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Cochlear Implants, A Tour Bus & Managing a Growing Non Profit #6

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Jaime Vernon is the CEO of Songs for Sound. Listen to her story about what happened to her daughter and what’s she doing about it with a 38′ tour bus.

Brand Forward The Marketing Podcast

Jaime Vernon and Cole Evans sit down to discuss her 38′ tour bus, managing a growing non-profit and raising serious awareness for the hearing impaired.

Cole: We’re here today with Jaime Vernon. Jaime is the founder and director of Songs for Sound. Jaime’s responsible for developing objectives and execution tracking and retaining, growing the donor base. She oversees all aspects of planning, marketing, event management. Jaime, let’s just be serious. You do it all, right?

Jaime: Don’t remind me, but yes, I do.

Colet: All of the event and social campaigns for their major event Hear the Music and Hearoes Tour. Jaime, thank you so much for being with us today.

Jaime: Oh my goodness, thank you. This is exciting. Any time we can reach new people and partner with not only Cole but good people, I’m so excited. Thank you.

Cole: Awesome. Well, look, we’re just going to dive right in. I’ve got a lot of things to go through and we’ve got a timer against us. So how does Songs for Sound make money? In this world of 501(c)(3)s, everyone’s a non-profit. I’ve got clients that are on a regular basis being asked to give to charity, asked to give to charity, and the very number one thing is how much is going to operations versus the actual charity? So talk about that for a second.

Jaime: Absolutely. So this is a second passion of mine recently is that there’s so much in the media right now that is somewhat negative on certain larger charities, and one thing that we pride ourselves on is that we’re very organic. So the history of non-profits is that the larger you are, the better that percentage should get. And the smaller you are, often it’s a larger percentage. So I preface this because we are actually in a percentage that’s closer to the larger non-profits, yet up until about two weeks ago, I’ve been a staff of one for six years. And that’s completely unheard of.

So we are 100% donations, sponsorships, and grants. And what I’ve learned in the first five years of this non-profit is that you just really have to diversify that. Don’t put yourself all in the grant bucket because that may not continue. And don’t put yourself all in the annual giving. And don’t put yourself all in the sponsorships. So we really have diversified and come up with a great strategy in that…we being myself and one of my board of directors.

The other thing is that we have reached…so typically our size, you see around about 70-75% efficiency. You never want to go below 70% or the IRS is knocking on your door, so that would mean that 30% is spent on overhead and 70% is tossed back into the mission. And then like I said, the faster you grow and the bigger you get, that number should decrease. And we are at 82% already.

Cole: Oh, wow, 82%. That’s great, Jaime.

Jaime: So 82% goes directly back into the mission and we pride ourselves on that.

Cole: Okay, Jaime, let’s back up for a second because you are awesome in diving right into the information. Let’s tell the listeners of Brand Forward in let’s say a 45-second pitch…and I know that’s going to be difficult…but let’s tell how Songs for Sound came about and why you’re doing what you’re doing today.

Jaime: Okay. So I have a deaf child, Lexi, and when she was born…we have so many places along her journey that were completely missed, from new newborn hearing screening to the 10-week screen was inconclusive and we were told she was fine. And to the pediatrician at one year of age when she’s not talking, not responding to loud noises, saying she’s fine. One month later, after I pushed, she was diagnosed at 14 months, just about 14 months she was diagnosed as being profoundly deaf and we had been crying out saying, “Help us.”

The whole point of Songs for Sound though is this, is that I grew up in music. My mom sang gospel music. I would sing to Lexi that first year and I would beg and pray and ask God to let her put her head on my shoulder. And it never happened and I would cry. She would squirm and turn and until she was obviously implanted by cochlear implants at the age of 18 months and suddenly the light comes on…

Cole: Okay, now let’s back up. Not everyone knows what cochlear implants are. So that’s directly in the ear? No?

Jaime: Yeah, so a cochlear implant is a device that’s implanted into the cochlea, and that is the internal part that’s in there for a lifetime. It has electrodes and it attaches to the hearing nerve. And then the external part is called a processor, and she wears that on her head. It’s a magnetic coil that attaches to her head. There’s a magnet under her skin on the implant, magnet attaches on the outside and it sends signals into that implant, which is then sending those signals to the brain.

