How to Turn Your Spending Into Someone's Second Chance. Or First Chance (Pt 2)

What if the thing that changed someone’s life wasn’t charity — but a purchase?

In this episode, Lauren McCann shares the deeply personal story of her brother’s struggles with mental health, addiction, and homelessness — and the $10,000 art purchase that helped spark his transformation. That moment didn’t only restore his confidence, it also inspired Lauren to build Procure Impact, an extraordinary marketplace connecting businesses to mission-driven suppliers such as ones who employ survivors of trafficking, people in recovery, and those returning from prison.

You’ll learn why opportunity often works better than intervention, how bottom-up solutions outperform top-down programs, and how your everyday spending decisions can become part of your service journey. This conversation might just change the way you think about helping others.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Everybody is Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue now with part two of our conversation
with Lauren McCann. Right after these brief messages from our
generous sponsors, I want to tell you a story.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'd love to hear it.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Okay, when I started my business, I also still wanted
to save the world because I was thirty one years
old and thought.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
I had the way I grew up, like we all
grew up.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
And while I was evolving and developing mown ideas about
what's right and wrong in the world, I still had
my perspective as a kid and a young guy in college,
and I think.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
We all evolve over time. One of the things that.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
I have always believed from my own personal experience is
that the nuclear family matters. I think a kid needs
an involved mom and dad, and if at all possible,
an organic mother and father in the home. And that
comes from the fact that I'm the product of a

(01:25):
mom who's been divorced five times, whose father left him
when he was four, who until in his forties, dealt
with some trauma that I never really reconciled until my forties. Right,
So as a result, that's something that I'm very opinionated about,

(01:46):
and I probably hurt people's feelings when I say that sometimes,
and oh, well, I grew up fat and redheaded. I've
had my feelings stomped on since I was six. They
can get over it. So with that in mind, I
started this business us on a wing and a prayer
when I was thirty one years old. And one of
the guys that I cared very much about who came
to me as a former marine who then became an addict,

(02:09):
who was actually living at Lighthouse Ministries named Sam Quinn.
He recently passed. I had an enormous respect for Sam
because he was in his early forties when I first
met him, working for me for eight dollars an hour
in a very labor intensive job, like a twenty two

(02:30):
year old guy. But he was working and he was
trying to get his life straight. And one night we
had some machinery breakdown and he stayed the entire weekend
to help me get the machinery going so we could
run Monday. And this is back when I had no
money at all, first year in business, very tenuous. I
could not run, also couldn't pay him overtime, and he

(02:52):
did it for nothing because he was buying into the
idea that if we built this business, maybe he has
a place in it. Loved Sam missed Sam today. At
any rate, it's impossible to spend forty eight hours with
somebody in Greece and dirt and soot and not talk.
And so I talked about my background, he talked about his,

(03:14):
and one of the things I found out is that
he had a girlfriend who had two children who he loved,
and the children he'd taken on as a father and
was really working hard to figure it all out. And
I started in on my kids need an organic family

(03:38):
conversation with sam My high and mighty, all knowing I
have the cultural answer for everything. Very condescending conversation that
was extraordinarily well intentioned on my part, but I had
no idea what hell I was talking about.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
And when pressing him on why he wouldn't go ahead
and just marry the woman that he professes to love
and maybe adopt or at least be a steady father
figure for those children and create an organic home so

(04:20):
those children would see what that looks like to break
this cycle of single parenthood.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Issues that plague are inner cities. Why he just wouldn't
man up and do the right thing. It was then
that I learned that although his wife worked forty hours
a week as a maid for a hotel chain, it

(04:47):
wasn't enough to pay all her bills, and she needed
some I think it's Section eight or I don't remember
the words, but she got some assistance for housing, and
she got some food assistance from children, even though she
worked forty hours a week. This is not the quote
welfare queen's story that we heard during the Reagan years.

(05:08):
All right, this is a working woman, full time, raising
her two children, keeping a roof over the head, but
couldn't make enough money and provide food for children a
roof over head. And I said, well, Sam, y'all combind
your incomes too, can live cheaper than one. And I
went into the whole that trope, at which point he
finally looked at me. He said, Bill, you don't understand

(05:31):
if I marry her, the government assistant stops. And he
looked at me and he said, so, on the one hand,
you and the government tells us that the best thing
for our children is to have an organic household and
be married, and we don't disagree. But on the other hand,

(05:55):
they disincentivize the very thing they say we should be doing,
or incentivize us to not do the very thing we
should be doing. And he looked me dead nose and
he said, what the hell would you do? Get married
and have your children starve. It was then that I

(06:15):
understood what the dangers of even well intentioned top down
policy is.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah. I had a similar experience actually reading a book
which is not a known, well known you know book,
but it's by a man named Mauricio Miller. It's called
The Alternative. It's pretty radical, but it had the same
profound impact on me. It was like everything I know
is wrong.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
That's how I felt.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, I also felt undressed by this man that worked
for me, and rightly so. He was respectful, but he
looked me dead the nose and tight lips said basically,
get off your high horse. You don't know what you're
talking about. And you know why because I never asked.
I told yeah. So it's interesting when you talk about

(07:12):
your time as stand together in the top down verse
bottom up things. And it's important to me that our
listeners here, the true answers don't come from an ivory
tower or somebody spouting policy because of all the things
they learned in academy. It happens when you actually ask
the very people you need to serve, what do you need?

Speaker 2 (07:33):
That was the theme of this book, The Alternative. And
I'll just share very quickly because I don't even know
if it's on Amazon. It's that kind of rare of
a book. It's not a bestseller, but it had a
profound impact on me. Maricio Miller used to run a
poverty program in California. And his name is Mauricio Miller, Okay,
And at one point he was like invited by President

(07:56):
Bill Clinton to sit in the box during like the
State of the Union it is, and that's how the
book starts. And he's sitting there and he's getting all
these accolades about the program he started in California, and
he's thinking to himself, I would never send my mother
to this program that I started. His mother grew up
in poverty, and he's feeling all this shame, like I'm

(08:20):
a fraud. I have this shiny program, but I would
never send my own mother there. And the entire book
goes through his realization that the key to helping people
like his mother was listening to her, was empowering her,
was getting out of the way. And so the alternative
is about this radical idea of not intervening. So he

(08:45):
started pioneering like direct cash assistance programs where you give
and you observe and you learn and you get out
of the way. And actually it was so radical too.
In reading the book, is like, even in his organization
that he built after this realization of like top down
versus bottom up, his team wasn't able to intervene to

(09:08):
help the people that they were working with. So a
good example in the book was very extreme. It's like
they're working with someone in poverty who does not speak English,
and somebody's like, well, I just can translate that letter
for that person. I'm happy to do it, and he's like, no,
because if you do that, they're not going to build
the community and connection to build the long term to

