November 18, 2025 • 36 mins
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
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
We will lend one hundred percent of the time. We
don't check credit.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I don't understand that don't check credit part.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
So credit scores in the United States, that concept is
very rigid and it's designed to protect the money. Just understandable,
Totally understandable. Don't get mad at the reality. Let's work
with it. FIGHTO came in. I think it's like nineteen
ninety six.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
To be fair. The trick here is the way to
be fair is tosess someone's past.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
So if you lead up to that moment you've never
had access, then how all of a sudden is that
system fair for us? Credit score or any data are
things that will not allow you to trust their potential.
So I say this to bankers to make them uncomfortable.
They want to understand. Just I say, imagine one hundred
(00:48):
percent of the people that walk through your branch, you
must say yes one hundred percent of the.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Time and get repaid nearly one hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Courtney. I'm
a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm
an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in Inner
city Memphis, and the last part somehow led to an
oscar for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. Guys,
I believe our country's problems are never going to be
(01:19):
solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits
using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox,
but rather by an army of normal folks. That's us,
just you and me deciding Hey, maybe I can help.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
That's what Steve want to The voice you just heard
is done.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Steve is the co founder of Just, a nonprofit lender
to eighteen thousand black and brown female entrepreneurs in Texas,
and because they built an unheard of system based on
trust and community, they're achieving unheard of results such as
loaning money to one one hundred percent of applicants to
(02:02):
the tune of forty one million dollars, and yet they've
been repaid ninety nine percent of the time.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I cannot wait for you to meet Steve.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Right after these brief messages from our general sponsors.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Steve Wanna from Austin, Texas. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
My pleasure. How you doing Grilli again? Gat to be
a Memphis Well good?
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Well, I really appreciate you coming by everybody. Steve is
the co founder and CEO of Just J aust which
we'll get to to believe or not before I read
all about you and I saw just.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Think.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
I think Justice is a pretty good title because I
got the idea just from I mean, I really knew
nothing about you, and I thought that has to be
about doing something just for people that aren't as fortunate
as us. And turns out it's really interesting. So we'll
get to it.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
But first, I guess you're a Packers fan.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I am a die hard Packers fan.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I bleed green and gold.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, about a mile
from the stadium.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Were you really you're born about a mile from the stadium.
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I was talking to Cassius a little bit about the
culture of the NFL and sports and man I played
football growing up. Was offensive lineman and defensive lineman at
all of five eight and seventy five pounds, but it
was it's just a every day and Sunday. That's one
of those moments my wife and my kids give me
(03:51):
because I feel connected to community just by simply watching
that game. I feel like I actually have some influence
over the game, which ibviously not the case. But yeah,
you're a football coach, you know.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Well, we folks from down south very happy that we
were able to send you a Southernsissippi guy up there
to a quarterback for you for many years.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Legend.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, is he still a legend up there? Yeah, we're
talking about Brett fa at FARV.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
When he that whole transition Aaron Rodgers, there was a
nation divided. Half of the Yeah, half of the jerseys
were for the other half were twelve. And my grandmother
who she had, she was going to be a nun.
She met my grandfather who's going to be a priest,
(04:40):
and instead they decided to have seventeen children.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Wow, there's yeah, they ran a bar.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Are you kidding? Irish Catholic unbelievable in Green.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Bay in northern Wisconsin got it, but my grandmother said,
we don't own Brett Farr. Everybody got it all changed
when Brett Fahr went to the Minnesota Vikings.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
That was.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Everybody and he had like one of the best years
of his NFL career. It was total insults, but that's like,
don't don't mess with a gun slinger man.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
He'll he'll get you back.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, I mean it wasn't his choice.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
He would have stayed at green Bay, right, he he left.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
He retired, and then he said, now I never mind,
and they said, wow, actually we're.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Pretty excited by Aaron Rodgers. Ye see, yeah, we don't
need this.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
And then you know, the same things sort of happened
with Aaron Rodgers and Jordan love Well.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
I'll tell you, I think Brett Farr was a perfect
fit for green Bay because it's it's a blue collarish
feeling town, hard working, salt of their kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And that's just how he played ball. He just hung
it out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
No, So it was a love affair absolutely.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
I mean he had the one of the longest streaks
of consecutive games and stuff that he went through to play.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I mean he was tough.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
He was so tough.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And you know, green Bay is one hundred thousand people,
if stadium fits eighty thousand, right. So I think for
me and a lot of the work that we do,
this idea of this transformational properties of community, really deep,
authentic community that rally around a higher purpose. And this
higher purpose happens to be the green Bay Packers is
(06:21):
pretty special.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
All right.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
So this interview has nothing to do with the Green
Bay Packers, but if you want to talk football, we
can do that for two hours.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And call it. You know.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
So Steve grew up in Green Bay and uh, you know,
I don't want to get I think it's important obviously,
But I guess you got a job in technology and
learn to speak Spanish.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Why don't you take us through how that all worked?
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah, I was, there's no real good reason why I
should seek Spanish.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I remember, there's really no reason why I should.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I was. I remember really distinctly being a young kid
and my aunt was taking Spanish classes and I just said, oh,
I could speak Spanish.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I made a bunch of noises and she said, oh,
you just said cow like that's pretty cool. So I
had a direction. I had a place.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
That I knew I wanted to get to, but I
didn't know what I was going to do along the way.
I didn't have some grand vision of certainly starting the
organization we have today. But I just really wanted to
be fluent in Spanish, and they just wanted to want to.
And I had this great opportunity to go study abroad,
and I fell in love with culture. I fell in
(07:31):
love with connecting with people that didn't look like me.
You know, in Green Bay, we lack of diversity is
an understatement. I mean it was.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
It was just the reality of white, white Midwest.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
And you know, if you were black in Green Bay
in the eighties, they thought you were a packer or
connected to the packers.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
So ken Brooks, this kid I played pee wee football with.
He was of freshman in high school and he got
asked for his autograph, no kidding, just to tell you
how little diversity there was. And I saw that there's
this amazing, you know loss that that we had. I
had personally to not have a chance to understand how
other people live in all forms of that income race.
(08:20):
So learning being summersed in South America was just fascinating.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
It was amazing.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
So I knew what I wanted to do, but I
didn't know how to do it, and that was being
part of a broader, a bigger community.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So I got a job at a tech company.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
And I was I was starting and I thought I
was going to die in a cubicle, and I'm like,
they got something else that's got to give.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well, So let's go back to the study abroad. Thing.
