117 – How to Avoid Burnout in Non-profits with Jake Smolarek

Episode Transcription

David Pisarek:  Are you feeling stuck, stretched thin, or like you’re running on empty? Jake Smolarek shares mindset strategies to help non-profit leaders stay consistent, motivated, and aligned with their mission, even when resources are tight.

In this episode, we’re going to be talking about high performance, avoiding burnout, and creating unstoppable momentum. I’ve got Jake Smolarek here with me to talk through all of this. Jake is a brutally honest, high-performance coach, helping entrepreneurs, professionals, and non-profit executives level up through frameworks like “No 0% days” and “10-80-10.” There’s no fluff, real growth.

Here’s a fun fact: he’s known for dropping truth bombs with a smile and pushing people just outside of their comfort zone, which, in my opinion, is one of the ways that we learn and grow as people in our roles, in our families, in our personal lives.

Jake, welcome so much to the show. Thank you for being here.

Jake Smolarek: Thank you very much for having me. I’m so excited about it.

David Pisarek: Amazing. Just before we started filming and recording the episode, we were talking a little bit about non-profits. Why don’t you fill in everybody listening or watching this? Hey, everybody, we do have this on YouTube, so go check it out and subscribe.

Tell us, tell them, I guess, what we were talking about.

Jake Smolarek: Yeah, I mean, we were talking about non-profits, well, they have to actually make a profit, otherwise you cannot operate.

The non-profit is almost exactly the same business as any other business out there. You have to make money, to spend money, to invest money. It’s exactly the same. How we operate might be a little bit different, slightly different, but it’s still a business. It doesn’t matter if you are in the UK, US, Canada, anywhere in Europe or Asia, the rules are exactly the same, isn’t it?

David Pisarek: Yeah.

In order to do the work that you set out to do to achieve the mission to help the people or the animals or solve this problem, it takes time, obviously, because it’s your time, volunteers, everybody’s time, but it also takes money. You need to fly whatever it is that you’ve received in donations to a third-world country, if that’s what you’re doing. It’s going to take money to buy food and supplies to feed starving children before they start school in the morning. You need to operate with a growth mindset and with a business mindset.

Jake Smolarek: 100%, and you must have a vision of what is it that you want to achieve.

Every major corporation, every big business, they all have a vision of what they want to achieve. I always say to people that it doesn’t matter if you’re a person, a small business, a medium-sized business, or a massive business – you must have a vision. If you go and talk to an Apple CEO, they know exactly what they’re doing. If you go to a successful company, they know exactly what they’re doing. If you go and meet, it doesn’t matter if it’s a non-profit organization or a small business, and they’re struggling, they probably don’t have a clear vision and a plan on how to achieve it.

David Pisarek:

If it takes you more than 10 seconds to explain to somebody what your organization does, you really don’t have clarity on your goal and your mission and your vision. So get clarity, practice it. It’s the elevator pitch, right? However, the elevator pitch isn’t 30 or 40 seconds. Just get it out, distill it, throw it into AI, ask it to simplify or to look at your mission, vision, value page of your non-profit and give you a one sentence: this is what we do.

Jake Smolarek: Yeah, 100%. I remember when we were running our organization, at the beginning, we just said: “We want more children to smile.” As simple as that.

Then, we’ve been hosting various events and activities. It’s just we’ve been making children smile, whatever that means. We help load thousands of thousands of children in many different ways. But that was the thing. It’s just like, “Hey, we want more children, kids just to have fun and smile and enjoy their lives.” Even if everything says it like, “Oh my God, the family is struggling,” or something like that. It doesn’t matter. Bring them just a little bit of a smile, at least. Do something.

But you’re 100% right. That’s exactly like with any other business. If your elevator pitch is 5 seconds, 10 seconds, ideally, maybe 8 seconds. If you cannot say that, then you’re not exactly sure what you’re doing. If you cannot explain it in eight seconds to an eight-year-old kid, what is it that you’re doing? It means you have to work on it. You have to work on your elevator pitch.