(09:30):
fill the long term need of their lack of understanding English,
like they need to figure it out. You helping actually
hurts them. And so it was this like radical idea
of like stop helping, stop intervening, listen, empower and get
out of the way, give them agency. And I remember
at the time we were thinking about how we could

(09:50):
build stand together in our working communities, and that book
had a profound impact on us. So it's like, how
do we not helicopter and how do we empower how
do we support you know, from the bottom up, because ultimately,
if you're not giving them the opportunity to figure it out,
you're hamstringing them. And it actually goes to my brother's story,
like he applied on his own to artlifting. My knee

(10:11):
jerk reaction was, no, I should have I should have
helped you with your application. I could have I could
have like supported you. He needed that win, he needed
to figure it out. That was a skill that helped
him long term. But like those were stepstones, like don't
don't take away the steps stones.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
It dawns on me as I'm listening to you, that
is the precipice of the very thing that becomes institutionalization.
It is, Yeah, when you when you tell people to
stand here, line up, here, go get this, go get that.
Eventually the government becomes the biggest paternalist on the face

(10:49):
of the planet.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
So there's your experience it stand together.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, professionally, as you're evolving your understanding of how you
think things did work, and then your personal experience with
your brother. We often say on the show that amazing
things happen when passion and opportunity collide, and it feels
like there's a collision starting to take place for you,

(11:16):
passion about folks who suffer from the same deals that
your brother suffers from, and obviously the opportunity you're starting
to see it Stand Together. So I'm sure procure impact
is morphed, but I'm collecting that or I'm arriving and

(11:39):
maybe inaccurately you can tell me. But somewhere at the
Stand Together Brother thing, this picture impact became a concept.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah, there's actually a project I worked on at Stand
Together that was really bringing it to life. So my
brother had this transformational purchase changes life, and I'm thinking,
how do you scale that? At the time at Stand Together,
I was given the project of building out our office space.
Totally random, but I had to literally work with architects

(12:12):
and designers to think through the physical office and we
care at Stand Together, you know, we were working on
projects that helped people break the cycle of poverty, and
I thought, well, why not actually do that in how
we're building perpetually?

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, why not actually put into practice what we're preaching
around this.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Story, but in this project of our office, which is
such a small thing, right, But what I realized is like,
by building a space, could we purchase products for our
office space that actually helped people transform their lives and
get out of poverty. And we started building up lists
of enterprises that made products that helped survive of trafficking,

(13:01):
or that helped people coming out of incarceration, or uh
snack products that supported individuals with disabilities. And I had
never thought of these organizations as suppliers. Just we were.
We were thinking of them as entities we would invest
in philanthropically, right to help them through the programmatic ways
they were supporting the populations they serve. And when I

(13:23):
met with architects and designers, they had never thought of
them as suppliers either. So we were building out the
office space and every piece in the in the office
had intention and purpose. I mean down to the coasters
that were made in Appalachia by people in poverty.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
I gotta say those Thistle Farm lavender soap is amazing.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
It smells. What is it still in the office? Are
you actually going to invoke lavender soap?

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Tennessee Tennessee Base.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Too soap made.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
It's made by Thistle Farms. They're in Nashville. They support
survivors of trafficking and addiction.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
Are you kidding?

Speaker 2 (14:04):
They support them with housing for two years. The job
is part of the transformation process to help the women heal.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
And so you're like the soap it stand togethers coming
from these folks. That's rather than Dove exactly. That was
literally the idea corporate deal. Nothing wrong with Dove. Gosh,
they may be we're going to go to commercial break
and it's probably going to be Dove and we're probably
going to lose that sponsor right now. Nothing wrong with Dove.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
But the point is you decided to take that job
of making the office space to use intentionality about buying
everything you could, spending those dollars with organizations that had
some social purpose.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
That's it was. It was a simple concept. But what
I realized is there wasn't an easy way to execute
the strategy. Like no one had ever aggregated product based
enterprise is that were helping people transform their lives. They
were all fragmented, you know, in different communities, and so
this was almost like the first manifestation of what became

(15:10):
Procure Impact before I knew I was going to become
an entrepreneur. But we had conference tables made by carpenters
that had experienced homelessness, high end, beautiful conference tables. We
had coffee, we had snacks. I mean, it was the
whole thing. So when we did the ribbon cutting.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
You know we have one of those in Memphis. Oh yeah,
it's this one and b I think is the name
of it. No, and a tea company here Yeah. No, oh,
Jess and I've been on with We've done.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
They started a woodworking show and people who had struggled
with both addiction and homelessness, and they make.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Cutting boards sending my way.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
We'll introduce you when we're done. Yes, he is amazing.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah. And the thing that was so exciting about it, No, No,
it's great. We want to be able to identify more
suppliers we can work with in that way. But when
we did the ribbon cutting for the space, what was
also so magical about it. I remember because it was
Martin Luther King weekend. Our team members were walking around
the space and there were plaques that talked about the

(16:24):
impact of each product, and it actually set the stage
for our culture in terms of like opening people up,
making people think more intentionally, connecting to the stories of
the products. We would open meetings and people would pet
the tables and like explain, they would explain where they
came from. They were so proud of the tables. They
were gorgeous tables. And so that's when I started to realize, like, oh,

(16:49):
wait a second, this is a business idea. Like the
architects and designers I was working with had no concept
of these suppliers and the opportunity to be that bridge
and to actually help their clients or help the corporations
they're working for leverage their purchasing power to create impact.
And what's so interesting to me is when you think

(17:13):
about corporations and their working communities, they often think about
it as like here's my business and here's my philanthropy
or my corporate social responsibility, But they don't realize that
their biggest levers for sustainable change are the people they
hire and the products they purchase, which are much more

(17:34):
sustainable than philanthropy alone. Like philanthropy is great because it
can help people stabilize and it's important, but when you
buy something and bring it into your supply chain. It's
creating that repeatable, sustainable revenue that actually.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Has so many philanthrothropic endeavors are only as good as
the people who keep empty in their pockets every year
to provide whatever work's being done.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
But this can help philanthropy sustain itself.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
It gives it philanthropy the opportunity to be targeted for
support of services, stabilization, etc. And that enduring revenue that
companies get through purchases, the corporations may become the foundation
for helping them impact more lives.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Will be right back.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
And so I was super intrigued by this.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Idea, and really you stumbled over it because you put
together the office but you had the background of the
top down, bottom up thing and your brother. So it's
almost this kaleidoscope of things kind of coming into focus.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
It feels like.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
It was surreal. Actually, I remember writing a two pager
about social impact procurement on a plane that sat there
for a little while.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Just brain just kind of thinking about it.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, I mean it was a couple it was. It
was several years before I actually had the courage to
start to like test it out beyond that office space project,
because I was I was working in philanthropy, so I
was doing good, but I wasn't really thinking about betting
on myself taking a leap, leaving safety and security to build.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah, all that stuff scary as hell.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
It's very I mean I have two little kids at
the time, so it was very like, that's something you
do later, right, but it was nagging at me. I
also realized that I knew the suppliers. I had this
passion because of my personal lived experience, like I was
equipped to do it. And I started thinking about what
industries buy a lot of stuff? What would create more

