Episode 25 – Feeding the Future: Dan Flowers’ 30-Year Journey in Nonprofit Leadership

Todd Bertsch: 0:10

Welcome back to the Bolt Podcast. I’m Todd Bertsch and I’m thrilled to be your guide on this inspiring journey of personal growth and leadership. Together with my guests, we’ll dive into transformational stories, uncovering how small, intentional changes can create massive positive results in your life From overcoming challenges and setting impactful goals to building lasting habits and living with confidence, health and positivity. We’ll explore it all and if you’re ready to embrace a growth mindset and unlock the best version of yourself, then let’s spark that transformation today.

Todd Bertsch: 0:46

Today’s guest is Dan Flowers, the president and CEO of the Akron Canton Regional Food Bank, where he has spent nearly 30 years addressing hunger. Under his leadership, the food bank has grown into one of the region’s largest nonprofits, distributing over 500 million in emergency food. Nonprofits distributing over 500 million in emergency food. He’s known for his innovative approach, including creating the nation’s first online ordering system for food banks. Dan is also active in community boards and advisory councils, including Feeding America’s Network Integrity Committee. Outside of work, he’s an avid reader, runner, martial artist guitar player, husband and father to three children and Leadership Akron alumni.

Todd Bertsch: 1:31

That’s right, that’s right.

Dan Flowers: 1:33

Good morning man.

Todd Bertsch: 1:33

Listeners, get ready for a great episode about leadership. Dan welcome to the Bolt Podcast, my friend.

Dan Flowers: 1:40

Yeah, todd, good to be with you today, man, yeah, yeah, it’s so good to kick off a Friday like this doesn’t feel like work does it. No, it never does Right, never does.

Todd Bertsch: 1:47

This is the beauty of getting to a position in your life where you can just have some really great conversations with people. I know you’re big on relationships and I’m sure we’ll go down that rabbit hole a little bit. But let’s first start by this great legacy that you’ve created. So you’ve been in the food banking sector for nearly 30 years.

Dan Flowers: 2:07

Yeah 22? 22 years at the Akron Canton Regional Food Bank as CEO. Yeah.

Todd Bertsch: 2:13

As president and CEO. I mean, that’s a long time, brother. Yeah. For anybody right, yeah, and I’m sure you’ve led some really incredible initiatives during that time. Has there been any any like defining moment? I’m sure there’s been several over those years that you would just say, oh man, that was a great. That was a great time in my career for this organization.

Dan Flowers: 2:33

Yeah, you know. I mean, I think there’s there’s been what I kind of think of as eras. You know, when I look back over all these years before I jump into that, it is great to be with you, Todd. Yeah, thank you for the invitation. Yeah, thanks for and the opportunity to sit down and talk about these things. I got a lot of respect for you, the work you do, the brand you’re creating, and so thank you for having me on.

Todd Bertsch: 2:54

Yeah, absolutely.

Dan Flowers: 2:55

You know I have been given a fair amount of thought to what we talk about today and how to get to some of these things, you know, or if you have a long period of time doing anything, it can fade together in a way. You know, I I think a lot of my career, my leadership, has been kind of more of a chipping it away than an adding.

Todd Bertsch: 3:17

You know what I mean?

Dan Flowers: 3:18

I love that, yeah yeah, like you know that that saying about the sculptor, this kind of like chips away, yeah you know, absolutely, until the final form, isor this kind of like chips away?

Todd Bertsch: 3:25

Yeah, absolutely.

Dan Flowers: 3:25

Until the final form is perfected, because you have what you need. Yeah, that’s kind of where it appears to me. So, when I think about instances of my career that stand out, yeah, I mean, there’s certainly been highlights. There’s been times where the team was really good, the team was really healthy and functioning well, where we were able to make a lot of progress. You know, looking back, I see sort of order and I see chaos. I see times when we were making big gains, where everyone was healthy, and I can think about mistakes that I made, circumstances happening around us that did kind of a disintegration, that were more work, that we had to sort of put it back together again.

Dan Flowers: 4:09

There is one thing that I will say that may be useful on that question, though specifically for people, is that I do think we come into these jobs with a set of aspirations. We don’t know. We don’t know, but we do know basically what our sort of North star is, the sense of who we want to try to be, that sometimes you need tools in order to fully realize and we went through I don’t know, this would have been back 2012, 2013, art of Hosting, it’s collaborative leadership training, and it was a really intense period of development for me and the people around me, because it was all about how to facilitate meetings in ways that maximizes collective intelligence. And so I found that in that training I got a lot better with techniques to have the kind of meetings and the kind of conversations that brought everyone in and maximize what we could do as a group. So I definitely feel like, if I was to say, one thing transformed my leadership and our cultural experience at the food bank was the time that we spent developing the tools to actually facilitate meetings.

Dan Flowers: 5:19

That’s a kicker because you know, it’s an art, you know. And how you start a meeting, how you gather intelligence, how you break up groups to have conversation, how you select what’s meaningful from group in terms of prioritization, how you harvest intelligence, how you gain alignment on the top priorities and how you activate on that is skillful work. And so I think I always had this sort of democratic mindset of leadership, but it wasn’t until I got those tools that I think I always had this sort of democratic mindset of leadership, but it wasn’t until I got those tools that I think I was able to create a collective sense that that’s who we were and it wasn’t just something I aspired to but failed at.

Todd Bertsch: 5:54

Interesting. Did you seek out those tools or did somebody like how did you end up going after that program?

Dan Flowers: 6:01

Yeah. So we had a gal on our team who just on her own started going to this. I think she’d read about it or heard about it online, and so she went and she started introducing all these things that to me initially seemed like a waste of time. She came back from this like retreat and she was like let’s start having a check-in before every meeting. And I’m like, well, we kind of do that I mean, we talk about what’s going on or we kick it before the meeting and she was like let’s focus a little bit on specific items, to check in and start building this sense of both personal and professional thoughts and be selective. And so we created this check-in jar with you know name, a celebrity you’ve met. Sometimes they were like not even work-related, most times they’re not work-related and then checkouts. And so we instituted a check-in and a check-out at the beginning and end of every meeting, board meetings included. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes to get around and have everybody talk before the meeting. We don’t just jump into any meetings.