David Pisarek: Exactly. Jumping into, I guess, the main stuff for the episode, we were talking a little bit about “No 0% days” and using that as a mindset. Can you explain what “No 0% days” is as a mindset?

Jake Smolarek: It’s one of my frameworks that I use when I coach entrepreneurs, business owners, including non-profits and charities.

First of all, you have to have a vision. You have to know what is it that you want. That’s a must. There’s no conversation about that. Because once you know that, then I always say to people, always do something every single day that brings you closer to that vision. Because at the same time, I like to say something that, first of all, you have to have a vision, but you have to be obsessed about that vision. Every entrepreneur, well, at least a successful entrepreneur, has been obsessed with what it is that they want. If you don’t have that obsession, it’s going to be very, very difficult to achieve it. First of all, have that vision, be obsessed with it, so it must be fun.

Then the “No 0% days” means: you have to do something every single day to get closer to that vision. It doesn’t have to be a lot, but we all have bad days. When you have a bad day and it feels like you don’t want to do anything, do 1%. Send one email, read one page, or write one page, call one investor or one someone, just do something because you will feel better the next day.

This is based on a Japanese way of thinking called Kaizen. You’re getting better every single day. It doesn’t have to be a lot, but at least a little bit.

There’s an amazing book called Atomic Habits by James Clear, and he’s talking about it as well. It’s just those everyday, small habits – not big habits, but small habits. Because those percentages they add up. People usually overestimate what they can do in a month, and they underestimate what they can do in 12 months. Those small percentages will add up. Twelve months from now, if you add up all those little percentages that you actually did it, when you didn’t feel like it, they will make a massive difference. It’s a difference between succeeding or non-succeeding.

David Pisarek: I love the idea of that. One of the things we do at Wow Digital, both for our agency and for our non-profit clients, as well as for non-profit consultants with whom we provide mentoring and coaching, is to conduct annual strategic planning. Additionally, we also do quarterly strategic planning. Then, we utilize the Entrepreneur Operating System (EOS) framework. We break things down into one of four areas: What is your focus for this quarter? What are three big projects that you can do to help you achieve your goal for the quarter? Then every other week, what are you going to do to get closer to getting that done for this quarter? It’s a very similar approach to what you’re saying, right?

As a non-profit, if your goal is to raise this quarter $25,000, $300, whatever that is, what do you need to do? Do you need to conduct some outreach and try to secure corporate sponsors to help? Figure out the plan, figure out every step you have to do, and then plan it out. Just do the work.

Jake Smolarek: Yeah, 100%. It’s not as difficult as it sounds.

Fun fact: usually, working with bigger sponsors is easier than working with smaller ones. Because I remember today, it was so much easier working with someone who gave us 100K or 50K. It was so much easier to work with those bigger players rather than working with someone who gave us 500 because their expectations were like, crazy. I just gave you $500, and I expect this, this, and this. Then, when you work with someone who gave you 100K, they were like, “Yeah, chill, don’t worry about it. That’s all fine, we just want to help.” That’s because we treat them like clients. I said, “This is our client, because we are a business, and this is our client.“

I like using the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, in any business 20% of the clients will bring you 80% of the money, and the opposite 80% of the clients will only bring you 20% of the time, but they will take you 80% of your time. So don’t work with those people.

Sometimes, to visualize that, it’s so much easier to sell a car for £150,000 rather than for £15,000. Because those people who’ve got the money, then don’t worry about small stuff. People who don’t have the money or they have very little money, they really worry about that. Because if someone has millions and it will give you $ 100,000, it’s just one percentage, maybe even half a percentage, of what they’ve got. If someone has, I don’t know, $2,000 and they will give you $500, it’s one-quarter of what they’ve got. That’s a completely different thinking.

David Pisarek: Absolutely. It’s a matter of perception of the overall value and return on investment.

Somebody who is willing to give to you that is amazing, but if they don’t have a big enough budget and they’re giving you a chunk, their expectations are that they’re going to ask or want more.

