Stronger together: the power of community

Lee Wochner: 
In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin noted that doing a favor for someone can actually make us feel more positively toward that person – and more likely to do another favor. We did a good deed, and now we want to do another. We call that “The Benjamin Franklin Effect.” 

What Franklin was describing was a truism of community action: That when we work together, not only can we effect change, we increase the impact of change because we’ve involved others in it too. 

In many roles over the past 30 years, Angela Landsberg has worked to build and increase action and involvement, to manifest impactful change in her local community. 

Whether as a city council aid, executive director of a Business Improvement District, where she grew up, a teacher, or more recently as executive director of the San Diego County Dental Society, she’s developed methods of getting people active and involved. And along the way, she’s collected a lot of wisdom about working with people cooperatively to achieve common goals. 

Today, on this episode, she’ll share practical strategies for effective community involvement and collaboration – things you can put into place – to build consensus, prevent burnout, foment success, and more, on “That’s What C! Said.” 

Jaclyn Uloth: 
Welcome to the podcast that lightens the tension when things sort of get hard That’s What C! Said, the Counterintuity podcast, featuring interviews with leaders and doers who have helped to make our world a better place through their actions — and especially through marketing, communications, and embracing change. Here’s host, Lee Wochner.  

Lee Wochner:   
Angela Landsberg, welcome to the show. It’s nice to finally get to meet you.  

Angela Landsberg:  
Thank you so much for the invite, Lee. I really appreciate it. 

Lee Wochner:   
You bet. You have a fascinating history of achievement. mean, real impact in communities in San Diego, one of my favorite towns. And I’ll be there next week, by the way, for Comic -Con, for my 36th straight year at Comic -Con. And it’s interesting to see how you’ve achieved so much. So I’d actually like to start at the beginning, which is not something I usually do, but I’d love to walk through the history of your achievement because it everything kind of led to the next thing in a way you don’t often see in careers. So you grew up in in San Diego in the neighborhood of North Park, that’s a nice place, and then you played a big part in that history of North Park. What was it like growing up in San Diego then and what was the neighborhood like?  

Angela Landsberg:  
Well, I am one of those rare people that when someone says where are from and I say San Diego and they go no Really? Where are you from? And I say no, I’m from she from San Diego So, you know, funny a lot of the things about North Park are the same It was always a walkable community which is why my family likes living there because we always walked and used public transportation to get around and It was always sort of an up and coming neighborhood and it still is. My childhood was spent at Balboa Park and it was like after school riding the merry -go -round over at Balboa Park and watching the bikes race over at the velodrome. And there was a bit of a hippie culture to North Park back in the 70s and 80s when I was growing up there. it was just a great, it was a great place to be. There was a roller skating rink now is a multi -use commercial on the bottom and residential on top, but that’s where I used to put on my, lace up my roller skates and spend my Saturday afternoons.  

Lee Wochner:   
Then somehow or other you started working for a city councilwoman, Christine Kehoe, and more about her in just a moment. How did that come about? 

Angela Landsberg:  
That was just one of those things that a series of events led to that. So I was entering a graduate program at San Diego State and that required me to do some volunteer work at the time. Council member, Christine Kehoe, was running for her second term. And I volunteered to work on her campaign. And I ran her campaign and we won with 80 % of the vote and she brought me on as staff. So at that point, I just loved working in local politics and decided to take that route. it was working with a community that really made me feel like I was at home. It was going to community meetings, was working with the schools in the neighborhoods and being able to be a part of the neighborhood that I grew up in and that I loved and still do. 