So we had to teach her how to talk, how to listen, how to hear. We worked a lot with Vanderbilt’s audiologist and speech pathologist in the Mama Lere Hearing School and then a mainstream Pre-K. We mixed all of that together and created this amazing mainstream child who sounds like every other kid.

Cole: That’s great.

Jaime: But I’m rocking her and so the first year and I’d just cry, and I’d hand her to Kevin and I’m like, “Why is she not responding to me?” And so then fast forward to the very first time she did. At 19 months of age, she’s finally hearing. She’s already said, “Mama.” She’s starting to babble finally. Most kids are saying a hundred words and we’re just getting, “Mama.” She flew through her first year, she made up two years of speech, but the moment within that first month that I was rocking her and her head, as I’m singing to her, finally went on my shoulder, it was as if time completely stood still…

Cole: I’m sure.

Jaime: …and I still get choked up talking about it. And so I grew up in this home full of music. Oldies music. I was not allowed to listen to secular music growing up. I was a Southern Baptist home, so it was oldies music, gospel music, but music. And then now I’m married to the younger brother of the lead singer of Rascal Flatts, Gary LeVox.

Cole: Oh, got it.

Jaime: So you’ve put all that together…and we live in Nashville. Come on, we live in Music City. And I thought…about six months into it, I’m reflecting on all of this and God just tapped me and he was like, “What would life be like without the healing power of music? If you couldn’t hear it? If you’re a veteran returning and you couldn’t heal from all of those hurts by song, cranking up the radio? Your parent dies, you can’t hear it? Your grandchildren’s play at school with music or their music performances…”

Cole: We take it all for granted very quickly.

Jaime: Yup. So anyway so that was the inception of Songs for Sound.

Cole: So Jaime, in episode number four, I interviewed Mila Greg at MODA Image and Brand Consulting and we’re talking about…she brings up being intentional with her time. Let’s talk about how your team prepares for an event, what the event looks like, and what a successful outcome looks like.

Jaime: Absolutely. So we have four categories at Songs for Sound. We have our Hear the Music tour, which is music initiatives to raise funds for hearing programs. It’s like the development arm of hearing programs. They’re very underfunded, they don’t have enough resources, so we go in and we partner. The most prominent and growing sector of Songs for Sound is The Hearoes Tour, which is our massive, massive, 38-foot mobile medical mission bus that has free hearing screenings. It provides free hearing protection. It has soundproof booths on the…the new event is actually we’re launching this year, the new experience.

Cole: I’m checking this out on the website. It’s awesome.

Jaime: All of these things. So yeah, it’s amazing. That’s our biggest growing sector and where we pour most of our resources. And then we have our missions, international and domestic missions where we go out and we help people that are completely under-served. And then we have our family program. So within all of those, the biggest events clearly are the Hear the Music events or the Hearoes Tour. Most of that is the Hearoes Tour. Our planning looks very much like me sitting in a room and strategically just jotting down everything from A to Z that could go wrong. I have great partners in Phonak, Cochlear Americas, and then amazing volunteers across the country where…

Cole: That’s great.

Jaime: Yeah. So we sit down and we just look at what is it…if I brought my child onto this experience from A to Z, what would I want?

Cole: Okay, Jaime, let’s back up for two seconds. I’m at Songs for Sound, that’s songsforsound.com, I see an event right here in our backyard in Franklin, Tennessee. I click Purchase Tickets, drop down, so $85…

Jaime: Hear the Music. That’s our annual Nashville event.

Cole: Okay, I see $85 to $10,000. Very, very nice. On the prices under…so you only have two prices under $1,000. What percent of a good show would you say averages more than $1,000 per ticket? Is the place being filled up?

Jaime: So the $1,000 isn’t per ticket, it’s per table.

Cole: Got it.

Jaime: Thousand dollars and up are table sponsorships and that is…basically the coolest thing this year is that we’re doing just what you are, basically a brand concept magazine where we will highlight your brand depending on your giving level. Obviously you get anywhere from a smaller advertisement all the way up to a full-page ad, and everybody will get one of those. It’s a directory and our call to action will be to use this throughout the rest of the year. When you need a service, this is your bible.

