Kesheyl van Schilt 06:49
Oh, like I wasn’t working on the service side, but it’s a crisis line for youth. Right. So you can check them out. They’re actually a client today. They’re an amazing amazing cause helping children kids youth with you know, depression and, you know, suicide things like that.
Jeremy Weisz 07:11
So fast forward a little bit and talk about the decision to purchase Blakely.
Kesheyl van Schilt 07:19
Yeah. So I have to backtrack a little bit. When I was working for one of the hospitals in Toronto, I hired Blakely as the agency to work with us on our direct marketing program, and I worked at the hospital for a number of years, and I was looking for a change. The owner, the previous owner of Blakely, was looking to hire an account director, and I was like, all right, well, you know, it’s still in the not-for-profit, but at least it’s a shift out of the charity side, which is a whole other podcast. Working, working for charities.
So I joined. I really liked it. I liked the work, I liked the autonomy. I liked working with lots of different clients, the relationship building. And then I had my son in 2010 and during that year that I was off, because in Canada we get a year off for maternity leave, he started talking to me about wanting to sell, and so I thought, well, okay, like maybe, maybe I could.
Jeremy Weisz 08:31
Was he talking to you because you expressed interest, or was he talking to everyone in the company about it?
Kesheyl van Schilt 08:37
He was talking to myself and in particular, he was talking to myself and he was talking to our VP of insights, Jeff Eland. But at the end of the day, he knew that I had the capacity to actually be able to purchase the company. So when I bought it, I. So I purchased the company from him and then I sold shares to other team members.
Jeremy Weisz 09:07
Talk about that decision. Selling the shares.
Kesheyl van Schilt 09:09
Oh it was like a no brainer. Like these were key people that were critical to the business at the time, and I knew were going to be critical to the future of the business. Like my two colleagues, Kimberly Blees, she’s our EVP. She kind of leads on all of the thought leadership, a lot of the growth strategies and things like that. And then Jeff runs our insights and analytics, the quantitative side of things. Yeah. And that like those two things were going to be critical to the growth and where we wanted to take things. So having them as shareholders just made sense because then they’d have more of, they’re shareholders, they have a stake in the company. Right. It matters to them.
Jeremy Weisz 09:58
With the percentage. I’m curious, Kesheyl, do you decide, Okay, I want to actually sell off X percentage or do you go to them first and say, hey, I want to sell you shares? What’s, I mean, obviously they’re going to have to put in a chunk of money, what’s affordable for you or whatever? How did you approach the thought about what percentage to sell?
I know I’m taking you back about a decade or something.
Kesheyl van Schilt 10:30
Yeah, over a decade. I think it was just conversations, like because there had been lots of conversations about it ahead of time before that, you know, actually came to fruition. So I probably came to them with a number and then negotiated from there depending on where they wanted to go. But like, definitely, I had a maximum in my mind of what I was willing to sell.
Jeremy Weisz 10:58
It’s really interesting. So when you first started working with Blakely, you weren’t necessarily thinking, I want to take over this thing or buy this. And it just, the owner was like, I’m thinking of selling. And then the opportunity arose.
Kesheyl van Schilt 11:11
Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened.
Jeremy Weisz 11:13
How was the transition then? I don’t know how long the current owners decided to stay or they’re like, peace out, good luck. I’m out. Obviously, there’s a good team in place that helps, but what was the transition like?
Kesheyl van Schilt 11:27
So I had become president the year before I bought it. So I had lots of time to kind of like get in there and get more, because I said to him, like, if I’m buying this thing, I need to know, like, I know what I’m buying, but I need to know what I’m buying. So, there were certain decisions that I wanted made before I purchased the company or before I took over. So we agreed for him to stay. He stayed on, he was supposed to stay on for two years, he didn’t.
I think it was just shortly after a year. But I think like, it definitely helped me having, you know, somebody in my corner and, you know, like somebody kind of backing me up through that. But it’s like any situation like that, I think it’s really hard for the founder to, like it’s hard for people to, you know, back away and see other like you have this desire that you want them to take it forward. But there’s also, you know, this kind of resistance to change sometimes, which I’m very conscious of as the owner and, you know, like I’m still young, but like, you know, from a succession planning standpoint, like if I do want to stay involved in the company long term, like that’s something I might need to go to therapy for so that I’m good at it.