What what was it costa.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Rica to Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Venezuela.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Wow, yeah, this is like nineteen ninety seven, so before
completely fell up.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Yeah, and it was.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
It was. It was one of the most prospeous South
American countries. Chavis came in and promised to to fix corruption,
give to the people, and then it became you know
what it is today, which is so many including friends
from Venezuela, have have left because of what has happened
to that government. And like there's amazing beautiful parts of
(09:17):
that country. They had a chance to go to study
brought in Chile later and I saw a whole different
form of both from climate to people to accents. And
I before going to Venezuela, I thought everything was like Mexico.
I had such little exposure and I was such an
idiot going in college. I didn't even realize that it
would snow in Chile, so I didn't bring a jacket.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Oh gosh, So.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Like to keep going south Patagonia, is there there's beautifu're skiing,
I mean, I blame it on the fact that there
wasn't the internet the same way. It was definitely not
my fault, you know, So that all that led to
this deep, deep passion to be speaking Spanish. But what
that really meant was being connected with folks that didn't
(10:01):
look like me, And yeah, such such fun personally curious.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
The Spanish that's in Mexico, the Spanish that's in Venezuela,
the Spanish that's in Brazil, and the Spanish that's in Chile.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Those are almost different languages, aren't.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, very different, Like.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I do not speak another languages.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
I'm just speaking from like what I've read that it's
more than just dialogue.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Yeah, there's different language, well a couple of things. There's
different slang. And you know, in Venezuela, bolo is means
like their local currency and bolo and Guatemala means drunk.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Oh, so you know you've got to have understanding, and
I don't. I've stepped, I put my foot in my
mouth a few sounds.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
But you know what's really fascinating about Guatemala is that
there are twenty three different Mayan languages in addition to Spanish.
So you would have people still addressed in their intraditional
indigo where's and you know they're speaking where I was
a Peace Corps volunteer. They spoke mom and that was
(11:15):
not even not connected to Spanish at all.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Wow. Yeah, all right, So you're doing this in college?
Speaker 1 (11:23):
College study brought me. I graduated college in two thousand.
I studied a brought a couple of times.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Then I got a job, a technology job because they
had big South American operations called unices, and like, that's
how I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Gonna get there.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I was, uh, I was gonna move.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
To Miami, and then you know, one thing led to
another another. I worked for UNICES and they moved me
from Seattle.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
To Austin, Texas. Where'd you go to college?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
University of Minnesota, Golden Gophers.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
The Golden Gophers.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
The worst chance in the world.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
They spell out all of Minnesota and then at the
end they say, go go for.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
It.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Takes me fall As played the chance.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
All right, So.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
You were this Midwestern guy, you have a love for Spanish.
You've been exposed all over Central and South America to
not only language, but I guess culture. Yeah, curious, one
more question. Did you learn more about culture or learn
more about language studying over broad?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Definitely culture. You know, I think there was language what
I really one of the things that would help me
in to learn the languages. I played rugby really like
rugby in Venezuela, played rugby in Chile. I played rugby
throughout college, and I was a chance to be connected
outside of the university with people that that were from
the from the local community, so it was only Spanish there.
(12:47):
But uh, I think throughout all of it, I realized
that there are we're all the same on some level
and regardless of your background. So it was really a
humanizing thing that removed it from a map and from
on TV to something.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
E really.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors, but
first I wanted to share an awesome update that in
January and February we're launching the first six local chapters
of an Army of Normal Folks.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
If you happen to live.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
In one of these communities and you'd be interested in
being part of it, email Alex and he'll connect you
to their leaders. These communities are Memphis, my hometown, Oxford, Mississippi,
Alexi's hometown, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Wichita, and we're going to announce
the sixth soon. If you'd be interesting in leading a
(13:46):
local chapter in your community, we'll hopefully be launching more
in spring or summer. So please reach out to Alex
on that. His email is Army at normal Folks dot us.
We'll be right back. There's nothing like eating the crap
(14:17):
I don't want another for two and a half hours
and then going.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
To beer together. Yeah, that's what rugby to me is
the greatest sport on earth.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
From that perspective, you will literally for two and a
half hours trying to kill somebody and then everybody goes
into experience.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah. Yeah, is that how it is? Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I mean I think that they're saying, like soccer is
a gentleman I forget how it goes.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Soccer is a gentleman's game, like about Ruffians. Rugby is
a Ruffians game. Yeah that's one of an old saying,
but it's true.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Right, So I've i go.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
I moved to Austin and I am I am like
the captain of the rugby team.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I am all in and.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I partly because I didn't have a lot of purpose
in life. It was like go to the cubicle and
the thing that sort of saves me from just day
in and day out perspective is this purpose of rugby.
But it was very bad for my back. It was
very bad for the level of beer that I drank.
I'm like, I cant get out of here. Man, I'm
gonna be like I cut pull the rip cord. And
(15:18):
that's why that's why I decided joined the Peace Corps.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Okay, so you work, you get this cool job, you're
in Austin. Uh, you've had all these experiences and was
the Peace Corps after the cubicle plant incidental?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah? So so tell that because I think that's hilarious.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Okay, So because there's a plant that was basically a
metaphor for your life totally.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
And so it gets back to rugby. So I, you know,
I'm playing rugby. I go to chiropractor because I can't
like look sideways.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
You're really that bad? Yeah, how old are you?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
I was twenty five, so that you know, I can't
feel a couple of fingers.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Oh you got nerve down shoulders or so.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
The doctor, the chiropractor says, hey, thanks for being a patient.
Here's my here's a plan. Here's an office plan.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
So friend, we go by.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
I s I had like great when you know, I
put this office plant in my desk and then my
boss's boss one day comes to you know, it's like
a Friday. So I'm kind of hungover and she comes
to my desk and she says, hey, Steve, you know
office space. So what you have that TPS report? You
know what's the what you Wear's the report? I said,
you know, I'll get it to you. As she's leaving,
(16:27):
she looks and sees the plants it's dead on my desk.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
She said, oh, Steve, you should get with that. Planet's dead.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
And I said, well, actually, it reminds me every day
I walk in here, a little piece of me dies.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Oh gosh, Boss's boss.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
So she sort of back pedals a little bit and
I thought it was funny, and she didn't think it
was very funny. So I really it was a moment
of reflection in humor and saying, well, that actually is
kind of true, so I probably should do something about it.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
And that's when I was sort.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Of the emotional push over the edge to finish my
Peace Corps application.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And that was ultimately they assigned me to Guatemala. That
it happened shortly after.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Okay, so let's recap A dude who grows up in
Green Bay, part of a family of a potential nun
and priests who said, Nah, let's own a barn, have
nineteen thousand children and side on.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
My other grandfather was a banker and a lawyer, no kidding, Yeah,
I had a bartender and a banker as my grandfatherly figures.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
That's crazy. That's very cool too.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
So you bounce around, you learn to speak Spanish, you
get this technology job, which is kind of a destination
for a lot of folks. And this plant metaphorically describes
how you felt about living in this pubil, this cubicle,
(17:55):
and where your life is. And you'd literally say at
twenty five of I'm a resett and I'm going to
Peace Corps and let's be honest, the Peace Corps, and
I mean it's great work, but it's great exposure and
it's probably a great education. But you're not make any
money doing it for sure, Right, So you were really
at twenty five years old hitting the reset button.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah, and you know, twenty five, I didn't have kids.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
I mean you can do that. You could it was
grew single and broke once in life. So if you're
going to do it, now is the time. But the
point is you kind of worked to get to this
place and you just said reset.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah, only in hindsight, did my mother say that?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
She was very, very worried, very concerned.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
But I had an amazing support system with my family, and
you know that there was something different about being in
a rural Guatemalan community, living side by side for two years.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Yeah, so there it is. That's the reset. Now let's
pick it up from there. You go to Guatemala with
the Peace Corps and a lot of folks don't understand
what that is, but that is a two year commitment.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
What in the world do you do in Guatemala for
two years?
