Everyone Hates Marketers | No-BS Marketing & Brand Strategy Podcast

Stacey - 00:00:00:

There's a lot in life. It goes really well if you just roll with it. And you can go home and kill it on the elliptical. But at the end of the day, there is something about knowing you have a righteous indignation against what you feel is an injustice in the world. And whether that's providing high-speed internet to people that don't have that, I think that there is a driving force where you're going head-to-head in these meetings where you have people that are much more established that are telling you that's not going to work, you can't do that, those sorts of things. But there is something in your gut that just says, man, this is something that it really needs to be done. I think that is extremely motivating. It's funny maybe I think I've forgotten a lot of that. As a young person, I used to be the youngest person in the room. I'm not the youngest person anymore. There is a certain resilience, I think, that any people that are in marketing, any people that are delivering hard messages, you just got to roll with it.


Louis - 00:01:10:

Bonjour, bonjour, and welcome to another episode of everyonehatesmarketers.com, the No Fluff actionable marketing podcast for people sick of marketing bullshit. I'm your host, Louis Grenier. In today's episode, you're going to learn how to stand the fuck out against huge corporation and big societal issues without revanting the wheel. My guest today doesn't like to be told what to do, doesn't like to answer to others, and so she's done a good amount of stuff the last few years. She founded the Texas Coalition for Animal Protection, the TCAP. 20 plus years ago to prevent senseless euthanasia in city animal shelters. And she has 59 staff-ish based on what I researched so far. It's a big organization. She also has a cattle business where she raises beef cattle and Texas longhorns, just like my t-shirt if you're watching that on YouTube, alongside her husband. So I have so much to unpack with my guest today, Stacey Schumacher. Hi.


Stacey - 00:02:14:

Bonjour.


Louis - 00:02:16:

Very good. Very good start. So as I was researching you and what you did in the past, I realized a few things. So I realized that I didn't know anything about what you were doing, like your industry. I still don't. But anything around like euthanasia of cats and dogs in cities and shelters and veterinarian stuff, I don't know anything about that. Cattles and Texas longhorns, I don't know anything about that. But what I know is that you come across as someone who has a huge will to change things and fight against, I would say, the establishment in general. That's kind of the theme I pick up. From what you've done. So... Where is that coming from? Were you born with this, like Lady Gaga would say, were you born this way or did you learn that? How did it come across? How did it happen?


Stacey - 00:03:05:

Well, first, thank you for the opportunity. It's always exciting to talk to people about things that you're really passionate about. And I think that there are certain people who are true believers. And there are people who wake up in the morning and think this is how it needs to be. And they're super driven to make things how they think things should be. And for me, as a young kid, you know, kids are motivated by sports or they're motivated by a lot of different things. For me, animals were a big motivator. In high school, I had parents that were very supportive of pretty much anything that we wanted to do. And I started volunteering at local animal shelters. And really saw what happened here in Texas. We have very easy climates for animals to breed all year long. And so in Texas, animal shelters are full of dogs and cats. And so as a young person started volunteering and saw animals being euthanized and felt like that was really unacceptable. And there was a way to fix that. And so right out of college, before I started graduate school, I started a nonprofit in my hometown and offered low cost spay and neuter. For dogs and cats. And then after graduate school, worked in corporate America for a little bit and decided that was an awful place to work. And so I took a management high out and started TCAP back in 2002.


Louis - 00:04:34:

TCAP instead of TCAP like I did. TCAP, much easier. So you didn't have, you didn't study, you didn't go to veterinary school, for example.


Stacey - 00:04:43:

No, I'm a liberal arts major.


Louis - 00:04:46:

Right. So you just had this love for animals, but you weren't trained to do that. Correct. So you said, am I right in assuming you are connecting your kind of this drive that you have with the way your parents brought you up? Is there anything else? Like, can you pinpoint a specific event, childhood or teenagehood that makes you say, I'm like that now?


