on. Do you do some presentations before as well? You get on stage much?
Oh, I sing. I've been in the studio recording. So yes.
Awesome. What do you sing?
I've been on TV, contemporary Christian ballads.
What else? Yeah, I did musicals and all that. So yeah.
All right. And still making time with it.
You take time for it even as the CEO, COO and...
Yes, I was at my parents event a couple of weeks ago and sing a couple of times
and perform there. So I love it.
Awesome. What do you think is
one or two of the most important things people might get out of today's show?
Is if you are an innovator,
a startup or someone looking to do a business,
if is a nonprofit that can educate you, support you and help you get funded
for C pledge partners that are looking to put money into startups
and don't want the risk and losing all their money.
We actually create a partnership with you to curate your pipeline of startups.
Nice. And what's number two?
Oh, that was one and two.
I got one. Well, the way here I am.
Not looking at the combination, but you're right. Those are two separate.
All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Calame.
I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders
who are building fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up and welcome in a Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And we've got Diane Tucker on today.
She's got a heck of a story.
She's overcome some great, great challenges and adversities,
and she's turned her life into a career of giving as well as
a very effective CEO and CEO for multiple companies.
So we'll be looking at that from different angles as we explore her vision
with her nonprofit that she runs that could help you find funding for your startup
and get yourself positioned to be able to maximize that.
So before we dive in with Diane, a little shout out to our sponsors.
We've got ColdClick. ColdClick is what we use for our LinkedIn automation.
And so as we get information, we get our messages set up to attract a new audience.
That system helps me connect with as many people as possible
on a day to day basis in order to attract people for this very show and experience.
In addition to that, it also allows me to change the message anytime
if I want to promote something that we have going on special for our business.
I'd also like to give a shout out to Tap Mental and David Goodall
on what he's done to create a business that helps entrepreneurs with their mindset.
And ultimately, he calls it putting the helping them with their business
and putting some of their psychology in order to create the systems that they need
in order to break free from their business.
And he works specifically with blue collar business owners, construction,
think general contractors, people who might end up roofing,
you know, your service provider, your local service providers would be great.
I recommend going to tapmental.io and checking out some of his case studies.
They've impressed me tremendously.
They've impressed me as a friend and as a father, as a human being.
I do recommend Dave, but by all means, check out the case studies.
They really speak for themselves without without going on too far, though.
I want to talk about the water project.
So I'm sure Diane can appreciate this if she's not already a supporter.
The water project allows us as individuals to contribute to providing water
to those who have a severe dire need for it and their communities.
And, you know, it's it's important to me because these these young children,
the parents, the communities, they have to walk for miles to get access to water
that's not even necessarily clean just to be able to survive.
And you can imagine the impact that would have on a community over a 10 year period
with all the time that would be saved if people just had the opportunity
to get water from their house, just like we do.
This brings them what's called a borehole well to their community,
or they create this sand dam.
It's really neat to see how the different projects work out.
But you can actually choose which project you want to help.
And then they're going to send you email updates of the project status as it moves along.
So you can see the impact that you had.
You also get to see the education that the local people get
in relation to their project and how they go about maintaining
their living with, you know, more,
I guess, more healthy water, more health training as well.
I'm trying to the sanitation training that they get of of maintaining that,
creating soap, things that are nutritious.
It's really cool. I love that. I love the adventure.
So if if you know of a cause that you'd like us to promote and give to,
don't hesitate to drop that in the comments as well.
We're open to looking at other causes that we could support.
We're all just very blessed for listening to this.
Right now, you yourself are extremely blessed.
And it makes sense to take a little bit of time to help other people
also achieve great blessings in their life.
So without further ado, we're going to bring Diane Tucker on board.
And, Diane, I'm so excited to have you on the show today.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Absolutely. So before we dive in too much into the nonprofit itself,
you have quite the backstory of adversities that you had to overcome.
In order to make sure that you could operate the way that you are now.
And that included a brain surgery that included losing your vision
for a number of months.
And I'm sure there's other health challenges beyond that, too.
Real quick, do you mind quantifying some of those those steps,
those milestones that you pass through on your way to to launching your venture?