Speaker 1 (19:08):
The irony is I'm actually working with farmers. I had
this dead plant and now I'm supposed to help, so
I help.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
There was a greenhouse project, so I helped these farmers
get to local markets sell their their tomatoes. And what
was another example of how important exposure is. So I
took a group of of our local farmers and you
know they struggle to speak Spanish, They're speaking the local
indigenous language.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Oh is that is that right?
Speaker 4 (19:39):
So these Guatemalans who are rule are still speaking whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
In my community is mom? Mom? There's others that catch
you go.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
There's twenty i think twenty six different languages Okay, So
I take them to a pizza place, say, this is
where we're selling your tomatoes, and half of the people
had never seen pizza before, and this is like fifteen
minute drive.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
And I was I think that's phenomenal.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, these folks in Guatemala who don't really even speak
Spanish in Guatemala because the rural farmers have not made
it more than fifteen minutes away from their village to
see pizza.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah, that's.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
That's that in and of itself should be opening to
people listening to us, that that's the reality and the
world in many many places.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
And I think the big thing that I really hit
home for me is in the Peace school, I see volunteers,
they pick empathy or apathy. Oftentimes the actions can look
very similar. And for me, I told that line a
couple of times, I'd be really frustrated, and then more
(20:49):
often than that, I chose empathy because I realized I
did not understand what they had lived, their access to
whatever it was education or experience. It's, you know, my
counterpart in one hilarious dude that could could grow anything,
you know. I asked them to finish the report for
(21:09):
some some funding. We got I said, I've done three
quarters of it. Just you finished the rest of it
because you have the answers, and I come back the
next day and do anything.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
And I'm like, on, like, bro, come on.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
And what I very quickly learned is like he had
never turned on the community before and he had stuffed
in a new role.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
This new role had some administrative part to the job,
and I'm like, I am an idiot.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
So that exposure, I think there's a big dose of
humility that comes to that understanding if you were making
assumptions and judgments on people that are so flawed, you know.
I think that was the biggest gift, especially in hindsight,
that I got from the Peace Corps.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Mmm.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Interesting, all right, so Guatemala and your two years is up.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
There's a I mean, I don't know how much these
stories want to go through, but I find myself in
a Mexican wrestling ring.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Oh I want to hear that. How do you quote
find yourself.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Wrestling twice.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Prostitution?
Speaker 4 (22:16):
First of all, when you quote find yourself somewhere, typically
the backstory to that is you took a number of
steps very proactively to end up where you vote found yourself.
So how tell me that that's the greatest thing.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Well, so we're going to go my peace war buddy,
and I I'm gonna I'm going to extend my trip
for my service to There was a natural disaster in Guatemala,
so I was going to extend for another few months,
but you know, a little break. We're going to take
a drive to Mexico. He's going to keep on to
the United States, and I'm gonna come back. So we
we find ourselves on the beach in Porto est Condido
(22:52):
and the southern part of Mexico, and then it's the
ad for Mexican Wrestling on the beach, Like it's so perfect,
you know.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I grew up watching WWF.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
And we show up and everybody's on the beach. There's
big crowd, and then I go up with my friend
Brian and he says, can we get in the ring.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Just take a picture.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
I was like, sure, fine, But that to me was
this once in a lifetime opportunity to go through the actual.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
The dream I had alreadys had in my head.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
So I whipped him around, threw him against the ropes clothesline,
and picked him up, slamed him on the on the
turf and then it was awesome, and it's actually on
YouTube somewhere, so I'm trying to get my views up.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
But it was such a cool climax.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
And then I proceeded to get typhoid fever and spent
three days.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
In a Mexican hospital. And the kicker of this is
actually was the greatest gift I've ever been given.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Of course, because I couldn't I couldn't continue my service.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
It just I had a bunch of stuff that happened medically.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
So because I got back, I started looking for a
job and at that time, Whole Foods Market had just
started a foundation, and I got a like a monster
dot com job hosting that said, hey, you might qualify
for this job, and it was.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Just because you were bilingual and.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
The well because actually the guy that started the foundation,
he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the seventies on durists.
It was you know what the foundation started, which I
think we'll get into, was started in they started two projects,
wanting Guatemala and the other in Costa Rica. So they
need someone to go back and support those two projects.
So they're really looking for someone that was like a
(24:43):
peascore volunteer that could, you know, roll up their sleeves
and not be afraid.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Experience in speaking Spanish was essential to it.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, will be right back.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Just curious to get between your ears midway through or
seventy five percent of the way through your time of
water mile. What you know, this is a two year commitment.
What in your mind, who you're thinking is next for you?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
I you know, the Peace Corps to me is like
a fine wine.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
It gets better with age.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
So when I was in the experience, I was not
very happy because I in so many ways I think
of like the beautiful part of like American culture. It's
like we're builders, We're gonna change, We're gonna fix stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
And that was not what I was supposed to do.
And I was met with what are.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
You supposed to do?
Speaker 1 (25:53):
There's three goals of the Peace Corps.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
One is provide some technical expert expertise and you know,
help so I knew something and stuff, so I was
sort of helping farmers. The other is in exchange, so
I learned from them, they learned from me. You know,
we're good people. And the third goal is we come
back to the United States and we share what we've learned.
So in some ways this podcast is sharing that third goal.