Dan Flowers: 6:54

Well, what we started seeing is that people who previously would just come, not talk, get in their car and drive home, started getting plugged in, started sharing things about their life and started participating more in the meetings. It’s like you know, there’s a term that words are the currency of our relational economy, so if you don’t exchange words, you built no collective value. That little thing alone shifted it, and I could give you a dozen more examples of little things that we started doing as a result of that. It shifted our way of being. It shifted our outcomes, shifted our look at strategy and, I think, also shifted the way the organization sees me as a leader, because it really again democratized the experience of being in the organization. It stopped being sort of a top down thing at that point, and so, like I use those techniques in every meeting I’m in, Wow, that’s amazing.

Todd Bertsch: 7:53

I love the fact and I think this this shows what kind of leader you are right that somebody on your team came to you. This idea didn’t come from you, right, it came up and you were open to that and I think, I think that’s a come from you, right.

Todd Bertsch: 8:05

It came up and you were open to that, and I think that’s a good lesson here, right? Because a lot of times, you have leaders who just sit at the top and if it’s not my idea, it’s not going to happen, right? So it’s again being in an open growth mindset, which you and I’ve talked a lot about mindsets.

Dan Flowers: 8:19

I think that’s critical, but yeah, I’m sorry, ted, we resist the things we need oftentimes, you know so. A lot of times, I think, you know, if we have a sense that we might have a gap, or just somebody’s approach makes us think that they think we do, it’s it’s hard to not get defensive, you know so. Yeah, but I think it is super important to be open to you know what people bring to the table, even if it is in response to a weakness or a deficiency on our part, right?

Todd Bertsch: 8:49

Yeah, and meetings are so critical, we spend so much time in meetings. I’ve been on several boards with nonprofits and. I’ve been involved and worked with a lot of nonprofits and it’s interesting that some nonprofits are not ran like a business. I don’t want to get into the weeds on it but, what I’m hearing from you is you’re running this thing like a business, because it is. At the end of the day, nonprofit, for-profit. I mean, you’ve got to run this thing like a business.

Dan Flowers: 9:17

Yeah, I mean, that comes up a lot in nonprofit. You hear a lot of people talk about running things like a business. I mean the only difference between a nonprofit and a business is that I don’t have an equity share. If I did, I’d have sold it a long time ago.

Todd Bertsch: 9:29

Right.

Dan Flowers: 9:29

It’s been a very successful organization, right, you know. But the principles that make any organization effective, you know they’re the same, right, you know. And so we’re fortunate We’ve got a really good board. A lot of people from you know really rich corporate and nonprofit backgrounds that have helped guide us and instruct us. And you know I’ve always been a really regimented person and so you know we’ve done our best to implement things that create effectiveness and drive effectiveness for the organization, and it’s caused us to be very progressive in a lot of things that we do it’s funny you mentioned in that introduction this online ordering thing.

Dan Flowers: 10:05

This is kind of a side thing, but it was interesting. I think everybody’s career has an early win. I’m always coaching young people. Listen, you got to figure out that one thing that’s going to get the spotlight on you. You know you start your career as a producer we’re all producers generally in the beginning. But you got to look for a defining project in the first three to five years of your first kind of real career job. And for me, I was driving around Northern Michigan as an agency relations coordinator at the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan in Flint in the mid nineties. The internet was just coming out. A lot of people had like Packard Bell computers they got from Best Buy with 256 megabytes, oh yeah, 14.4 dial-up modems yeah yeah yeah, exactly.

Dan Flowers: 10:50

Anyway, every week we would produce the provider. It was a newsletter that had the food that we had available on it and we would send it from Flint, where the food bank was headquartered, up to Mackinac City. You know, tawas Take two or three days for it to get there and by the time it even arrived the agencies in Flint would have already got that and ordered all the good stuff off the menu. So the agencies were always complaining about it and I was like man, there’s this thing, the internet. You know, maybe we can use it to solve this problem. So I asked my boss if I could get Microsoft front page. It was like an early website.

Todd Bertsch: 11:23

You’re horrible, but I remember I’m a web designer, yeah.

Dan Flowers: 11:25

Yeah, yeah. So you know about front page, oh yeah. So I got front page and I made a website for the food bank where they didn’t have one at the time fbemorg. And then we started taking PDF pictures of our menu every day and uploading PDFs, and I made a little simple form fill out box where they could enter in the numbers of what they wanted. It spit out a little email with their order on it. Well, it was the first food bank in the country to have online order and we were the first one to beat this problem of the lag in mailing their things In the country.

Dan Flowers: 11:55

In the country, yeah, so you know I was in my mid twenties and you know we got this big award and I flew all over the country and all of a sudden, I was on the map and it wasn’t anything but just like me figuring out how to do.

Dan Flowers: 12:07

I didn’t know anything about websites, I’d never done a website, but my brother and I sat down and we figured out how to make one and we figured out some way to come up with a workable solution.

Dan Flowers: 12:17

Well, it wasn’t long two years and pretty much every one of those agencies had some person from their church board doing their ordering and it just took off like wildfire. And so it taught me a real lesson out in some kind of a network, whether it’s a research project, something that you can pounce on and define an early win through, then your career is on the way. People want to see that from you, because there’s a lot of other things that go behind a win like that right, like you know your initiative and the character you know. So, anyway, to young professionals listening, look for an early win and get after it and talk about it. That’s another thing If young people don’t talk about it. I’m thinking about what’s on my radar screen, and that’s two things wins and problems, and most people are either not on my radar screen at all I’m celebrating the fact that they’re driving wins and productivity for the organization or their problems. So pick which one you’re going to be.

Todd Bertsch: 13:31

I love that man. I love that. You got me thinking like what was my win? Or did I even have a win? But I think it goes back to being proactive and just working hard, right, like doing the work you know, and I think that’s potentially a lost art. You know that I’m just going to come in and everything’s just going to be given to me. So I think we need to instill that, because with that you’re going to build resilience, you’re going to fail, you’re going to learn.

