Transcription – [Unified Purpose] Janine Francolini Ep. 11 – Podcast Highlights and Transcript

Daniella: Hello everybody. Welcome to Unified Purpose. This is the podcast where we share inspiring tales of compassion, resilience, and community spirit. I’m your host Daniella, and I’m Penji’s partnership coordinator. Today I am joined here with a very special guest, Janine. Oh my God, Frank Wally Francoise. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to pronounce your last name.

Janine: Francolini.

Daniella: Okay. I was so wrong. Wow. That was terrible. I’m sorry. But she is the founder of Flawless Foundation and I’m very excited to have you today. Hi Janine. How are you doing?

Janine: Good. Thanks so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

Daniella: I’m so thrilled to have you now to kind of break the ice a little bit and get everything started. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, about Flawless Foundation, what you do, and what it’s all about?

Starting with Authentic Connection

Janine: Sure, sure. So actually, do you mind if I ask you a question first?

Daniella: Yeah, go ahead. You can ask me whatever.

Janine: Whenever we get together, whenever we have a conversation with anyone, we start every single meeting this way – we ask each other how we’re really doing. So not just “how are you, fine,” but how are you really doing? So I was wondering if I could ask you, how are you really doing today?

Daniella: Oh, how am I really doing? I guess I’m a little stressed. It’s been a busy day. So I haven’t had a lot of time to breathe. So stressed out a little bit. It’s been a difficult week. I’m having like a busy week. So every day of the week is gonna look like this. So I think that’s probably a more honest answer.

Janine: Great. Well, it’s so good to hear the truth and to kind of get a sense of where we’re starting from because you didn’t seem stressed at all when we were doing all…

Daniella: It’s my superpower. Yeah. How are you really doing? How are you really doing, then?

Janine: How am I really doing? I haven’t even, I’ve also been super busy, so I didn’t even stop and think about that. How am I really doing today? I’m good. I’m good because it’s been so cold and the weather changed. It got finally got sunny and nice. So that’s been great because it’s been very, very rainy and dark for like two weeks and cold.

Daniella: Oh yeah. The sun after a lot of rain is nice. Yeah.

Janine: Yes. It’s really making a big difference today. So that’s how I am. It’s been a good weather day today.

Daniella: Okay. That’s great. So we were, I feel like I’m in therapy, you know, like being, having to be really honest about how I’m feeling.

Janine: I love it. Oh, that’s really, it’s just nice to kind of connect and to, this is like the real, that’s what we were all about being real and authentic and connecting. That’s like our big thing, so that’s amazing. Yeah, right. It’s especially like now with our devices and digital media and everything we’re kind of having some issues with connecting and we’re more kind of separate and in our little silos, so. That’s what Flawless is all about, is bringing people together in authentic ways and changing the conversation around mental health, making it more accessible and open and giving hope and education to everybody about this cause that affects every single person.

About the Flawless Foundation

Daniella: So tell me more about Flawless, for people who are not familiar with it. What is the purpose of this foundation? I know that you guys are all about mental health, but can you tell us a little bit more about the type of mental health and all these things that you focus on?

Janine: We work at the intersection of mental health education and criminal justice reform, and we do that in, we are kind of changing the conversation in the face of this cause in three ways.

One is we have a really great intern program, leadership training program for mental health advocates and most of the members of that program are in college, but we have a few high school students, which is amazing, and you’ll see them all over our social media.

And the second way that we’re changing the conversation and making it more accessible and getting educated awareness out there about this issue is all of our digital media we have. We’re on all social media, TikTok. We write blogs. We’re launching a podcast. We are just really out there in terms of communications and making this accessible, leading with the lens of light and hope. So that we do those two things.

And the third thing we do is we help other organizations within our mission with their social media and their all of their different communications. Like early on we got, we became like, it’s a funny thing, like 10 years ago before we had influencers really, we were sort of like mental health influencers. We had a pretty big social media following and mental health organizations weren’t there yet. So we got invited to like a lot of big meetings and conferences all over the country, and people start to hire us. They’re like, “How’d you get all these followers?” So leading with this message of hope and “you are flawless” and all of this has been our sweet spot.