(26:16):
So you know, I thought I could go in and
I could fix anything, and you know, but I also
didn't know what needed to fix, be fixing or you know.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
It was back to that lack of understanding.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
So I felt less capable of service, less capable of
contributing something meaningful. So when I was leaving, I just
I love business. I thought, you know, I'll just get
a good job and I can speak Spanish. I was
going to go sell hialty tools at home depot. I
was going to be a rep. That was I was
actually potentially gonna go back to Green Bay and sell cheese.
(26:50):
I just wanted to both do business because I thought,
you know, there's a fair exchange, and I want to
do it in the context of speaking Spanish.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Got it.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
So Monster reaches out and you're like, here, it is
business Spanish.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Probably important to give a little bit of context. Then,
how the foundation got started? So John Mackie, founder of
Whole Foods to Market, he twenty years into building the
grocery store, said hey, it's time for us to give
back to global community. We trade one hundreds of countries,
and he found and fell in love with micro credit.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Well that makes sense, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Super cool.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
And John Mackie's smart guy that did a bunch of
research and said, why don't we just start, Why don't
we partner with the best.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
So the best are this group out of Bangladesh, Greman.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Bank about a Bangladesh, Yeah, Bangladesh.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Where did that come from? Well?
Speaker 3 (27:40):
They micro credit was this thing that started to gain
momentum in two thousand and five. The World Bank called
it the Year of micro Credit. It was the first
solution to a social problem poverty, that had a business
like approach that could make life loans, get those loans repaid.
(28:02):
So there was a ton of excitement from people from
all walks of life that saw potentially a business like
solution for a real, entrench social problem. And it started
to shift how people saw the poor.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
And the idea.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
And now I'm asking, I'm stating, but with a question
mark at the end, if I kind of moderately understand
the whole micro credit thing as it pertains to two
thousand and five and Bangladesh, it's exactly what it sounds like.
Really small loans three four five hundred dollar loans two
(28:36):
very very poor rule farmers or maybe even entrepreneurs to
just help them get over the line. And they were.
The term on these things was really short too. I think, yeah,
it is that about that.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
So Professor Unie wrote a book called Banker to the Poor,
which really helped catalyze people understanding of how it worked,
but also deeper the underlying problems facing those in abject poverty.
So the story goes in nineteen seventy seven, he goes
back to Bangladesh to help rebuild the country they gain
(29:15):
its freedom from Pakistan, and what he saw as a
professor was that people were dying of famine.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
So he went out and tried to understand why.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
He comes to discover that there's people borrowing money from
loan sharks.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
They've got to pay.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
They get a dollar today and they got to give
them back two dollars at the end of the day,
that kind of thing. So he bands together forty two
women and gives them a total of twenty seven dollars
to free them from these loan sharks. How many twenty
seven dollars to forty two women. Yeah, in this case,
he got to put in context of Bangladesh at that
(29:53):
point in time, there was women doing the work weaving baskets,
but they were not actually.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Allowed to touch money. They didn't have a voice.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yeah, so it's a profoundly different context than we that
anyone can really understand you in today.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
So he goes through this process of discovery.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
You know, can you imagine trying to serve someone that
you're not actually allowed to talk to. So he had
a students to a female students I would have to
talk to to talk to the women as they built
this thing.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
And flash forward twenty twenty years later.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Multiple millions of people in Bangladesh, primarily women, are gaining
access to small loans a couple hundred dollars, and they're
able to invest invest that's a big part of it,
and be able to invest in making more money.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Huh So John Macki says, this is awesome, we should
do this.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Well, I want to go back to the Bangladesh thing.
Women were not allowed to handle money or.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Speak to men.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Correct quick question, how does the species pro create if
women cannot speak to men?
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I mean, I'm not at certainly a student of Bangladesh history,
but if you go back to Bank of the Poor.
Because of his professor UNI's status, he was a professor,
He was not part of their family. The idea that
he could just simply go have a conversation with another
woman in a world village was not.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Acceptable, no kidding.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah, So you know, it's certainly, and I think that's
this cultural context that is so important for us to
understand and be.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
That's fascinating to me. I'm gonna go read about that. Yeah,
probably tonight when I have twelve minutes extra. So they
make twenty seven dollars loan to forty two women, and
they found out that just that little amount of money helped.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, and that at the same time, there's groups from
all over the world that were starting to explore an
experiment with this kind of thing. Because there is one
universal truth about people in poverty, whether in Memphis or
Austin or World Guatema, it's an absence of resource and
money is the most.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Clear agree more that is that is it's access.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
It's access to credit, access to good medicine, access to education,
access to transportation. We can name a list of one
hundred things, but access is the is what I've grown
to learn is the biggest impediment to getting out of
abject poverty.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
It's just access to things that most of us take
for granted.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
And I think it's a big piece of that. That's
that question, a story is deep.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Understanding of what are the limitations to that access. So
there's this idea of a triple whammy effective poverty. It's
also that income is often low, but it's not just
that it's low. It's highly volatile, and it makes it
difficult to pool together lump sums of money. So those
three things together make it extramely difficult.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Well, income's low, it's volatile, meaning.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
One day a dollar a day now four dollars tomorrow,
nor money for the next three days.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
How do you plan right? How do you budget? So
there's no financial literacy, well.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
No, And also lack of trust, lack of lack of
belief that it's going to be better when it you
never know.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
It's always it's a roller coaster, all right. And what's
the third one.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
The third one is because of the first two, it's
hard together to pool together lump sums of money.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Which is why you can't invest, which is why I
broke credit.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, exactly, So microad addresses, but it's also things that
you're not aware of. Oftentimes there's a great book called
Portfolios of the Poor that talks about South Africa and
people go into debt for the funerals of their loved ones.
So pulling together lumps some somebody to weather storms, whether
the low points is really important as well as not
(33:48):
being able to capitalize opportunities because of the lack of credit.
Lack of lump sums compound all of those things good
and bad.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
So interesting, it's beyond this, beyond the purposes of our conversation.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
You can fix a lot if you could fix that.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
So this micro credit thing, you answer the Monster dot
com and the Whole Foods guy likes this whole micro
credit idea and this.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Is a story gets crazy. So John Macki meets Mohammed Unis.
Mohammed unas, as we can replicate the grid. John Macki
is a founder and CEO of Whole Foods. Mohammed Unis
is the founder and CEO of Gamen Bank in Bangladesh.
So they come together and Muhammed Unis as, we can
(34:40):
replicate the Gamen Bank anywhere in the world as long
as we have money.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
John Macki is like, well, I got money.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
So they partner to have Whole Foods now the foundation,
Whole Planet Foundation fund all of the necessary capital to
build a sustainable replication of Gamen Bank in Guatemal and
Costa Rica.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
So we're going to take what they learned in Bangladesh
about micro credit. And because I've made all this money
with Whole Foods, We're gonna make whole what bank?
