Enduring Hearts: Making the Gift of Life Last a Lifetime

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Carolyn Salvador  0:00  

We serve children and they’ve had a heart transplant and Enduring Hearts funds pediatric heart transplants across the globe to try to make that precious new gift of life last a lifetime. What a lot of people probably don’t know is that right now, on average, a heart transplant only lasts around 17 years. And so that’s pretty tragic. A child getting a heart transplant at one or two, 17 years is really not a full life. So Enduring Hearts was actually founded with the mission to make it last a lifetime and actually started by entrepreneurs.

 

Richard Matthews  0:40  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers, and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what, I can fix that I can help people, I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money, and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

 

Richard Matthews  1:36  

Welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. And today, I’m live on the line with Carolyn Salvador, Carolyn are you there? 

 

Carolyn Salvador  1:41  

I am Richard, thank you so much for having me. Y

 

Richard Matthews  1:45  

Yeah, thanks for coming on. So where are you calling in from today?

 

Carolyn Salvador  1:48  

Today I’m calling in from wonderful not so sunny Key Largo, Florida.

 

Richard Matthews  1:54  

Key Largo we haven’t been down there yet. Key Largo is an island at the bottom of the keys, right?

 

Carolyn Salvador  1:58  

Yes, it’s the first Key in the stream of the Keys.

 

Richard Matthews  2:02  

Yeah, so we were there last year. We went and visited Key Largo and Islamorolada I believe, I’m not sure if I’m saying that right. 

 

Carolyn Salvador  2:09  

You’re butchering it, but it’s fine. 

 

Richard Matthews  2:10  

We have to go visit that on our next travels.

 

Carolyn Salvador  2:12  

 

Islamorada.

 

Richard Matthews  2:15  

 

 Islamorada, I was close. We got to snorkeling there, it’s super fun anyway.

 

Carolyn Salvador  2:20  

Yeah, no, it’s wonderful. We’re staying down here for a little while before heading back to Atlanta, which is where Enduring Hearts is headquartered.

 

Richard Matthews  2:29  

Nice. Yeah. So for those of you who have been following along with my wife and I’s travels. We’re currently in South Carolina, we’re on our way back down to Florida. We’re hoping to get into Fiesta Key, I believe later this year, we’ll see if we can get down there or not. But anyway, what I want to do to get started is just go through a very brief introduction of who you are, and then we’ll get into your story. So Carolyn Salvador, you are the Chief Executive Officer of Enduring Hearts Incorporated. And what I want to find out from you is what is it that Enduring Hearts does? Who do you serve?

 

Carolyn Salvador  3:02  

We serve children that had a heart transplant and Enduring Hearts funds pediatric heart transplants across the globe, to try to make that precious new gift of life last a lifetime. But what a lot of people probably don’t know is that right now, on average, a heart transplant only lasts around 17 years. And so it’s pretty tragic. A child getting a heart transplant at one or two, 17 years is not really a full life. So Enduring Hearts is actually founded with the mission to make it last a lifetime and actually started by entrepreneurs.

 

Richard Matthews  3:42  

So I didn’t know that about hearts, that they only last 17 years, how do you guys help to extend the life of the heart? Are you actually trying to make the heart last longer? Or are you trying to make it so they can get another transplant? How do you actually accomplish that goal?

 

Carolyn Salvador  3:56  

That is a fantastic question. So we’re doing that by funding research to be able to extend what’s called heart longevity. But there’s actually a lot of different ways that we attack it all through research. But primarily right now, when our own bodies receive something that’s not ours. Our bodies are wonderful white blood cells go hey, not me, let me attack it, Right? And so they start almost fighting this through drugs to kind of stop our body from rejecting it. So organ rejection, if you do is the foe. So we’re always fighting and trying to keep organ rejection at bay with these immunosuppressant drugs. So we find lots of research in order to detect organ rejection sooner, find better ways to detect it because sometimes organ rejection looks like a stomach cold or It looks like a common cold. And then the only way right now that we really have to detect it is to go in and put a child under anesthesia and go into the cath lab and take a piece of their heart and then put it under a microscope and then kind of score and graded. And that’s really imperfect. And without getting into too much science, it’s really imperfect, and then tried to treat it. And for some types of organ rejection, there are even no treatments for it. So we work on the science of immunology to give them better drugs and treatments. We work on the technology piece of how do we use blood biomarkers to detect it. So we’re not taking that piece of the heart. And then you talked about, well, can we just give them another heart? There are even pieces of bioengineering, we’re looking at maybe one day there could be something called xenotransplantation like there’s just not enough hearts. So is there a way 50% of children die on the waiting list. So maybe there’s a way to have other hearts in the pipeline. Because most children don’t get a second chance, or I shouldn’t say the third chance for another heart transplant because there aren’t enough hearts to go around, even with the first transplant. 

 

Richard Matthews  6:02  

So just out of curiosity, are you guys also doing research in the regenerative medicine space where they’re talking about growing hearts in a petri dish from stem cells from the child? 

 

Carolyn Salvador  6:15  

So we are looking at funding different stem cell research, but we’re starting with a type of stem cell that looks at not necessarily the whole heart, you have to kind of start with maybe some of the pieces of it. So we actually have a model that is using stem cells to kind of recreate the veins of the heart and mimic rejection so that we can kind of study what this very insidious type of rejection looks like. And the field is looking at that. How do we use them for patches on the heart? So it’s in the beginning stages of it. They’re looking at different animal hearts to see. Are there tissues that we can use from baboons or other animals to use without going into all the animal pieces? But there’s definitely a lot of science around how do we increase the supply of hearts? And if you think about it, Richard, Do you have children? 