Before you go to the Internet, before you go to Google, before you go to…know that this group right here, we want you to make sure that you’re stewarding one another and thanking one another for supporting our amazing mission. So a $1,000 table gets you 10 seats, a $10,000 table gets you 2 tables of 10 plus a million other perks. So it just depends on what giving level. Ninety percent of our event is sponsorships, so sponsor tables. So you typically…anywhere from the 1,000 to 5,000 mark, and then we have probably about 10, sometimes 20%, but usually around 10% are individual ticket buyers, which is your 85, 150 mark.

Cole: Jaime, three takeaways. What are three things you wish everyone knew about Songs for Sound?

Jaime: So number one, that we are absolutely, positively rooted in love and when someone comes to me, it might be towards the end of the year and we have already donated all of our grant money out for the year for a needy family. And an example would be, we had a Marine. He is a Purple Heart recipient and disabled, TDI and some other things going on, and just this amazing family. He has a child with severe autism and he has a child that’s deaf and needed the new cochlear implant processors. They were literally…one did not work, completely broken. The other one kept going in and out. And that’s like a car, those processors have to be upgraded about every five to six years.

Cole: Oh, sure.

Jaime: But his copay was 4,000. He has a very hard time. He can’t work as much as he would like to because of his disability and so his wife works a lot and then he has these kids with special needs. So when he called me, that bucket was empty for the year. We’d given out all of our grants for the year and his copay was 4,000. And he said, “I’ve been to every single non-profit that supposedly helps people like me with kids with hearing loss across the country and I never heard of Songs for Sound. And someone finally told me about you. You’re my last stop. Can you help me?”

And I said, “There’s no way I will ever say no to someone like that.” And so I spent my personal time, that time that doesn’t count, calling and just making things happen and raising that money. And so one month later, I raised four grand, cut the check to him, done deal. And that child is hearing again and thriving and living a normal life. So we’re rooted in love. From the veteran that jumps on our experience and gets his hearing tested and looks in my eyes with big crocodile tears, “You’re telling me I can hear my grandkids again?”

Cole: Right.

Jaime: That is what we do.

Cole: You make the time. That’s right.

Jaime: We restore lives.

Cole: All right, number one. Rooted in love.

Jaime: The second, number two is sustainability. You see a lot of charities out there that do mission work, that go in, they drop off the supplies and they leave. They get pictures with celebrities and they leave. That’s not us at all. Whether it’s our Hearoes Tour, when we go in and test and screen and do all those great things and hand out hearing protection, anyone that fails the screen not only gets a call the very next week, but we also look at their insurance and set them up with an appointment. I partner with a wonderful service that will set them up with an appointment at an audiology facility.

The third thing is now two or three months later, I have now finally a part-time amazing, amazing coworker, Kelly, who is contacting them and just having that conversation. Finding out what is it that, have you done anything about your hearing loss? And if you haven’t, why? And how can we help? And so we’re literally…she’s been on the phone with a sweet woman here in Bellevue who has just not been able to navigate everything. She’s much older. She doesn’t have any family. And so we’ve been walking her through to the right facility and helping her get the coverage that she deserves and even offsetting costs for her. So we’re sustainable and we will always come back and we will always take care of you.

And then the third thing would be that we are truly, truly, truly grassroots. I love the thought of one day that we’re going to be on major networks with media buys, but there’s also something very sweet right now about how we are reaching that same number of people coast to coast…we go into air shows that have 1.7 million people. And one of my go-tos, I literally go in and say, “I want you to give me this space for free for our experience.” It’s like a 40 by 30 experience. So we pull in and I say, “But I also, because we’re going to protect the people at your air show, I also want you give me six announcements per day.” So even if they don’t make it to that bus, I know that my announcement is going to reach people with our awareness messaging.

Cole: How many people will you service in the bus at an event, Jaime?

Jaime: At any given day…so we had a record weekend, we did…those events are pretty much active about six hours per day. So let’s use Jacksonville when everything was really going full-steam ahead about three-fourths into our first proof of concept tour. We did 251 free hearing screenings just in 12 hours. And then this year…that was our proof of concept, it was an 11-week proof of concept where we bounced around and tested markets and just tested the concept…and this year it was so successful.