Speaker 1 (35:11):
What's the foundation they start was called whole Planet.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
The whole Planet, I get it. So the foundation created
by the success of Whole Foods is now called Old Planet,
and we're going to replicate in Costa Rica and Guatemala
with micro credit. What the success has been in Bangladesh?
And how are you balled up in this?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
They air dropped ten Bangladesh.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
He's from Grimen Bank, Okay, into Costa Rica and Guatemala.
These guys definitely don't speak Spanish and they English is
a little broken as well, so that is their their
support is bags of cash and like a connection to university.
So they quickly say, well, they've we've got a problem.
(35:56):
Let's hire somebody, Let's hire a residence.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
They need a Mexican wrestler, that's what we profile.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Have you been in a Mexican wrestling ring? You do
love to give me back this.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yeah, so I was fortunate to be the right place
at the right time. I could not have dreamt of
a more ideal situation.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
And that concludes Part one of our conversation with Steve
Wanta and you don't want to miss Part two that's
now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change
this country, but it starts with you.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
I'll see in Part two.
We will lend one hundred percent of the time. We
don't check credit.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I don't understand that don't check credit part.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
So credit scores in the United States, that concept is
very rigid and it's designed to protect the money. Just understandable,
Totally understandable. Don't get mad at the reality. Let's work
with it. FIGHTO came in. I think it's like nineteen
ninety six.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
To be fair. The trick here is the way to
be fair is tosess someone's past.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
So if you lead up to that moment you've never
had access, then how all of a sudden is that
system fair for us? Credit score or any data are
things that will not allow you to trust their potential.
So I say this to bankers to make them uncomfortable.
They want to understand. Just I say, imagine one hundred
(00:48):
percent of the people that walk through your branch, you
must say yes one hundred percent of the.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Time and get repaid nearly one hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Courtney. I'm
a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm
an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in Inner
city Memphis, and the last part somehow led to an
oscar for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. Guys,
I believe our country's problems are never going to be
(01:19):
solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits
using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox,
but rather by an army of normal folks. That's us,
just you and me deciding Hey, maybe I can help.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
That's what Steve want to The voice you just heard
is done.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Steve is the co founder of Just, a nonprofit lender
to eighteen thousand black and brown female entrepreneurs in Texas,
and because they built an unheard of system based on
trust and community, they're achieving unheard of results such as
loaning money to one one hundred percent of applicants to
(02:02):
the tune of forty one million dollars, and yet they've
been repaid ninety nine percent of the time.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I cannot wait for you to meet Steve.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Right after these brief messages from our general sponsors.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Steve Wanna from Austin, Texas. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
My pleasure. How you doing Grilli again? Gat to be
a Memphis Well good?
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Well, I really appreciate you coming by everybody. Steve is
the co founder and CEO of Just J aust which
we'll get to to believe or not before I read
all about you and I saw just.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Think.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
I think Justice is a pretty good title because I
got the idea just from I mean, I really knew
nothing about you, and I thought that has to be
about doing something just for people that aren't as fortunate
as us. And turns out it's really interesting. So we'll
get to it.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
But first, I guess you're a Packers fan.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I am a die hard Packers fan.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I bleed green and gold.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, about a mile
from the stadium.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Were you really you're born about a mile from the stadium.
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I was talking to Cassius a little bit about the
culture of the NFL and sports and man I played
football growing up. Was offensive lineman and defensive lineman at
all of five eight and seventy five pounds, but it
was it's just a every day and Sunday. That's one
of those moments my wife and my kids give me
(03:51):
because I feel connected to community just by simply watching
that game. I feel like I actually have some influence
over the game, which ibviously not the case. But yeah,
you're a football coach, you know.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Well, we folks from down south very happy that we
were able to send you a Southernsissippi guy up there
to a quarterback for you for many years.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Legend.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, is he still a legend up there? Yeah, we're
talking about Brett fa at FARV.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
When he that whole transition Aaron Rodgers, there was a
nation divided. Half of the Yeah, half of the jerseys
were for the other half were twelve. And my grandmother
who she had, she was going to be a nun.
She met my grandfather who's going to be a priest,
(04:40):
and instead they decided to have seventeen children.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Wow, there's yeah, they ran a bar.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Are you kidding? Irish Catholic unbelievable in Green.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Bay in northern Wisconsin got it, but my grandmother said,
we don't own Brett Farr. Everybody got it all changed
when Brett Fahr went to the Minnesota Vikings.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
That was.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Everybody and he had like one of the best years
of his NFL career. It was total insults, but that's like,
don't don't mess with a gun slinger man.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
He'll he'll get you back.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, I mean it wasn't his choice.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
He would have stayed at green Bay, right, he he left.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
He retired, and then he said, now I never mind,
and they said, wow, actually we're.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Pretty excited by Aaron Rodgers. Ye see, yeah, we don't
need this.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
And then you know, the same things sort of happened
with Aaron Rodgers and Jordan love Well.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
I'll tell you, I think Brett Farr was a perfect
fit for green Bay because it's it's a blue collarish
feeling town, hard working, salt of their kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
And that's just how he played ball. He just hung
it out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
No, So it was a love affair absolutely.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
I mean he had the one of the longest streaks
of consecutive games and stuff that he went through to play.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I mean he was tough.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
He was so tough.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And you know, green Bay is one hundred thousand people,
if stadium fits eighty thousand, right. So I think for
me and a lot of the work that we do,
this idea of this transformational properties of community, really deep,
authentic community that rally around a higher purpose. And this
higher purpose happens to be the green Bay Packers is
(06:21):
pretty special.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
All right.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
So this interview has nothing to do with the Green
Bay Packers, but if you want to talk football, we
can do that for two hours.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And call it. You know.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
So Steve grew up in Green Bay and uh, you know,
I don't want to get I think it's important obviously,
But I guess you got a job in technology and
learn to speak Spanish.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Why don't you take us through how that all worked?
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah, I was, there's no real good reason why I
should seek Spanish.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I remember, there's really no reason why I should.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I was. I remember really distinctly being a young kid
and my aunt was taking Spanish classes and I just said, oh,
I could speak Spanish.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I made a bunch of noises and she said, oh,
you just said cow like that's pretty cool. So I
had a direction. I had a place.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
That I knew I wanted to get to, but I
didn't know what I was going to do along the way.
I didn't have some grand vision of certainly starting the
organization we have today. But I just really wanted to
be fluent in Spanish, and they just wanted to want to.