(19:54):
sustainable revenue for these suppliers that are working with our
most vulnerable, marginalized populations. And I just kept imagining mini
bars like hotel consumption of product. I had no hospitality
background at the time, and yet because of my filanthropic connections,
I knew a couple of owners of hotels. And these

(20:16):
were owners of hotels who deeply care about their community
and were investing filanthropically. And I approached them and said, hey,
would you pilot with me? Like, I don't really know
what this is going to turn into, but what about this?
We could we use your hotel and your purchasing power
as a way to create the impact you're trying to

(20:36):
create in communities. Are their products that would fit your needs?
And it started with a handful of hotels that we
were working with.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
First products. I've been dying to ask those first products.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Soars, No, absolutely, soap candles. So think about a hotel.
Hotels almost like a microcosm of our multiple businesses. You
have spas, you have restaurants, you have retail, you have snacks,
you have food and beverage. So there's quite a lot
of consumption happening in hotels, and hotels are trying to

(21:11):
create unique guest experiences, not just kind of the cookie
cutter same same, Like they want hotels to be a
destination where you're able to align to your purpose, your
why get respite, relaxation. Their place is a belonging right
they have to. They welcome people from all over the world.
And I realized I was like, Okay, if you're in

(21:32):
the minibar, you're in every room, you know there's consumption happening.
These are repeat orders if you're in their retail store,
if you're their amenity program. And so we went to
Pacific Hospitality Group, which our first partner literally had nobody.
I had no staff, I didn't have a big vision
for what was going to happen. I just said it

(21:52):
was me and a napkin, and I asked them to
pilot with me, and they said yes, and that pilot
uh turned into you know, fast forwards. Now we have
twenty five hundred hotels.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Yeah, what did you what did they buy the first time?

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Buying? Okay? Snacks for their retail store, candy.

Speaker 3 (22:11):
What's snacks? Who makes snacks?

Speaker 2 (22:13):
So they're companies like the Women's Bean Project. So the
Women's Bean Project is in Denver. They work with women
coming out of incarceration, women in recovery sons. They have
raspberry gummy fish, jelly beans, plantain ships, trail mix.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
They mad jelly beans.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
They do so we have really well Okay.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
So where would they sell these before you came along a.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Lot of these groups had partnerships in some local grocery,
local boutiques, But.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Would they sell enough product to actually be profitable enough
to sustain themselves?

Speaker 2 (22:47):
So sometimes that's the goal. Sometimes they have philanthropy to
pay for the kind of like deep casework case management
work that they have to do with the populations they serve.
So oftentimes it's a blended model where they have like
some philanthropy and they're making revenue through the sale of
their products. Another good example, Cameron's Chocolates, is in Fairfax, Virginia,
just like fifteen minutes from my house. I didn't know

(23:09):
they existed until I started this company, which is crazy.
They work with individuals with disabilities and they make high
end Belgian truffles and chocolates and baked goods, and these
are some of the best chocolates store.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
So where do they go into the host of the hotels?

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Imagine like the chocolate on the pillow from back in
the day.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
Right, it's like in the day, there's still hotels that
do that.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
It's it is the welcome gift you get when you
come in. Several several of our hotels have four piece
chocolates that.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
Out of taste.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
All the cameras story tom time stamping. Yeah, I get
so much trouble with this producer guy.

Speaker 4 (23:43):
You chased of too many squirrels in the first part
of the interview.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
I thought, you're here, I'm allowed to do it, and
don't edit this out either.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yesterday, Yeah, we interviewed an organization in McKinney, Texas, that
the restaurant is run seventy employees or so is run
ninety percent of the employees. Our individuals to suffer intellectual disabilities,
some folks with downs, some folks on the spectrum whatever.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
She brought me a box of cookies that her people made.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yep, fantastic, Lisa, and I almost got sick on them.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Web side.

Speaker 4 (24:28):
Yeah, do you know Hugs Cafe?

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, you know them.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
I we're not working with them yet, but I know
of them because Yeah, they were to make.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Check in cookies wrapped in little bags for the hotels.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
There are thousands of those those things all over the country.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
And the point is, but how do people even really
know about them? Because typically they're selling their stuff probably
it I don't want to besmirch what they're doing, but
they're probably selling them locally, and they're probably.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
It farmers' markets or whatever. But how do you like
scale it?

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
And what you're doing is you're challenging This is all
just coming to me now. I'm starting to understand what
you do. You're challenging large corporations that have true buying
power to be intentional about trying to direct their purchases
as long as it's I mean, profits are necessary measure

(25:26):
of any businesses this US. So these hotels can't just
go pay extra money. But if it can be reasonably
competitive price wise, why not put your buying power at
places that intentionally help.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Society exactly, And they have to perform well, So these
have to be amazing cookies they have, they're amazing cookies,
and our products do outperform the typical snack or typical cookie.
And they have a story that helps connect the guests
to their community and inspire them and allow them to

(26:01):
they tell.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
The guests the story because I got to believe then
the guest is like, oh and yeah. With that number
of scale of people coming in, that's got to also
heighten the awareness of one the good that the hotel
or the corporation's doing, and two the actual people doing
the work.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yep, we create the storytelling assets for the hotels. You do.
We do so we make it super easy for them
to engage with their guests and allow them to create
that meaningful moment upon check in or when they enter
their room. And I'm going to mention Cameron's Cameron's was
never in a hotel before they came on our platform.
We have a B to B marketplace, like an actual

(26:40):
e commerce platform that it makes it really easy for
hotels to buy from us. I walked into that chocolate
shop one day in a baseball hat and just said, Hey,
I have this vision. Would you guys want to partner
with us? Very early on, they're in over two hundred hotels.
They are now shifting a lot of their production to
wholesale because it's allowing them to hire more people. I've

(27:00):
met families and individuals who've been impacted by jobs that
didn't exist before the purchases from our platform came to camerons?

Speaker 1 (27:08):
When did this concept? Because you asked Pacific somebody.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Pacific Hospitality Group two, Yeah, to hang out with you.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
But you're still working. I mean, this is not your
thing yet? Right?

Speaker 2 (27:19):
No? Where did you go all in?

Speaker 3 (27:22):
This might work? And I'm gonna toss in quit my
job and tell my little kids we may starve a
little while while I do this.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yes, and to add to that, my husband also works
for Procure Impacts, so we like pushed the chips on
the table currently.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Yes, both did What did he do before this?