Todd Bertsch: 13:58

And I also think we need leaders who empower their people so people feel like they could bring an idea to the table that it wouldn’t be a lost cause.

Dan Flowers: 14:07

Going back to that last point too, todd, about how to distinguish yourself. Sometimes you can distinguish yourself just by being responsive, and what I mean by that is every day I wake up in the morning and I have a burden for every facet of the organization every risk, every problem, every person, every asset. It’s all on my mind. I’m responsible for every bit of it. Every employee who makes themselves available to me, that answers my phone call or text quickly, that gets their stuff report submitted on time, that’s there when I walk in in the morning, is sharing that burden with me. And I see it. And those are the people that I want around me. I don’t want people that aren’t sharing the burden and letting me know it. And so I think that you know, even if you don’t have a defining project, your defining element can simply be a willingness to share the load and a willingness to do the work Eventually, if you’re delivering good work, you’re still going to get your breakthrough.

Todd Bertsch: 15:06

Right, right.

Dan Flowers: 15:08

Yeah.

Todd Bertsch: 15:08

But I think the key there is the willingness you got to be able to get in there right, Get your hands dirty and do some work.

Dan Flowers: 15:17

Yeah, make a decision Right.

Todd Bertsch: 15:19

Make a decision. Wow, I mean, it’s such a long time to be at the same organization.

Dan Flowers: 15:24

Yeah.

Todd Bertsch: 15:25

I mean it’s such a long time to be at the same organization. Yeah, I mean you started off. I mean 32 years old yeah, that’s extremely young to have to be in charge, president and CEO of one of the largest nonprofit organizations, at least in our community.

Dan Flowers: 15:39

It is and responsible for what?

Todd Bertsch: 15:41

100?

Todd Bertsch: 15:42

100 employees, yeah 100 employees, that’s a lot of lives. Responsible for what? A hundred? A hundred employees? Yeah, a hundred employees, that’s a lot of lives. What kind of mistakes, what kind of failures. You know that you’re willing to share, that you just you had immense learning moments where you’re like, oh, it had to be a lot Right. And I’m just saying because I can’t imagine myself, you know, at that age, taking on such a responsibility. But somebody believed in you and said, hey, this guy’s got the goods, he’s got the character traits, he’s got an open mindset, he’s, he’s going to go after it.

Todd Bertsch: 16:08

Yeah, and he’s going to share that Like this is a nonprofit. You gotta, you gotta, be in it. It’s a ministry. Your passion, it’s a ministry. Yeah, your passion’s got to be there.

Dan Flowers: 16:28

Yeah, well, I think they knew I was going to get after it. I mean, you know, I think my energy, even at 55, is still people can sense it at 32. It was almost too much, you know. But yeah, I mean, you know, and I would also say too, it was a very, it was a solid agency when I took it, but it wasn’t anywhere nearly. I mean there was 19 people working there. You know, we distributed like we distributed last year 40 million pounds of food. Well, the first year I was at this food bank it was like seven and a half million. So I mean we have had a ton of growth. I don’t think that the food bank, my food bank today, would hire a 32 year old man.

Dan Flowers: 16:58

I think they’d be looking for somebody that’s got a little bit more time in, you know. So I do think that I was probably. I still think they took a chance on me, you know, as a first time CEO at that age, but I don’t think that the board would take that same chance with the organization today. Right, you know so I do would like to qualify that. But I’ve talked a lot about some of the things that I’ve learned and some of the mistakes that I sort of made early on in my career. You know you take a job like this. You don’t know what you don’t know. I’d read a lot of leadership books, but those can only take you so far. That set me back.

Dan Flowers: 17:35

That I learned most in that early era, say the first five years, was I was scared a lot and I didn’t know it, and so I had a lot of people working for me that were a lot older than me Most of my leaders that were there. When I got there, I had like four or five direct reports who were 20 years or more older than I was and they intimidated me. I don’t necessarily think they supported me even getting the job. I mean, I was a kid from out of town, so I didn’t know anybody in the community. I didn’t know them. We were cordial, but they also knew a ton of things I didn’t know about life and leadership. I was this hard charging kid and I think a lot of times I was much more harsh than I needed to be in conversations with them because I was so scared of them. And I’ve realized in retrospect that a lot of times we substitute or we cover our fear by maybe being a little more aggressive or choosing words with an edge out of fear.

Todd Bertsch: 18:44

It’s the fighter, fight, fight yeah exactly yeah, and it’s just embedded in us, right yeah?

Dan Flowers: 18:50

Yeah Well, so I’m not scared anymore.

Todd Bertsch: 18:54

Right.

Dan Flowers: 18:55

And so I can be a lot more gentle in conversations with people. And so, looking back, that’s one thing. I would just generally coach people to be aware of the role of fear before you have a big meeting, especially if we’re talking about someone’s performance, because if you’re really scared, nervous, shaking going in, there’s a stronger likelihood that you’re going to mask that by saying something that’s got more of an edge on it that needs to have, and you can easily walk out with regrets as a result of it.

Todd Bertsch: 19:22

Right, so emotional intelligence, exactly. You know, being in touch with your emotions goes a long way.

Dan Flowers: 19:27

Yeah, that’s a big one, you know, and the other one was just like being super hasty to make decisions, you know, jumping on things faster than I needed to, you know, and that just sort of like comes with time, yep, knowing how to play it. Patience yeah, I’ve spent most of my life working against fear. I think it’s the unknown ball and chain on most people’s ankle, and of course, I see it more as I get older. But I think that young people should keep an eye out for that. There’s another thing, too, about early, because I mentioned leadership books. Yeah, you know, I think there’s only two leadership books a person needs to read. Okay, good to Great.

Todd Bertsch: 20:17

Good to Great by.

Dan Flowers: 20:18

Jim Collins, yep and Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Those to me, are like the Bibles. If you, let’s say, you get a bachelor’s degree in fine arts or philosophy or music or whatever, you can still be a CEO. You got to learn a little bit about how businesses work. I think those books do a pretty good job, kind of covering the basics. You can supplement it, but those are the two I would say are required reading.

