Building A Transformational Community: A Profitable Social Good Model w. Ana Megrelishvili

How do you move from vision to movement? Ana Megrelishvili shares how she built a transformational community that mobilizes Christian professionals for impact and social good—one connection at a time. This episode is for you if you’re called to build more than just a business.

Ana Megrelishvili is the visionary founder of the Christian Professionals Network Worldwide (CPNW) in Atlanta, Georgia, where she skillfully blends her passion for positive change with actionable initiatives. CPNW transcends traditional networking by integrating business relationships with service-oriented values, fostering global community transformation.

🌐Check  out the work that Christian Professionals Network Worldwide is doing http://cpnworldwide.com/

🤝Connect with Ana https://www.linkedin.com/in/anamegrelishvili/

Simple & strategic marketing solutions for the busy coach and consultant. Visit www.reinventingperspectives.com

Transcript

Ana Megrelishvili: [00:00:00] relational poverty is lack of genuine connections in someone's life and our society is really suffering. And COVID has affected it a lot more where. In the US at least one in five Americans surveys say that they feel lonely and isolated. We've grown tremendously because people are tired of not having community. So people are genuinely wanting to get out there, network more, meet more people, and I really see a trend of people coming into networking events, not just for business opportunities, but for social aspect of it. 

It's.

Priscilla Shumba: Welcome to the Lessons of Entrepreneurship, the Journey of Reinvention. I've got a exciting guest ana Megrelishvili

Thank you so much for being with [00:01:00] us. Anna has built an amazing community and is sharing what it takes to build a transformational community, which I think our audience of early entrepreneurs who are looking to build community that's bigger than business, with a bigger mission.

Would be very interested to hear what you have to say. , Anna, please let us know what is your mission and how did this all start?

Ana Megrelishvili: Yes. I'm here to solve relational poverty. So that's a relatively new term that you might not be familiar with, but what that means, relational poverty is lack of genuine connections in someone's life and our society is really suffering. And really COVID has affected it a lot more where.

In the US at least one in five Americans surveys say that they feel lonely and isolated. And I think that's a trend worldwide where people are feeling more isolated, even though we're so connected with social media. And it feels like, we are communicating with a lot of people, but in [00:02:00] reality we're really, are not as involved within our community. And so I am battling it with my organization, Christian Professionals Network Worldwide.

Priscilla Shumba: It's so true because as much as we are all on social recording ourselves now doing things that feel out of the box, if you ask someone to. To pick up the phone to call someone. They feel really weird about that in most cases. 

That relational poverty that people are experiencing. I'm excited to dive into this 'cause I think it affects professionals as well as business owners 

Ana Megrelishvili: yes, and it's more than that. Feeling lonely and isolated is equal to smoking half a pack of cigarettes per day. That's how negatively it affects our bodies and mental health. But also loss of productivity. There's been a study done in the US where they're estimating that $9.5 billion gets lost in productivity every year due to people feeling lonely and isolated.

Because basically you're more depressed, you have high [00:03:00] probability of being on antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication. It lowers your productivity. You take more days off. And so that results in a dollar amount of $9.5 billion lost every year, but more studying homelessness in the United States.

I realized that relational poverty is the number one reason why people become homeless. And that is the same for people who are incarcerated and getting out of incarceration. Maybe people who are rescued from human trafficking. So these demographics of people are really relationally.

Poor, and that really negatively affects their economical state of being as well. So this is a really big issue on many levels, as you can see, from physical to emotional, to economical. And so when I first started my organization. It was very [00:04:00] interesting because everybody told me to start it as a nonprofit and I was very adamant about starting it as a for-profit business with social impact later on.

The way I structured my organization, there's two entities under one umbrella, under one brand. So I have a for-profit, which is a networking entity. Think of Chamber of Commerce, different networking organizations. You come in as business professionals to expand your professional circle, your network lots of educational elements and revenue gets generated through sponsorships and membership.

And then under the same brand, we also have a nonprofit with a mentorship program for the homeless. Guess what? The profits of the for-profit business feeds into our nonprofit, which becomes more sustainable down the road because we're now able to cover some of the overhead and administrative costs [00:05:00] from the profit of the business.

And as a for-profit, you have a lot more freedom in how you structure. Your operations and how you spend money and where you reallocate money, where with nonprofit, it's a lot stricter. You have to be very careful because you are dealing with donations, money that was raised from, public.

