261. Authenticity and Impact in Nonprofit Leadership with Dan Johnson

What motivates people to give their best effort without financial incentives? This was the central theme of a compelling conversation with Dan Johnson, a nonprofit coach who has galvanized over 10,000 volunteers. Dan’s story begins with a moment of disillusionment during political meetings, where he recognized a lack of genuine problem-solving. Realizing he was "in the wrong room," he made the bold decision to redirect his organization toward meaningful impact, even at the cost of losing most of its funding. Surprisingly, his core team remained, proving that shared purpose can outweigh financial security.

Dan attributes this loyalty and growth to what he calls the "volunteer paycheck"—a trio of intrinsic motivators: purpose, ownership, and mastery. Purpose keeps people grounded during tough times, ownership fosters empowerment and initiative, and mastery ensures personal growth and skill development. By moving away from top-down leadership and embracing a model of “radical ownership,” Dan saw his volunteer numbers surge from 60 to over 10,000 in just two years, underscoring the power of mission-driven leadership.

These principles extend far beyond the nonprofit world. Whether in corporate settings or community projects, people stay committed when they believe in the mission, feel a sense of agency, and see themselves growing. Dan’s insight—that “clarity of purpose attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones”—is a guiding truth for any leader. Authenticity and distributed leadership, it turns out, can drive extraordinary commitment—no paycheck required.

🌐 Connect with Dan:
• Website: https://nextlevelnonprofits.us/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trainerdan/

Chapters

• 0:27 Exploring Volunteer Motivation
• 2:29 Dan's Journey From Politics to Purpose
• 6:42 Finding Authenticity After Wrong Turns
• 14:22 Impact-Driven vs Donor-Driven Organizations
• 25:34 How to Inspire 10,000 Volunteers
• 33:01 Purpose, Ownership and Mastery
• 45:13 Final Four Questions

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

What truly inspires people to give their best, even when there's no paycheck involved. Have you ever wondered what really drives someone to pour their heart into a cause and as a leader? Have you taken a moment to ask where you might have gone wrong in today's episode, I'm joined by Dan Johnson, a nonprofit leader and coach who has inspired over 10,000 volunteers to take action for a greater cause. Dan takes us behind the curtain of the nonprofit world and openly shares how he made mistakes. He gives us a look behind the curtain on what happens in some of these non profits in a very authentic and emotional story. So whether you're leading a team, running a business or driving change in your community, stay with me. You'll walk away with powerful insights on humility, purpose and leadership that connects. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Dan Johnson. Dan Johnson is a non profit coach from next level non profits. He's previously grown one of his non profits to over 10,000 volunteers. Imagine that inspiring 10,000 people to volunteer their time to something that they see as a worthy cause. That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about leadership in the nonprofit space. But what are the differences? But also, what are the things that are transferable, that you can take from how you lead and inspire in the nonprofit space into a more conventional workplace. Dan now helps other nonprofits as a nonprofit coach for them to achieve the same success that he did. So I'm really keen to get into today so without any further ado, Dan, I'd love it if you would say hello to the audience, give a little flavor of your background and that experience that you had and what inspired you to do what you do today?

