100th Episode with MVPs Daniel Orozco and AJ Babra

Episode Transcription

Part 1:

(Click here to go to part 2)

David Pisarek: Welcome to the Non-Profit Digital Success podcast. I’m your host, David. And in this very special episode—the 100th episode—we’re going to be talking about all kinds of neat, interesting background things over here at Wow Digital and the podcast.

I’ve got two key players with me here today from my team at Wow Digital, one of the top digital and web design companies dedicated to supporting non-profits, NGOs, charities, and community-based organizations.

I’ve got Daniel, who is the MVP behind the scenes and has been with Wow Digital for nearly three years, rising through the ranks to upper management. He coordinates an international team to achieve maximum digital impact for renowned non-profits in Canada and the US. And I have AJ and he’s got over a decade of experience. AJ excels in digital production for online marketing, corporate events, and individual projects.

Thank you both for joining the episode today.

AJ: Thank you. Yeah.

Daniel Orozco: Thank you, David. That’s a very flattering intro.

David Pisarek: Well, you both deserve it. You’re doing awesome stuff here not just on the podcast with the editing episode after episode an episode in our social and all kinds of other projects that we’re doing as well. So I guess let’s jump in. Daniel, what’s your favourite part about the company culture that you think would be really great for other organizations to practice as well?

Daniel Orozco:

Well, I’m really in love with the Wow Digital team.

The company culture that we’ve pretty much cultivated ever since I’ve been here has been open communication between each team member. So, that has come a long way since we started just doing quick check-ins throughout the week. We do three check-ins throughout the week just to check in pretty much our progress with our tasks are going well that if we have any questions we’re free to ask them. It’s a gathering of the whole team.

So that happens between people from marketing people from the delivery team sales anything that is relevant for the team in that meeting is open to be communicated. Even if it’s something for design, the marketing team can just jump in and give their thoughts on what’s happening for something related to a project.

So we’re also very aware and celebratory of our wins. From time to time we do business best and personal best so we’re aware of what’s happening between each team member. Some of us have been in physical competitions in whatever country they’re in. Some of us have started swimming classes and things like that. We’re very celebratory of those achievements and we’re also always chatting on our Slack channel and posting things there. That’s always fun.

David Pisarek: Yeah it’s hard as a remote team to come together and build a sense of community between everybody in the team and cultivate relationships and be friends with each other. We have a newer member on our team, Líbano. What was it? The first or second week, he was like, “Everybody come to my place.” Everybody that’s local, you all got together on- what was it? A Friday night or a Saturday night, right?

Daniel Orozco: It was a Friday night. The remote team here, some of us are in Argentina, so we gathered, and it was a pretty fun experience meeting everybody in person just checking in and can’t wait to do it again.

David Pisarek: Yeah. Our team we’re working really well. We communicate. You mentioned that we use Slack. We’ve got the internal comms that are flowing all the time as a team.

I go to the gym Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the morning and then right after that, we get together at 10:30 every week to connect and talk and walk through pieces with our projects and get any insight that they need from me or from each other to be able to move to the next phase or figure out what is the next step that we need to actually do or troubleshoot or just share something.

AI was huge; we have a Slack channel called “AI-Insanity.” We’re doing stuff to continue learning as well and picking up new things.

There’s always some new tool that we want to play with and experiment with for ourselves, but also then go, “Okay, yeah, this is really cool. How can we apply this to our clients or for our clients or in some way that will help them as well?” I think really getting together and having conversations is really key. Having these human relationships and connections with each other makes us a stronger, more bonded team.

Daniel Orozco: Definitely. That’s spot on.

David Pisarek: Okay, so that’s internal. Let’s talk about external. Clients that we want to work with. What are your favourite clients and organizations that you really like working with?

Daniel Orozco: My favourite client would definitely be the one that is excited about their website and what it can be that they understand that their organization also needs to have a digital footprint. It’s a digital world now and making sure that your message and your story are coming across in the digital space is definitely a key thing nowadays.

So there are clients that they can see that, and they have that vision of what they can achieve online and how they can spread that message online. There are ones that need a bit more guidance, but the ones that understand may not be as knowledgeable, and that’s why they come to us. They understand that we’re here to help guide them with our knowledge and our experience, and they know that we have their best interest in mind as well. Of course, it’s a trust exercise.