Be extremely clear as a non-profit, what are your donation levels and then, what are people getting for that? Then, when you do go in for the ask, if they have $50, $500, or $1,000, they know with extreme clarity what it is that they’re going to get for the money. That’s going to avoid a whole bunch of haggling, and I was expecting this; you didn’t deliver on it, give us some money back. It’s wild what actually happens out there when you get into the donation scene.

You mentioned the 80/20 rule. It’s a great rule out there, but we also understand, or I understand, that you have a 10/80/10 rule. Let’s talk about that. What is the 10/80/10? How could it be used to help, maybe manage volunteers, committees, or boards, to help keep momentum and things moving forward?

Jake Smolarek: Yeah, another framework, it’s called “10% at the beginning and 10% at the end,” is very exciting. It’s partly based on the Pareto principle we just talked about, 80-20. So 80-20, the 20s are split into 10 and 10.

Everything that you do at the beginning, you’ve got an idea, there’s an excitement there, new things happening, you’ve got the vision. It’s so exciting. That’s amazing. You really want to do that. Then the last 10%, you’re winning. It’s amazing. You made it. You go through a lot of difficult things, but you actually made it, and it’s so exciting. But now, the 80% in the middle is hard work.

Most people, they don’t want to do it, especially at the very beginning of that 80%, let’s say the first half of it, it’s hard. It’s like going to the gym every day, seven days a week, for the next seven years to achieve a massive goal. That’s exactly what it is. It’s hard work. You’re doing the same things all the time for a long time, but this is how you succeed. This is how you become, let’s call it a champion. This is how you’re succeeding because you’re basically doing the same thing over and over. You’re getting better and better, and eventually you’re succeeding.

If you look at all the successful athletes, sports people, it’s a repetition game. You’re doing it over and over again. Then, one day they call you, “Oh my God, you are so lucky”. Overnight success typically takes anywhere from 3 to 10 years. We only see about 10%, maybe 5%, of the iceberg. We see the top, we see the successes, we see the Instagram stories like, “Oh my God, this guy or this lady, they succeeded.” But we don’t see everything that’s behind it, the ugly stuff. We don’t see that. This is where we have to stick to it.

Unfortunately, most people fail in the first half of the 80%, and they often revert to the first 10% because that’s where the excitement lies. The rule is, make that journey, make that 80% in the middle fun. Make it as fun as possible. I always say to people, “Yes, I do believe in discipline. Discipline is a must, but make that discipline fun because this way you will actually do what you have to do.” You know when they say, “Actually, it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” But more often than not, people connect the dots, as Steve Jobs said, looking into your past, and you’re like, “Oh, now it makes sense.”

Think about the future, what is it that you want to achieve? Think about your vision, and then return to the present to start connecting those dots, looking not only backward but also forward, because it’s possible to plan ahead. Obviously, and I think I will apply the Pareto principle again, the 80/20 rule, where you can probably plan for 80% and then the remaining 20% will just happen to us. But that’s life.

We can talk about another framework that I’ve got, it’s called VisionGPS. The ‘P’ actually stands for a planning process, not just a plan. We can talk about it in a second.

David Pisarek: I feel like people, they get together, they brainstorm, they’re sitting in a boardroom. What is the next event that we’re going to do? What’s the theme for the upcoming gala that we’ve got going on? Everybody gets really excited. A 10%, yes, let’s go; let’s do this. We’re going to get everybody going super excited about it. Then you have to sit down and plan. I think that the first 5% of that 80 is where procrastination hits.

Jake Smolarek: Oh, yeah.

David Pisarek: I think working through that, it can very much be a struggle. I think just chunking the work down, “All right, today I’m going to spend half an hour doing this. I don’t have to sit down and spend five hours today figuring this thing out. This event is six months down the road or whatever it happens to be.” Slow work on it.

Every step forward that you take towards the goal is one step closer to getting there. And yes, there will be times when you’re like, “Oh, I misstepped. I got to go back and rethink this thing.” But you’re still eight or nine steps further down the road to getting it done than you would have been otherwise.