Dan Johnson: 2:03

Hello, Leadership Project. Audience, it is great to be here and great to be talking with you. What inspired me to do what I do today is originally, I went into politics, yes, everybody, boo and hiss, but I went into politics because I figured that's where the solutions were created. That was where, you know, things were changed. If you wanted to make, you know, a change in the world, you needed to be at the levers. And I wanted to be at the levers. And over a period of 10 years, I did pretty much everything in the political space and entered in some of the biggest rooms in the world. And you know, those smoke filled rooms that nobody talks about, and I can't even mention the name of on this broadcast, I was in those rooms, and my organization had a seat at the table, and I remember realizing I was in the wrong room. When it was a 2016 there was a policy that then candidate Trump was throwing out on the campaign trail that nobody in the room had ever heard of, and the reaction of the people in the room was not, well, that's stupid. We're not doing that. The reaction of the people in the room was, well, it was set out there. Clearly, we have to deal with it, so we're just going to get our piece of the pie. And I realized doing that, that this was not where the solutions were found. This was where everybody got their piece of that solution, and that was not the kind of room that I wanted to be in. And shortly thereafter, my organization started researching community nonprofits, and I was asked by a friend if I wanted to sit in on the emergency rescue line of the Cajun navy. Now, if you're not in the US and you don't know much about the Cajun Navy, is exactly what it sounds like. It is a bunch of Louisiana boaters with shallow bottom boats who got upset after Hurricane Katrina, and our national emergency management agency didn't do too well and started rescuing people themselves, and they were on their way to rescue people in Houston, Texas during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 It's not every day to listen in on the emergency line of something really happening? So I said yes, and I was listening in on this line, and very lively. Lots of you know first responders saying, we're going here, we're going there, here's what we're doing. And at one point, a voice cracks on the line, and this guy says, We've got a three year old hanging on a branch the corner of such and such. Our boat can't get to him. Can anybody get there? And the whole line goes silent for like three minutes. Now, after a few minutes, somebody pops in the line and says, We got him. He's in the boat. We got him. And everybody breathes a sigh of relief. And. And I realized in that moment that that was where the solutions were in that room, and I ended up joining the Cajun Navy social media team. We would find people who were posting their zip codes online and saying they were at such and such an address in any knee high water or in chest deep water. We would send those out via this ridiculous it ticketing system to boats that were using Google Maps to go find these people and rescue them. But you would get messages, hey, you just rescued my grandma. I want to thank you so much. She she wouldn't have made it out without you. And at the end of that time, the Cajun Navy with $100,000 budget, rescued more people than the US Coast Guard. And I realized this is the room I need to be in. This is where the change is made. From then on, I've been working with community nonprofits, working primarily to help people launch community nonprofits and raise their first 250,000 so that the solutions that they have can reach the people who need to reach them.

Mick Spiers: 6:06

I'm hearing three really powerful things there, Dan, and the first one that I want to come back to in a moment is a discovery of being in the wrong room. I'm curious to know what that felt like, so I'll be coming back to that in a moment. And then from there, the the difference between one group of people who see a problem but instantly work out, well, hang on a second, I can make a buck out of this, even if the solution isn't something that doesn't sit well with them and they don't necessarily even agree with a solution, hey, I can make a buck out of this. And then others that don't care about the buck, they only care about the impact, and how much more impactful they can be when the impact is the goal not making $1 is what I'm hearing here. But, and I want to unpack all three of those, but I want to come back to the first one. First. How did that feel, to discover that you come across to me as someone that's very purpose driven, very values oriented, and then to discover that you thought you're in the right room, I only did a look in the eyes of the people around you and go, hang on a second. These people are not here for the same reason I'm here.

Dan Johnson: 7:19

It's hard, you know, particularly because at the time that I was in that room, I was one of the youngest people in that room, and I had given up my social life to be in that room. I had given up, you know, partying and all the stuff you do. We had a really cool party school too, and I'd given all that up to build an organization that would get me into that room. And I think the worst part about it wasn't that I was in the wrong room, but that I had led so many people with me to the wrong room. That was the hardest. It was thinking about the hundreds of speeches and the interviews and the phone calls, and everything that I did to get people into that room and to get us into that room, and realizing that it wouldn't matter that the work that I did up until this point, and the things that people believed in and believed in me getting to that point, that was the hardest thing to overcome, was realizing that I had let all these other people down, not just me.

Mick Spiers: 8:27

So how did you deal with it like how when you made that discovery and you you're at your own crossroads of your own conscience, going, Oh, whoa, how do you deal with the people that you had inspired up until that point, to follow you on that journey?

Dan Johnson: 8:43

I wrote a manifesto, for starters. It's called Document 11. Has never before been shared. Probably won't outside of my team, but I sat down and I wrote a manifesto, and I said in there what we were doing wrong and what we needed to do differently. And then I went to my team and I said, so if we go down this new path that I think we need to go down, because this is the wrong room, it's very likely, and it did eventually happen. We lost most of our funding. 95% of our donors walked when we went down this path and but I went to my team and I said, Hey, I can't continue down this road. I didn't do all of this in my life to have I tried on my tombstone, but you don't have to come with me. So I gave him the option. I said, either I can lead us down a completely new and different path from here, or I haven't talked about this ever on a show such a good question, or I will resign and you guys can continue with probably well funded you guys can. Continue doing we were doing, and to their credit, and somewhat to their chagrin, because it didn't work out like initially, we did lose a lot of our funding, but every single one of my team members said, I'm with you, regardless. That's a humbling experience as a leader. I'll tell you.