Dan Flowers: 20:48

But I would also counsel people that there is a again fear this compulsion to. You know, sharpen the saw to try to stay ahead of the next guy. You know your competition’s probably reading leadership books this weekend. Well, you know. Well, hey, maybe you might do better if you just chill out and read a John Grissom story or just go fishing. You know, like you, hey, maybe you might do better if you just chill out and read a John Grissom story or just go fishing. You know like you’ve got to cultivate a restful mindset and a clear mindset and I think a lot of things that you need you just learn on the job. So you know, that’s my thing about books and learning in general. You got to give yourself the time to let those lessons sort of just emerge.

Todd Bertsch: 21:27

Gotcha, anyway, okay, anyway, okay, no, love it and we’ll have those books in the show notes. I love those. Yeah, good, greats. I read in my 30s and that kind of changed the way that I looked at business I didn’t really know much about, I wasn’t really involved, certainly didn’t think I’d be an entrepreneur or have my own business, but that book was enlightening for sure. And then, Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. That’s a no brainer. That’s on the shelf. That should be a staple.

Dan Flowers: 21:53

Guaranteed. Yeah, Everybody’s book. Yeah, Keep referring back to that one. I have over the course of my life, since I read that book almost 30 years right after it came out, I got Good to Great and then I read a bunch of other Jim Collins stuff too, because Good to Great was actually not his first book.

Todd Bertsch: 22:08

I think Built to Last was his first one.

Dan Flowers: 22:09

I think I have been pulling back layers of understanding about what truly is the paradoxical blend of humility and resolve that, to me, has been the most useful sentence in my leadership journey. What is it? To come to a full understanding of what you lack? What annoys people about you, your deficiencies, maybe, the things that you overexert, times that you use your strengths to the detriment of yourself and other people? You know I can think about. You know, every time I’ve ever done the StrengthsFinder thing, discipline comes back as my very first. I’ve done it three times. I can’t fake not getting discipline at the top of my list, which you would think is always a good thing, until I’m missing time with my family because I’ve got to get my run in, I got to get my workout in. You know what I mean.

Dan Flowers: 23:11

So there are times where I think I’ve taken it probably too far at times. Being disciplined and regimented, gotcha, and so you know, yeah, so I have to have the humility to see honestly how my life affects other people, how my leadership, how my decisions affect other people. And so the question is after you take that full inventory, can you summon the resolve to continue? Like a lot of people are broken by it. You know, like if you’re honest enough about who you are really, then you’ll either be broken by it or you’ll be humbled by it to the extent to which you can actually be a softer, more gentle, easier person in the world. And that, to me, is the defining element of the paradoxical blend of humility and resolve, as the defining aspect of level five, the highest level of leadership, are the people who you know.

Dan Flowers: 24:10

My brother said it’s unfortunate that the only pathway to humility is humiliation, and if learning the truth about you isn’t a little humiliating, then you’re probably not listening, right? Okay, so then in that truth, if you can still lead, how different will you be? Well, of course you’re going to be more open to other people. Of course you’re not going to yell at them. Of course you’re going to try to soften your edges.

Todd Bertsch: 24:35

And those are the best leaders, you know.

Dan Flowers: 24:38

but you cannot get there without humility and you cannot gain humility without pain and self-reflection.

Todd Bertsch: 24:48

There’s no other way. There’s no other road Right, and that’s stepping out of your comfort zone. And I think I’ve been really fascinated with just mindsets. I’ve been doing a lot of research on that, preparing for a book that I plan to launch next year. Okay, Congratulations.

Dan Flowers: 25:04

A book you’re writing.

Todd Bertsch: 25:05

Yes, absolutely.

Dan Flowers: 25:07

What’s it?

Todd Bertsch: 25:07

called. I’m still working on it. All right, I’m still trying to figure that out. On it, I’m still trying to figure that out, but generally focusing on the mindset and coming off of Carol Dweck’s work on a fixed mindset versus an open mindset and I think, to me that what you’re talking about is really that continuum of starting at a fixed and coming into an open or growth mindset.

Todd Bertsch: 25:29

If you’re in a fixed mindset you are not going to be open to challenges. You are not going to be open to challenges. You are not going to be open to criticism or feedback. Right, You’re going to fail and not keep trying, right, You’re not going to step out of your comfort zone. So, if you’re going to be a great leader, or really the best version of yourself, you have to be open. You have to be open to feedback again to humility right, you have to be open to feedback again to humility right, you know you have to be open to stepping out of your comfort zone and the possibility that you might fail, and that’s okay, but you’re open to just growing and learning. And then, when you set that precedent, your team, all the people that are underneath you, they see that and they want to be like that, so anyhow.

Todd Bertsch: 26:11

so yeah, I didn’t want to, but just when you’re saying that I’m thinking really it does come. It all comes down to the mindset that you’re in but there are several people that are just stuck in this fixed mindset and a lot of people that say if you were to ask them they’d say they’re in a growth mindset, but they’re not really. They’re kind of in this, this middle point of the continuum right, maybe open to it, maybe tried a few things, but they’re still not moving the needle.

Dan Flowers: 26:36

Yeah, and you know I can spot that. We all know leaders that have gained a fair amount of influence and affluence in the community who have a certain abrasiveness or a certain I don’t know man ostentatiousness. You know that I see as fear, because if you’re not anybody who’s taken themselves I mean they’re a dry personality type, you know but if you’re a person that takes yourself really seriously and to the point to which other people can’t relax around you, that means there’s something wrong. Yeah, I see that as a weakness, yeah, a fear. Maybe at some point they developed an inferiority complex and so they tend to mask it through dressing a certain way or keeping people at a certain distance. But most people I know that have done their work, that are like fully actualized people, unless they have some kind of personality quirk or something like that they make other. Their mission is to make other people feel comfortable. You know I would. In fact, if it isn’t your mission, then that’s a problem, right?

Dan Flowers: 27:44

Right, exactly, I don’t want to be around people that aren’t on a mission to make other people comfortable with who they are Right.

Todd Bertsch: 27:52

I think that’s leading with empathy.

Dan Flowers: 27:54

Yeah, right For sure. This is, you know, for all of us, right. A lifetime of observations.