Stacey - 00:05:05:

No, I'm kind of bossy. I think that God put a desire in me to be a fixer. And I think there's nothing that we can't do. If you're really motivated, there is nothing in this world you can't do. In the United States, we have a lot of freedoms. And one of those freedoms is to change things that we don't care for. And so it really is great. Now, I'll tell you, I've never had a business course. I've never had a formal marketing course. And people that work with me will tell me I'm not the smartest person in the room. But I do think that I'm very good at attracting people who are smarter than me. It's not hard. I really like to surround myself with really smart people and putting those groups together. That's kind of my gig.


Louis - 00:05:48:

I think everyone in everywhere in the world where there is some ways people can act without being killed or suppressed that, you know, we have the freedom to do it. I mean, in Ireland as well, in Europe in general. So America is not alone there. But I think you are maybe diminishing your, you know, what you're about or maybe like making it seem like it's normal because it's not. What strikes me is you started this. Nonprofit, the very first one you mentioned while in college. But you had no experience doing this. You had no contact per se in the industry or you were just volunteering in the shelter. So how did you go about this? How did you create this thing? Did you just go one day and say, you know what, fuck it, I'm going to do this? Or was it more of a...


Stacey - 00:06:29:

I think that's it.I think that's it. You know, you look around and I think this would be the same in any industry. You look around and you think the way we're doing things is not working. People are adopting animals out of animal shelters and they're putting them in foster homes, literally in the next day, another dog comes in. This is not working. What can we do? And spaying and neutering is the key to that. And where I lived in very rural East Texas, there were no solutions for people. It's very difficult in any industry to drive home, like this is a solution, but that solution doesn't exist for those people for whatever reason. My job was to create that solution. The solution existed. We just had to bring it locally. And it's probably that way in a lot of people. A lot of industries.


Louis - 00:07:14:

What was the solution?


Stacey - 00:07:16:

The solution was creating a spay and neuter program locally.


Louis - 00:07:20:

Just explain to me like I'm an idiot, which I am. How does it help preventing cats and dogs to be euthanized?


Stacey - 00:07:27:
It's very easy in many places to own one dog or one cat. Without those being spayed and neutered, that one dog or one cat becomes 15 very easily. And if you live in a neighborhood with a small backyard or you live in an apartment, you can't have 15. Well, you shouldn't have 15 cats in your home. That is where spay and neuter really helps. It stops that cycle and allows people to care for the pet they have, not for that pet and all of its offspring.


Louis - 00:07:56:

So what's the number one advice you would give people who do see in their own industry or in their own context area in something that isn't right, like you recognize, but maybe feel like it's done this way for a reason. Maybe I shouldn't challenge it. Maybe I'm just going to shut up and not do anything about it and go about my day.


Stacey - 00:08:17:

Well, I think we need to be students of our industry or of our interests. And we're going to look around and think, this is something that I'm really interested in. I'm very passionate about. And then once you're passionate about those things, you're going to really learn the ins and outs of what that is and what the needs in that industry are, whatever that industry is. So in where I live, the opportunity, the need was really for a low cost service for people to be able to care for their pets. It's not that they didn't want to care for them. They could not afford to. And so that is where low cost services in our industry are really paramount to being able to allow people to be the pet owners that they want to be.


Louis - 00:08:59:

And so how did you realize they couldn't afford it? Was it just through you volunteering and hearing people telling you this? Absolutely.


Stacey - 00:09:06:

You see that people care for their animals, but you should not have to make a decision of feeding your family or spaying your dog. And in our area, that's what that decision was. That's what that decision is still in a lot of places. And so having a low cost auction really got rid of that roadblock and they're just providing very basic animal care. And I think it would that way in any industry.


Louis - 00:09:33:

How did you know that in other places that was done, like you could do it way more affordably?


Stacey - 00:09:38:

Well, in larger cities, they were providing that service very successfully. And I don't think that there was no reason why in a smaller community you couldn't provide that. And that really has been the footprint now for TCAP. We have eight different standalone locations throughout North Texas, and those are very strategically placed so that people in the DFW area don't have to drive more than 30 minutes. To have a service, a low-cost service for their pet. Because again, they shouldn't have to make those decisions. We're not providing full service care. We're providing very, very basic services. So I would say if you look at like, it's almost like the CC's pizza model. We're not providing tons of different types of food. It's only pizza. And so what we do here is very, very basic wellness care, but we do a lot of that one thing.


