BONUS EPISODE: Nora McInerny on her non-profit, Still Kickin
[0:09]Hi, everyone.
[0:10]Today I'm releasing a short bonus episode with Nora McInerney, who's the host of podcast
[0:16]terrible thanks for asking, and the author of several books, including No Happy Endings
[0:20]a Memoir.
[0:21]Nora was in town, and my podcast with her, which you should listen to, has already come
[0:26]out.
[0:27]But I didn't get a chance to meet her in person.
[0:28]So today she came over, and we talked about her nonprofit called Still Kickin, which
[0:34]I wanted to hear more about, which she founded after her husband passed away.
[0:38]And so I hope you enjoy our little talk.
[0:41]I was so inspired by Still Kickin, I'm definitely going to be donating to help other
[0:46]families who are going through these horrible things in their lives.
[0:49]Anyway, enjoy.
[0:50]Hi, so I'm here with Nora McInerney, the author of No Happy Endings, the host of terrible
[0:55]thanks for asking, and all around Rockstar.
[0:58]And we're talking today about Nora's nonprofit Still Kickin, which she launched after her
[1:02]husband Aaron Pesterray.
[1:04]Yeah.
[1:05]So I wanted to hear a little more about that because we already have a podcast about her
[1:07]writing.
[1:08]Which was great.
[1:09]Thank you.
[1:10]Thank you.
[1:11]Yes.
[1:12]So Still Kickin is a retail-based nonprofit, which means we primarily are a retail company.
[1:18]We sell these shirts and many other items, most of them say Still Kickin, which is the
[1:24]shirt that you're holding, this Kelly Green shirt with weathered looking letters, that's
[1:29]a tracing of Aaron's favorite shirt.
[1:32]And Aaron, is that my phone?
[1:34]I know.
[1:35]It's your phone.
[1:36]Oh, it's just giving you one of those things.
[1:37]I'm just going to have a day like this.
[1:38]I woke up and I had a feeling, I was going to have a day like this.
[1:41]Honestly, this is perfect.
[1:43]This is my phone vibrating while filming.
[1:49]Amazing.
[1:50]Okay.
[1:51]It really is perfect.
[1:52]Less doing anything can go really.
[1:54]One time I was on stage with my iPad, which is how I like read the script for terrible
[2:00]thanks for asking live.
[2:01]And one of the kids face time to me.
[2:04]I was like, no, I couldn't like, it's like, how did I forget to turn off like that?
[2:10]I don't know.
[2:11]So that's perfect.
[2:12]That's wonderful.
[2:13]Just showing you how unprofessional I can be.
[2:15]Look, I think this is very professional.
[2:18]This is the reality of being a professional who also has a life, which is that it's going
[2:23]to be I mean, some news are just better than not there, some news are neater than
[2:27]others.
[2:28]I'm waiting for my daughter to come in post-tension.
[2:31]The door is getting the thing will fly.
[2:34]So just wait for that.
[2:35]I can't wait.
[2:36]I love other people's kids tantrums or nothing to me.
[2:39]I'm like, okay, I get you doing okay?
[2:42]My kids tantrums.
[2:43]I'm like, the stress like just shoots out of my head and I'm like, what is wrong with
[2:47]you?
[2:48]So I will, I'll take that tantrum.
[2:49]Yeah.
[2:50]If you want, if you want to tag me in, I'll go up there.
[2:52]I'll handle that.
[2:53]She would probably love that.
[2:54]She'll make there's a strict one in my house.
[2:56]Yeah.
[2:57]I would get, it would jolt her right out of that tantrum.
[2:59]Like any time you miss babe, this giant Midwestern woman is going to go into your room
[3:06]and ask you questions about your feelings, honey.
[3:08]I have to say you talk about your height so much that I was expecting like someone just
[3:13]so tall that I wouldn't even like, I was like, what shoes could I possibly wear to meet
[3:18]her when I met you other than I, anyway, but you're like just a normal tall person.
[3:22]I think so.
[3:23]Yeah.
[3:24]Some people are like literally shocked by that.
[3:26]So I present it before we meet in real life so that people aren't like, honestly,
[3:31]sometimes people are like, like physically startled.
[3:34]It happens when I like walk in New York, like people will be like, oh, God, like, at
[3:38]an airport, a little boy, like looked up and he goes, oh, sorry, sir, looks up and
[3:43]it's like, you're just very big.