Speaker 2 (27:42):
He was working for it for s and p he
was in like finance and capital market.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
So you both have really good jobs.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
We have good jobs. Yes, we have good jobs.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
You're living in outside.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
DC, totally rational.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
You kind of got the normal walk well, two kids.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Two kids, Yeah, I mean you're good.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yes, yes, So you just had to screw your life
up and just say.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
That nurs Yeah, you know, I think there's this feeling
like safety and security. You know. I was always pursuing
that as like a part of my growth path is
like I'm gonna get a good job and I'm gonna
stick with it and then when my kids graduate college,
I will go do the fun things. But I realized
I only have X amount of working years left, right,

(28:26):
I only have a certain amount of time to be
able to creatively build. And I was like, why not
bet on myself? Right? I think being around a lot
of change makers in philanthropy made me realize that, like
what sets them apart from everybody else is they got
in the arena, like they tried. Worst case scenario. I
fail and I learned a lot, but there wasn't It

(28:48):
was really just a question of do I have what
it takes to get in the arena. And then once
I got in the arena, I was like, there's no
going back, Like I am a builder in the arena
for us. Yeah, I mean it is. It is uh
life giving to be able to see to bring something
to life and to be able to see it grow
and to impact lives, like I have the best job

(29:09):
in the world, Like we create demand for chocolates that
allow people on waitlists to get access to jobs who
wouldn't otherwise have access to that kind of work. So
I pinch myself every day.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
But I have to ask you, do you have a vendor?
I'm going to call the people vendor? Is that what's
going supplier?

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Vendor?

Speaker 3 (29:28):
Do you have a vendor that are artists?

Speaker 2 (29:32):
We do, so we do work with artlifting. We have
had hotels by artlifting art for their lobbies.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
That is so cool.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Art wrapped.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
I mean, just tell you back to your brother well.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
To bring that home. I was at an event and
my team knew this was going to happen. I didn't
know this was going to happen. But I was speaking
at a hospitality conference and I get into my room
and there's like a setup, you know, with a couple
of in room amenities for the participants. Including art wrapped
notebooks with the story of the artist inside. And I
walk in and it's one of my brothers art pieces.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
Are you kidding?

Speaker 2 (30:05):
No, I'm sobbing. Yeah, I face timed him. Yeah, it
was a whole thing. But but it was a very
full circle moment. I was like, this was the dream
to be able to actually help other people and scale
the opportunity for for more people. But I want to
share a quick story to like bring to life the
scale of the opportunity here. Last year we heard that

(30:30):
Marriott that has like this glamping brand called Postcard Cabins.
They're like pods in the woods. They were not happy
with their Smores Kit. Now this is so specific, but
you're going camping and they have Smores Kid as an amenity.
When you arrive, the marshmallows weren't melting. It was just
kind of a bad Smores Kid.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
So I didn't even know there was a sports kit. Ye,
good bad? And how hard is talking about a Graham Cracker?

Speaker 2 (30:59):
I mean, you think, right, But we seize this opportunity
to pitch this brand on an elevated s'more using stroop
waffles instead of gram Crackers. And so if do you
know what a stroop waffle is. It's like two waffles
with a caramel side.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Those things are good. You get them on airplanes sometimes.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yes, so these are handmade.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
Actually they're they're like Swedish or something overseas airplanes instead
of peanuts.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Get those things out exactly. I think it's in Norway
or air France. No, I'm serious about them. I know
what it's talking.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
About hundred percent. So we have a supplier that employees
resettled refugee women and they make stroop waffles. And we
went to them and we said, hey, could we scale
a s'mores kit using your stroop waffles. Now, postcard Cabins
is nationwide. This was a million dollar opportunity and we

(31:50):
won that contract for these smores kits with postcard Cabins. Immediately,
five women guide jobs who are on a waitlist who
wouldn't have otherwise had access to that work. They get
supportive services like access to English classes. They get like
a whole community of support around them, and they're often
coming from more torn countries right with nothing except their family.

(32:13):
And what's so awesome about this story is the smorest
kits have gone viral on Instagram and TikTok because people
walk into these cabins and they're like mind blown, a
stroop wafflesmore different than your average, more elevated ouey guey,
and it's changing lives right, And so for us, it

(32:33):
shows like the commercial success isn't a compromise. Like if
you're purchasing with intention and you're purchasing high quality cookies
from a group like Hugs Cafe, it is a win
win for the brand and for the customer, it's a
win win for society. There isn't a compromise in that equation.
And so what we're trying to demonstrate is like by

(32:55):
shifting a percentage of your purchase to products on our
platform that are uploadfting communities, changing lives, you have this
trickle down effect into the communities. You're creating sustainable revenue,
you're uplifting people that wouldn't otherwise have access to that work,
and they're amazing products, and so it's a superior experience
for the guest. And so that's what we've just been

(33:15):
doing all across the board. But this smorest Kid is
a really good example of how scale can happen.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
When did you take the plunge, what year.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
So forcurem pack's been around three and a half years.
I went one time two and a half years ago. Yeah, yeah,
it's just.

Speaker 4 (33:32):
Got a Marriot contract.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Come on, well, just hand you really took the plunge.
I thought we were talking about five to ten years.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah. It's been a bit of a rocket ship in
that when we identified this market gap that we could
be the glue and the bridge that made it easy
for people to purchase these products. We had to build
a tech platform that was a not in the Bingo
card either had never done it.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
Also not inexpensive, is it.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
No. We actually ended up going to the market, got
some investors who were deeply vision and values aligned in
what we were doing, and I found co founders to
support me. One has twenty years experience in hospitality. The
other actually worked at stand together with me, and so
that hospitality experience, we were able to go to management companies,

(34:20):
brand executives and essentially get the right to sell and
the ability to galvanize their hotels.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Towards the end, I knocking down that door's probably pretty tough.
Those are some big companies.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
It is tough, But for us, that's really why individual
suppliers like it's impossible for them to break down those
joys doing. It's too complicated. The decision making.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
Is to you. The biggest my company is the prospect
of selling home deepot is just too argos. I don't
even try the layers you have to get through and
to get no company like that or too For instance,
Alex has said advice, now I'll tee it up for
you marry on.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, and we have a partnership with Hilton. We're working
with all the four major brands.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
And to get how'd you get there?