Definitely. So in 2005, I was 24 at the time.
That's when I had brain surgery.
The doctor said I had a pineal cyst on my brain that was putting pressure
on the brain and causing headaches, that if we remove the cyst, I would be better.
Unfortunately, surgery caused more problems than it fixed.
Vision was not one of the risks they had mentioned.
Double vision was so bad, I couldn't see or make out who was in front of me.
It was just light. I had to go around like this with the eye patch for about three months
and my eyes closed for them to heal and link back up.
So if I look at you, you're not going to be able to see
what's going on in your vision.
So if I look at you straight ahead, I see one.
If I turn my head or start looking at the room, you'll see my eyes start doing this.
I see two. So still to this day, I deal with double vision.
My eyes don't really contract the light, even though I'm inside a building.
I don't have my glasses on, but I usually have shades on 24 7
so that I can make out who's around me.
And to this day, still dealing with after that, I developed too much fluid on the brain.
I have IH, but that is when too much fluid is on the brain and it acts as a tumor that's invisible.
And so doctors and all that, but being on the permanent disability
and things coming to a screeching halt, I was full time in school,
full time in ministry, full time in work and things came to screeching halt.
But it allowed me to utilize my skill sets.
I'm a computer techie, taught myself to code at nine years old.
I learned how to code DOS at nine. And so I've always been a techie,
but I paid my way through college with accounting and office management.
So I love numbers. So I had all these skill sets and I would help people
that I knew who had their own business. They'd have a box of receipts and like,
I have to file taxes in two months. Can you help me?
And I would organize all their business and financials.
And from there, I just started helping people with their companies and their vision.
If you tell me your business idea, as long as I can see it,
I can map it out and build it. Departments, personnel, financials,
three-year performer, marketing plan, you name it.
And so after a while I was like, I'm helping everybody else with their dreams
and visions. What about things, dreams and aspirations that I have?
And so in 2011, I launched my first company, Diane means Divine.
So anything you see with my name, you'll see Divine associated with a lot of times.
So my first company is Divine Movement Making Successful Individuals.
And it's the Dmissy for short. That's my K-12 virtual education platform.
And so over the years, I've been able to launch several ventures.
I currently am the founder and CEO of Four. I also run Three in Massachusetts as the COO,
doing agrovoltaics, which is solar panels about 10 feet high and farming underneath.
And but I've worked with a lot of global minds, a lot of experts in the UK and Belgium and Africa
and Canada. And along the way, we've launched the Black Technology Mentorship Program,
which is a global aspect and having all these minds with these amazing impact ventures that
were viable, but couldn't get them funded. And then also being on a TV show where we
have four days to solve a social issue. They took CEOs from all over the world and put us
on different teams. I was placed on climate change. I was one of three teams who won.
And we were supposed to get funded. They said we had four days to save the world,
but with TV filming, it was two and a half. So we came up with a business, a pitch deck,
five year performer, how it would work on ways to really impact climate change in one.
But unfortunately never got funded. And so I'm dealing with all this and I was like, you know what?
I want to do something about it. I want to be the change that the world needs.
And that's when I started my nonprofit Impact Innovation Foundation last year.
Wow. I'm so happy and glad that I let you tell that story because I don't think anybody can
tell that. But I could be your emcee in the event, but you would need an event where you have multiple
speaking sessions so we could really unpack that in a way that helps people quantify and realize
these aren't just buzzwords. You got the experience. You really get in the trenches of what you do.
That is amazing. So Impact Innovation Foundation. I'm looking forward to asking some deep questions
about it and what types of people could benefit the most. With that said, you've covered some of
this already. I mean, I think most of the audience knows that they should be able to in right now.
But who would you say would be like the top listeners right now, the people who are really
going to benefit from knowing your story, knowing what you can provide. Why should they listen to
you beyond the obvious that we just heard? And then we'll go into your vision from there.