Mick Spiers: 10:21

Yeah, I can imagine. I've got a question coming about that. But what I'm going to tell you, what I'm seeing there is, if you did that, what you're going to have is people appreciating the authenticity of that, the congruence of that, to have a leader in front of them that sticks up their hand and says, Hey, I've made a mistake here. I've led us down a path that was not the path that I thought it was. This is not aligned to my values. Here are my values. This is where. This is the real Dan Johnson, if you want to follow me, I'm pivoting right the ones that would have pivoted right with you. Guess what? They're the ones that truly believed in the first place and were in it for the right reasons too, and the ones that didn't pivot, maybe they weren't in it for the right reasons as well. How does that sit with you?

Dan Johnson: 11:13

It does, it sits well? Because we did. We did lose a few people. Wasn't a lot, but we lost a couple people, and I don't think that they were in it for what we were trying to do. And doesn't necessarily mean they're bad people or anything.

Mick Spiers: 11:28

It doesn't. They're just different. Different is not bad. But now, now, when you've gone on this, you've taken the fork to the right. Now, the people that are with you are 100% with you, and they're all, they're all kind of, I'm going to say, rallied around that same cause and and that same mission. Now, how does that feel if you wind the clock down, let's, I don't know how long this process takes, but let's say six months, 12 months later, yeah, you've lost 95% of your funding, but you've got these people that are with you that truly believe in the mission. How does that feel now?

Dan Johnson: 12:02

It feels honest, you know, it you can ignore the practical effects. And if I were to do it over again, I might have done it a little bit slower and allowed for a little bit more transition to make it work. You know, found new donors and realigned and things like that. But it's honest. It's saying we only get so many minutes and hours in our lives, and it's saying that each of those minutes and hours that I am here, that I am working, that I am putting in this effort, it's genuinely my best effort toward the cause that I think is actually going to work, and I have a team around me who believes the same thing, and even though that organization ultimately went under the seeds of what we found and developed and created, there is what has set me on this lifelong mission of working with nonprofits. I almost wish you know some of the people who stayed on that boat and it didn't go where we thought it would go initially, some of those people I've lost contact with and don't have any way to reach them at this point. And I wish that they were listening to this episode so they could hear how much those seeds were planted. And maybe the first boat didn't get us there, but the boat we're on is much further than that boat was. It did not end there.

Mick Spiers: 13:33

Yeah, that was part of your journey, Dan, is what I'm going to say. And probably the lessons that you took from that help you to sharpen and focus we go to today. Now I want to put something to you around this whole thing about when you're in the wrong room, curious to hear your thoughts on this. So first of all, to the audience, I want to say that there's no issue with nonprofits out there generating fundraising and generating income without the cash, they can't have the impact. The cash fuels the impact. But I feel like the fundamental difference here, Dan is that when there's people in the room that are looking to profit from, I'm going to say other people's suffering. This is very passionate to me. Sorry. I'm going to get a little bit emotional here as well, potentially. But when people are profiting from other people's misfortune, what they're going through in their life, etc, it's going to completely dilute any impact that can be made. So it's okay for nonprofits to generate fundraising, etc, etc, but it's what happens next is the really key thing. And if you've got people that are looking to profiteer from it, the return on investment, or the return on impact for every dollar raised is going to be significantly diluted. So I'm picturing this thing. I. Can't do the math quickly enough in my head, but a a non profit that's raised $5 million over here on the on the left, but he's got people profiteering from that $5 million and over here, you might have a smaller non profit that's only raised 100,000 but every dollar of that 100,000 is going into impactful like impact for the people that you're trying to help, I'd prefer to be in the boat that's got the 100,000 that's doing impact than the 5 million that's diluted impact. I don't think I'm describing myself very well, Dan, but please help me out here. Does that make sense?

Dan Johnson: 15:37

No, you're you're hitting the nail on the head. There are nonprofits that are impact driven, there are nonprofits that are just confused, and there are nonprofits that are donor driven. And what you're talking about is the kind of organization that is donor driven. There is absolutely, not only nothing wrong with but it is, it is the step that the nonprofit sector needs to take is to recognize the massive impact that this sector has. I mean, you just think about the Cajun Navy example of the 5000 people that they rescued for, you know, 100 grand. How many of those people? First of all, how much would it cost to rescue them through normal channels. Heck of a lot more than 100 grand. And secondly, how many of those people would not have made it if that organization, you know, had not gone in there and done that? And what's a life worth? But perhaps more importantly, if you look at the challenges that we're facing in the US, a lot of them are challenges that nonprofits can help us solve almost better than any other institution, because their challenges where the people who have them don't have the money to solve them, and nonprofits can come in there and address homelessness, whether it's lack of affordable health care, whether It's you know, pick your issue. So nonprofits need to recognize that and need to step up. But while nonprofits have not been and they've been in kind of either this old style charity I'm just trying to do a little bit of good in my community mindset, or this donor driven mindset, the impact suffers the donor says, you know, this week, I want you guys to do this. This month, I want you guys to do this, and this year, I want you guys to do this. And even if the donor is of good intention, the fact that that nonprofit is chasing that money instead of chasing that impact just makes it a really inefficient for profit. And if the sector wants to get away from this donor capture, then it really has to step into who it is and the real incredible impact that these organizations can make.