And I had this great opportunity to go study abroad,
and I fell in love with culture. I fell in
(07:31):
love with connecting with people that didn't look like me.
You know, in Green Bay, we lack of diversity is
an understatement. I mean it was.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
It was just the reality of white, white Midwest.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
And you know, if you were black in Green Bay
in the eighties, they thought you were a packer or
connected to the packers.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
So ken Brooks, this kid I played pee wee football with.
He was of freshman in high school and he got
asked for his autograph, no kidding, just to tell you
how little diversity there was. And I saw that there's
this amazing, you know loss that that we had. I
had personally to not have a chance to understand how
other people live in all forms of that income race.
(08:20):
So learning being summersed in South America was just fascinating.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
It was amazing.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
So I knew what I wanted to do, but I
didn't know how to do it, and that was being
part of a broader, a bigger community.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So I got a job at a tech company.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
And I was I was starting and I thought I
was going to die in a cubicle, and I'm like,
they got something else that's got to give.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well, So let's go back to the study abroad. Thing.
What what was it costa.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Rica to Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Venezuela.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Wow, yeah, this is like nineteen ninety seven, so before
completely fell up.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Yeah, and it was.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
It was. It was one of the most prospeous South
American countries. Chavis came in and promised to to fix corruption,
give to the people, and then it became you know
what it is today, which is so many including friends
from Venezuela, have have left because of what has happened
to that government. And like there's amazing beautiful parts of
(09:17):
that country. They had a chance to go to study
brought in Chile later and I saw a whole different
form of both from climate to people to accents. And
I before going to Venezuela, I thought everything was like Mexico.
I had such little exposure and I was such an
idiot going in college. I didn't even realize that it
would snow in Chile, so I didn't bring a jacket.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Oh gosh, So.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Like to keep going south Patagonia, is there there's beautifu're skiing,
I mean, I blame it on the fact that there
wasn't the internet the same way. It was definitely not
my fault, you know, So that all that led to
this deep, deep passion to be speaking Spanish. But what
that really meant was being connected with folks that didn't
(10:01):
look like me, And yeah, such such fun personally curious.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
The Spanish that's in Mexico, the Spanish that's in Venezuela,
the Spanish that's in Brazil, and the Spanish that's in Chile.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Those are almost different languages, aren't.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Yeah, very different, Like.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I do not speak another languages.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
I'm just speaking from like what I've read that it's
more than just dialogue.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Yeah, there's different language, well a couple of things. There's
different slang. And you know, in Venezuela, bolo is means
like their local currency and bolo and Guatemala means drunk.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Oh, so you know you've got to have understanding, and
I don't. I've stepped, I put my foot in my
mouth a few sounds.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
But you know what's really fascinating about Guatemala is that
there are twenty three different Mayan languages in addition to Spanish.
So you would have people still addressed in their intraditional
indigo where's and you know they're speaking where I was
a Peace Corps volunteer. They spoke mom and that was
(11:15):
not even not connected to Spanish at all.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Wow. Yeah, all right, So you're doing this in college?
Speaker 1 (11:23):
College study brought me. I graduated college in two thousand.
I studied a brought a couple of times.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Then I got a job, a technology job because they
had big South American operations called unices, and like, that's
how I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Gonna get there.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
I was, uh, I was gonna move.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
To Miami, and then you know, one thing led to
another another. I worked for UNICES and they moved me
from Seattle.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
To Austin, Texas. Where'd you go to college?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
University of Minnesota, Golden Gophers.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
The Golden Gophers.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
The worst chance in the world.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
They spell out all of Minnesota and then at the
end they say, go go for.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
It.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Takes me fall As played the chance.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
All right, So.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
You were this Midwestern guy, you have a love for Spanish.
You've been exposed all over Central and South America to
not only language, but I guess culture. Yeah, curious, one
more question. Did you learn more about culture or learn
more about language studying over broad?
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Definitely culture. You know, I think there was language what
I really one of the things that would help me
in to learn the languages. I played rugby really like
rugby in Venezuela, played rugby in Chile. I played rugby
throughout college, and I was a chance to be connected
outside of the university with people that that were from
the from the local community, so it was only Spanish there.
(12:47):
But uh, I think throughout all of it, I realized
that there are we're all the same on some level
and regardless of your background. So it was really a
humanizing thing that removed it from a map and from
on TV to something.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
E really.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors, but
first I wanted to share an awesome update that in
January and February we're launching the first six local chapters
of an Army of Normal Folks.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
If you happen to live.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
In one of these communities and you'd be interested in
being part of it, email Alex and he'll connect you
to their leaders. These communities are Memphis, my hometown, Oxford, Mississippi,
Alexi's hometown, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Wichita, and we're going to announce
the sixth soon. If you'd be interesting in leading a
(13:46):
local chapter in your community, we'll hopefully be launching more
in spring or summer. So please reach out to Alex
on that. His email is Army at normal Folks dot us.
We'll be right back. There's nothing like eating the crap
(14:17):
I don't want another for two and a half hours
and then going.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
To beer together. Yeah, that's what rugby to me is
the greatest sport on earth.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
From that perspective, you will literally for two and a
half hours trying to kill somebody and then everybody goes
into experience.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah. Yeah, is that how it is? Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I mean I think that they're saying, like soccer is
a gentleman I forget how it goes.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Soccer is a gentleman's game, like about Ruffians. Rugby is
a Ruffians game. Yeah that's one of an old saying,
but it's true.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Right, So I've i go.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
I moved to Austin and I am I am like
the captain of the rugby team.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I am all in and.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I partly because I didn't have a lot of purpose
in life. It was like go to the cubicle and
the thing that sort of saves me from just day
in and day out perspective is this purpose of rugby.
But it was very bad for my back. It was
very bad for the level of beer that I drank.
I'm like, I cant get out of here. Man, I'm
gonna be like I cut pull the rip cord. And
(15:18):
that's why that's why I decided joined the Peace Corps.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Okay, so you work, you get this cool job, you're
in Austin. Uh, you've had all these experiences and was
the Peace Corps after the cubicle plant incidental?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah? So so tell that because I think that's hilarious.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Okay, So because there's a plant that was basically a
metaphor for your life totally.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
And so it gets back to rugby. So I, you know,
I'm playing rugby. I go to chiropractor because I can't
like look sideways.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
You're really that bad? Yeah, how old are you?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
I was twenty five, so that you know, I can't
feel a couple of fingers.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Oh you got nerve down shoulders or so.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
The doctor, the chiropractor says, hey, thanks for being a patient.