Todd Bertsch: 28:02

Lifetime. I love that Lifetime of observations. It’s a journey, man. You know one of the things that I’ve learned? Dan and I have a life coach, a high performance coach. I’ve been working with her for four years and last year she really two things that my focus were was grace, and we could go down a tunnel with that. And then you’re probably the same way. I’m really hard on myself. But checking that box, getting to the top of the summit and being, hey, I’m here, I wasn’t really enjoying that process and that full journey and once I shifted my mindset to really embrace it, like Simon Sinek says, I’m not focused on the end.

Dan Flowers: 28:46

To me there is no end.

Todd Bertsch: 28:54

I’m just iterating, I’m just trying to get 1% better every day. That’s it right.

Dan Flowers: 29:01

That’s kind of like the idea of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that Robert Pershing book it was so popular in. You know, a guy’s on a motorcycle trip and as he works on his motorcycle he starts to uncover this reality that it’s the getting there and the whole book, at least to me, was a metaphor of enjoying the journey. Enjoying the journey, yep.

Todd Bertsch: 29:26

Yep, it’s easy to get caught up. We’re busy. Let’s talk a little bit more about leadership, because I love this and we have a lot of listeners that are leaders or inspiring leaders. You know, I think this is really cool, that your organization has been recognized as one of the top places to work and that. I don’t know about you, but as a leader like that would be one of the things that I’d be most proud of.

Dan Flowers: 29:48

Oh for sure, you know like especially 100 plus people.

Todd Bertsch: 29:51

Again a lot of lives. I’m responsible for 10 to 15 lives in my small business, and one changes everything right. So how do you build a culture that allows your team to embrace collaboration, innovation, avoid burnouts Like let’s be honest like most nonprofits? It’s a lot of work right.

Todd Bertsch: 30:17

And potentially I’m not saying your organization, but in most cases not. The money’s not there in respect to the roles, right, it’s a nonprofit. So how do you, how do you keep your team motivated? How do you win an award like that and I know for you, I’m sure it’s it’s not about the word that just happens to come along, Right, but still to win that multiple years in a row. That says a lot about you and the organization and your people. So are there any silver bullets here or gold nuggets that you can share for other people? Building a team, yeah.

Dan Flowers: 30:50

I think so. I mean, you know, fortunately I do get that question, you know, like, how did you get this culture where it is, or whatever? I can boil it down to two things. One, a fanatical commitment to high quality work. If you don’t have that ability and that commitment, it’s a pretty easy conversation, you know if you’re not really really doing great work.

Dan Flowers: 31:14

So you have to. That’s the price of admission on the performance side. Secondly, we have a sign with a cool story behind it I don’t have time to tell In our conference room and it says in this house we do second chances, we do grace, we do real, we do mistakes, we do I’m sorry’s, we do hugs, we do family, we do grace, we do real, we do mistakes, we do I’m sorry’s, we do hugs, we do family, we do love. And so that’s the character side. And what I have found over the years is that if we get people that can do those things well the soft skills, the intangibles, the I’m sorry’s if you can’t ask for forgiveness and admit you’re wrong and grant the same to other people, you’re not going to probably be in any relationship that long. And if you can’t deliver high quality work and don’t have a fanatical commitment to it, you probably can’t deliver the high quality that we need in order to be an organization on uh, of excellence.

Dan Flowers: 32:15

Those two things seem to be what brings comes where it all kind of comes from. Okay, so so. So those are my people filters. Uh, if somebody isn’t laying down the work really quick, we make a move pretty fast on them. Uh, if people don’t have, um, the ability to say they’re sorry or forget people or whatever, they’re too, you know, pretentious or whatever they tend to not last long either.

Dan Flowers: 32:36

And once when I figured that out and became very, very committed to making sure that our people could balance those two, then the culture then kind of took over and became self-reinforcing. Certainly, for an award like that you know, nc99 award a lot of it’s based on, like employee benefits, you know, compensation or whatever, and I’ve always had a pretty progressive view of that too. That you know, I want my people to know I love them and and and more than more than more than that at times, I want them to get what I want for me, and so I look at everything that I want for me as a likely want for them and I do everything I can to give them that. It’s simple.

Todd Bertsch: 33:28

So would you say those are kind of the core values of the organization. Do you guys have like a a set core values? It kind of sounds like yeah story you read is almost like kind of a mission. Ish, core values, yeah, I mean, I would almost say that.

Dan Flowers: 33:42

I would love to have a picture of that by the way, I’ll send it to you yeah, I I think that the um, I almost feel like in this house we do second chances. That is almost more important than our core values, because you know, anytime you sit down with a group of people and you say, like what are our core values?

Todd Bertsch: 33:59

A lot of the same things come up, yeah, integrity, accountability, excellence, exactly Well, those are the kind of things that good people do.

Dan Flowers: 34:06

If you have a fanatical commitment to high-quality work and you’ve got enough character to stay in relationships for a long time, you’re probably going to align on values just in general. So I’m looking for more of those things, and one of the things that I think has supported our culture over the years is longevity. I mean, I’ve been there for a long time and a lot of my people have been with me the whole time too, and we were friends. We raised our kids together. We’ve been to our family members’ funerals. You know, I’ve coached team members through divorces and losses of parents, and mine too. My staff members have stuck with me through my crisis in life, you know. So you kind of become a community over time, and that led me to. I think one of my most other significant realizations in life is that the longevity of a person’s relationships with people and institutions is the greatest indicator of their character Bar none.

Todd Bertsch: 35:07

We can just stop there.

Dan Flowers: 35:09

Bar none.

Todd Bertsch: 35:09

Yeah, that’s it.

Dan Flowers: 35:11

That’s it. That’s it. So if you come into my life with lifelong friendships, a long marriage, a long employment history with one person, then it says to me that you’re stable and, more importantly, you’ve said you’re sorry and you’ve forgiven people, because any relationship that goes long enough has to have those elements.

Todd Bertsch: 35:36

Oh, I love that.