Some clients go through different vendors, but I’ve seen it in the Wow Digital clients that they trust us and that they get the best they can after the whole project. Not only after the whole project but throughout the process. It’s a very fun experience because we have those weekly check-ins where it’s a very I don’t know candid or personal conversation as well with them not just project but we also do our bit of check-ins with them just to get familiarized with them.

It’s about creating that network or that connection with the client as well. So that also carries over a bit to the project and how efficient we are with it because the more we understand the client, the more open they are with us, the better experience or the better output we can give out to them. So that’s my favourite client, the ones that are open and understand the value of their website.

David Pisarek: I know I’ve spoken about this in a number of our episodes about the three main factors—the “know, like, and trust” factors, right? We know that it takes seven or eight interactions with somebody before they know they can trust you so that they would want to make a donation to you. In our case, that they would want to hire us and bring us into their team to help them evolve and do better things digitally. But we actually take that through the entire process.

It’s not like, “All right, we’re going to onboard you, and then everything is just hands-off, and we’ve got some web forms for you to fill out, and then you don’t hear from us forever and ever and ever.” It’s important to have, again, those relationships, those one-on-one conversations, check-ins, making sure that the work that we’re doing is on point, that our clients really like it, and that we’re getting the feedback and insight we need from the clients so that we can continue to take the project to the next level and go further and eventually launch the project with them.

Are there any highlights with any clients that you want to mention that you’re like, “Oh, we really love working with these ones?”

Daniel Orozco: Definitely.

So recently, we had a pretty good experience with a client called OGS (the Ontario Genealogical Society). It was a redesign project for them, and they were just such a kick-ass client, honestly, with the way that they just came into the calls.

They were very open about their thoughts and opinions, even though they were not, again, as knowledgeable in terms of the trends nowadays for websites. They made sure it’s their website; they came clear with those questions like, “Hey, is this okay? Or is this better?” They had a lot of questions for us. Even if there were things that were outside the redesign project, they knew that we, I guess, proved that we’re also very knowledgeable, very experienced, that they came to us with questions about other pieces like server-related issues or things like that where they just relied on our expertise to move forward.

Just that, again, being that open with somebody, not holding back with any questions, just come in with your opinion, we’ll discuss it, we’ll talk about it. That just makes us move forward way better than if you were holding off on any questions or your opinions.

David Pisarek: Yeah, it’s important that we have clear, really open, transparent communication with our clients as well as within our own team so that we’re all on the same page.

If you’re thinking of working with an agency (ideally us, so whoever’s listening, hire us!) but if you’re going to hire somebody else, it’s really important that you’re totally open and honest with them about all the things.

What are those things that are keeping you up at night that make you lose sleep? Are you worried about your server going down? Are you worried about a campaign that you’re about to run? Are you worried that your website doesn’t actually work across devices? Meet with them. You’re hiring them because they’re experts. You’re hiring us because we’re the experts.

Everybody needs to have that openness and frank conversation with whoever it is that you’re working with. Even if it’s somebody in your own team who’s dealing with your web properties, “Hey Daniel, this thing isn’t working. Can we fix this? Why is it not working?” All that stuff and really get into it on that side.

To your point, Daniel, clients are really excited about it—and I love feeding off of that energy.

Daniel Orozco: It really does change how we feel about the project as well. You hire us, and we’ll do the work, whether you’re excited about the project or not. But when our clients are really excited about it, and they see things really coming together and the new shift in direction, it’s exciting for us too. Definitely.

There’s three key parts that I always come back to when thinking about projects. Which is getting that redesign or just the mock-up of how it would look, how the homepage would look, seeing the client’s face when they’re excited about it, they can see the potential, they see the new face of the site.

Then there’s when it’s actually built, and you can actually navigate through the homepage, and it’s all redesigned; they always get excited about that.

Then, the third point is when they actually see their content, their images, their phrases, and everything linked together. They just get so excited; that’s what always gets me riled up in a project. Just building up and working hard to see that reaction is definitely my favourite part of a project.

