Christine Courtney: Okay. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Stepping Into Your Leadership. I'm your host, Christine Courtney, and excited to have in the studio today a brand new person for your ears. I think you'll be excited to hear some of the things that she can share with you. This is Sally Mildren from Commonwealth Marketing. And just to tell you a little bit about Sally before we dig in, Sally is the founder and CEO of Commonwealth Marketing, is a heart-centered marketing and leadership firm that helps nonprofits, healthcare orgs, and mission-driven brands stand out with clarity, connection, and purpose. A former brain injury rehabilitation therapist, turned executive leader and marketer, we're gonna talk about that one for sure, Sally brings a rare blend of art and science to her work, applying the neuroscience of belonging, trust, and human connection To marketing, communications, and leadership strategy. Sally has served as the executive leader for small businesses, Fortune 100 companies, nonprofits, small hospitals, health systems, and a Medicaid health insurer, giving her deep insight and experience into the real world challenges faced by underserved and resource constrained organizations. Her work is especially focused on supporting small and solo marketing. marketing teams, nonprofit executives, and rural or community based leaders who need practical people first strategies that actually work. She's also an author. She wrote a book called Leading Real People A Guide to Human Centric Leadership for Today's New and Middle Managers. And ⁓ she also has a she's the host and creator of the Leadership Cafe, a free online community, and it has a companion podcast Where marketing, communication, and leadership experts share actionable guidance for mission-driven teams. Welcome, Sally.
Sally Mildren: Thank you. It's nice to be here.
Christine Courtney: You are a woman after my own heart. ⁓ so I love it. I'm very excited to dig in. And I'm I'm immediately what stands out to me. I love learning about people's backgrounds and how that influences who they are as leader. So I gotta ask you right off the bat, because it's in the first part of your bio, you know, how does someone who's a former brain injury rehabilitation therapist turn into executive leader and marketer? Explain that. Transition for us.
Sally Mildren: Well, the practical truth is that I have a degree in recreation therapy, which is not reimbursable in the United States. So it so a lot of places ⁓ don't have them on staff unless they can absorb the full cost. So unfortunately it was a practical thing, but I got into the degree because I started originally in pre-med and then ended up in this field because I didn't want to just fix one thing. I didn't want to just fix an arm. I wanted to address holistically the life of the patient and and consider all of the things that are at play when there's an injury. What k what do you do? How do you take care of yourself? What things do you love to do? And so That was why I got in the field, and I think the transition into marketing and strategy in healthcare, a lot of my experience was kind of that full circle of helping patients understand what is available to them, how to connect to it, how to take care of their own health, and how to maximize their own wellness kind of fits in that same space.
Christine Courtney: Yeah. And I I can see that. And and how how specifically you started working with healthcare organizations and I guess that naturally led to other not for profits or more. Now you live you live In any minute now, you're gonna live in Montana. You live in Santa Fe right now. So I was very interested too in learning about you how much when you're serving you're serving underserved communities, it sounds like it's a little bit different than the work that we do here in New York, serving underserved communities in a very urban setting. You're doing a version of that but in very rural settings. So can you just tell me a little bit about what that looks like?
Sally Mildren: Yes. Mm-hmm. Sure. Well, I'd say the primary difference, because I have worked both in urban settings like in Seattle and ⁓ in very rural settings. And the primary distinction is distance and access to resources. You know, when you're in the middle of an urban center and somebody needs food or s housing or are in labor and need to go deliver a baby, often there are an hour to two hours of driving, which in a lot of cases with underserved communities, some of them don't have cars or don't have access to that. Or you know, it's the distance for meeting that last mile gap for humans and individuals is the primary difference between rural and urban. And then obviously That at some point, depending on the rural. Yesterday I was in a conversation with a gal and she said the definition of rural is very different from town to town. In some cases, rural is, well, our population doubled because Mary Joe had twins, you know, and in other cases, rural is 50,000 people, which feels like an urban center to somebody from a little teeny town. And so The just the bandwidth and the additional resources of different rural communities changes from place to place and from culture to culture, honestly.
Christine Courtney: Yeah. And so when you're working with those types of teams, what are you specifically what what is how does your work reach them? What do you look at? What would might be
Sally Mildren: One of the things that I see a lot in small communities, whether it's nonprofits or rural, is that people they're so connected. I mean, if you're at a hospital and the patient is your child's soccer coach or your minister from church or the lady who works at the grocery store, whatever. There is such a deep integration in those areas that the trap becomes for organizations to try to be everything.
Christine Courtney: Mm, mm hmm.
Sally Mildren: To everyone. Because there's a genuine personal buy-in to these are my people and my community. It's not just a job for a paycheck or a a ⁓ cog and a wheel, which is easier to feel like in a huge millions and millions of people. It's easier to feel a little less connected from the direct impact of that work. And so we we really try to help. People learn to focus strategically on the things that not only serve your mission, but will move move the impact forward rather than just staying busy trying to juggle a hundred balls at once. And there's a lot of, you know, organizational habits, if you will. ⁓ well, we always do this fund run, and we're gonna do this fun run.
Christine Courtney: Ha ha ha.
Sally Mildren: You know, come heck or high water, we're doing this fun run because it's almost an organizational habit. ⁓ those are the things that need to find their ⁓ ⁓ And we need to instead connect with our ⁓ in a way that is relevant today. And today is different than it was a year ago or 10 years ago or whatever. And ⁓ that's the biggest thing is helping them strategically evaluate where are they at.
Christine Courtney: Mm.
Sally Mildren: What is their purpose here? Are they doing the right things to achieve that goal?
Christine Courtney: And so you really work with them as a thought partner to it sounds like evaluate and then strategize some things. So imagine those folks that are listening to us today that might not have the money to hire somebody, ⁓ an expert like you. What are some some tips that you can give them if they're trying to do a v ⁓ a mini version of what you help people through? What does that look like? What might be some tips they could do?