Mick Spiers: 17:54

What I'm hearing here is a dilemma, dilemma of the attraction of scale. And you would look at scale like with the donor driven organizations, you'd look at that scale, and it'd be easy to fall in love with, oh, with all of that leverage capital resources, I could do so much more versus being nimble and agile. So if I use your occasion, Navy idea, yes, I agree. Like in a big organized charity or even government organization that's got lots of resources to be able to be responsive and save that three year old in the tree would have taken a long time, and it may not have worked. Whereas the nimbleness and almost the kind of distributed leadership of having all of these people that are mission driven on the end of that radio, the nimbleness and the agility of that in a less organized but still mission driven structure, it's the agility that's the difference there that makes a more real time impact. So the attraction over here is scale. I can be so much more impactful, but the cost is agility and being nimble. How does that sit with you?

Dan Johnson: 19:13

Yeah, I think that there are 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States right now, right? So there are that's not as many as we have small businesses or something like that. I think it's like 30 million. But there's 1.1 point 5 million organizations out there. And if those organizations adopt what, organizations who scale well, adopt this, this mindset that there is a business component to it, this mindset of sustainable impact. In fact, one of my biggest recommendations to people who are starting a nonprofit is raise the money first, because so many of these organizations will go out and they'll make an impact, but now they're so deep in the impact they don't even know if it's going to get funded. And so they are just, you've seen it, they'll just burn themselves out on the impact, and then you lose a really good person with a really good heart to just a bad mindset about the organization. If nonprofits are able to adopt what organizations that scale well do and push whatever their own solution is, then we have 1.5 million solutions that are operating and being tested and being pushed and whatever the challenge is that we're facing, we can do a lot with 1.5 million different solutions. So I'm a big fan of nonprofits stepping up and being more professional, but the distributed nature of it is there needs to be more nonprofits. Need to be more organizations who recognize this is the problem we're trying to solve. This is the impact we think we can have. We're going to go out and treat ourselves like we're worth the 10 million, the 50 million, the 100 million, the 100 and $50 million impact that our addressing PTSD, for veterans, encouraging youth entrepreneurship, is actually worth.

Mick Spiers: 21:12

Yeah, really good. I think that's an important lesson. It's I'm going to say it's more than okay to run your nonprofit like it's a business. You need to do that, because otherwise you will have the sustainability issue of not knowing if you have a future, right? And this is what I was meaning before, that the cash involved is not evil. It's actually the fuel that fuels the mission. So don't shy away from the fundraising and don't think, oh, that's the bit I don't like about this. I just want to do the good. You need the cash to be able to do the good, and if you run out of cash, the good stops. So yeah, I think that's an important lesson. But don't lose what's beautiful about the impact and the agility, then the nimbleness that we're talking about before. So it's about running it with a with business acumen and a business mindset, but don't lose what's beautiful about nonprofit and impactful, driven volunteers and all of these things. How does that make sense? Yeah, good. Coming back to the donor driven ones, I'm always curious to know this one I've worked with organizations before that sit on both sides of this ledger, Dan, without kind of putting them in it, how much of it ends up being green washing or cause jacking, right? So you know, what do I mean by that? So donors that that donate a lot of money, but they're only doing it for for marketing reasons and to make themselves look good, but they don't really believe in the cause, and their actions don't even have an impact. It's just a bunch of marketing fluff and oh, we, we gave millions of dollars to charity. X, aren't we a good company? And then behind it, their actions don't match the words.