And you need to make sure that every dollar gets allocated properly and gets allocated to the programming. I'm very pleased with how. It is set up now because it becomes a sustainable way to do good in our community while generating profit from our networking side.

Priscilla Shumba: A lot of people make that mistake when they're building community for good, trying to balance. Having that mission, trying to balance being monetized, trying to balance it being something that continues to grow and pay for itself.

That's interesting. I would love to [00:06:00] know how you landed on this. Was this your initial let's do this way or you had to pivot at some point in time,

Ana Megrelishvili: yeah. Before I got into it, , I had a completely different career. So I was in corporate sales. Climbing corporate career. I worked for large organizations and was very satisfied there because I was making a lot of money and was very content. And then I had a personal transformation journey where I went from being atheist to having an encounter with God.

So that completely transformed my life, which led to eventually me quitting my corporate job going on a year long sabbatical. And then everything that I told you about really came from a vision. I was at a silent retreat for five days where I didn't speak. I didn't have any cell phone, and really just was there in prayer and meditation and suddenly I received the vision of everything that I told you about today.

And [00:07:00] really. It is not something I ever thought I would be in. I never pictured myself as an entrepreneur or somebody who is doing a lot of social impact work in my community, but that's something that I was led into by God and completely transformed my life. And I think, going from corporate career has helped me a lot to know how to structure , even nonprofit.

Operations are structured a lot like a business. You have to be very structured. You have to be very strategic about where you spend money, how you organize events, how you raise funds, and so on. , there's a lot of misconceptions often where people believe that if you are working for the good of our community, for the social impact, you have to be organized as a nonprofit.

Yeah, of course there's a benefit in being a non-profit and if that makes sense. Absolutely. [00:08:00] But I think we see a trend where for-profit businesses become businesses for social impact. So you still can be a for-profit business generating revenue, but then you use your profits for the good of the community, and that is.

A really sustainable strategy as well. You operate like a business, whatever you do, it doesn't matter. But then you use part of the profit for the nonprofit. Area. And so in the United States, you can organize a nonprofit in three different ways, and most people are only familiar with one, which is 5 0 1 3 C status, and those are majority of the nonprofits.

But there's also an two other options which is a private foundation and private operating foundation. And so when I started the nonprofit, I started as a private operating foundation. And so to give you a cliff notes, what that means, [00:09:00] it's a middle ground between the 5 0 1 3 C and the private foundation where with private operating foundation.

Externally, you operate like any other nonprofit, all of your dollars are going for the good of the , general public. But internally, up to 33.3% of your operating budget can come from one source, which is the profit of the business associated with the foundation. So imagine as a sustainability route eventually.

That 33.3% could become 100% of the operating budget, like overhead administrative costs for the nonprofit. So then when you go out and raise funding, your donors are really attracted, knowing that 100% of the dollar they donate goes to programming. So it's a win-win. You are sustainable because [00:10:00] you never have to worry about how we're gonna pay salaries and overhead because your for-profit covers that.

And then for donor, how attractive is it to know that everything I donate goes directly to programming? So I highly recommend for people to just explore different options and how you can strategically structure your for-profit and nonprofit work.

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you for sharing that, Anna, especially in this climate, where so much has happened with donor funds and donor aid and all those things, and also to imagine that you take control of how this vision will go because. 

It's not good to rely on donors completely. 'cause at some point, if something is to happen in the donor environment, as it does often happen every once in a while then you can continue with the mission. 

Ana Megrelishvili: Correct. 

Priscilla Shumba: I was reading the reviews from your community and people really. Enjoy being part of it and find that it feeds something inside of them. I'm talking about the networking arm [00:11:00] being combined with the nonprofit side or somehow working together, or the people somehow working together.

Just the sense that I got. What do you think are the key pieces to building such a community where people feel very engaged?

Ana Megrelishvili: So part of it is for our community, they know that they not only network, but. Their dues and the money that they spend on membership not only covers all the events and the community engagement, but they also are supporting our work with the mentorship of the homeless. And I think that gives them higher purpose for being part of this organization.

It's not just about, me coming to events and meeting people, it's also, you know what, I am investing in this organization. It trickles down to supporting my community. another factor is that, we are united in faith, so we are a Christian community and there is a lot of hunger that I've [00:12:00] found from people who want to connect with like-minded individuals and be able to talk about their faith, not just on Sundays when they go to church, but even in the business setting.