Sally Mildren: So most often in these organizations, truthfully, they're fighting for their life. The money has already been split twelve ways. And so from a practical standpoint, the stopping and evaluating, asking yourself the question to what end on every project that you are trying to tackle, to what end? And does that align with the mission of who you are and your core business?
Christine Courtney: Ha ha.
Sally Mildren: function. Lot sometimes we get engaged in the fluff and then we lose our way and find ourselves, wait, what happened? I took a walk and nobody's following me. But or we stay where we've always been and the audience has changed. Now maybe your community is 80 instead of 40 and the needs of the community have shifted. So for me
Christine Courtney: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm.
Sally Mildren: The most important thing is to stop and indict everything that you think you need to do and say, is this still meeting the needs of the organization? And is it meaningfully going to result in more business for us? And you know, healthcare it's hard or nonprofit, it's hard to s use the words business, but truthfully, you can't you can't have a nonprofit if you don't raise money. And if you're just doing the gala every year because that's what we do, and you aren't earning money from it, it's just busy work. And so I think simply indicting everything you're doing and then making sure that the people you're speaking to or targeting with your activities, events, campaign, whatever, are the same, that their needs are still the same. Because we get so busy we don't stop and take time to go. Am I speaking to them in a way that really is going to resonate? Or am I even answering a question they're asking anymore? And those two functions will make a big difference on your strategic impact and helping you, you know, strategy is as much what you say no to as it is what you say yes to.
Christine Courtney: Yeah. So true. You know, my husband runs a not for profit here in in the city in New York City. And I years ago they used to have this big fundraiser, ⁓ every year and everybody looked forward to it. It was probably one of the best fundraisers I've ever been to. ⁓ and basically they would put on these plays with celebrities, ⁓ that were called the twenty four hour plays. And would happen, you know, in twenty four hours the celebrities would come and it was amazing celebrities. Chris Rock, Brooke Shields, Jennifer Aniston, you name it, they were there, right? And they were put but we would see them go up at night. We'd come and people would pay for their tickets or whatever. We come, we'd see them put on these ten minute shows and half the time they couldn't remember their lines or whatever. And it was so fun. You felt like you were just having this moment. And ⁓ and all of it my husband was like, W I have to stop doing this this ⁓ fundraiser. And he goes, Because it has nothing anymore to do with what we actually do. And ⁓ they had it years ago been a program that maybe did some theater and some different of art forms. But now where they were focused had nothing to do with what that fundraiser was about. And I thought, You're crazy. People love it. You make so much money. And he's like, I know, but I just it doesn't align with our mission. Like it doesn't align with where we're headed and and it tells a totally different story. And and I
Sally Mildren: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Christine Courtney: You know, I kind of disagreed with him in the moment because me and everybody else loved this event so much. But when I look at it, I'm like, what a bold decision that he made because now they have a very different gal that makes tons more money. But not only more importantly, it's so aligned to who they are and where they're going and who they're serving. And to your point, I think that's a very hard decision. It's easier decision to make if you're not making any money. But if you're making money and people love it and looking forward to it.
Sally Mildren: Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Right.
Christine Courtney: ⁓ I think that's very hard for leaders to make that strategic call.
Sally Mildren: I agree. And and I call it a you know really brave leadership because you're gonna get the pushback, but in the long run, you know, from a neuroscience standpoint, we are looking for things, especially the younger donors, the millennials, the Gen A, some of the younger donors are really looking for organizations to participate with that align to their personal. values, their ethos and all of that. And so the way of the past with the silent generation or the boomers who really had their set would mail a check kind of thing is different now. And we have to we have to evolve as well to a make sure we're still aligned to our mission, which I, you know, I celebrate what your husband was brave enough to do because sometimes we just
Christine Courtney: Yeah.
Sally Mildren: Get on our way, or sometimes our mission has evolved over time as well, based on political or funding or whatever is going on. Sometimes your mission has to evolve. And it's it is a one of the hardest things is to be brave enough to make those hard decisions to really narrow in and align. But honestly, at the end of the day, those are going to be the most successful organizations.
Christine Courtney: So if a if a not for profit or a small business has basically, you know, no marketing or very small marketing budget, where do you think they should put their first dollar of effort? You know, I know some people who are starting businesses and they're just getting a little bit and they're like, Should I spend you know, every dollar is so valuable. Is it worth it to spend it on marketing? Where do I go? Like, where should they put their first kind of dollar or even effort? ⁓ whether it's time, energy, money, I mean I think part of what I hear you say is really looking at overall strategy and like where their connections are coming from. But where is that first ⁓ valuable dollar best place to put that?
Sally Mildren: It's a great question. And it may sound sacrilegious as a marketing agency to say that first dollar should not go into ads. It shouldn't go into paid media. If if you have not clearly identified who you're talking to and what problem you're solving or what value you're bringing.
Christine Courtney: Mm.
Sally Mildren: Every dollar you put into paid media or marketing or whatever will be wasted or diluted. And that is not a popular opinion among a lot of marketing agencies. But the truth is, from you know, getting to my brain injury root, from a neuroscience standpoint, you have about two to eight seconds. Our brain processes 11 million bits of information per second. And it weeds out about 99.9% of it. B otherwise our head would explode off our shoulders. And and the function in our brain is looking in that amount of time, and it's subconscious. It's not even something we're just, I'm going to evaluate this ad or this message. Your brain is looking for relevance, something that is of value to you based on the decisions you've made, what you pay attention to. your history, all of that. And so you have very little time to get attention, which is, you know, what we were talking about is we've got two to eight seconds to capture the attention enough to say, okay, this is worth me paying attention to. Otherwise, because it's so costly to run our brain, 20% of our calories are spent just keeping our brain going. It's so costly. It's like the giant AI farms that they're trying to put in for energy. It's so expensive. If it costs too much to try to figure out what you're trying to say to me, your brain's like, nope, not for us. Let's go look somewhere else. And so without that clarity of your message and exactly who you're talking to, the money you put into marketing will be wasted. And that to me Is the most important piece to get clarity on. And it can no longer can you say I had one client that was a health system that was like literally their words on their ads were for any woman, any age, any stage of life, we're here for you. I mean, that does not resonate for me.