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Grinding it out? I mean truly, but also you know
all of us I said this sort of at the beginning.
One in six families has a story like me and
my brother right when we talk about what we do.
I cannot tell you how many times there's a person
across the table that has a similar story.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
That a mentor of mine said, wants to me to
never forget. When I was a very young man, I
was a sea level guy on another business Forumnlown company.
He said, just always remember an organization or corporation will
never be loyal. It's the human being behind the plaque

(35:50):
that you build your loyalty with. Likewise, breaking into you're
really not breaking into an organization often is just finding
that right one person who your story resonates with, and
then all the rest of that corporate crap gets.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Out of the way.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
And I hear you saying, and that's how we approach
sales of my business. But I hear you saying, it's
almost invariable that when you tell your story, there's not
somebody inside that organization that feels that story because they've
dealt with the similar issue with someone in their family.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
It is. I mean, we give speeches at hospitality conferences
and talk about our why and give the case studies,
and there's usually a line of people that are waiting
to share their story with me. It almost feels like
ministry in that moment, like it's very different.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
At the top, you said one of six families experienced
difficulties in.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
This so RNY nine million Americans are in recovery.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Odds are there's plenty of people in that room when
you're presenting that.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yeah. I mean example, we were doing a tasting with
the head of Food and Bad Ridge for IHG and
he's he was actually tasting Cameron's chocolates. To bring it
full circle to camerons and he is blown away and
he's like, I have to get on the phone with
the founder and tell them how amazing these chocolates are.
So we set up this call. We have no idea

(37:18):
other than he wants to talk to them and share
his like positive feedback. But in the call, he says,
you know, I grew up with dyslexia, and I see
myself through the people who make these chocolates. And I
mean those types of human moments that happen to us,
and our business is pretty frequent. You know, parents of

(37:41):
children who have disabilities, people who express like their openness
around like their recovery journey. And hospitality as an industry
is that way. Like a lot of people started as
dishwashers and become general managers and become you know, C
suite executive in hospitality. It's an industry that provides that

(38:03):
on ramp. So the level of passion that we tapped
into it. We don't sponsor, we don't do ads, like,
we don't actually have the traditional marketing sales strategies. It's
been very direct referral and person a person.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
We will be right back. So two and a half
years later, Yeah, how many vendors or suppliers. Word am

(38:44):
I supposed to use?

Speaker 3 (38:45):
There?

Speaker 2 (38:46):
I use suppliers.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
How many suppliers do you represent?

Speaker 2 (38:50):
We have over one hundred, and we have two hundred
to three hundred prospects right now that we're actually evaluating.
And we exclusively work with mission driven brands and so
from a supplier fit perspective, And we exclusively work with
social enterprises that employ people who have barriers to work
products that have charitable contributions tied to them where they're

(39:13):
uplifting communities in their backyard. And we've started to also
onboard local brands, independent brands that wouldn't otherwise get access
to the market for hotels that are looking for local
And it's all about economic mobility.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
And you say you as in your organization cure impact.
You guys make it easy for the customer to tell
the story about the products you're buying. So when you
bring on a new vendor, you also have to cultivate
the story.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
That's right. We're building out shelf talkers, merchandising signage, we
have video assets that show the products being made. We're
doing blog stories, We're constantly giving a and it's creating
an experience on site at the hotel. So you're grabbing
go snacks marketplace, you could have the same same products

(40:09):
you see at the grocery store or three convenience store,
or you can create a guest experience through those shelves.
And so we're like taking the shelf. We're building the
retail experience for the hotels, which for them, it's taking
the burden off of them to coming up with the
ideas and curating the collections. For the suppliers, it's giving

(40:31):
them repeatable purchases that help them hire more people.

Speaker 4 (40:37):
And you have this at Dullest Airport too.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Do we have a ten foot wall at Dallas Airport?
There's probably about fifteen suppliers. We're actually going into two
other airports this year.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
That was my next question. How many ongoing, like I
guess customers? Yeah, do you have right now?

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Thousands? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (40:55):
Thousands? Yeah, I really was expecting fifty.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
No.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
No, I mean when you say thousands, do you mean
thousand different hotels or thousands?

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, Because we work with management companies and nobody really
knows this. They think like Hilton and Marriott, and we
do partner with the brands, but they're franchises right, So
they license and then monitor and have compliance standards around
the license for the brand. The management companies are these
companies that actually operate the hotels. There are customers, they're

(41:26):
the ones who make the purchase.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
So when you say you're with Hilton, some family owned
management company owns eight hotels.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
They're branded under Hilton.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Yeah, and they use the Hilton name and they get
direction from Hilton, but they're running their own So those
eight hotels may not have your products where these other
eight Hilton hotels do. And so when you say thousands,
you're getting all of these different entities under these big
management marketing brand names.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yes, and the brands. If you want to become like
the Double Tree cookie like our s'mores kit, that is
a brand level decision because it's essentially a mandate across
the brands. So we're pursuing all those things to try
to get leverage. But the management companies are really our customers.
And we have twenty nine management companies.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
We work with some of them only two and a
half years.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
It's been it's been three and a half, but we
went full time and our first platform, like the Tech,
launched two and a half years ago, so that's been
like the scale.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
I mean, that's really phenomenal. So yeah, what about now
my mind's running.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
Now my business fun thing is we've talked a lot
about foods. Yeah, there are places who make furniture. There
are people who make mirrors, there are people who do
toile trees. There's yeah, all kinds of vendors out there

(42:59):
that are that are that are purpose driven in terms
of who they employ. H I mean, honestly, this thing
has no bounce.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
When I first started, I was like, anyone can buy
from us. It was kind of like, if you have
four walls, you can buy from us. Right because my
office space example was a great case study for anyone
who's purchasing can purchase an attention, and that is the
scale pathway. We're starting with travel and tourism, hospitality and

(43:30):
adjacent industries first because the storytelling around it is actually
a differentiation opportunity and it creates brand loyalty, it creates
unique guest experiences, it increases guest satisfaction and their consumption
is really high. But essentially, we're testing in spas, We're
testing in airports, we're testing in convenience stores within hotels,

(43:51):
and so the opportunity for us to expand is pretty
substantial with the same products that we're currently using. But yeah,
we have hotels buy furniture from us. The hotel m
A Line bought a coffee table and stools, you know,
and supported people coming out of incarceration. We have spas
that purchase candles and wellness amenities like Thistle Farms products.

(44:15):
We do a lot in like textiles too, like handbags.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
I was wondering about textiles. My next question was stuck stalls.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah, we have an amazing group that I'm actually joining
the board. I'm joining. My first board meeting is this
this month. But Unshattered works with women in recovery and
they upcycle textiles and make handbags. So they've actually partnered
with Jet Blue and they have like the seats, the
seat covers and they make they make handbags out of that.

(44:41):
So it's a sustainability strategy, but it's creating skill development
for women in recovery.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
It's phenomenal. Ye, it is such a cool Is anybody
else doing anything like this?