Lee Wochner:   
So I got to know her a little bit and I was saying to you earlier, you know, when you’re in certain circles, everybody knows everybody. I got to know her a little bit when I was on the board of first the Association of Performing Arts Service Organizations and then the California Arts Advocates Board, which is a statewide lobbying organization for the arts. And I eventually became chair and she was an arts advocate. And so I was introduced to her by Alan Zider, whom you also know, is a big arts and culture institution guy in San Diego. And so the thing about Christine Kehoe was, you know, we live in a time right now when all people do is criticize politicians and say they don’t do anything and everybody seems to hate all of them. And she always seemed so effective. 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yeah, it was a different time. And certainly on the city council, it was a lot of getting things done in San Diego. You the ballpark was being built at that time. I remember there was, you there were programs that were being brought up that now we think of as just naturally occurring pieces of San Diego, like community policing and Christine was saw the vision for that. one of the things that was for me, now I expected this the rest of my career is that she included her staff’s feedback. She did not make decisions in a silo. And that’s what I think a lot of our politicians can benefit from is the work that we’re doing as staff when we’re out there and we’re meeting with the, whether it’s the people who are community activists or meeting with the community planning groups or just the individuals who are leaders within their community. And we bring back that information. And Christine was always one to allocate a lot of time to hearing the information that we were bringing back to her, obviously as one person, you can’t be everywhere all the time. And I really think that that made a difference in the policy that she supported. 

Lee Wochner:   
It’s interesting when you actually involve the community, they take more ownership and they care more. And so this siloed thing is not so great. And I just think that so much hierarchy has fallen apart, particularly in the internet age and now everybody’s connected in a way. And it’s just better to be collaborative and take input and involve people. And then they’re part of the process and the solution. 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yeah, yeah, and I don’t know, there’s an element to someone just being a solid person, you know? I mean, just a really good human being doesn’t hurt one bit.  

Lee Wochner:   
Yeah, that good for you. That’s right. So as I understand it, in that office, you were somewhat kind of a liaison between the San Diego City School District and that council office. And I’m speaking to you from Burbank and we have a similar arrangement here. So can you talk a little bit about your role? 

Angela Landsberg:  
Within the council office when I was in there, each staff member would be given either an area geographic area, which I also had, or a specific topic, if you will. Elementary schools was one of mine. So I worked closely with the elementary schools to make sure that they were being considered in the decisions. And a lot of those things like we see right now. The fields of elementary schools, the playing fields, sometimes after hours, there’s soccer games there and other things that are going on. That’s because there’s a joint use agreement with the community and those elementary schools that allows the community to access the elementary school. Those kinds of things didn’t used to happen. So school would close up at 3 .45 and that field was closed for the day, even though there may be elementary schools in areas with very few parks for people to play at. So what a waste, right, that we’ve got this field ready for people to use, but there’s no access to it. So it was working with elementary schools on things like that, integrating them into the community, and then working to make sure that the leaders, many of those families from the elementary schools are also leaders in the community. just connecting those dots. 

 

Lee Wochner:   
And also making use of assets and resources that already exist, which no doubt has come in handy as a nonprofit leader. 

 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yes, yes, absolutely. It’s all about making sure that the resources are being accessed because like you mentioned, that’s the role of an executive director of nonprofits. 

 

Lee Wochner:   
And then you were in public education for a while, right? Became a school teacher. 

 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yeah, so I spent time working at the elementary schools and I remember one specific day and I was at ironically my elementary school that I was in as a fifth, fourth, fifth, sixth grader and I was working there over in District 3 at the time and I was sitting there in the elementary school reflecting and I was like, you know, I loved being in elementary school. I love being here right now and what do I want to do next? And I went back and got my teaching credential and master’s degree in education and made the move into being an educator. This was about the same time that I started a family and thought it would be a great opportunity to have summers off with my kids and be able to work around children, which at the time was something I was really craving. And it was a, it was a really nice transition. And I really enjoyed working for San Diego Unified. And probably there are pieces of being, there’s pieces of being a teacher that I’ll, I’ll never find in any other thing that I do. It’s a very, it’s a very rewarding career. Like I say to people, there’s very few jobs you can go to where you’re told, I love you all day. And yeah, so it’s a nice place to be. 