Christine Courtney: Ha ha Right.
Sally Mildren: It doesn't tell me that you have expertise to understand what I'm going through at my age, or that you could treat a daughter who, you know, has other symptoms, or a woman who may be pregnant or postpartum or whatever. So that kind of broad messaging is lost on people. And they're if they can't see themselves in it, then they're gonna move on and nothing you do will be worth paying for.
Christine Courtney: Great. I love it. Okay. Good good advice. ⁓ let's just shift a little bit because you you've brought up a couple of times it's fascinating, right? The the brain and neuroscience. And I know a lot of your work has to do with the neuroscience of belonging and trust. So this is something a particular
Sally Mildren: Yeah, it's
Christine Courtney: in particular that I'm absolutely fascinated by. And can you just break it down for our listeners out there, for everyday business owners, you know, what does that look like in practice when you talk about that?
Sally Mildren: So in practice it would be and it's not very satisfying because it's not like vacuuming you can see the lines and see exactly what you've done. So just be prepared for a little bit of the hard work. in in practice it would be the images that you're choosing for your social post or your billboard or the message that you're using. It would look like not just throwing out this
Christine Courtney: Ha ha.
Sally Mildren: Concept that says we've got people kind of like you, but it would be, you know, to your point of your husband being brave enough to say, I want to speak to the women in their 50s and prove that I understand what you're going through and we know what it's like to be you. And we're here with this solution. It feels scary to really narrow in because What about all these other people? We're for everybody, but particularly where it comes from paid media or paid marketing at all, you really have to get brave and say, I'm not trying to reach the whole world. I'm trying to reach these women in this community. And targeting your message exactly to them in a way that resonates to them. A 50-year-old woman has a whole different message that's gonna resonate. maybe a picture of a hot flash, you know, whatever, as opposed to a f fifteen year old. So it takes really narrowing and making sure that your messages, your images, I mean there's all kinds of neuroscience around color and around all of that. And I actually have a couple tools I'll give you to share, but there's a lot of what triggers in the brain that is involved in
Christine Courtney: Yeah. ⁓ great.
Sally Mildren: Everything from your social post to your billboard message to your taglines to the color of your call to action button. I mean there's a lot of really simple things that trigger in the brain differently. You know, just simply a call to action. You wanna have it. You wanna have your logo at the top left, the meat in the middle, and your call to action on the bottom right. That kind of Z pattern is how the brain, most people in
Christine Courtney: Mm.
Sally Mildren: Western hemisphere read left to right. And that call to action button should be a different color than anything else on your page. It converts thirty percent more often. So there's little nuances like that. Yeah.
Christine Courtney: Really? Great tip. And you you teased us with the color, the neuros the colors of neuroscience. Give I love that call to action button being down there on the lower right. What about any other color that's really helpful to folks, whether it's on your website or in some sort of marketing? I'm taking notes for myself too.
Sally Mildren: Yeah. Well, it t it really depends on what reaction or what action you're wanting from people. If you know, like yellow is really an optimistic, it's perceived as happy and youth are very drawn to yellow. So if your mission or whatever is reaching youth, using yellow strategically is really important. Green can have all kinds of meanings depending on the shade. If it's the dark, heavy green, it's seen more trustworthy, and that's why you see it in banks and financial institutions. But the little bit brighter green is perceived as real echo conscious and more, you know, engaged. And so there's I have a color tool I'll give you to share with your audience, but it's really fascinating. The one color that you should be careful with red signals kind of threat. There's a part in our brain that's like red. And that's why it needs to be used strategically, like to draw attention to something urgent. But to overuse red makes people just go, I don't want it. So it's it's curious how the colors impact our thinking and and what we pay attention to.
Christine Courtney: it great tips I love it ⁓ I'm automatically think I have a million things that are swimming through my brain of like I gotta look at that you know you wrote a book l Leading real people right what's one kind of leadership habit that any manager out there we have a lot of people who are managers or up and coming managers listening ⁓ what's one leadership habit that any manager can start this week and
Sally Mildren: Ha ha. Ha ha.
Christine Courtney: That will immediately kind of change how their teams show up or how influence them in some sort of positive way.
Sally Mildren: Well, if I may, I'll tell you a short story first. I was on a call I was on a call with an insurance company for my business, you know, trying to change the address or something. And the rep got on the phone and I'm like, How's your day? And there was this like stunned silence. And he said, Are you talking to me? And I'm like, Yeah, how was your day today? He's like
Christine Courtney: Please. I love stories.
Sally Mildren: No one has ever asked me that. And I was like, in my heart, I was like, that's really sad. Makes me a little mad, but ⁓ my gosh. And I said, well, how is your day? And he said, it's good, thank you. And then he did his thing. And at the end of the call, he was like, thank you so much for asking me how my day was. You made my whole month. And it just stunned me. And it just is the point of it cost nothing.
Christine Courtney: What?
Sally Mildren: But employees, like 67% of employees in the US, say they are disengaged at work. And about that many say their boss wouldn't even notice if they didn't show up again. Which is heartbreaking as an empath that the biggest thing you can do this week is look in the eyes of your staff and say, hello. How's your day? How's your evening? How's your dog? Seeing them and acknowledging their presence and their work is so important. Not, ⁓ thank God you're here. We need this, this, this, this. Take 15 seconds and acknowledge the humanity of the being before you. That they are a whole person. They aren't a job description or a box on an org chart. They are a whole person who brings all of that to work. So we're for you to exercise 15 seconds of humanity to just say, ⁓ my gosh, you mentioned your dog was sick. How's your dog doing? That will is the thing that people need to feel seen and needed and begin to build loyalty to your organization. It's not hard work and it doesn't cost anything. So you all can do it.