Okay, definitely. So who should listen? Entrepreneurs, innovators, startups, and also
VC, angel investors, corporate investors that look to actually put money into the startup and
get a return on their investment. Why they should listen is to learn about what it is doing on a
global scale, how we are changing the way donations are received and given, how we're mixing
philanthropy with investments. And then what are they going to get out of it? How they can sign up
for the startups and entrepreneurs, how they can sign up, get involved, take our programs,
and really take their ideas out of their mind to in the market, building traction, having a research
team around them. And then the investors, how they can be able to learn how to get a curated pipeline
of tested and tried startups that mitigate risks. That's fantastic. Well, I've got two investors,
the name drop for you who are recently on this show. One is Lance Cottrell. I recommend that we
get you connected to Lance. I'd love to see what comes of you guys meeting. And the other one I
just hosted this week, that's Bernard Chong. And so we'll have to make that happen because they're
both like amazing people. They're both, one of them is an angel investor. The other one
has been more involved in the venture capital level, but they, I don't think levels matter too
much when you get to that stage. You're usually either just, you know, you're a shark that's
hungry or you're out to make a lot of a difference or somewhere in between. In between. So they're the,
to me, they both seem like great people who, who are very much, begin to impact driven opportunities,
which is what you're, what I keep, I keep getting on the tongue, the tongue twisting on the impact
innovation. You can call us if. Innovation foundation, if, got it. We can, we can also
use that pointing the, the acronym. Good stuff. Well, let's hear about this. What's your vision
for those that you serve? Diane, what, what is their pathway look like over the two, three,
five years they start working? Definitely. Yes. So impact innovation foundation is the public 501c3.
And so what we do is we work with social impact startups. As long as you align with one of our
five social issues, which is climate change, education, health such as med tech and first
responders, then mental health for youth. And then the last fifth one is technology for human
betterment. As long as you're a startup that fits within one of those five, which it's pretty hard
to not, we educate, provide mentorship, fellowship and early stage funding for you to be able to
build that traction, test your product. We also wrap a research team around you so that we can
measure the impact made, measure what has been going on so we can pull that data that the VCs
are going to need to see down the road. So like I said, we educate, we have the business fellowship,
we help you with pre-launch and startup funding. And then we work with you to put you in front of
our VC pledge partners once you build that traction, tested your model and actually have
acquired customers. I love that. Cynthia, we're going to stay right here for a minute on this part
of the page. And I wanted to ask you about that. So one of the, probably one of the harder questions
I'm going to ask when it comes to, for those who complete the education and business fellowship
program, they may apply for the capital. Do you have enough students in this program yet to where
you have a percentage of students who actually receive capital? So we are in pre-stage funding.
We're building out our 300 million HCI, which is human capital initiative fund. So we're building
that out right now. And so our goal is to officially launch in the spring of 2024 with our
education program. But we have pre-registered startups that are trickling in as we speak.
They're already in the health industries, in technology industry, and also in the climate
industry. And so those are coming through right now. Okay. Awesome. And that reminds me, I don't
want to forget this. The other person I want to connect you to is Harut Markarian of Markobonics.
He's got a robot that will help millions of disabled people throughout the world. And he's
also, he's got Jeff Hoffman as a founding partner with him, the Priceline guy. So they've got a
pretty good foundation set, but you know how that goes. There's so much to be done to make it all
come to fruition. So do you have a projection as far as whether that's a goal or it's an estimate
of how many of the incubated startups will likely get funded? We all played with that.
Yes, we have definitely played with that. So those that who go through the education,
that's a 12-week program, they can apply for our $25,000 pre-launch grant to actually just get
things rolling. And our education program is actually our filter as to who's ready to move
forward to the fellowship. So you have to take the education program before you can take the fellowship.
And that's how we curate and filter who's ready to move forward, who's actually ready to start
building and creating. Because when they move into the business fellowship program, our VC pledge
partners are also allowed to mentor them and actually feed into and help prepare them for how
they need that investment to go. And so in regards to the numbers on how many startups we're looking,
we can, we do our education program four times a year. And that's, we're starting out with 25
startups at once. So in the first year, we're looking at about 75 startups that will go through
just the education program alone. Our fellowship program is a six-month intensive, intensive
fellowship. And that one we're starting next year, we're only going to do one next year,
and that will be 25 startups that go through that. Those that finish and be able to launch
their program, they'll be able to get the funding and apply for that. So funding is anywhere from
50,000 to a million for that pre-startup funding to be able to go through that. And so next year,
we're only doing one, but then in 2025, we're looking into two and then scale from that.