Lee Wochner:   
So now we get to the part of your fascinating resume where you enter the nonprofit realm in a leadership position. And so you became executive director of the North Park Main Street, which is a business improvement district. And I’ve worked with lots of business improvement districts, so has Counterintuity. Can you help us understand what a bid, a business improvement district does? 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yes, I describe to people that a business improvement district is like a giant HOA. So the the businesses pay an assessment, they pay a fee and that fee collectively goes into the organization, the nonprofits management to be used for very specific things thatdetermined before that district is formed. So for example, in North Park, the fees could be used for keeping the sidewalks clean, doing promotion and advertising for the area, which we did a lot of, putting on events to bring people to the areas and shop at the businesses. Planting trees was another thing that we did in North Park that I just was walking last night actually and was taking a look at some trees that I planted probably about 13 years ago. And they’re huge now on 30th street and it’s there was nothing there, know, but some scrappy weeds along the right public right away. And now there’s these beautiful shady trees that are, you know, the businesses that are there and providing a really nice aesthetic feel. Yeah, that’s what a business improvement district does and it works really closely with the city because it does have to be managed by an entity. It’s not like something that you or I could just go form a business improvement district. There has to be some other formal entity that oversees those funds and collects those funds. yeah, I spent 12 years working and building North Park and it was a fantastic run and a part of my career that I feel really lucky to have been a part of. 

Lee Wochner:   
When you’re in a leadership position in a business improvement district like that, you get connected with everybody. Everybody who’s having any influence, making any impact in that community, you know them and they know you. 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yeah, hopefully that’s how it works because it really is a collective effort. The whole thing about it is that we’re working with not just the business community, not just the small business owners, not just the property owners, the residents, the schools, the. Caltrans that might be doing work on the freeway right off the side where we’ve got encampments or it might be people from Sandbag who are putting in a bikeway or it, know, definitely the County of San Diego, the city of San Diego, the elected officials that represent that area, the planning groups that are making important zoning recommendations to the city on how high buildings can go where bike lanes can be put, things like this. So yeah, it really varies. And then just being able to work with these small business owners. Small business owners are some of the hardest working individuals I’ve ever met. And remember, I came from teaching. yes, small business owners, it was really fantastic to be able to work with small business owners and build that community. Some of them, we called them our pioneers came into North Park way before there was much happening there. They stuck it out and now have, you know, second, third and fourth locations in Del Mar and Encinitas. you know, there’s, it’s, they started out small and the community took off. And, but really it was, it was because of those pioneers of the area and the belief that everyone had that we could really create something there. 

 

Lee Wochner:   
So after a stint there in which, by the way, you were recognized by San Diego Metro Magazine as one of the women who impact San Diego, that’s a pretty big wow, you became executive director, I think it was two years ago, of San Diego County Dental Society. And again, that’s a nonprofit, but it’s a different sort of a nonprofit. So what’s the difference in those two roles and how those organizations are governed? 

 

Angela Landsberg:  
Well, first, let me say how they’re the same, because while they might seem very different, I think if we were to look at a Venn diagram, that middle area would probably be much bigger than people might expect. They’re both 501C6s, so they’re both membership -based organizations. The memberships are different because we have a membership of a very homogenous sector, right? It’s just dentists at the San DiegoDental Society. Whereas the members of North Park Main Street were varied. We had some dentists who were members, but we also had dry cleaners and restaurants and theaters. So every small business that was within that geographic area was a member. So providing a benefit to members is really the lens through which I would look at every decision that I was being asked to make. Because those are the people we’re serving. These are public funds and those funds need to be spent on the benefits for the members who are paying them. So in that way, the job is very much the same. The part that’s different is that I’m not out in the community walking the streets, planting the trees. So there’s that urban development part of it that is not a piece of what I do, but there’s a huge continuing education component, which is almost like a, you can almost compare those, those two things. So instead of, you know, planting seeds and having them grow into trees, I guess we could say I’m planting seeds and it’s helping to educate people because I’m bringing people in to provide continuing education for our members. And that’s a big part of what the San Diego County Dental Society does. Both of those organizations advocate for their members. I do a lot of advocating. I’m up in Sacramento, I’m in Washington, DC with my role at the San Diego County Dental Society. And the same could be said for when I was at North Park Main Street, I was advocating at the county and the city local levels. So yes, there’s some differences, but I think there’s probably more in common than they are not in common. 

 

Lee Wochner:   
So city council office, business improvement district, school teacher, professional membership organization. I mean, I could park all of that under the rubric of public service. just, really seems like you’re public service minded. What is it about nonprofit work and public service that has attracted you? 