Jeremy Weisz 12:46
What did you start to do differently once you took over?
Kesheyl van Schilt 12:52
Well, the very first thing was financial rigor. Pricing strategy was probably, I think, the agency’s biggest problem.
Jeremy Weisz 13:02
Were they undercharging at the time?
Kesheyl van Schilt 13:04
Yeah, yeah. Big time.
Kesheyl van Schilt 13:06
There was just no like, you know, again, like homegrown out of a basement. You know, you grow like smart, smart, smart. Right. Like, you know, I bought a successful company. I’m not saying it wasn’t successful, but there were just, you know, like there were some things that needed to be professionalized about the operations of the business and what we were doing.
So the pricing strategy was very key. The other thing was the like, you know, the concept of doing things off the side of your desk. So there were a lot of cool things happening on the side of people’s desks. So it was about figuring out what those things were or like reorganizing or structuring around that, I guess, and hiring the right people so that we could propel those things forward and making those investments early on.
The other thing that I think was critical for me at that time was I had a mentor, so I had somebody who was very much, he’s passed away, so I might get a little emotional.
Jeremy Weisz 14:10
Sorry to hear that.
Kesheyl van Schilt 14:11
Yeah. It’s okay. He was incredible, an incredible mentor, like one of those people who would, like, just get you thinking in different, like asking lots of questions, getting you thinking about things differently and then like, kind of letting like, and then, like, off you go. You kind of do things and then you come back and you’re like, okay, here, this is what worked. This is what didn’t.
And it was just a very organic kind of mentoring relationship. And it was both, you know, about the internal stuff, the internal pieces, but also a lot about how we We’re marketing ourselves and how we were going to market ourselves in the not-for-profit sector, because that was going to be that was the other thing that the previous owner and I did like, I did very I, we marketed ourselves very differently when I took over.
Jeremy Weisz 15:08
What were some of the, you know, through those conversations with your mentor? And on the marketing, what did you discover that the way you wanted to market the company?
Kesheyl van Schilt 15:19
Yeah. Well, we needed to, like, not just be standing and set like trade shows. We needed to with, like, our logo standing behind a thing. Like, we needed to put, like, some of that creative energy that we were putting into, like, our clients work into our own marketing. It’s actually probably one of the things that I envisioned for a long time, and it took a long time to kind of get to where we are today with our marketing.
But our marketing is basically about sharing resources freely and widely with the sector in order to help them be better at their jobs and at fundraising. That’s ultimately kind of what the big picture is. And then you know, we don’t take ourselves very seriously at the same time. So like our very first like so it was about being. I don’t know what the word is like. We wanted to be edgy. Right. We wanted to —
Jeremy Weisz 16:27
I don’t know about the word sterile, but I don’t know if that’s the right word. But as you can see, that’s why I pulled up the website, because this kind of speaks to the personality of the company a little bit, where we see we take your work seriously, ourselves, not so much. And then you can see I always love looking at the about the team page, because you can kind of tell a lot from the company about that, right? You know, it could be that everyone has a little different structure and personality to it. You could see, you know, just the different expressions and pictures on there. Just to see the personality, I guess you could say. Right.
I mean, even yours. Right. You’re not just like standing there, but it’s like an in action pose type of thing.
Kesheyl van Schilt 17:12
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, our very first push after the purchase, we are the campaign that we did for ourselves was not your dad’s agency. And the reason we did that was because every other major agency player in Canada was not owned by women. So that was kind of our you know, that was one of the angles that we had and used at the time, I guess, to our advantage. Given, you know, the industry that we work in, which is primarily dominated by women.
Jeremy Weisz 17:54
So, you know, you talked about pricing. Doing pricing differently, really looking at that and looking at some of the kind of operational efficiencies and, and that piece and then the marketing piece, how you’re marketing your team. And then also you mentioned the cool stuff on the side of the desk. Can you give an example of that? What do you mean by that?
