One Take with Nigel Allen

I know. We’re supposed to say something elevated. Inspirational.

And Nigel is both: a superbly successful salesman for Fortune and a fundraiser for hospice organizations.

But mention Nigel Allen to those of us present at creation in the Latin American cable industry and we all remember when all of a sudden, we would get random jokes, funny jokes, in our emails from someone called the Admonster. Fast forward and the mystery was revealed: Nigel Allen, he was the one making our days a bit happier.

Fast forward even more and we find the star salesman from Fortune now a hard-working fund raiser for non-profits. Here’s the goods:

Decisive moment – I think the answer to that question for me started when my father became ill and died of lung cancer. This was back in the late 90s. It was a painful illness to watch. About a year after that, I retired.

I moved from Atlanta down to Pensacola, built a house by the water, and I became pretty good friends with a neighbor. A couple of months later, I was told that he was seriously ill, he had cardiomyopathy. And he started to go under hospice care, which was a revelation for me. I did not know really anything about hospice care.

Fast forward another 12 months and my financial retirement was crumbling because of poor financial choices in the stock market, and I had to go back to work.

And one day I opened my former newspaper, looked in the classified section and there was an ad for a position at the big hospice in Pensacola. I got hired even though I was terribly under qualified. That put me on the path that is now more than 20 years behind me of doing fundraising work.

What huge change you would have never expected? Going from selling ad space for Fortune Magazine to fund raising for hospice care.

How did you cope? How did you succeed? One of the things I was pretty good at was telling a pretty good story about myself and projecting competence. In many ways, during the early part of my fundraising career, I lived in a constant state of fear that I was going to be “found out”.

There were a couple of things though that kept me grounded and I think helped me be successful. I kept it basic and authentic.

One: you're not giving to an organization; you're giving through an organization. And when people make gifts to an organization, those gifts are intended to be used to meet the mission of that organization.

Another is the saying, “facts tell but stories sell”. I sold a lot of facts when I was representing Fortune Magazine. But the story about one person and how even a small gift can change their lives for the better is something that's very relatable and it is something that's very, powerful.

Another one is “if there isn't a problem to solve, donors have nothing to do”. Donors love problems, especially when they feel that their gift is part of the solution. And so, framing that, understanding what the needs are of the organizations I work for, and in the case of the hospital, that’s key.

Words to a CEO or CMO? Many CEOs are themselves older. So the first thing I'd say to the CEO is practice what you preach, buddy.

There is enormous value to life experience. There are very few true new ideas. But you know, the benefit that those of us with some seasoning have is we've seen a lot of great new ideas that have not succeeded. We've seen a few that have succeeded. But we've also seen the gray in between the black and white of success and failure.

And we're in a position to provide perspective and insights on how to make something more successful.

It's important not to focus on how old we are and to really focus looking ahead at what we are doing.

People respond well to people who have energy, who are enthusiastic and are passionate about what they do. And they speak with conviction and who are authentic.