Dan Johnson: 22:55

Yeah. I think it's difficult to tell how many organizations you know fall on one side of that ledger or the other. But I think a really good question is, people give for all kinds of reasons. Some people give because they want to leave a legacy that's really common. Some people give because they really care about that particular issue. Some people give, you know, primarily for advertising or for marketing reasons for their company. What is important, and I think what separates the donor driven organizations from impactful organizations with a lot of donors, is you don't let the donors who don't care lead. They don't sit on your board, they don't give you the majority of your funding. You don't put them in a position where they lead the organization. We've several organizations I work with who get a lot of corporate funding, and the corporations are just looking to get their name out there, and they're just looking to support some cause somewhere, and this happens to be the cause that they support, great, but they're not sitting on the board, right? They're not sitting on the board. They're not a more than one to two to 4% of the revenue of the organization per per company. Do not put if you want to maintain a impact driven organization. Do not put donors who do not care about that impact in charge of it. And that is what a lot of organizations do, is they're like, Oh, you're giving us so much money. Will you sit on our board? And now that donor is making strategic decisions about the organization, instead of, you know, your money's still green here, we'll use it to make a good impact, right?

Mick Spiers: 24:42

Yeah, that's really good advice. And I think one of the key tests there is a conflict of interest test, like, if this person was to sit on their board, is there a chance that they could start making conscious or subconscious decisions that more in their own interest than the than the interest? Of the impact. All right, really good. Yeah, okay, you've grown nonprofits to in excess of 10,000 people. I have to ask this question, how do you inspire 10,000 volunteers to volunteer their own time to a mission that they believe in? Damn, that's 10,000 that's huge.

Dan Johnson: 25:20

So I think that I've always been someone who is decently good at inspiring people to do things. I think it's partly because I really do care deeply about people, and I think people can see that, and I care deeply about people I'm talking to, and so if I'm casting a vision or whatever that that's that's helpful. My mom used to say that I was selling furniture at the mall when I was three, just pointing out, telling the lady how the couch would look in her own so there's, there's some of that, but at that scale, I think there's a there's a couple things. You know, when I first started my first organization, I had in my mind a there was a very specific problem that we were tackling. So it's actually somewhat relevant to today. It was people having the right to due process before they are jailed, that ensuring that every single person had that right to due process. And as a country, occasionally had groups of people who we said, you don't get due process, and it never turns out well. And so my organization was dedicated to advocating for people's right to due process. And there was a specific law that had passed down, which was the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which had some specific provisions in it that were wholly violative of that. And so being able to talk about a very specific problem and how bad that could be and casting a future that looked significantly better fits into the number one way that you motivate people, which is purpose. People want to be a part of something that is greater than themselves. In fact, if you run a nonprofit and even to some extent a for profit, the number one thing that you need to make sure is clear is what problem you solve and how much better the people's lives are that you serve if you solve that problem. And you need to make sure everyone in your organization understands that, understands that to a T, understands that to the point that you have a metric that says this is the number of people we've gotten to this point, you need to be really crystal clear about that, because people will join you for a period of time because they like you, but they won't stay because they like you. They will stay because of the vision. They will stay because they are a part of something that people could look back 6080, 100 years from now and go look at what they did. That's what people will stay for. And so the first key to me was purpose, get everybody to buy in and understand this is what we're doing. If we pass these resolutions, if we pass this legislation around the country. Then when somebody comes in there and tries to detain someone without a charge or a trial, then they're going to get stopped. That person is going to be protected, and it's not going to happen there. And that was motivating people throughout the country to get on board and get involved with this, the cause. And the second thing came about when we had, or had our first year. And when I started the organization, I had this idea of how it would run my dad's Air Force, my whole family's military. So I was going to run it like a military operation. You know, you're going to have generals, and they're going to be in charge of this, and they're going to do this, and very authoritarian, very top down. And I ran it that way for the first year, and we had lots of turnover. We had, you know, Chapter pop up here and then it would disappear, and it would pop up here and disappear. And we still had, you know, 35 chapters at the end of the year, which was not bad for an organization run out of my dorm room, but it wasn't working the way it needed to. And I met someone at a conference, and he basically was like, you have been arguing against absolute Central, top down control as an organization, and yet you run your organization like the exact thing that you're arguing we shouldn't have. And I remember going, wow. A, you suck. B, okay, let me think about and, and we, we completely change. Changed the culture at the organization from a top down, you know, do you tell you culture to actually the exact opposite, which is best described as a swarm. So in we really adopted the principle of radical ownership, that instead of having chapters, we had teams, and when you signed up with us, it was your team, and you ran that team, and you owned that team. So we were going to provide you, as an organization, with resources. We're going to provide you with training, we're going to provide you with connections, we're going to provide you with a plan, but it is your job to run that team, and therefore you make all the decisions about that team when we changed our mindset and our model. From you are joining my organization, and here are the rules you're going to follow, to you're joining a movement, and we're here to help you achieve this shared vision that we have in your area, our volunteer just exploded. It went from 5060, people in 2012 to like 2500 in 2013 and hit 10k by 2014.