Speaker 2 (44:55):
No, And I think that you know, it's hard. It's
hard to be working with two different sides of a marketplace,
like our customers are the supplier and the buyer. It's
very hard people have. Yeah, it's very hard to penetrate hospitality.
Like our competitive mode is deep because this is hard.
But you know, when I think about the scale of impact,

(45:17):
like oftentimes, again in my old hat with philanthropy, you'd
invest in a model right in a community to help
it grown scale. But without distribution, without the infrastructure, without
the demand, you're kind of limited in the scale potential.
You know, we're becoming twenty thirty percent of people's revenue
and climbing, and so that enables them to diversify away

(45:40):
from philanthropy, allows them to hire more people. It's a
market based approach to scale, and so I get super
excited about like the platform play, the systemic change that
we can create.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
I think grocery stores, large change. Grocery stores would be
a possible for sure place.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah, they're trying to curate local, they're trying to curate different,
you know, different products, absolutely, and whole foods I would
say pioneered some of this, like local independent brands as
a grocery chain. But yeah, airports, I.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Mean, on the one hand, in two and a half years,
it's phenomenal, how far you've come. On the other hand,
as I listened to you, you're only scratching the surface.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Yes, this is why my hair is going great. Yes,
you know if you just think about hospitality alone, Like
the two largest procurement companies in hospitality are fifteen billion
and fourteen billion, So we're talking a lot of resources
that can help a lot of people just by shifting
a small percentage.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
I get jazzed about the business side of it just
thinking about it, but I think I need to bring
us back to the impact point. Yeah, your suppliers employees
have been challenged by some disincentives to work, So that
we remind ourselves the two and a half years is phenomenal.
Your passion started with you finding out that your brother

(47:09):
was able to deal with himself when he found value. Yeah,
and insteadive, and that's what changed his life despite all
the help you try to get. And then your time
is staying together, really cultivating your full belief and bottom
up answers. And then you paired them together for this,
But then the reality is still there that like I said,

(47:32):
some of your suppliers employees have been challenged by some
distance centives work. I think it's important alreadyence understands what
that is, what that looks like.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Yeah, I mean these these are often people left out
of the workforce. And by demonstrating what's possible through these
models that are supportive and inclusive and driving profit and scale,
those are the lessons all corporations can learn from you.
When I mentioned that the levers corporations have are the

(48:03):
people they hire and the things they purchase. Even though
this isn't explicitly our mission, we've always said that our
products are a trojan horse in getting people to think
differently about the people behind the products. And if we
can get them to think differently about the people behind
the products, why not hire the people that are making
these products? Why not give them more opportunities and on

(48:26):
ramps to employment. We actually had a hotel recently reach
out to us and ask the question, said, Hey, do
you have groups in the area that we could work
with as an employment on ramp, And I was like,
it's already happening, right, We're already getting them to think
differently about these levers and the value that these individuals
can create. And to give you a sense of an

(48:47):
example of like why these groups are able to support
people enabling them to thrive. There's a popcorn company called
prospect Or Popcorn. It was actually a movie theater, So
they were a movie theater that employed individuals with disabilities
for all aspects of the movie theater. And in their
tiny little kitchen and in the top floor, they were

(49:08):
making popcorn. And they started making gourmet popcorn flavors like
strawberry ice cream, Belgian toffee, chocolate in this very small kitchen.
And they're in over three hundred hotels through our platform.
And as a side note.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
They actually a movie theater out there in over three
hundred hotels. Yeah, with their popcorn. That is so cool.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Yeah, And they're one of our bestsellers. And they actually
just broke ground on a new popcorn facility, a five
thousand square foot facility that should actually they should be
moving into in the next couple weeks. And it's this
beautiful place that they'll be able to double the amount
of people they're employing. I mean, it's an amazing story.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
And they employed people with intellectual disability.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Intellectual disabilities across the spectrum of disabilities. But there's this
gentleman that works there. They call them the Prospects. All
the people that work there, whose name is Dylan. And
Dylan was bagging groceries before Prospector, and we did this
interview with him and he's like, it's bagging groceries and
I just wanted to learn and my boss wasn't very

(50:12):
nice to me. And ever since he's been at Prospector,
he's been able to grow. He's done the front of
the house, he's done ticketing, he's done popcorn making, he's
done marketing. He's been able to learn new skills, and
very unprompted in this interview, he's like, and now I
live on my own. My parents still look out for me,

(50:34):
but I live on my own and I just want
to keep learning. And these places of employment, like this
popcorn company, we can all companies can learn from what
Prospector is doing to create a supportive work environment that
enables people to thrive. They have this special sauce like
they're creating the environments that are empowering Dylan to grow

(50:56):
and to be self sufficient more so than he ever
was before. And so we're trying to help them scale
their models. But when you think about the trojan horse
of getting people to think differently about people behind the
products and getting companies to think differently about how they
treat people and how they support people in their own environments.

(51:17):
Hopefully there'll be a lot of case studies that get
more systemic change in companies across the country.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
It's not just companies though, No, you're right. As I
listen to.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
I think about and that guy over there gets so
upset when I say anything that says politics.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
But this is not a political comment. It's just a
general comment involving politics, which is this, Sometimes somebody does
something in politics or culture, or society or with policy
that pisses off enough people that they go have a boycott.
And that is how the individual uses their dollar to

(51:57):
oppose something they don't believe in. You're the antithesis of that.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
You're the positive version of that in that certainly the
companies and everything else, but we as individuals, I'm sitting here,
I can't help but think we as individuals have a
part to plan those You're right.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Everyone asks me, why are you going to launch the
B two C version of your marketplace? I want to
buy it.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
No, it's true because if I, as an individual, oppose
something and decide not to spend my money with something
because I oppose what they did. I mean, for instance,
bud Light can teach a lot of people about not
really understanding their market and having a marketing campaign that

(52:47):
could kill about forty percent of their business. Whether or
not you agree with that whole thing that happened and
the public boycotted a product because of a policy they
didn't like and it changed that company, that's a negative version.

(53:07):
But the point is if the public understood and could
use their and choose to spend their dollars where there
was social impact that was positive, Yeah, it can. Literally
the scale of that is phenomenal to me, is the thought.

(53:29):
So while I'm sitting here listening to you, I can't
help but wonder, Yeah, do you have designs on just
letting Joe blow Bill here in Memphis be aware of
these platforms so that I can spend my money and
support of them.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
We are absolutely thinking about that, and part of what
we do is introduce these brands to customers who then
purchase from those brands right and follow on. So we
get stories like that all the time of people discovering
Port City Pretzels because they were in a hotel and
then becoming a customer of ports City pretzels. Like the
consequence of that is creating more impact as well.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
My wife buys bisco Off all the time. I thought
Delta because we're Memphians and Delta's here.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
All right, Well I love bisc Off.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Well, I would have never bought a bisc Off had
I never sat in Delta and enjoyed a bisc Off. Yeah, right,
That's how it was introduced to me, was my travel,
which is hospitality and traveling hospital and all that.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
I just can't help but think that as this continues
to grow, as just the Joe blow consumer starts seeing
these products and understand the social impact behind them, that
then we can purchase those on our own, to blow
it up in a crazy way.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Yeah, I mean the movement building potential here ish, Yeah,
it is. And that's really the premise is like our dollar,
where we put our dollar matters, and those small incremental
changes actually have huge impact when you think about the
collective purchasing that's happening across the country. And so yeah,

(55:06):
we want to be able to empower more customers to
purchase products and be part of this broader movement. We're
doing this in service of the hotels right now. But
they like peripheral effect or like the sort of halo
effect of what we do in hotels is customers get
more aware of these brands, Like you're gonna go home