Eighty-six percent of veterans failed. We had 49% of all adults fail. Thirty-eight percent of teenagers failed. That’s a whole other topic, the prevention and the hearing protection that we passed out and educated folks on proper hearing protection and turning volumes down. And then 20% of just metro kids failed. We haven’t even dove into the rural markets, which we will.

Cole: Those are pretty staggering.

Jaime: We’re launching and we’re doing a full year of touring. Our sponsors all came back in and we’re going to over 200 events.

Cole: Thanks for listening. Subscribe to our podcast today on iTunes. Once you’ve subscribed, text me at 615-775-4227. That’s 615-775-4227. Now back to Brand Forward.

All right, Jaime, you talk about one of the strong suits being grassroots. You on the other side, right? I’ve seen it on the media-buying side and radio and television and outdoor and social media. Let’s talk about Jaime for a second and not what you’ve seen change in Songs for Sounds specifically, but let’s talk about Jaime’s media consumption, okay? So at Brand Forward, we want to talk about your morning, mid-day, and evening media consumption.

Jaime: Okay. So my husband, too, is like, “You’re so strategic to a fault.” And it’s true and it has to be. When you talk about media, whether it’s your professional strategies or your personal strategies, which is what you’re referring to, it has to be intentional. So every day I wake up and you know me, you know me personally and professionally and of course my first go-to is I read the Bible every day. That’s my first go-to but then it shifts into this…I have to put my mind into the entree leader, the person who is driven for everybody else. Everybody’s looking up to us. Right, Cole? They’re looking to use for the answers. So my first go-to is a podcast, like you. That would be the first thing that I do.

Cole: Excellent answer, Jaime. Excellent answer.

Jaime: It is absolutely a podcast and it is very intentional. If I am struggling in this area, I need to go to that podcast. I need to go to your site and I need to look up all of the wonderful podcasts that you’re offering and say, “Okay, what makes sense to me?” Right? “What makes sense to me today? What problem am I solving?”

And then every day before I start my day, unless I’m out and about, but when I’m at my office, every morning I will choose…I think in our world, we all have this level of ADHD, which is why we’re so creative and we’re so high-energy and all of those things, and so I don’t just read a book start to finish in a week. I’m not that person. I’ll spend a year studying a book. So I will literally spend three pages in something that’s very relevant, whether it’s customer service or business strategies or whatever I’m struggling with or really trying to capitalize on, I will spend a significant amount of time studying those three pages to make sure I’m not just reading it, but I’m absorbing it and using it that day.

And then finally like at lunchtime, I will turn on some sort of business television show while I’m making lunch because my office is in my home. Or even on the radio to make sure that I’m always staying abreast of, who’s a new sponsor? Where can I grow our service and our business? Where can I gain new support for the mission? Where can I take this mission to? And then I do end the day just making sure that I’m following up in a great magazine that can just continue to inspire me. So it is intentional, but I also make sure that I’m diversified in my media consumption strategies as well.

Cole: How many people would you say that you’ve helped total, as of today? If you had to say how many…

Jaime: Oh my gosh. I mean we did almost 2,000 free hearing screenings in just 11 weeks. And like I said, 86% of veterans failed. I could give you numbers all day long. We have intentionally and physically touched thousands, to be honest. Thousands.

Cole: Fifty thousand?

Jaime: I mean, thousands. If you were talking about the people that we’ve touched, the lives that we touched, like hands-on helped their lives, we’re talking 5,000-plus. If you’re talking about the people we’ve reached through our awareness, you’re upwards of 500,000-plus. We’ve done tons of radio. We’ve done tons of television. We’ve done tons of announcements at air shows. We’ve done 25 million-plus impressions with our vehicle traveling the country. So it’s very hard to quantify awareness.

Cole: Traveling a 38-foot bus across this country, running the great Heroes Tour, servicing tens of thousands of people across this country, and raising money for hearing awareness. Jaime Vernon, thank you for moving your brand forward.

Jaime: Thank you so much, Cole, for having me.

The post Cochlear Implants, A Tour Bus & Managing a Growing Non Profit #6 appeared first on Good People Creative.