[3:45]I was like, I know, that's okay.
[3:47]It's like also this very polite.
[3:49]Yeah, that's true.
[3:50]Yeah.
[3:51]Excuse me, sir.
[3:52]No one's apologizing to me.
[3:53]That's not me.
[3:54]Whatever.
[3:55]I know.
[3:56]I know.
[3:57]What we're talking about.
[3:58]It's a retail nonprofit.
[3:59]There we go.
[4:00]So I like green shirt.
[4:01]Telly green shirt.
[4:02]That's true.
[4:03]Yeah.
[4:04]So that's the first thing that we ever made, Aaron had been wearing this shirt.
[4:09]It was, he had, okay, so in my basement, Aaron died in 2014, I have three giant bins,
[4:15]like giant.
[4:16]Not just the normal size Tupperware bin, the giant extended, like, bigger than my
[4:22]body man.
[4:23]Yeah.
[4:24]Yeah.
[4:25]Filled with t-shirts.
[4:26]T-shirts that have been, like, I have them all cataloged in a Google document.
[4:29]I have them all like, wow, you know, air, like, yeah, no, I'm going to do the symbol.
[4:34]I get it.
[4:35]Vacuum seal.
[4:36]Thank you.
[4:37]Yes, yes.
[4:38]They're all put away.
[4:39]They're saved for Ralph and even the big kids if they want them when they get a little bit
[4:41]older.
[4:42]But Aaron loved t-shirts he has.
[4:43]So they were his t-shirts.
[4:44]His t-shirts he had filled our dresser with t-shirts when I moved in with him.
[4:50]He was like, you can have, like, six hangers, and that's about it.
[4:54]But he had t-shirts that he cared about a lot that I was not allowed to borrow and this
[4:58]still kicking one was one of those t-shirts.
[5:01]It's so thin he had bought it at a second hand store when he was young and healthy and
[5:05]he wore it ironically.
[5:06]Like, in the heyday of ironic shirts, which, you know, I think is coming back, honestly,
[5:11]which is sort of weird.
[5:12]Everything comes back.
[5:13]But the early 2000s, you know, wearing ironic t-shirts from thrift stores and still kick
[5:19]in was one of them.
[5:20]The one that the original one is clearly handmade for somebody's grandpa's 100th birthday
[5:25]or something.
[5:26]It is really, really, it's sweet and he was wearing that the day that he had a seizure,
[5:31]which is the day that we found out that he had a brain tumor and we thought that was so
[5:35]funny.
[5:36]Like, I remember walking into the ER and he was like, hey, like pointing at his shirt
[5:40]and like, that's what a shirt.
[5:42]What a great shirt.
[5:43]Like, let's bust you out of here, but it turns out it was really serious.
[5:45]It was happening to him and we didn't know we were just so oblivious.
[5:49]So this was Aaron's idea.
[5:52]All of it was Aaron's idea almost right away when he found out he had cancer.
[5:55]He was like, I want to recreate this shirt.
[5:57]I want to sell it and I want to give the money to people who really need it.
[6:01]We had amazing insurance and still it was really hard for us to make it through financially.
[6:08]And most Americans don't have $500 saved for an emergency and emergencies are way more
[6:14]than $500 typically.
[6:16]So these things that can destroy you physically might first destroy you financially and therefore
[6:24]also emotionally money is tied up in so many things and Aaron didn't have life insurance.
[6:31]He was 31 when he had sick.
[6:32]We weren't married and we had this whole community of internet strangers and friends
[6:38]and family who made us a safety net.
[6:40]I was never going to really hit the ground and not everybody has that.
[6:43]I got this money which was Aaron's salary for a year and I could pay off all of his
[6:49]medical debt and I could survive for a little while without working.
[6:54]And I would at night spend a lot of time clicking through like different GoFundMe's
[6:59]different, you know, all these fundraising sites and I would seal these people whose network
[7:03]was completely tapped out who couldn't tap their network to pool $800 together.
[7:10]And I would just get drunk and go and fill those.
[7:14]It was nice.
[7:15]It was very nice.
[7:16]The money went very quickly and I probably should have saved more of it for like my life.
[7:20]But it felt like it felt to me like I didn't deserve it and I didn't need it the
[7:25]way some other people needed it and I had to I had to do something.