Daniella: Aw, that’s so sweet. I do think like social media has been great at providing a lot of different people with voices. Yes. I think, and I think you’re a great sort of example of that, right? Of being able to sort of get your name out there in a very different way than in a more even playing field than how it was prior to social media.

Janine: Exactly. Yeah. And the other thing we do, we’re very much into holistic health. So we do wellness workshops as well with people who have all kinds of the range of mental health issues. So serious to not so serious. And we work in schools, we do all kinds of presentations and workshops, and we’ve got our flawless tattoos. We have like temporary tattoos, I should put one on today. They’re like gold and they say flawless on them. And we have posted notes that cute. We write little like love notes. “You are flawless because,” and we write little notes and so yeah, so it’s really just a whole kind of movement of inclusivity and acceptance and connection and all that.

The Founding Story

Daniella: So what inspired you to start Flawless Foundation, when you started it and you said you started 10 years ago, right? Back in…

Janine: Longer than that.

Daniella: I’m trying to think. 2015, right?

Janine: Longer than that. We started in 2009.

Daniella: Oh wow. Okay. So 2009. So very different landscape. I think very little talk about mental health back in that time. What inspired you to start a mental health foundation? And how has that vision evolved? Since 2009 so much has happened. So much has changed.

Janine: Sure, sure. So a few things. The first thing is that I had serious mental health issues when I was younger. I have mental illness on both sides of my family. It’s very genetic and I had untreated… talk about the change. I mean, when I was a kid it was really not talked about or treated at all. So I went untreated until I was in high school and then it became pretty serious. So that was one thing. I got really good help. I was very, very grateful for that. So that influenced me later on.

Fast forward 30 years and I was a teacher and an administrator in New York City private schools. So these schools were really fantastic. And they had the best opportunities and really great philosophy. And they were like the best schools ever. So I was in that world for 15 years and then I moved to Portland, Oregon.

And one day I was in this school for kids that had serious mental health challenges. It was K through 12 and it was so underfunded and not at all like what I had been used to in New York at the schools that I worked at. I was shocked when I saw it. So it was this immediate like, “Oh my gosh, whoa, I’ve gotta help this school like now.” And I just, it was like, no plan, nothing. I have a master’s degree in education, but I had no fundraising experience or any experience running a nonprofit.

Daniella: You knew you wanted to help?

Janine: It was just a calling. It was an absolute calling. I never had a plan, no strategic plan, and then it just kind of took off and had a life of its own. It was amazing. I just called some friends of mine. I just moved to Portland. So I called some friends in New York. I said, “Oh, this school has no materials. They have couches with ripped pillows. There are police officers. They’re like, it’s so awful. Please just like clean out your kids’ rooms and send me some stuff so I can give it to them.”

So that’s how it started. And then boom, boom, boom. And very early on, Al Roco did an endorsement for us on video, like very early on. So that helped us get out there and it just took off. It was incredible. It’s been such a, it was so much luck just poured on us from the beginning.

Daniella: That’s amazing. You know, like my mom always says that if something is meant for you, things are gonna sort of pave the way themselves. So I think that’s kind of what happened to you. ‘Cause my mom would always tell me like, “You know, if this thing that you want so much is for you, like, don’t worry. Like whatever blocks you feel like are happening right now, you will figure it out some way.”

Janine: So true.

Advocating for Mental Health: Then and Now

Daniella: And it feels like that with you. But I’m really just curious about how you were able to advocate for mental health back then versus now? I feel like the mental health conversation, mental illness, trauma, all of these things, that’s a conversation that’s a lot more prevalent nowadays. We’ve become somewhat more tolerant. Not entirely, I think. Maybe not all that understanding, but we’re certainly in a place where we’re a lot more aware of this and we try to work on it than back in 2009, when this whole thing started. So I just wonder like, how was that experience of trying to advocate for something that was, I think very rare at the time. And maybe like a bit of a taboo subject.

Janine: Yes, it was for sure. And the funding wasn’t there at all. You know, mental health is very much underfunded. It’s not on the radar compared to other. So that was a big issue, how underfunded it was and how many people weren’t fundraising for mental health. So that was really tricky and interesting.

