We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Justin Brozanski. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Justin below.

Justin , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Is there a historical figure you look up to? Who are they and what lessons or values have you learned from them?

Paul Newman. Yah, the actor. I love his salad dressing and his take on doing nonprofit work.

I remember reading that he would hand-make and deliver his salad dressing, before it was a thing, to all his neighbors during the holidays. One of them loved it so much that he wanted to go into business and make a fortune. Paul had no interest in making money, though, to the chagrin of the would-be capitalist. Eventually, he did wear Paul down but Paul had another plan.

Instead of making it simply for-profit business, Paul told his soon-to-be partner that the entire business would be modeled like a nonprofit and all revenue gained outside of operational costs would need to be donated to charity. This model stands today and is kept alive by his surviving family.

I respect this, a lot, and try to model my own business practices after, what I like to call, the Neuman model. It’s sort of a guiding principle for all my decision making.

Justin , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Brozanski for Cats, Inc. is a 501c3 in animal welfare based out of Orlando, FL which specializes in the trap, neuter, and rehoming of feral cats and kittens and other designated “unadoptable” felines. There are over 90,000 feral cats/kittens on the streets of Orlando/Central Florida so our focus is not on releasing, but focused toward the rehabilitation and re-socializing so these cats don’t ever have to live outside again.

Through our TNR partners, we provide trapping services. Our vet partners at Loch Haven Vet Hospital provide medical care including deworming, vaccines, neuter/spay services, dental, and other services as needed. In-house, we provide continued medical services, socialization training, and an industry-standard sanitized living space where the cats also receive their own professional PR team who provide new branding, marketing, and design services to help them get adopted.

Each of our team members has anywhere from ten to fifteen years experience working in marketing and advertising, myself working for fifteen years internationally in places such as Japan, Korea, South-East Asia, New York City, California, and Denmark.

It’s no surprise people ask after hearing that why non-profit work and why specifically cats? Our reasons are mostly out of anger for the animal welfare industry.

After my cat-son, Meowgi, who I brought back from Korea many years ago, suddenly passed away I turned into this sad little bottle of rage for awhile unable to properly grieve over his death. Eventually, my wife helped my heart be open to love again and we went to several rescues, both small and large, to adopt again.

What I saw only angered me more: cats were stressed in shelter cages looking like they were in a perpetual state of a PTSD panic attack; youth volunteers were poking them with sticks through the bars terrifying them more; the locations smelled acrid with stress, urine, feces, and death hanging in the air–they reminded me of penal systems that would be in violation of human rights. Smaller organizations were no better, trying to get us to adopt their cats the same day; had limited paperwork and history; poor communication, sometimes taking over a week to reply to a single text or email, and we heard from other adopters that they never spoke to the organization again post-adoption. Everything felt transactional without a hint of intimacy.

We would visit smaller organizations fosters only to find their homes were an absolute mess, sometimes looking like an episode of Hoarders.

One time, I remember, we picked up some kittens for a larger organization and found the father nearby them in a terrible medical state: a punctured paw twice the size of the other, multiple internal infections, and mange covering half his body. The organization was happy to take the kittens because they could move them quickly but only gave basic medical attention to the father before they declared him “unadoptable” and were gonna release him back outside. We took him in instead. He needed over a month of care and now loves belly rubs. How unadoptable, right?

So, out of anger for all these things and more (trust me, there’s many other stories), we started our own organization called Brozanski for Cats. We wanted to make something different that utilized better and more up-to-date behavioral sciences, better medicine, better marketing practices, and better client-to-cat customer care that didn’t feel transactional.

Why better marketing practices? In my last fifteen years working in marketing, I’m a believer that there’s an audience for everything and everyone–you just have to find that audience, tell them the story of what you have, how it has value for them, and then encourage loyalty through better services compared to your competition so they stay at your table.

That’s why all our cats are rehomed, never released and only euthanized if medically-necessary. That’s why all our cats, after a time in our quarantine spaces (which include natural light and views of outdoor enrichment) are allowed to learn important socialization skills with other cats around our house-cility, sleep on couches and beds, interact with other human beings and objects they will find in their future forever homes to ease their transitions. That’s why all our cats are given to best medical care available from our vet partners. That’s why we keep track of every cat we adopt out and maintain regular relationships with their new families.

There’s more we do. A lot more. But I’ll be writing this forever.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Death and high cost of living, surviving, and rarely flourishing in this industry.

The reality is, animal welfare is tough. I don’t think it’s something you should jump into headfirst like we did. Many people or organizations burnout quickly either through compassion fatigue or bankruptcy. We’ve only been open for one-year and our team is feeling the strain. Granted, we often take on more than we should (we maxed out, at one point, with fifty-six cats in our care, if you can believe that).