And instead of just maxing out at 25 scale, test out, refine what's working, what's not working,
what do we need to tweak before we move up to the larger amount of startups?
I love that. I believe in that process. I call it cinching the hose.
And there aren't a lot of... I mean, everybody wants to scale so fast. Everybody wants to be
viral on TikTok. Everybody wants just explosive, nonstop growth. And it's funny that everybody's
at a 96% or worse failure rate. So as loud as that is, I appreciate these quieter groups that
are practical about how things will unfold. So are you saying that out of the 75 who go into
the education program, the anticipation is that 25 will graduate to the fellowship program? Is
that correct? Correct. I like that. It's so funny. We have extreme similarities in our visions.
You're a bit further along than I am. Really?
Yes. The Academy of First Class Business is very much built out, the foundation's laid.
The process of how we would support people is not as well laid out, which is why I don't
work with entrepreneurs. I don't work with the younger stage startups. I work with businesses
that have three or more years of experience underneath their belt. But with the way that
you've built this, it seems like a very attractive model for me to send people towards and say,
Diane Tucker's laid something out amazing here over with IF, the Innovation Foundation. I'm ready.
Most definitely. I love it. You're like, I'm locking it in.
I am. So, gracias, Cynthia. So perfect. That's just amazing. I can ask for yourself then. What's
your vision for you, Diane? In five, 10, 15, yeah, however far you want to put it, I'm going to ask
you, Diane, in five, 10, 15, yeah, however far you want to project, what do you see for yourself in
life? Oh man, for me myself, I know I'm only one person and I have a huge vision of making an
impact in K-12 students are my heart. That's why I launched Demissy first. And one, making sure that
Demissy can be incorporated inside of schools, K-12 or homeschool, because it is too cool to have
books, but everybody's got their cell phone. Everybody's walking on with that. We have a
digital library that's built into the cell phones. And my impact is to in five years time, I really
want to close that gap, that learning gap for reading, writing, and math and that core foundation.
Not only that, I want to bring families back into the parents back into the lives and then the
control of their students learning. Great. We've got Common Core and all that, which are all of
our programs aligned with that. But now parents can get back into it and be like, okay, that's
what your teacher signed today, but this is what we're also going to make sure that you do. And so
that, and not only that, the program includes mentorship and tutoring. And so you've got a lot
of mental issues that students are going through with doubt in their mind. Like I've gone through
class, but I'm getting bullied or I don't think I can do it. And what, what, what is there for me
in life and being able to have a mentor that's saying, oh, well you like sports or you like music,
you can turn that into a pathway to doing this. So you have some encouragement to move forward. So
we're, we're doing the closing the learning gap. We're including the parents and the family back
into their students education. And then we also provide the mentorship. So improving education,
not only in the States, but then going global with the Missy. And then also with IF and my partners,
IF has three lead nonprofits. So IF is the main one. You're Immersive is the second one. Exergy
over in Portugal is the other one who works in Africa. So if it's not just the United States
nonprofit, it is a global nonprofit. We are working with visionaries all over the world.
And my vision is to be able to impact the communities, the economic development,
the accessibility, the lives of people worldwide by this global community that I'm putting together.
And so being able to touch lives and improve them. My model is anything and everything I do
is to help others reach their own level of success. Each and every person has their own version of
success. Me just saying, I'm going to help you reach success. I can say what I think success is,
but that's not necessarily Jackson's level of success. So then how can I help me each person
at their level, no matter where they're at in the world and help them reach their next level of
success? And so for me, my vision is to connect with amazing minds, amazing businesses, amazing
governments and officials that can say, okay, let's work together to make an impact around the world.
That's awesome. Okay. So I'm going to put a couple of seeds planted then for
that vision. One, as your education program, I mean, I don't know if it's developed yet or not
and what you're ready to talk to, but I will say my sister's a principal of a high school in Midland,
Texas. So if you have a program or you have something, whenever you're at that stage where
you've got something that they benefit from that you want to see, just let me know.