Louis - 00:10:28:

There's two things already that I found very interesting is the first one is what you just mentioned. It's like you seem to really have this grasp of focusing on one thing is much better than trying to do too many. So we'll talk about that. The second one is what you mentioned earlier, which is identifying a problem and going for it. Let's dive into the one I just mentioned before we dive into the focus one because Again, very, very, very few people would do something about the something that they see in the world and say, let's change that. And yet you had the drive to do that. So then. What's What major obstacle, if maybe pick the number one obstacle that you faced when you started that on profit, did you go against anyone or any organization that were like preventing you from doing this? Or how did it go?


Stacey - 00:11:15:

One of the major issues that any low cost service is going to provide that they're going to encounter is the full service provider of that service you're wanting to provide at a low cost. And so for those in the nonprofit veterinary world, there has been a disconnect from time to time with full service clinics, understanding that we are a supplement to the service they provide. We are not replacing the service that they provide. And so that can be a little off-putting and it can be a little scary when you're going against what feels like an entire industry. Now, that is not the case, but we employ a lot of veterinarians. We refer to a lot of full service veterinarians, but it can seem a little overwhelming. I would say that the hardest part is step one. It's just deciding this is what I'm going to do. You become a student of that industry, whatever it is, and then you work through all of those things. I'll tell you, I'm not a business plan kind of gal. I think that you can spend a lot of time in a boardroom creating a business plan. The next day is completely irrelevant. And so I'm much more about the emotional intelligence of what, like read the room and really creating really strategic partnerships to be able to supplement, to be able to support the work you're doing. And, you know, halfway through that, you may find it's better to partner with an existing organization than it is to create a new one. And together you're stronger versus being a maverick and going out on your own. And it's a really hard go.


Louis - 00:12:56:

Was there a specific instance, for example, of where you really had to fight for the existence of the nonprofit or where you really had to fight for to get something you wanted that the establishment in general didn't want you to have?


Stacey - 00:13:09:

I would say there's a lot in life. It goes really well if you just roll with it and you can go home and kill it on the elliptical. But at the end of the day, there is something about knowing you have a righteous indignation against what you feel is an injustice in the world. And whether that's providing high-speed internet to people that don't have that, I think that there is a driving force where you're going head-to-head in these meetings where you have people that are much more established that are telling you that's not going to work, you can't do that, those sorts of things. But there is something in your gut that just says, man, this is something that it really needs to be done. I think that is extremely motivating. It's funny. I think I've forgotten a lot of that. As a young person, I used to be the youngest person in the room. I'm not the youngest person anymore. And there is a certain resilience, I think, that any people that are in marketing, any people that are delivering hard messages, you just got to roll with it. In our industry right now, a big thing is compassion fatigue. And so at my work, we talk a lot about that. And I think that resiliency. It's something that we need to see more in the workplace. And so when you think about, like in the beginning, those really hard meetings where maybe there were some people that didn't understand what we were trying to accomplish, what I was saying, look, our community needs this. This is something I heard a lot of. When you grow up, 20-something years later, I'm still preaching the same message because I think that it's important for families to be able to afford pets. I think that we have a responsibility to take care of animals in our community. All those things have... Yeah. Absolutely blurred. Those really awful conversations that happened in the beginning where it was like, you just don't understand the way the world works. I don't understand it. And that's why we're having this conversation. And I think resilience.


Louis - 00:15:10:

So let me stop you here. Yeah. Because it's so important and so interesting. You don't understand the way the world works, right? Or this is not going to work. Or we've always done it this way. And so therefore it must remain that way is the type of shit you've heard. And you keep hearing probably. And I'm sorry to make you go into those maybe difficult conversations with people years ago or whatever, but I'm interested in the way you reacted on the way you thought about those things, because it's going to help people listening right now when they're facing similar problems. So how did you, like if you can picture maybe one of the worst meetings or the worst conversation you had about this, how did you handle it?