I've heard very often people say that they feel like they can bring 100% authentic self to events of our organization because they don't have to hide their belief system. They can openly share that with others. And then I think lastly, we are all about philanthropic impact. So we do a lot of hands-on volunteer projects as well.

It's not just, support with dollars, because I think. We have a very generous community, but what about getting your hands dirty and actually going out in the community and doing the work and connecting, and I think a lot of people have that desire. To do that, but they just dunno where to start.

And making it easy and accessible is just , basically lowering the [00:13:00] barrier of entry. And then for them to know that I can go and meet other professionals who are also passionate about helping our community and we can engage with each other and plus. Help and uplift the city where we live. And so the vision that we have is that now that we have started this in Atlanta, Georgia, to start opening up new chapters in other cities because I believe our work is needed all over the US and all over the world.

People need to be connected with each other. And also they need to start feeling like they're responsible. To do something good for the city where they live. Imagine if every single one of us, did just one little thing for the betterment of our world, how much better each community would be. And so I want to inspire people just to get out of their.

Everyday work, right? You work, you go home, you take care of your families. But let's look at [00:14:00] beyond just our immediate circle. How can we support our community and uplift them because then everybody feels better and our city can thrive together.

Priscilla Shumba: Oh, that's such a good mission and I think people are craving for that, to have that sense of ownership of the place where you live because it is for you to make a good place. That's the power that the community has. It's us who transformed the places we live, and we have that power.

Very exciting what you're doing over there. And I'm excited to see the growth of this community. For the person who's thinking, okay, I have a mission and I'm trying to build a community. How do I get maybe my first a hundred members? For the person who's thinking tactically okay, I see this.

How do I do it?

Ana Megrelishvili: Frankly, people are craving it. You can start easily by doing brunches for the community. One of the things that I do is I pick a local restaurant where we can support our [00:15:00] local economy. And I just put it out there and I advertise that we're doing brunch and networking. Every person is responsible for their own lunch, but we're gathering together, we're meeting new people, we're ideating 

and that's a really easy way. It doesn't cost you any money. It's just your time, right? Going and picking a restaurant and telling them, hey. Can I organize a brunch here and just invite people? When I first started, I really just tapped into my own network first. So I invited friends. I asked them to bring each a friend, and it spread like wildfire.

So I haven't spent really any money on marketing. Everything that we've done and growth came from word of mouth.Just make sure you're genuinely passionate about it and you love people because people respond to that. They can feel that you genuinely want to create this safe space for people to meet each other.

You are here to elevate your community. [00:16:00] You're here to help, and people respond to that and they want that. There's a hunger , especially for professionals to. Make new friends. It is hard to make new friends after you graduate college. We say that all the time. How do you make new friends?

Put yourself out there. Create this community. Invite people, tell them to invite their friends. And so basically just utilize your own network first. And after two, three months, it's just gonna start growing just organically because people enjoy and they really look forward. And when I first started.

I just did one event per month for a whole year. That's all I did. Now we have six or seven events per month in year three, but first year start, small , one event a month is very doable. You can do it on the weekend or in the evening after work. And then see what happens.

Priscilla Shumba: Anna, a lot of communities have someone that they look to. It's almost like that one person holds the community [00:17:00] together, and I get the sense that your community the mission is so big and the people are so engaged that it doesn't need to be focused on you.

, was that something that you did consciously or is that something that sort of just happened?

Ana Megrelishvili: Yeah, so I want whatever I built to outlast , myself and my life. This is for me, this is my legacy. This is the most important. Thing I will ever accomplish. And so I kept thinking, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, everything will stop because I was the person running it right. And so that really freaked me out.

I was like, I do not want for this work and all the invested time to go to waste because if something were, God forbid to happen to me, everything would just stop. And so then you start basically figuring out how can I bring other individuals to help support this mission? And you can do it different ways.

We are very familiar with the board. Set up because, many companies, many nonprofits [00:18:00] have a board and I do too, but there's different levels of involvement for board members versus committee members. So you still can have volunteers who are helping you out with some. Projects, for example, I call some of the people who are helping me ambassadors, we have, a discipleship ambassador, for example, so she's leading the Bible study group for our organization.

I quickly realized I cannot be leading everything. I need champions for different events, for different tasks. I eventually hired a event planner to have a second person who can run everything that we do, in our organization.