Christine Courtney: Yeah, and I think sometimes people it it's impatience that gets in our way too. You know, we just think, ⁓ that's gonna take too long to stop and ask that question and and really it doesn't have to. You know, it's it can be small little touch points that ⁓ make someone feel like they have some attention. I love that.
Sally Mildren: At the fortune fifty company that I worked for, I adopted a call center of a hundred people for health insurance. Probably one of the worst jobs on the planet. Next to being the honey bucket, clean it guy. sh they they got chewed all day long. And I one time I was on a trip and this little girl in Mexico came up and said, You want to buy a chiclet? Goma.
Christine Courtney: Yeah.
Sally Mildren: And I was like, ⁓ I'll buy the whole box. And she was just like, What? She went and got three people who spoke English and said, Are you sure? That's twenty dollars. I'm like, Yeah, I'm sure. So I bought it the box of a hundred chiclets and I left a little note on everybody's desk with a little chiclet that said, We have no idea how important one little teeny action or one little act of kindness. makes a difference in our customers' lives because at dinner, like three hours later, her mother found me in a restaurant and said, You fed our whole family for the week. And so it's powerful, these little touches. And I cannot tell you how many staff members stopped by my office and were like, I've never had a vice president say hello to me or Acknowledge me and this is the most meaningful thing I've ever had, which you know, I don't care what I'm called, it's leading real humans and acknowledging them and being connected to them in a simple way. It's so easy to do.
Christine Courtney: Yeah, and it gives so much in all directions, you know, especially in that s example that you just gave us. And and how wonderful to have like a handwritten note, you know. I'm finding that even I have kids who are twenty one and and nineteen and you know, Father's Day's coming up this weekend and one of the things that we always want, whether it's Father's Day is Mother's Day or birthday, is just a handwritten card from your from our kids. And we've always instilled that one thing. I've never been a great mom at making sure they wrote thank you notes. I wish I wa had done that, but I I wasn't. ⁓ but they do write a nice birthday card, very specific. And I think, you know, it it is a powerful thing to to see a handwritten note show up from someone that you care about or you respect. And even at the office, you know, and and God, if you mail things today, you know, I'm finding that the young the young people are bringing back some mail. ⁓ I just got you know, they they really get a kick out of something coming in the mail because it's so unusual to them. so y you know, you we like to think, ⁓ young people wouldn't care about that, but actually it's a differentiator, you know, and in the
Sally Mildren: Yeah. Right. It is.
Christine Courtney: marketing world that makes a difference. I even know some marketing companies that were telling me they're going back to in this world of AI because to try to differentiate, they're going back to sending things in the mail again. So you never know what w comes around.
Sally Mildren: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's a whole analog movement right now along the among the millennials where they are literally looking for ways to get away from online and yeah, the people who are savvy are gonna touch into that right away.
Christine Courtney: Mm-hmm. I think it's gonna be interesting how it affects their kids, right? Because I think millennials are are real and they're such a big generation, how they're really looking at parenting. You know, I have a lot of millennials who work for me and they have kids and they have no like they d those kids don't have cell phones, they don't have they have landlines in their house. You know, it's gonna be interesting to see ⁓ what that generation ⁓ as they start to age Not the millennials, but whatever their kids are gonna be called, ⁓
Sally Mildren: Yeah.
Christine Courtney: Alpha, Gen Alpha maybe. ⁓ anyway, take us back, Sally, a little bit to the beginning of who you were, because I'm kind of fascinated by the work that people do and what they're what they were like in childhood. Like what were some of the core experiences that you did growing up that ⁓ you look at your life now and you're like, ⁓ yes, that's why this comes out in my leadership or this comes out in the work that I do. You know, some people I talk to they were, you know, drummers or they were in a b a band or they were ⁓ played ⁓ field hockey. You know, what were the things that who you were and how does that show up for you now?
Sally Mildren: So I have a twin brother, and we were the youngest of eight kids. And our father was a Navy fighter pilot. He did thirteen nine month deployments in fifteen years through Korea and Vietnam. So we didn't really know him much. And by the way, my mom had eight kids in nine years. So single mom basically raising a whole tribe. And we were at you know in Southern California.
Christine Courtney: Yeah.
Sally Mildren: until dad retired. And so a lot of our time, I mean, basic bandwidth, talk about, you know, stretched resources. That was my mother's theme. we we weren't allowed to just sit in the house and watch TV. We we were outside playing. We were doing and trying anything that we could imagine, which, you know, may or may not all be good. But we I was in the backyard
Christine Courtney: Yeah. Yes.
Sally Mildren: I set up a whole lab under this huge pine tree that had sap, and I did all kinds of experiments and made my own glue and you know I s always was playing scientist, which is interesting because then I got into science in college and in high school, but I think that that kind of scrappy creativity has really formulated who I am as a human.
Christine Courtney: Uh-huh.
Sally Mildren: And also not this kind of and I don't mean to insult anybody, but there was zero coddling going on in a family of eight kids with one parent. So I it was kind of figure it out kind of environment that I grew up in. And that has served me very well, where I'm not afraid to try and fail or test something new. And even, you know, forward into high school years, I was
Christine Courtney: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Sally Mildren: Painfully shy. I would not make eye contact with a human, partly because we moved so much as a military family. And I was always starting over and always that new kid. So when I got to high school, I was just like really introvert, didn't really want to talk. And one person in high school was like, you really should run for student counsel. I'm like, what? Why me? And that one person who believed in me, I ended up giving a speech in front of the entire high school, which was eleven hundred people at the time, and I won. So now I'm class president. Smort mortified to talk in front of people. And it just kind of forced me out of ⁓ it forced me out of that insecurity to well, I'll give what I can and that's the best I can do. And that has s been kind of a foundation for me for my whole life, my career, the way I volunteer, where I give, how I lead my family. So that's a little about me.