 

Richard Matthews  7:17  

I have four of them. Yeah. 

 

Carolyn Salvador  7:18  

Oh, my goodness, four children. I have two children, they’re in their 20’s now, but I never as a parent, when my children were young really thought about what would happen about making my children organ donors, and you have to really think about that. And that’s in the worst moment of a parent’s life. Those parents did something just so selfless and gave up their organs for another child to have that chance. So that is so incredible. But that supply is so limited. So we really have to try to make that first heart last. And Enduring Hearts is the only organization that’s dedicated solely to doing that. There are lots of great organizations that focus on the heart. But we’re the only ones that are really solving that problem for these young children.

 

Richard Matthews  8:13  

So my next sort of question on that then is are you guys physically doing the research under your umbrella, or you guys doing the funding of the research or both?

 

Carolyn Salvador  8:27  

We have a scientific advisory committee team that basically curates all of our research, and they’re the best and the brightest, but they’re from all over different institutions from all over North America. We even have a researcher from Alberta, Canada, that’s part of our team. We have research that comes into us again, from all over the world. We just funded a study in Germany, and Enduring Hearts doesn’t have one lab, so it’s not being done in our Enduring Hearts lab. It’s being done wherever great research is. So far, we’ve been around since 2013, funded our first study in 14, I think we’re up to about 45 different research studies, funded at Harvard, Stanford, Calgary, Germany. So wherever again, the best research is our team. We have about 12-13 doctors that are on our scientific advisory committee team. They’re the ones that determine these are the target areas that will make the biggest impact. And then when all the studies come in, they will peer review and score all of the different scientific studies. And then we will determine which ones we can fund based upon funding and also based upon impact and significance to a child’s transplant longevity.

 

Richard Matthews  9:43  

Makes a lot of sense. So from a business standpoint, how do you guys go about generating the revenue required to fund the studies?

 

Carolyn Salvador  9:53  

We are a 501(c)(3) which is a public charity. So that’s just tax determination, but that also means that we need to get public funds. We can’t rely on one family donor just to strike a big check. So it’s really hard work. We started in Atlanta out of a family that thought they had two healthy children. There was a family vacation during Disney and their youngest daughter went into heart failure, basically, in a magical place in the world. And she was rushed to the hospital kind of fast forward, they’re told she needed a transplant. And when they found out it wasn’t a cure, they basically started the charity to do something about it. So I say that because they could have at that point in time, he had just sold a business, he had money to get the very best care for his daughter. And he could have just stopped there and taken care of his daughter. But he decided to create this public charity because he knew at that point in time, which was 2013, a transplant would only last around 11 years. And so he knew to be able to really do more good in the world, and really be able to impact his daughter’s life and kids like or he needed to get a lot of people aware of the charity aware of that need and be able to get a lot of donors. The long answer to your question is we get public money. So we do fundraisers, we try to create awareness by getting our message out there. We leverage pockets of heart families to be able to help us spread the mission, social media, events, some grants to institutions, but it’s really public awareness and public donation.

 

Richard Matthews  11:43  

Interesting, so when you say public funds, does that mean it has to come from government funding? Or does that mean like, could I donate to the organization? What does that mean?

 

Carolyn Salvador  11:52  

Yeah, that’s a great question. It means the general public, we don’t get any government funding. So it’s the general public and being the type of charity donation again, it’s a business. So it’s just the US government says if you were a public charity, you need to get so much money. So much of your donation has to come from so many people, you can’t have one big donor, because then it becomes a foundation. So we’re a public charity. So it means that we have to get lots of people donating amounts to us, it could be $10, it can be $100, it can be $10,000, it can be a lot more, that’d be great. But we need to get a wide breadth of people donating to the charity to have that what’s called public support.

 

Richard Matthews  12:37  

So when you guys are actually looking at building the charity. Do you guys build it the same way an entrepreneur builds a normal business, but instead of selling a product or service, you guys are selling the need to donate?

 

Carolyn Salvador  12:49  

We’re selling you get nothing for it, except for the feeling really great about making an impact. And so we go through all that as a CEO, I’m running this organization. I think I shared with you before we got started, I’ve owned several businesses, and I’m doing the same things. I have marketing, I think about my marketing plans, I think about my brand, I think about my messaging, think about how that looks, what the channels of my marketing are, how do I execute that? Think about my pipeline of my sales, if you will, right? You think about what’s coming in, what’s going out, those are my donors. What are the events? What’s the calendar? You do budgeting, planning, forecasting, it’s really the same except for, we’re relying on people and goodwill. And we have to make sure that we’re really doing a good job of communicating our impact. And then there are other nuances which are even more incredible because, with a nonprofit and business, it’s your own profit, you’re a small business owner or large business owner, and you’re trying to improve your bottom line, you want to be able to, of course, lower your expenses to be able to enhance your bottom line, I guess, the same kind of principle, except that within the charity, when there’s optics of donors coming in looking, they want to make sure that the lion’s share of the money that you raise is going toward what’s called your research and your programs. And so we have our research, and we have family programs, and our family programs, and we do gas cards for families that have heart transplants, and temporary food programs for them, and some other support programs. So all that combined needs to equal or have a certain percentage of our money. So we try to get somewhere between 75 and 85% of all the money raised are all our expenses that go toward that bucket, which means that all of your operation costs and everything else have to be really lean and mean. So it’s kind of hard because you’re kind of like a duck paddling underwater when the duck’s legs are going really fast. It’s like thinking about when you’re operating in a start-up company when you don’t have that big startup money coming in, you’re trying to operate lean. So you can kind of make some profit which is the same thing, you’re always in that a lot of nonprofits operate in that lean mode when you’re a public charity, because you know that that’s really important for donors, because you don’t want to give it to someone that’s not really mindful of that bottom line, because it is about bringing your mission out there in the world and improving the life. For us, improving the lives of those children.