Mick Spiers: 31:20

Yeah. Well done. That's amazing, and congrats on the success. The two key things I'm hearing here are purpose and ownership. That's the things that are coming through on the purpose part. And I think both, by the way, I think both are transferable into conventional businesses, right? So because this is all comes down to human behavior on the purpose part, yeah, people want to be part of something that's bigger than themselves. That means something. They want to go home at the end of the day feeling proud that they did something that mattered. And I love the way that you described it, that what problem do we solve and how will people's lives, or even the world be better when we solve it? So that's very visionary to go, Well, I can now do what I do because I know that it's making an impact. And I'm not just getting a paycheck, I'm making an impact. Whether I'm a volunteer and it's my time that I'm investing or it's the, you know, the more conventional businesses where I'm also taking a paycheck, I can still go home proud at the end of the day that I did something that mattered, and then on the ownership, people don't like being told what to do. Dan, it's fundamental freedom of choice, freedom from oppression, type psychological need that people have. They don't like being told what to do. They want to have some choice or some decision making. They want their fingerprints on it to feel like they've got decision making, they've got empowerment, they've got the resources that they need to make a difference. And when someone owns the place, they do so much more, and they put so much energy in than if they were just renting the place, right? So yeah, I think there's a powerful here the purpose and the ownership. I think it applies in both the for profit and the non not for profit sector. How does that sit with you?

Dan Johnson: 33:09

If you think about so there's there's. Dan Pink has an incredible book drive The Surprising Truth About What Motivates us. And I had found these separately, but when he introduced purpose, ownership and mastery as the three paychecks of people who had already been paid enough that they needed that these are the three paychecks. And I actually call them together the volunteer paycheck, because if you're running a effective organization and you're going to have volunteers stick with you for the long term, you better pay them. You don't have to pay them in money, but you better pay them. They're there for that reason. And so this purpose, ownership and mastery, really outline, not just in a nonprofit, but in a for profit, in any kind of organization, what people are looking for outside of that paycheck, outside of hey, I have a roof over my head. My bills are paid. I don't have to worry about that. Okay, if that's the case, who do I choose to work for? And you know the purpose? The purpose goes beyond, you know, if we're just touching on that first, the purpose goes beyond just the initial, inspiring people. The other thing it does is it provides intense, incredible clarity. So I have a thing that I go through with all of my clients called the 10 points of clarity, which will identify the, you know, what problem do they solve? What makes them different than other organizations? You know, who do they serve like these very key points. I didn't ever think about a for profit business using it, but they could probably use this too, these key points about, what are you actually doing here? What is the point of this organization? And I find that when people I work with. With on the 10 points of clarity. Get clarity a it inspires a lot more action from them and from the people around them. Everybody knows what they're doing. And we talk all the time about, at least in the business space. Talk all the time about these distributed leadership organizations and stuff like that, and giving empowering people, and giving people more, you know, leeway to make decisions. If you don't have a clear vision, then nobody can make any proper decisions, because nobody knows what the end game is. So when including the founder, the founder is not clear. In fact, often founders come to me because their people aren't clear, and what they find is they aren't clear. They change that. They message to their people, and everybody's in the same boat. But it's not just about that initial inspiration. It's also a guide. It's also something that I can look at as an employee or a volunteer, and I know here's who we are, here's where we're going. Here's our you know, we always do a three year metric. This is something that the business world has and nonprofits don't. Business World has Profit and Loss revenue. That's how you know if you're creating value. There are ways to rig that system, but in general, that is how you know that your presence on Earth is actually valuable and should not just be replaced with somebody else. Is your profit and losses in the positive nonprofits don't have that, and so we create it. It's their vision metric. This is the number of people that have been helped in this way three years from now. And if every volunteer, every person at that organization has that vision metric on their desk when they're sitting down, when your IT guy is sitting down and having to make a decision about what goes on the website, he knows that's what we're going for. When your janitor is deciding whether to stay late and take out the trash or just go home because his day's over. His shift is over, and he sees that metric on the wall, and he knows how close you guys are to it, and he knows if he just took out the trash tonight, then it would make the place that much easier for people in the morning when they see that that's going to help them make that decision. Up and down, your organization, your purpose, guides people more than any micromanaging or all your weekly meetings ever could. And if you get that clear and people understand it, they will be they'll make better decisions. They will stick with the organization longer, and they will understand when things need to change a lot easier, because they know where you're coming from too.