Stacey - 00:15:53:
Probably not well. I do think that as we get older and we get more established in our careers, we learn the value of silence. You know that the pregnant pause in meetings is always really good. And I've had to tell myself, Stacey, you don't have to respond to that. Stacey, you don't have to provide a response because I will tell you in the beginning, I meet force with force. I'm a force multiplier. I am not a de-escalator. And I know that about myself. And I would just encourage folks, you know, in those really hard times, it doesn't always pay to tell people what you think they need to hear. I felt that was my spiritual gift. I've since learned that maybe silence is a better thing. And I do think there has been a change in veterinary care for the better. Shelter medicine is now in a lot of different schools. That's something young people learn while in school. 20 years ago, that wasn't a thing. And so I do think that the veterinary community, and we employ a lot of veterinarians and they do wonderful work for the community. I also think that in the workplace, we've talked a lot about the value of giving back to your community, the value of work-life balance, the value of not just working a job to work a job. Nonprofit organizations have met those desires in people since the beginning. That's why nonprofits exist. And so the sell for what we do and the value that we provide the community has really been taught from schools recently versus 20 years ago. It was like, you know, this is something that needs to be offered. Like we were educating the entire industry. I do think, thankfully, that's changed somewhat.


Louis - 00:17:35:

The second thing that I wanted to touch on that you mentioned earlier was this kind of focusing, this idea of not trying to do too many things. Because I'm pretty sure you got the opportunity over the years to do many more stuff. So maybe we can start this way. Your focus, correct me if I'm wrong, but the focus, the number one thing that you're doing is this nurturing program, basically. The basic wellness stuff that you do for the animals. Is that correct? Correct. And did you have opportunities In the recent years to expand and all of that you had to say no to?


Stacey - 00:18:11:

Yes. I think in one of the struggles that I think very mission-driven folks will have, whether that's in certain industries, nonprofits, whatever, you think we're doing this really well. We've got time, experience. We've got subject matter experts. We could really do X, Y, Z. Like we're doing this really well. We could do this too. And I think you start to have mission drift. You start to lose the main thing doesn't become the main thing anymore. And so we've had staff members, we've had veterinarians who have worked here and they all come and say, hey, I've been thinking about it and I think we could do X, Y, Z. I know there's a part of me that we absolutely could do that. And I'm not going to lie. We could rock it. We could be amazing. But I think at the same time, we would lose the value, the quality of the services that we provide. And so mission drift, I think at any nonprofit, and again, that's like my experience. I see that happen with other organizations and it starts to get really muddled. And so making the main thing, keep it the main thing.


Louis - 00:19:20:

So tell me more about this. Tell me more about this. You've seen this happen in previous organizations, like in your previous life or whatever. Tell me an example that actually happened where you're like, fuck, that's a big lesson.


Stacey - 00:19:31:

You only have so much time. Like just in general, it can be driven. You can be the best in your career, whatever that career is, but you only have so much time. And if you are dedicating yourself to one thing and doing that really well, you only have so much bandwidth. In our industry, what I've seen is you've had different low-cost providers, say, and they only provide services to cats or dogs or to rescue, whatever it is. And then they decide that they're going to provide full service care. That is a completely different set of skills. It's a different set of equipment. It's a different set of service providers. Like all of a sudden, that thing you were doing really well, you get pulled from that and you're doing a lot of other things. And I just, I would encourage folks to think about, we talk a lot about work-life balance. And just recently, I heard somebody talk about work-life harmony. And I think that's more realistic. Because I don't think if you are working really hard to create some sort of career, if you're working to create some sort of something, I don't think it's ever going to be 50-50. There are going to be times where you're 100% something. But if you can live in harmony with those things, I really think that's really the key. And so thinking about mission drift... We're going to do what we do very well. That's it. And we're all going to know exactly what we're doing. There's not going to be any question about what we do and don't do. I think it's those whenever we have made some sort of accommodation, like a special one case, that is when it falls apart.


Louis - 00:21:09:

Tell me an example of that.


Stacey - 00:21:10:

Oh, like, well, you, for instance, we just do spay and neuter and somebody has an injured cat that comes in and they want us to remove its leg or remove it. I mean, a one case thing. It never fails. Those folks are going to come back and say, well, you did this for me last time. And then they want it again. And then they're mad when you don't. And we just tell folks, like, the main thing, keep the pace, keep the mission, stay on track. Because it's when you make those little accommodations that I promise it goes to, it doesn't go well.