Christine Courtney: I love it. I love it. That's great. That's fantastic. Sally, thank you so much for coming on. ⁓ how can people get in touch with you?
Sally Mildren: Well, I'm on LinkedIn, Sally Mildred, or all of the platforms we are Commonwealth Marketing dot com or at Commonwealth Marketing on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, we'd love to connect.
Christine Courtney: Great, thank you. And if you send that color tool, we'll put it in the show notes. Thank you so much, ⁓ Sally, for being with us today and thank you guys for listening.
Sally Mildren: Perfect.
Christine Courtney: And
Sally Mildren: Thank you. It's nice to be here.
Christine Courtney: You are a woman after my own heart. ⁓ so I love it. I'm very excited to dig in. And I'm I'm immediately what stands out to me. I love learning about people's backgrounds and how that influences who they are as leader. So I gotta ask you right off the bat, because it's in the first part of your bio, you know, how does someone who's a former brain injury rehabilitation therapist turn into executive leader and marketer? Explain that. Transition for us.
Sally Mildren: Well, the practical truth is that I have a degree in recreation therapy, which is not reimbursable in the United States. So it so a lot of places ⁓ don't have them on staff unless they can absorb the full cost. So unfortunately it was a practical thing, but I got into the degree because I started originally in pre-med and then ended up in this field because I didn't want to just fix one thing. I didn't want to just fix an arm. I wanted to address holistically the life of the patient and and consider all of the things that are at play when there's an injury. What k what do you do? How do you take care of yourself? What things do you love to do? And so That was why I got in the field, and I think the transition into marketing and strategy in healthcare, a lot of my experience was kind of that full circle of helping patients understand what is available to them, how to connect to it, how to take care of their own health, and how to maximize their own wellness kind of fits in that same space.
Christine Courtney: Yeah. And I I can see that. And and how how specifically you started working with healthcare organizations and I guess that naturally led to other not for profits or more. Now you live you live In any minute now, you're gonna live in Montana. You live in Santa Fe right now. So I was very interested too in learning about you how much when you're serving you're serving underserved communities, it sounds like it's a little bit different than the work that we do here in New York, serving underserved communities in a very urban setting. You're doing a version of that but in very rural settings. So can you just tell me a little bit about what that looks like?
Sally Mildren: Yes. Mm-hmm. Sure. Well, I'd say the primary difference, because I have worked both in urban settings like in Seattle and ⁓ in very rural settings. And the primary distinction is distance and access to resources. You know, when you're in the middle of an urban center and somebody needs food or s housing or are in labor and need to go deliver a baby, often there are an hour to two hours of driving, which in a lot of cases with underserved communities, some of them don't have cars or don't have access to that. Or you know, it's the distance for meeting that last mile gap for humans and individuals is the primary difference between rural and urban. And then obviously That at some point, depending on the rural. Yesterday I was in a conversation with a gal and she said the definition of rural is very different from town to town. In some cases, rural is, well, our population doubled because Mary Joe had twins, you know, and in other cases, rural is 50,000 people, which feels like an urban center to somebody from a little teeny town. And so The just the bandwidth and the additional resources of different rural communities changes from place to place and from culture to culture, honestly.
Christine Courtney: Yeah. And so when you're working with those types of teams, what are you specifically what what is how does your work reach them? What do you look at? What would might be
Sally Mildren: One of the things that I see a lot in small communities, whether it's nonprofits or rural, is that people they're so connected. I mean, if you're at a hospital and the patient is your child's soccer coach or your minister from church or the lady who works at the grocery store, whatever. There is such a deep integration in those areas that the trap becomes for organizations to try to be everything.
Christine Courtney: Mm, mm hmm.
Sally Mildren: To everyone. Because there's a genuine personal buy-in to these are my people and my community. It's not just a job for a paycheck or a a ⁓ cog and a wheel, which is easier to feel like in a huge millions and millions of people. It's easier to feel a little less connected from the direct impact of that work. And so we we really try to help. People learn to focus strategically on the things that not only serve your mission, but will move move the impact forward rather than just staying busy trying to juggle a hundred balls at once. And there's a lot of, you know, organizational habits, if you will. ⁓ well, we always do this fund run, and we're gonna do this fun run.
Christine Courtney: Ha ha ha.
Sally Mildren: You know, come heck or high water, we're doing this fun run because it's almost an organizational habit. ⁓ those are the things that need to find their ⁓ ⁓ And we need to instead connect with our ⁓ in a way that is relevant today. And today is different than it was a year ago or 10 years ago or whatever. And ⁓ that's the biggest thing is helping them strategically evaluate where are they at.
Christine Courtney: Mm.
Sally Mildren: What is their purpose here? Are they doing the right things to achieve that goal?
Christine Courtney: And so you really work with them as a thought partner to it sounds like evaluate and then strategize some things. So imagine those folks that are listening to us today that might not have the money to hire somebody, ⁓ an expert like you. What are some some tips that you can give them if they're trying to do a v ⁓ a mini version of what you help people through? What does that look like? What might be some tips they could do?
Sally Mildren: So most often in these organizations, truthfully, they're fighting for their life. The money has already been split twelve ways. And so from a practical standpoint, the stopping and evaluating, asking yourself the question to what end on every project that you are trying to tackle, to what end? And does that align with the mission of who you are and your core business?
Christine Courtney: Ha ha.
Sally Mildren: function. Lot sometimes we get engaged in the fluff and then we lose our way and find ourselves, wait, what happened? I took a walk and nobody's following me. But or we stay where we've always been and the audience has changed. Now maybe your community is 80 instead of 40 and the needs of the community have shifted. So for me
Christine Courtney: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm.