You’re just going to shoot yourself in the foot if you procrastinate too long. The amount of stress that’s going to build up and the pressure, and you’re going to get burnt out from it, and you’re going to feel like, “What have I been doing for the last two months?” Slow work on it. Plan to not get it all done in one shot because if it’s a big enough thing, you’re not going to be able to. Schedule some time in your calendar every day, even if it’s just a repeating half hour, an hour, or 10 minutes, to get the things done that you need to.

Jake Smolarek: Use your schedule.

I always recommend: become a master of your schedule. Just be careful, make sure that the schedule is not becoming a master of you, because it happens sometimes to people.

I like giving examples: I have people coming to me for mentoring or coaching, and I would ask them, “Okay, what’s important to you?” “Oh, travelling, for example, is important to me.” I would ask, “Okay, so how many trips are in your schedule for the next two years?” They would say, “Well, not even one yet because I’m still like…” Obviously, travelling is not important to you.

You see, we all procrastinate. Don’t take me wrong, I used to be a master of procrastination. I was so good at procrastination. I could teach it. I was so good. Then I realized that everybody procrastinates. It’s just that successful people procrastinate on minor things, and unsuccessful people they procrastinate on major things. That’s the difference. Successful people do the things that must be done. And unsuccessful people, they’re avoiding those because they feel too big.

There’s a beautiful book called Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. When he’s talking about time management and stuff, it’s just like you don’t have to do everything in one go. If you have an elephant to eat, just eat it chunk by chunk. As simple as that. That’s why having that vision, that long/term planning thing, is so important. Exactly as you said, in the first 5% of that 80, that middle, that messiness is dark. You don’t even see the light at the end of the tunnel. You don’t even see the tunnel yet.

That’s why having a vision that will push you during those dark hours is so important, because another great book, Start with Why. Why are you doing this in the first place? It will help you to go through that first 5, 10% of that 80%, because once you get in the middle of that 80%, you’re starting to see that light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s just like, “Oh, okay. It’s tough, but we’re used to that toughness now. It’s just like, it’s fine. It is what it is. Let’s go through it. Just go to the gym.” Sometimes, again, no 0% days. If you don’t feel like going to the gym, I would suggest just go to the gym but don’t exercise. Just go there, tick that you went to the gym and go back home. More often than not, if you go to that gym, you’ll be like, “Okay, I’ll do 5 minutes or 10 minutes.” Even if you only do 10 or 5 minutes, 5 minutes is way more than nothing.

Because once you start having 0% days, they accumulate really fast. It’s like, “Okay, I’ll do it tomorrow, and then I’ll do it tomorrow, and I’ll do it tomorrow.” It’s like that old English saying, “An apple a day keeps a doctor away.” It doesn’t say that if you eat 10 apples 9 days from now, it will keep the doctor away. It’s an apple a day.

David Pisarek: If you eat 10 apples in one sitting, you’re probably going to need to go to the doctor.

Jake Smolarek: Probably.

David Pisarek: One of the little tricks I use is that, I use my calendar for everything because we’ve got a calendly booking on our website, and if I don’t have things on my calendar, somebody is going to book a call at a very bad time that I need to do other things.

One of the tricks I use is that when I put a task in, I need to do some social media or put a proposal together, whatever it happens to be. When I put it in my calendar, I’m like, “All right, this isn’t due for a week, but I’m going to work on it today.” If something comes up and I need to move it, I’ll find another spot, move it, and put an asterisk in the title of the calendar event so I know I’ve moved it once.

If something comes up the next time, if I have to move it again, I will then start asking myself why: what is stopping me from doing this thing? Then I go through, “All right, is there a reason I don’t want to do this? Is this way too early? Is this something that should be next week because it’s something for a month from now? Is it something that I should be doing? Or is there somebody else, maybe in my team, who could be doing this? Is this thing even important at all? Should we just delete this and forget we ever thought about doing this thing?”

I think it’s important that you hold yourself accountable and be honest with yourself around what is it, what’s stopping me from doing this? More often than not, it’s just a psychological barrier that we need to break through to go, “Okay, I’m going to do this now.”

