Steve Wanta: How To Loan Money 100% of The Time (Pt 2)

Steve Wanta is the co-founder of JUST, a nonprofit lender to 14,000 black and brown female entrepreneurs in Texas. And because they’ve built an unheard of system based on trust and community, they’re achieving unheard of results such as loaning money to 100% of applicants while also being repaid 99% of the time! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
And everybody is Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue now with part two of our conversation
with Steve Wanta. Right after these brief messages from our general.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Sponsors' exciting that's all new and fresh and no dime
plants in cubicle.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yeah, and I got I mean, I've got a salary now.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
And you're connected to like Whole Foods, which is cool totally.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
You know, my job description was don't be in Austin.
That was it success?

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Did you have an American base Austin and it came back.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
It was like such a gift.

Speaker 4 (00:51):
They'd come back to hang out in Austin for like
three days and then I would get on a plane
would go back to Guatemala. Where as a Peacequa volunteer,
it was it was it did something right in a
former life.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, and how many and how many of these? One
in Guatemala and one in Costa Rica initially.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, one in Costarica.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
And then the Foundation had grand aspirations, let's get to
serve as many places as we could in the world's scale.
And so my job then became, uh, finding different similar
organizations because we realized there's tons of groups that do
this sort of stuff. We chose the hardest way first,
the biggest risk, because it's not the first loan. It's

(01:31):
actually built a system that can sustain itself. That is
the key to what allowed this work to scale across.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
The So what do these micro loans look like in
Guatemala when you start.

Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yeah, it was women buying lump sums of flour to
make tortillas. They make tortillas in their house. They would
buy chickens. So what reality of micro credit is You've
got to manage that triple whammy, low income, volatile. So
one of the ways you do that is make alone
and then they pay back frequently weekly, a little with

(02:05):
a little bit of interest, and that allows them to
manage cash flow so they can by the end of
their six months they can pay off the loan and
without a lot of pain.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Is there any financial literacy teaching that goes along with this,
Because if someone's never seen a pizza store only fifteen
minutes from their village, I would imagine conceptually the idea
of interest and boring and paying back when you've never
seen a lump sum together at one place in your life.

(02:36):
There has to be some education that goes along.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
Yeah, so a lot of it is around in the
traditional micro credit model, a lot of it is around
discipline and showing it up, which in and of itself
could be really hard, especially if you have a lot
of other pressures. So in so many ways, their focus
was on keep showing up, keep showing up. So in
Guatemala when I worked with these bangladeshis of things that

(03:00):
we did for five days was make sure people could
show up and bring twenty five cents and then they
learned to move from their thumb print for their signature
to actually signing their name.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
So that was the context in Guatemala, and that was
the application of that like keep showing up. And you know,
for me, I know, I traveled the world for ten
years finding and funding these all across Africa. I lived
in Indonesia for six months, all with Whole Foods, and
I felt like, man, there's a huge opportunity to see

(03:33):
the community as the point and figure out how that
can be this beautiful source of support and transformation. So
I thought micro credit did a great job of figuring
out how to scale the transaction I wanted. I wanted
to figure out how we scale the transformation.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Give us a sense after I don't know, picking time,
twelve months, eighteen months, two years, whatever, a benchmark that
you think is reasonable that in Guatemala and Costa Rica
on this first fora into this micro credit world, that
whole food stuck, the transformation that you saw.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
Yeah, there is so money challenges facing someone in rural poverty,
and there there's only so much the money can do.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
That's what I was wondering. None of this is an
Alexis prop. Actually, I'm kind of chasing your story now.
I'm curious. I mean, what did this Let's be honest,
did this do any damn good?

Speaker 4 (04:39):
That's what I'm going And I think this is so
micro credit often tis give you real insular community, and
there's a lot of academics that researched it. There was
really a lot of attention post Nobel Peace Prize. So
Mohammed Units won the Nobel Peace Prize a year after
we started working with them, uh and and people were

(05:00):
really excited. At the same time, they started to see
that micro credit mean a lot of different things a
lot different people. Units started to call the new version
of micro credit just different version of loan sharks.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
So there's a lot of internal debates.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
I wondered about them. Yeah, and what was interest?

Speaker 4 (05:19):
So I think in Guatemala it was might have been
like it was really low costs compare comparison, like twenty percent,
but when the way it structured, they would actually only
be because they pay back principle and interest every single
week and it's being like a cost like ten percent.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
So but in other places it's like seventy one hundred.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Really.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
Yeah, So there's there's a couple success stories from the
capital market perspective, one in India, one in Mexico. This
group in India they serving millions, they learned from Germine,
and ultimately there was real concerns around the level of
pressure they put on really poor people to pay back.

(06:04):
So there was a bunch of things that came out
saying like, I don't know if this is a good thing.
In Mexico, there's a group called Compartamos and they were
the darling child.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Because they it's also scaled.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
They were serving hundreds of thousands of people millions, tens
of millions of dollars.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
They went public.

Speaker 4 (06:23):
This micro credit institution went public in the Mexican market,
and everybody celebrated, but the next day said well, let's
look behind the curtain a little bit, and they were
charging like ninety eight percent interest.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (06:37):
So one camp would argue, our job access is so important,
that our job is to serve as many people as possible.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
The way we do that is be as profitable as
we can.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
But there I've believed that if your focus is transformation,
then you're going to ask different questions. What the industry
did was talk about financial inclusion, how do we scale access?
Which isn't the game that I'm interested in playing, But
I also appreciate many of the things and the reasons
and how they could do that. So I think trying

(07:08):
to reimagine things that already exist is I think the
heart of the innovation.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
I didn't mean to say this. I wasn't planning on
saying it, but what you just said reminded me of
an article that I couldn't tell you when, how long
ago or where I read it, but I do remember
reading it, and one of them was about a similar
business model to try to help people in poverty with

(07:37):
loan with loaning money, and this organization originally wanted to
make it easier to pay back the money because transportation.
A lot of the people they found were having to
take one day off work of productivity to travel to

(07:57):
pay back the money. So they said, well, well that's easy,
will allow them to keep that extra partic productivity and
we'll go to them to the collect the money. But
within three months they were started to be viewed as
like the Italian Guido coming to break your kneecaps if
you didn't pay us. And then instead of they had

(08:19):
ninety five percent of the people they were loaning money
to actually showing up half the people when they went
to get the money. Many of women's of the words
would show up and pay their money when they saw
you come and would run out the back door. Yes,
so it was this weird deal that the good intentions
actually screwed up the whole system. And I can't help

(08:44):
but wonder you know, in this micro credit lending world
that you were exploring and learning and everything that even
though it really was well intentioned. I hear you say,
But the point is we have to make money to
be able to service more people. Does the making money

(09:04):
end up being an impediment serving more people?