Dan Flowers: 35:37

You know, and so, and the people that come to you with two to five years, you know, okay, well, it’s okay to make a couple of jumps here and there, but if you are a serial relationship jumper, I don’t think you’re safe for relationships for me at least I don’t. I’m not looking for two-year relationships. You know what I mean, right? I’m looking for people that want to make a run, a life run, and share life with me and share good work with me, and I don’t think you can build anything of quality in a short time. It just doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t.

Todd Bertsch: 36:08

I love it. Relationships are huge, Obviously very important to you. We’ve seen the benefits of that right With the longevity of you, your team, your accomplishments at the food bank.

Dan Flowers: 36:22

Well, and here’s the thing on that, if I could jump in on that, because here’s the thing on that If somebody told 20 year old Todd, hey, listen, bro, I know you’re going through a really hard time right now, but if you stick with it, there’ll be a richness 20 years from now that I can’t explain, you probably would have heard it and thought, yeah, but if you can’t explain it and I can’t know it, so it’s not real. It’s not real to you If you would have told me, when my wife and I got married 20 years ago, what it would feel like to go to bed at night next to the mother of my kids, who are fully grown, who I know in a completely different way than I did before. You know, certainly before they were born, but when they were even five or seven. You know the richness of of of having a wife that we’ve buried our parents together and our grandparents together and our siblings and our neighbors, and we’ve been to weddings and we’ve I mean, we’ve done it all. She’s witnessed me as the worst version of me and the best version of me, and we’ve grown and laid down so many things. And here we are. I woke up next to her this morning. Well, there’s a richness to that that you can’t. Well, there’s a richness to that that you can’t. Okay, here you go.

Dan Flowers: 37:40

If I was to tell you that the most meaningful relationships in your life come from these things, do you think they’re going to give those things away? It’s like the most meaningful relationship you could have as a human being going to be free, without effort or struggle. It’s not. That’s not how it works. Without effort or struggle. It’s not. That’s not how it works. And so you know. Anyway, I just get really wound up on that, because now I look around at my life from this position and I’m like, my God, I’m so glad I didn’t blow it. You know what I mean. I’m so glad I didn’t walk away when it was hard. I’m so glad I didn’t walk away when it was hard, at the food bank during the pandemic, or the thing 10 beers before Right. And that’s brought me to another saying, which is don’t quit when it’s hard, quit when it’s done.

Todd Bertsch: 38:18

Right.

Dan Flowers: 38:18

Right. You know people mistake tired for done every day and they walk away on relationships and jobs that weren’t done. And I would tell anybody anytime you say I’m done with so-and-so, I’m done with this or that, step back and ask yourself soberly am I maybe just tired? And if the answer is I could be tired, I think I’m tired. Don’t do anything stupid, stay the course, take a break and then see where you’re at, because once you tell yourself I’m done with winter, you’re screwed. You’re screwed for two more months, I’m done with this relationship. It’s probably not going to work out, it’s probably unsavable. I’m done with this or that, I’m done with this job.

Todd Bertsch: 39:06

No, ask yourself before you say that maybe am I just tired yeah, I love that, dan, and it goes back to a concept I think I share with you a little bit this practice program that I went through called Positive Intelligence. I bring it up in every episode. The listeners are probably tired of me talking about it, but I talk about it because it freaking works and I’m very passionate about it. But Shozad Shamim talks about finding the gift and the opportunity in every scenario every situation, and you can’t do that unless you have an open mind, right.

Todd Bertsch: 39:37

So make no assumptions that there’s somebody, everybody’s struggling with something. So you talk about relationships, right, and saying I’m tired or I’m done, well, take a step back, pause, reflect and think about they probably are struggling with something. Maybe they didn’t get back to you in time. People get all upset so you can get an email back the next day or a text message right away. Well, maybe maybe something’s going on with their family, you know, or something. So, and it’s it’s funny because I’ve learned that over time Cause I, you know, had a struggle with patients a little bit over the years Sounds like maybe you had some some trouble.

Todd Bertsch: 40:15

Troubles with that and as I’ve built patients through positive intelligence, it’s allowed me to, like you said, just stop, not quit, not call it done and just try to find the gift in winter. You know what you don’t like winter. Well, too bad. You live here, so you know what Embrace it man Like find something.

Dan Flowers: 40:32

It’s a time.

Todd Bertsch: 40:33

Maybe you can spend more time reading You’re going to be inside, or maybe getting that project and finishing the basement, finally, or spending more time with your kids playing board games. There’s something, there’s a gift there. Just be open to it.

Dan Flowers: 40:45

That’s just it, Absolutely man.

Todd Bertsch: 40:47

The whole notion of just getting out of this damn fixed mindset and just being open to things, and it comes for me. It comes back to one word being curious.

Dan Flowers: 40:57

Okay.

Todd Bertsch: 40:57

If we could just be curious, right Like when we were a kid, that inner child right. Where we just explore, we’re just open. We have no predetermined thoughts and if we’re open, we’re looking for gifts and opportunities.

Dan Flowers: 41:11

That’s a super good point Empty cup. Bruce Lee says the best cup to have is an empty cup because you’re just open to everything and anything. Amen Love it Right. Yes, sir.

Todd Bertsch: 41:21

Yes, sir. Anyhow, lots of nuggets here, man. Great conversation. Let’s learn a little bit more about Dan Flowers. So what’s a day in the life like of Dan Flowers? Leader of a big organization.

Dan Flowers: 41:34

You know, as you would guess, pretty regimented.

Todd Bertsch: 41:37

Yeah, you know pretty regimented. I love its structure yeah.

Dan Flowers: 41:40

I mean, I’m really one for streaks. If I get a streak going, it’s really really hard to stop. Okay For me, like I’ll give you an example In 1999, before Y2K, I started cleaning my desk at the food bank in Flint and I was like you know, I think next year I want to have, I don’t want a single piece of paper on my desk when I go home from work. No sticky notes, no, nothing. I’m going to file everything before I leave and I’m not going to have anything on my desk. 25 years later, I haven’t missed a day. There hasn’t been a single piece of paper on any desk I’ve ever sat at in 25 years. So you know, like I could give you, I probably got a dozen streaks like that going. Some are really stupid. Like you know, it’s been I don’t know, probably 20 years since I threw a piece of paper in a trash can, a wrap or something, and missed and didn’t pick it up. I have to pick it up, so like.