We tested it for about two to three years. It's on the shelves right now until it gets funded
and it's ready to go. Cool. That's awesome. So yeah, let me know about that. And then I have
another company I recommend in relation to helping children with their reading. I haven't seen
that it really stuck in my heart as much as when I met Jen and Christina of this book called Critter
Crew. So this is designed for kids who are of the ages of between three and nine. And it's got
songs that come with it. I'll just show a CD for now, but of course you can download this online.
But the songs, they focus on one letter and they focus on how to pronounce that letter through the
songs. I love it. You learn the phonetics as you fall in love with these different songs. They're
super good musicians. Christine's a super great musician too. I love it. Amazing. You know, I
love music. So when you pull in that heart string and I'm just like, good. Well, and I'm excited.
And they're Christian women who, that book that I just put over there is a near 15 year old copy.
It looks brand new. It is brand new. They launched this business almost 15 years ago.
They ended up focusing on their families and raising their own children, putting it aside.
And a few months ago they decided to start bringing it back. They're ready to go. They're
back. They're ready to help it, you know, take off. And I just, I can't wait to see that resource
in the hands of millions of children and parents because I've never seen anything in the market
like it. That's amazing. Yeah. And they have studies. They have studies too of how well the
kids have done with the program itself. I have to get you guys in touch and see where that goes.
There might be a great startup to work with Impact Innovation Foundation, but that material,
we got to get that in the hands of kids. We can get kids connected to the letters faster. I mean,
they, they, they claim that with that book, kids would be going into kindergarten reading.
So yeah, it'd be huge. So, all right. Yes. Thank you for that.
So I got to ask, you've been in business a lot. It means you've had your ups and downs. Let's go
into some of the darker side of it. So what's your worst business experience ever? I have to pick one.
Yeah. This is a common question for a lot of entrepreneurs.
Let's see. I think this is about back when I was first starting out helping people launch their
official business. And I had been on disabilities for about a year or two. I was down in like the,
Temecula area. And there was a gentleman, older gentleman, I think he's about in his 60s,
wanting to launch this business. And I came on board to help him build out his programs, his plans.
And at the time I didn't have anything else going on. So this was pretty, a disability was pretty
much my only income and what have you. And it got to the point where he started talking down on me,
even though I was helping build out his platform, coding it from scratch, the operations procedures
of what he needed done. And so I'm trying to work with him. Okay. So how are we going to get paid?
How is this going to be, how are we getting invested? So we can get our return on investment.
We can pay our employees and move on. And he pretty much told me he was doing me an opportunity
of giving me an opportunity to work on this project with him. So I wouldn't be sitting at
home watching Oprah and just wasting my time and that I should be grateful. I would say that would
be one of the worst experience I've had the spark to take. And I was just like, huh, okay.
I've learned tough skin over the years and don't let things like,
to some people with the dick it in the corner and it's, it's got to mess things up, but it makes me
stronger. And I was like, evidently my knee, my service is no longer needed for you. Thank you.
I'm glad you had the healthy boundary to know like, I'm not doing this. How long were you working
with him before that happened? It was about six to eight months. Oh my goodness. I'm not too sure.
Yeah, it was around that. Wow. Oh, okay. Yeah. So anybody who's been burned by a provider,
oh, I mean, I'll like, that's, that's a, that's just disgusting what he did and said. So, yeah,
let's make sure we choose the people we work with wisely. Make sure they got our best interests at
heart moving forward. You know, you know, and, and you preach it because a lot of people get
themselves in that situation where they provide and, and don't end up having somebody looking out
for their best interests. So we might, we might recircle back to that. And we talked about the
powerful lesson, but let's go, let's dive into your best experience and business on the flip side.
What's your best experience been so far? Best experience. I'm not so much, this is my best
experience, but right now it's my most rewarding is to see a transformation. I do a lot of business
consulting and speak and give into other people's lives. And so I am the fractional COO for a gentleman
who has three companies in Massachusetts. He started doing his business as a sole,
businesses as a sole proprietor, doing everything on a yellow meat, no pet. I mean everything.
