IAM1268 – CEO Makes the Giving Experience Beautiful and Instant

Wale Mafolasire is the founder of Givelify, the most trusted online and mobile giving platform. Nearly $3 billion in donations across more than 55,000 organizations, including churches and places of worship, as well as a variety of other non-profit causes, has been generated through Givelify. Mafolasire believes giving is a beautiful thing. He leads the efforts at Givelify to make the giving experience equally beautiful and instant. A multi-time entrepreneur, Mafolasire pioneered an online learning and collaboration platform for college students and an interactive mobile video cloud platform. He formed Givelify in 2013 out of a desire to transform spontaneous giving and increase generosity in the world.

• CEO Story: Wale’s generous heart and passion to help churches and organizations by making the transfer of donations easy, through an app. Turning those good intentions into good deeds. Successful enough that it generated nearly $3 billion in donations.
• Business Service: Connecting the organization and the people who want to support them.
• Secret Sauce: Never give up on your dreams. It’s not the features and benefits that made Givelify special, it’s the people behind it – it’s the diversity within the organization.
• CEO Hack: Book recommended – the Bible. How Jesus imparted the vision and being a servant leader to his disciples is really helpful for entrepreneurs today.
• CEO Nugget: Hiring the best person for the team. Diversity brings innovation to the organization.
• CEO Defined: Servant leadership. In a team effort, you need the people to execute the vision. Everyone plays an important role.

Website: www.givelify.com

Twitter: givelify

Facebook: Givelify

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00:18 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:46 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Wale Moffolashi of Givelify. Wale, it's great to have you on the show.

00:55 – Wale Mafolasire

It's great to have you Gresh and thank you for having me.

00:59 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Wale so you can hear about some of the awesome things that he's doing. Wale is the founder of Givelify, the most trusted online and mobile giving platform. Nearly 3000000000 dollars in donations across more than 55, 000 organizations including churches and places of worship as well as a variety of other nonprofit causes has been generated through Givelify.

Wales believes giving is a beautiful thing and he leads the efforts at Givelify to make the giving experience equally beautiful and instant. A multi-time entrepreneur, Walei pioneered an online learning and collaboration platform for college students and an interactive mobile video cloud platform. He formed Give La Fly in 2013 out of a desire to transform spontaneous giving and increase generosity in the world. Wale, super excited to have you on the show. Thank you for giving us some of your time today. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:52 – Wale Mafolasire

I tell you what, they're very exciting, man. I've had a chance to review some of the work that you're doing and just taking this nuggets from those of us who are out there trying to figure out how to run businesses and sharing those nuggets. I get to learn from some of the things that you've done as well. So hopefully there are some things that I can share today that your audience can learn from, just like I've gotten to benefit from the things you've shared from others.

02:16 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I always say success leaves clues. So I definitely think you have loads of knowledge and information. You've had so much success. So before we kind of jumped into the success that you have, what I wanted to do was kind of rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started. Can you take me through what I like to call your CEO story?

02:33 – Wale Mafolasire

Yeah, sure. Definitely. A couple of years ago, I was sitting in church and the offering plate came by, this was probably early 2013 or so, rich for my wallet. I had maybe 2, $3 in there. And meanwhile, I knew I wanted to give away more than the 3 dollars I had in my wallet. Put that in the offering plate and made a promise to myself that when I got home, I'd go set up the online gift. Meanwhile, the pastor was on the pulpit saying, hey, we've got online giving so you can give online. But I tried to do it from my smartphone while sitting in church and it was not the smoothest experience. So just think about that.

This was about 8 years ago, things were not super mobile-optimized or geo-optimized. So you would have to hit the browser on your phone and type in the name of your church. In my situation, the name of my church was faith apostolic church. So it's like a whole bunch of churches exactly show up in the Google search results. And so in that moment, I realized that there are these moments where we all aspire to want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, right? Whether we see something in the news, or we're just walking down the street and want to, we just want to do something about it.

For some people, they're able to act after the fact. For people like myself, if I don't act in the moment, I lose that moment completely. And so I was wondering, there's got to be an app that helps people like myself. When we found ourselves in this moment and looked in the app store, there wasn't one, I was like, you know what I told you, maybe we'll build this app. Worst case scenario, nobody uses it. I'm the only user. The best-case scenario is to solve the relationship between my church and me. I don't have to keep avoiding eye contact with my pastor every time I go to church on Sunday, sneaking out the back door 5 minutes before the service is over because I don't want him to come to say hello to me.

I'm feeling guilty because I didn't give. And you know, what we thought was just going to be this little thing that solves Wally's ability to give whenever it was inspired to has turned into this generosity movement that you read of some of those stats by all means we're just very humbled by almost 3000000000 dollars in donations that we've held this organization's race 55, 000 of them over a million people like me that are out there we're looking to do more good and we just feel very fortunate that we helped them turn those good intentions into good.