Sally Mildren: The most important thing is to stop and indict everything that you think you need to do and say, is this still meeting the needs of the organization? And is it meaningfully going to result in more business for us? And you know, healthcare it's hard or nonprofit, it's hard to s use the words business, but truthfully, you can't you can't have a nonprofit if you don't raise money. And if you're just doing the gala every year because that's what we do, and you aren't earning money from it, it's just busy work. And so I think simply indicting everything you're doing and then making sure that the people you're speaking to or targeting with your activities, events, campaign, whatever, are the same, that their needs are still the same. Because we get so busy we don't stop and take time to go. Am I speaking to them in a way that really is going to resonate? Or am I even answering a question they're asking anymore? And those two functions will make a big difference on your strategic impact and helping you, you know, strategy is as much what you say no to as it is what you say yes to.
Christine Courtney: Yeah. So true. You know, my husband runs a not for profit here in in the city in New York City. And I years ago they used to have this big fundraiser, ⁓ every year and everybody looked forward to it. It was probably one of the best fundraisers I've ever been to. ⁓ and basically they would put on these plays with celebrities, ⁓ that were called the twenty four hour plays. And would happen, you know, in twenty four hours the celebrities would come and it was amazing celebrities. Chris Rock, Brooke Shields, Jennifer Aniston, you name it, they were there, right? And they were put but we would see them go up at night. We'd come and people would pay for their tickets or whatever. We come, we'd see them put on these ten minute shows and half the time they couldn't remember their lines or whatever. And it was so fun. You felt like you were just having this moment. And ⁓ and all of it my husband was like, W I have to stop doing this this ⁓ fundraiser. And he goes, Because it has nothing anymore to do with what we actually do. And ⁓ they had it years ago been a program that maybe did some theater and some different of art forms. But now where they were focused had nothing to do with what that fundraiser was about. And I thought, You're crazy. People love it. You make so much money. And he's like, I know, but I just it doesn't align with our mission. Like it doesn't align with where we're headed and and it tells a totally different story. And and I
Sally Mildren: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Christine Courtney: You know, I kind of disagreed with him in the moment because me and everybody else loved this event so much. But when I look at it, I'm like, what a bold decision that he made because now they have a very different gal that makes tons more money. But not only more importantly, it's so aligned to who they are and where they're going and who they're serving. And to your point, I think that's a very hard decision. It's easier decision to make if you're not making any money. But if you're making money and people love it and looking forward to it.
Sally Mildren: Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Right.
Christine Courtney: ⁓ I think that's very hard for leaders to make that strategic call.
Sally Mildren: I agree. And and I call it a you know really brave leadership because you're gonna get the pushback, but in the long run, you know, from a neuroscience standpoint, we are looking for things, especially the younger donors, the millennials, the Gen A, some of the younger donors are really looking for organizations to participate with that align to their personal. values, their ethos and all of that. And so the way of the past with the silent generation or the boomers who really had their set would mail a check kind of thing is different now. And we have to we have to evolve as well to a make sure we're still aligned to our mission, which I, you know, I celebrate what your husband was brave enough to do because sometimes we just
Christine Courtney: Yeah.
Sally Mildren: Get on our way, or sometimes our mission has evolved over time as well, based on political or funding or whatever is going on. Sometimes your mission has to evolve. And it's it is a one of the hardest things is to be brave enough to make those hard decisions to really narrow in and align. But honestly, at the end of the day, those are going to be the most successful organizations.
Christine Courtney: So if a if a not for profit or a small business has basically, you know, no marketing or very small marketing budget, where do you think they should put their first dollar of effort? You know, I know some people who are starting businesses and they're just getting a little bit and they're like, Should I spend you know, every dollar is so valuable. Is it worth it to spend it on marketing? Where do I go? Like, where should they put their first kind of dollar or even effort? ⁓ whether it's time, energy, money, I mean I think part of what I hear you say is really looking at overall strategy and like where their connections are coming from. But where is that first ⁓ valuable dollar best place to put that?
Sally Mildren: It's a great question. And it may sound sacrilegious as a marketing agency to say that first dollar should not go into ads. It shouldn't go into paid media. If if you have not clearly identified who you're talking to and what problem you're solving or what value you're bringing.
Christine Courtney: Mm.
Sally Mildren: Every dollar you put into paid media or marketing or whatever will be wasted or diluted. And that is not a popular opinion among a lot of marketing agencies. But the truth is, from you know, getting to my brain injury root, from a neuroscience standpoint, you have about two to eight seconds. Our brain processes 11 million bits of information per second. And it weeds out about 99.9% of it. B otherwise our head would explode off our shoulders. And and the function in our brain is looking in that amount of time, and it's subconscious. It's not even something we're just, I'm going to evaluate this ad or this message. Your brain is looking for relevance, something that is of value to you based on the decisions you've made, what you pay attention to. your history, all of that. And so you have very little time to get attention, which is, you know, what we were talking about is we've got two to eight seconds to capture the attention enough to say, okay, this is worth me paying attention to. Otherwise, because it's so costly to run our brain, 20% of our calories are spent just keeping our brain going. It's so costly. It's like the giant AI farms that they're trying to put in for energy. It's so expensive. If it costs too much to try to figure out what you're trying to say to me, your brain's like, nope, not for us. Let's go look somewhere else. And so without that clarity of your message and exactly who you're talking to, the money you put into marketing will be wasted. And that to me Is the most important piece to get clarity on. And it can no longer can you say I had one client that was a health system that was like literally their words on their ads were for any woman, any age, any stage of life, we're here for you. I mean, that does not resonate for me.
Christine Courtney: Ha ha Right.
Sally Mildren: It doesn't tell me that you have expertise to understand what I'm going through at my age, or that you could treat a daughter who, you know, has other symptoms, or a woman who may be pregnant or postpartum or whatever. So that kind of broad messaging is lost on people. And they're if they can't see themselves in it, then they're gonna move on and nothing you do will be worth paying for.