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Jaime Vernon is the CEO of Songs for Sound. Listen to her story about what happened to her daughter and what’s she doing about it with a 38′ tour bus.

Brand Forward The Marketing Podcast

Jaime Vernon and Cole Evans sit down to discuss her 38′ tour bus, managing a growing non-profit and raising serious awareness for the hearing impaired.

Cole: We’re here today with Jaime Vernon. Jaime is the founder and director of Songs for Sound. Jaime’s responsible for developing objectives and execution tracking and retaining, growing the donor base. She oversees all aspects of planning, marketing, event management. Jaime, let’s just be serious. You do it all, right?

Jaime: Don’t remind me, but yes, I do.

Colet: All of the event and social campaigns for their major event Hear the Music and Hearoes Tour. Jaime, thank you so much for being with us today.

Jaime: Oh my goodness, thank you. This is exciting. Any time we can reach new people and partner with not only Cole but good people, I’m so excited. Thank you.

Cole: Awesome. Well, look, we’re just going to dive right in. I’ve got a lot of things to go through and we’ve got a timer against us. So how does Songs for Sound make money? In this world of 501(c)(3)s, everyone’s a non-profit. I’ve got clients that are on a regular basis being asked to give to charity, asked to give to charity, and the very number one thing is how much is going to operations versus the actual charity? So talk about that for a second.

Jaime: Absolutely. So this is a second passion of mine recently is that there’s so much in the media right now that is somewhat negative on certain larger charities, and one thing that we pride ourselves on is that we’re very organic. So the history of non-profits is that the larger you are, the better that percentage should get. And the smaller you are, often it’s a larger percentage. So I preface this because we are actually in a percentage that’s closer to the larger non-profits, yet up until about two weeks ago, I’ve been a staff of one for six years. And that’s completely unheard of.

So we are 100% donations, sponsorships, and grants. And what I’ve learned in the first five years of this non-profit is that you just really have to diversify that. Don’t put yourself all in the grant bucket because that may not continue. And don’t put yourself all in the annual giving. And don’t put yourself all in the sponsorships. So we really have diversified and come up with a great strategy in that…we being myself and one of my board of directors.

The other thing is that we have reached…so typically our size, you see around about 70-75% efficiency. You never want to go below 70% or the IRS is knocking on your door, so that would mean that 30% is spent on overhead and 70% is tossed back into the mission. And then like I said, the faster you grow and the bigger you get, that number should decrease. And we are at 82% already.

Cole: Oh, wow, 82%. That’s great, Jaime.

Jaime: So 82% goes directly back into the mission and we pride ourselves on that.

Cole: Okay, Jaime, let’s back up for a second because you are awesome in diving right into the information. Let’s tell the listeners of Brand Forward in let’s say a 45-second pitch…and I know that’s going to be difficult…but let’s tell how Songs for Sound came about and why you’re doing what you’re doing today.

Jaime: Okay. So I have a deaf child, Lexi, and when she was born…we have so many places along her journey that were completely missed, from new newborn hearing screening to the 10-week screen was inconclusive and we were told she was fine. And to the pediatrician at one year of age when she’s not talking, not responding to loud noises, saying she’s fine. One month later, after I pushed, she was diagnosed at 14 months, just about 14 months she was diagnosed as being profoundly deaf and we had been crying out saying, “Help us.”

The whole point of Songs for Sound though is this, is that I grew up in music. My mom sang gospel music. I would sing to Lexi that first year and I would beg and pray and ask God to let her put her head on my shoulder. And it never happened and I would cry. She would squirm and turn and until she was obviously implanted by cochlear implants at the age of 18 months and suddenly the light comes on…

Cole: Okay, now let’s back up. Not everyone knows what cochlear implants are. So that’s directly in the ear? No?

Jaime: Yeah, so a cochlear implant is a device that’s implanted into the cochlea, and that is the internal part that’s in there for a lifetime. It has electrodes and it attaches to the hearing nerve. And then the external part is called a processor, and she wears that on her head. It’s a magnetic coil that attaches to her head. There’s a magnet under her skin on the implant, magnet attaches on the outside and it sends signals into that implant, which is then sending those signals to the brain.