Kesheyl van Schilt 18:14
Yeah. Well, I mean, at the back ten years ago, digital was off the side of your desk. So like literally like because we were primarily like a print, like with, like the communications that we were sending out were primarily print. Right. With like, a smattering of digital.
And we were doing some pretty cool, we’d done a couple of pretty cool campaigns and really wanted to, you know, bring that kind of across the board. Probably like one of the, I don’t know if this is really off the side of the desk, but like my theory on growing new services product offerings. Right? Like, so part of our job is to be out there listening to clients and helping them solve problems. Right. Fill gaps. So as they’re talking about different challenges and different problems, we’re trying to figure out if there are solutions that we can bring to the table. Right.
And sometimes you’re creating those solutions at the same time that you’re creating that solution as you’re selling the solution as you’re, you know, doing the solution.
Jeremy Weisz 19:22
I’m with you.
Kesheyl van Schilt 19:23
But that’s because of the people that you hire. Like, you can’t do that by yourself. So like one of our key focuses coming out of the pandemic because like the whole like fundraising went bananas during like because people were at home, people had disposable income. There was a massive need in the world and fundraising dollars went up.
You’ll also hear people say that they went down because events went down. Major gift fundraising went down. But the world that we’re in, in that not-for-profit space, it expands.
Jeremy Weisz 20:03
Because of medical. You’re in a lot of medical. Is that why?
Kesheyl van Schilt 20:08
Medical, food insecurity, like everything went up, some more than others, right. And then, you know, you follow that with the international crises, you know, like that what is happening in the world today. And so there was just so much change happening so quickly and digital, which had always been around like escalated, like not-for-profits, always like behind the commercial sector. So it really escalated.
So everything was changing so fast. And I had hired this woman from the UK. She was a fundraiser. She actually, we had the same mentor and I’d met her at a conference and I didn’t really have a job for her, but I was like, you’re really smart and I think you can help me with stuff and get some things that I’m kind of doing, like off of, like my plate. She’s created like an an out of like, you know, because she’s so smart and out of the coming out of the pandemic, the things that we needed to help our clients solve problems, which is better audience understanding, better product development based on those audience understanding, better experiences for donors like people who give to charities.
She’s created an entire profit center in the agency as a result. And like it’s, you know, and like, not alone. Like there’s a lot of other people who have been involved in that. But I really think it’s about, you know, people have Incredible ideas and can bring a lot to the table. And if you kind of let them run with it within the context of the vision and where you’re headed, amazing things can happen, right? Rather than trying to kind of like dictate and predict and whatever, like you just kind of have to go with it, right?
Jeremy Weisz 22:02
I’m curious. I want to go a little deeper on the better experience for donors piece and I’m just curious where that stemmed from. And maybe you don’t even know. I’m just curious of like, a client said something and they’re like, oh, we need to, because the client probably didn’t say we need a better experience for donors. Or maybe they did. They just said something and your team has said, you know, what that really means is we need a better experience for donors. Do you remember, like what was the client saying that you came to that conclusion as a team?
Kesheyl van Schilt 22:32
I think what the clients were saying, I mean, you look to the commercial sector, customer experience was the big, you know, the big thing, right? And I think, you know, a lot of times in the not-for-profit sector, people are looking, you know, to their experiences elsewhere and saying, how can we apply this here? But really it was born out of the analytics. Right? It’s like we don’t think like retention is down or we’re not reactivating it.
Like not as many winbacks, you know, like is, you know, kind of what they call, I think what they call it in the commercial sector. You know, there’s not as many people upgrading or, you know, it’s like we know with higher value donor groups, we know intuitively the experience is better. Like if you’re going to give more money, you’re going to be more known to the charity. You’re going to have a better experience. Right.
So how do you apply some of that to somebody who is making what might be like a small gift to the charity, but might be a significant gift to that human? Because at the end of the day, like it’s about it’s about the whole right. It’s not just about one donation. It’s about, you know, it’s about the masses coming together to support. Like that’s what ultimately affects the change.