Louis - 00:21:42:

It goes to shit.


Stacey - 00:21:42:

It does.


Louis - 00:21:44:

It does. How easy is it to keep people working with you? Around that idea? Because I know from experience, this is a very counterintuitive thing to do, to be content with what you have, or to double down on that thing, to only focus on it and say no to potential other opportunities. So how is it easy to keep them? You just say the main thing is the main thing, you just repeat that, and they're happy? or do you have to do more?


Stacey - 00:22:11:

We're going to look for new opportunities within that main thing. I'm not saying we can't do new partnerships, new clinics, I mean, whatever it is, we're going to look for opportunities within that thing. But as a nonprofit, we've set what our mission is. We're going to be super mission driven. We're going to stay on that course. But if, and I think that my colleagues over the years have learned, we're not going to talk about doing random somethings, but we're going to look for opportunities within that mission. So maybe that means a couple of years ago, we did a couple missions, I guess is what they call them, to the island of St. Croix. And we went and did spay and neuter on the island. Well, that's rad. That was really fun, but it was still within our mission. And so I think that as leaders or as a leader, the leadership team I have around me, we're going to look for ways to make the same old thing exciting and to keep it fresh. But at the same time, we're still doing what we said we were going to do.


Louis - 00:23:10:

Yeah, so you add this extra kind of benefit of staying the course. So I've just Googled it briefly about like mission drift. So yeah, it says when a company or nonprofit starts doing stuff that's off course from their original mission, it dilutes focus. It could alienate supporters. And they said to keep checking back on your mission, say no to stuff that doesn't align. Yeah, I just had never heard those two words together. So that's interesting in the way you describe it.


Stacey - 00:23:36:

Well, you learned something today.


Louis - 00:23:37:

Yeah, I always do when I talk to interesting people. So to summarize what we've said so far, we've talked about the power of focus and avoiding, as you described, this mission drift. Talked about this kind of, when you see something that is not working in your industry, when you become a student of it and really see how things are working and therefore the problems there, just go fucking go for it. And you learn along the way. So yeah, like you have this kind of, we also talk about how to fight against or with those big things like the establishment, how to deal with people who don't necessarily agree with you from the start. Let's touch on reinventing the wheel or not reinventing the wheel. Again, that's something you seem to be comfortable with in terms of, You're not trying to do something that others are not in the space. You saw a solution that was there already in big cities, as you said, and you just brought it to North Texas. Again, that's something that is counterintuitive for folks, for some anyway, where they feel like they have to invent, come up with something new in order to not feel like an imposter or feel like, you know, they are stealing people's idea or whatever, or they don't feel original enough or good enough. So what do you say to those people? Or what's the number one advice to avoid this for you?


Stacey - 00:24:53:

I think imposter, the imposter, what do they call it? Imposter...


Louis - 00:24:58:

Syndrome.


Stacey - 00:24:59:

It's real. Most people in leadership, most parents, I have two little kids and so I can speak to this. We have no idea what we're doing. Don't tell my colleagues that. We have no idea. We're going to wing it, right? And so when it comes to speaking truth to power or when it comes to, hey, we're going to try this, I think the hardest step is step one. And we're going to take that first step and we're going to ask a lot of questions. I try to be a really good student. I try to be really engaged. If I don't know, don't give me a lot of acronyms. I don't know those. But I think that asking questions is really paramount.


Louis - 00:25:37:

So asking questions, okay. But again, when we go to basic questions, stuff like innovation, which is simply to find unmet needs and solve them. Again, you strike me as someone so fucking practical, someone who just does the thing, move on. And while so many marketers in particular, when they try to come up with solutions, when they try to come up with new stuff. Are getting lost in the weeds of trying to be clever rather than trying to be clear or practical. Have you seen any examples of that? In your industry or outside of it in the world of trying to reinvent the wheel and going extremely wrong.