So we had to teach her how to talk, how to listen, how to hear. We worked a lot with Vanderbilt’s audiologist and speech pathologist in the Mama Lere Hearing School and then a mainstream Pre-K. We mixed all of that together and created this amazing mainstream child who sounds like every other kid.

Cole: That’s great.

Jaime: But I’m rocking her and so the first year and I’d just cry, and I’d hand her to Kevin and I’m like, “Why is she not responding to me?” And so then fast forward to the very first time she did. At 19 months of age, she’s finally hearing. She’s already said, “Mama.” She’s starting to babble finally. Most kids are saying a hundred words and we’re just getting, “Mama.” She flew through her first year, she made up two years of speech, but the moment within that first month that I was rocking her and her head, as I’m singing to her, finally went on my shoulder, it was as if time completely stood still…

Cole: I’m sure.

Jaime: …and I still get choked up talking about it. And so I grew up in this home full of music. Oldies music. I was not allowed to listen to secular music growing up. I was a Southern Baptist home, so it was oldies music, gospel music, but music. And then now I’m married to the younger brother of the lead singer of Rascal Flatts, Gary LeVox.

Cole: Oh, got it.

Jaime: So you’ve put all that together…and we live in Nashville. Come on, we live in Music City. And I thought…about six months into it, I’m reflecting on all of this and God just tapped me and he was like, “What would life be like without the healing power of music? If you couldn’t hear it? If you’re a veteran returning and you couldn’t heal from all of those hurts by song, cranking up the radio? Your parent dies, you can’t hear it? Your grandchildren’s play at school with music or their music performances…”

Cole: We take it all for granted very quickly.

Jaime: Yup. So anyway so that was the inception of Songs for Sound.

Cole: So Jaime, in episode number four, I interviewed Mila Greg at MODA Image and Brand Consulting and we’re talking about…she brings up being intentional with her time. Let’s talk about how your team prepares for an event, what the event looks like, and what a successful outcome looks like.

Jaime: Absolutely. So we have four categories at Songs for Sound. We have our Hear the Music tour, which is music initiatives to raise funds for hearing programs. It’s like the development arm of hearing programs. They’re very underfunded, they don’t have enough resources, so we go in and we partner. The most prominent and growing sector of Songs for Sound is The Hearoes Tour, which is our massive, massive, 38-foot mobile medical mission bus that has free hearing screenings. It provides free hearing protection. It has soundproof booths on the…the new event is actually we’re launching this year, the new experience.

Cole: I’m checking this out on the website. It’s awesome.

Jaime: All of these things. So yeah, it’s amazing. That’s our biggest growing sector and where we pour most of our resources. And then we have our missions, international and domestic missions where we go out and we help people that are completely under-served. And then we have our family program. So within all of those, the biggest events clearly are the Hear the Music events or the Hearoes Tour. Most of that is the Hearoes Tour. Our planning looks very much like me sitting in a room and strategically just jotting down everything from A to Z that could go wrong. I have great partners in Phonak, Cochlear Americas, and then amazing volunteers across the country where…

Cole: That’s great.

Jaime: Yeah. So we sit down and we just look at what is it…if I brought my child onto this experience from A to Z, what would I want?

Cole: Okay, Jaime, let’s back up for two seconds. I’m at Songs for Sound, that’s songsforsound.com, I see an event right here in our backyard in Franklin, Tennessee. I click Purchase Tickets, drop down, so $85…

Jaime: Hear the Music. That’s our annual Nashville event.

Cole: Okay, I see $85 to $10,000. Very, very nice. On the prices under…so you only have two prices under $1,000. What percent of a good show would you say averages more than $1,000 per ticket? Is the place being filled up?

Jaime: So the $1,000 isn’t per ticket, it’s per table.

Cole: Got it.

Jaime: Thousand dollars and up are table sponsorships and that is…basically the coolest thing this year is that we’re doing just what you are, basically a brand concept magazine where we will highlight your brand depending on your giving level. Obviously you get anywhere from a smaller advertisement all the way up to a full-page ad, and everybody will get one of those. It’s a directory and our call to action will be to use this throughout the rest of the year. When you need a service, this is your bible.