 

Angela Landsberg: 
I think a lot of it has to do with how I grew up. My mother was very public service minded. She worked at one of San Diego’s only community clinics back in the early seventies in Mission Beach. A funny story when I would, you know, get in trouble as a teenager, which is what teenagers are supposed to do, right? Instead being punished by having to like not go out at night or stay in my room. My mother would say, okay, well, you’ve to go dedicate 12 hours to some volunteer organization. Which one are you going to do this time? And so while it seemed like a punishment, it was really doing something good. And it opened up my eyes to really how important it is to be out there and be a part of the change and impacting people’s lives. And so I got on a lot of lists from doing that because here it was 16 years old showing up to fundraiser car wash for a local nonprofit. It just kind of, know, sort of rolled out from there. But I think we all have an obligation to be a part of our communities in some way. And that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to show up to, you know, wash cars on the corner, but it’s I really believe that being a part of the community that you’re in, serving the public in some way, needs to be a part of everyone’s life in some small way at the very least. 

Lee Wochner:   
Well, I agree with you. And, and you know, the, the ideals of the country were founded on that idea that people would be involved and invested, at least the people who were allowed to be involved in invested at first. and it’s an attractive notion. And there’s also the thing of, and this is kind of from your teenage years, you get to meet a different circle of people. And I’ll tell you some years ago, I just got a little tired of my, of my day to day life of my, well, here’s my circle of friends and I do love them. Right. But, know, and here are the things I do. I want to do something different. So I signed up with AIDS Project LA to run a marathon in Amsterdam. I mean, I just, it just seemed like something I wasn’t going to do. So I went and did that. And, AIDS Project LA trains you for months to run a marathon. Cause before that I couldn’t run around the block and it was terrific. And I still know a bunch of those people I met really nice people. I ran with them. Once a week training and twice a week on my own. And I finished the marathon in Amsterdam and promptly pledged not to do any more marathons, but I’m still in touch with a bunch of those folks. I had a terrific time. And I tell my fiance that I like to try new things. Like, you know, we went out for breakfast the other morning and yes, I tried the caramel coffee, whatever, even though I don’t really like caramel. I thought, this is kind of good. I just want to try different things. But yes, I have gotten involved in the communities I’ve lived in because I think it’s good to be involved and it’s also good not just to be a complainer but to try to pay into the pot and provide solutions rather than just complain. It’s easy to complain and it’s more useful to do something. 

Angela Landsberg:  
It is, think, one of the ways, you know, as people of a certain age, it can become easy to do the same thing that we’re comfortable doing and stepping outside of our comfort zone with whether it’s people or activities or foods. And there are a lot of studies that show that those people who try new things, marathons aside, but try new things live longer. 

 

So if we want to just add that to the list of benefits that come from trying on new things, think living longer probably makes the top of the list.  

 

Lee Wochner:   
Well, I’m excited about that. There’s a long list of people I don’t want to predecease, starting with my children. But yeah, I intend to be here a long time. I’m working on that. We’re going to take a short break. And now that we’ve established Angela’s history, when we come back, she and I will be talking about leadership, marketing, and how to build community. Stick around. 

Jaclyn Uloth: 

Hi, this is Jaclyn with Counterintuity.   

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Lee Wochner:   
And we’re back with Angela Landsberg, Executive Director of the San Diego County Dental Society. Every leader makes changes and you strive to make them for the better. So Angela, when you enter a position of leadership, what’s that like? Do you do an assessment? How do you start your first six months? What do you find? What do you work on? How do you approach 