 

Richard Matthews  15:27  

Yeah, it’s like one of the things that we talked about a lot with our business, and some of the coaching places that I’m in is, you’re targeting that 28 to 30% margin, where the rest of the money is all going to essentially your cost of goods, your labor costs, energy costs, all of that your cost of goods is the research and the actual programs. And so the whole business needs to be operated on what’s left.

 

Carolyn Salvador  15:55  

Exactly, and we’re growing charity, which is exciting, we have grown tremendously. I think our revenues quadrupled over the past four years. And that’s great because we need to do that in order to make the transplant last. So we’ve created partnerships with different organizations to be able to co-fund grants, and we’re trying to kind of leverage every dollar we can. So that we can get others to come alongside of us and fund the research. Because as I said, when we started, there’s not anyone else focusing on it. So if we can get others, that’s great, kind of be the Pied Piper in it.

 

Richard Matthews  16:33  

So you talked a little bit already about your origin story. And how the charity got started. What I want to talk about next is, as the CEO, is your superpowers that you bring to the business. We talk about this all the time, every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by a genius intellect or the ability to call on Thunder or super strength. In the real world heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is a skill or a set of skills that you’re either born with, or you developed over time that really energizes all of the other skills, and the superpower is what sets you apart and allows you to help other people slay their villains, or in this case, make the hearts last longer for children. And the way I like my guests to think about it is if you look at all the skills you’ve developed over time, you probably have a common thread that ties all those skills together. And that’s probably where your superpower is found. So what do you think your superpower is that you bring to bear on this charity?

 

Carolyn Salvador  17:30  

Well, when I think about this, that’s kind of a hard self-reflection. You put me on the spot, okay. I know that I have a lot of energy and passion around the mission. And throughout my career, I am a very action-oriented kind of person. And so I think I bring a lot of energy to this role. And because I’m such a go-getter, if you will. I bring a lot of enthusiasm about the mission, I get a lot of people to kind of come alongside of me and get excited, and become what I call evangelical about the cause. Because they can kind of feed off of my energy and my actions. And so I think throughout my career, I’ve been able to activate people around me and get them to become passionate about the things that are important. And so I think of my superpower, someone told me, I’m able to get people to walk across the bridge, I’m able to get people to collaborate and to get people to engage and be excited about things because they can see my vision. I’m very visionary. So I think that’s between that and the energy that I bring because I have a lot of tornadic activity around me. And so I think those are the two things that get people pretty pumped up about what’s going on.

 

Richard Matthews  18:58  

The follow-up question I have for that, after hearing you say it’s the mission and having the energy and the passion for the mission, give it a read. I think it’s the book, Good to Great. They talk about that in the book. 

 

Carolyn Salvador  19:12  

I’m reading that. 

 

Richard Matthews  19:14  

Yeah, that getting everyone in the company, everyone in the organization to buy into the mission is one of the things that separates a good company from a great company, or I would assume a good charity from a great charity. So as the CEO, how do you work on getting the people who are working for the organization to buy into the mission with the same level of passion that you have? 

 

Carolyn Salvador  19:36  

So there are two different stakeholders. I have people working truly the kind of employees working and then there’s the board of directors who are the volunteers that are working, so I can address both the people working for the charity, two of them have been working with me for 8 to 10 years. Before I worked for this charity, they worked for me in a past charity. And there’s a theme, we’ve been champions of children. So I know that about myself, and so to be a champion for the underdog, if you will. And so I think it’s an easy sell, right? Because no one wants to see a sick child. And because we’re the only ones. And I think always being in touch with the mission and never getting too far away from it. And so whether it’s my team, or whether it’s the board, I’m always making sure that I go back, whether it’s a board moment or a board meeting that we reflect on why we’re doing it. And getting back to the WHY. And so it’s having a mission moment, or putting that back in it. And remembering the WHY. And sometimes when I’ll be in a meeting and it’s very tactical, or I’m not getting a lot of engagement, I’ll come off of a meeting and go, well, that kind of didn’t go the way I want, or it didn’t get a lot of engagement, I have to then reflect well, we didn’t talk about the WHY again. So I know that making sure that I put the WHY on top of everything. And whether that’s putting in an interview with the family or putting the child’s face or telling the story, or getting them to emote. And once you hear that, then you’re refocused, then it’s not oh, a board member that’s sitting for an hour and a half away from their desk, and they’re really checking their phone. Or it’s like you’re making a difference. Like, this is why these kids are in a race against time. Because if a transplant lasts 17 years, that clock is ticking. And if we’re the only ones doing it, what are we doing, like we’ve got to leave, this is highly motivational. So if you’re not motivated by sick children dying, then you shouldn’t be on this board. And so we’ve got to do something. And so everyone is motivated. And just refocusing that energy around WHY. And so it’s just putting it back in the top of focus.

