January 23, 2023

Episode 164: Geng Wang, CEO & Co-founder of Civic Champs

Geng Wang is the CEO and Co-founder of Civic Champs, a volunteer and mentorship management platform that triples volunteer capacity and retention for nonprofits.

Prior to Civic Champs, Geng co-founded two companies, Rent Jungle (an apartment search engine) and Community Elf (a social media management firm).  Both companies were acquired in 2014 and 2017 respectively.  

Geng is also a former McKinsey & Company consultant and holds a bachelors from Michigan State University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Geng Wang, CEO and co-founder of Civic Champs, a volunteer and mentorship management platform that triples volunteer capacity and retention for nonprofits. I'm so excited to chat with you.

I was chatting with you before the episode and really excited about the social impact space. We've talked to a lot of companies who are working within, you know, sustainability and social impact. Really just thinking where that we can collaborate and cooperate to, you know, make, make positive steps forward in, in whatever is in need, whether it's underserved, undervalued.

So I'm really excited to get into the weeds of, what you're doing and how you're kind of empowering this whole kind of sector into just being more efficient and, and, helping volunteers kind of have an easier way of, of and a more manageable way of, of giving their time up.

But before we jump into all that and what you're working on at Civic Champs describe to to the audience kind of your idea around social impact and how are ways we can give back without just, you know, donating money, say at the grocery store or through, an organization that we might know of.  

What's the social impact that you define? And then also what are ways we can give back without, you know, having to offer money or things like that?  

Geng: so I, I think social impact in my mind is, is pretty broad, right? And so it's basically any action you can take to improve your community or, or the world, right?

And so social impact, you know, on an individual level can be, you know, we recycling it can be around, you know, helping the environment, right? In, in, in all this, you know, decisions that you make by, you know, eating more plants, right? And instead of meat and things like that. And and of course with Civic Champs for us, right, we really focus in on volunteerism.

Yeah. And how do we help nonprofits really better motivate, engage, and recruit and, and sort of track their, their volunteers. You know, nonprofits really have two key resources. They have donations as you just talked about, the dollars and, and that come in. And then they have volunteers who offer up their time to do, whether that's manual activities, skill-based activities.

Right. Really things that can help the mission of that organization. Right.  

Julian: Yeah. What are some ways that, you know, before, whether you know, Civic Champs or otherwise that you've kind of volunteered and, and what are some of the positive outcomes of that experience, and then what, what was kind of left to be improved?

I've done some volunteering and, and, and I've just like the whole sometimes the whole organization structure is a little bit frustrating and, and a little bit more involved than, than just wanting to focus on giving your time. So, yeah. What are some positive outcomes from your experience? And then what are some things that.

This needs to be improved. I think this could be better. And, and this community could be better served if, if this part of the business was, or part of the prof non-profit was improved.  

Geng: So the I, I serve on multiple boards of, of nonprofits. That's probably the way that I contribute the most these days, is, is is serving on the board of whether that's United Way or you know, a the Dimension Mill, which is an economic development organization helping promote entrepre.

Right. It's something very close and dear to, to me, obviously. And, and through those organizations I have an opportunity to mentor and coach other younger entrepreneurs, college students. And so that's a lot of, that's really fulfilling for me. I think for. In the past, right? I've done a lot of you know, events as well or, or sort of more mentorship as a, as an example.

So I used to be a, a mentor at an organization called Amachi. And so they had children who had parents who were incarcerated, and so they were looking for mentors to to provide a, you know, another adult, you know, role model if you. Yeah for kids. And so, I find those to be very fulfilling.

I mean, they do take a bit more commitment and so you have to say you're available for generally a minimum of one year, probably multiple years at a time to be effective there. And I would say, you know, the things that are. most motivating for me or for most volunteers, right? Yeah. Are clarity of what's expected and what, what you need someone to do.

If there's things that you need them to be trained on, to have good sort of onboarding, training, and then allowing folks to get started early, right, sooner than later. And so one of the most frustrating things I think for on the volunteer side is you, you reach out to an organization, you're really excited and three months later they say, oh, yes, I got your application.

