Heroes in Business - Matt George, 3x #1 Best Selling Author "The Nonprofit Prophet", Motivational Speaker, runs a $35M Company themattgeorge.com

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

Tune in as Matt George, 3x #1 Best Selling Author with his latest book "The Nonprofit Prophet", Motivational Speaker, runs a $35M Company with over 450 employees, Harvard Business School Executive Leadership Coach, President of Employee Insight, is interviewed by David Cogan, Founder of Eliances, at the Eliances Heroes Show. themattgeorge.com

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. That's right. And welcome back to the show. And by the way, I can't thank you enough, viewers and listeners, for the feedback we continue to have, especially when I recently had on the founder of E! Entertainment. So make sure that you go to alliances.com, click on the radio, podcast show, and you'll be able to hear that along with many others. Well, I'm super excited,

super, super excited today to have with us, are you ready for this? Matt George. Now he has number one bestselling book. His latest book is The Nonprofit Profit. All right. And he ran a $35 million company with over 450 employees. And you can reach him at thematgeorge.com. So, Matt, welcome back to the show. It's always exciting. And I've got, we just have so many questions and so many things to ask you. Oh, I appreciate it. Your show rocks.

I love it. And it's just, I'm happy to be on. Excellent. I'm very excited. First, I want love it. And it's just I'm happy to be on. Excellent. I'm very excited. First, I want to jump in, though, about Harvard Business School. Now you're now teaching part time at Harvard Business School. Well, yeah, I'm the executive business coach, leadership coach at Harvard Business School. And I'm actually going into my fourth year coming up. And and it's really an honor. It's fun. And we I don't teach undergrad uh or undergrad we we have uh it's exec ed and it's a lot of fortune 500 and a lot of entrepreneurs and so i get to see

business from a global aspect uh and we have people from all over the uh all over the world how exciting so what would you what would would you say, and this is probably pretty difficult, but if there's one takeaway that you want to instill on when you're teaching them, what would that be? Everybody, especially from the entrepreneur side, comes in with grit. They come in with this drive that is, if you're an entrepreneur, you know it, but it's also embracing failure. And so a lot of times from the entrepreneurial standpoint, we talk about what is that leadership journey and how does empathy play into it? How do you sit there and take care of each other and take care of your team and take care of people in your community. And so there's a lot of giving that happens when people form a business. Let's say they put together a $100

million business and then they start talking about, okay, how am I going to give back? And so those are the fun conversations. But at the same time, a lot of these entrepreneurs will hit a certain spot and let's say the mark's 100 million and they want 500 and they want a billion. And so they're driven and they know failure is an option. And so what we do is we sit here and we we give them the opportunity to look at different things, including team building, including how to scale. The professors at Harvard that, I just can't even tell you how good they are and how the case study method is implied into all of the programs. It's just really an honor to be a part of it. It's fun. That's fantastic. Well, I want to talk to you now about the nonprofit profit. And again, the nonprofit profit, which, by the way, listeners and viewers, you can get at Amazon. You can also go to thematgeorge.com. Once again, thematgeorge.com. How did that come to be? I mean, you've written other books before. Now, what led to the process of, okay, it's time to write another book. And here's what I'm going to write it about? Well, about five, six years ago, I was, I'm a longtime CEO, nonprofit CEO,

30 years in the business. And, and I was with Kevin Harrington, the original shark on the hit TV show shark tank. And, and Kevin's a mentor of mine. And he pushed me to write my first book. And we were sitting there in the car one day and driving, we're in Tampa. And he said, I need to really come up with a brand for you, a nickname. And he said, just give me a few hours and not 10 minutes later, he looked over and he said, you're the nonprofit profit. And, you know, it was at the time and I sat here and this was pre COVID. And when COVID hit, I kind of put it to the side because I just didn't want to, I just didn't want to brand during COVID. And when COVID hit, I kind of put it to the side because I just didn't want to brand during COVID. I was sitting here. I wanted to lead during COVID. And I did with my team of 500