And so it is now four years to date. He has one LLC, two C corporations out of those three
sole proprietors, full staff. And one of them, he is the industry leader in the nation because
it's a brand new industry working with state officials on how helping to create the policies
on how this new industry can be mapped across the States and being able to see his transformation
from, I don't know how to time manage. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just a farmer. I can't
do this to, okay, Diane, I'm a CEO of three companies. This is how we're going to run things.
The confidence that he has, the growth that we've made these businesses and building out
the operations and the processes. And so it would be like the pride of being able to see such a huge
transformation in one person that has three amazing industries that are life-changing in
agriculture, renewable energy, and agriculture consulting. And so I would say that right now is
just one that's at the top of my list. Absolutely. That's awesome. That's a heck of a transformation
too. There's not too many transformations that get bigger than that reality. My apologies to everybody.
That is my prayer alarm. We won't take a break for it, but my little bell there reminds me that
it's time to say prayer of gratitude, be in the mindset. That gong that you hear is the Taco Bell
gong though. It worked. It was the best gong I could find. I love it, but no, that's the priority
to keep at the top, that prayer life. I love it. That is perfect. Absolutely. So with those two
things, now that we've accomplished both those, I'd love to know what powerful lesson that you
can share with other visionaries. Let's circle back to the one about choosing who we work with
and making sure that we have people who appreciate us. But let's open the door a little bit further
for now. What's a powerful lesson you would share with visionaries that they can learn from your
experience so far? One, do not doubt yourself. You're dealing with someone who's gone through
brain surgery, who's gone through some days crawling around on the floor, can't move. And so
who am I to make a global impact when I need help to get off the floor on a day? And so that self
doubt, you need to get rid of that right away. And I know you said go a bit broader, but what I was
going to talk on is surrounding yourself with people who encourage you and speak into your life,
whether that's family members, friends, advisors, coworkers, peers, those that can feed into what
you're doing rather than you sharing something and people are like, oh, why are you doing that?
That's never going to work. Rather than negative people that are just going to drain from you.
If you've got enough doubt in your mind, you don't need added onto it from someone else.
So that mindset is huge before you even start one iota of your business.
Oh, I love that. I love it so much. So this is one of the most common themes that I hear over and
over from successful people. I want to circle back to something I said, because people might
take it wrong. And I said, so far, I want to put into context that then you got more years of
experience than me in the business world. So when I was saying so far, the reason why I project that
is because I know that you've got a few decades ahead of amazing things that you're going to be
doing, which is certainly going to influence the amount of powerful lessons, the types of lessons
you'll be teaching to others. Gary Vanderchuck was one of the first people on YouTube. I'd heard it
before with like the highly effective, seven highly effective habits. Thank you, Stephen Covey. But
Gary said it in a way where it just kind of hit me a little bit harder about surrounding yourself
with five people, you know, that really build you up. And Taylor Welch came along and he shared the
concept of making sure that you do not share your goals with random people. Like share your goals
with people who are going to support you. Not everybody, because people will come at you,
like you said, and they'll tear it down. And so if you already have a little bit of self doubt
with that goal, and you go share with somebody else, well, why do you think that you can do that?
Yeah. Yeah, very rarely do I feel a sense of resilience when somebody comes at me like that.
Very rarely. It reminds me of a friend in high school who said, I told her where I applied for
college and she said, she said, you're not going to get in there. I didn't even get in there.
In fact, I told her I was going to apply. I didn't apply. He hadn't applied yet. I didn't apply.
I didn't do it. But guess what? By some act of God, he sent me an acceptance letter.
Oh, that's cool. I'll take it. She was so mad. But it did. It completely deterred me
from moving forward with that dream of an entire. And so it would have been better off shutting my
mouth and selecting better friends at the time that would support me on my ambitions. So thank
you for that. You're welcome. Keep that in mind. All right. Circling back to choosing those types
of people, you mentioned one qualifier, which was looking for people who, when you make a statement
about something you want to do, their thought process is like, hey, that's awesome. They're
supportive. That's a really great character trait to look for. What else should we be looking for
as we're looking for healthy relationships who will support us on our ventures? People that have
actually gone through what we've gone through. So that mentor type of person that someone who
has experience in the field connecting with networks that are in the industry you're looking
to work with. And there's a lot of communities out there where you can just do Zoom meeting with 30
people and then learn from their experiences. And like, I've gone through this. Don't do that. It
didn't work. And so you can glean information. And sometimes you can build good one-on-one
relationships with people that they can actually be a mentor for you and guide you along your path.