Jake Smolarek: I’ve been using the Eisenhower box and its quadrants for over 20 years. It’s funny that you say that. I was speaking with a client of mine, who is an accountant at one of the top accounting companies here in London. He said, “Oh, my God, most of the tasks I’m doing every day they urgent.” I would say, “Okay, let’s break them down.” It turns out that 80% of them they actually been fake urgent. They haven’t been urgent at all. They looked urgent. They were not urgent. I said, “You have to start using the Eisenhower box. The importance, not important, urgent, not urgent, because to be honest, most things, they’re not that urgent.”

Using the Eisenhower box or quadrant on an everyday basis helps a lot because some things, for example, are very important, but they’re not urgent. That’s why we procrastinate on them. We postpone. Reading one book that could change your entire life is not urgent. Your book is not shouting at you, “Read me, read me.” It’s just like, no, it’s sitting there on the shelf quietly, but it might be one of the best books to read. I’m a reader, as you can see behind me.

David Pisarek: Moments ago, you mentioned Vision GPS. Let’s talk about that.

Jake Smolarek: That’s another interesting, I believe, framework that I use with a lot of people, if not over 80%, probably.

It’s an acronym. The vision is something that you want. You call it however you want: Vision, North Star, dream, you name it. This is something you have to have in your head. How do you want your life to look like? Your life, your business, everything. That’s the vision.

The GPS is an acronym for Goals, Planning Process, and Systems. Vision, I probably don’t have to explain to anybody. Sometimes I have people coming to me like, “Oh, my God, but I’m not such a visionary person.” But listen, vision is your life. It doesn’t have to be massive. You don’t have to think like Elon Musk or Bill Gates. It’s your life. If you want to be a happy teacher, teaching people and helping them, that’s your vision. Your vision, you dream about whatever you want. But anyway, so I’ll leave the vision there.

The GPS is like: you have to have goals, and as cliché as it sounds, you have to have SMART goals: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. It’s very important to have deadlines and to measure things.

I love it when people come to me and say, “I need more money.” I’ll take, let’s say, $10, and I’ll give it to them. There you go. Now you have more money. “Oh, no, you don’t understand. I need a lot more money.” Okay, that’s 20 bucks. That’s a lot more money now. “No, you don’t understand. I need a lot of money.” But a lot is not a number.

Your brain is not going to help you achieve that goal. That’s why it’s so, so important to have SMART goals. We need to have both long-term and short-term goals, as well as goals in between. Because if your vision is so big and it’s actually scaring you, that’s good. Because most people don’t think big, they think average, they think small. Why? You only have one life. Give it a go. If they say no, they say no. But you never know. Maybe someone will say yes. Maybe, a big player will say yes. You have to have goals.

Now, the “P” part is partly based on a book called The Art of War by Sun Tzu. It’s not just a plan, it’s a Planning Process. At war, especially 500 years ago, you had to watch what was going on on the field. You have to have your eye on the enemy because you cannot just follow a fixed plan. That’s the difference between a plan and a planning process. A plan is fixed. You follow, you follow, something happens, and suddenly the plan is no good anymore. However, in the planning process, you must be flexible and adapt to what is happening.

Great example, the pandemic. The pandemic happened, and most people panicked. They have no idea what to do, but people with the proper planning skills, with the proper planning in place, they quickly adapt. There’s no question like, What’s going on? Pandemic? No problem. Let’s adapt as quickly as possible. The planning process is so important. To be flexible, as you are saying, if I have to move something, I have to move, but I need to be smart about it.

Then “S” is for Systems. You’ve been explaining how you’re moving things in your calendar, and that’s a system that you have in place that you use to help you achieve your vision in the long term. Small systems and big systems. I run a digital marketing agency. For example, the best systems for me to explain are Google Apps or Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Those systems work for you 24 hours a day. So yeah, that’s the Vision GPS.

The Vision GPS in that framework will work exactly like the GPS you’ve got in your car. You set your destination. The vision is your destination, which is where you want to go, and then, the GPS will take you there. Fun fact: you don’t have to know the exact address.

First of all, if you know the direction, just to start with; that’s good enough. Because if you have no clue where you want to go, every road will take you there. You’re going to be drifting on the ocean of life. You don’t have to have 100% of clarity to start with. Direction is fine. Then, where is the destination? That’s even a little bit better. Then, at the end, you just need to know the full address, I say it.