You know, are you still interested? You're like, oh, no, I, you know, like, you know, I've moved on from, from there. Yeah. Or similarly, you show up for volunteering and you don't know who, you know, who to talk to, where to go, how to get started, and you're standing around for, you know, an hour before you do anything.

Right. And that can be very de-motivating. And you're like, why, why volunteer at this organization when for example other organizations that do a really great job? I would say Habitat for Humanity. We work with a lot of them. Yeah. But they, one of the things that they do really well is Shepherd.

The volunteers through this process and you know, when you show up, you know exactly what you're doing. They have people that are in charge that coach you and show you how to, you know, hammer the, you know, the nails here. Right. Or, and how to do it. Yeah. And the best part is, , at the end of the day, you can see meaningful visual progress, right?

Yeah. To say, oh, well today we put up the walls, right? Like literally there were no walls. Now today there was walls, or like, today we built this like staircase for this family. And so that I think is the other piece which is allowing your volunteers to understand their impact that they're having with their work.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It is crazy you say that. Cause I. If I think about it, such an under undervalued piece of, of the com of the whole experience of volunteering and it's like, it is selfless work, but it, it, it is motivating to continue that and, and put more effort and time into it when you can see the impact and, and kind of have a something to tie it to.

I'm curious because, you know, this is not your first startup and your startups were in completely different fields. One was in social media management and then, you know, the, the other was in apartment search engines in, in kind of a marketplace. What's different about working with customers in, in just kind of a traditional business sense or consumers versus working with nonprofits?

Is it, you know, the speed of the organization? The types of individuals you're working with, who you're selling into, what's been different about that and what, what was unexpected about the transition into nonprofits?  

Geng: There's a number of differences. A lot of them are very positive. Yeah. I would say people are much nicer in this space.

And so if you're, if you're trying to sell into an organization, they might say no, but they're not gonna be jerks about it, right? So if you're selling into other industries people can get short, they can be a little angry. They can, right? So this is probably one of the nicer industries, if you will, from that perspective.

Mm-hmm. , I would say the other reason we got into serving nonprofits is we saw the tools available to nonprofits. You know, from a technology standpoint is still relatively limited. Right? Yeah. And it's interesting because. Even in my, you know, previous startups, we noticed that across other industries, right?

And so for example if you looked at auto dealers, automotive, you know Ford, you know, gm, whatever and then you looked at apartment managers auto dealers were always a year, maybe two years ahead, in terms of what's features they had in, in relative, in very similar tools that they had.

Right? And so we happened to have a business that served both, both sides. So we could see it's like, oh, a year ago these guys were doing something. A year later or two years later, The same things are now available in this other industry. And so, nonprofits unfortunately are even further down on the sort of technology adoption curve.

And, and that's too bad. And so we wanted to help change that by creating, something super intuitive, easy impactful for volunteer, you know, volunteers and nonprofits to use.

Julian: and what was the initial inspiration behind working with nonprofits, you said you, you saw you know, technology kind of, there's a technology deficit in a few different industries.  

what got you really excited about the nonprofit space and, and kind of enabling this whole volunteerism to be more efficient, more effective and overall, you know, kind of increase the, the, the deficit of individuals that are, you know, offering their time. Cuz a lot of it's the friction, you know, we all wanna offer it.

We all have good intentions, but the friction of, of getting there, getting started and, and getting up to speed you know, that delay in time I think is kind of a de motivator.  

Geng: Yeah. And that's, and that in part was part of the original concept we had. And I I was inspired by by Pokemon Go originally, actually in part.

It's, if you think about mobile games, right, or, or video games in general, there's very few that have a tangible positive impact on you or, or your environment, right? Pokemon Go encourages people to walk and explore their neighborhoods. It promotes some, some amount of sort of social interactions because you might be able to bump into people.

and things like that. And so I thought that was really neat as a concept. And we, you know, I've always thought volunteerism at, is fantastic and for a number of reasons. One part of it is it brings communities together, right across political, social, economic lines. You know, we can all agree that you know, people shouldn't be hungry in our neighborhoods.

kids may be educated, right? There should be good housing, right? Et cetera, et cetera. And so you, we, we can all come together. And, and for me, you know, it was a little bit as a, as a volunteer myself, I was thinking, you know, sometimes you have this wish to do good, but there's this point of friction and so could you make it fun and easy and sort of little bite sized pieces, right?