04:50 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, well, I appreciate you sharing that so much. And so I know I touched on it a little bit when I read your bio, you did as well too. Could you take us through a little bit more on how it works and how you make that impact it sounds like the organizations as well as the individuals want to give as well.

05:03 – Wale Mafolasire

Yeah, definitely. So anytime you look about philanthropy, right, there's these organizations in there. One of the quotes I like to quote is from Mr. Bill Gates, right? He says, Hey, look, there's a huge problem that philanthropy solving, right? If there were easy problems, the government would step in, businesses would step in and solve them. But they're huge problems. And so we leave it into the hands of philanthropic organizations to tackle them. And so we've always looked at it from the perspective of, Yes, there are these organizations that are tackling these problems, and that's their passion. That's what they wake up every day for.

And there are people like perhaps you and I who are saying, hey, look, we wanna solve the problem too, but it's not our full-time job, right? And we just wanna support those who are tackling these problems. And maybe we can do that through our time, right? We can give up our time, Or if we have financial resources, we'll give them some money so they can continue to champion these causes. So when we look at, OK, if that's the problem we're trying to solve, how do we build tools that bring those 2 sides together, that brings the organization together, who's looking to connect with more of the people who wanna support them, and the good people like you and I, who are looking for organizations that are just near and dear to us and causes that we can be inspired by to support them.

And I think in our heads, when we first started the company, we thought, hey, we could go out there and raise a million dollars to make this happen. And so we started going around pitching investors and say, hey, look, here's the problem we're trying to solve. As this ever happened to you, I remember starting to pitch out of Indianapolis, where I used to live at that point in time, and we couldn't get any investors to get behind the idea. So I'm like, you know what? Forget Indianapolis, I'm gonna go try Austin, Texas. I've heard that investors there are very progressive, pitched a couple of investors there, couldn't get anybody to bite, and tried San Francisco. I heard they found anything called an idea out of there, and spoke to a bunch of investors. It was one thing or the other.

We don't know who you are. You've never done this before. We think competition is going to eat you up. I'm like, you know what, forget San Francisco, I'm gonna go try New York, the money capital of the world. And again, pitched a couple of different people there and same result. And so I remember at some point in time looking in the mirror and everybody can't be wrong. Maybe this idea actually does suck and maybe I shouldn't pursue it. But I got off the plane and it was Sunday the next day and I went back to church and I'm leaving this problem again. Like, well, maybe I just suck at explaining what the opportunity is.

This problem is real. I've got to be able to solve it for myself. And so, called on some of my friends at that point in time, some of them from college, some of them I just knew casually, and just talked to them about what I was trying to do. And they could all get behind the idea of a product out there that can help people turn that innate desire that exists in every one of us to turn it into immediate actions of donations, right? They could get behind it. And so, you know, $5, 000 there, $10, 000 here, we all pitched in, and that's how we were able to get the company started.

08:04 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that. So would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This could be for yourself, the organization, or a combination of both. But do you think it's that hardworking, that the mentality sounds like perseverance as well as you have? Do you think that's part of what makes you, sets you apart, and makes you unique?

08:20 – Wale Mafolasire

I've seen it to be a consistent theme for success, regardless of who you talk to within the business world, within sports, or whether it's in the entertainment industry, consistently what everybody says is never give up on yourself. And it sounds so easy. Like it's just, it sounds so easy, but it's literally the secret sauce. It's like never give up. And I remember moments when it's like, I would go to all these pitches, I went to hundreds of pitches, And time after time, they would say, no, this can never work, but don't wanna take the chance.

And so today, if you ask me, what's the secret sauce to give Lify success? Definitely product and features, they're great, but absolutely it's the people. And if you ask yourself one more question, why the it's the diversity in people? And so at work, I joke a little like if you look at any of our work Zoom calls, it feels like you are the United Nations because you see people from all different backgrounds. And it's just absolutely incredible because of the innovation you get from their respective diverse, from diverse perspectives.

09:24 – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate that so much. And hearing the answers of you and what kind of gets you going. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So it could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:39 – Wale Mafolasire

One of the books that I enjoy reading a lot is the Bible. And I say this because it's not just a complete book from a faith perspective. But if you look at all the lessons that the Bible outlines, so we talked about just from the story of creation, one of the things I talk about is God could have said, he's God, he could do anything. He didn't have to wait 7 days to create the world. On day one, he could have said, let the world look like, let the earth look like it looks like in 2021 today. And it will have happened, right? But he remembered there was something he had to do first, right? So he looked around, he saw there was darkness and he said, let there be light.