Christine Courtney: Great. I love it. Okay. Good good advice. ⁓ let's just shift a little bit because you you've brought up a couple of times it's fascinating, right? The the brain and neuroscience. And I know a lot of your work has to do with the neuroscience of belonging and trust. So this is something a particular
Sally Mildren: Yeah, it's
Christine Courtney: in particular that I'm absolutely fascinated by. And can you just break it down for our listeners out there, for everyday business owners, you know, what does that look like in practice when you talk about that?
Sally Mildren: So in practice it would be and it's not very satisfying because it's not like vacuuming you can see the lines and see exactly what you've done. So just be prepared for a little bit of the hard work. in in practice it would be the images that you're choosing for your social post or your billboard or the message that you're using. It would look like not just throwing out this
Christine Courtney: Ha ha.
Sally Mildren: Concept that says we've got people kind of like you, but it would be, you know, to your point of your husband being brave enough to say, I want to speak to the women in their 50s and prove that I understand what you're going through and we know what it's like to be you. And we're here with this solution. It feels scary to really narrow in because What about all these other people? We're for everybody, but particularly where it comes from paid media or paid marketing at all, you really have to get brave and say, I'm not trying to reach the whole world. I'm trying to reach these women in this community. And targeting your message exactly to them in a way that resonates to them. A 50-year-old woman has a whole different message that's gonna resonate. maybe a picture of a hot flash, you know, whatever, as opposed to a f fifteen year old. So it takes really narrowing and making sure that your messages, your images, I mean there's all kinds of neuroscience around color and around all of that. And I actually have a couple tools I'll give you to share, but there's a lot of what triggers in the brain that is involved in
Christine Courtney: Yeah. ⁓ great.
Sally Mildren: Everything from your social post to your billboard message to your taglines to the color of your call to action button. I mean there's a lot of really simple things that trigger in the brain differently. You know, just simply a call to action. You wanna have it. You wanna have your logo at the top left, the meat in the middle, and your call to action on the bottom right. That kind of Z pattern is how the brain, most people in
Christine Courtney: Mm.
Sally Mildren: Western hemisphere read left to right. And that call to action button should be a different color than anything else on your page. It converts thirty percent more often. So there's little nuances like that. Yeah.
Christine Courtney: Really? Great tip. And you you teased us with the color, the neuros the colors of neuroscience. Give I love that call to action button being down there on the lower right. What about any other color that's really helpful to folks, whether it's on your website or in some sort of marketing? I'm taking notes for myself too.
Sally Mildren: Yeah. Well, it t it really depends on what reaction or what action you're wanting from people. If you know, like yellow is really an optimistic, it's perceived as happy and youth are very drawn to yellow. So if your mission or whatever is reaching youth, using yellow strategically is really important. Green can have all kinds of meanings depending on the shade. If it's the dark, heavy green, it's seen more trustworthy, and that's why you see it in banks and financial institutions. But the little bit brighter green is perceived as real echo conscious and more, you know, engaged. And so there's I have a color tool I'll give you to share with your audience, but it's really fascinating. The one color that you should be careful with red signals kind of threat. There's a part in our brain that's like red. And that's why it needs to be used strategically, like to draw attention to something urgent. But to overuse red makes people just go, I don't want it. So it's it's curious how the colors impact our thinking and and what we pay attention to.
Christine Courtney: it great tips I love it ⁓ I'm automatically think I have a million things that are swimming through my brain of like I gotta look at that you know you wrote a book l Leading real people right what's one kind of leadership habit that any manager out there we have a lot of people who are managers or up and coming managers listening ⁓ what's one leadership habit that any manager can start this week and
Sally Mildren: Ha ha. Ha ha.
Christine Courtney: That will immediately kind of change how their teams show up or how influence them in some sort of positive way.
Sally Mildren: Well, if I may, I'll tell you a short story first. I was on a call I was on a call with an insurance company for my business, you know, trying to change the address or something. And the rep got on the phone and I'm like, How's your day? And there was this like stunned silence. And he said, Are you talking to me? And I'm like, Yeah, how was your day today? He's like
Christine Courtney: Please. I love stories.
Sally Mildren: No one has ever asked me that. And I was like, in my heart, I was like, that's really sad. Makes me a little mad, but ⁓ my gosh. And I said, well, how is your day? And he said, it's good, thank you. And then he did his thing. And at the end of the call, he was like, thank you so much for asking me how my day was. You made my whole month. And it just stunned me. And it just is the point of it cost nothing.
Christine Courtney: What?
Sally Mildren: But employees, like 67% of employees in the US, say they are disengaged at work. And about that many say their boss wouldn't even notice if they didn't show up again. Which is heartbreaking as an empath that the biggest thing you can do this week is look in the eyes of your staff and say, hello. How's your day? How's your evening? How's your dog? Seeing them and acknowledging their presence and their work is so important. Not, ⁓ thank God you're here. We need this, this, this, this. Take 15 seconds and acknowledge the humanity of the being before you. That they are a whole person. They aren't a job description or a box on an org chart. They are a whole person who brings all of that to work. So we're for you to exercise 15 seconds of humanity to just say, ⁓ my gosh, you mentioned your dog was sick. How's your dog doing? That will is the thing that people need to feel seen and needed and begin to build loyalty to your organization. It's not hard work and it doesn't cost anything. So you all can do it.
Christine Courtney: Yeah, and I think sometimes people it it's impatience that gets in our way too. You know, we just think, ⁓ that's gonna take too long to stop and ask that question and and really it doesn't have to. You know, it's it can be small little touch points that ⁓ make someone feel like they have some attention. I love that.
Sally Mildren: At the fortune fifty company that I worked for, I adopted a call center of a hundred people for health insurance. Probably one of the worst jobs on the planet. Next to being the honey bucket, clean it guy. sh they they got chewed all day long. And I one time I was on a trip and this little girl in Mexico came up and said, You want to buy a chiclet? Goma.