So like a Pokemon Go for volunteering and that's actually how we got started and but ultimately we pivoted, right? Because we talked to these nonprofits and that's how we learned about these pain points that they had around Yeah. You know, tracking your hours, getting you signed up, having your waivers, right?

Yeah. So you can imagine. If you are a animal shelter and you have a you know, adopt a puppy event at, you know, some mall, right? Well, the volunteer that shows up there isn't at your office, right? And so how are they gonna report that? Yeah. That they actually showed up that they're there. How are they gonna get their waiver forms completed?

Where are you gonna keep it? Right? And if you're or if you're, you know, we work with a lot of habitats. They're out on a build site. If it rains, you've got soggy weaver forms who, you know, who knows what the validity of that is, right? And so we said, could we take some of these technologies and ideas we had for this game and just apply it to maybe more mundane, but potentially much more impactful areas for the non-profits that really accelerate the good that they can do in the community.

Julian: Yeah. It's so amazing to hear kind of the progress. And, and I love the word pivot because I think it, it comes with a bad connotation, but it's, you know, somebody told me I was a founder on the show. It was like, yeah product market fit is a, is is a point in time. And I'm sure at, at that point in time you saw kind of a, a huge you know, opportunity to kind of enable and, and support the, the nonprofits.

And I'm, I'm, I'm curious when, you know, as a founder myself, when you think about building and building a platform that affects end users. like the volunteers, but also kind of the organization in total. How do you, who do you focus on building for? Are you focusing on building to make it easy for the volunteers and then kind of, you know, kind of grows from there, kind of bottom up approach?

Or do you focus on what the organization needs to keep track of these employees and then kind of create a really, you know, homogenous kind of, I guess as I guess group that that can have the impact that they need? Kind of top down, how do you focus and, and. You know, what are some benefits to the way you, you kind of look at building product?

Geng: So we focus on the volunteer manager as our core constituent, and so we always build for them. And the reason being we think we get the most. Leverage in terms of impact by helping them do their jobs. Mm-hmm. , right? So if you think about it, right, if, if they can go from managing 100 to 300 volunteers with no additional effort or time, yeah, well shoot.

That's, that's a huge impact that you've had on whatever mission it is that they, that they're working on, versus if you make it easier for volunteers, right? Like you, it is one on one. But the other part of it is you, we had, we feel like we had those. Saw for the volunteer manager, cuz at the end that's who's validating the information.

That's who's like actually running the program. Right? And so, you know, you could have the best experience for a volunteer, but. How are they gonna know what's going on without the volunteer manager? Yeah. You know, submitting or inputting that information in Right. That says like, oh yes, on Fridays we have this this shift that's open.

Right. Or, or isn't open. Yeah. And so we we felt that, you know, we, we could, a, have more impact, but b don't think the system quite works. Right. , certainly not with any sort of depth. If, if you don't make sure that this tool is really great for volunteer managers.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And what are, I guess, you know, in your experience or what you've seen, you know, kind of as you've worked with non-profits, what are some ways that they can better support either the community or, or the the effort or, you know, the overall kind of impact that they're looking to?

Outside of, you know, volunteers or, or is volunteers kind of the main source of pain that they're having, kind of getting resources to contribute to that impact? Yeah. What, what are some ways that they, they can kind of better impact their community or whatever they're focused on from an nonprofit standpoint?

Geng: I, I'll sort of reinterpret your question as, how, maybe how can we help them more, right. To have more impact. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah. Yeah. If you were to ask nonprofits, generally the, the first answer they, they would have is like, well, we could just use more donations. Right? And, and there's some truth to that, right?

Which is, if you think about a food bank and you can donate cans of food, you can do. You know, and it feels good. It's great. But they also can buy food at huge volume discounts, and they receive them in giant pallets. Right. And that's easy to, you know, wow. You know, to manage and distribute.