Angela Landsberg:  
My natural inclination is to just come in and do it all at once because that’s just the kind of person that I am. My internal battle is to try and slow down and do just that, to really take an assessment, see how things work as they are, and then take a look at the changes that might need to be made. So that’s my area of constant growth is how to do that, when to make the change. I’m a very adaptable person. So, you know, I feel like I’m one of those people that you can put anywhere, any place, anytime, and I’ll be like, I’ll make that work. No problem, I can make that work. But not everybody can move at that speed. And so a lot of it is being able to read the room and make sure that the people who are also being impacted by that change feel comfortable with it too. So yes, that’s a piece of it. Understanding the other as nonprofit, we work with board members, committee members, the other members that we’re serving and making sure that everyone is understanding the reasons for the change and comfortable with how that’s going to impact their world. I can give you, you know, like a good example of that is when I started at the San Diego County Dental Society, they had great leadership for 14 years with their previous executive director. But a lot of those files had not been made digital. And so I came in and I’ve been working digital for a long time and I just, uploaded everything and all of a sudden everything’s in a Google Drive and we’re working, everything’s digital and we’re not signing things and we’re just sending Adobe signs. And I think a lot of my board members and we’re like, what is this lady doing around here? Why aren’t I signing pieces of paper anymore? And so, you know, maybe like moving a little more paced with things like that and other big changes as well, programmatic changes and things like that. That’s a big one. I think also coming into a new organization and making sure that your team understands that we all have a similar vision, creating that vision with the team. I have always been someone who feels like I am better because the people I am working with feel that they’re doing a great job. We’re synergistically making things happen. I want to lead by example. I want to show someone that it’s okay to make mistakes. I want to make sure that there is full transparency, full honesty, because nobody and nothing is ever perfect and we can only always do our best to try and fix the things that don’t go right. Yeah, I mean, I could go on. I love the topic of leadership and I love working with the team. And that’s one of the reasons that I really like working for nonprofits because I love working with boards of directors because you have, you know, in this case, I’ve got 18 people plus my staff, my employed staff that I get to work with and bounce ideas off of. I mean, I was on the phone this morning with one of my board members, just in hindsight, I might’ve been venting, but he was really good about it and kind of talked me through a couple of things. And so you have all these resources, all of these people to go to. I think that’s one of the reasons that I love working nonprofit is having a board of directors to bounce things off of. But it can also be a little lonely too. 

Lee Wochner:   
And a good board chair makes all the difference. And then a not good board chair makes a different sort of difference. Many years ago, one of the nonprofits I ran in my own career, the then board chair, who was a great, great guy, was afraid that I was moving too quickly. That goes to the speed issue you were just talking about. And we went out to lunch and he shared that with me over lunch. He’d heard some rumblings like from your board members about what happened to all the paper, right? And so I was somewhat new in the position and I was making a lot of change because it had to happen. And so he took me out to lunch. He was afraid I was moving too quickly. And I said, I’ll tell you what, I’ll go down the list of every change I’ve made. And when I get to the part where you feel I’ve moved too quickly, we’ll stop and talk about it.” And he agreed. And we got through the whole list and he never stopped me and that was it. I got lucky, right? Because I mean, sometimes you arrive in a situation and the building is burning and no one called the fire department. And certainly, you see that in business and small business, you see that in major corporations, you certainly see that in nonprofits. yeah, and then, so he allowed me to proceed, he authorized me, but I learned a lesson, which was, you’re good board chair is your partner and you keep him a little more informed than I had done. So I learned a good lesson. 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yeah.  

Angela Landsberg:  
Yeah, no, that is that is key and it might even be said that the, you know, the, executive committee itself has such an important role, the, the incoming president and, and the treasurer, obviously, because the, the fiscal responsibility of that board lies in that treasurer’s understanding and conveying that information to the rest of the board and all of that. So, yes, I, I’m lucky in that I have that right now and have always had, I feel really responsive board members that I’ve been able to work with. And of course, there’s been some better leaders than others. And we can talk about what those kinds of things look like. And I think that there’s some common threads with all executive directors who have challenges with not just board chairs, but board members who the lines get blurred between what is a day to day operational decision and what is a board level decision. And those, think if I were to pull my other executive director friends would probably say are some of the most common struggles that we have.  

Lee Wochner:   
Right, because sometimes that role is ill -defined and people think they’re being helpful and the board member. And actually, if you focused on what the appropriate role is for a board member, it would help us all more. San Diego County Dental Society, was shocked, stunned, impressed to learn, is almost 140 years old. 

 

Angela Landsberg:  
Isn’t that crazy? It is! Yeah! 

Lee Wochner:   
It’s an amazing feat. That in itself is an amazing feat. And so I have to ask you, how do you balance protecting legacy, people’s feelings about legacy of an organization with affecting change when it’s needed? 