David Pisarek: That’s awesome.

There’s lots of smaller organizations that have been in touch with us over the years that you’ve been with us here; and some larger ones as well. We’ve got some national organizations that we work with.

Some of these organizations are really super niche and something very, very specific. That’s good because then that’ll help differentiate your organization from another one; everybody’s competing for donor dollars. How do you stand out? What’s your cause? As opposed to saying, “All right, we’re going to help everybody in everything.” No, you need to pick something and focus on that.

Many of these organizations aim to build a team of like-minded individuals to achieve their own goals, but should non-profits consider working with vendors instead of building their own team for their website or marketing efforts?

Daniel Orozco: I think for small organizations it definitely makes sense to go with a vendor.

It definitely can take countless hours just looking for the right fit for your organization, for somebody that can pretty much do what probably a team of already of a vendor or a digital marketing agency can do. With a vendor like us in Wow Digital, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel or anything.

We already have our proven process and the testimonials and everything to back up what we do, and we know that we have a great output. you can check that, and you can preview that.

When looking for a team of individuals, it’s harder to manage. Just the human resources of it can definitely be hard. Just having that team-building exercise and just again the countless hours of looking for somebody, having the interviews, getting back to them. Sometimes, it doesn’t always work out. You can always get lucky. It’s not like it’s not a possibility.

But again for a small organization, you probably have a bunch of other things on your plate already, just running the organization, running your mission. So, getting your message out there digitally might be better than looking for help when you’re starting out.

And then maybe when you already have a good face or a good digital presence and you’re a bit bigger, maybe you can start looking for individuals in your team, but when starting out, getting that help from somebody who is knowledgeable can definitely get your site to hit the ground running and just get your message out there right off the gate.

David Pisarek: I think part of that also is just the actual cost of it. If we talk about the reality of this, a project manager probably costs about $120,000 a year. Getting a web developer is about $80,000 to $120,000 a year. Getting a really great designer is probably about $70,000 to $80,000 a year. And just between those three roles, you’re looking at $280,000 to $300,000 a year plus benefits like medical, dental, vision, plus vacation time, plus onboarding, plus the need to get them computers and the software and all of that stuff. It really does add up.

So you’re probably looking at like $350,000 to $370,000 instead of just bringing in the experts to do the thing that you need done.

Bringing in a specialization really will save you a lot of pain and aggravation, to be blunt about it, in the long run because you’re hiring the person or the team or the Wow Digital team to get you the result that you’re actually really looking for.

Daniel Orozco: Definitely.

David Pisarek: Yes, we are biased. Let’s just lay that on the line; we’re biased. Hire outside consultants to get you the results that you’re looking for. There’s cost savings, time savings, and then the actual HR management side of it that you don’t have to worry about.

Okay, so let’s talk about tips for coordinating efforts online with a team of companies, especially with remote members. Can you talk about the tools that we’re using?

Daniel Orozco: Yeah, 100%. In terms of managing a bigger team, as I mentioned previously, we do have our regular check-ins. We use Gmail for communication, and Google Calendar is our saviour in terms of scheduling multiple people on the team just to make sure that we all have availability for it.

Each calendar invite has its own Zoom meeting as well. We use Zoom for those check-ins, in which Zoom has integrated AI that can give you notes after the meeting. We can also record them and store those recordings in our Dropbox to always go back and check in if something was missed.

We also use ClickUp for our internal communication as well in terms of project management for marketing, for the delivery team, for sales as well just to have our leads in there as well as our proven process.

We’re making sure that each task has its own deadline. We can have internal conversations in there for each individual piece of the process. You can always make sure that things are being tracked or that nothing is falling through the cracks. Really, the regular check-ins can make or break a project, specifically when you’re collaborating with multiple people.

At some point, you may not need too many meetings, but when you’re starting, it’s better.

Make sure that you have a leader, somebody that’s leading the project to trickle down the communication and the activities for the rest of the team. So people should be looking to that leader or that project manager to make sure that any questions are answered or what is the next step throughout the process.