And then lastly, just, something I'm actively working on is really the plan. What's gonna happen at the end of your life, like. How are you going to transition what you've built? And that's something you should be putting in, as soon as [00:19:00] you can because again, if something were to happen to me, I don't want for this work to stop.

I want this to continue because this is bigger than myself.

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you for that, Anna. You've gone from focusing on food insecurity and poverty to relational poverty, to support to community, and it's interesting, and you came from a corporate background

Ana Megrelishvili: Yes.

Priscilla Shumba: What's been the biggest mindset shift that you've had to make?

Ana Megrelishvili: Yeah. If entrepreneurship was easy, I think we would have more than about 8% of total population who is an entrepreneur. It's definitely. Oh, a complete shift in the mindset, like you could in the morning thinking I'm gonna be a multimillionaire, dominating the world to, in the afternoon, be like, I'm gonna be homeless tomorrow.

So it's a really extreme shift just because it is so volatile and it is so uncertain. And as most businesses fail within first year. And [00:20:00] then, there's like year three then five, then seven, and so on. It's not easy. I think, we make a lot of mistakes as entrepreneurs because sometimes I feel like I have wanted things too fast.

And in order to achieve it, I've thrown money at it where I shouldn't have. And so it might have affected, some of my budget or you could have relocated that money somewhere else. And that's a learning experience for sure. And the biggest thing where my mindset shifted was in the past I was really in the rooms where.

I wasn't learning from people and I didn't have mentors, and now. I make it my point to not be the smartest person in the room. I want to learn from others. I surround myself with other entrepreneurs who [00:21:00] might be ahead of me. I have somebody who does exactly what I do, but in a different market, and we meet every so often because you need somebody , who is your peer, with whom you can discuss business strategy.

You need somebody who is. higher as far as ahead of you in their journey so that eventually when I'm ahead I can be lifting up other entrepreneurs who just started and we just keep helping each other. . If you are thinking about entrepreneurship, just be prepared to be a risk taker.

Be prepared to be in a volatile, unstable environment where you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. You just have to be okay with it. And then make sure that you find a mentor who you can be running things by. I have a mentor now and I meet with her every other week and, I discuss with her just different things that are going on in my business.

She's very passionate about. You [00:22:00] know what I'm building. So she wants to support the mission, but then she also as a mentor is really looking forward to that because she's in the corporate world and she's high up a CFO, but now she's able to be part of this growth and so she's really excited and she's also getting things out of it as a relationship.

Priscilla Shumba: I think that's such a good point that the mentor is excited about it and they're also getting something from it as well as, is really aligned and is wanting you to win. I'm interested, you said you wanted things to happen so fast, which I think a lot of entrepreneurs go through that.

How are you now pacing yourself or what do you think to yourself to be okay with the pace of things and the volatility of things?

Ana Megrelishvili: It's very interesting. This year was really a shift in my mentality, and as soon as I stopped rushing things really things started going a lot more naturally and smoother. I'll give you an example. Like I am considering transitioning my business structure a little bit. So right now I have an LLC [00:23:00] and I am in the thought process of creating potentially a S corp or C corp because I'm planning to open up new chapters.

And so I'm thinking long term strategically, how do I need to organize it? As I was thinking through this, I know that I need advisors. So I brought in somebody who is an attorney, somebody who is A CPA, and I started asking like, how would you do it? Why would you do this? How would you handle it?

And then suddenly, a CPA who I was working with said, oh, your deadline to do this is. I forgot like March something, which gave me less than three weeks to do it. If I were last year, I would've been, Ugh, you gotta do it now. Let me just get it right now by the deadline. But I've learned to not rush and really do my research before I jump into some sort of big decisions.

And so I said, I'm not gonna rush. [00:24:00] Even if I have to next year just, close this LLC and start a new C corp, I'm okay with it, but I do not want to rush anymore. I want to really make sure that , it is the right decision long term rather than, making a decision and then regretting it.

But I also on the flip side, want to caution if you are somebody who is taking a really long time to make a decision. No decision is also a decision and it could negatively affect your business. So you have to, as an entrepreneur, find that balance because sometimes it's better to make a decision and maybe make a mistake and learn from it and move on rather than not.

Make anything happen, and you're just in this limbo for a while, and I feel like with experience, you start learning where you need to just go ahead, make that decision and move on, versus let's wait and figure things out before I move through with the next steps.