Christine Courtney: Yeah.
Sally Mildren: And I was like, ⁓ I'll buy the whole box. And she was just like, What? She went and got three people who spoke English and said, Are you sure? That's twenty dollars. I'm like, Yeah, I'm sure. So I bought it the box of a hundred chiclets and I left a little note on everybody's desk with a little chiclet that said, We have no idea how important one little teeny action or one little act of kindness. makes a difference in our customers' lives because at dinner, like three hours later, her mother found me in a restaurant and said, You fed our whole family for the week. And so it's powerful, these little touches. And I cannot tell you how many staff members stopped by my office and were like, I've never had a vice president say hello to me or Acknowledge me and this is the most meaningful thing I've ever had, which you know, I don't care what I'm called, it's leading real humans and acknowledging them and being connected to them in a simple way. It's so easy to do.
Christine Courtney: Yeah, and it gives so much in all directions, you know, especially in that s example that you just gave us. And and how wonderful to have like a handwritten note, you know. I'm finding that even I have kids who are twenty one and and nineteen and you know, Father's Day's coming up this weekend and one of the things that we always want, whether it's Father's Day is Mother's Day or birthday, is just a handwritten card from your from our kids. And we've always instilled that one thing. I've never been a great mom at making sure they wrote thank you notes. I wish I wa had done that, but I I wasn't. ⁓ but they do write a nice birthday card, very specific. And I think, you know, it it is a powerful thing to to see a handwritten note show up from someone that you care about or you respect. And even at the office, you know, and and God, if you mail things today, you know, I'm finding that the young the young people are bringing back some mail. ⁓ I just got you know, they they really get a kick out of something coming in the mail because it's so unusual to them. so y you know, you we like to think, ⁓ young people wouldn't care about that, but actually it's a differentiator, you know, and in the
Sally Mildren: Yeah. Right. It is.
Christine Courtney: marketing world that makes a difference. I even know some marketing companies that were telling me they're going back to in this world of AI because to try to differentiate, they're going back to sending things in the mail again. So you never know what w comes around.
Sally Mildren: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's a whole analog movement right now along the among the millennials where they are literally looking for ways to get away from online and yeah, the people who are savvy are gonna touch into that right away.
Christine Courtney: Mm-hmm. I think it's gonna be interesting how it affects their kids, right? Because I think millennials are are real and they're such a big generation, how they're really looking at parenting. You know, I have a lot of millennials who work for me and they have kids and they have no like they d those kids don't have cell phones, they don't have they have landlines in their house. You know, it's gonna be interesting to see ⁓ what that generation ⁓ as they start to age Not the millennials, but whatever their kids are gonna be called, ⁓
Sally Mildren: Yeah.
Christine Courtney: Alpha, Gen Alpha maybe. ⁓ anyway, take us back, Sally, a little bit to the beginning of who you were, because I'm kind of fascinated by the work that people do and what they're what they were like in childhood. Like what were some of the core experiences that you did growing up that ⁓ you look at your life now and you're like, ⁓ yes, that's why this comes out in my leadership or this comes out in the work that I do. You know, some people I talk to they were, you know, drummers or they were in a b a band or they were ⁓ played ⁓ field hockey. You know, what were the things that who you were and how does that show up for you now?
Sally Mildren: So I have a twin brother, and we were the youngest of eight kids. And our father was a Navy fighter pilot. He did thirteen nine month deployments in fifteen years through Korea and Vietnam. So we didn't really know him much. And by the way, my mom had eight kids in nine years. So single mom basically raising a whole tribe. And we were at you know in Southern California.
Christine Courtney: Yeah.
Sally Mildren: until dad retired. And so a lot of our time, I mean, basic bandwidth, talk about, you know, stretched resources. That was my mother's theme. we we weren't allowed to just sit in the house and watch TV. We we were outside playing. We were doing and trying anything that we could imagine, which, you know, may or may not all be good. But we I was in the backyard
Christine Courtney: Yeah. Yes.
Sally Mildren: I set up a whole lab under this huge pine tree that had sap, and I did all kinds of experiments and made my own glue and you know I s always was playing scientist, which is interesting because then I got into science in college and in high school, but I think that that kind of scrappy creativity has really formulated who I am as a human.
Christine Courtney: Uh-huh.
Sally Mildren: And also not this kind of and I don't mean to insult anybody, but there was zero coddling going on in a family of eight kids with one parent. So I it was kind of figure it out kind of environment that I grew up in. And that has served me very well, where I'm not afraid to try and fail or test something new. And even, you know, forward into high school years, I was
Christine Courtney: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Sally Mildren: Painfully shy. I would not make eye contact with a human, partly because we moved so much as a military family. And I was always starting over and always that new kid. So when I got to high school, I was just like really introvert, didn't really want to talk. And one person in high school was like, you really should run for student counsel. I'm like, what? Why me? And that one person who believed in me, I ended up giving a speech in front of the entire high school, which was eleven hundred people at the time, and I won. So now I'm class president. Smort mortified to talk in front of people. And it just kind of forced me out of ⁓ it forced me out of that insecurity to well, I'll give what I can and that's the best I can do. And that has s been kind of a foundation for me for my whole life, my career, the way I volunteer, where I give, how I lead my family. So that's a little about me.
Christine Courtney: I love it. I love it. That's great. That's fantastic. Sally, thank you so much for coming on. ⁓ how can people get in touch with you?
Sally Mildren: Well, I'm on LinkedIn, Sally Mildred, or all of the platforms we are Commonwealth Marketing dot com or at Commonwealth Marketing on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, we'd love to connect.
Christine Courtney: Great, thank you. And if you send that color tool, we'll put it in the show notes. Thank you so much, ⁓ Sally, for being with us today and thank you guys for listening.
Sally Mildren: Perfect.
Christine Courtney: And