Whereas like, you know, they have to sort your, your individual cans and, and, you know, all of this one's a bean, this one's, you know, tomatoes or whatever it is. And that actually takes time and effort, right? Versus like, hey, they, they call up, you know, Sam's Club, Walmart, whoever it is, and say, Hey, I want a whole truck of this, right?

And so, yeah, that's probably, you know, number one what nonprofits would like the most. I would say though part of the challenge for them is people increasingly want to have very tangible impact, right? It's, it's no longer do you want to invest in like generically global warming as a topic, right?

You're like, oh, I'm gonna fight global warming. Here's a global warming fund, and you're like, here's a hundred bucks, right? No one, no one does that because who knows what, what happens to the dollars? And we're used to that personalization, I think in our day-to-day as consumers now too, right? So like whether that you're, you're on, you know, Amazon shopping, right?

You're not getting. The broad catalog that everyone sees. You get your specific Julian or Geng's special recommendations. Yeah. And so people now increasingly expect that, which is like, what is my special thing or impact that I'm having with my $20 gift? And so to the degree that you can make that very tangible for folks and communicate it well.

So in the moment of giving, I think that makes a big difference, right? To say, oh, your $20 can do flaw, right? And here's, here's the impact that you're having. And by the way, you know, a month, three months, whatever, from now, I circled back and I'd tell you yes, that's exactly what happened.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like keeping track and, and keeping that impact is, is huge. Not only from the volunteer, but also to measure kind of the you know, the, the effectiveness of, of the nonprofit or organization that, that's running it. I'm, I'm curious, you know, As a, an industry that people don't kind of associate kinda money with in terms of like investment and, and returns.

How was the whole fundraising process? How are you able to communicate not only the value of the product and its impact, but also kind of the return on investment that, you know, from a traditional standpoint? When you think about VCs, they all. You know, B2B products or B2C products that are gonna, you know, gain in certain revenue.

How is that whole fundraising process in, in delivering the, the value of the product, but also kind of explaining the overall kind of gains that, that, you know, the industry would have and your product would have.

Geng: I would say, you know, nonprofits makes it sound like they don't have money, but nonprofit, profit doesn't mean no dollars, right?

As a matter of fact, right? It's yeah, it's a 10% of our economy in the US right? So, you know, around 2 trillion of impact in the economy. And so there's lots and lots of dollars and certainly donate. Across the board, you know, roughly half, you know, half a trillion, so $500 billion. We volunteer, you know, hun, you know, over a hundred million hours typically, right?

Every year. Covid, you know, obviously makes things a little bit different, right? And so the market is actually quite. Large. And, and nonprofits have to buy software and use software just like everyone else, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, I think, you know, what we did is we, we built it, you know, from the bottom up and said, Hey, here's how many nonprofits are out there.

Here's how many of them, you know, really depend and value volunteers. Here's how much we charge for that. And so here's, you know, The, you know, market size that, that you're looking at and you know, it's, you know, it's over a billion dollars in total, right? And, and here's our sort of more tangible success that we've had, right?

So from you know, from launch and then from piloting to getting, you know, paid customers and here's sort of the growth trajectory, right? . I think one of the great things I think about is one of the ways we can measure impact is actually just by how many dollars we make, just our revenue, right?

Yeah. And that's yeah. And that's also the social impact in part that we're having, right? Because people aren't dumb, right? They're not gonna buy your stuff if it's not helping them, right? Like, no, no one purchases use. More. And so, if we can build something that people are excited to buy and purchase it, maybe for smaller organizations, we can, you know, lower the price to keep it affordable and all that, you know, part as part of our social mission, but in total.

Sure. Right. If we could say, Hey, look at our revenue growth. That's also, by the way, our, our social impact growing, right? Because that's more nonprofits that we're able to serve and more lives that we're able to touch.  

Julian: How, how do think about the way you monetize on, on the product.

Is it kind of a, the company buys the service of it, or is it for the amount of users on the seat? I feel like that would be kind of hard to track. How did you kind of define how you were gonna make money from, you know, the impact, but also you know, how, how it's kind or I guess what also was the importance behind the decision you made?

Because I think a lot of companies struggle with, you know, how do I monetize, but also balance that based on the impact that I want to have, because sometimes they're mutually exclusive and sometimes they're not.  