Jeremy Weisz 23:51
Totally. I mean, you know, someone contributing $100,000 may be the same, you know, thing. Someone contributing $1,000 to that, to that same person. Talk about some of what you have done to help with better experience for donors. Like what were some of the programs.
Kesheyl van Schilt 24:11
Yeah, so out of the work that we’ve been doing over the last 4 to 5 years, we basically established I don’t know what you would really like, t’s surveys. Right. So we survey for affinity.
So we’re surveying donors within our clients for what motivates them. How are they connected? What would motivate them to do more for the organization? How informed do they feel? Do they trust the organization? Do they feel needed? Do they understand what their own donation achieved? Do they understand the impact of the organization? And values connection would be the other thing.
So we actually measure these things and we’ve been able to establish benchmarks. And we know what things like which one of those like we call them donor needs. So they’re the like, you know, the need states. We know which ones, along with other factors like favorite charity like. So somebody’s saying that you’re their favorite charity can influence higher value giving, whether that’s retention like giving more frequently, higher value donor value gifts, leaving a gift in your estate like a bequest type of a type of giving.
So we know what those things are. And so our job then is to, so say a charity is scoring low on need for example in a certain donor segment. Well then it’s about looking at those communications and those strategies or the communication strategies that are in place and making sure that you dial that up in the messaging. Right. So that’s just a very, you know, kind of simple, practical way. There’s obviously, you know, lots of other things involved, but that’s that’s the gist of it.
We’re very data driven. Right. It’s not just like, oh, we think this is a good idea, right. Like it’s this equals plus this equals this.
Jeremy Weisz 26:24
Some of the top like copywriters, direct response marketers talk a lot about, I don’t remember if the quote is attributed to like Eugene Schwartz of Breakthrough Advertising, but something, copy isn’t written, it’s assembled. And so he talked about basically they’re listening to the customers and using that as the most compelling copy, which just sounds like, okay, you do the survey, you figure out based on the analytics, what are people wanting or needing to hear? And then for all the, I mean, the charity knows where certain things are going and maybe they’re not communicating that or the donors don’t feel like when I give something, I don’t know where it’s going. Right. I’m sure some are very all their messaging is where it’s going and they’re lacking some of these other pieces.
Kesheyl van Schilt 27:09
Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 27:12
So I love what you said about that. I don’t know if that relates to the heart and stroke, but what did you do with the heart and stroke organization?
Kesheyl van Schilt 27:24
Yeah. So you know, we’ve been running the affinity surveys with them for a number of years. And the insights that you know, they’re able to get out of that. And, you know, so we’ve built a program for their higher value donors, like a platform like a fund, if you will. That was built out of the insights. And they’ve had tremendous growth.
You know, like the whole value based marketing side of things, like connecting people with values, that has been a big focus of the work. We actually just repeated their survey and their value scores went up, which was nice to see. Like our values alignment I should say. Scores went up. I’m trying to think of some other things I don’t specifically remember.
Jeremy Weisz 28:20
Do you remember, and maybe, you don’t because I know you’re not in all the weeds on all these. But do you remember at a higher level what things maybe came in that they weren’t communicating? I know you listed kind of what motivates them? Being connected and form trust. What was maybe some of the tweaks that were made in the campaigns because of the insights that you discovered?
Kesheyl van Schilt 28:44
Yeah. I don’t know that I’d be able to speak to that, but I can speak to it with Diabetes Canada.
Jeremy Weisz 28:50
Okay. Go ahead.
Kesheyl van Schilt 28:51
Yeah. So the donation achievement is probably the biggest one. So again, like you’ve got people who are making smaller gifts and don’t really know specifically what their donation has achieved. And it’s hard sometimes to bring that tangibility in because like a $50 gift is not like necessarily going to something Uber specific, like, like, you know, there’s some charities where it’s like it’s buying food, it’s buying shelter, right? Like you can actually translate the dollar amount.