people. But then when COVID was over, I stepped down after all those years and I met an Alliances member, Mark Victor Hanson, and one of the original founders of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and one of your guests and supporters. And Mark really and Crystal, you know, they put their arm around me and they said, we've got an idea. Here's what we're going to do. And we talked and talked, meeting after meeting, and he knew Kevin Harrington. So it was just kind of meant to be, in my opinion. And he said, let's get the book going, The Nonprofit Prophet. And it's really

about a story that I've experienced and seen, and the character is loosely based after some of the stuff that I've seen in the past 30 years. Wow, excellent. That's again, you can get it in Amazon. So please make sure that you go to Amazon or the MattGeorge.com. So I've got a key word I want to say to you and I want to know what it means to you and how it ties to what you do. And that single word is community. I love it. It's the most important word to me. And I think I don't think it matters what community you live in. I truly believe that it's your job,

no matter what community you live in, to take care of your community. And that can mean many different things. It could mean joining a board. It could mean getting on city council, or it could be volunteering at a school. It could be donating to a good cause. But it's a little more than just writing a check. It's actually caring and having that empathetic side to you and letting all the younger people see you in motion. It's not that you're bragging that you're taking care of your community and that you embrace and love your community, but it's showing the younger kids and people that there is a path and that we have a lot of garbage going on in our lives.

There's violence. There's all this stuff going on. And each community has its own pain points. But when you boil it down to you wake up every day and if you have a family and I want my community to be safe, I want my community to thrive. I want business to be great. And so I support all local business. I support all people. And being in my business as, you know, working at a children's home for many, many years, it was my job to take care of the community. I challenge anybody that wants to debate me on it because I'll tell you, you're going to lose because I think it's the most important thing, not only for current, I'll tell you, you're going to lose because I think it's the most important thing, not only for current, but for the future.

Because what we want in our communities is we don't want people leaving. So as these kids are growing up, we want them to see as an example. I'm in Illinois. You're in Arizona. If you're in Phoenix, Arizona, you want to show all the positives that are going on. So those kids stay there and build a business and thrive so that community can thrive excellent wonderful very very very good advice on that and again you're watching listening to me david kogan host of the alliances hero show make sure that you go to alliances.com that's e-l-i-a-n-c-s.com the only place where entrepreneurs align and we have with us again matt george he's the number one Amazon best-selling book make sure you go and get his book the non-profit profit he ran a 35 million dollar company with over 450 employees you can also go to his website if not Amazon the Matt George.com so Matt is there a difference and if so what is it between being the CEO of a for-profit versus

a non-profit and what interrelates to one? And have you seen people where they've gone from managing a private public corporation to a nonprofit? I don't think there is a big difference. What I say to a lot of people is, you know, if you work at a car dealership or you're selling shoes or cheeseburgers or whatever it is, you don't hit the quota for that day. At the end of the day, you wake up tomorrow, you go to bed fine, you wake up tomorrow and you've got to hit quota. Here in the business of nonprofit work and in my business, you know, we're trying to save communities and save kids and families. And sometimes it meant death. And that's not being dramatic. That is what happened. So when you are sitting and work at a cancer center, as an example, you're talking about fighting and you're talking about fighting for life. When you work at the Boys and Girls Club, you name it, accounting, audits, anything that goes with the for-profit. The difference is the mission.

And the mission for a nonprofit is personal. And so what I always tell people about being part of a nonprofit is even if you're on a board, once you allow yourself to get hooked and you're part of that mission, you'll understand it even more. So a lot of people that are on boards, they'll sit there and say, I want to do more. I want to do more. And then when they actually dive in and see the impact that you can have as an individual, no matter what it is, and they see what is going on in our community, whether it's poverty or whether it's abuse, whatever it is, you know, you can make a difference. And I think that's the fun part of being so on paper, there's no difference. In reality, it's mission versus maybe bottom line for for profit, or in some cases, shareholders. Great. Tell us more about again, the book, the nonprofit profit, once again, the nonprofit profit. Tell us about that. And