Geng: Yeah. So, We we charge typically it's an annual subscription, right? So it's sort of a classic SaaS model.

Yeah. And it's depends on the number of active volunteers you have in that, in that year. Yeah. And so our thought is if if you have lots of records or you want to keep a historical budget, that's great. You should have that. It doesn't really cost us much to host that on aws. Right. Like this. You know, pennies on, you know, if, if you will.

And so, unlimited historical records. But you know, the, the number of active volunteers is, you know, one indicative of the value that we we're providing. Right. And, and then probably a sense of how much you're able to, to pay. Right. And I think we might do another cut at some point, which is, you know, looking at your operating budget if you're under or below Yeah.

A certain operating budget we might provide a bigger discount Right. To to, to our software. Yeah. And if you're above, then you know, there's not, you know, there's not the discount that's in place.  

Julian: Yeah. It seems like there's so many things you have to kind of, consider because of the community you're serving.

The, the, the organizations obviously, you know, as, as a young company or earlier company, I would say, you know, you also have to focus on just getting people to use your product and, and getting kind of, expanding that network effect. Right. How did you go about kind of, the, the go to market strategy.

Did you, you know, did you spend marketing dollars? Did you make kind of the connections and kind of do the network effect a bit where, you know, you had one kind of use case that used it really well and expanded on that relationship. Yeah. What did you do and, and. Would you do anything different?

Geng: Yeah, I, well, yes, we would do things different, but what we did is we started with outbound sales, right? So we went initially we just went in person and, and met with folks and said, you know, talked about what we're trying to build, getting their feedback, but then as they got excited about it, right, we would then convert them to, to customers.

Yeah. Later, you know, we moved to more of an outbound like phone call and email model, and so we would call and email folks and say, Hey, you know, here's what you do. You know, what are you interested? And, and that we probably did for a year and a half or so. Right. And, and I think it, it, it sort of worked.

Yeah. But I think with our price point, it was tough to make it consistently work in a way that we're, you know, we were actually making money. Yeah. And so I would say about a year ago we started transitioning to inbound marketing. And so really relying on people finding. And then, and then, you know, and then sort of pitching them after.

And so that is a much more scalable model in the long run. And, you know, if I were to do things differently, that's probably where we would've started instead. Right. And then it's relies on content, right? It relies on your sort of authority, if you will. Them, the space. And it can be a little bit slower to get off the ground, but once it's going right, then it's it continues to pay dividends.

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. You echo a lot of kind of the earlier discussions that founders have, I guess internally with the, with the different tests that they, that they promote and or utilize to kind of get people active. And it really depends on the product from what it, what it sounds like, how are people engaging with it, how they come to find out about it.

Is it for word of mouth? Is it through social ads? Is it from someone kind of putting it on a platter and then, you know, describing it to me the process is so, you know, it evolves a. Tell us a little bit about the traction. You know, who, who are you working with that you're really excited about?

It sounds like Habitat for Humanity is a huge customer of yours, which is amazing to hear the impact there. But what's excited, what, what got you excited about last year's growth? But where is the company kind of going this year that, that is even more exciting?  

Geng: Yeah, so we, we doubled revenues last year, so that's great.

You know, we, we wish we did even more, right. But certainly growing is always good and And from a traction standpoint, right? So yeah, we serve lots of habitats, lots of animal shelters, lots of food pantries lots of youth-serving organizations. So, big Brothers, big Sisters, boys and Girls Club.

And we've recently launched a a new module that's really focused on mentorship. So lots of volunteers are volunteer mentors. Yeah. But what you really care about there is less around tracking hours and, and, and whatnot. But really looking at the. That they're having with their mentees allowing them to provide easy and quick feedback.

Yeah. Right. Maybe getting some feedback from the mentees themselves. Seeing that in real time allows you to understand, you know, are people meeting or not, are they are they able to see success? Are, is somebody's metrics changing over time with their mentors, right?

And so that's really exciting and we've been co-developing that. The National Mentoring Partnership and then Big Brothers, big Sisters of Greater Pi. So, super excited about that. And then last year we had the opportunity to be part of black bods social good startup accelerator. And so, that was great.