Here's my here's a plan. Here's an office plan.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
So friend, we go by.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
I s I had like great when you know, I
put this office plant in my desk and then my
boss's boss one day comes to you know, it's like
a Friday. So I'm kind of hungover and she comes
to my desk and she says, hey, Steve, you know
office space. So what you have that TPS report? You
know what's the what you Wear's the report? I said,
you know, I'll get it to you. As she's leaving,
(16:27):
she looks and sees the plants it's dead on my desk.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
She said, oh, Steve, you should get with that. Planet's dead.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
And I said, well, actually, it reminds me every day
I walk in here, a little piece of me dies.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Oh gosh, Boss's boss.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
So she sort of back pedals a little bit and
I thought it was funny, and she didn't think it
was very funny. So I really it was a moment
of reflection in humor and saying, well, that actually is
kind of true, so I probably should do something about it.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
And that's when I was sort.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Of the emotional push over the edge to finish my
Peace Corps application.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And that was ultimately they assigned me to Guatemala. That
it happened shortly after.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Okay, so let's recap A dude who grows up in
Green Bay, part of a family of a potential nun
and priests who said, Nah, let's own a barn, have
nineteen thousand children and side on.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
My other grandfather was a banker and a lawyer, no kidding, Yeah,
I had a bartender and a banker as my grandfatherly figures.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
That's crazy. That's very cool too.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
So you bounce around, you learn to speak Spanish, you
get this technology job, which is kind of a destination
for a lot of folks. And this plant metaphorically describes
how you felt about living in this pubil, this cubicle,
(17:55):
and where your life is. And you'd literally say at
twenty five of I'm a resett and I'm going to
Peace Corps and let's be honest, the Peace Corps, and
I mean it's great work, but it's great exposure and
it's probably a great education. But you're not make any
money doing it for sure, Right, So you were really
at twenty five years old hitting the reset button.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah, and you know, twenty five, I didn't have kids.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
I mean you can do that. You could it was
grew single and broke once in life. So if you're
going to do it, now is the time. But the
point is you kind of worked to get to this
place and you just said reset.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah, only in hindsight, did my mother say that?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
She was very, very worried, very concerned.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
But I had an amazing support system with my family, and
you know that there was something different about being in
a rural Guatemalan community, living side by side for two years.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Yeah, so there it is. That's the reset. Now let's
pick it up from there. You go to Guatemala with
the Peace Corps and a lot of folks don't understand
what that is, but that is a two year commitment.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
What in the world do you do in Guatemala for
two years?
Speaker 1 (19:08):
The irony is I'm actually working with farmers. I had
this dead plant and now I'm supposed to help, so
I help.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
There was a greenhouse project, so I helped these farmers
get to local markets sell their their tomatoes. And what
was another example of how important exposure is. So I
took a group of of our local farmers and you
know they struggle to speak Spanish, They're speaking the local
indigenous language.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Oh is that is that right?
Speaker 4 (19:39):
So these Guatemalans who are rule are still speaking whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
In my community is mom? Mom? There's others that catch
you go.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
There's twenty i think twenty six different languages Okay, So
I take them to a pizza place, say, this is
where we're selling your tomatoes, and half of the people
had never seen pizza before, and this is like fifteen
minute drive.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
And I was I think that's phenomenal.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, these folks in Guatemala who don't really even speak
Spanish in Guatemala because the rural farmers have not made
it more than fifteen minutes away from their village to
see pizza.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah, that's.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
That's that in and of itself should be opening to
people listening to us, that that's the reality and the
world in many many places.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
And I think the big thing that I really hit
home for me is in the Peace school, I see volunteers,
they pick empathy or apathy. Oftentimes the actions can look
very similar. And for me, I told that line a
couple of times, I'd be really frustrated, and then more
(20:49):
often than that, I chose empathy because I realized I
did not understand what they had lived, their access to
whatever it was education or experience. It's, you know, my
counterpart in one hilarious dude that could could grow anything,
you know. I asked them to finish the report for
(21:09):
some some funding. We got I said, I've done three
quarters of it. Just you finished the rest of it
because you have the answers, and I come back the
next day and do anything.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
And I'm like, on, like, bro, come on.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
And what I very quickly learned is like he had
never turned on the community before and he had stuffed
in a new role.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
This new role had some administrative part to the job,
and I'm like, I am an idiot.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
So that exposure, I think there's a big dose of
humility that comes to that understanding if you were making
assumptions and judgments on people that are so flawed, you know.
I think that was the biggest gift, especially in hindsight,
that I got from the Peace Corps.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Mmm.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Interesting, all right, so Guatemala and your two years is up.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
There's a I mean, I don't know how much these
stories want to go through, but I find myself in
a Mexican wrestling ring.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Oh I want to hear that. How do you quote
find yourself.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Wrestling twice.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Prostitution?
Speaker 4 (22:16):
First of all, when you quote find yourself somewhere, typically
the backstory to that is you took a number of
steps very proactively to end up where you vote found yourself.
So how tell me that that's the greatest thing.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Well, so we're going to go my peace war buddy,
and I I'm gonna I'm going to extend my trip
for my service to There was a natural disaster in Guatemala,
so I was going to extend for another few months,
but you know, a little break. We're going to take
a drive to Mexico. He's going to keep on to
the United States, and I'm gonna come back. So we
we find ourselves on the beach in Porto est Condido
(22:52):
and the southern part of Mexico, and then it's the
ad for Mexican Wrestling on the beach, Like it's so perfect,
you know.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
I grew up watching WWF.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
And we show up and everybody's on the beach. There's
big crowd, and then I go up with my friend
Brian and he says, can we get in the ring.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Just take a picture.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
I was like, sure, fine, But that to me was
this once in a lifetime opportunity to go through the actual.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
The dream I had alreadys had in my head.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
So I whipped him around, threw him against the ropes clothesline,
and picked him up, slamed him on the on the
turf and then it was awesome, and it's actually on
YouTube somewhere, so I'm trying to get my views up.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
But it was such a cool climax.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
And then I proceeded to get typhoid fever and spent
three days.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
In a Mexican hospital. And the kicker of this is
actually was the greatest gift I've ever been given.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Of course, because I couldn't I couldn't continue my service.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
It just I had a bunch of stuff that happened medically.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
So because I got back, I started looking for a
job and at that time, Whole Foods Market had just
started a foundation, and I got a like a monster
dot com job hosting that said, hey, you might qualify
for this job, and it was.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Just because you were bilingual and.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
The well because actually the guy that started the foundation,
he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the seventies on durists.
It was you know what the foundation started, which I
think we'll get into, was started in they started two projects,
wanting Guatemala and the other in Costa Rica. So they
need someone to go back and support those two projects.