Todd Bertsch: 42:39

I got a lot of things like that.

Dan Flowers: 42:41

I love that, you know and it’s, it’s OCD for sure.

Todd Bertsch: 42:44

Yeah, you know, and I’ve wrestled with that.

Dan Flowers: 42:46

I mean I can remember one time I was sitting in my office.

Todd Bertsch: 42:48

I’m with you.

Dan Flowers: 42:50

And I took a stack of sticky notes and I set them in the front quarter of my desk you know a new, new stack, yep and I was trying to get them squared with the front of the desk and I got them. So they look pretty good. And when I got onto my car I was like man, that bitch, that damn sticky notes they’re probably. And I almost went back in and that’s when I was like don’t do it, that’s ridiculous right?

Todd Bertsch: 43:10

Don’t do it, Dan, I know.

Dan Flowers: 43:11

You know, like I know, where this is headed. Well, it has, in a lot of ways, headed that way. I, you know, I have wrestled a lot with OCD in my life, the bad kind you know the bad kind.

Dan Flowers: 43:23

And it’s, it’s manifested for me and worry and things like that. But you know, discipline is a big part of it. So my days now, you know, as I’ve gotten older, I don’t like to get up with an alarm and you know I’ve had to eat my words a lot, cause I don’t know how many times I walked around saying work starts at eight, you know be here at eight o’clock. Well, I got some people that are going to be there at eight every day, but I’m kind of the point in my life now where I’m not going to be one of them. Yeah, I like to wake up. When I wake up, my kids are grown. I can work all day. I work at night, I work on the weekends. I’ve never not worked all the time. All I do is work. So when I go is when I wake up. So I usually get up, drink a cup of coffee, then I have what I call my daily office where, you know, I do my email. You know I’d look at my day. I journal every day. I’ve done that for years.

Todd Bertsch: 44:14

Yeah, that’s a big thing. We’ll talk about journaling, okay.

Dan Flowers: 44:23

Good Shoot into work, work the full day. Usually I have meetings all day, which means I’m going to have a lot of work to do just my own, you know. And so I leave the office every day, you know five o’clock or so, go home. I always work out every day. I do at least 60 minutes exercise every day. I’ve done it my whole life. I don’t think I’ve had, you know, I’ve had a couple of surgeries that’s that kind of broke my streak, but other than that I’ve I’ve done at least 30 minutes of cardio two days a week for 30 years straight. I just never miss.

Todd Bertsch: 44:44

Streaks. Yeah, I just streaks man.

Dan Flowers: 44:50

Yeah, I’ve never heard it quite like that. I love it Cause it’s a habit. Yeah, yeah, I get a streak going. Now I don’t want to break it, so I so. So you know, I just keep doing it. Then usually after that, you know, dinner with my wife and then I putz I don’t sit around and watch TV, so I putz I go in the garage. I like to bull hunt, I like to work out, I go to jujitsu. You know whatever, you know whatever thing I’m working on would work. Taxidermy I like to do taxidermy.

Dan Flowers: 45:18

But it’s a hobby, it’s my life, so what about?

Todd Bertsch: 45:20

this journaling. Well, you know, we talked a little bit about this.

Dan Flowers: 45:23

Yeah, I didn’t journal until my dad died in 2021. I remember growing up and we were very religious, a true Methodist family, and I would wake up in the morning and my dad was always doing his devotions. He’d have his Bible out. He’s reading the Bible. I’d sit out there in his underwear. He’s start praying, fall asleep. I’d walk out there and be snoozing, you know, in his underwear, with his Bible in his lap. It was, it was cool, love it, yeah, but uh, and he always would journal. And then, you know, I all my life I grew up he had seen his Bible with his little, you know, spiral notebook over top of it. So they always went together my mom, my dad, his devotions and his journal. But when he died I felt like I could maybe read them, and so he had a stack of these spiral journals in his closet.

Todd Bertsch: 46:06

Yeah, years, years, years Kept them all.

Dan Flowers: 46:09

Oh my gosh. And so I’d flip them up A lot of times. Half the time they didn’t have a date, they were just like a paragraph He’d scribble, but they were prayers for us, his worries, his struggles. I was like man, dad, you know, made him so real to me, you know, reading it, so vulnerable, so relatable.

Todd Bertsch: 46:27

What a treasure, man. Oh, it was beautiful. I mean that’s a gift, bro. Yeah, that’s a huge gift, yeah.

Dan Flowers: 46:33

And so I was like you know, I’m going to start journaling. So I found this great app Day One is the app. Day one is the app day one and I decided in 2021, while I was working through my grief of him dying I would just journal. So I journaled through the year. The app has a cool feature where you can print your journals into a hard copy book hardcover book. So I did that that year and it was like 60 pages, and so I was like I’m going to do this next year. I’m going to journal every day.

Dan Flowers: 46:54

So I got a streak going. I journaled every day in 2022 and I printed like a 380 page journal. I wrote a hard copy. I got it home on the shelf. I wrote what I was doing that day, but I also wrote my family history and my prayers and my stuff for the kids and I wrote like who I want, who I want to get all my crap when I die, just in detail, everything. But I did it again the next year and I just kept doing it, you know. And so I’ve got like five now, five bound books um on my shelf from this app day one.

Todd Bertsch: 47:25

That’s beautiful man, you do this in the morning, yeah this year I’m doing a photo project.

Dan Flowers: 47:29

So when I get up in the morning now I’ve been going around taking pictures of like photo albums and stuff and I’m just like taking a picture and talking about that picture, telling who’s in what was happening at the time. Okay, and so this year I’m going to print a 365 page photo book Gotcha, that’s this year’s journal project. But it has kind of been troublesome because there’s been a couple of things I wanted to journal about that because I’m doing a photo project. It didn’t really fit into that motif.

Dan Flowers: 47:56

I need to crank up my fire, up my other journal so I can vet.

Todd Bertsch: 48:01

Right, right teeth, I need to, oh gotcha, crank up my fire up my other journal, so I can okay that right, right and just get it out how much time do you spend journaling each?