Angela Landsberg:  
That’s a great question. And in fact, we talk about it a lot. Right now we are putting together an event just to bring together as many past presidents that we can who are still alive going back through our records and continuing to keep them involved. Because I think it’s that. You can’t document everything, right? But it’s that oral history that gets passed on from one person to another. We want to make sure that those traditions remain talked about. And then, you know, maybe some of them need to change. mean, there was a time not that long ago. And I heard this from one of our first female presidents where women from the dental society were not allowed to come on the retreat. mean, and this was when you and I were alive and probably had careers. So not that long ago. Yeah. So yes, tradition. Yeah. So tradition, let’s protect it. And then let’s also make sure that we are improving what we do because times change and we need to evaluate what we do related to its appropriateness now. Yeah. And so I think that’s balancing act. 

Lee Wochner:   
That’s an excellent point. An assistant I inherited once at an organization I arrived at, every time I wanted to change something, and she’s a good person, I haven’t seen her in forever, but she would say, we’ve never done it that way in the past. We’ve never done it that way in the past, never done it every day, every day throughout the day. And one day I said, well, one thing we know for sure about the past is no one lives there and that was bad. Because if you just live in the past, you’re not in the present and the future. And there are exciting opportunities there as well. 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yes, and I think that that’s based in fear, right? Where if we’re fearful of change, not gonna be able to take on new things, but that fear, I think, comes from not knowing what that change is gonna feel like. And that’s what I was referring to earlier when I was saying people seeing all of these things happening and then you went down the list and there was not one thing there that was really, it’s that fear of the unknown that’s really not there. It’s that fear of the unknown, that what the change might be like. And doing things a certain way because that’s how we’ve always done them is not a good answer, in my opinion. Now, some things need to be done a certain way for a certain reason. We can examine that. But doing things a certain way just because that’s how they’ve always been done, I think we could look back in history has gotten us in trouble.  

Lee Wochner:   
Yeah, exactly. And so we’re talking here about leadership and specifically nonprofit leadership. And I’m sure we’ve both seen a fair amount of burnout. My theory is people take on so much to do. Like they’ve got five jobs instead of two or three. They’ve got five and they’re doing so much and then they get a little burned out. And we had a client who I was really personally invested in their mission. And the person we were working with at the client was so burned out and everybody on our team felt it. And it was just tragic because it’s a good person who at one point was really making a difference and now just could not see the emotional state she was in or what to do about it. When you’ve run across this sort of thing in your staff, in peers, in colleagues, do you have any way of coping with that? Have you ever experienced burnout yourself? 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yes, in lots of different ways. And I think that the term has different connotations. I mean, there’s actual physical burnout and my job at North Park Main Street was physical. I I was out there on those big cherry pickers at 1 a .m. in the morning, putting up new banners on the street poles because I wanted them to be put up correctly. There’s physical pieces of jobs that can cause burnout as well as mental burnout too. When you combine the two and having to be places and be on the road and all of the pressures that come with trying to adapt to the constant needs of others. and especially if, know, you can lean towards wanting to please everyone. and I think that’s, that’s the big thing I’m trying to keep in my front of mind right now is you just cannot please everybody. And not everyone is going to feel 100 % pleased by what you do. And that trying to do that is gonna cause a lot of burnout. I talked to my staff and I should take my own advice, but I do talk to my staff about making sure they take care of themselves because they can’t take care of others unless they do that. so I don’t know the perfect answer. I know the feeling of what it feels like to be burned out. I think that what we can do I also sit on a board and have been on boards and I have, I see how hard other people who are in my position are working and I’m a board member. And what I try and do is say, what can I do to help? Allow me to do those things that I know how to do that I can take off your plate. Instead of saying, you know, I really see what you’re doing is not, you’re not doing that right. So I think sometimes as board members, we can help our executive directors avoid burnout by recognizing that maybe there’s things we don’t know. Are coming at them and just occasionally checking in and saying, there anything I can do to help? I’m really lucky right now. I have a board president who does that often. So, you know, every time I call, she picks up. And if there’s ever, you know, if I ever say I’ve got so much on my plate right now, what can I do? How can I help? I mean, just even those comments, whether or not I take her up on it, even that just helps. 