When you get into some of the health charities, that’s a lot. Or like even in some of these other causes, it’s harder to do. So really honing that messaging and that communication in a way where they understand what their donation in the context of the bigger picture is actually achieving. So like, you know, we’re funding this much research this year or we’re, you know like that kind of thing.
Jeremy Weisz 29:54
I gotcha. So it’s kind of like it’s contributing to this bigger pool. And that’s what it’s doing, as opposed to your $50 buying three glucose monitors to these patients or something like that.
Kesheyl van Schilt 30:04
Yeah. Right. Which it would not do.
Jeremy Weisz 30:08
Glucose monitors are surprisingly expensive.
Kesheyl van Schilt 30:11
Very expensive.
Jeremy Weisz 30:12
Thanks for sharing that. I love how you think about this because this applies to any industry obviously. Right. And so, you know, what are some of the mistakes you mentioned, obviously there’s digital and I mean with direct response you’re using it via print and digital. What are some of the mistakes you find people making or companies with their direct response marketing in general that could be online or offline?
Kesheyl van Schilt 30:39
Oh, God. So many. So it’s oh, gosh, I don’t even know where to start. I think the biggest mistake that people make is when they, so in this world, this marketing world, like you’ve got to be present, you have to be present all the time and you have to repeat like it’s like my son. Like I have to repeat things like multiple times for it to, like, stick it, but like, anyone’s like that, right? Like you’re getting hit with so much stuff and this like wanting to pull, pull back on things or like.
Jeremy Weisz 31:21
Like, feel like you’re repeating yourself, like, oh, maybe we should say this again.
Kesheyl van Schilt 31:26
Or we need to say this differently. Or we need, like, reinventing the wheel. During the pandemic, a lot of organizations pulled back, and those are the ones that didn’t do as well. Like stay the course. Like direct response is really about it’s not like it isn’t. It’s a bit of a numbers game. Right.
And you need to be you need to be consistent and you need to be consistently present for people to for you to be top of mind. And especially like when I said in, you know, about fundraising it is one of the hardest marketing jobs out there. Like, I’m not kidding. Like you do not wake up in the morning and say, I wonder which charity I’m going to give to today, right?
Like you might say, I’m going to like, I need a new pair of jeans. Okay. That’s like maybe a nice to have, but like, you need to go get milk. You need to go get butter. You need to go get food. Right. Like, charity is not a necessity for people. And so, you know, like I can’t come up with like an offer like, oh, today for 29.99, you can save more lives. Like it doesn’t work like that, right?
Jeremy Weisz 32:34
That’s a good tagline, though. Maybe you should use that.
Kesheyl van Schilt 32:37
But you can’t. You can’t do that. Right? So you’re you’re it’s about people’s emotions and it’s about pride and generosity for like, it’s about tapping into those values or those feelings that make people feel good about themselves. Like getting the hat, like giving philanthropy is like it’s happy endorphins, right?
But so we’re like, we’re trying to convince somebody that we’re going to make them feel good by doing this. Right. Like charity is really about problem solution. There are problems. People like to solve problems.
So you’ve got to present the problem in a way that inspires them, that they feel compelled, that they feel that they can actually make a difference and then put a solution in front of them that makes them feel that there’s going to be impact that they trust. Right. And like that combination is like it can be really hard to nail down sometimes.
Jeremy Weisz 33:33
One of my favorite books of all time is Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. And really, the examples they give in that book are all not, I mean, not all, but a lot of nonprofits and telling us it’s really about direct response, like telling a specific emotional, personal story as opposed to this general thing. Right. And so I learned a lot about, I don’t know, not just direct response, but nonprofit.
But just like you said, tapping into those emotions there. Do you have any favorite business or leadership related books throughout the years? Resources.
Kesheyl van Schilt 34:11
No I’m not. I read like a lot of like blog posts and articles and things like that. I’m not like a really sit down and read the whole, like I read that, what was that one? The Good to Great or whatever. Like that one kind of sticks out.
Jeremy Weisz 34:26
Jim Collins, yeah.