Priscilla Shumba: The biggest mistakes [00:25:00] around networking and creating business partnerships. I think that's a big one.

Ana Megrelishvili: It is a big one. The thing that drives me crazy is when people come to networking events and they take people's contact information and business cards and they've never set up one-on-one time with each other. That drives me crazy because at a networking event, you are there maybe for two hours.

You need to treat that event as a, let me see how many people I can get a contact from. I get this vibe that, okay, I am interested in learning more about them or about their business. And then you set up those one-on-ones, whether it's on Zoom, whether it's in person. And that's where magic happens.

That's where you , really get to know a person, like I personally, on average per month have 40 one-on-one meetings every month. When I calculated at the end of last year, I met [00:26:00] close to 500 people, not just , meaning I got their contact information. I actually know them. I can tell you where they work.

I can tell you something personally about them and what ends up happening. Now, a person is looking for somebody, they're like, Hey, do you know somebody in such and such industry? And I'd be like, absolutely. Chances are I do because I'm able to meet. One-on-one. And so if you're somebody who's going out there and then just never following up, don't even go, don't bother.

Because then it's really not going to produce any kind of impact on your business. People buy from people they know and trust. One thing, if you find a networking organization that you really like, start going there consistently. Once people really see you multiple times, that's where people are like, oh, I've seen you.

They really start trusting you. You establish that bond and you have [00:27:00] something in common. So the organization unites you.

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you for saying that. 'cause that's why people drop the ball. It's oh, networking doesn't work. But you haven't taken the actual step to build relationship and this was just like the entry point, . You talk about embracing feminine power, and I said, what? What is she talking about? I need to know what she means by that.

Ana Megrelishvili: so when I was in my corporate career, I was in construction industry. Construction industry is highly men dominated industry. And so back then I thought I had to really be very masculine in my interactions, very assertive domineering , in order to really assert myself in a boardroom or in a meeting.

And I was absolutely miserable. I had no friends. I had no social life and really inside of myself, I was very unhappy because I was really high in masculine energy. Now imagine I'm an [00:28:00] entrepreneur, I run my own business. I interact with people really high up in their careers. But I have completely adopted a different mindset about how I show up.

So I embrace my femininity and my feminine comes forward. So I come more with a motherly role, , and I'm okay to tell people that I love them even in the business setting. I'm kind and bringing a lot more feminine. Traits into a business interactions, and yes, I can still be assertive, but imagine, think of like a strict mother, how would a strict mother.

Talk to somebody like an employee who is not performing well and it's really been incredible just to see how much power you actually have When you lead with love and femininity. You still can have so much effect. And I'm still highly respected as a leader. I get invited, people ask for my advice, and it's very [00:29:00] interesting because now men and women feel very comfortable.

So I often get. People coming in and telling me their very deep personal situations that they're going through because they want my advice. They want, my input. None of it used to happen to me. Now I have this kind of role of a, so to say, spiritual mother for many, because I lead with my femininity.

Priscilla Shumba: You are open, you're open to who you are and to being used to how. That's amazing. Please what future trends excite you in your space or what you're seeing?

Ana Megrelishvili: I am really excited to see people. Really wanting to connect. So in this year, I feel like we've grown tremendously because people are tired of not having community. So people are genuinely wanting to get out there, network more, meet more people, and I really see a trend of people coming into networking events, not just for business opportunities, [00:30:00] but for social aspect of it.

I think a lot more people are genuinely wanting more friends, more acquaintances just build their community, and so I hope this will continue because as I mentioned before, like being lonely and isolated is really negatively affecting our communities, and I truly believe that we were made to live in community and not alone or by ourselves.

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you so much, Anna. Anna, you've just given so much perspective to what it takes to build a transformational community where people feel cared for. People feel.. Mothered where people feel like they are meeting their social needs as well as their professional needs. To the audience, please look for the Christian professional networks worldwide.

That's cpn worldwide.com. somewhere where they can follow you if they'd like to learn more about what you do?

Ana Megrelishvili: Yeah, so if they follow our website, every social media link my personal information, everything is on the website, including [00:31:00] our nonprofit work. So that's the easiest and fastest way to get in touch with me and our organization.

Priscilla Shumba: Thank you so much. So that's cpn worldwide.com. Thank you so much, Anna.

Ana Megrelishvili: Thank you.