 

Lee Wochner:   
Yeah. So you’ve been a community builder, and clearly you seem like someone who has a vision for how the organization, whatever organization it is, can be more effective. And as you said, do better membership service, constituent service, whatever sort of service that is. What role does marketing play for you in building community? How do you approach that? 

Angela Landsberg:  
I think it’s huge and I think it’s going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. We have so many messages coming at us as a society. I mean, I don’t know. Do you ever talk to anybody who says I don’t get tons of emails? I I cannot clean out my own personal inbox fast enough. And even I have the junk email one that I use for everything and somehow they still find me in my real one. I mean, we just get so much messaging. That marketing has to be really crafted to hit the mark 100 % or it’s going to get thrown out by the eyes and the ears of the people that are just being bombarded by messaging. So I leave that to the professionals. I believe that it is something that while know the tip of very tip of the iceberg, how important it is. I think it needs to be left to professionals at this time because it’s so important or we’re going to get lost in the mix. So I’m reaching out. I’m reaching out to members to inform them about some very critical things like July 1st, there’s a workplace violence prevention plan that all of our members have to have in place. And I want to make sure that they have accurate information and that, you know, like that’s critical information. I don’t want that getting lost with the, you know, hey, come to our family picnic. I mean, sure, I want them at our family picnic, but like, how do you, how do you balance the messaging that has to be really like top of their list? mean, not everything can be important and how that’s done is critical, I think, to, to, to nonprofit success right now. And that’s emails, that’s social media. It’s postcards that end up in your mailbox that get thrown into a pile that get thrown out with everything else. Like how do we reach people right now, I think is a really great conversation. 

Lee Wochner:   
Well, I think you just took a really great swipe at that. I mean, what you’re saying is it’s multifarious. There are lots of different ways and you need to know the message. And the message is either you have a compliance issue due July 1 or you come to the family picnic, whatever the message is. And here’s the email, here’s the social post, here’s the text we might’ve sent you, here’s the door hanger we put on your door, here’s the postcard we mailed you because you are correct. We are inundated with messages. You’d better know your message and you’d better send it out in multiple ways to make sure people got it. 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yeah. Yeah. And also making sure that we’re keeping an eye on what kind of platform matters to our particular members. You know, we can use Instagram for one kind of a message and then we, you know, a postcard is better for a different kind of message and we’re tracking that and we can see it because we can shoot out an e -blast and, you know, four hours later, everyone registers for that class and we measure that. So keeping an eye on the analytics because like anything. What you can keep doing the same thing, but unless you’re analyzing the data, if you’re not looking at the data, doesn’t really matter what you’re doing or how you’re doing it. Cause you don’t know if you’re doing it right. So data analytics is, is a big part of the marketing understanding. If your marketing is working. 

Lee Wochner:   
It sure is. And then you determine, and there are ways because it’s all, it’s trackable. Most of the marketing we do anymore. There are ways to determine if it was the message or if it was the medium. Absolutely. 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yeah. I would say that in North Park, that was probably the, if I had to say what was like, what were, you know, three catalysts that took that community from where it was when I took over as executive director to where it was when I left, I would say it was the marketing as, one of the top three catalysts for change. It, it just, the messaging that we used was spot on for the time. And it really just got on people’s radars. I mean, I would be traveling to other cities, taking little weekend vacations and have conversations with shop owners and let them know I was in on there. Like, I follow you guys on social. I saw what you’re doing. You know, so it was it was, you know, it really hitting out of out of just our general market to bring people in. And and I really think that we whether it was the time because social media was just taking off, you know, it was like 2012, 13, and we were right there at the beginning of it. But yeah, that was a really fun thing to watch. Our followers just start climbing, climbing, climbing. 

Lee Wochner: 
We did some work some years ago for a BID, East Hollywood Business Improvement District, one of the bids we’ve worked with. And they wanted to be known as East Hollywood. And I’ve been in Los Angeles since 1988. So what is that? That is 36 years. I’m originally from New Jersey. So 36 years here. I said, well, where is East Hollywood? How about that? I had no idea. I thought it was the East end of like Hollywood Boulevard. Isn’t that East Hollywood? 