We now have an integration with them that's best in class. And so now your volunteer data we'll go in real time to your donor management or CRM as well, right? So you can start to get a. Holistic view of somebody right. To say, you know, Julian gave one her bucks. Yeah. But also volunteered three times last year.

And so next time when I interact with you as a, you know, as a big donor you know, I'll have all that context.  

Julian: Yeah. I feel like that completely changes the, the landscape of, of these companies kind of enabling the. To not only get more impact, but kind of strategically align themselves with more partners, more donors you know, if, if someone's giving time or, or money or anything of value.

That, that tangible kind of data, I think is, is extremely exciting. In, in terms of just tracking impact, you know, this year Mo had great impact that the next year, lesser or so, and, and, but actually having, you know, reasons why those changes were made, which is extremely exciting. I'm sure. You know, the nonprofit space being that if everything's on pen and paper, that kind of data collection is a little bit lost in, in the amount of work or outdated by the time you complete it.

But tell us a little bit about what are some of the biggest challenges that Civic Champs faces today?  

Geng: Challenges. So many . I think, you know, we'll, certainly at a macro level, you know, we are looking at a recession right now, and so always anxious to understand, you know, how, how that will impact the sector.

I think the last time around foundations really you know, stepped up and, and gave more to offset the impact in part because. Nonprofits are actually more needed oftentimes when things aren't going as well, right? And so, that's certainly on our, on our radar. Not, not that we have much that we can do about it, but you know, what, what are the ways we can mitigate or, or address things?

The other challenge I would say is, You know, we are now three and a half years old. Right. And so, you know, we're not quite cashflow break even yet, right? And so, but I, you know, that's the big goal for this year, right? Is how do we get to cashflow break even so that we don't have to take another investment round, right?

And then so, or, or it becomes sort hard choice whether we want to or not. And so that's really important for, for the company and for me and, and sort of the other folks here. And so we're we're hard atwere trying to do that.

Julian: Amazing. It's amazing to hear kind of how you view in, in, in kind of the exciting part of this new year coming up. And I'm always curious if, if if everything goes well what's the long-term plan for Civic Champs?  

Geng: I'm happy to grow this forever. If that's the, if it keeps, you know, doing well and it's making great impact.

That said, right. I. Say, we have lots of different stakeholders you know, from our employees to our shareholders and investors. And so certainly if there was a an offer that made a lot of sense financially you know, we do. , oh. A great return to our investors. Right? And so, hopefully it's somebody that's strategic.

Hopefully they're, they see the vision of Civic Champs and they can actually make it bigger and better Yeah. With their resources. Yeah. And you know, I, I would be excited to continue that. Yeah. If. That were the opportunity. You know, I can also see them saying, well, you know, we need, you know, older, more proven CEO or, or, or leader in this space.

And thank you for all your hard work. Right. But you know, we're, you know, we'll take it from here and that that's okay too. Right?  

Julian: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's awesome to hear , that example is really, I guess telling about kind of how you view the, the importance of the, the project, the company, the value.

Versus, you know, I think a lot of people may, may think that founders are, are synonymous with what they build, but oftentimes I feel like there's a you have to kind of abstract your ego from it because, you know, when you go in a direction, you have to be very much resolute on going that way versus, you know, inwardly.

What's particularly hard about your job?  

Geng: I would say the hardest thing for a startup CEO is, is probably just managing your psyche. I'm sure I'm not the only one that has talked about that. Yeah. . But I, I feel like that is the yeah, that's definitely the toughest part, right? Which is you have a lot of ups and downs, right?

Yeah. But I think what happens. If you don't manage it well, it can make your decision making worse. Right? You might be like, spiraling, right? And, and maybe like, like things start to go into loose Right? And, and you're not able to make good decisions or you're not able to make any decisions. Yeah.

Perhaps even, you know, sort of paralyzing. Yeah. And then, and I think. Your psyche or your attitude permeates the team. And so that that's really important too, obviously, because everyone is Yeah. You know, derives energy hopefully from you, right. And in some way, or maybe feels motivated. Right. In some way.