Mick Spiers: 37:45

There's two powerful lessons I'm taking away from that, Dan and I think everyone can apply this listening in the audience, around purpose and now the clarity of purpose. So if you can articulate with deep clarity who you are, what you do and why you do it, including what problem you solve, and why that's important, then it's going to drive two things. It's going to drive resilience and efficiency. The resilience, and I'm going to use a quote from nitsky here, says he who has a powerful why can outlast almost any how, and that this is when we have the powerful why, and we keep on reminding ourselves every day why we do what we do. If we have a bad day, we're still going to show up the next day, or if we need to go that extra mile, we'll go the extra mile because we've reminded ourselves that what we're doing is important. So it's the resilience to keep on driving forward on the good days, the bad days and in between, and then the efficiency, if there's the clarity of purpose, and in that distributed leadership team, you won't have inefficiency of people scratching their head going, Oh, is is this aligned, or is it not aligned? Right? So you start getting rid of the interference, the things that are not aligned to the purpose, and you start fine tuning the activities that have the biggest return on impact. So resilience and efficiency. How does that sit with you, Dan?

Dan Johnson: 39:13

Absolutely, if you can get that resilience, efficiency and attraction, I didn't talk about attraction, right. The number one thing that has made the biggest impact with my clients, and I'm talking, you know, you don't see this kind of results in the nonprofit industry, but five times their revenue in 90 days, three times their revenue in six months, is clarity of purpose. Because when you have that clarity of purpose, and people see that they know whether it's right for them, and the right people show up and the wrong people leave. So that clarity of purpose tells that person who's applying for that job at your company if they want to work there, and tells that person who's applying for the job. Who doesn't belong at your company, I don't want to work there. And that clarity of purpose creates an attraction and gives everyone, even tangentially associated with your company or with your organization, a reason to talk about you, reason to either be on board or not be on board. So we cannot forget about the power of attraction from the clarity of purpose.

Mick Spiers: 40:27

Yeah, really good. So if you can articulate that purpose with clarity, you will attract people that believe in the things that you believe. The other powerful thing that you picked up on here, and we had a marketing expert on our show recently, talking about branding, it should equally repulse the people that you don't want hanging around that don't believe in the mission, because they're just going to drag everyone down and become inefficient because then they don't believe in the mission. So it should equally attract as it does repel the people that you're actually not trying to talk to in the first place anyway. All right, so really good. We've covered purpose and ownership quite a bit, but you you touched on mastery before. What does mastery look like to you, Dan?

Dan Johnson: 41:09

The third reason that people volunteer for an organization, and from what I've seen in for profit positions, also at nonprofits, but at least employee positions rather than volunteer, is people are looking to get better at a particular skill set. They want to improve themselves. In this process, they don't just join organizations because of the big purpose. They don't just join and stay in organizations because they have ownership, and they have a piece of that. They also join and stay in organizations, because they get better as people by being a part of that organization. And this can be in how the leadership invests in their people. This can be that you're constantly as a leader, trying to understand where are they going in their career. How do I help them get there? How do I help them up level? How do I help them, you know, move from this point to that point, it could be in we're going to bring in a favorite question at my nonprofits is, if you could learn any skill that would help you at your job, what would you want to learn? And you get a consensus, and you bring in somebody who trains that on a, you know, a Thursday, or a Friday or something like that, and you constantly a aware of how these people want to improve themselves and be providing opportunities that they can get better through your company. Oh, you want to learn graphic design. Fantastic. Is it part of your job? Maybe. But could you learn graphic design and then somewhere in the future be super beneficial to the company? Yeah, absolutely great. Here's graphic design. You want to learn this. You want to go to this conference. You constantly recognizing that you are not the last landing place for your people, and if you can provide them with skills and the investment that shows that you care about them and their career and their trajectory, they will work so much harder, they will put in so much more effort for you, because it's the ultimate way of actually showing that you care about them.