But again, we just landed it on this kinda philosophy that we had. Like it was flawless, like, you’re perfect. And our tagline is “seeing the perfection in every person.” So it’s, you know, like I said, leading through the lens of light and love and looking at someone’s strengths. So we really kind of led with that messaging, which was very accessible and people were intrigued and interested.

So I had this way of talking about it that made it very comfortable for people. And we had a ton of young people involved and we did a lot of social things in the beginning, a lot of parties and really fun fundraising things, so people wanted to come to our events. So that kind of made the cause fun and something people were intrigued by and wanted to get involved with. So that’s kind of how we did it in the beginning. And again, like you said, it has changed dramatically. It’s really much, much, much better. Now, 15 years later.

Daniella: Yeah, I mean, definitely there’s been a lot of changes. I was super young in 2009, so I don’t, I just remember the conversation about mental health was really different back then as a child. I don’t remember like all of the stuff that I had access to regarding mental health would be like mostly just in extreme cases. I think I would only learn about like, “Oh, like she has like terrible schizophrenia where she cannot even walk out on the street because she’s like having these weird panic attacks and stuff like super crazy.”

And then I think throughout the years I learned that mental health issues don’t always look like that. They can look like that, but they can also be different, because the conversation around it changed. You also learned that a lot of people around you have mental health issues, but sometimes we’re just unaware that we have them, which is insane to me. How many people don’t even know that they’re walking around with trauma or mental illness and they’re just trying to make it through their day?

Janine: Yes. It’s so common. Once you start talking about it, everybody tells you, “Oh, my sister or I had this,” you know, you just hear so many, so many stories. It’s really common, which like I said, it affects every single person in some way. Either you have something or someone you know.

Setting Boundaries in Mental Health Work

Daniella: Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask you this question. I hope that it’s not too invasive, but I saw this video of this woman who was kind of like an advocate for human trafficking. So she had been a victim of human trafficking herself. Which is a really serious topic. You’re already talking about something that’s very heavy just from the get-go.

And she spoke about all of the mental health issues that she had to deal with because of being a victim of human trafficking and the trauma that she had and how she was trying to help other victims of human trafficking to get out of those situations. And she said that it was really difficult for her to sort of have boundaries because she would always have girls calling her in the middle of the night saying like, “Oh, like I need help” and it would always be urgent, you know, and they were always needing money and help for running away from these crazy situations.

And she was always trying to help because she felt like she needed to, but she was also spreading herself so thin that she was having financial problems. She was just struggling so much and she had to sort of start to set boundaries, which I think is a very common problem that happens when you’re doing something like this because you wanna help everyone. But you can’t help them, obviously. And I wonder how that experience has been for you of learning if you have to set those boundaries. What have you guys in Flawless Foundation been doing to sort of make that process a little bit easier? I don’t know if my question makes sense. It’s just I really feel like that happens a lot and I wonder how you sort of navigated that situation.

Janine: That’s a great question. So I don’t know how I learned this. I just had this big picture from the beginning and knew that if I took care of myself and we all took care of ourselves, we’d be able to impact more people. I just kind of understood that from the beginning, and I had something incredible happen once.

This is a very poignant and kind of heartbreaking story. I was working, it was early on. I was at that school and I was doing an art workshop with some kids and this wonderful boy who I’d gotten to know. He was about 10 years old. It was just so lovely. He said to me, “Ms. Jeanine, did you see I’m in the newspaper?” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yes, I’m up for adoption.” They would put kids that were their picture in the newspaper. It was horrible.

So that’s horrible. I don’t know. Yeah, it’s interesting. But he said, “Would you adopt me?” And I like almost fell off my chair. I think the teacher that was with me was a man. I remember he filled up with tears and I was about to just cry, but I don’t know what I said. I said, “Oh, I’m your friend. I’m your teacher. I’m always here for you.” I got through it and then I went home. I was like, “I have to adopt this kid.” I was really thinking about it, and I talked to my husband and I was really thinking about adopting him.