 

Richard Matthews  22:15  

It’s key for every organization is learning how to do that. You have such an emotive mission, that it just strikes right at the heart for people.

 

Carolyn Salvador  22:30  

Yeah, I don’t have to work that hard about it, I just have to remind us again, it’s not something special, I’m not creating it, it’s really there. And behind the scenes of our family programs, we get an email, we deal with 25 to 30 transplant hospitals across the US. We have these programs that are ongoing, and a family will apply for a gas card, and then we’ll get an email back from a social worker, and it will be, sorry, please take Samantha so and so off the list, because they died, and my whole office will erupt in tears, or there’s a family that we’re interacting with on social media, and there is a little child that passed away, several weeks ago and cries thinking about that. And we all were following this little girl and feisty Phoebe and we’ve been engaging with this family for gonna cry for a year. And she was a couple of weeks after her one-year heart transplant, and she died. And these are not statistics, they are not numbers. These are children and families. And I think it’s highly motivational for us all.

 

Richard Matthews  22:34  

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s got to be rough to be dealing with something that’s both motivational and also it’s hard, it’s heavy that every time you have a child that passes away, that you guys have been working with and helping it’s like we have to get back to work because it can feel like a failure.

 

Carolyn Salvador  24:15  

It is tough. Sometimes I’m like, I just don’t like my job today. I don’t like it, I will cry with my husband and say, why am I doing this? This is really tough. But I know why I’m doing it. Because I’m kind of a firm believer sometimes, God gives you what you can handle, I think being too spiritual, but I think there’s a reason I’m doing this. I’ve been a kid Crusader for a long time. It’s been in my blood for a very, very long time. I owned a large licensed childcare center with 200 children and 30 teachers. So I’m certainly passionate about trying to help children that this has got, I think the ultimate challenge for me.

 

Richard Matthews  25:07  

Yeah, so I want to talk about the flip side of your superpower. So if your superpower is getting your team and organization to buy into that mission and continue to fight for it, the flip side of superpower is the fatal flaw. So just like every Superman has this kryptonite or Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably have a flaw that’s held you back in growing your charity, something that you struggled with, for me, it was a couple of things. I struggled with perfectionism early in my career, it kept me from actually shipping products, getting things to market, I also struggled with a lack of self-care, mostly. And then I didn’t have good boundaries with my clients and I would answer the phone in the wee hours of the night and work till I die. But I think more important than what the flaw is, is how have you worked to overcome it so you can continue to grow and serve your organization’s mission?

 

Carolyn Salvador  25:56  

Oh, so for me personally, I don’t know that I have overcome it. But I am trying. So I think my kryptonite is to slow down. So I am trying to be still or slowing down is my continuous challenge. Because I have very high standards. And I move very quickly, I think quickly. And so I’m trying to be very mindful of the others that may not move at mach five speed or 10 whatever I am going at the day. And I do have to remind myself, I just met with my team yesterday. And we joke about it, but I have to remind myself, like when I’m doing written communication to go back and give salutations, or when I’m texting, hi, good morning, how are you? It’s not that I don’t love the people, but I’m already in the mode of like, no, let me just make sure I go back and humanize everything I’m doing because I get into that business mode of just full throttle. So I think doing that, for me, it’s being able to and also trying to figure out how to turn it off. Because if a board member emails me at 10 o’clock at night, I happen to have my laptop on my legs, which I often do, I’m gonna respond to it. So I can’t say that I’ve overcome it, but I’m trying.

 

Richard Matthews  27:23  

I know I have the same kind of thing going when I get into work mode, I have to remember, like, because I have four young children, they’re all like 12, and younger, all the way down to two. And I work at home, so I can be here with them and hang out with them to do things. But I have to work on being able to transition from work mode, Richard, to dad, Richard very quickly. 

 

Carolyn Salvador  27:46  

To work and have boundaries.

 

Richard Matthews  27:49  

Yeah, It’s hard to have boundaries, those kinds of things, and realize, like, I don’t want to be mean to them. And the whole thing like you talked about humanizing your communications. And it’s like, the same kind of thing where, if I’m in work mode, I’m very quick, I’m very blunt, and I’m very short because I’ve got things I have to get done. And my son will come and want to tell me something and I’m here, I want to listen to it. But at the same time, I’m like, I’ll be blunt with him, oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be blunt. It’s like I actually do care about what you’re doing. But I have to make that transition.

 

Carolyn Salvador  28:19  

It’s funny, I get like that. One of the things that, for me, helps is because we work remotely, then we have an office that we go to, but I often don’t go to the office because then I don’t get my work done. And everyone is talking to me, that sounds horrible. So I have to make sure that I have that balance of going in and saying for half a day, I am yours, I will sit in the middle of the office and you can just ask me every question. But if I go into the office thinking I’m going to get any work done, I’m not going to get any of my work done. So I have to kind of balance the time of full access to my own time, kind of time blocking my day and getting my own stuff done. And so I’m trying to do those things, that way, I can kind of check out at a certain point in time and feel good about turning it off. I’m still working on the turning it off part. Because that’s hard.

 

Richard Matthews  29:20  

Because you’re not done. Right?

 

Carolyn Salvador  29:22  

You’re right and I don’t have a governor. And it’s only 17 years, so I won’t be done until it’s a lifetime.