If you go this way, eventually, you will know exactly what is it that you want. However, that’s a significant issue that many people face. They think like, “Oh, if I don’t have the 100% of my vision, I cannot start because I have to wait until I’m 100% prepared or 100% motivated or 100% whatever.” But no, it doesn’t work this way. You just have to have a direction first, and that’s good enough. Even if you walk, even if you crawl, to be honest with you.

David Pisarek: I think that’s a very valuable insight, and I hope everybody listening and watching this is taking that really to heart. 

You need to start down the path, you will get to where you want to be. However, you need to have that goal, that vision. Even if it’s a three, a five, a ten-year goal, you’re never going to reach where you want to be if you don’t articulate what it is that you want to achieve. Even if you write down one sentence on a piece of paper or a post-it note and you stick it to your monitor, if you know what your goal is, you have something to work towards. Without that, you’re just going to flounder.

Yeah, you’re going to do some cool stuff and some great stuff along the way, but how are you going to know whether you’ve achieved what you’ve set out to do if you haven’t articulated what it is that you want to set out to do? A little bit of chicken and egg scenario, but that’s really the reality, is you’ve started an organization, you want to do X, Y, and Z. You want to do that by doing this, how are you going to get there? And that is the path that’s going to get you there.

I love using the acronyms. We have our Mission Accelerator program, which is MAP. It goes along really well with what you’ve talked about GPS.

Yesterday, I was mentoring a mastermind group, and they said, “Okay, we are planning out this month and let’s talk about the next two weeks. We follow EOS, the Entrepreneur Operating System.” So, I was, “All right, what are the rocks? What are you going to do to get closer to getting that done for this quarter?” In terms of SMART goals, absolutely, how much time can you put towards this thing that’s going to get this done for the end of the quarter? Over the next two weeks, is it half an hour? Is it eight hours? Is it somewhere in the middle? Just because you didn’t finish the task doesn’t mean that you don’t have a momentum marker that you can check off by saying, “You know what? Yes, it’s a 20-hour task I need to complete. I said I was going to spend an hour. I actually spent the hour.” You could pat yourself on the back, and then you go, “Okay, the next week, I’m going to do five hours or another hour or whatever it happens to be.”

But congratulate yourselves along the way as you accomplish things, because that’s going to help motivate you to do more of it.

Jake Smolarek: Yeah. I mean, you have to monitor the progress and see that you’re actually making progress because sometimes people think like, “Oh, I’m not making any progress.” Have you been measuring it from time to time?

Because sometimes progress is visible, you can actually see it, and sometimes progress is hidden.

I’ll give you an example: one of my first businesses ever that I started was a construction business. It was in London, UK. I was about 20 years old. I knew nothing about construction, but one of my mentors just told me, “If you want to be successful and have money, start a construction business, and you will be fine.” Okay, I’ll start it the next day. That’s exactly what I did – success like speed. I always say that.

My example is: if you’re renovating a house, the progress at the beginning is clearly visible. You’re just getting rid of everything. The clients were saying, “Oh, my God, such a quick progress. Oh, you guys are amazing.” Then, we’ve been doing things like plumbing, electrical, things that are hidden in the ceiling, in the floor. Then, the client would come and say, “Oh my God, the progress slowed down so much.” I was like, “Nonono, we’re actually making lots of progress, but the progress is not that visible to you.” It’s visible to us because we know what’s going on.  But for someone who is not a construction worker, they couldn’t see it because sometimes progress, you’re doing lots of things, and you don’t see the results. The results are there, but they’re hidden.

One day or another, you will see it, but you have to stay in that middle 80%, you have to do the work, even if you are unmotivated. I always say motivation is overrated. It’s all about discipline. People are coming to me and saying, “You are so disciplined. How do you do that?” as if like, “Yeah, I drink my discipline shake in the morning, and this is how it works.” No, it’s not like that. You just do the things. That’s it. Even if you don’t feel like it, again, going back to no 0% days, you just push yourself, even if you don’t want to, just a little bit, and then the next day, you are proud of yourself.