And that's the thing he did on day one. But the lesson and the translation is that no matter how big your dream is, you've got to be able to condense it to what's the one thing you can do today. Jesus Christ is talking about the things he needed to inspire his disciples. Like literally in business terms, I say, Jesus Christ was an entrepreneur. He didn't have money to hire those 12 disciples, but he sold them a vision. He told Peter, I will make you fishers of men. Not I will pay you to be a fisherman, but I will make you fishers of men.

And he had a very clear vision that he could articulate and he could get people behind that vision. And so for any entrepreneur, you need to have a vision. And how do you get people to buy into that vision? Cause you can't do it by yourself. And so there are lots of things you can look to in the Bible that point to business lessons, and business hacks. I enjoy reading Bible stories on a faith level, But from a business perspective as well, there's hardly anything I'm struggling with that can find something in the Bible that speaks eloquently.

11:22 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that so much. So I love that hack. You might have already touched on this, but I want to ask you for a CEO nugget, which is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. And I almost wonder if you kind of touched on this when you said when you were able to bring on a team, but that team was a diverse team, it provided certain opportunities for you to see and look at things maybe from a unique perspective because you were creating a team and building a team that had those unique experiences, perspectives, and that kind of built and became a competitive advantage for you.

11:54 – Wale Mafolasire

Yeah, there's no doubt. I think, you know, as GilaFa has grown over the years We've expanded the products that we offered. One of the things you start to quickly see is you need to bring in more people to help you with your organizing. And there are some times where you're like, hey, I got to find the best person very quick. But one of the things that we've always appreciated at Giblify was just the power of diversity. And even yes, sometimes want to bring somebody very quickly.

Sometimes we're very intentional about saying, hey, look, when I look at this team, we have certain perspectives on there and we lack this other perspective on there, right? And so we're very intentional about saying, hey, look, we need somebody of a different kind of background so that they can offer their own perspective there. And yes, it means it might take you longer to fill the role, but it's never filled us when we're very intentional about saying regardless of what it takes, We just can have a team that all looks and sounds the same.

12:49 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely appreciate that nugget. And I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. You're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Wally, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:01 – Wale Mafolasire

You don't get into this to become a CEO, at least personally. I think one of the things that I like to correct people is, hey, you want to work for yourself. The whole concept of I'm working for myself. And I'm like if you're doing this because the end goal is to work for yourself, I think there are other things that are a lot easier that will get you the money. And you don't have to worry about working for yourself. Because the whole concept of I'm working for myself, it's as far as I'm concerned, it's a fallacy. Everybody's working for somebody. If my organization, so my donors ask me to jump right now, Gresham, I'm gonna ask how high I work for them, right?

So everybody works for somebody. And so the whole concept of servant leadership, again, you go to the Bible, you talk about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. In my own opinion, it's just something that every leader needs to take very seriously, right? That it's a team effort and nobody's more important. Yes, your role is to set the vision and get people behind the vision, but you need the people who are gonna get behind the vision as well and they execute on the vision. It doesn't make me more important than the next person.

It's just that is my role. My accountant has his role. Our customer support folks have their role and nobody's role is more important. We're just playing our role. As a leader was something I had to learn in my early days and made a few mistakes through that. But the moment I appreciated that my role is a CEO role and it wasn't any more important than anybody else's, it was easier to get people to get behind the vision and hold each other accountable to what are we trying to do and how do we measure that we're doing?

14:33 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense and definitely, you know, so powerful, especially when you, you know, you mix in that servant leadership as we kind of been talking about with the good book and, and, you know, Jesus being a phenomenal leader as well to being able to kind of motivate the disciples and let them know the mission and the vision as well to truly appreciate that definition. Of course, appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get a hold of you. Find out about all those things you and your team are working on.

15:03 – Wale Mafolasire

Www.givlify.com. That's our website. And we're just very excited about some of the new things that we're putting out there in the marketplace today. One of the things that we've come to appreciate is how you start to leverage the power of technology. There are a lot of things we're reading in the news today about how technology is selling our data and it's doing all of this hanky panky with what it knows about us. And for us, we've just always wondered like, Hey, can we reverse that and instead use technology?

15:33 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I truly appreciate that. Wally. What we'll do is we'll have the information that shown us as well, too, so that everybody can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you all are working on. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:44 – Wale Mafolasire 

Thank you, Gresham, for telling the stories. I know there's somebody out there who's probably struggling with it, should I pursue the idea or not? And I'm hoping they can watch some of the things that you've written about or talked about in your podcast and they can find that inspiration even when it looks like it's impossible. So kudos to you and the good work you're doing.

16:01 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. I appreciate that. The saying is it's always darkest before dawn. So I appreciate you Wale and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:08 – Wale Mafolasire

You do the same.

16:09 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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