 

Richard Matthews  29:32  

One of the things we talked about on the show all the time is that entrepreneurs never really are done with their mission, which is why it’s hard to turn off and actually recreate like, take time for ourselves, those kinds of things. And it’s even more pressing for what you do because if you stop no one else is doing this work. So I could see how very difficult it is to turn off.

 

Carolyn Salvador  29:53  

And I like business. I really like the business. So I read business books, I read business articles. I read at night, so when I’m reading them, that’s not really relaxing. So when I’m reading Good to Great, or whatever the business book is in front of me, my mind is still spinning about business. So I may be sitting there, but I’m reading it, and I’m jotting notes down. So I’m still not really turning my brain off, really, even though I might be sitting there at the end of the evening reading. I’m just thinking, and then I’m staring at the ceiling at night going, Oh, I could do that. Or what do I have to do tomorrow?

 

Richard Matthews  30:24  

A hundred other things you could do? Yeah.

 

Carolyn Salvador  30:26  

My book choice is not really good for me to kind of relax either. But then I’m not going to read the book during the day. So I don’t know when I’m going to read all these books. I have got four business books, I can’t find time to finish them, because I don’t know when I’m going to finish them if that makes sense. Because it’s not making me go to sleep at night.

 

Richard Matthews  30:45  

Get audiobooks, listen to him on the way back forth to the office. 

 

Carolyn Salvador  30:49  

My office is a quarter-mile from my house, which won’t work. I could do it while I’m running. 

 

Richard Matthews  30:55  

Maybe you have to block to work and it looks that way.

 

Carolyn Salvador  31:00  

Something thank you I appreciate. 

 

Richard Matthews  31:02  

So I want to talk then a little bit about your common enemy. Every superhero has an arch-nemesis, and it’s the thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. Generally speaking, we put in the context of your clients. And since you’re in a unique situation with a charity, let’s put it in the context of the people who are donating to Enduring Hearts. It’s a mindset, or it’s a flaw that you have to help them overcome, so you can continue your mission, so you can get them to actually donate and help them be a part of what you’re doing. So what is the arch-nemesis, you have to fight to get people to buy into the mission and actually give for, for what it is you guys are doing?

 

Carolyn Salvador  31:44  

Yeah, well, I think there are two components. One is that you have people that are charitable, and you have people that don’t really consider charity as part of what they do. One is that the people that don’t really consider charity, they have to have a tie or introduce them, and maybe you can get them to come along. But that’s even just kind of convincing them generally of it’s good to give, you’re going to get something, even though you’re not getting goods or services, there’s an intrinsic value, and you’re going to make an impact. The people that give, a lot of people have their own passion projects, right? Or they have things they care about like I love dogs, or whales or my grandmother has diabetes, I’m going to give to diabetes. And studies show that people have to give to their universities, their churches, their kind of affinity groups if there’s a cause impacted. So you take something like pediatric heart transplantation, where there’s not a lot of children each year that get one. But there are thousands of children that have been waiting. And then we’ve got these whole overarching congenital heart defects that are the most prevalent birth defects. But if you haven’t been impacted by it, or you don’t know, like, how do I convince someone that might care about children’s charities to focus on us? Right? How do I get people to care? Because when you talk about something that’s like childhood cancer, and the preface, I never want to put one child against another because they all need support. So I would just say that, but you hear lots about childhood cancer, and how do we help these children? But congenital heart defects in the heart are important. It’s the most prevalent birth defect. So how do I move people into the space of going, well, I might not know anyone that had a heart transplant, but 17 years for a child is not acceptable, so how do I make them care? Because people go, how many a year? And we’ll say, well, 500 that’s not a lot. Again, well, okay. But think about what your dollar can do, and the impact you can have on those children. And if we’re the only organization doing it, then. It’s not like other organizations where you may have one disease, but there are 25 or 40 organizations that spread across, that are funding research and have been doing it for years and years, and there’s still no. So trying to get people to kind of come along and see that you can have an impact that it’s a very focused charity that these children need someone in their corner and in trying to kind of change or craft that mindset. So I think that’s kind of our foe because it doesn’t impact a lot of kids, specifically, heart transplantation.

 

Richard Matthews  34:35  

So one of the things that just popped in my head and I don’t know if this is useful for you, but we ran a supplement company for a number of years. And one of the things that were super effective for us from a marketing standpoint, was having a charitable mission on the backside of our products. So when we sold our supplements, when we sold teens multivitamins and parents multivitamins and men’s and kids and all these kinds of things. What we did was every bottle that we sold, we donated to a charity, I think it was vitamin Angles. And Vitamin Angels, essentially, they had it down every, every 25 cents you donated, provided enough vitamin A to essentially save a child’s life. Because vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of death in children, something like that. And we started marketing that. And when you buy a bottle, we will donate to this charity. And essentially, we had a marketing tagline that says, buy a bottle, save a life, because we donated enough from every sale to essentially save the life of a child. And I know that there’s this whole thing called conscious capitalism, but there’s a lot of companies that are looking for organizations like yours to partner up with so that they can have that as a marketing outlet. And I know it almost doubled our sales when we added a charitable component to our sales, where we were saying, hey, when you buy one of our products, we donate to this. So we increased our sales. It was a really good benefit for us as another company. Have you guys started looking at not just individual donors, but maybe e-commerce companies or other things that are looking to have an impact?