 

Angela Landsberg:  
Right.  

Lee Wochner:   
And when they told me and I met the people on the board, I’m like, holy cow, I’ve been going to East Hollywood for 30 years and never knew that was East Hollywood. You have a branding issue. So we put banners up all around in crazy tag lines and logos and whatever. And then people started saying, oh, this is East Hollywood. Cause I said to them, isn’t that Los Feliz? I mean, I thought that’s no, that’s not Los Feliz. It’s East Hollywood. So now we know it, right? And that was a branding effort.  

Angela Landsberg:  
Thanks. 

Lee Wochner:   
And when you look at the bid you had run, when you go to the website, which I looked at yesterday, there’s a big banner across the street that announces you’re in North Park, of course. So now people can know. 

Angela Landsberg:  
Yeah, branding. Yes. 

Lee Wochner:   
What advice, so we only have a couple minutes left and I gotta tell you, I feel like I could talk to you all day, like we should meet for coffee or something, because I just find this great.  

Angela Landsberg:  
Let’s do it. Let’s do it. How about in Los Feliz? I love Los Feliz. It’s a great area. 

Lee Wochner:   
Well, you’re on. You come up here and I will take you out lunch or coffee or something. Maybe we’ll go to the Dresden Room in East Hollywood, is, yes, they love the Dresden Room.   

Angela Landsberg:  
Love that place. Yes. 

 

Lee wochner: 
What advice would you give people in leadership positions with nonprofits? Like if you were gonna pass anything along to the next generation, what would you tell them? 

 

Angela Landsberg:  
I’m going to give away my book title now. No, I’m just joking. would say listen to the people around you. We don’t know what we don’t know. And by listening to the people around you in nonprofits, you’re going to learn so much because you’re working to benefit other people. It’s so different than just a regular, as people call it, who want to install me like, the real world. You work in the real world, you work in nonprofit. But yes, it’s listening and learning from the people around you. And whether that is your staff, your board members, your community, your fellow nonprofit executive directors, other professionals that you work with, I think that that for me has been something that has helped me in lots of ways. 

 

Lee Wochner: 
If you could put one change into an effect, like you got a magic wand and you can do this, get rid of this, improve this, add this, that would produce a positive impact, what would it be? 

 

Angela Landsberg:  
Access, just removing barriers for individuals, admitting that there’s barriers, first of all, that there are barriers in this world and that those need to be looked at and removed so that we can get more people involved in the work that we’re trying to do out there. 

 

Lee Wochner:   
That’s a great, great answer. And that says a lot about you. That’s a great answer. What’s the best way for people to connect with you if they want to reach 

Angela Landsberg:  
How many people are we talking? Because I got a cell phone. That’s mostly what I do. I can be emailed. I love talking to new people. I can be emailed at my director at SDCDS. That’s on our website. And I would welcome someone reaching out and having conversations. And that’s how I learned so much and hopefully I can share things that I’m working on and collaboration is fun for me and I love to talk to people about things that they’re doing. yeah, email, email to me would be great. 

Lee Wochner:   
I love getting inspired by talking to new people. I had my fiance, her parents had a dinner party last night and I wound up talking to a very interesting guy from Scotland and her and my fiance’s nephew whom I know but didn’t know he was interested in these and three of us had a fantastic conversation. So it’s always great to connect with new people and learn new things and get re -inspired. Angela, it’s been 

Angela Landsberg:  
You’re gonna live forever, Lee. You’re gonna live forever. 

Lee Wochner:   
Well, I do enjoy every day. one of those people. I have my frustrations about the world and the nation and such, but I do get worked up about things. It’s been an absolute pleasure, getting to know you. And thank you so much for joining us today. 

Angela Landsberg:  
I feel the same. Thank you so much for inviting me on. This is a great podcast and it was a very enjoyable hour. Thank you.  

Jaclyn Uloth: 
Thanks for listening! We’re glad you came. That’s What C! Said is produced by Lisa Pham. It’s available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please like and follow the show. Visit Counterintuity.com to sign up and learn more.