Again, ClickUp, as well as Google Calendar, are our saviours. ClickUp is a really amazing tool. Everything is in there. That’s their tagline; it’s all into one platform. So you can take notes, you can have whiteboards, you can switch the views of how you want to see the information if you want to see it on a list or on a board. So it’s really open for multiple types of workflows.

We already have our own that we’ve been working on throughout the years and always improving. That’s the thing; ClickUp always sends these notifications where you can see, “Oh, maybe they have AI now.” We can start using those things to gather all our notes and have them condensed down. So once you’re settled on your process or in your tools don’t be shy and like “Oh yeah it’s already said.”

I’m not going to look at it ever again. You always want to keep improving your processes.

We also have SOPs, which are the Standard Operating Procedures. So, just to make sure that once we have a process, we’re writing it down. We’re having pictures here and there. If there’s a new onboarding, we can just give them that SOP with a video that they can guide themselves.

If you’re the leader, you might be very very busy and you don’t always have the time to get back to your new team members. So, having that library of procedures can definitely help. And again, everything is stored in ClickUp. That’s definitely one of the tools that I recommend. It’s free. You can get it right now and start running your projects or running your organization in there. That’s definitely one of the go-tos that I would recommend for new organizations.

David Pisarek: Just on that, there’s a few things you mentioned, Daniel, that I want to touch on which is number one ClickUp. We use it all the time for podcast episodes and recordings. What is the process that we’re doing right, AJ? We’re including all those details in there.

ClickUp isn’t a tool for web agencies. ClickUp is just a project management tool, period. You can make it do anything that you want. Most of us on our team are verified ClickUp power users as well. We’ve been using it somewhere around three years now.

If you don’t have a project management tool, if you’re fundraising, if you have a CRM, you can do whatever you’re doing inside of ClickUp. If you need help with it, there are free resources.

The easier thing to do is just to get in touch with us and we’ll help you with your ClickUp setup if that’s something that you want to support with.

We’ll walk you through, based on our experience and how we’re using it with all of our projects, to go, “Hey, what are your processes? How can we digitize those in a way that will lend itself to having better communication within your team?”

I’m not trying to sell you ClickUp here. What I’m trying to tell you is that there are platforms out there. You can use Monday, you can use Asana, you can use ClickUp. We say use ClickUp because that’s what we’re, and it’s really fantastic.

The other point is we actually give clients access to parts of our ClickUp through our hub page. So we onboard you in a project, we create a password-protective page for you, and you can see the Gantt chart of the entire project. Afterwards, we’ve created forms where our clients can actually just go and type in whatever the support thing is that they need and then have a Kanban view of all the tasks that they’ve submitted with us and the status of them.

So I encourage you to go to wowdigital.com/consult and book a call with us if you need some support around project management or getting your team in the right space. We even have ClickUp and Slack connected. So when things are updated, it’ll send messages out to channels in Slack as well. So we’re making sure that things don’t fall through the cracks.

Having worked in Non-profits for about 16 years, I know that with project management internally in marketing communications teams, you’re supporting the entire organization. Your support is crucial to them, so if you can build out a platform or a way of managing all those tasks, it’ll make your life so much simpler as opposed to relying on your inbox as your to-do list.

I just wanted to talk about that for a moment there. Actually, Daniel touched… I’ve got a little bit of a funny story. He touched on the new functionality that ClickUp has; they released the AI update as a beta. Daniel was like, “Oh, this is really cool. I need to play with this.” What did he do? He went in, he ran a few queries, and he was like “Oh, I used up all of my credits. Hey David, can you try this out?” I went in, and it wouldn’t let me do it. They allowed five AI queries, so we couldn’t even test the thing out properly because Daniel happened to use all of them.

Daniel Orozco: Oh, I’m sorry. (laughs)

David Pisarek: They didn’t tell us that there were only five uses of it, but they’re evolving the platform over time. So that’s really cool.

Daniel Orozco: David was waiting for the 100th episode to call me out on the five credits.

David Pisarek: Here we are.

Daniel Orozco: Here we are. Here we are.

David Pisarek: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining on episode 100!

I hope the folks have been able to take some of the insight around project management, how to deal with a team, and how to deal with actually the small minutiae stuff that we all have to deal with.