 

Carolyn Salvador  36:13  

So the answer is we’ve talked about it, but haven’t gotten far in that conversation. So I’d love to continue that conversation with you. I’m kind of wondering how to do that? You kind of have it. What does that look like on the opposite end? Like what’s intriguing? We’ve talked about February as Heart Month. And in Heart Month, we’ve talked about what a partnership looks like, and I thought like, oh, can you think about things red? How do you partner with someone that says like, if you sold red wine for a bottle of red wine or something goes back red pajamas, something tied with children’s company. So you think about what could happen, that you have this ongoing work? I love companies like Tom’s, right? There are companies that you know of, that give back. So having that charity time, we’ve talked about how the operating room, I talked about that percentage that goes to your research and goes to so we’re really mean and needed. So we’ve talked about it now how to actually get that implemented, and executed and then connecting, it takes these conversations about, you know, I know someone so let’s kind of craft out what that looks like. And then think about the best inroads, so totally on our conversation radar, but not yet in the execution of it. So love to follow up on that.

 

Richard Matthews  37:26  

Yeah, we can continue later after the podcast interview. And I can show you how we were approaching the marketing because I think if you were going to approach it the other direction. Because we were looking as a company, we were looking, who we do charitable work with. But I think from your side, you want to look at companies who may not know the benefits. They might not know that it can increase sales.

 

Carolyn Salvador  37:45  

Right, it has to be what’s in it for them.

 

Richard Matthews  37:49  

Yeah, and we did a lot of focus on our marketing with that stuff. We put a whole page together on the website. And we promoted that page more often than almost anything else because it was a good tie-in, our target market was moms with kids. And when you’re selling supplements to moms with kids, you’re like, hey, when you buy a bottle of this stuff, you’re going to buy it anyway, you’re going to get supplements for your kids, why not buy from a company who’s also going to help another person?

 

Carolyn Salvador  38:15  

A 100% and there are all those alignments. I think it’s brilliant. It’s definitely something that we’ve talked about. I’m kind of in the beginning stages with our public relations company about putting together letters to be able to craft out for Heart Month in February. Like identifying those kinds of companies or corporate partnerships, and it’s something that we have not yet as an organization solidified, and how do we formulate those companies? What does it look like for them? What’s the value add for them? But it’s that social marketing, it’s that, how they tied with us. And it’s interesting, you had picked an organization that wasn’t necessarily a household name, because on the flip side, one of the things that we come against as well, Enduring Hearts, yes, your national company, but you’re not American Heart Association, you’re not St. Jude. So a lot of companies want to team up with a big brand. And so we’re not bringing that big brand name to someone who should not be interested. So it’s just like trying to figure out their reference.

 

Richard Matthews  39:19  

You have to find a certain level of entrepreneur. And really what we were looking for is we were looking for, we do actually care about the mission. We’re doing supplementation because we care about kids and health and that kind of stuff. So it aligned with what we were doing. But the thing we were looking for, they had the taglines we needed, it was, buy a bottle, save a life in it. And that’s something we came up with, but they had the math, they knew how much money leads to certain things getting done. So we could put those numbers into our marketing. And that was really what helped us decide, it was like hey, if we donate to these ones we know exactly like, hey, when we sell this product, we can donate this much money, and this is what’s going to get done with it. And that really helped us decide which company to go with. So that’s the kind of thing that you’ll probably have to think about. And you could approach companies and be like, hey, if you donate $1 of every sale or 25 cents per sale, here’s how it gets spent. And what happens with that. So every time one of your customers buys one of your products, you’re helping this stuff happen, you’re helping save a child’s life, or we add a year to a lifespan of the heart,

 

Carolyn Salvador  40:34  

Right, which is really hard in the research. It’s very, very hard, like you talked about, what’s the other challenge? Being able to kind of determine your impact when you have research that has lasted a really long time. So those are also really kind of difficult things to measure right now when you’re funding. We’re funding a lot of innovation startup research that we’ll see its way to the bench side in four or five years from now. So how do we do that, too? But if we do go away, we don’t have that funnel of research. That’s all great ideas.

 

Richard Matthews  41:06  

You also have family programs that probably have some really easy numbers that go along with them, like, here’s how much it costs an average family who’s going through the transplant to pay for food and pay for medical bills or pay for like the gas cars back and forth, how much they spend, and buy some of our products, you can help a family accomplish these things. Anyways, I think there’s lots of synergy there for you guys to look at in the future. But anyway, I hear that you’re already going down that path.

 

Carolyn Salvador  41:33  

Yeah, but thank you for bringing it up and putting it back to the top of the mind. So I appreciate that. It’s great to talk to you about that.

 

Richard Matthews  41:42  

So we’ve sort of covered what your mission is, your mission is to extend the life of a heart. So I want to talk about some more practical things. And I call this the hero’s toolbelt. Just like every superhero has their awesome gadgets like batarangs, or web slingers or their magical hammers. Talk about the top one or two tools you couldn’t live without to run your charity, it could be anything from your notepad to your calendar to the marketing tools you use to get the word done, something that you use every day. Essentially what’s top one or two tools you couldn’t live without to do your work.

 

Carolyn Salvador  42:18  

My immediate response would be my team, I know that’s not a tool that I’ve got. 

 

Richard Matthews  42:23  

But it works.