And I went to the principal of the school and he said to me, “You can adopt this kid, but I wanna tell you a few things. Number one, you have to not do Flawless Foundation. You can’t travel all around the country like this ’cause you’re gonna need to really be home with this kid. And he’s had so much abuse and been in so many different homes, you have to be home.” And he’s like, “So you have a choice. You can either help this one kid, which is great, or you can impact thousands of kids.” And so that really helped me. So every time I have to say no or set a boundary, I always think of that, how many more people I can impact if I set that boundary.

Daniella: That’s so sweet. That’s actually a great way to put it. ‘Cause I think it’s so hard when you have it in your face and you have to be like “No.”

Janine: I think it’s so hard. It’s so hard.

Daniella: It would be really hard for me.

Janine: It’s so hard. I mean, I’ve had people sometimes reaching out to me and asking for help and I had to say no. I mean, I would just send them to, I always have resources in places to send them, but there have been times I’ve had to say, “Please, people would give out my phone number,” just exactly what you’re talking about. And I had to say to my friends, “Please don’t do that.” So it’s never easy to set a boundary and to learn how to say no, it’s not. But the more you do it and the more you practice it, the better you get at it.

Daniella: I think because like the difference between having just a normal job is that it’s easy for you to set a boundary when you can just say like, “Well, my day ended, I can email this to her tomorrow, and the company’s not gonna end.” And it’s easier when you’re thinking of it from the perspective of business because you feel like it’s not a person. But if it’s an actual person who’s going through something and they need your help, and you have to say no, I think it’s a lot more personal for you to be like, “Yeah, my day’s over my job’s done.” Right? That’s how I feel about it. So that’s why I always like to ask people that question. ‘Cause I think it would be really hard for me if I was working in any kind of actively advocating for something, having to sort of have those boundaries. But I do understand the concept of sort of putting your mask on before you do it on the other person.

Janine: Exactly. Exactly. And having your toolkit ready to go. Like it’s not like when I say no, I don’t have resources for people. I do, I have everything ready to go.

Seeing the Perfection in Every Person

Daniella: Great question. But no, it totally makes sense. Now I also wanted to ask you about, you guys emphasize the phrase “seeing the perfection in every person,” right?

Janine: Mm-hmm.

Daniella: This philosophy, how do you actually translate it into the actionable programs or initiatives that you’re doing at Flawless Foundation to help people?

Janine: It is like a lifestyle. It’s a philosophy, it’s a practice. We just, like I said, we look through the lens of light and love and strength. So instead of someone’s diagnosis or their behavior that might be out of what people are used to. If it’s you looking at their strength, looking at their smile, looking at their light and meeting them there.

I have a big story, an anecdote of how we actually did that once, if you wanna hear it. We were, we did this training once with this doctor in New York City and there were like a hundred people in the room. Maybe I forget how many people were there. But this woman found out about the workshop ’cause it was advertised all over the place. And she came in like with a supermarket cart with her and she was interrupting the doctor a lot and I wasn’t sure if she had a place to live or anything.

She was just, you know, definitely not… We had doctors in the room and teachers and parents, and it was just, I was like, where’d she come from? You know, it was like, and the doctor handled it really well, or mental health organization. It all like, you know, was whatever, you know, we all had our… We are being inclusive and understanding, even though she was taking the conversation off track a bunch of times and the second day of the training.

At the end of the training, she came up to me with these beautiful candles from like Anthropologie, like gorgeous candles. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is so…” I think she was unsheltered, like didn’t have shelter. Definitely had mental issues. And I was like, “Wow. And where’s these candles come from?” She told me, she went dumpster diving and found these candles for me. I mean, that it was like she made the training. And I was able to give one to the doctor, and so I made a big deal out of it. Like I announced it to everyone. I said, “Oh, Diane, whatever her name was, just gave us these candles. So thank you, Diane.” Like, I just included her and people knew who she was. And at the end of the day, she gave such a gift to all of us and brought so much light.

Daniella: That’s sweet. Yeah. And it’s like from a place where you don’t expect it to come from, right? Like, it’s like, how did you go by this?

Janine: And not judging, you know, trying not to judge.