So that would be one. I like that. Let's combine the formulas too. So kind of like a filtered
system for those of you techies out there. For those who aren't, let's water that down a little
bit. So for instance, I might want to choose to select five people in my life who have 10 to 15
to 20 years experience or more having done what I'm trying to do. But to further filter that,
I go talk to 10 people. And one of them takes a condescending approach to telling me, hey, man,
you're never going to succeed with that plan. You need to do it this way. I see a lot of people say,
oh, man, he must be right. Jackson said go talk to that person who's had the experience.
Then you get another one who comes in and says, hey, you're really onto something. And I look
forward to seeing where your business model goes from here. And they give you some feedback,
but they do it in a healthy fashion. I would recommend going with the person who was healthy
and productive in addition to having the knowledge. It's not enough to just look for that one care
without stacking them together. What else you got to add to that, Diane?
And also even if they have the positive, like, oh, that's a great idea. And they're like, can I
assist you or here's some things to look into to kind of expand upon it. If they're coming in with
positivity and believe in you, but they may be a little off on what your idea is meaning. Let's
say you come up with something that has nothing to do with an industry and you're trying to force
it into there. A lot of businesses fail because they haven't tested out the market or done the
research on it. They might be giving you a good aspect as to, okay, we know that's not going to
work, but do look at it from this angle, but still stay along your path. So being able to receive
not so much criticism, but critique on how you can model it. But if it's in a healthy manner,
it's in a positive manner. There are some ways to learn from some things, whether then it's like,
oh, they didn't say I was on point 100%. I love this. You're filtering the value back and forth.
So let's take the person who's critical as well. And let's filter that further. And so you know
what? I don't necessarily want that person in my life as a best friend or as a constant advisor,
but did they gift me information that is valuable for my next steps? So if they're like, dude,
Jackson, you're an idiot. You should have called 300 people before you even got started. I have
to be able to say, you know what? It's okay if they feel I'm an idiot. They are right that I
should have called 300 people. I can go call 300 people and I can look for a mentor who's going
to be nicer to me about the process or going to continue to look out for me and guide me that way.
But I'm not stuck with somebody who's going to be toxic towards me. And that's that law of abundance
at play, realizing that just because you have an opportunity in front of you right now does not
mean that's your last source of oxygen. There are lots of other people you can turn to in order to
get help. Diane, we can continue on that path, but is there any other powerful lesson, aspects of
impact innovation foundation or your vision that you'd like to discuss since we got about five
minutes left? Yes, definitely. I want to touch on the part of why VC pledge partners or VC investors,
angel investors, any type of investors would want to work with the impact innovation foundation.
Okay. So investors who want to work with innovation, impact innovation foundation,
and that could be accredited investors. That could be angel investors, people, first time investors,
anything, any of the spectrum, correct? Correct. Really for specific types. No, we're not looking
for specific types. Okay. Any of those are good. Go ahead. Yes. So last year alone in 2022, $590
billion was invested into tech startups alone. And then out of the data from, I believe it's called
exploding topics, only 63% of techs, not only, but 63% of tech startups fail within the first
five years. So out of that $590 billion that was invested last year, they're going to lose about
371.7 billion over the next five years and not get any of their returns. If 1% of that was to come to
if for human impact innovation that we're doing, that'd be 5.9 billion. If you broke that down to
1% of 1%, let's say of that 590 million came to if for the work we're doing. And so that's an average
of about VC capitals, VCs see about a thousand pitch decks per year. And so if we have VC pledge
partners, we just call VC pledge partners, but any pledge investment pledge partners that come in and
say, I want to invest a minimum or pledge a minimum of $15 million over the course of the next three
years at the impact innovation foundation, human capital initiative. So like I said, we're
transitioning the traditional way of giving. Most places would say give that full 15 million to if
you get a tax deductible donation. We're not doing that. We're saying pledge $15 million over the
course of three years. 20% of that comes to if as a tax deductible donation, but that tax deductible
donation is now you investing into the startups or the education of the startup, should I say.