 

Carolyn Salvador  42:25  

My superpowers come from the fact that I’ve got people that I know that I can trust that I care about the mission that works incredibly hard. I’ve got a really great team on our board that is super dedicated to the mission. So I think, for me, it is surrounding yourself with people that are just as passionate about the mission and being able to have them and be able to bring them along and be able to further the mission. So I think that’s one of my number one tools. The second you named are my notebooks. I have three different notebooks. So I write my stuff down in three different notebooks. So I’ve got my research notebook, I’ve got my action notebook, and then I’ve got my kind of notebook. So I operate on my notebooks all the time. Because I go so fast, if I don’t write it down, I’m so engaged in the conversation. I’ve got to write my stuff down. I’m a visual and so I write it down, I go back, and I reread my notebooks. And I go back. And it’s very helpful to me because I catch stuff and go, oh, yeah, we talked about that. And I date the top of every page on the notebook and the topic of conversation on each page so that I can remember who I was talking to and what these scribbles mean because my handwriting is not so great.

 

Richard Matthews  43:49  

Yeah, I can totally relate with the team thing. I know, it was a huge change in my business, when I went from being a solopreneur to having an organization having a team of people. And I know like it was a big roadblock for me to actually hire people and have a team. And once I did that, our business has grown a lot since then, which is great. And I know it sort of feels like having superpowers when you have other people who care about what you do and are working to make your mission a reality. So that’s huge. As far as notebooks, I’m an auditory learner. So if I write things down, they disappear forever. So I can’t use notebooks, because it’s like, it’s now out of my hands and it’s gone.

 

Carolyn Salvador  44:34  

Oh, you and I would be on opposite pages and I am not an auditory learner. In fact, one of my team members is auditory. So she talks to me, and I go, please write it down. I need it to be in writing. Because I’m talking to you. I won’t remember what you told me.

 

Richard Matthews  44:55  

Yeah, my wife is that way. She’s very visual. So she’s got her notebook and she writes all the things down. And then my son is like me, he’s an auditory learner. And one of the most interesting things is that they’re homeschool because we travel. So my wife has been teaching them for a couple of years. My wife is like, I can’t get through to your son. Like, I can’t get him to understand anything or do anything. Like I feel like I’m failing as a teacher. And I was like, have you considered that maybe he’s not a visual learner like you but an auditory learner like me. And she was like, dang it, no, I didn’t consider that at all. So she switched a lot of how she was teaching him from visual to auditory. And he just took off like a rocket. And it’s one of those things. It’s really fascinating.

 

Carolyn Salvador  45:35  

Yeah, I’m in awe of auditory learners because I’m listening and then all of a sudden, they’ll go up here, I’ve got to stay focused. Maybe I’ll get the key back and write it down.

 

Richard Matthews  45:48  

Yeah, one of my business running partners is visual, like you are. And he’s funny because he’ll be like, I’ll like to explain things to him over the phone. He’s like, I don’t get it. You have to pull up a screen share and draw on a screen for me. But the other way around, he’s like, I have something cool that I have to show it to you. And he’s like, wait, I don’t have to show it to you. I could just tell you. And I’m like, yeah, it works just fine for me.

 

Carolyn Salvador  46:08  

It’s much easier if you could just tell someone I think as long as you can articulate what you’re trying to get across. 

 

Richard Matthews  46:16  

Yeah

 

Carolyn Salvador  46:17  

I think being an auditory learner is a superpower.

 

Richard Matthews  46:20  

It kind of is, it’s definitely. Our world lends itself very well nowadays to auditory learning, just because there are a lot of audiobooks and podcasts. And there’s a lot of learning availability from an audio standpoint, and it’s less intensive to do. Like visual stuff, it requires a lot more work and creative skills.

 

Carolyn Salvador  46:40  

It is certainly easier to just hear it, I think. 

 

Richard Matthews  46:44  

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Richard Matthews  48:16  

I want to talk then about some of your own personal heroes. So every hero has their mentors, just like Frodo had Gandalf or Luke had Obi Wan, or Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad or even Spider Man had his Uncle Ben. Who were some of your heroes, were they real life mentors, maybe peers for a couple of years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far?

 

Carolyn Salvador  48:38  

When I think about that kind of my heroes, I definitely had people along the way that have kind of mentored me and that have helped me a bit. I will be honest, I don’t think I have one person that stands out to me. There are certainly people and I look at different aspects of different people. I think, like, I’ll look at someone like Richard Branson, and look at what he did, and how many different silos of business he created. He’s a genius or, and I’ll take a Hollywood person, like a branding person that I think of it takes and you’re gonna laugh at this but like an Oprah Winfrey or someone that came from Hollywood. And granted, they had exposure and that put together all of the enterprises. So I think about that, but that’s someone that’s come from opportunity. And then you think about the woman that created I’m from Atlanta, so Sara Blakely, they created Spanx and that was able to turn something that was a disruption. I love disruption, so something that was essentially a girdle that grandma’s used to use. And now turned it into this brand that women at cocktail parties will go, Oh, I can’t go without my Spanx. And you laugh at that. But it’s a household name, she’s laughing all the way to the bank. And she made them into bathing suits and sprints. And so I think about all the different things that creativity and people that take this idea. And I literally have, I don’t have it really anymore. But I used to have an idea book of all of my ideas for businesses, and you probably do not remember the movie Night Shift. It was Michael Keaton, he was an entrepreneur, and he would have a microphone and he would put his ideas in. And one of them was like he would say, feed the tune of mayonnaise. And I always remember that, because he would like to record all his crazy wild ideas. And so I would have a notebook and I would write my Michael Keaton ideas in my notebooks. But I think it’s a lot to be able to take your ideas, your what if I did this, and actually turn it into a really viable business that has multiple business streams, right? That you’re able to really take this idea and go from a $100,000 business to a million and then make it expanded into multiple units. So, I don’t know that I have one. But I look to people that have been able to grow seeds to something that’s giant, knowing that people are helped, I don’t believe that. There’s really, truly a self made person because everyone gets help along the way. Some people have a silver spoon. Some people have families. I’m always impressed, I guess, with people that really have been able to do it and grow something.