Daniella: Yeah, I did it. Totally. I mean, it really speaks volumes I think. A lot of times we sort of identify people’s identity, like I think that is a common mistake that I’ve sometimes caught myself doing, which is sort of reducing a person’s identity to a certain thing that has happened to them, or mental health illness that they may have or shortcoming or whatever. I don’t even know what the right word is. Right. But like difficulty. When I think a person is so much more than just that diagnosis that they might have had.

Janine: Exactly, and it’s being inclusive and kind and compassionate and understanding and not, you know, being, yeah. Writing someone off and canceling them because of their behavior. We could have been like, “Oh, she’s so disruptive.” Like, we could have done a whole thing, we could have asked her to leave. Who knows what we would’ve if we were like, not seeing the perfection in everyone.

Financial Sustainability in Nonprofit Work

Daniella: Janine, I also wanted to ask you, ’cause I feel like with nonprofits, this sort of happens a lot. It’s a very common problem. How did you figure out the financial stability of your organization, to actually make it sustainable for yourself, for you to be able to provide help to the people that you’re trying to help, to be able to sort of have a team that you can also support? I think with nonprofits, the financial conversation is very big because it’s different than like a company where you’re trying to get sales and make revenue. Obviously a nonprofit is doing it the same, but it’s a different approach. So I just wonder how were you able to figure that out when you were, from when you started it up to this point?

Janine: Again, I was lucky. We were lucky in the beginning. Very early on, we had a donor who made a very significant gift each year, like for 10 years that kind of took care of all of the operating costs, so it was luck in the beginning and now it’s getting a little easier because mental health’s finally getting some attention. And the crisis is so big that a lot of people are supporting it. A lot of foundations are supporting it. Everybody’s addressing this issue now, so it’s getting a little bit easier now, but it was tough and Covid was really hard.

And I think that if I had to give some advice, a few things I would say are, try and get a model for earned revenue. So we had flawless strategies where people would hire us to do their communications for them, for people within our mission. So that was helpful.

And then the other big thing is I am such a big fan. We haven’t done this yet. Maybe we will, but I’m such a big fan of little organizations merging together. So you’re not duplicating legal services and accounting and all these expenses that are for infrastructure. It’s just one that’s like my favorite thing in the world is for us to all merge and there should be probably one organization for every 10 really. And then we could take those infrastructure costs and be able to use them for more programming altogether.

Conclusion

Daniella: Well, I think that’s a great note to end this episode on. It’s been great having you, Janine, but before we finish, I do want to give you the space to promote anything that you wanna promote. If anything that we spoke about today resonated with anyone that is listening or watching and you wanna send them to your foundation, they wanna talk to you. The floor is yours for that.

Janine: Okay. So yeah, our social media is at Flawless Foundation, our website’s flawlessfoundation.org. And like I said, we just recorded like 15 podcast episodes. We’re so excited about that. So that’s coming out really soon. And we also have online courses that we’re doing now. We have one done for high school students who identify as male. And they’re all kinds of wellness tips and suicide prevention and just everything you need to know about mental health and emotional intelligence. And it’s taught by these amazing guys that work for us, who were student athletes actually.

So we have that course. And then the course for those who identify as female, the high school students, is coming out. Again with this podcast pretty soon. So we have lots of things cooking and great stuff every day on TikTok and Instagram. And we have our blog and just follow along on digital media for sure.

Daniella: Awesome. Yeah, I will be adding the links to your foundation and your socials on the description of this video so that anybody can go and find you and talk to you if they need to. Now we are going to finish the episode, but thank you so much, Janine, for doing this. It was great talking to you, and I had so much fun.

Janine: So good to talk to you too and go take care of yourself and relieve some stress.

Daniella: Thank you.

Janine: Hope the conversation helped a little bit.

Daniella: Yeah, it did. It was actually very lighthearted. I think a lot of the interviews that I do can be very… well, no, actually I wouldn’t say that they’re serious. I have great guests, but sometimes, you know, they require a lot more mental capacity. So it’s been great talking to you.

Janine: Good to talk to you too. Thank you so much for having me, and stay flawless.

Daniella: You too. Have a great day, everyone. I’ll see you on the next episode.

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