[7:30]Aaron had always wanted to turn this ironic t-shirt into something that could help other
[7:37]people.
[7:38]Even before he died, how lucky we were, we would go to the hospital and look around
[7:42]and think like, oh, we're the lucky ones.
[7:45]Like Aaron has stage four in curable brain cancer and we are doing better than everyone
[7:50]in this waiting room.
[7:52]And that was, you know, that was 2011, 2012.
[7:54]The internet was a different place.
[7:57]The idea of making a shirt and selling it that was that was a good idea, right?
[8:02]Yeah.
[8:03]The implementation in 2012 was just heart.
[8:06]I mean, square space wasn't a thing.
[8:07]Shopify was not as easy as it is now.
[8:11]We just didn't know like the idea of having inventory in our basement while we're, you
[8:14]know, doing chemo and radiation and having a baby, all these things.
[8:18]It just never happened.
[8:20]And right before Aaron died, we contacted Cotton Bureau, which is a wonderful print on
[8:26]demand site.
[8:27]It's really curated, right?
[8:29]They like they do design oriented stuff.
[8:31]So it's not like just anyone can throw a t-shirt up.
[8:34]And to have your short printed, you have to have a minimum of 12 orders.
[8:39]So I thought, okay, well, like there's six people in my immediate family.
[8:43]There's four in yours.
[8:45]And then maybe two of our friends will order one and like, you know, that'll, that'll
[8:48]feel good.
[8:49]And you get half the money basically from the sales.
[8:53]And we sold like 400, wow, it's, they're, the orders are only open for a two week period.
[8:58]It's like a pre order system.
[9:01]And then they brought it back and we sold like 800 and then they brought it back and we
[9:04]sold 3000.
[9:05]Wow.
[9:06]Yeah.
[9:07]It was more orders than they had ever had.
[9:09]They didn't even know how to do they have a lot of features.
[9:12]Not at first.
[9:13]They were like, Oh God, how are we going to do this?
[9:15]And Aaron died.
[9:17]And that idea was just sort of on hold for all the reasons that you can think of.
[9:25]And maybe four months, five months later, I'd turned in my first book.
[9:30]And Jason Ellie, who runs cotton bureau, a wonderful man, he had contacted me and he
[9:35]said, I will print this shirt a million times if you want me to, but this could be something
[9:39]more.
[9:40]And when you're ready for it to be something more, just tell me, I'll do whatever I can
[9:44]to help you.
[9:45]And he really meant it.
[9:46]And he really did.
[9:47]He gave us his printer, his warehouse.
[9:50]He showed us like their whole business model and he was like, no, you go do it.
[9:55]You go do it with this design and we did and my friend Lynn.
[10:00]Z came over and we made a website and I made it in LLC, not that hard to do, turns out.
[10:08]And we just started and we started with my friends who I've met through the internet
[10:15]who also had a brain tumor, my friend Scott.
[10:18]And we just put it out there, we were like, if you buy a shirt, you will be supporting
[10:23]Scott.
[10:24]At the end of this month, we're going to give Scott and his family as four children.
[10:28]We're going to give them the money.
[10:29]So you buy a shirt, you help a person out.
[10:32]And I did not know if that would catch on, I did not know if people would really get it,
[10:36]but they did.
[10:37]And that first month we gave Scott a thousand dollars, Scott's family, a thousand dollars.
[10:41]And then now we give people like almost $5,000 a month, yeah.
[10:45]And then if we can, we do bonuses at the end of the year too for everybody.
[10:48]And every month, we just pick a person and they can be going through anything.
[10:52]It does not have to be cancer, it does not have to be brain cancer.
[10:56]And we give them a no strings attached financial grant.
[11:00]So whatever they want to spend it on, whatever they need to spend it on, that is their
[11:04]business.
[11:05]And do you not to sound like a total skeptic?
[11:07]Yeah.
[11:08]Do you meet the families?
[11:09]We have like, they're nominated by somebody who cares about them.
[11:12]And then we do some like online research basically.
[11:16]And then we talk to them.
[11:17]Yeah.
[11:18]I feel like you read in the post about who we're scamming and we have devastating
[11:23]that would be for somebody to go in and steal that money.
[11:26]I know.