Kesheyl van Schilt 34:27
Yeah. But no, I’m not like I have a lot of them, you know, people outside of the not-for-profit industry in my life who I use for, you know, guidance, direction. Like I said, my father was, you know, a marketer. And so I feel like I learned at the kitchen table over the years.
Jeremy Weisz 34:48
What did he do?
Kesheyl van Schilt 34:51
Do you know the drugstore chain up here, Shoppers Drug Mart? No. So it’d be like, is there still people’s drug in the state or like a Walgreens?
Jeremy Weisz 35:02
Of course, Walgreens.
Kesheyl van Schilt 35:03
CVS or whatever, right? So it’s the big national drugstore chain. It’s now owned by Loblaws group of companies. But yeah, he ran all of their marketing and eventually became president and then retired.
So yeah, he’s a brand guy. Like, He’s the one that, you know, came up with like the loyal like you know him and a team of people, right. Like not just him but he led and Interacted some pretty cool brand marketing for that company.
Jeremy Weisz 35:37
Through osmosis. I’m sure you learned at the kitchen table, marketing. Do you remember any of your maybe favorite advice from your dad from a business or leadership standpoint?
Kesheyl van Schilt 35:50
Yeah, my favorite advice from my dad ever, I still quote it to other people, is that you can only control what you can control. And so focus on that because everything else will just make you spin. And then I think not like direct advice from him but just watching him. People and relationships. Right. Like that is critical to not just your success, like while you were in business, but like he’s been incredibly successful post business because of those relationships.
Jeremy Weisz 36:25
We were talking before we hit record about growth and about dealing with growth. And one of the ways, you know, deal with growth is especially, I don’t know, hashtag agency life is people, more people. So I’d love to talk about the hiring process and a little bit about culture. You’ve hired a number of people recently. What’s the hiring process look like?
Kesheyl van Schilt 36:50
So like a detailed hiring process or like how we?
Jeremy Weisz 36:57
Whatever, yeah. Whatever you think is beneficial.
Kesheyl van Schilt 36:59
Well I think the key thing with the hiring process is making sure you’re really clear on like we’re fortunate that we’re like right now the roles we’re hiring for are like repeat role like it’s the same. Like we’re not like we’re not creating brand new roles and going out into market. So we kind of like we know the role that we’re hiring for. I think again, it’s about getting it out to the networks.
Right. Like, so you do your regular posting. We sometimes depending on the role, we’ll go through a recruiter. It just kind of depends on like there’s a bunch of different factors that go into that, like the type of role. How recently did we just hire for that role? What did the pool of candidates look like? You know, we rely heavily on our networks of people like.
So a lot of the roles that we’ve just recently hired for, like we hire from within the fundraising world, like the fundraising space because like, the more you understand, kind of not-for-profit. We have found in our hiring, like in our hiring over the years, they’re the more successful team members moving forward than when you don’t have that kind of experience and background. A lot of us came from, like we’re on a like worked at a not-for-profit at some point in our career.
Jeremy Weisz 38:23
Industry related experience.
Kesheyl van Schilt 38:24
Yeah, yeah, it definitely helps. You know, one of the things I’m really proud of is that our hiring is actually, so we anonymize everything so that we can eliminate as much bias as possible. And now that we’re fully remote, we hire from anywhere in the country, which is also fantastic. So it’s really opened up the pool of candidates that we can access. And at the end of the day, I think it just makes the talent a lot better.
Jeremy Weisz 39:06
How have you been able to win when you’re hiring 9 or 10 people? How do you streamline the onboarding process without getting crazy? What is the onboarding process?
Kesheyl van Schilt 39:16
Yeah, yeah. So we have a pretty cool onboarding process. So the history behind our onboarding process is that we had a really shitty onboarding process for a very long time. So we do off sites even before we were remote, we would do off sites with the team. And we had an off site. So this was before we all went remote and we did this like, I can’t, it was like an exercise, like a team building exercise where half the groups were given okay, act out or do some kind of presentation on a good client or a good employee onboarding experience. And then that other half had to do a negative one. And it was so funny because all of the crap that we were doing or weren’t or the stuff that we should have been doing that we weren’t doing, all got highlighted in these hilarious skits, right?