Speaker 4 (09:09):
And there's a bunch of questions because this poverty is
very complex, and you know, what I've come to realize
is that there's not a silver bullet and my co
credit is important from a perspective of people need access
and if they don't have money, how do you how
do you how do you get money?

Speaker 3 (09:25):
How do you build stability? How do you build wealth
without money?

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Money?

Speaker 4 (09:29):
So you know, in the United States were really great
at assessing people's past so we can say no to
their future. So if you compare micro credit in the
context of the United States, it's beautiful, it's it's very special.
And I think what I always saw, the thing that
I struggled with was it wasn't enough. I am deeply
impatient and I feel like it's not good enough. And

(09:51):
what is the magical part is this relationship that you
build with people, so you have a responsibility to keep
pushing new, more and better. And I feel like there
people are happy enough with making a bunch of loans.
I feel like that's that's not for me.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Okay, So how long did you do this for the
whole foods thing? Ten years? Wow?

Speaker 4 (10:13):
I got to travel, I mean I got I got
to travel the world. But on all of round I
think probably seventy countries and got to give away money.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
What's wrong with that?

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Give away somebody else's money?

Speaker 3 (10:26):
Totally the greatest thing, you know, and I get a
twenty percent disco on whole foods. I mean, like, what
what like, it's all all win, all up.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
You have said it now three times in the last
ten minutes. This wasn't really what you were more interested
in the transformation, right.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
I'm curious what you think the greatest travesty.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
In the world is. You want to ask I want
to ask you that. That's fine, let's reverse roles. You
want to ask me.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
What do you think the greatest travesty in the world is?

Speaker 4 (10:57):
You mean historically to ever happy like or currently like,
what's the thing that kind of makes you.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
That makes me bristle the most? Yeah, honestly, yeah, I
can think of two. One is that in many areas
in the East, both East Asia and the Middle East,
that women are not allowed to be educated and that

(11:27):
they have to live the subservient lifestyle where they're not talked. Actually,
I can think of three. And remember I do business
in forty two countries, so my perspective may be a
little different because I've traveled a lot too. A second
is that in many I mean it's really in the
true in Bombay or New Delhi, but in many cultures,

(11:51):
especially in and around India, rape is a way of
life and it's not even punishable. I think that is
a horrific travesty from not only what's happening to the woman,
but the children that are born of that are often ostracized.

(12:15):
And then the third travesty that I think that that
really worries me is uh social media has gotten us
to a place that we now believe lies about one another.
And I think that's tragic.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
And I think certainly two of I think all three
of those get to what I believe this is the
greatest travesty is the loss of potential. Loss of potential
and when you think about people not have being a
access education.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Or.

Speaker 4 (12:53):
Their their access to money, access technology, the idea that
someone isn't given the same opportunity to flourish, to me
is the hardest thing to get over and it has
a lot of edges to it. But I think that's
what's really driven me to leave the Foundation because I
believed when I got to ten years that I would

(13:17):
never reach my full potential If you would reach your
own Yeah, I wouldn't reach my own full potential if
I stayed And no, I didn't know what would be next,
but I hit the professional lottery twice.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Let's pause for just a minute, because it's a good
segue into all of the experience that led to what
you're doing now. But as an assad when you say
loss of potential is the biggest travesty in the world
in your mind, and the amount of time you've spent

(13:50):
in the very countries in our hemisphere, whether it's just
an enormous loss of potential which manifests itself. And believe
in multiple thousand person caravans headed towards the southern border
of our country, you know the people. You don't know

(14:11):
the actual people, but you know the metaphorically, you know
the people in those caravans.

Speaker 4 (14:18):
Yeah, Well, in the rural village whereas a Peace Corps volunteer,
twenty percent of the community, a few thousand people had
emigrated to the United States.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Many of them illegally.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
Many of them would borrow money to be able to
make that voyage there. If you're called coyotes, and you know,
more than a few funerals passed through our community for
kids that had died along that journey.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
What to me is so clear is that from.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
A world what a mall perspective, those were the hardest working.
Those are the people that had the greatest entrepreneurial spirit,
Those people that said, hey, there is nothing here, I've
got to provide for my family, so willingness to work hard.
Their dream is always they come back home and provide
for their family. It's this universal truth we have. We

(15:11):
all have dreams. We all need to figure out how
we can take steps towards those dreams.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
We're not all given the same set of circumstances.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
So my understanding is that a lot of these folks
would happily migrate to the United States legally if the
access to legal migration was available to them. And did

(15:42):
you say that was it that bad?

Speaker 4 (15:46):
I don't think I had a good connection to the
understanding of how the immigration system worked. You know, just
even to apply to a visa costs you a couple
hundred bucks in Guatemala. You have to take tests and
it's very intense to get of just for tourist visa.
But I have a friend that I worked with that
whole Foods. He left and started a company that was

(16:07):
we're working in farm labor and helping farmers navigate that
system because there just isn't the labor necessary to provide
for our food system. So, you know, I think I
keep coming back to systems, and I love your conversation
with Darren Babcock and talking about how it's not the people,

(16:28):
it's our systems.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
So I think about that a lot, and every.

Speaker 4 (16:31):
Problem you see there's probably a system's approach that we
can make it better.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Well the reason I ask, and it may seem off topic,
but in my mind it's completely on topic because as
we go forward from where your tenures stopped and really
the crux of what we're talking about now, which will
be the rest of the time we're together, it seems
to me you're serving a lot of those very people
that you would have served in Guatemala but are now

(16:59):
or Costa Rica or pick a country, El Salvador, Mexico
or wherever. And you said the biggest tragedy is lost potential.
What if access and potential existed in their own countries,

(17:21):
I would argue, we would not have an immigration issue.

Speaker 4 (17:24):
Yeah, I think there's that was actually what a lot
of USAID's strategy was is to help build and foster
local economies. You know, I think about I've worked with
a lot of folks across Africa.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
And it was really clear.

Speaker 4 (17:38):
One guy in particular, olowanjo at ta Challa, one of
the most amazing people in the world, and he said
very clearly, trade not AID. So there is I love
that and he's built an amazing business. And the point
there is that these systems have to work, and they're
they're multi dimensional, and it's there's not simple answers, but

(18:00):
there is simple commitment to the work and keep.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
Because it is good. Change takes time.