So I want to challenge everybody that’s listening to this episode to take a look at what your current project process is. If it’s just you working alone by yourself in your team dealing with the web or social or whatever it happens to be, take a look at what your process is.

Actually, write it down on paper. If you use an iPad, do that, whatever it happens to be, but actually write it down and then go, “Okay, what parts of this could maybe be automated? What parts of this could maybe go into a process? Do I have any documentation about the steps that I do? Are there SOPs that you could actually create?” Within a week, I want you to make one SOP.

The easiest way to do that is the way that we started. I hopped on Zoom by myself, I shared my screen, I hit record, and I walked through “Here’s how to do this process from start to finish.”

And maybe it’s a two-minute video, maybe it’s a 25-minute video, but at least you’ll have some documentation around what it is that you do. That way, you can finally start getting some support and having it done the way that you want it to be done and make sure all the steps are done. Take that, that’s your challenge.

If anybody wants to get in touch with us, just head over to wowdigital.com/consult or go to our homepage and see what we’ve been up to. We’ve got some testimonials, our blog, and our podcast on there.

Thanks so much, Daniel and AJ, for joining the Non-Profit Digital Success podcast today.

Head over to our podcast page at nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com and click on this episode for all the details. We’ll have some links and whatnot on the show notes page.

Until next time, keep on being successful!

Part 2

David Pisarek: Welcome to the 100th episode of the Non-Profit Digital Success podcast. We did record this before, and it was so great we actually split it into two parts. This is part number two.

Welcome to the Non-Profit Digital Success Podcast. I’m your host, David, and in this very special episode, the 100th episode, we’re going to be talking about all kinds of neat, interesting background things over here at Wow Digital in the podcast. I’ve got two key players with me here today from my team at Wow Digital: Daniel and I have AJ, and he’s got over a decade of experience.

AJ excels in digital production for online marketing, corporate events, and individual projects. All right, so AJ, we haven’t really spoken with you yet on the episode. Welcome to the show.

AJ Babra: Thank you.

David Pisarek: Cool. So, the non-profit space can be pretty niche when you’re dealing online. You’ve got a huge background in all kinds of various work and stuff. And I know you went back to school not that long ago for your Master’s of Philosophy, right?

AJ Babra: Right.

David Pisarek: Okay. So, in terms of the sector, what have you noticed about how online content and social media make it different? It might be for, let’s say, somebody who’s an online shop trying to sell shoes or social media influencers.

AJ Babra: Totally. Yeah.

There are actually a few differences that I’d love to point out. If I had to make a short list, I’d make three. I’d say that there’s a greater need for authenticity for non-profits than it might be for a profit organization that’s giving you shoes, as you mentioned.

Secondly, it has to include social media now, not just your actual organization’s office.

Thirdly, it has to be good. So I want to explain a little bit about each of these things and why I’m saying that.

Firstly, why it has to be actually more important for a non-profit to have authenticity than somebody selling you shoes is because of these for-profit organizations, you actually get the exchange in your hand like you get the product in your hand or you experience the movie yourself. So you know where the money is going. Basically. It’s not a scam. At least you get to know if it’s a scam or not. +

And I think we kind of tiptoe around this conversation, but it’s one of the main issues that could hold somebody back from actually giving another person funding, giving them money. Do you know where it’s really going?

And with for-profit organizations, you get that review right there immediately; you know this is what it went to; was it worth it or not? But with non-profit organizations, you are not necessarily getting that back. So it’s way more important that you can convey that you are legitimate, that you do have authenticity, and that you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do.

So you share those stories of impact. You actually explain to your donors or to your funders that this money is going to this outcome. So this is how you can review the quality of the impact that your dollars are going towards.

And for that second point, it’s kind of what Daniel touched upon earlier. I like to tell people, you know, when it comes to a scam, if you go to a person’s office and it is a kind of empty factory back room with just like papers sprawled all over the place, you’d be like, “This is a scam.” Nowadays, it’s the same thing with a website because your website is your office in the digital world. And if you go to somebody’s website and it looks trash, you’re going to think, “This is not legitimate. I don’t really trust this. It’s maybe a scam.” So you got to have a good website in the same way you have to have a legitimate office kind of space.