[11:27]And there are, I mean, I think that I do take a pretty generous approach to it or a surprisingly
[11:33]unscaptical approach to it for somebody who knows just how crappy life can be and how
[11:39]crappy people can be.
[11:41]But I do think that there's something about the community that has been built around
[11:45]still kick in that just doesn't make me skeptical in that way, if that makes sense.
[11:50]You should do on your site, well, this is a huge thing.
[11:53]But you know how there's a donor's choose?
[11:55]Have you heard of donors?
[11:56]Yeah.
[11:57]Yeah.
[11:58]Were you support different classrooms for teaching type projects?
[12:00]And obviously they're like scattered.
[12:01]Go find me.
[12:02]Maybe this already exists.
[12:03]But like family is like a just for families who need support.
[12:06]Do they have that already?
[12:07]Yeah.
[12:08]I don't know.
[12:09]I mean, I think online marketplace for that.
[12:10]Oh, yeah.
[12:11]I mean, like, so you could go in and like, let's say I have a particular attachment to breast
[12:16]cancers.
[12:17]Right.
[12:18]That's right.
[12:19]They need X amount of money, like maybe I go in and then, oh, yeah, it's a good idea.
[12:23]Yeah.
[12:24]Yeah.
[12:25]All right.
[12:26]Well, we'll start that on the side.
[12:27]There we go.
[12:28]There's just a lot of, there's a lot of need and a lot of it is tied to really specific
[12:34]causes.
[12:35]Right.
[12:36]And people do that really well, obviously.
[12:37]Yeah.
[12:38]But you never see.
[12:39]You never get that satisfaction.
[12:40]Right.
[12:41]But if I give to, no, no, no, the Barack a one or that, either, not that I don't like
[12:44]to.
[12:45]Yeah.
[12:46]Not that that's not also important.
[12:47]It is for research and other stuff.
[12:48]But to interact, I think you have a direct, you get to see how rewarded and grateful
[12:54]and that your efforts are actually like making a big difference.
[12:58]Yeah.
[12:59]And that's different than it is knowing intellectually, they're making a difference, but
[13:03]not seeing it as much.
[13:04]It is.
[13:05]And when your life is completely falling apart, you have so much to do, like there's
[13:09]so much going on.
[13:12]And I remember people sending me links to like organizations that would help you like pay
[13:16]your bills and, or this and that.
[13:19]And it required so much paperwork that I was like, I can't, but I don't even know where
[13:24]I would find that stuff.
[13:25]Like I don't know.
[13:26]No.
[13:27]Like I can see that thing.
[13:28]Yeah.
[13:29]And so I want to make it as easy as possible for people who are like living in crisis
[13:34]mode to just get some relief.
[13:38]Because for a lot of families getting like $4,000, $5,000 is like a lot.
[13:44]Like that is a ton of money.
[13:46]That is enough to like pay a couple months of their mortgage and just get a little bit of
[13:52]breathing room, which is wonderful.
[13:54]Like that's all you need.
[13:55]It's just like a little bit of breathing room.
[13:57]So do you have a list of families that you want to help?
[14:00]Yeah.
[14:01]We have a lot of families that we want to help.
[14:02]We have a lot of families.
[14:04]How many months ahead do you have?
[14:06]Is that how you do it?
[14:07]Well, yeah.
[14:08]So it's not as if we have like the whole year planned out because we do want like to make
[14:12]it.
[14:13]My immediate.
[14:14]Right.
[14:15]And we have like we have a whole committee, we have a whole committee that's dedicated
[14:19]to like reading those things like doing a selection based on, you know, I mean, a subjective
[14:25]but also semi objective sort of criteria of immediacy and need and sort of all like their
[14:34]own little formula of what it is.
[14:36]And then we have a separate fund that can meet smaller needs more immediately that basically
[14:42]we call like the Oprah fund, you know, like they're like, we'll take care of it kind
[14:45]of fund where maybe you don't need a huge grant, but like you need something right now.
[14:51]And so we have a fund that helps us do that and meet those more immediate needs in a
[14:55]quieter way where you know, you're not the, you're not the still kicking here of the
[14:59]month, but like we can help you with that kind of relief.
[15:03]So if there are people listening who think this is amazing, maybe I do want to help, maybe
[15:08]they don't need a t-shirt, maybe what, how can they help?