Speaker 4 (18:06):
So yeah, I mean I think at the end of
the day, what I think as a person, as a human,
I want to follow people's dreams. I want to be
the guide on the side and let them wherever they
want to go, wherever they want to get there. If
they have resources and some support, we will.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Be right back. You played football in high school.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
You better believe it.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah you said you played offensive on center? Oh good, better.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
No tackling center. I'm forty eight.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Okay, can you remember your two best running plays? What
they were called? One dive? Right?

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Yeap?

Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, say it again?

Speaker 3 (19:00):
I right a gap, I think.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Yeah, So a lot of people might have said forty
four lead or thirty three counter or whatever, because back
when you and I grew up playing football, you had
to play in three or four or odd or even
indicated whether you're running running right or left, or a

(19:23):
gap or whatever indicated the hole you were going to
run to. Right. Yeah, that was the system. That was
how football was called. You were going to run right
or left, and you're going to run this whole or
that hole based on the play call, and you, as
an offensive lineman had to have certain responsibilities to make

(19:45):
that hole open up. And that's where we were going.
And that was the system. And then defenses evolved they
started taking that away, so the system of offensive football
no longer worked. So the answer was for offensive coaches,
how do we now attack these defenses that are taking

(20:07):
away what has worked as a football system on offense
for four or five decades, which was the wishbone, the veer,
the afloration. All right, And so the evolution of football
was we're going to spread these defensive out defenses out,
which is if you'll think about twenty years ago, when

(20:28):
when offensives stopped using fullbacks and tight ends as much
and started spreading out and instead of calling a play
to a specific spot against the defense, we're going to
teach a concept. And the concept is we're going to
go right, but we're going to attack whatever hole there

(20:50):
is on the defense. And instead of teaching kids you're
going to open up the big gap, we're going to
teach kids the concept of what we're trying to approve, attack,
and we're going to let you work it out on
the field. So the conceptually, we're definitely going to run right,
but where that hole is is going to be based
on the defense, and you have this set of rules

(21:11):
to create that whole. It's called conceptual football.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
That is what you see on Saturdays and Fridays on
the Sundays and Saturdays on TV. But it's what has
morphed in the high school game to the last ten years. Okay,
the systems quit because things changed. The systems no longer worked,

(21:37):
and so while the answers are complex, let's instead of
going from a hard, fast system that no longer works,
let's create a concept and teach people how to work
inside that construct to attack this new problem. That's football.
Love it it is my belief that many of our

(22:01):
systems don't work. And what you just said was the
whole reason I just went into the stot tribe is
because what you just said was the answers are complex
and very hard to figure out. I completely agree. The concepts, however,
are very simple to me. We need access. We need

(22:24):
to meet people where they are. The greatest tragedy of
our time.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
Is lost potential.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
So we need to maximize potential. So if we maximize potential,
we give people access and we meet people where they are,
those concepts are not difficult. I agree. Now, how to
attack that issue simply requires having people understand the concepts

(22:52):
and creating a different construct to those concepts because the
current system doesn't work. It's just slite football.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
Yeah, and I'll give you it's to respond to your diatribe.
There's really systems theory that talks about simple, complicated, and complex.
I want to make a cake. You've never baked before.
You could figure out the you could read the recipe.
You can make a cake. Complicated is many pieces that

(23:21):
have to do the exact same thing every time your car.
The engine on your car, you've got to push the gas,
you've got to go forward. Complex is our humans raising
a kid. Traffic is also complex. So in order to
address complexity, you must address it with simplicity. And there

(23:42):
is a role for complicated and I think deeply about
building trust.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
This is how we've evolved.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
Our work is to bring a technology piece of technology.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
That allows us to do the exact.

Speaker 4 (23:54):
Same thing every single time, because we believe that's paramount
to building trust, that us offer a complexity of humans
with simple tools.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Okay, so we've just gone all over the place to
basically say you spent well more than ten years, but
you spent ten years plus kind of learning this thing
and you wanted to look at it from a different
way and in a different place. I think, yeah, And
so you're living an Austin, So what do you do well?

Speaker 4 (24:31):
I think it's important to give a brief nod how
just the organization started and it speaks to how important
loose connections and strong ties are. So I worked with
a guy I worked with another foundation in East Timoor,
just next to Indonesia, to invest in micro credit. That

(24:53):
the foundation that we worked with, that executive director.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
Became a mentor of Miney.

Speaker 4 (24:59):
One of the most brilliant people, highest integrity they could
hope to meet.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
He was business partners with venture.

Speaker 4 (25:07):
Capitalists in Austin, and I was coming to the tail
end of my time. I was talking to my mentor
saying like, hey, you know, I'm struggling. I'm trying to
think what's next. And that venture capitalist came to me
and said, hey, Steve, I want to do philanthropy differently.
I've been backing entrepreneurs for thirty years. You know, We've
just have some shared background, and you know I want

(25:31):
to back you. You can do whatever you want as
long as it starts in Austin.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Okay, pretty cool, amazing.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
And it was this this thing I did.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
I did not come to him with a pitch. I
did not say, hey, this is my business plan, this
is what we're gonna.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Do with I got money, I want to do something
good and I'll back you as long as it's here.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
And we said, well, we'll meet every week, we'll figure
this out together. So at the time, I'd fallen out
of love with micro credit because I wanted something. I
was about transforming lives community. It's all micro credits. It's
just a piece, not the full solution. So with that context,
with this opportunity. I said, Okay, great, let's figure something out.

(26:15):
And you know, flash forward, I've fallen back in love
with micro credit because if I see it for what
it is, and I believe we know what enough could be.
So when it first started, though, I was really struggling
because I didn't know what to do, and only thing
I really knew how to do was lend folks money
and get it back.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
So I started explore the.

Speaker 4 (26:33):
Things like I went to AA, I went to weight Watchers,
I went to other community movements that other things that
use communities a central.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
Part of their of their approach.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
And I try to explore as many diverse models as
I could to be inspired by what micro.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Credit could be. Wow, that's kind of cool. Yeah, that
you went to AA and White Watchers.

Speaker 4 (26:58):
And so weight Watchers funny because I wrestled also growing up,
and to me, the stepping on the scale was torture.
So in weight Watchers, for those that don't know, there's
an app and you point system and track your food
and then it's like nine ninety nine a month. But
if you want to go way in, it's like fifteen
dollars a month. Even though I have to do more

(27:20):
I have to drive to these meetings. They know that
the community is so much value they charge for it.
And for me, it was this eye opening moment around
the use of the market's use of capitalism to really
quantify things of value.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
So my traditional man, that's.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Really interesting, so interesting, that's very cool. Actually, and once again,
that's a concept.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
Such a concept is a concept.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
And I ended up so I saw micro credit really
is in many ways a tax on the poor because
they got to go to these group meetings.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
It was making sure people repaid.

