For better or worse, I have a strong intuition for when things won't work or will go wrong. A solid portion of any amount of time I take in between actions is spent evaluating how to navigate the wrongness in advance. Most often, I find myself having to do enough of the wrong for the sake of getting moving altogether. This is becoming more apparent as the action steps for my business involve less and less time in front of a screen or filling out paperwork.
Small example. I need to advertise. I need to advertise something that is supposed to maintain a particular "pleasant" or "professional" or "hopeful and helpful" veneer. I'm not inviting you to my pop up show on the weekend. I'm trying to introduce myself as a counselor with a home based casework nonprofit he's attempting to fund well into the tens of thousands of dollars. You've never met that guy handing out pamphlets in the street. You also almost never see an organization with those kinds of resources advertising on anything less than billboards and commercials. I've got flyers and little to no peg boards or community centers that "everyone" let alone maybe anyone is going to see.
I also have a service that most people who are using it are trained to misunderstand how it works. They believe they're already in counseling, not that they're being milked and babysat. They think they're doing "enough" to justify their place in the world because yada yada we all have a backstory. Who recognizes that what I'm offering is different? Well, the people who've already worked with me or the people who've felt how I exercise power. Confidentiality, which I'm increasingly convinced is a monopolizing tactic, means I can't just reach back out to them and say what's up. They have to find me "organically." My $0.30 a piece flyers can be torn down and discarded seconds after I put them up anywhere, especially if they reside close enough to the entities I'd be competing with…where all my clients are.
I wasted a lot of time and gas driving to places like Wal-Mart thinking they maybe had a board by the door. We've spent money on facebook and google ads which get clicks, but it's not a personal connection. I feel like I'm selling one of the hardest things precisely because it consists of dozens of conversations over time for it to sink in what we're doing. By analogy, if you're exhausted looking at one blog, how am I going to get you to buy a book?
My friend has said we should make videos, and I agree. You can complain about the landscape, or you can lean into how it has trained our attention. I don't really know how to make the right kinds of videos, and it sounds like more money I don't have, but it's likely the direction we're headed. I kind of want to do some Richard Branson-esc display and hold an event. I envision like curtains on a pop-up privacy office I can put in a field.
What compounds my sense of inevitable failure though is the feedback that results in no referrals or responses from people claiming the landscape is overflowing. If you've got people in mind, why haven't you sent them to me? If you have 150 through your doors every month, and everyone you call is booked, why is my phone silent? If you're sooooo excited to start using us, what am I to make of that when it just looks like a lie? At some point I'm going to have to expand or change the primary focus to be more "home based services" broadly that sort of "tricks" people into utilizing us for addiction counseling because….yeah, it's addiction. It's not really a problem and no one's really ready to change. I'm selling a very particular program for 1 out of 10 people who will do it right and consistently.
I have options though, that's the key. With the nonprofit, I can do a great many different things as quickly as I can change a flyer if one does not seem to be panning out. I still believe I need to lock in an expert grant-writer or fundraiser. That horse race is still going. I need services I can offer I don't need anyone above me to get paid to oversee. I need things to do as an individual that are low to no cost that can help me build the stats as far as work done. I also need to find a way to stop feeling like I'm doing basically all of this alone.
The last thing I want to do is pick up a normal job again. Whatever progress I think I can make here and there goes almost totally out the window when my mind and time is eaten up by wage-slavery. I'm convinced that most things that survive are only based on a handful of persistent relationships. I look at the donor lists for things like the symphony, and while there's certainly some sizeable donations, it's like 4 that really keep it going and the rest supplementing salaries. Who could I make my whale(s) has been on my mind a lot, and I've thought about writing personal letters to different celebrities or rich people I admire that might care about what we're doing.
Even just pairing up with an organization who is better connected and already doing close enough to what we're doing could fix our issue, but I get this impression that everyone thinks their cause is the special one, so if your "mission," (the language they use towards me) isn't to be subsumed or controlled by them, they aren't interested in what you bring, especially if it's any burden to their income. This, of course, because even the "nonprofit space" is another iteration of a capitalist monster in the hands of most.
On top of this, because my network isn't a network and my "friends" are in quotes, if and when I do things like ask, "Does your company donate each year or do you think your boss would be open to talking to me?" That question scares the shit out of people and they act like I've asked for their first born. You can't obligate anyone under any circumstances to advocate for you or open a discussion they aren't familiar with. They're not going to take the time to learn or translate what you're doing so it jives with what might connect. So even potentially monied people who are one-step removed from me I can't access with any remotely personalized approach. This one I find the most frustrating for several reasons I'm sure will be a whole new blog later.
No comments:
Post a Comment