Stacey - 00:26:15:

So what is that acronym? I just told you not to give me acronyms. What is it? The KISS method? Keep it simple, stupid. I think there's real value in that. The people that we are marketing our program to are pet owners. Okay. And so a lot of these people are busy with other stuff. They've got little kids. Like we look at who our customers are. You get a lot of single parents. We get a lot of college students. We get a lot of unemployed folks. Don't really have time to research different heartworm preventions. They're coming to us for those solutions. Okay. They're looking at us as a subject matter expert to make a value-driven quality recommendation for them. Just this month, this is a marketing piece. We offered a thing where it was, you could pick from three things, a discount. We'd never done that before, but it was like, when you bring your pet in, you can choose from these three things, a greater savings. It was a flop because it was so complicated. In the past, we had done each month, we had one special. And you came in and you got that one special. And we thought, well, we'll try this. Keep it simple. You know, people don't have time to figure out all this mess about whatever it is that you're selling, what you're recommending. And that was a take home this month at TCAP. We made it too complicated. People didn't understand it. Our staff didn't understand it. They couldn't explain it. And so... For me, I think everything is very actionable that we do. Everything is very simple because then from the lowest staff member you have, the newest person you have to the most senior, there's no disconnect. It's super easy.


Louis - 00:27:59:

Yeah.Yeah. We can go into that for forever. But yeah, things are changing at the minute. So you said something quite interesting about the recent promotion you tried, which is, Which I still don't understand, which is a sign of... So you were saying folks could pick one of three discounts. They had three choices. You know, you pick that and you get a discount. That you get a discount. That you get a discount. Correct? Correct. And before that, what you used to do, every month there is one thing that is discounted and that's it. Yeah. Correct. Okay. When we say that thing being discounted, what type of thing did you use to discount?


Stacey - 00:28:39:

So for instance, in the past, we would have Microchip. So those are the little grains of rice. They can scan your pet, and it'll tell them who the owner is if the pet is in an animal shelter. We did those for $10 a month, for instance. And so everybody who came in had the opportunity to avail themselves of that one discount. This month we thought, well, hey, your pet can only be microchipped once. What if we did, if you've already got the microchip, you would get a free vaccine of some sort, you know, because those are typically done yearly. It was so complicated that we couldn't explain it well enough for people to think it was a deal. And I think a lot of the coupons that I get, because I'm a consumer, a lot of the consumer things I get, man, it's so complicated. I'm like, forget it. I'm out. And I think that was our real world experience. Giving people the opportunity to save 20 bucks. They didn't understand it. They weren't going to save the 20 bucks. And so anyway, we've had some chats about that and laughed about it because that was a mistake, but we learned.


Louis - 00:29:44:

Exactly. Is there anything that you took away from another industry, something completely outside of what you do as an idea to market, like a type of discount or anything at all that you can recall?


Stacey - 00:29:57:

Okay.So twofold. Number one, Southwest Airlines. Love Southwest you know, they're a Dallas-based company and they're seemingly happy typically about doing their jobs. Yeah. And during COVID, one of the things that we had to do was create a way that people could stand in line, but not stand in line with masking mandates and those sorts of things. And so we looked at how other people in other industries were solving that issue. And that had to do with entering a queue and receiving a letter. And you could watch when your letter was posted and that told you when to get in line versus just a line to the moon. I think it is important to look at other industries and see what they're doing. The other thing I would say is if you don't want to work like Chick-fil-A. In any kind of service industry, you need to just hold up shop. Because those folks are always trying to find a way to make something very basic. Like they don't serve steaks at Chick-fil-A. They're chicken sandwiches, chicken nuggets. But you want to go to Chick-fil-A and pay $40 to feed your kids, or at least we do around here. That's the thing, right? You want to give them your money and it's their pleasure to take it. And so when we think about TCAP and the services that we provide, man, it's very basic, but we want people to want to come here and we want it to be our pleasure to service them. And that's a core value that customer service makes you or breaks you. So we definitely want to be that service provider that's thankful that people are here. We're thankful for the opportunity to help them and it is our pleasure to service their pet.


Louis - 00:31:30:

So let's imagine a very awful scenario where I'm actually looking at one of your centers and say, I want a job. And you make the terrible decision to say, okay, you're hired and you'll be customer facing in one way, shape or form. You can pick the role. How did you train me, or what's the one thing you tell me to embody that value? Because every single business in the world will say, oh, we're consumer-centric, blah, blah, blah, we care, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, as you know, very, very few actually do it. So how do you make sure I actually do this?