David Pisarek: Yeah, think about Nike: Just do it.

If you have to write that down, and I have on my desk at any point in time a stack of, I don’t know, 8 or 10 Post-it note stacks. I’ve got them right here. I’ve got a whole bunch of different colours. I will write something down if I need to remember it, and I’ll put it on my monitor. Every day, I’ll look at this thing and go: this. For me, that helps.

Maybe it will help the folks that are listening: just write it down. Whatever it is that you need to focus on.There was a point in time when there was something in my business that I needed to focus on in order to grow. I had this post-it note on my screen for a year and a half, reminding me every day I need to do this, I need to do this. I need to do this. And it worked.

Jake, amazing conversation, fantastic insights. I’ve gotten some stuff that I’m going to take back to my team, and I’m going to have a conversation with our clients over here. So, thank you so much for being here, discussing mindset, motivation, and overcoming those challenges.

I think there’s some really great tactical advice here, for sure, that people will be able to leverage, to improve, and to implement to get themselves moving forward or to get their teams moving forward or their organization. So thank you so much.

What I would like to do is ask you to issue a challenge to everyone listening to the show. So, what is one thing you want somebody to do starting today?

Jake Smolarek:

I want you to ask yourself one very simple question, and as cliché as it might sound, it’s probably one of the most important questions you will ever ask yourself, and the question is: what is it that you actually want from your life? And sit down and write down the answer. Don’t think about it. Sit down, take your time as much as you have to, but actually be honest and answer that.

To be honest, it’s not actually easy to say, what is it that you want? Because it’s basically, I’m asking you for your vision. Some people are not sure. And I’ll tell you a little secret, we all have it in our hearts somewhere. For some people, it’s so dusted, you actually have to dig for it. It’s so deep inside, but we all have it. When we were all kids, we were dreaming big dreams. I want to be an astronaut, and I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be like my dad and run a business and do crazy stuff. That was amazing. Then we grow up, and people say no to us all the time, and we stop dreaming. Why would you do that? Ask yourself, what is it that you want from your life? Sit down and answer it honestly. This might actually change your life.

David Pisarek: If you felt the desire after going through that exercise that Jake is asking you to do, write it down, put it in an envelope, put it away, and open it in six months, open it in a year from now, open it in three years from now, and go, Is this still true? Or, did I get there? What is the next step? What is the thing that I need to do to get there?

Jake, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what do they need to do?

Jake Smolarek: Well, probably the simplest thing is to Google my name, which is Jake Smolarek, or just go to my website, jakesmolarek.com. Send a quick message, and maybe we can sit down in person or over Zoom and have a chat. That’s it.

David Pisarek: Awesome. So anybody going and you’re like, “How do I spell Smolarek?” Just come to our show notes page. We’ll have a link right there. You also have an offer for a free consult on your website, right? People should, definitely, connect with you and get some thoughts, advice, and direction and see how you might be able to help them.

Jake Smolarek: Yeah, I always offer a free initial consultation session. To anyone who will come to me, there is a verification process at the beginning, because I only work with serious people who want serious results. I don’t work with flappy people with zero vision and stuff like that. If you don’t have any vision, you have no idea. Do the homework first, and then come. You’re not going to waste your time. I want to honour your time, take your time.

But yeah, if you know what you want, or more or less, you know the direction or destination you want to go, but you’re struggling to start, let’s have a conversation. It’s free of charge. I don’t charge for it. It can take up to even 2 hours. Some of those conversations took me 4 hours of my time. I don’t charge it. Some people were like, “Oh, my God, this is mind-blowing.” I know. I’m good at what I’m doing.

David Pisarek: It’s very clear that you’re passionate about this. It came through in everything that you were talking about today.

Thank you so much for joining in, Jake. It’s been great having you here on the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast.

Everybody listening, as I mentioned, if you want any of the links, the resources, the books that we’ve talked about on this episode, just head over to our show notes page by going to nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com, click on this episode for all the details.

So until next time, keep on being successful!