Nowadays, there’s another step though; you just not only go from an office to a website, it also went from your website to having some presence on some kind of social media. Now, online search isn’t just to search for your website but also to search for your social media platform and see the kind of content that you’re putting out. So if you’re putting out just complete trash or just nonsense that anybody could put out, it could really prevent anybody from really trusting your organization.

So all of these things really have to tie in together. So it’s not just, you know, a for-profit organization that wants to have social media and make more sales. But even if you’re a non-profit organization or charity that’s even looking for funding from a government, you’re not necessarily looking to get more small-dollar donors, but you still need to convey that legitimacy to gain some of that funding whether it’s a donation from the small dollars or it’s a grant from a larger organization.

David Pisarek: Yeah, I think there are two points in there. I made some notes as you were chatting, AJ. It is transparent; we need to be open and honest about where the money is going.

There have been a number of scandals over the last few years around charities and whatnot, and you know where the money is actually going. I don’t think anybody expects 100% of the donation to go to fight the cause.

There are overhead costs with running an organization just like there are with running a business, whether it’s software licensing, needing a new computer, having an office, having people in your team that you’re paying—executive directors, whoever, right? Just be open and honest about it and be like, “Look, there’s 18% of your donation that is going towards overhead. And this is what the overhead does.” It helps drive the organization forward. It helps create new corporate sponsorships to bring in more money, whatever it happens to be. So that’s the first point.

The second thing is branding. Branding, a lot of people think, is about the logo and the colours, but there’s more to branding than that; there’s the voice, the tone, and the style of the messaging itself.

That also needs to be authentic but also carried through everything. So, if you have a podcast, a website, ads that you’re running, and social media posts that you’re doing, you need to have them follow and flow through everything cohesively.

So if you have a brand guide, awesome. I would bet lots of money that your brand guide doesn’t include anything around messaging, tone, style, etc. Add that into there. Make a content brand guide or an addendum to your existing one that covers that type of thing because that will help you and the folks in your team put out messaging that is more closely aligned.

AJ Babra: Absolutely. I’d love to add to that. It’s a very good thing to know when you are; as Daniel mentioned, when you’re small, you might have a good need to work with vendors and give you something like a brand guide.

When you work with an organization like Wow Digital or another legitimate organization that’s making social media for you or something like that, they do verify you. There’s a process. You have to give credit cards; you have to give a verification whether or not you have your 501(c)(3). These kinds of things make it harder for cons to happen.

So when you’re working with vendors that are legitimate, it’s more likely that you will have high-quality websites, high-quality social media, a brand guide that actually carries a message all the way through where all these kinds of cheaper or more available people who are just going to do the work and then run away because they don’t need your information or to verify anything about you—they’re not going to be able to produce that level of quality.

So when you’re a donor or someone else, and you see the quality in the website and in their organization and in their social media, it’s far less likely that they’re just going to try to run away because it’s not going to be very easy for them to do so.

David Pisarek: Yeah, and quality doesn’t always mean expensive. From our side, we’ve done projects that are $5,000, $6,000 up to, you know, $150,000 or more multi-year span projects. Just because you need something doesn’t mean you have to go all out.

Yeah, you can go on Fiverr and hire somebody for a couple hundred bucks, but the reality of doing that is it’s probably not going to serve you in the long run, or at least it will be strategic in the approach. It’s just, “All right, I need somebody to do this.” Most organizations need a strategy behind it.

We’re happy to build the strategy for you. If you want to get in touch with us, like I said before, wowdigital.com/consult (shameless plug so you know, get in touch with us). If all you need is strategy, cool, we’ll do that. We’ll meet with you, and we’ll get you set on the right path.

All right. AJ, you do a lot of the editing and content creation yourself. You’re kind of the person behind the podcast that’s making me look, and our guests look super awesome on the episodes. Is there anything that you would advise non-profits when it comes to making content or working with an editor such as yourself?

AJ Babra: Well, firstly, I’d love to say that we have superpowers, okay? So maybe you can’t see that, but I can see that in the future where I can put in effects. But more importantly, on that kind of note, yeah, it is a superpower.