Before you go to the Internet, before you go to Google, before you go to…know that this group right here, we want you to make sure that you’re stewarding one another and thanking one another for supporting our amazing mission. So a $1,000 table gets you 10 seats, a $10,000 table gets you 2 tables of 10 plus a million other perks. So it just depends on what giving level. Ninety percent of our event is sponsorships, so sponsor tables. So you typically…anywhere from the 1,000 to 5,000 mark, and then we have probably about 10, sometimes 20%, but usually around 10% are individual ticket buyers, which is your 85, 150 mark.

Cole: Jaime, three takeaways. What are three things you wish everyone knew about Songs for Sound?

Jaime: So number one, that we are absolutely, positively rooted in love and when someone comes to me, it might be towards the end of the year and we have already donated all of our grant money out for the year for a needy family. And an example would be, we had a Marine. He is a Purple Heart recipient and disabled, TDI and some other things going on, and just this amazing family. He has a child with severe autism and he has a child that’s deaf and needed the new cochlear implant processors. They were literally…one did not work, completely broken. The other one kept going in and out. And that’s like a car, those processors have to be upgraded about every five to six years.

Cole: Oh, sure.

Jaime: But his copay was 4,000. He has a very hard time. He can’t work as much as he would like to because of his disability and so his wife works a lot and then he has these kids with special needs. So when he called me, that bucket was empty for the year. We’d given out all of our grants for the year and his copay was 4,000. And he said, “I’ve been to every single non-profit that supposedly helps people like me with kids with hearing loss across the country and I never heard of Songs for Sound. And someone finally told me about you. You’re my last stop. Can you help me?”

And I said, “There’s no way I will ever say no to someone like that.” And so I spent my personal time, that time that doesn’t count, calling and just making things happen and raising that money. And so one month later, I raised four grand, cut the check to him, done deal. And that child is hearing again and thriving and living a normal life. So we’re rooted in love. From the veteran that jumps on our experience and gets his hearing tested and looks in my eyes with big crocodile tears, “You’re telling me I can hear my grandkids again?”

Cole: Right.

Jaime: That is what we do.

Cole: You make the time. That’s right.

Jaime: We restore lives.

Cole: All right, number one. Rooted in love.

Jaime: The second, number two is sustainability. You see a lot of charities out there that do mission work, that go in, they drop off the supplies and they leave. They get pictures with celebrities and they leave. That’s not us at all. Whether it’s our Hearoes Tour, when we go in and test and screen and do all those great things and hand out hearing protection, anyone that fails the screen not only gets a call the very next week, but we also look at their insurance and set them up with an appointment. I partner with a wonderful service that will set them up with an appointment at an audiology facility.

The third thing is now two or three months later, I have now finally a part-time amazing, amazing coworker, Kelly, who is contacting them and just having that conversation. Finding out what is it that, have you done anything about your hearing loss? And if you haven’t, why? And how can we help? And so we’re literally…she’s been on the phone with a sweet woman here in Bellevue who has just not been able to navigate everything. She’s much older. She doesn’t have any family. And so we’ve been walking her through to the right facility and helping her get the coverage that she deserves and even offsetting costs for her. So we’re sustainable and we will always come back and we will always take care of you.

And then the third thing would be that we are truly, truly, truly grassroots. I love the thought of one day that we’re going to be on major networks with media buys, but there’s also something very sweet right now about how we are reaching that same number of people coast to coast…we go into air shows that have 1.7 million people. And one of my go-tos, I literally go in and say, “I want you to give me this space for free for our experience.” It’s like a 40 by 30 experience. So we pull in and I say, “But I also, because we’re going to protect the people at your air show, I also want you give me six announcements per day.” So even if they don’t make it to that bus, I know that my announcement is going to reach people with our awareness messaging.

Cole: How many people will you service in the bus at an event, Jaime?

Jaime: At any given day…so we had a record weekend, we did…those events are pretty much active about six hours per day. So let’s use Jacksonville when everything was really going full-steam ahead about three-fourths into our first proof of concept tour. We did 251 free hearing screenings just in 12 hours. And then this year…that was our proof of concept, it was an 11-week proof of concept where we bounced around and tested markets and just tested the concept…and this year it was so successful.