And so you're not motivated and you're not believing in the mission and what, you know, then it's, you know, it's gonna come, come off. Right. I, I think it's very hard to fake that. Right. Notice that, you know, you can, you can sort of feel it when you're with investors, right? And so like some days you're just like, ah, yeah, this is, we got the best.

You know, since slice bread and, and that comes through and, and investors are like, wow, you got this amazing what you built. Right? And then when you're not personally feeling it a little bit, it also comes through and they're like, well, okay, well here, let's poke some more holes. And Yeah. And then you're like, okay, yeah, this is kind of interesting. Right.

Julian: Yeah. How do you manage it yourself?  

Geng: That's a great question. I think a few things I do. One just. You know, from, from, from a day-to-day standpoint, I like to write down, you know, all the sort of my to-dos and tasks. That can be good from just like reducing stress generally. So you like know what the roadmap is.

Yeah. I think the other thing is, Evaluating what's exciting about the company for yourself, right? Occasionally just be like, here, here's like, this is, this is great. We also have like weekly wins as a team. We, we celebrate weekly wins every week. Like what was the win from last week, right? There's always a win something.

Something always good happened even if it was a terrible week, right? There's always something good and so highlighting that can be. . And then I I picked up exercising a bit more about a year ago. And I played tennis a few times a week, so that's That's great. Just like physically you're a little healthier, you sleep a little better.

Right. Yeah. And that's that can be quite helpful.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. I'd like to ask this next question for selfish research purposes, but also for my audience whether it was early in your career or now, what books or people have influenced you the most?

Geng: I really like quite a few. This sort of startup-y books. So, Shoe Dog by Phil Knight is great. Yeah. think that's, that's a great story. It tells a lot about his journey. Yeah. It, it can it, it's awesome to see sort of like someone so, so successful talking about their almost failures. Right. Almost running outta money.

Yeah. Right. And, and so makes you also think about like how close and like certainly Nike's a as a success story, right? But there's. I don't know if perseverance is the only ingredient there. Right. Certainly that was a big part of it. But there might be some luck, right? And so like imagine if the we flip the other side, right?

And now Yeah. You know, that person is not, and so try and evaluate, you know, when we look at things like who is successful or who isn't, and to try to like, you know, differentiate, you know, not, not differentiate that as much, right? , Ben Horowitz has a great book called, you know, the, the Hard Thing About, you know, hard Things.

Right. I, I really enjoyed that one. Those are probably the two that I liked the most. Zero to one I remember was pretty good, but I, you know, I don't I don't remember as, as clearly. Right.

Julian: Yeah, yeah. I love kind of the differentiating, you know, The different reasons why someone was successful. You know, a lot of it is timing, but some of it is, you know, making the mistakes that they made, but then correcting them in kind of the whole process there. I, I, at least for me, it's really illuminating on evaluating the, the different kind of highs and lows of each day that, that I face.

And and, and kind of making sure that the, the decisions are based on you know, the learnings and teachings from those moments. But gang, I'm, so, I'm so excited to have chatted with you, and I know we're at the end of the episode, and I always like to give my guests a chance to give us your plugs.

So tell us where we can find Civic Champs. Tell us where we can find you, where it can be a part of the mission. The, the, the high value content that you're generating. Give us your websites, your LinkedIns, your. Where can we find you?  

Geng: Champs is civic, as spelled as, as you would imagine it, right?

C i v i c, champ, c h a m p S. Right here on the shirt, , if you'll, and so, that's our, that's our web address, right? So civicchamps.com. You can find us there. Certainly if folks. Are, if you're on the board of a nonprofit, if you volunteer with a nonprofit or if you work at a nonprofit and you know, you find that the volunteer process or managing volunteers is taking longer or is, is less than ideal certainly give us a shout and you know, we'd be happy to chat.

And you know, we're not for everyone, right? And so we try to be pretty upfront about that. But if we're a good fit, we'd love to serve more nonprofits.  

Julian: Amazing Geng. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I really do hope you enjoyed yourself and if we ever do another version of this, I would love to have you back on that.

Sounds good. Thank you.  

Geng: Thanks for having me.  

Julian: Of course.

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