Stacey - 00:32:03:

I can't. The long and short of it is, I can't make you a nice person that cares about animals if you don't. So we're going to hire for culture here. We're going to hire people with experience or not experience, but they love people and they love pets. And then we're going to train them through a training program that's really, really beefed up over the years. We have a gal that's in charge of our training and she does an excellent job in helping people feel a part. We have a great culture of mostly women, but not all, but they love each other. And those people are doing stuff on the weekend, not at TCAP, just on their own. But we're going to hire people that fit that culture, who are friendly, who are nice, because if you're not friendly, I can't make you friendly. And I can give you a script to read, but you might still suck because you don't like people and you don't like pets.


Louis - 00:32:54:

I just telling me it feels like you're talking directly to me and I'm being refused a role.


Stacey - 00:32:59:

You're not hired. You're fired.


Louis - 00:33:01:

Yeah, I can see. How do you recognize someone who does fit that culture?


Stacey - 00:33:05:

So I think if I interview you and you're smoking a cigarette on your porch, you didn't take it real seriously. I think if you are dropping your kids off at school and you are doing an interview and you're working really hard to multitask and meet the obligations that you have, we're going to talk to you for a while. If you want to learn more about our organization before I've ever interviewed you, please I think you're somebody that we should talk to more. We do a lot of things via Zoom now. And I can't tell you how many people we interview that have never heard of TCAP. They have no idea what we do. You probably aren't that serious about working here. This is a great place to be. We do a lot to develop people. We have benefits for our people. People have been here for 15, 16, 20 years. But we do that because we have a great culture. So if we interview you and you are like engaged and friendly and you laugh a little and whatever, you're going to be a great fit, regardless of what your experience is. So you better laugh a little if you want a job at TCAP. Look a little happier over there, okay?


Louis - 00:34:13:

I've quizzed you a lot and I appreciate you taking the time to answer all my questions. So my last question to you before I ask, well, how can people learn more from you and connect with you? What would be the top three resources you would advise folks listening right now to read, to learn about? To become better at what they're doing? It could be anything. It doesn't have to be marketing per se. It could be anything that comes to mind.


Stacey - 00:34:38:

So I'm not a reader. Readers are leaders. I have little kids. And so I listen to a lot of podcasts, a lot of podcasts. And so do I have a recommendation? Well, I do a lot of true crime because Me too. If I end up in a trunk, I want to know what to do. Like, I feel like I'm like studying for an exam, but I think that it is really important I'm a liberal arts major. I think being a well-rounded human is huge. We used to use the term Renaissance . Do you remember that term? Do you know that term? No. Okay. So a Renaissance , I'm going to make you Google it. But I think that there is value in knowing a lot about a lot of different things. And so I don't know that I have a recommendation, but I will tell folks, if you are a marketer, if you are a nonprofit administrator, whatever it is, I think it's really important to know other industries and to know what's going on in the world. And so maybe that's like you do fencing on the side or you do whatever it is. I think that knowing people and knowing what is going on in other industries is really huge. And not being one of those people that when you go to a cocktail party, because I kind of like those, you tell me there's an open bar, I will be there. But I think it's important to be able to talk to people about a lot of different things. We talked a lot about mission drift. So when I'm at work, it is all work. But I think it's really important to be able to speak to people about what's going on in a lot of different industries versus only jogging about those one things. I want to be the person that makes people feel good and they want to talk to me about a lot of different things. I don't want them to run because all I want to talk about is spay and doer.


Louis - 00:36:25:

Yeah, so a Renaissance is the notion that humans should embrace all knowledge and develop themselves as fully as possible. That makes a lot of sense. I like it. Thanks for sharing that. Where can listeners connect with you, learn more from you?


Stacey - 00:36:39:

I don't know that they'll learn much, but we can connect. How's that? They can go to Texasforthem.org. That is the website for the Texas Coalition for Animal Protection. They can learn about TCAP and where we are and learn more about the organization. And then me personally, they can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Stacey and it's spelled Schumacher like Schumacher. No relation, unfortunately, but Stacey Schumacher on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect and talk about whatever's happening.


Louis - 00:37:13:

Brilliant. Thank you so much.