Kind of like you mentioned, we actually do a lot of work to make messaging better. We can shorten the gap between thoughts or in between words; we can remove misspoken words. Even if sometimes you might have meant to say something in the plural but didn’t put that “s,” we can actually find the “s” from another part of something that you said that did have an “s” and a plural and put it in there as if you said it correctly.

So we can make people or speakers sound more coherent and more clear in their messaging, which helps a lot.

Not just because you’re trying to make them sound more intelligent and impressive, but it’s more so about the audience that can have something that’s consumable and easy to hear. They don’t mind if there’s a little bit of editing here and there that’s made for their purposes of just getting what the message is.

So editors really do help with that, but there’s always going to be this kind of notion that “Oh, you know, professional editor, are we editing things? Something spooky is happening here.” It’s not spooky. It’s just to help clarify the message and make sure the content that you’re making has the most impact because it will reach that. When you can get that kind of editing, professional editing, or just general editing, it makes a big difference to how consumable your message of impact is.

So, another thing that I’d like to say is that your editors probably give you the best feedback you’ll ever get. They’re like your audience, but they’re the number one audience. I watched David so many times; I don’t just watch him once in the raw.

Like, I get a behind-the-scenes look at what David’s saying and doing and how he’s behaving, and then I have to watch it again when I edit it. Then I hear it again when I edit the audio, and then I have to watch it again when I’m putting it into the effects work. So I kind of watch an episode at least three times—a fourth time, too, if I’m reviewing my own work. But I watch it enough that I really do kind of develop what we call a para-relationship.

Now, a para-relationship usually is when, if you have a YouTuber or somebody that you consume their media daily, you begin to feel like their friend, but they don’t really know who you are.

So it’s kind of interesting with David, though, because he knows me as the editor, and you might know your editor; you can have this kind of understanding relationship with them, whereas with David, he might, in the middle of a video, start talking to me like, “Hey AJ, do this. Do XYZ.” I’ll say, “Yeah, sure, David,” as if he could hear me back, but he can’t. But it’s still fun.

So there’s something really important about the kind of feedback that you can get from an editor also, which you probably couldn’t get from anyone else because they basically study you. Like, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard about the “know, like, trust” factor or a number of the other things that David is like the key touch things that he espouses in his messaging, which I’m like really intimate with because I watch it so many times. So, I think the feedback you can get from an editor is invaluable.

David Pisarek: I think that’s AJ’s subtle way of kind of telling me off to improve my speech and pattern and talking so he doesn’t have to work as hard on the back end to edit me.

AJ Babra: It does help. It makes a difference.

David Pisarek: It does. It really does. So AJ, thank you. You know, 100 episodes deep on this and, you know, making me and our guests on the show really kind of stand out and showcase our expertise in a way that is more concise because you can cut out these lengthy pauses that I’m doing right now. So we’ll see how that goes when you edit this one.

Okay, so I understand. I’m a little nervous about this, but you’ve got some outtakes, bloopers, and things that you wanted our audience to see.

AJ Babra: Well, as Daniel was talking about a kind of internal community culture. And one of the things I get to do with Wow Digital is share that kind of para-relationship as if it’s a show. So here’s one example of it that we’ll show in NPDs. We’ll watch it now.

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Guest: Sorry, we can start that one again.

David Pisarek: AJ, cut round running. Here we go. So, all is good here. And I think all the levels are good and everything. I can hear you clearly. Hopefully, AJ, my voice is clear too. We’ll find out when he gets this recording.

AJ Babra: So you’re good, David.

–

David Pisarek: Awesome. Here we go. By prioritizing data-driven privacy… No. What? That makes no sense. By prioritizing data privacy, non-profit leaders can build trust with their audience and protect their organization’s reputation. Some amazing site insight. All right, AJ cut that. So… The other thing. What do I want to say here? I’m sorry about that. No worries. AJ will just cut that out.

Guest: Yeah, cut that out, AJ.

AJ Babra: What? No. Only David gets to break the fourth wall. I’m just kidding.

–

Guest: I remember parts. We picked different parts from each one. I remember that. Yeah.

David Pisarek: Okay, so let’s rephrase this. Take two. AJ cut that. Cut that out. Here we go. Yeah, I need one of the like… Hollywood; what’s it called?