Eighty-six percent of veterans failed. We had 49% of all adults fail. Thirty-eight percent of teenagers failed. That’s a whole other topic, the prevention and the hearing protection that we passed out and educated folks on proper hearing protection and turning volumes down. And then 20% of just metro kids failed. We haven’t even dove into the rural markets, which we will.

Cole: Those are pretty staggering.

Jaime: We’re launching and we’re doing a full year of touring. Our sponsors all came back in and we’re going to over 200 events.

Cole: Thanks for listening. Subscribe to our podcast today on iTunes. Once you’ve subscribed, text me at 615-775-4227. That’s 615-775-4227. Now back to Brand Forward.

All right, Jaime, you talk about one of the strong suits being grassroots. You on the other side, right? I’ve seen it on the media-buying side and radio and television and outdoor and social media. Let’s talk about Jaime for a second and not what you’ve seen change in Songs for Sounds specifically, but let’s talk about Jaime’s media consumption, okay? So at Brand Forward, we want to talk about your morning, mid-day, and evening media consumption.

Jaime: Okay. So my husband, too, is like, “You’re so strategic to a fault.” And it’s true and it has to be. When you talk about media, whether it’s your professional strategies or your personal strategies, which is what you’re referring to, it has to be intentional. So every day I wake up and you know me, you know me personally and professionally and of course my first go-to is I read the Bible every day. That’s my first go-to but then it shifts into this…I have to put my mind into the entree leader, the person who is driven for everybody else. Everybody’s looking up to us. Right, Cole? They’re looking to use for the answers. So my first go-to is a podcast, like you. That would be the first thing that I do.

Cole: Excellent answer, Jaime. Excellent answer.

Jaime: It is absolutely a podcast and it is very intentional. If I am struggling in this area, I need to go to that podcast. I need to go to your site and I need to look up all of the wonderful podcasts that you’re offering and say, “Okay, what makes sense to me?” Right? “What makes sense to me today? What problem am I solving?”

And then every day before I start my day, unless I’m out and about, but when I’m at my office, every morning I will choose…I think in our world, we all have this level of ADHD, which is why we’re so creative and we’re so high-energy and all of those things, and so I don’t just read a book start to finish in a week. I’m not that person. I’ll spend a year studying a book. So I will literally spend three pages in something that’s very relevant, whether it’s customer service or business strategies or whatever I’m struggling with or really trying to capitalize on, I will spend a significant amount of time studying those three pages to make sure I’m not just reading it, but I’m absorbing it and using it that day.

And then finally like at lunchtime, I will turn on some sort of business television show while I’m making lunch because my office is in my home. Or even on the radio to make sure that I’m always staying abreast of, who’s a new sponsor? Where can I grow our service and our business? Where can I gain new support for the mission? Where can I take this mission to? And then I do end the day just making sure that I’m following up in a great magazine that can just continue to inspire me. So it is intentional, but I also make sure that I’m diversified in my media consumption strategies as well.

Cole: How many people would you say that you’ve helped total, as of today? If you had to say how many…

Jaime: Oh my gosh. I mean we did almost 2,000 free hearing screenings in just 11 weeks. And like I said, 86% of veterans failed. I could give you numbers all day long. We have intentionally and physically touched thousands, to be honest. Thousands.

Cole: Fifty thousand?

Jaime: I mean, thousands. If you were talking about the people that we’ve touched, the lives that we touched, like hands-on helped their lives, we’re talking 5,000-plus. If you’re talking about the people we’ve reached through our awareness, you’re upwards of 500,000-plus. We’ve done tons of radio. We’ve done tons of television. We’ve done tons of announcements at air shows. We’ve done 25 million-plus impressions with our vehicle traveling the country. So it’s very hard to quantify awareness.

Cole: Traveling a 38-foot bus across this country, running the great Heroes Tour, servicing tens of thousands of people across this country, and raising money for hearing awareness. Jaime Vernon, thank you for moving your brand forward.

Jaime: Thank you so much, Cole, for having me.

The post Cochlear Implants, A Tour Bus & Managing a Growing Non Profit #6 appeared first on Good People Creative.

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