Often, the donations, both in-kind and monetary are not enough to sustain us–food alone costing anywhere from 700-800 dollars a month, not including vet bills, marketing and event costs, insurance, gas, cleaning products, and the list goes on. The only upside is the organizations current backer is myself set in our books as a loan from the Brozanski family (somewhere now to the tune of about $12,000) accruing zero interest. One day, I’m hoping, as we continue growing, we will be able to pay that money back to ourselves (likely in installments) and see the business in the black. Knowing me though, and how I take inspiration from the Paul Newman School of How-to-run-a-nonprofit, I’ll likely just invest the money back into the organization.

Things are looking up though, for now. Public interest is increasing exponentially in what we do, why we do it, and why we’re a better option. We just closed a partnership with Petco. Corporate and will have our own retail space at the front of an high-traffic store where we’re going to create a full interactive experience for potential adopters and supporters. Our standardized practices for all our paperwork is paying off in spades and we’re now eligible for several grant opportunities.

But, then there’s the time dedication. Because it’s not just about the money. People always forget about that prong in terms of budget: Time.

Many of our team members already have full-time jobs. I work as a university professor and have my own clients, too. It’s not uncommon to regularly be working 80-90 hour weeks, including the nonprofit. And, it’s not like my wife and I can take a vacation. Who are we going to get that can take care of our current count of 27 cats to our standards while we head out for a long, relaxing weekend, let alone an entire week. Heck, we still haven’t taken our honeymoon yet and we’ve been married since October 2018.

On the plus side, as interest is growing, so are our dedicated volunteers. We’re hoping in the next year, we can build enough trust so someone can stay here at the house-cility and “man the helms,” as it were–even if it’s just for a weekend.

So, now that you’re physically and emotionally exhausted and financially defunct, let’s add in the reality of death. It happens in this business. We’ve been blessed–knock on wood–to only have four passings in the first year we’ve been open and have saved nearly a hundred cats. Statistically, that’s fantastic. But it hurts. We build intimate relationships with every cat that comes into our care so losing any of them for any reason is an emotional hit to the soul that makes you want to just pack up everything and go back to a life where you didn’t do this thing.

I remember, one time, I was teaching a virtual university class in our maternity ward and an adult cat went into cardiac arrest in front of me. I attempted CPR, brought him back from about a minute, but he kept crashing. Historically, I had no precedent for what to do in this situation. Here I have a deceased cat in my arms and a computer full of my students (luckily, I had the foresight to turn the camera off). What I did next was odd: I wrapped his body in a blanket and kept teaching the class. You might think me morbid but put yourself in my shoes. Emotionally, I had no idea what to do and needed to ground myself in something real, which, for me, was teaching. Later, we buried that sweet boy at our seventeen-acre family farm and gave him his Jewish rites.

You think, after they pass, was this my fault? Could I have done something different? Could I have been better? And, nearly 99% of the time, there’s nothing you could have done different and it’s not your fault. But death still happens and it carries weight you’ll never be able to fully shake off.

It’s weird, working in this business. And, I do think about quitting sometimes. Just going back to having a few cats to ourselves. But then I think about the number of cats we’ve saved. Where would they be without us? Would they have survived, or would they have succumbed to the number of things that could harm them? Are they happier now because of us?

I think so, every time I rub their bellies and hear them purr–I think so.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

I ran for Mayor of Orlando on a Cat platform against current Mayor Buddy Dyer, and also promised that if you voted for me I would bring capybaras to Lake Eola to boost tourism. I also said the current Mayor was in bed with “Big Coyote” (literally a photoshop of him shirtless in bed with a really big coyote) during a smear campaign, amongst other things.

Not really, though. It was all a marketing gimmick but it worked.

This was one of those “perfect storm” ideas with a dash of lightning in a bottle. The current Mayor was up for reelection, and he’s been the Mayor for over 20 years. His popularity was still high. All bets told me he was going to win (and he did by a wide margin).

So, we got this crazy idea that I would create a character, a fictional Justin Brozanski who would act as the face for the nonprofit, who was also running for Mayor of Orlando on a Cat platform. We wouldn’t actually run though, because to get on the ballot required over 2000 signatures or several thousand dollars. Instead, we would build all our marketing around the Orlando Mayoral campaign with a focus on cats on the streets as a local political issue.

We shot commercials; cloned the current mayors entire website; any photos he took for his campaign, we copied; released political signage to street corners and front yards of those who would have us; created campaign swag; gave speeches; sent out press releases; and, the list goes on and on.

On our limited budget, we tried to project manage what was, essentially, a satirical campaign to the point that many people actually thought I was running for mayor, with some pushing me to ‘actually’ run. For us, it was a success. This campaign built our branding and our humorous, lighthearted style which many appreciated in the face of other animal welfare campaigns that utilize feelings of guilt via that one Sarah McLachlan commercial where all the animals are crying (that’s probably herpes, btw, and not tears).

We took a risk to be different with our marketing but made sure to support that risk with a strong foundation of procedures and policies. The risk was enough to get our audience’s attention. Mission accomplished. Our foundations are what kept them at our table.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.brozanskiforcats.org
• Instagram: @Brozanskiforcats
• Other: TikTok: @Brozanskiforcats

Image Credits
Shay Walker Photography https://www.shaywalkerphoto.com/