Mick Spiers: 43:35

Really good, Dan, and that's it, people. This is a Teddy Roosevelt one, but people don't care how much they you know until they know how much you care, and that's when they're going to go above and beyond. So I'm going to use that as our platform to kind of round it out here and give a bit of a call to action to everyone listening. Whether you're in a not for profit space or a for profit space, you can apply what Dan is talking about. So I love what you said before, that people might join you because they like you, but they won't stay because they like you. They have to stay for something else. If you're in the for profit space, there includes a paycheck, but everyone still is driven by the same things. They're driven by purpose. They're driven by ownership. They're driven by mastery. So my question to all the leaders in the audience today is if you want people to to stay for the long run, if you want people to show up, not just for their paycheck and do the bare minimum, but but to actually bring their full energy at work. What have you done lately? To show them to articulate with clarity the purpose of what you're doing. What have you done to empower them and to encourage them to take ownership, and what have you done to invest in their mastery, to give them the opportunities where they can learn and grow, the skills that they're looking to learn and grow, and to show them that you care about them as an individual and. Not just them as a number, right? So purpose, ownership and mastery. I want you all to think about that. What have you done lately in your teams, to give purpose, to give ownership, to give mastery. All right, Dan, this has been a wonderful conversation. I want to take us now to our final four questions. These are the same questions we ask all of our guests. So what's the one thing you know now, Dan Johnson, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Dan Johnson: 45:27

I'll be bold and say, myself, but more that myself plays a role in how I lead and understanding me and who I am and my weaknesses and my strengths and my ticks, and how that plays a role in how I engage with people, helps me be a better leader for others, and for me.

Mick Spiers: 45:48

I can tell you, we've never had that answer on the shower, and it's very powerful. I love that. It's really good. What's your favorite book?

Dan Johnson: 45:55

I think my favorite book recently is tribes, because I can't pick a favorite. There's too many books, but my favorite recently is tribes by Seth Godin, which basically says it's worth it. Go create a movement around what you do and go make a bigger impact than just what you think you can do. Nice one. What's your favorite quote? My favorite quote is by an architect trying to remember the name of this architect now, but I'll paraphrase it. I know it's my favorite quote, and I can't remember the quote off the top my head. I'll paraphrase the quote. And basically it's, if you want to create change, don't fight the old, create the new, the solutions, the future is in the new, not in taking down the old.

Mick Spiers: 46:49

That rings very true with what you were sharing at the start of the show today, the story that you shared. Yeah, really good. All right. And finally, then, how do people find you? You now help other non profits with your coaching services to become more impactful, to have purpose, to have ownership, to have mastery, or to have the clarity, the 10 Point clarity you're talking about before. How do people find you if they want to know more?

Dan Johnson: 47:13

Yeah, the simplest way to know if you're right, for me is, are you a business owner, and are you looking to increase your impact through a nonprofit, whether it's launching one or whether it's building the one that you are a part of on the board of to 250,000 or more a year. That is what I help people do, launch nonprofits and raise their first 250,000 so if that's you, my website is next level nonprofits.us. Do us. I do calls all week, just giving some little tidbit of advice, little paradigm shift, something that will help you enter what most people think is a murky world and instead have the clarity that you need to create sustainable impact in your community. nextlevelnonprofits.us Help my calendar. Let's chat.

Mick Spiers: 48:06

Brilliant, Dan, thank you so much. I want to I want to say thank you for what you do, not just about the show today, but I want to thank you for what you do, because it's people like you that can coach people that are impact driven to have the impact that they're trying to achieve. So that changes the world. That solves a problem, and at the end of solving that problem, it makes the world a better place. So thank you, Dan for what you do. Then I also want to thank you for your time today and for sharing your wisdom, your insights, and, most importantly, sharing your story. It was, was very moving and very impactful for me as well, and I know the audience would have taken a lot from today. So thank you so much.

Dan Johnson: 48:46

Thank you so much for having me, and thank you to your audience for listening in.

Mick Spiers: 48:51

Wow. What a powerful Interview with Dan Johnson. Dan's story is a powerful reminder that Leadership isn't about titles, charisma or even compensation. It's about connection. It's about vision. It's about seeing the human being in front of you and creating a space where they feel that they matter and that the work they do matters. He learned, sometimes painfully, that assumptions are dangerous, especially when we think we know what drives people, but the truth is, people want to be part of something meaningful, and they will walk through fire for a leader who leads with authenticity, vulnerability and purpose. So I leave you with this question, how are you inspiring your team, not with money, but with meaning? How are you creating environment where people give their best, not because they have to, because they want to. In the next episode, it'll be a solo cast where I reflect on what I heard from Dan today about purpose, ownership and mastery, and adding my own flavor of what I believe people crave in the workplace. And what the leader can do to give them just that. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do, take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.