Speaker 4 (27:52):
So I thought, wow, could you reimagine it's so the
whole point is that they want to show up, they
want to help their friends, they're inspired by their friends.
Weight watchers gave that aha moment for me. That's what
we've been trying to do since so just.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Was formed in twenty sixteen. And I think this is
probably website content, but it served low income black and
brown female entrepreneurs and Austin with micro finance. I mean,
that's a pretty specific goal. You want to serve black

(28:26):
and brown female entrepreneurs and Austin with micro finance. I'm
curious how you landed on that's what is that that's
not a creed. That's that's a that's a that's a purpose.
I guess how you landed with that purpose and why

(28:47):
and how you started? Yes, how you started doing that?

Speaker 4 (28:50):
Yeah, so this is the first taking back to my
friends at Whole Food's Market. I knew we needed a
higher purpose from day one. We know what we're going
to do, boy, I said, whatever it is, it's going
to lead to less stress and more joy.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
That's why I can put the rest of my life behind.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
And in that, we started lending, and we started lending
in with Spanish speaking women because simply I spoke Spanish.
I knew there was lack of opportunities, and I ended
up being able to hire someone from the community. Because
central to all of it in this model is trust
on some level. Because we don't check credit, you don't
have to have a bank account, like, all of those

(29:26):
things are really important to giving people money and getting
it back. So when we first started, it was really
this deep commitment to say, let's figure out who we're
going to be.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
So we set a goal.

Speaker 4 (29:39):
Goals are really important helping you have targets and directions.
So Yvonne, the first woman I had the fortune to hire,
we said let's go find one hundred women in Austin.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
We'll see what we learned from that.

Speaker 4 (29:51):
So she ran around knocking on doors. We ended up
having fourteen different small groups. Our only thing that we
promised to them was we'd give you some money. We
would meet every week together and we would something valuable.
We get some valuable experience. We had no experience. We
had to build it. Every Friday, we get together, what
are gonna do next week? And we went through ji.

(30:14):
I went to fourteen meetings Monday through Thursday across this
Austin and that was going to have to happen forever
for us to scale this work or to grow this work.
So what was very clear was that was more stress
and less joy. As beautiful as those relationships were, it
was very stressful driving across town. And then what we

(30:34):
more importantly, we learned two other things that they had
the gability to lead.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
They didn't need me to show up.

Speaker 4 (30:42):
And when we talk about dreams and they would say
their dream is to help their community. From there is
what emerged our innovation on traditional micro credit from around
the world for Texas, it is the just Entrepreneur Trust agent,
the Jetta. Jetta often say she's she's not a Star

(31:02):
Wars Jedi, but she is.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
Check, got it. That's I got to play on Merge
for sure. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
So she now.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
In twenty seventeen, we started with that approach where we said, hey,
you guys totally have the ability to lead.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
You have total agency.

Speaker 4 (31:15):
You get to decide who joins your small support group
like EO or YPO for the business community. Uh, and
will will trust you. You are extension of trust, so
we will lend one hundred percent of the time. We
don't check credit, don't have to bank account.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
I don't understand that. Don't check credit pard.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
So credit scores in the United States.

Speaker 4 (31:36):
Our system, like I think credit system, our system in
the United States is very that concept is very rigid.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Uh, you know bank.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
But did we just use the word system and concept
of course? Yeah, it's interesting. So that the if you
start paying attention to how many times we use that
word when talking about stuff, it will blow your mind
started paying attention to it. But it is the concept
of that. The concept is very rigid.

Speaker 4 (32:06):
And it's designed to protect the money and so totally understandable.
Don't get mad at the reality. Let's just let's work
with it. So you know, FIGHTO came in. I think
it's like nineteen ninety six, to be fair, and it
makes total sense. Let's be fair. The trick here is
the way to be fair is tosess someone's past. So

(32:26):
if you lead up to that moment you've never had access,
then how of a sudden is that system fair? So
for us, the credit score is or any data, how
much money that in their bank account, any of that
are things that will not allow you to trust their potential.

(32:50):
So we also actually very much need to get repaid.
So I say this to the bankers to make them uncomfortable.
They want to understand. Just so I say, imagine one
hundred some of the people that walk through your branch.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
You must say yes one hundred.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Percent of the time and get repaid nearly one hundred
percent of the time. And so much of it is
actually rooted in how goes back to that triple whammy
effect and why credit is so important, and why the
design of how you get repaid is so important. So
there's all these little nuances. I had the fortune of
learning and studying deeply for ten years.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
We'll be right back. So what is a typical loan size, so.

Speaker 4 (33:58):
It's very prescriptive. Our first loan is a maximum of
seven hundred and fifty dollars. They pay us back weekly.
The total click interest or none. The total cost to
that that for that loan is fifteen dollars. So they
pay us back in thirteen weeks. They pay us back
seven and sixty five dollars. Average week of payment's.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
About sixty bucks nothing, So there's no fees.

Speaker 4 (34:21):
The reality is, I'd like to say, in business terms,
that's known as a really bad business does that?

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Why do you charge that fifteen dollars?

Speaker 3 (34:28):
It's actually interest, it's a in a it's a APR
fifteen percent.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Okay, So.

Speaker 4 (34:35):
Because first loans are test loans for both of us,
subsequently loans extend to six months and they'll go, I'll
whip to seventy five hundred dollars and it's on average
it's like four percent.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
Of principle is the interests.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
To expend to them after seventy five hundred, we say,
if you want more money, that's great. There's probably a
couple of things that would be helpful that everybody can do.
You can do your taxes, you can register your business
that is just a simple signal to us that you're committed.
So we'll extend alone. All we up to fifteen thousand
paid back now over a year and same sort of

(35:09):
weekly payments.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
So it's these first groups, these first groups of fourteen.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
One hundred and six hundred and six pioneering.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Entrepreneurs, one hundred and six pioneer what did they want
the money for? Give me just examples.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 4 (35:28):
This is you got to put the money work immediately
you're gonna start paying us back. So one woman that
went on to be easily the most successful just entrepreneur
have bought and sold jewelry and she had a clear
distribution strategy, so she beautiful story. And then other folks
did cleaning, a lot of cosmetology, hair and nails, buying

(35:52):
and selling stuff.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
So there's a range of.