Jeremy Weisz 40:19
Be an example.
Kesheyl van Schilt 40:21
Oh my God, I don’t even know if I remember. I don’t remember. It was like everything from, like, your computer wasn’t set up to, like, your, you know, you show up in your manager’s not there. You’re like, standing in the, you know, in the office, like it was just, you know, like, overload on this, overload on that. Anyway, so it basically changed the whole onboarding process.
And I mean, I meet with all of the like, so the entire I think it’s the leadership team. I don’t know if the management team does as well, but we all meet with all of the new hires, like within the first three months. I don’t really know what the details are on. Like what actually kind of happens in the, you know, with the I just know that like there’s things in place in a process and we have a human who actually manages it all. So it actually gets done properly.
And the feedback that we’ve gotten has been pretty, pretty positive. We also implemented Blakely Buddies. So you get buddied up with somebody outside of your department to actually help kind of guide and mentor you through your first few months at Blakely, which can sometimes be very overwhelming. And then our Amy, who leads on employee experience, she meets with all of the new hires at three months just to sort of check in and see how things are going.
And there’s like a whole bunch of other things that happen. But we’ve actually been asked by clients to come in and share how we onboard because it’s pretty solid training. Great story.
Jeremy Weisz 42:06
So at least they’re probably get assigned to someone in their department. They’re taking them through whatever specifics they’re going to need for their job. They meet with the leadership team, the leadership team within the first three months, then the head of the, you know, customer or client or team happiness meets with them in three months just to check in. They’re assigned a buddy from a different department so they can kind of, you know, open up with questions or feel welcome and navigate everything else as well. Okay, cool. That’s pretty good.
So Kesheyl first of all, thank you. I have one last question. Before I ask it. I want to point people to BlakelyFundraising.com. You’ve seen it as we’ve been sharing it.
If you have anything you need, you know, check out the website. It’s really fun and I encourage you to check it out anyways to see the personality and how they do things. Last question is kind of on that same realm, which is about culture. I know culture is very important. What are some of the things you do, especially in this remote world, to maintain culture with the team?
Kesheyl van Schilt 43:10
Yeah. I really think culture is just about the way you act, right? Like it’s a process. It’s not like a set of things that you do. It’s like it’s embedded in everything you do, how you work, how you think about things, how you engage the team, what you talk to the team about. Like I spend so much time thinking about like how to communicate certain things to the team.
Like, you know, what’s the best way to communicate X or Y? Like whether it’s like, exciting news or whether it’s challenging news, like just thinking that through and putting yourself in their shoes and, you know, thinking, how can we be the most transparent and build, build that trust. And at the same time, you know, like, how do you be approachable as a leader and how do you make sure that other leadership team members and managers are approachable, right? Like, it’s, you know, like there is no open door anymore because we’re all, you know, online behind scenes.
So how do you kind of build that, that consistent kind of fun. But then also how do you set expectations. Right. So like our entire performance management system is based on values. So again it’s about how you, not just what you’re doing, but how you actually do it.
Right. Like I don’t really know how else to sort of put it because it’s so fragile and it can get screwed up very easily if you’re not paying attention to things. Totally. Like, it’s constant. Like it’s every day. Right. It’s every day living the values that you say you’re expecting from your team, from yourself, and actually actually doing that. And then when you misstep, you know, like, you know, like owning it and moving on, right? Like it’s those actions that I think.
Jeremy Weisz 45:29
Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 45:30
No, I love how, you know, the performance is based off of, it goes back to the values, right. Because if someone you know at least learns to live it, and maybe if they don’t know it, but if that’s what they’re, you know, measured on the values, then that gets reinforced every time there’s performance reviews or anything like that.
Well, Kesheyl first of all, thank you everyone. Check out blakelyfundraising.com, and more episodes of the podcast and we’ll see everyone next time.
And Kesheyl, thanks so much.
Kesheyl van Schilt 46:01
Thank you.
Jeremy Weisz 46:02
Thanks everyone.