(55:28):
and talk about Cameron's Chocolates if you received a small
chocolate box with a card at the Sheridan Philly City Center,
which is where they give out Cameron's chocolates as an
amenity because of the story behind it and the sort
of like surprise of who made it and then your
inquiry about like, well, wait, I want to learn more.
So we're creating those moments all all across the country,

(55:51):
but you're not to dive into politics, but to maybe
share what I see is really hopeful. We have some
of the most conservative owners in hospitality and some that
would maybe be more liberal. And what's been really amazing
this past year is that you know, we are a

(56:14):
solution for both Like we are a market based approach
to uplifting communities. We are an economic justice strategy that
is true. Those are both things that are true, and
so I feel like we've been able to stay in
a lane that is both a platform for social change

(56:38):
for people who have different affinities or affiliations because it's
all about job creation, it's all about uplifting communities. And
all of us are neighbors. All of us have people
in our lives who've had these barriers, and so despite
a lot of the politics happening, we've been growing. We've
been growing with people who have very different points of

(56:59):
view about the world. Because we don't argue about these things.
We all know how important and dignified work is or
our most vulnerable and marginalized populations, and so I feel
like we've created a strategy that is inclusive rather than exclusive.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
We'll be right back. What you just said rings so
true to me. One of the things I've said a lot,

(57:40):
and it's you know, Alex gets tired of me saying it, probably,
but I truly believe. I don't care who or how
you love. I don't care who or how you vote.
I don't care which skin color is. I don't care
who you worship or if you worship at all. As

(58:01):
it pertains to this, if you're doing something positive for
another person in our society, and you're doing it selflessly
and for the right reasons, regardless of all that other
craft that seems to divide us these days, I can
celebrate you. And even if I don't vote like you,
look like you, love like you, or worship like you,
if I'm doing something positive by society that's helping somebody

(58:22):
that you can see. If you have any empathy or
care for siding in the world, you can celebrate me.
All those things seem to melt away and not matter
near as much when you're having a positive impact on
your culture or society. So when you say I have
customers who are a rule leve.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
Customers who are more conservative, I have everything, all of
that doesn't seem to matter as much when they can
use their dollars, run their business, do it efficiently and profitably,
but also have some positive social impact. It's a win
win for everybody. And those things that we tend to

(59:00):
divide ourselves by these days seem to melt yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
And I think, like I mentioned before, there's so many
times when people are sharing what's on their heart in
our work. I've never been in a role where people
have been so vulnerable and so real and authentic and unmasked.
It's almost like we're giving them permission by sharing what
we do to be that way and to show up

(59:24):
that way. And because we have a very tangible way
they can take action and it's a low lift, right,
it's a win win, right. It's not changing behavior, it's
kind of like helping them align behavior. It's almost like
a relief. A lot of people are like, I want
to be part of this. There's not a lot of
salesmanship in it because it's real jobs, real impact, you

(59:46):
know in communities. So yeah, I mean, we're I'm excited
about this movement we're building within hospitality and the broader
implications of it because the monumental impact in the amount
of dollars that can actually sustain and support people who
are waiting for that opportunity. That's what gets me up

(01:00:09):
every morning.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Look, you still have a whole lot to look forward to.
Like I said, you're only two and a half years
old in this thing, and there's no doubt, there's no
way this thing doesn't just gym. But I do got
to ask you, yeah, when you or if you, because
you should take a deep breath and take a survey

(01:00:31):
of the incredibly unique circumstances of your brother and what
you did for a living, and your two pager that
you wrote on an airplane, and how all of those
kind of collided to bring this, I mean pun intended
how they impacted to It's almost like a big bang

(01:00:54):
to kind of bring this together. When you take note
or you survey all of those unique experiences that led
to what it is right now and what it invariably
is gonna even morph into and become, how do you
feel when you take stock of that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
This entire journey, there's no other explanation than God. And
I'm a person of faith. My faith has been strengthened
and deepened actually through a lot of the struggle that
we went through as a family. I found my faith,
I would say later in life. I mean I was
a grew up Greek Orthodox and I was kissing icons,

(01:01:35):
but I wasn't like deep into my faith until much
much later. And I cannot explain the people who have
come into our lives at just the right time, or
to your point, the stakeholder across the table who shares, oh,
my mother happens to have been someone who worked with
individuals with disabilities. I'm in, what do we want to do?

(01:01:57):
Like the amount of open doors that have happened, and
the inexplicable nature of how this came together. I can
only point to to God, and I genuinely feel like
a vessel for what is happening, Like I am of
service to this broader vision, and I've learned so much,

(01:02:18):
Like I've been stretched to the edge of my limits
in just the short amount of time. Many times I've
done things I've never thought I could do or we
would do. Last year, we were named to Fast Companies
Most Innovative Companies list. We were a baby company. Mind
blowing things like that have happened where we're like, you know,
it feels very surreal. But at the end of the day,

(01:02:41):
the moments that really like ground me are when I'm told,
you know, these two people were hired because of the
three hotels that started coffee programs with procure impact. We
got a video from Butler Coffee, the employed individuals with
disabilities actually interviewing two people who hired because of our work.

(01:03:03):
There's a lot of happy tears in our job, a
lot of serotonin hits in the sense that it's not
it's very rare for someone to be able to tangibly
point to the impact they're having every day and know it.
So even though there's very tough days like grinding it out,
trying to figure out how to better unlock you know,
Hilton or Marriott or get the next management company. We're

(01:03:25):
constantly getting reminders of why it matters, and so it's
like a true blessing.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
Who puts you in charge of deck right in the
office of staying Together.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Definitely Brian Hooks, the chairman, and yeah, I mean that
was Ron.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
Hooks gets a high hot because if not for that, yeah,
arbitrary little job that got tossed on you, you probably might
have rolled your eys as at first, like, oh I
get to do this. I mean, even with unique nick
set of circumstances, just that opened a window for you.