Speaker 4 (35:55):
Folks from the side hustler trying to make ends meet
to someone that has a clear vision for business of
her dreams.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
And would you would these groups sit and talk about
challenges openly and bounce ideas off each other. Is that
what the community groups were for that you were driving to.

Speaker 4 (36:15):
That was the hope that they would see this as
a source of safety, of support.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Encouragement, encouragement.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
So we started simple goal setting concept and together we
learned the ton You know, I learned a tremendous amount
of what it meant to be, you know, a single
mom trying to make ends meet with a with a business.
So that was what we've been trying to anchor the
group experience around how we create mental slack for planning

(36:46):
for our future selves. Because what we already know is
if you're operating from a place of scarcity, you make
more myopic decisions. You will pick what's right in front
of you to be able to focus on that, and
those are oftentimes decisions that may not be the best for.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
Our future self.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
So the whole thing that we try to do is
manufacture that mental slack, and that community is a big
part of making that possible.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
I like that mental slack, the ability to just exhale
and think about something beyond Friday.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:17):
So actually that's one of the things we tried. All
these little tiny things we try to do based based
on our theory of change, and one of them, as
we pause at the beginning of every meeting and we
breathe together three times and then we share one word
with you know how we feel what's going.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
On in our life. That's very cool, all right. So
that's how it started. And then you said in twenty seventeen, you.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Said the Jeta.

Speaker 4 (37:42):
We launched the Jetta approach weight one hundred women and
we said, Yo, this is over. Or if you guys
want to continue with us, you're going to become a
Jedda or wait for a Jetta to invite you into herb.

Speaker 1 (37:53):
That's what we're doing.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
But when I'm not doing this anymore, Yeah, because the
alternative is like, well we'll go do like micro private equity.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Well, plus, if it's required for you to go, there's
no way to scale that. There's only so much of
you that can go around.

Speaker 4 (38:07):
You can scale it, but it becomes a very linear
type of scaling, very cost They're very labor intensive, very intense,
and that would not be the way to deliver something
with less stress and more joy.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
And more importantly, I.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
Think there's a massive upside from people having autonomy and
the ability to be creative, and our traditional micro credit
system is very rigid. So this has introduced a whole
bunch of creativity that has sense brought us into a
very different version of what we're trying to build.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
Across Texas, all right, So the Jetta Jetta.

Speaker 4 (38:43):
So she's the first couple of times we're given. You know,
I'm writing checks at this point, I'm driving to these
meetings to inaugurate these groups. And we would talk about
what it meant to set goals, accomplish them not and
people would say, I feel terrible when that happens, and
the I would say, oh no, it's this great opportunity
to learn. So there's all these little things that we

(39:04):
would say to each other's three of us at just
at the time, and we're like, this might actually work.
Because what you started to see was people planning differently
because they could trust the money.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
But you also saw what.

Speaker 4 (39:17):
They loved about the organization was compassion and caring because
we knew we could always figure out a plan to
get repaid if there's deep trust. So we hit the
pandemic in everybody thought it was just going to be a.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Week long experience.

Speaker 4 (39:35):
Two weeks, right, So if you remember, it's March and
to March that the shelter and order, Shelter and order
was happening across the country and Austin, the same thing
we had about eight hundred clients at the time. It's
spent three years building those relationships with them, and we
were really concerned about the first of April bills come.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
So we said, hey, what can we do.

Speaker 4 (39:58):
We thought we could give up personal loan and do
it a little bit differently, but there was a real
clear problem. We didn't have the money. So organization did
not have the money. We did not have eight hundred
thousand dollars to just go lend out with. We have
no proof that we get back because we were no
longer going to invest in their business. We're going to
say here's here's a band aid for this moment that

(40:19):
we think is going to be pretty hard.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Interesting.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
So as a team, this is back to I think
when you talk about values and organization values, how do
you use them to make decisions. So we as a team,
there's probably like seven of us at the time, we said,
what do we do?

Speaker 3 (40:33):
There's two options.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
We can we've got some money, we can go and
find people that want that money and then work to
get more money and then we get bring in a
few more people, or we tell everybody, tell all eight
hundred of our clients that this is what we want
to do, so what we'll try to do, but we
don't know if or when it'll ever be open. So
we debated as a team, and we landed on the

(40:56):
second option, where we would tell everybody because we thought
that was a way to build most trust transparently, tell
them what our challenges were, and then work our tail
off to fulfill that promise. So four hundred and seventy
two women said yeah, I want your money, and we
out of eight out of eight hundred sixty percent, so

(41:17):
we got that. We did four hundred and seventy two
thousand dollars in loans in a week.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
We got the money.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
We made the loans that had to put you pretty
thin on your own balance sheet for sure.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
At the time that was represented fifty percent.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Of our portfolio.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (41:36):
And we were paid ninety nine percent of that money.
Of that emergency loan personal loan capital, we got repaid
ninety nine percent of the time.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (41:48):
And that was Unfortunately, that experience made us for a
moment forget how important building the community was. We saw
that the money was part of the answer, and we
thought we could do more of that sort of work
lead with money. When reality we have come back and
We've learned a number of lessons over the years that

(42:09):
we have to deeply root in community.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Those Jetos are the best.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
It was probably the love of the community that got
you ninety nine percent of the money. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (42:17):
And so now we're actually in Houston, we're in Dallas,
we've got work in Olpasso. We've got a couple hundred
entrepreneurs in Olpasso with fifty Jettas and no staff.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Really.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
Yeah, one woman from lub had heard about us through
a friend in El Paso and drove five hours twice
to become a Jetta and opasso in Lubbock. So you're
starting to see trust spread in these really interesting sort
of ways, because that Jetta is magical.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
So tell me, now, almost ten years later, tell me
what just looks like today, And tell me you said

(43:13):
I'm gonna screw it up. So I'm gonna let you repeter. Timmy,
you said one of the reasons you left the whole
foods thing is because you wanted to see there's.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
A word you used, knew more better.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Well, no, it was you wanted to see transformation, transformation
that scale. So tell me on the transformation. Well, first,
tell me what just looks like now from this beginning
and getting through COVID and give us some transformational stories.

Speaker 4 (43:40):
Yeah, right, So we're we've done since inception, we've done
forty one million dollars in loans.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Forty one million from what was the first nesting.

Speaker 4 (43:55):
So the additional co founder, Bill Wood, he committed like
seven or fifty thousand dollars to start.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
He reinvested again, and then since then.