Dan Flowers: 48:05

day, if you don’t mind me asking 10 to 20 minutes.

Todd Bertsch: 48:07

Okay, that’s, that’s a good, that’s a good pinch, okay, interesting. Yeah, journal we talk a lot about journaling on the show. Um, I’m a big advocate of it. Uh, I have struggled with making it a habit. Ironically, as much as I talk about habits and I’m very much like you regimen structure, I love streaks I’m gonna um big streak guy, uh, when you fall off the streak. Getting back on to start a new one.

Todd Bertsch: 48:32

Right, that’s a little tough, but yeah, journaling I’ve struggled with. I have a little bullet journal that I created. I think I showed it to you, my custom one so it’s just real quick hits, wins and things. But the sit down like let’s talk about the day or week or month. That’s been a struggle for me this year getting in the mode.

Todd Bertsch: 48:50

But I just got my first entry in last week. It felt really good, you know, just to get it out there. So it was more of a reflection of the month instead of a you know, day to day.

Dan Flowers: 48:59

But um, you know, if you don’t feel like journaling, though you’re like it’s okay not to, I feel like, you know, like I. It’s funny because, like sometimes I feel like when my mental health is best, I, I, I tend to work out the least, I tend to journal the least. It’s weird, like I look at those as sustaining disciplines in my life and so, to a certain extent, like if I’m struggling, man, I’m going to write a lot, I’m going to work out more, so it’s therapeutic for you.

Dan Flowers: 49:27

Yeah, all that stuff is. You know, like you know, the Buddha was fat. He’d never worked out. You know, I don’t know what he wrote. He probably didn’t write anything.

Todd Bertsch: 49:36

Yeah.

Dan Flowers: 49:37

You know, so like to me, a lot of my discipline that I’ve seen as so critical to my edge, my success to me are almost, at this stage in life, an indication of maybe even something that it would be that it’s good to be able to let down a little bit. Good to be able to let down a little bit Like like I look at the storms in my life and those in those disciplines, like working out and cleaning my desk and all these things like they’re good things and I think that they carried me through a lot of storms. But I also think that they are rooted in an inability to simply be okay with with me, like the animals are with themselves. And so there is like it’s becoming symbolic to me of I at least am trying to correlate not doing my disciplines with me actually being healthy. Yeah, because, like my fanatical regimentation was two part one good for me, because it helped make me successful in business to a symptom of my interior discomfort and disorder, perhaps to a degree.

Todd Bertsch: 50:55

Yeah, I can, I can agree with that. Yeah, I can agree with that. This has been great man. Lots of great nuggets, lots of great nuggets. How about some quick fire questions? Sure, all right, if you could have a conversation with one person dead or alive, anybody who would that be? Sit down, conversation with somebody, and what would you talk about?

Dan Flowers: 51:26

You know, on this question I don’t want to have a conversation, I want to do stuff. So for me, you know, like if I could go back in time and do anything, dude, I’d want to be a comanche hunter on the open plains out on a bison hunt. If I could spend a day with those people, go have the full hunt, kill a bison, build a big fire out on the prairie, dance around with my Native American brothers and sisters under the open skies and the plains, breathing that fresh air blowing across the. You know, say, 600 years ago, that’s what I’d do 100. All right, I don’t want to talk to anybody. If my dad came back from the dead, I’d probably like give him a hug and say you know I’m cleaning the garage, we’ll come in and help me out, and just that’s what we do. We just go and start working. I don’t really want to talk.

Todd Bertsch: 52:12

Yeah, you know Okay.

Dan Flowers: 52:15

I yeah.

Todd Bertsch: 52:19

So, at the end of life, how do you want to be remembered? You know this is Stephen Covey. This is begin with the end of mind, right. Begin with the end of mind. Love this, right. I think if we all just sat with this every day, I think we’d be better people.

Dan Flowers: 52:33

Yeah, I wrote at the advice of my therapist. I saw a therapist for six months back in like 2011. She really helped me out, yeah. And when I first went and saw her she was like she recommended I write my obituary and that was like a game plan, a template for me, and since then I’ve just been living my way into what I wrote that day. For me, number one dependable. I want to die as a reliable person. That’s it okay to the people in my life, gotcha.

Dan Flowers: 53:07

So I mean, obviously there’s a legacy from the organization that’s important to me but the number one attribute in my life that I want to display for the people around me is simply that they can count on me.

Todd Bertsch: 53:16

Okay.

Dan Flowers: 53:18

Love that.

Todd Bertsch: 53:22

So if you could leave our listeners with one last thought, that’s one last nugget from damn flowers, what would you, what would you drop out?

Dan Flowers: 53:31

Professionally I would say get after it, get after it work.

Todd Bertsch: 53:38

That’s it. Yeah, it Work. That’s it. Yeah, got it. Love it, man. Yeah. Well, this has been great, dan. I appreciate you sharing some words with us today. Appreciate your time. Yeah, I enjoyed it, it’s fun talking.

Dan Flowers: 53:51

Thanks for letting me kind of riff a little bit. And you know I would say to other people if I can, if we have just a second, if somebody is in crisis and they’re listening to me, get help. That’s probably the last thing. It’s not all about getting hard. Sometimes it’s about getting help. Go see a therapist, whatever. Check in with somebody if you’re in crisis, you know, and ask for help and don’t be ashamed. Ask for food if you need it. You know that’s been my life’s work. Right Is trying to get people to ask for help when they need it. So maybe that’s a good note to end on. It is we all need help. It’s okay, right on.

Todd Bertsch: 54:22

It’s okay, excellent, excellent. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bolt Podcast. You’re on an inspiring journey of growth, transformation, and joy and I’m honored to be a part of it. If you found this episode valuable, please like share it with your friends and consider leaving a review. It means the world to us. For show notes, resources, and to subscribe to the weekly Motivational Monday newsletter. Please visit toddbertsch.com and don’t forget to follow us on social media at the Bolt with Todd B for more inspiration. Remember, real change doesn’t happen overnight. Start small, stay consistent, and watch as your growth unfolds. See you next time.