AJ Babra: It’s Clapper.

David Pisarek: Sandwich board? I think that is what it’s called. No, that’s not it.

AJ Babra: A clapper.

David Pisarek: Whatever it is, that’s okay.

Guest: Clapper. I think it is.

David Pisarek: Maybe.

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Guest: … Your expectations around your specific organization.

David Pisarek: One of the things you meant… All right, that’s something that we’re going to cut. All right…

Guest: No one ever says it right.

David Pisarek: No problem. We’re gonna get it right. We’re gonna get it right right now. Here we go.

Guest: All right.

David Pisarek: AJ, don’t include this when you do the cuts. All right?

AJ Babra: I got you.

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Guest: Issues by giving them everything they need in advance.

David Pisarek: I’ve got two things to add to that. I love it; have guidelines. Even better than that is to create some…

Guest: Sorry, David.

David Pisarek: Can’t hear me. You can’t?

Guest: You’re… No, your camera is stuck, and there’s just a green bubble in the middle.

David Pisarek: All right, hold on. That’s… Where did that come from?

AJ Babra: It’s an alien.

David Pisarek: Whoa. Every time. That was so bizarre. Did you see it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Guest: You went like this, and then it just like. Big green bubble over you. Really weird.

David Pisarek: Weird. I don’t know. I’m back, everybody. Um. Okay, let’s try that one more time.

AJ Babra: Place this evidence into my top secret…

David Pisarek: AJ, you can put that in a cut reel or something like that.

AJ Babra: All right.

–

David Pisarek: So, Abby, I’ve got…

Guest: I’m sorry, I just lost my thread of thought.

David Pisarek: No problem. AJ cut this out. When you do the editing.

Guest: Yeah, before you go back to the philosophy studies, we were discussing something earlier, and my brain needs to get it.

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David Pisarek: Find valuable… No. Let’s try that again. That was not good. Take two, AJ. All right there. An organization that might find valuable… I keep saying valuable. All right, take three. Here we go. This is it!

AJ Babra: You sure?

David Pisarek: I’m going to do it on this one. I got it.

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Guest: Got pitfalls up from like a DEI perspective for just like being more of a human.

David Pisarek: All right, so let’s. All right, let’s ask again. All right, AJ. All right.

–

AJ Babra: That was it. But there are some other ones. If we have other ones, we’ll put them up on our website or on YouTube so you can check them out. We’ll put the link below so you can check out some other outtakes too. They’re really fun.

David Pisarek: Awesome. Thank you, AJ, for showcasing the reality of what happens, you know. Awesome! So Daniel and AJ, thank you so much for joining on the 100th episode. Let’s see if the balloons will go. Are these balloons? No. Fireworks. Okay, we’re gonna do some fireworks. There we go!

AJ Babra: That’s not me. I didn’t do that.

David Pisarek: No, that wasn’t him. That was all Mac OS did to affect it there. But Daniel likes the laser lights better, so. So we’ll save that for another episode.

Daniel Orozco: Let’s go! Thank you, David, for having us.

David Pisarek: I hope the folks have been able to take some of the insight around project management, how to deal with the team, as well as some of the insights, AJ, from you around editing and ways to kind of think about the brand and the messaging.

AJ Babra: Well, how about this? If anybody wants to see more of Daniel on the episode or more of yourself, click the poll or whatever it is below. Give us a vote, and let us know if you want to see us back on the show. That’s going to be something on social media now.

David Pisarek: I’m curious if you’re interested in hearing more about how we deal with project management. We can have an episode talking specifically about our project management and how we do those type of things.

Or if you want to find out more details specifically about the editing side of stuff, let us know. We want to get you the content that you’re interested in, so let us know. We’ll take the feedback and we’ll go from there.

AJ Babra: Perfect.

David Pisarek: If anybody wants to get in touch with us, just head over to wowdigital.com/consult or just go to our homepage to see what we’ve been up to. We’ve got some testimonials, we’ve got our blog, and we’ve got our podcast on there.

Head over to our podcast page nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com. Click on this episode for all the details. We’ll have some links and whatnot on the show notes page.

And until next time, keep on being successful!