Speaker 4 (44:04):
We've been able to access foundation capital, some government money,
some bank money.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
So forty one milik that doesn't stop fills, not like
that's a whole lot of micro loans.

Speaker 4 (44:17):
So we'll do fifteen million dollars of micro loans this
year average loan side about fifteen hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Fifteen million in what and still no credit check?

Speaker 3 (44:25):
No, no, I definitely don't know how to check.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Credit and what's your payback per some ninety nine point
that's probably better than a traditional bank.

Speaker 4 (44:32):
And yeah, I mean it's it's like apples and oranges
in the sense that you know, we have no collateral.
We don't there's no way for us, there's no recourse
for us. The only recourse we have is someone won't
get a new loan.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
There is people.

Speaker 4 (44:47):
If you don't repay and I co signed for you,
I can't get another loan.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
So there's real.

Speaker 4 (44:51):
Teeth, but it is social capital in our point spent
repaymental A loan is the floor we need to be
driving to people's say gaving money, because if they can save,
they can own and they don't need you anymore exactly.
But if we do a great job, you never have
to leave your community. You never Why would you want
to graduate from your best friends. So for us, it's

(45:15):
a really important paradox of wanting people to be independent
and wanting to have something that they feel deeply connected to.
So for us, it's it is so deeply design around transformation.
How we show up for the community, how they show
up for themselves, and we're committed to figuring it out.

(45:36):
And I think it comes back to concepts because micro
credit is great a building relationships for people that's hard
to reach. It can help make income, increase income a
little bit. But transformation happens with ownership, all forms of ownership,
owning your home but also owning your your contribution to

(45:57):
the community.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
And ownership increases access exactly. It's very much all yep,
that's so interesting all right, So today you have two
other secondary programs that I think.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
It really Yeah, Mark, we we have say more, what
do you've.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
To Well, you've got the financial health program and the
asset ownership program. Tell us about how those have evolved.

Speaker 4 (46:22):
So the ground game, so to speak. We're in Houston, Dallas,
Al Paso. So we've got.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Twenty staff now, twenty twenty unbelievable, and a.

Speaker 4 (46:33):
Part of it is to make sure that we are
being good stewards of our of our resources. Our job
in the next three years is to cover all of
our costs through earned revenues, through our interests, through other
things that we do outside of philanthropy, because we believe
pilanthropy is finite and this this problem has an infinite breach.

(46:54):
So for us, central to this is building new programs
that also drive financial self suffficiency. Because if you're going
to deal in wealth and helping people create wealth, it
is a capital game. It's a capitalism and we believe
in the power of capitalism that has to be re
a concept has to be shifted so that that system

(47:16):
works for the realities of our community. So financial health,
the whole idea is around creating a growth mindset or
a journey mindset where people are setting goals helping each
other through that process, and where it culminates is we
do a organization organization wide saving challenge where they start

(47:38):
to save in groups. There's a little bit of a competition,
and that is starting to instill a new mindset for
how they can take control of their money.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
So I think all of those.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
Pieces speak to how we leverage community and trust for
them to have their own their own experience, change new, build,
new habits, and oftentimes that's still not enough. So for us,
we're what's known as a CDFI. We've got great relationships
with banks, with funders. We believe we can build a

(48:13):
bridge for asset ownership that our clients can cross over
on their own terms ten dollars a month.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
So our job is to build that new system.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
That's unbelievable and are people able to take advantage of
that shot.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yeah, So there's a couple of things that have happened.

Speaker 4 (48:33):
One, I think about systems all the time, and you
know the es central to how micro credit works is
you have to do collections, you have to stay.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
On top, you have to call people.

Speaker 4 (48:40):
Hopefully you can do that with love and compassion, and
if we didn't have to do that work, that would
be pretty awesome because it's managed or saving money. So
what we did is created a incentive that says, if
you can do this hard thing, Jetta, then you get
access to our wealth club.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
So there's a bunch of benefits that we layer on.

Speaker 4 (49:01):
Now becomes a home a container for us just dumping
a bunch of benefits in there. There's been as many
benefits as we can get that are sustainable that maybe
even driver sustainability the better. So the one that we
launched with was following our client's dream of buying a house.
So if they persist in the wealth Club and they
can qualify for a mortgage, which is really hard in

(49:22):
Central Texas, we will invest up to twenty percent that
purchase their house.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Really yeah, how do how does that work with their
traditional lender because usually they are you a gift? No,
so are you subdebt?

Speaker 3 (49:38):
Then we are? We are we know as a community.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
Second, it's a home appreciation product, so we get paid.
They don't pay us, not debt, They pay us back
on resale or refinancing, and we get a share of
the appreciation.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
That's interesting. So you don't become a monthly burden by
the homeowner, but they're just beholden to you. You for
whatever percentages of appreciation, refire or whatever. How's it. How's
that been working?

Speaker 3 (50:06):
It's great for one person.

Speaker 4 (50:08):
We invested in purchases one of our Jetta's houses. And
what we've done through this learning journey is we see
that income is this massive bear. So no matter how
much money we had it being able to qualify for
a mortgage, you have to verify your income.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
You have to have enough income.

Speaker 4 (50:27):
So that is the biggest hurdle right now, and that's
why we're working on other things that can be a
stair step to building more more income, more more wealth.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
We'll be right back. I'm just gonna read these. Although
this producer over her hates when I read stats off

(51:04):
your website because he wants you to say him but
I don't know how to get you to remember these,
But I'm just going to say this overview stats fourteen
thousand visionary female entrepreneurs have received loans fourteen thousand, exactly
eighteen eighteen amazing thirty three million, and invested dreams.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
Forty one million. Yeah, our site, our website's pretty up
to out of date. You know, every week it's doing
like today, I'll do like two hundred thousand dollars loans.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
It could be he looked up something. Yeah, but it's
still good. So how many visionary female entrepreneurs have received loans?

Speaker 4 (51:40):
Now, I'm not eighteen eighteen thousand. We have like three
thousand active female entrepreneurs and some.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Men to over forty million invested yep, still got a
ninety nine percent or better repayment right, and sixty three
percent of just women women have a savings fun now. Yeah,
and I would have guess that's up from almost none.

Speaker 4 (52:03):
Yeah, there's there's a real relationship to money that I
think is profound to especially if you don't have mental
slack to plan for your futures. I've heard more than
a few times people say I just can't save. And
when you start looking at others that have and the
tactics they use to save, you start to believe it's possible.

