Don’t miss out on this episode where non-profit expertise meets entrepreneurial spirit as Catalina Parker unravels her journey from burnout to brilliance. Learn how non-profit professionals are transforming their passion into profitable consulting businesses, combatting common industry challenges, and leveraging AI for operational efficiency. Whether you're in the non-profit sector
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of the Scaling Impact Podcast.
- Non-profit burnout triggers consulting pivot
- Strength training as a mental health tool
- AI fills in busy work, opens strategic room
- Fractional work is a growing non-profit trend
- Structuring services for non-profit consulting
Resources:
Connect with Catalina Parker:
Connecting with our hosts
Quotables:
- 09:30: I had found myself having panic attacks in my office every day. I was not a good mother, not a present wife, not a great friend. My whole life was really consumed by work and trying to make a situation that wasn't right for me work. And eventually, I couldn't stop ignoring the signs that my body was sending me, which were these panic attacks. I would have a lot of anger outbursts because I was just so overwhelmed with the emotions. I didn't know how to process emotions. So that's really what made me realize that there was a problem and something needed to change.
- 13:04 - I think because I was doing what I thought other people wanted me to do growing up, I was always told that, you know, you have to achieve a lot. So there was a lot of pressure put on me at an early age to just push yourself, do better, do better. You're never enough was always the message I was given. So when I did all the things you're supposed to do, you know, I was a straight-A student, graduated college early, did my master's in an Ivy League school, I got my dream job, this was all before I was 30. And it was just because I realized kind, I was just doing what everybody told me to do. Others, what society tells you to do. And I never really asked myself like, what do you wanna do? What makes you happy?
- 19:38 - I started reading a book by Keith Cunningham, and he mentioned this concept of thinking time, which he took from someone else. But essentially, scheduling time for yourself to just stop and think and going into that meeting with yourself with the right question in mind, like a very specific, narrow question that's an important one for you to answer. I haven't yet worked it into a ritual, but the couple of times that I've done it, I mean it's been, it's had a profound change on my business.
- 34:32 - I really do believe that the future of the nonprofit sector, because the system really is not built in a sustainable way to support the people working inside nonprofits, right? Like donors believe that people are overhead and we need all of the funding to go just to the mission, but donors sometimes forget, well, who's gonna actually implement that mission work, right? So there are just a lot of issues with the nonprofit, just the system, the sector as a whole, systemic issues that are just going to take a while to be addressed. And that's why we see a lot of people choose consulting or fractional work as an option because it's like, what else do you do? Right? And again, I mean, the nonprofit sector pays people not well, just all of these various issues.
- 38:04 - Catalina: I have a sales bot trained on our script and everything. It's just incredible how much time you can save if you're using it correctly. I've seen it used incorrectly a lot as well.
Josh: Yeah, I think just to kinda repeat that, I think it does a good job filling in the busy work that we were just sitting there typing a brief or something like that. And it leaves more time for strategy, which I think is where we get the human involved and let the AI do what it does best, and then we do what we do best.