Were you taking a shower and you were like, "Oh my God, I should start this company"? Were you waking up in the middle of the night and you were like, "Oh my God, I should start this company"? Like, at what point were you like, "Yes, I need to start this company"?

I feel like I just fell into it, because when I left my organization, I left my job.

I like quit everything, moved back to my parents, and was helping my sister out with her new baby.

And I was like, I'm just chilling and we're just gonna consult and help people.

But because of the organization I had, everybody was like, "I need help.

I need help starting this organization.

Like, just help me with this one little thing." And so I would help give them all my experience, everything I did, everything that they should not do that I did.

[laughs]

What are some warning signs that an organization is maybe growing a little faster than its infrastructure can support? I mean, that's basically what we're talking about.

Absolutely.

So the first one, of course, is just that it's completely dependent on just a few people.

If you cannot walk away or if you cannot lose one person to go on vacation, they can't walk away for like a week without things falling apart.

That's a problem, right? If we are completely dependent on that person to do anything, then we already have a problem and we're setting ourselves up to fail in that way.

If you are burned out or have people that are burnt out, staff members, team members that are just overwhelmed, that's a flag that you probably don't need to bring in more money or more anything yet.

The other thing is if you... don't have a good a good way to like track and measure what you're already bringing in and what's going out that's also a sign that you don't need to bring in any more because my big thing too when you start bringing in like larger amounts of money that's more compliance That's more like more information that the IRS is going to want.

Like, what is it

And should a, the founding CEO, executive director, what should his or her expectations be of the, of the board? How, how might they use the board to further the mission?

So this is, this is a really good q- question 'cause I, I always see people really struggle with whether their board should just be a governing board or whether it should be a working board.

[chuckles] And when that f- when you get that first board, chances are they're gonna be working just a little bit.

It's, it's almost inevitable, just as you're really solidifying that foundation of your organization and really building your operations and building your systems and really figuring out what this ultimately is going to look like.

They're gonna have to put in a little extra work.

And so, as I'm, like, what should they be looking for? That is gonna be kind of a personal thing for every founder, depending on your organization, on what it is that you need.

And while I was talking about, like, those skills and those expertise that people should have coming in, I think it's really, really important to do just a skills assessment of your own to figure out, like, what skills do I have and what skills is this organization ultimately going to need moving forward? Like, if you have some kind of educational nonprofit, you're gonna want an educator on your board.

Observations, and how do you coach your clients on that first board chair?

Yeah.

Yeah, so our biggest thing is organizational development.

So just helping you build your organization from the ground up.

If you have already started, we help you just kind of rebuild your foundation.

And we do that in three really specific ways.

Because, well, first, we're very holistic about the way we operate, because most people tend to focus on one thing we have this idea that you have three different pillars to your organization and all of them are inextricably linked and you really just can't separate these things.

And so the first one, of course, is just your systems, just how you're operating and how you're running.

What would you tell them? Sorry, just because funding is always in everybody's mind, right? 100%, right? Yes.