So you're kickstarting the acceleration of innovation because that 20% allows us to provide
our education program, allows us to provide the business fellowship program and allows us to work
with these startups with that pre-traction funding to start and launch and test out.
And so that 20% of their donation is furthering their investments. It's they're putting into
being able to have a return on investments. So we're the first nonprofit that is returning
a return on a donation. The other remaining 80% never comes to if we don't touch it. We don't say
a penny of it. The other 80% of their pledge is what they allocate over the next three years to
directly invest into social impact startups that have finished our program, that have tested out
their model and that have gone through. We put research around it. We put the news crew because
we have a gather verse news crew as well. So we put our news crew around it showing the story.
So now when the startups go through the fellowship, why we say it's a pledge partner is because now
they're a partner. They can say, okay, who's the cohorts that are going through this fellowship?
Now they can do their bespoke mentorship and say, we're going to craft. I see three startups that I
like. Now we can craft these startups as they're going through the fellowship and we can mentor
them while they're going through your program so we can craft our investments. So once they build
traction and test and they've gone through and tested and tried everything to true and say,
okay, these are the risks we had. This is how we overcame them. Here's our model. Here's how we
built traction. We have revenue coming in and now they can go and they're prepared for VCs to invest
into them. So that's how we're transcending and mixing philanthropy with investments.
That's great. That's awesome. I'm excited to see that process visually explained. That would be my
invitation and challenge to you to add to it. It reminds me a little bit in a very different way,
but we had a company in Canada that I own a very small percentage of, and we were helping the
entrepreneur gain grant funding through grants that were often overlooked and the money wouldn't
have even been used, but our company had built a secondary nonprofit in order to apply for the
grant funding legally and on behalf of the client and allow them to get 36,000 in government grant
funding for a $9,000 commitment that they also got back from it as well. So they ended up with
quite the financial investment in their marketing efforts. And you've now created a system as well
that is just being smart with moving the money and how the money is being moved in order to help
entrepreneurs bring their visions to life. Most definitely. I don't know if you're able to show,
but that link I just shared is actually our VC pledge partner deck that we send out to those.
And that visually describes that pathway of investing into the innovation, then the fellowship,
then building their traction, and then when they're ready for investments. Cool. Let me take a little
extra minute on that. I think it's well worth the time. So if anybody wants access to this afterwards,
I'm sure you can get in touch with Diane. And again, that you should see this on your screen.
So you mind if I flip through this? Is that okay? Oh, go right ahead. So that roadmap right there
showed that very much pathway. And then that next page shows how we're transitioning traditional
giving. Nice. And anybody who's watching right now, I would challenge you to just pause the screen,
pause the video and take a look through this. I don't want to waste anybody's live air time,
but you'll be able to see this right after we finish the recording and you'll be able to flip
right through it. So way to be well prepared, Diane. This is awesome. How do you recommend
people reach out to you and get in touch? At info at impactinnovationfoundation.org
or they can just go to the website, impactinnovation.org and fill out the contact form.
Awesome. How about social media? Is there, we should catch up with you on social media?
I am on LinkedIn under my own name, Diane N Tucker. I am on Instagram. You can look up the Divine CEO.
I told you I use Divine in a lot. And those are my two main social platforms that I use.
Awesome. Well, we should have those in the show notes everybody. Thanks for tuning in to Vision
Pros Live. Dan, it's been a pleasure to have you. I look forward to catching up with you and seeing
how we might also benefit from what you're doing over at Impact Innovation Foundation with First
Class Business, Passion Pro and Opratianes de Trabajo para Latinos. We got a couple of different
ventures that may make sense to explore it. So thanks for all you do. You've built a wonderful
vision. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Everybody, you guys follow us if you
want to subscribe in. If you have any comments, questions for Diane, don't hesitate to leave them
in the platform that you're viewing from. We'll make sure she gets those. Everybody have a fantastic
day. And if we don't see you before then, enjoy your Halloween too. Bye. Thank you for being here
today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your
reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an awesome day.