(52:24):
This social proof. And I share this with Alex. You know,
I had the gift of traveling the world, and you know,
seeing oftentimes someone's first interaction with micro credit and they
more than a few times I see people cry because
the first time they get that access. What is beautiful
about that story is that they do not cry the

(52:47):
second time.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
M hmm.

Speaker 4 (52:49):
It shifts how they see themselves, their ability to provide
for their families. There is a pride that comes with this,
this relationship that's rooted in mutual respect, a handshake, not
a hand up. Right, There is something really powerful about
the concept that micro credit offers. And I think this

(53:11):
is this is you know, simple proof that alternative ways
are possible.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
You know, there's a worn out old thing that we
really accept that we all say to each other, which
is there's just no difference in us, right. I mean,
we're all human beings. We're all want the same thing
as tho hierarchy of needs. We're all the same. And
if the zip code at the time of our birth

(53:38):
happens to be that we're born into poverty, well we're
probably going to be poverty sticking it's the zip code
the time of our birth is wealth or affluence, you know,
but ultimately the essence of our beings are very very
very similar. And everybody goes yeah when you say that,

(54:00):
everybody shakes their head up and down. It's rare that
anybody says no, I just disagree with that because they're poor,
they're just worse people. I mean, that's ridiculous to say, Right,
we're all basically the same and what the same things,
and access has a lot to do with it. I'm
just trying to make the point that I think everybody

(54:20):
can agree. Yes, human beings are essentially basically the same.
And then when we go a loan in money, people
from that affluent zip go dull. Oh they're good folks,
they're going to pay the money back. And the people
from the poor oh, well, they're just not going to

(54:40):
pay the money back. How is it that we're essentially
the same, but we're not going to act essentially the
same with money? And I think it's interesting that the
natural notion would be that the poor people are not
going to pay back the money and the people from
affluence do, even though we say people are basically the same.

(55:03):
And I think what just has proven is that the
people from the poor place will pay back the money
just like the peoples because they are the same. They
want the pride of standing on their own, they want
to pay things back, they want to do things right way.
And if you just give the opportunity, they will succeed.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
And I think this is the nuanced response because just
bringing it back to football and concepts versus systems, the
concept has to be right for the person's context.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
So that's that's a really good way of putting.

Speaker 4 (55:40):
And what I unfortunately I don't think we do enough
of in our country is try and figure out new
concepts that work for folks.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
It's because that's where the gray is, that's what the
heart is.

Speaker 4 (55:54):
It's so awesome you're doing these these conversations with people
like Darren Babcock and Adrian Lewis, you know, people that
I held in high regard because they're sharing these different approaches,
and you know, that's what we need more of. We
just need We're not the answer, we're part of a solution,
but we need many more. And I would hope there

(56:14):
would be a bunch more, a bunch more folks, army
of normal folks getting out there trying to figure out
what could be their contribution.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Share with us the story of Letty Is it Letty
l A T T I A housequenner.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
Yes, she's uh.

Speaker 4 (56:32):
She actually was one of our first Jettas she ends
up cleaning my house shield. To this day, she now
has the team of of people that are still cleaning
my house. And one of the greatest gifts that I
get to give our family is having having a clean house.
And this woman, you know, I think the thing that
I saw she came hard worker, and she felt like

(56:57):
I'm stuck. I don't know, I don't know how to save.
And then she started to chip away these things. She
started setting goals. She started connecting with other folks within Jest,
and she bought a better vacuum cleaner, and she bought
four more.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Vacuum which was right.

Speaker 4 (57:13):
She at one point she said, she bought like four
rumbas because she was going to be more efficient.

Speaker 3 (57:18):
Oh my god, the genius. Uh. But so I stayed
in I.

Speaker 4 (57:22):
Stayed in touch with her more closely because she cleaned.
She was you know, I was in relationship with her
from her her services cleaning our house. So at one
point we were trying to figure out, you know, what
could be more and we sat her down. We said, hey,
maybe we can help you register your business. And in
that conversation, I said, well, what's your dream for the
next five years? And she got very we all got

(57:45):
very emotional because she had chick cancer, and she had
cancer and she didn't know where to look. This is
like early early stage of her journey, and you know,
I've at that point I felt really like, that's not
the place I should be, Like I shouldn't be this
person that is trying to counsel her. I'm not equipped

(58:06):
to do that. So what happens over time is she
finds the right people. But one of the most important
things that I love from her sharing was that those group,
those women in her group became her sisters. They extended
support in different ways beyond her business. They helped her
when she couldn't clean, and then from that pot from

(58:27):
that process, she figured out she could manage a business
of other people cleaning houses and she could be quality control.
And it became such a symbol for me that there's
tremendous potential and it needs a way to get out,
and once it does, it's going to do things that

(58:48):
we never anticipated. So she's she's one of my favorite
and she's one of.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
Thousands that's phenomenal and probably well not probably none of
that happens if not for just because she doesn't even
have that group of girls to be with.

Speaker 4 (59:06):
Yeah, and I think the thing if we just compare
Just to like micro credit that I saw over the world,
there is a different relationship that's made because of the Jeta.
The jet has agency over who's in her group. Those
groups are meant to be small so that when problems happen,
they want to help each other. So this is where
compassion and caring emerges. So I think that is the

(59:30):
really unique thing of Just. It's this trust based loans,
It's the Jetta, the community, the community that she creates,
and then it's this wealth club. It's this path like
we are going to be in on your dreams. Everybody
starts just by drawing their dream.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
So what's next.

Speaker 4 (59:47):
Next is to prove onequivocally that we can do this
work in any context across Texas.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
And that means great.

Speaker 4 (59:55):
Well, because I don't have billion dollars, so.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
I think we can get to like one hundred million,
do you really? Yeah? So we've got a we've got
a strategic plan.

Speaker 4 (01:00:10):
We look like a good business from from operating procedures
and policies and team that is deeply rooted, and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
So your balance sheets healthy.

Speaker 3 (01:00:19):
Now, yeah, we've.