we want to hear more. Well, the main characters, Thomas Matthews, my real name is Matthew Thomas George. And so it's really about a story of it's a fiction book. So it's a story that happens in every community. And the short of it is, is there's a man who wants to do great for a community. short of it is, is there's a man who wants to do great for a community. And his daughter actually works in the system, which is in the Department of Children and Family Services here in Illinois. The book's based in Chicago. It talks about how the character wants to open up a homeless shelter and the impact of what people think of. And so it has a lot of different characters and a lot of different storylines. But the main one is if you're trying to do good, there's always

people who resist. And so there's people that come at you and say, well, you're going to devalue my property or you're going to do this or whatever it may be. There is some truth to that. I can't fully argue one way or another because it's a healthy debate. But at the same time, come up with your own solutions and let's have a conversation. And that doesn't happen. You know, there's a lot of people right now that are homeless in a lot of communities. We talk about it. We see it all the time. There's people begging on every corner in every major city and people then will gripe about that. But the root of the cause is most of those people are homeless. And so if they are homeless, then why don't we actually stop throwing money at

situations that aren't working and actually come up with a solution? So I truly don't think the government has the answer. I think that this is where for-profit actually can help is I truly believe that for-profit and fortune 500 can come up with a solution. There's a lot of people that know a lot of strategies out there where you could get individual donors to fix each individual community, but it takes an effort and it takes a process. And we don't ever have the patience for that, which makes no sense to me because a lot of times what will happen is you'll take money and you'll just flush it down the toilet and people are still now in one city I've seen an increase of 11 percent I think across the country the last I saw is homelessness is up 12 to 13 percent so that's what the book's

about and you know it's a it's a topic that needs to be talked about now you've written other books before this was it any easier writing this one, or is it just as challenging as writing the first one? Well, this was a fiction book, so this is where I needed Mark's and Crystal's help, is trying to figure out, okay, here's somewhat what the storyline is, and then how do you... I learned a lot, let's put it that way. The first book, Nonprofit Game Plan, was easier to write because it's a blueprint for nonprofit success. So I talk about utilization of how do you cultivate a board and then get the right board members and then utilize them right. And then or the importance of a CFO, the importance of your team, the importance of community. So I talk about what

your question was earlier, nonprofit versus profit. That's what that first book was. That nonprofit profit, then my latest book, Starfish Among Us, are both fiction books. And so those books are really, I wanted to paint a story that people could sit here and go, I didn't even realize that happened because a lot of people really know what's right underneath their nose. And the bottom line, David, is poverty is not going away. Right. No, it's not. And you're right. It's an epidemic. It's unfortunate in that. And, you know, and even so with nonprofits and your years of experience, how do you see some of the things, the best things that have worked for them to be able to raise funds, to be able

to distribute and build and do different things, maybe at shelters and other things. I imagine that is probably one of the biggest challenges? Well, one of the biggest challenges for nonprofits right now, it relates to funds, is long-term sustainability. And when you look at raising money, a lot of times, like I had somebody come up to me one time and they said, you're such a good fundraiser and this and that. I said, no, no, there's a lot better fundraisers out there. But what I do take pride in is storytelling. And I think the story that a nonprofit can tell equals dollars raised. And so if there was something I would tell any nonprofit CEO or development director or whoever out there running a foundation is craft your story, build your brand.

And when you build your brand, it's going to be so much easier to go fundraise because then everybody will be on the same page of what you do. And so the bigger you are, the more diverse you are, which I had 54 programs. So we had to sit here and tell a story of really what, what did we do? And what I would say is every day we change the lives and save the lives of our community. And that's what we did. So it didn't matter whether it was foster care or autism school, behavioral health, we worked with homeless youth, you name it. Those are all great programs, but at the end of the youth, you name it. Those are all

great programs, but at the end of the day, we help people and then we can craft. Written helps so many, definitely listeners, watchers, make sure that you get it. It's been an honor having you on the show. Matt George, number one, bestselling author. Make sure you get his book, The Nonprofit Prophet. And while you're there, pick up his other books too. You can reach him at themattgeorge.com or of course on Amazon. Thank you so much again, Matt, for being on the show. You're awesome. I appreciate it. Thank you. You got to dance a little bit. There you go. Excellent.