 

Richard Matthews  51:50  

Yeah, it’s always fun to have the stories, the inspiration that comes from the success story. Especially when they have their stories told, so you can look through their stories and see what it is that they did, and maybe pull some of that stuff into the stuff you’re working on.

 

Carolyn Salvador  52:10  

I always say I steal ideas, my team says you don’t steal them, you just kind of repackage them. But I’m always looking wherever I go from sitting and watching a webinar or listening to a podcast or reading a book, I always tried to take away a little bit of something of what they did and try that kind of craft it into my own and think about, how can I how can I reflect on it and use it for my own business or my own personal growth so or then it just makes me antsy because I haven’t taken my ideas in my book and made them anything yet. And then I’m feeling like I need to write more ideas next. But it is motivational to me.

 

Richard Matthews  52:51  

So, the next thing I want to talk about is your guiding principles. One of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we sort of wrap up this interview, let’s talk about the top one, maybe two principles that you use regularly, maybe a principle that you wish you knew, when you first started out on your own entrepreneurial journey.

 

Carolyn Salvador  53:13  

You’re giving me some hard questions to end with a principal. I would say a guiding principle or value certainly is to try to be very transparent and very honest in my communications with people, I am very much kind of what you see is what you get. I think when you have honest and real communication and relationships, then that’s only going to help you in business. I think being undermined or being distant genuine is one, it’s exhausting. And secondly, you’re coming from a bad place. So in everything I do, it’s coming from a real place. And I think that’s a governing principle, but I don’t compromise that I don’t compromise who I am, I don’t try to be something I’m not. And I make sure that it’s all honest, a good place that aligns with any job that I do anything in line with, has to have character and integrity. I guess that’s maybe I’m kind of working back into the word integrity. I’m kind of thinking through that because you’re gonna be thinking all through that, but it has to align with having integrity and having real relationships. Did I answer your question?

 

Richard Matthews  54:42  

Yeah, I think so. I said my favorite definition for integrity is that I can’t remember who said this to me, but it was like integrity means that when you lean on it, it’ll stay solid. Like your wall in your house has integrity, if you lean down, it’ll stay there and you want to be that person. That the people around you know that they can lean on you. And you’ll be there. Because you are who you say you are, you have that honesty, you have that integrity, that’s letting people know that you can be counted on. to always be there to be who you say you are to do what you say you’re gonna do. And yeah, that’s an important guiding principle, I think.

 

Carolyn Salvador  55:26  

If you think about it, it’s the kind of the Maslow’s hirarchcy, it’s like the base level, right? If you’re going into business, and you don’t have high integrity, or you’re forming it on a rocky foundation, your relationships aren’t real, or you’re doing things in a shady way. I don’t know how you do business, this is not how you wake up in the morning, you look yourself in the mirror, because I certainly work in the nonprofit world or doing that, like I couldn’t do what I do, I could get people to come behind me and really sharing the vision of the mission. If they really trust me, and they didn’t really kind of believe what I was saying. So I think that’s key. And donors wouldn’t donate.

 

Richard Matthews  56:07  

That’s true, and it’s super important, especially with the work you do. So that’s basically a wrap on our interview. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge, which is the reason you’re here actually, it’s called the hero’s challenge. And we do this on every episode to help get access to stories we might not otherwise find on our own. That’s why we got you here. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network, who you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine and why do you think they should come to share their story on our show?

 

Carolyn Salvador  56:40  

Why didn’t you give me these questions ahead of time, so I can think about this. A cool entrepreneurial story. Well, I have several, our founder, well, you know what ________, I’m going to say_______. So he is one of our donors, and he started a company. And I think he’s very successful. And he’s also a great philanthropist. So I think he would be kind of a cool person to come on, so I would vote for him.

 

Richard Matthews  57:14  

Yeah, so will reach out afterward and see if we can get an introduction. But in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end who are clapping and cheering for the acts of heroism. So as we close our analogous to that is, where can people find you? If they want to help with the mission of helping hearts last longer? Where can they find you? Where can they go to donate? Where can they go to be a part of the research and the mission and the work that you guys are doing?

 

Carolyn Salvador  57:43  

Thank you, you can go to EnduringHearts.org and check us out and go to Donate Heart.org to make a donation. So I appreciate that. You could also like us on Facebook and Enduring Hearts.

 

Richard Matthews  57:57  

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story today. Carolyn, it has been a pleasure to speak with you. Do you have any final words of wisdom for our audience before I hit the stop record button?

 

Carolyn Salvador  58:09  

Well, I just want to say thank you so much for having me. And   I really, really appreciate your time today. Richard.

 

Richard Matthews  58:15  

Thank you for being here.