(01:04:02):
And I mean honestly, you're a set of one who
else would have had all these different little things to
collide to make this happen.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
It's incredible. It's such a cool.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
Story of how it all landed in your lap and
you had the courage to go for it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
I also, I have to say I had like mentors
around me who recognized the opportunity before even I did.
Our chairman of our board, John Boaz, heard me kind
of dreaming this up in weekly conversations, monthly conversations, and
then one day said I'd invest in that and I
genuinely didn't know his net worth. I didn't even know

(01:04:40):
he would be open to investment. I had no anticipation.
I didn't I didn't actually think I was asking him
for anything. So there was a lot of people who
bet on me before I realized the opportunity that actually
helped this come to FORRUI.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
Those are other little blessings of miracles.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Miracles my co found one of my co founders, John Collins.
I literally reached out to her on LinkedIn. People assume
we've known each other for years, and people are like,
how did you meet? We're like, god, you know, I
was looking for somebody in my network who had hospitality experience,
because I was like, this is really confusing, like who's
the buyer? How do I figure out how? And I

(01:05:18):
went on LinkedIn and we were directly connected, but we
have thousands of connections, both of us, and we have
no idea how we were originally connected. And she didn't
respond at first, and I was persistent, and then when
she did respond, we met for coffee. And she will
often say like she was trying to weasel her way
on to my advisory board, and I was trying to

(01:05:39):
figure out a way to make this her thing, and
within three months of being complete stranger, she was our president.
So I mean all of that, I can't really explain
any of this other than to say, like we tapped
into an existing need in hospitality and desire to really
help people feel a sense of belonging in the places

(01:06:00):
in which we visit, and we had supply to do
that and the right talent. And it's been a lot
of a lot of learning. So it's not all like
straight up, right, there's a lot of like ebbs and
flows on the journey of entrepreneurship, but the conditions that
were set around us, Like I can't explain that.

Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
You've also had a little bit of a personal story
yourself with addiction, right, and we've actually had the phoenix
too on the podcast was on the board before. Really, yeah,
if you could talk a little bit about your personal story.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
Yeah, So to unpack that in sort of the journey
when my brother was found that year kicked off like
a series of pretty monumental changes in my life. One
I started going to church. I baptized my kids that Easter.

(01:06:54):
I mean, because there was really no way to describe
the miracle of my brother found and it set me
on this this sort of discovery journey of my of self.
And so that first step was finding God again, finding
my faith, reigniting my faith, finding the right faith home
for my family. And then that summer I started to

(01:07:17):
really look at like what was in my life that
wasn't serving me, and trying to shed the things that
weren't serving me, being honest about the influences of things
around me, and I held up a mirror to my
own use of alcohol as a way to kind of
weather through life. I was definitely what you'd call it

(01:07:40):
a functional addict. AD a great job, I had a
great I was professionally successful. I was also in bands
and using a lot of alcohol on the weekends. And
there was this cycle that I was noticing in my
own patterns of my own behavior. And so that same
year I got sober, and I've been sober for almost

(01:08:03):
eight years now. And so that when I think about
again the gift that was that incident with my brother
and how it set me on this course professionally, it
also set me on a course personally to really realign
myself towards not only impact and my purpose and my why,

(01:08:26):
but in my own day to day life with my family,
kind of facing my own demons.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
What a story? Do you allow yourself to be proud
of it? Yet?

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
I mean, my I'm I'm I'm a doer, so I
probably don't marinate in like the reflection enough to be honest.
I'll tell you. My co founder Jen says, we're really
bad about celebrating so like because we're just like, all right,
next thing right. I mean, I feel like I was

(01:09:03):
around a bunch of courageous people because my work could
stand together. I was around a lot of leaders who
had built organizations and it faced their dams. So I
think I was just sort of faced with this reality
that I was hiding things for myself, and so it
prompted me to really self examine. But I know, I

(01:09:26):
think you've had the Phoenix on your show before Scott Strode.
I was definitely influenced and impacted by Scott's story. And
I remember listening to a lot of Phoenix participants, like
on stages telling their story and I was like, huh,
sounds a lot like my story. And that was part

(01:09:47):
of the holding up a mirror website.

Speaker 3 (01:09:49):
How do people find out more about procure impact? There?

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
Could be somebody listening to us today that owns six
hotels somewhere, a management company that wants.

Speaker 4 (01:09:57):
To I'll share her emails.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
Don't be That's fine, I'm going to get there.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Go yeah. I you know. If you're a hotel, if
you're a place of business that wants to purchase with intention,
please reach out to us. Our website is Procure Impact
p R O c U R E Impact dot us.
And if you are also a supplier, if you are
a nonprofit leader or a business that makes a product

(01:10:25):
that is helping your community, helping create job opportunities, or
a local brand, we are actively looking for new suppliers.
We have some really exciting news with some big brands
that we'll be launching later this year where we're looking
for suppliers in regions across the country. And so we
want to build out our supply to be able to

(01:10:46):
handle the demand that we're expecting from these big brands
who want to continue partnering with us and grow their
partnership with us. So, if you are an enterprise like
Hugs Cafe, we don't have your cookies on our platform.
I haven't tried them before. We would love to try them.
We would love to get them on our platform. We're
looking for enterprises like that and we have an application process,

(01:11:07):
but anyone can contact me at Lauren l a u
r E N at Procureimpact Us.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
Lauren, I'm gonna tell you something. Your story is cool,
and it's just.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Oh, I sit in this chair and talk to people
all the time for all these shows and all that,
and it is It's never lost on me how so
very often sets of circumstances gets stringed together to create
something amazing. And I think we all have sets of

(01:11:43):
circumstances in our lives that equip us, and we all
have passions in our lives that should drive us to
get involved. The common denominator for those that do and
the common denominator for those that don't, to me is courage.

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):
And you had the courage to step away from job.
Your husband had a courage step away from job and
jump in both feet and do it. And you're changing lives,
you're changing narratives, you're telling stories. But ultimately and you're
making a living. But ultimately, as you're able to help

(01:12:20):
these brands grow, they're able to hire more people who
they are seeking to serve. And so through your entrepreneurship
and your work. Ultimately, you're changing lives of the people
that work for the vendors whose products you sell, and
what a way to make a living.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
Yeah, it is a blessing, and I appreciate your kind words.
It's a it's been a journey. But you know, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
If you hadn't even gone around the first term yet,
when you think I've been a journey, listen, Yeah, I
started my.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
Verses thirty one. I'm fifty seven years old. Yeah, I
made it through nine to eleven. I made it through
the housing crisis two thousand and six, I made it
through the first round of tariffs.

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
I'm making it through this round of tariffs.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
And I always think to myself, it's been a journey
until I take survey of what's in front of my
business and I realize miles to go before we sleep,
and you have it even take it the first turn
in this race. I can't wait to see what happens
for you the next five to ten years.

Speaker 3 (01:13:27):
I know it's going to be extraordinary. Thank you, Thank you,
thanks for coming to Memphis and telling your story. I
am I can't wait to watch I really am. I'm
gonna keep up with you and there.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
Is it's impossible that we will not interview more people
who I need to connect with you ultimately and so
have the sneaky suspicion will stay in touch.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Yeah, I would love that. Thank you so much for
having me, thanks for.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
Being here, and thank you for joining us this week.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
If Lauren McCann has inspired you in general, or better yet,
to take action by exploring procure impacts, mission driven products
for your own company, recommending suppliers to them, or something
else entirely, just let me know I really do want
to hear about it. You can write me anytime at
Bill at normalfolks dot us. If you enjoyed this episode,

(01:14:22):
please share it with friends and on social Subscribe to
the podcast, rate the podcast, review the podcast, join the
army at normalfolks dot us any and all of these
things that will help us grow an army of normal folks.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what you can