Speaker 4 (01:00:20):
Got like eight million dollars in assets and we need
fifty million by the next three in the next three years,
So we've got aggressive plan because it's back to being
eternally impatient. Because if you have those relationships rooted and
trust you, I believe you have a responsibility to new,
more and better. So for us, it's ten thousand clients

(01:00:43):
across the state of Texas the next few years. They're
on a durable path to wealth that they have a
plan for, that they're excited by, that provides them with
new resources, new opportunities, and that we as an organization
approach being financially solvent sufficient on our own two feet.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
You may or may not have these metrics, but as
I'm sitting here listening to you, this is another squirrel
of a tree that there's no front here. You know,
you're not supposed to ask a question that you don't
already know the answer to, so you don't end up surprised.
I'm the king of not doing it right. So but
you know, I'm a football coach, a lover guy with
a microphone orm mote of me. So who cares if

(01:01:22):
I screw it up? Right? If you don't like it,
don't listen. I would love to know, and you may
not have them, and you probably don't, but I think
it would be interesting the metrics on what just has
created for communities where just exists that have nothing to

(01:01:45):
do withdjust from a standpoint of tax space, crime, education levels,
because we all know that as you, as you minimize poverty,
you start maximizing upward mobility, and therefore you maximize your

(01:02:09):
communities because there's more people paying into the tax space,
there's less crime, there's better education schools, there's more people
involved in the booster clubs, there's more people involved in
the PTA, which put more kids out into the public
who they are now contributing to tax space or going
to college or the trade school and making more money.
And that's the economy of communal growth. That is the

(01:02:34):
economy of communal growth. So as I sit here and
listen to you, and I think about the woman you
just Aleetti or whoever, and the people she hired to
then clean and the taxes and the blah blah blah,
the metrics of what these women are organically doing for
the communities they live in when the vast majority of

(01:02:58):
the people communities don't even know about them. Because you
are truly fixing it from the bottom up.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
So what I would say, I would love that. I think, yeah, totally.

Speaker 4 (01:03:06):
We have explored working with economists to figure out some
of those more complex questions contexts of impacts, economic impact.
And one of the things that I think we see
because there's a very clear loans out, loans back, and
then incomes, there's a very one step removed, and those

(01:03:31):
numbers are interesting. Where I do think it gets really
exciting is thinking about something like Bontan Farms and Darren Babcock.
I believe the combination of those our model plus there
deep rooted place with assets is the addressed to two
really important problems. How do you build relationships rooted in

(01:03:54):
trust with people you don't know, especially if they're rightfully
so trusting of systems, so that's what your credit does
really well. And then if you had that deeply rooted
in community ownership for awesome assets that the community is
proud of, like those two things together making the invisible

(01:04:15):
visible in trust and that's how it manifests and this
beautiful building, this beautiful space we have that's helping people
increase income and appreciating assets like that. To me, a
combination of those two things becomes a radical transformation for a.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Community, and that's what I'm saying. It does become radical.

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
And in the United States, there's not enough people, in
my opinion, that are thinking creatively about how you reach
the most isolated and then use that to unlock resources.
Because you're now no longer disconnected, you have new opportunity and.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
It erases disenfranchised, but it erases so much of what
is killing us. This is the kind of stuff and
it's very much bottom up, it's very much going where
the need is, but allowing what there was a alex

(01:05:14):
will remember, but it's a story of these people that
went to a mountain village to help these people that
were falling off edge of the edge of the mountain.
And they said, well, we need to have a clinic
for the people that fall off edge of the mountain.
And they opened this very expensive clinic and nobody would
come because they couldn't get to it. So then they said, well,

(01:05:35):
we need an ambulance because all these people that fall
off edge of the mountain need an ambulance to go
the clinics. So they buy an ambulance and then five
years later the clinics shut down and there's two ambulances
sitting in the weed overgrown and one of the oders says,
why don't we just build a fence on the edge
of the mountain, And they invested hundreds of thousands of
dollars and a five thousand dollar fence kept people from

(01:05:57):
falling off the mountain. And the point is, why not
just ask the people on the mountain what they need
rather than going in and tell them what they need
and give them agency and let them handle it themselves,
and then you fix the community. And to me, that's
part of the beauty of this is that these communal

(01:06:18):
groups are supporting one another with the help that you
give them, and then you change the entire community because
you're going from the bottom up with people supporting one
another's phenomenal. And that's not really it's morphed to that.

Speaker 4 (01:06:34):
It feels like there is definitely a different element because
that jetta is materially different because normally I have higher
staff and we're going to organize everybody and we'll give
them a little bit agency. They'll get to pick what
they're going to invest in their business. And that's actually
really beautiful, especially in the US context. But to now say, hey,

(01:06:57):
you have a potential to lead your community of the
potential to help them realize their dreams. That is a
shift that is at as core emotional and that that
agency leads to a greater belief that they deserve it,
and we believe they deserve it from day one.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
It's pretty crizy. Just everybody, Steve wanna see co founder
and CEO of Just Changing Lives, Alex you got anything
on any of this. I think it would be cool
for other listeners across the country to consider this model
in their community if they want to start it, or
existing organizations could. I'm sure you got a website or

(01:07:38):
some people and go to check this out.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
Hellos dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
What is it?

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
Hello?

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Just hello, Just well, Hello, Hello Hello, just hellos dot com.
And if there's somebody out there saying, hey, I'd like
to do this in Birmingham or I don't know, God forbid,
Green Bay or something, how do they you just email
you at hellos dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:08:03):
Yeah, Steve at hellos dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:08:06):
And I think the the point is, as much as
we talk about the entrepreneurs changing mindsets, we actually need
people that want to do this work to also change
mindsets their own mindset to truly believe in people and
you can say yes. So I think there's a there's
an element of really challenging ourselves and.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
What don't we do we really believe in?

Speaker 4 (01:08:29):
How are we showing up with with those resources or not?

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
And you know this is well, it's simple.

Speaker 4 (01:08:35):
It's not so easy because you gotta you gotta go around,
you've gotta go along for the ride for for years.
And there's some hard elements of this. So it's not
for the faint of heart. And it's really beautiful if
you can commit to it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Well, you know, nothing of any value is ever going
to come easy, and it's always about being kick. It's
just the way it is. But it's a hell lot
better than dying in a cubicle along with a plant
you were given by your Caro proc my friend Steve.

(01:09:11):
Thanks for joining us, Thanks for the incredible work, Thanks
for spending time telling the story. Everybody look up just
and think about it in your community, because this is
truly a bottom up, life changing, community altering idea that's
been modeled out works and I guess you're just going

(01:09:34):
to keep on going going.

Speaker 3 (01:09:37):
Yeah, with together we get better.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
That's it. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sure, and
thank you for joining us this week. If Steve Wanta
has inspired you in general, or better yet, to take
action by donating to them, exploring their model for your community,
or something else entirely, please let me know. I really

(01:10:03):
do want to hear about it. You can write me
anytime at Bill at normal folks dot us. If you
enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and on
social subscribe to the podcast, rate it and review it.
Join the army at normal folks dot us, any and
all of these things that can help us grow an
army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time,

(01:10:26):
do what you can