[15:11]You can sign up to be a still kicking sidekick, which is a monthly recurring donation,
[15:17]which is always helpful for any nonprofit that you believe in to have some sort of like
[15:22]recurring donation revenue is very, very helpful.
[15:26]Or you can make, you can just make a big old donation.
[15:28]I'm not going to tell you like how much money to give.
[15:32]I'm really bad at like the money for asking for it or anything like that.
[15:36]You can host a still kicking event, which we have a lot of them all over the country.
[15:43]So we have still kicking sessions, which are basically like panel discussions about what
[15:47]it means to like survive in this world to be still kicking in a world where bad things
[15:52]happen and life is really hard.
[15:54]So we've done those based around, you know, finances based around mental health, based
[15:59]around mindfulness, and we have like a panel of experts in their ticketed events and
[16:06]that money helps help support the organization.
[16:09]Or you can come to Minneapolis on July 15th for a fourth birthday party at Bauhaus
[16:15]Blue Labs, which is very fun.
[16:17]So those are all the things I think.
[16:19]Awesome.
[16:20]And tell your website for still kicking, still kicking dot co dot co dot com still kicking
[16:27]dot com is an old man's bluegrass band.
[16:30]Okay.
[16:31]Maybe they should play at the party.
[16:33]I don't think so.
[16:34]Because once they sent us an email and they were like, people are confusing our website
[16:37]for your website.
[16:38]And I was like, sorry.
[16:39]Yeah.
[16:40]It's like, I don't know.
[16:41]Welcome to the internet.
[16:42]Dude, I don't like sorry.
[16:45]Sorry.
[16:46]Yeah.
[16:47]Still kicking dot co.
[16:48]All right.
[16:49]Okay.
[16:50]Thank you.
[16:51]Well, thanks for telling us we're about it.
[16:52]Thank you.
[16:53]It's so amazing what you're doing and helping other people and just your big heart is
[16:57]shining through.
[16:58]Amazing.
[16:59]Love it.
[17:00]It's like if you, I don't know.
[17:01]I didn't have like that pole towards like other people, honestly.
[17:06]Like when I was in my 20s, I don't think anything ever like touched me emotionally.
[17:10]Really?
[17:11]Like I did not have like true empathy for anything like either it was happening to me.
[17:15]I don't believe that.
[17:16]And then I cared, you know, or or I felt pity.
[17:19]I could feel bad for somebody, but I couldn't feel it just felt like all of the world's
[17:24]problems were like too big.
[17:25]What could I possibly do?
[17:27]And the fundraiser that supported our family when Aaron died, the average amount that
[17:34]was donated was $20.
[17:36]Like so people doing one small thing like added up to like basically saving my son and
[17:41]I like we we were okay because of that money in a way that we definitely wouldn't have
[17:48]been where I would have been back at my cubicle like way before I was, you know, mentally
[17:55]or emotionally ready to do that.
[17:57]And I probably would have gotten fired because I was not functional.
[18:01]And I don't know that that money, which I think to most people who who donated and moved
[18:07]on with their day, like they didn't even really think about it.
[18:11]But I have like this very, very deep gratitude for all of those people because that was
[18:16]just a small thing that they did.
[18:18]Maybe they don't even remember doing it and it truly saved us.
[18:23]So all of the small things that you do, like throughout the day, throughout your life,
[18:28]like they really, really do, they do help people.
[18:32]And it is the world's problems are too big for us to solve on our own.
[18:36]But I know that you can do very small immediate things for people and that it affects
[18:41]them.
[18:42]It helps.
[18:43]So I want to be a sidekick.
[18:44]I'm going to be a sidekick.
[18:45]Be a sidekick.
[18:46]You get some pretty cool stuff as a sidekick.
[18:48]Okay.
[18:50]I never need this stuff either, but I mean, I like this stuff, but you're just saying,
[18:53]we'll see.
[18:54]Yeah, that's that one.
[18:55]But you know, like when you donate to public radio and they're like, if you donate now,
[18:58]you'll get like, you'll get, oh, so many top eggs, or you'll get like a clock radio or
[19:02]something like, I don't need the clock radio, like I just, I appreciate the thing, I'll
[19:06]do it.
[19:07]But some people really need the thing.
[19:08]Yeah, the thing is nice.
[19:09]The thing is nice.
[19:10]The thing is nice.
[19:11]All right.
[19:12]Thank you so much.