So they're really looking for someone that was like a
(24:43):
peascore volunteer that could, you know, roll up their sleeves
and not be afraid.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Experience in speaking Spanish was essential to it.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, will be right back.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
Just curious to get between your ears midway through or
seventy five percent of the way through your time of
water mile. What you know, this is a two year commitment.
What in your mind, who you're thinking is next for you?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
I you know, the Peace Corps to me is like
a fine wine.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
It gets better with age.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
So when I was in the experience, I was not
very happy because I in so many ways I think
of like the beautiful part of like American culture. It's
like we're builders, We're gonna change, We're gonna fix stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
And that was not what I was supposed to do.
And I was met with what are.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
You supposed to do?
Speaker 1 (25:53):
There's three goals of the Peace Corps.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
One is provide some technical expert expertise and you know,
help so I knew something and stuff, so I was
sort of helping farmers. The other is in exchange, so
I learned from them, they learned from me. You know,
we're good people. And the third goal is we come
back to the United States and we share what we've learned.
So in some ways this podcast is sharing that third goal.
(26:16):
So you know, I thought I could go in and
I could fix anything, and you know, but I also
didn't know what needed to fix, be fixing or you know.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
It was back to that lack of understanding.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
So I felt less capable of service, less capable of
contributing something meaningful. So when I was leaving, I just
I love business. I thought, you know, I'll just get
a good job and I can speak Spanish. I was
going to go sell hialty tools at home depot. I
was going to be a rep. That was I was
actually potentially gonna go back to Green Bay and sell cheese.
(26:50):
I just wanted to both do business because I thought,
you know, there's a fair exchange, and I want to
do it in the context of speaking Spanish.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Got it.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
So Monster reaches out and you're like, here, it is
business Spanish.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Probably important to give a little bit of context. Then,
how the foundation got started? So John Mackie, founder of
Whole Foods to Market, he twenty years into building the
grocery store, said hey, it's time for us to give
back to global community. We trade one hundreds of countries,
and he found and fell in love with micro credit.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Well that makes sense, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Super cool.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
And John Mackie's smart guy that did a bunch of
research and said, why don't we just start, Why don't
we partner with the best.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
So the best are this group out of Bangladesh, Greman.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Bank about a Bangladesh, Yeah, Bangladesh.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Where did that come from? Well?
Speaker 3 (27:40):
They micro credit was this thing that started to gain
momentum in two thousand and five. The World Bank called
it the Year of micro Credit. It was the first
solution to a social problem poverty, that had a business
like approach that could make life loans, get those loans repaid.
(28:02):
So there was a ton of excitement from people from
all walks of life that saw potentially a business like
solution for a real, entrench social problem. And it started
to shift how people saw the poor.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
And the idea.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
And now I'm asking, I'm stating, but with a question
mark at the end, if I kind of moderately understand
the whole micro credit thing as it pertains to two
thousand and five and Bangladesh, it's exactly what it sounds like.
Really small loans three four five hundred dollar loans two
(28:36):
very very poor rule farmers or maybe even entrepreneurs to
just help them get over the line. And they were.
The term on these things was really short too. I think, yeah,
it is that about that.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
So Professor Unie wrote a book called Banker to the Poor,
which really helped catalyze people understanding of how it worked,
but also deeper the underlying problems facing those in abject poverty.
So the story goes in nineteen seventy seven, he goes
back to Bangladesh to help rebuild the country they gain
(29:15):
its freedom from Pakistan, and what he saw as a
professor was that people were dying of famine.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
So he went out and tried to understand why.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
He comes to discover that there's people borrowing money from
loan sharks.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
They've got to pay.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
They get a dollar today and they got to give
them back two dollars at the end of the day,
that kind of thing. So he bands together forty two
women and gives them a total of twenty seven dollars
to free them from these loan sharks. How many twenty
seven dollars to forty two women. Yeah, in this case,
he got to put in context of Bangladesh at that
(29:53):
point in time, there was women doing the work weaving baskets,
but they were not actually.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Allowed to touch money. They didn't have a voice.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yeah, so it's a profoundly different context than we that
anyone can really understand you in today.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
So he goes through this process of discovery.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
You know, can you imagine trying to serve someone that
you're not actually allowed to talk to. So he had
a students to a female students I would have to
talk to to talk to the women as they built
this thing.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
And flash forward twenty twenty years later.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Multiple millions of people in Bangladesh, primarily women, are gaining
access to small loans a couple hundred dollars, and they're
able to invest invest that's a big part of it,
and be able to invest in making more money.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Huh So John Macki says, this is awesome, we should
do this.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Well, I want to go back to the Bangladesh thing.
Women were not allowed to handle money or.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Speak to men.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Correct quick question, how does the species pro create if
women cannot speak to men?
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I mean, I'm not at certainly a student of Bangladesh history,
but if you go back to Bank of the Poor.
Because of his professor UNI's status, he was a professor,
He was not part of their family. The idea that
he could just simply go have a conversation with another
woman in a world village was not.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Acceptable, no kidding.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Yeah, So you know, it's certainly, and I think that's
this cultural context that is so important for us to
understand and be.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
That's fascinating to me. I'm gonna go read about that. Yeah,
probably tonight when I have twelve minutes extra. So they
make twenty seven dollars loan to forty two women, and
they found out that just that little amount of money helped.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah, and that at the same time, there's groups from
all over the world that were starting to explore an
experiment with this kind of thing. Because there is one
universal truth about people in poverty, whether in Memphis or
Austin or World Guatema, it's an absence of resource and
money is the most.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Clear agree more that is that is it's access.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
It's access to credit, access to good medicine, access to education,
access to transportation. We can name a list of one
hundred things, but access is the is what I've grown
to learn is the biggest impediment to getting out of
abject poverty.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
It's just access to things that most of us take
for granted.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
And I think it's a big piece of that. That's
that question, a story is deep.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Understanding of what are the limitations to that access. So
there's this idea of a triple whammy effective poverty. It's
also that income is often low, but it's not just
that it's low. It's highly volatile, and it makes it
difficult to pool together lump sums of money. So those
three things together make it extramely difficult.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Well, income's low, it's volatile, meaning.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
One day a dollar a day now four dollars tomorrow,
nor money for the next three days.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
How do you plan right? How do you budget? So
there's no financial literacy, well.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
No, And also lack of trust, lack of lack of
belief that it's going to be better when it you
never know.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
It's always it's a roller coaster, all right. And what's
the third one.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
The third one is because of the first two, it's
hard together to pool together lump sums of money.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Which is why you can't invest, which is why I
broke credit.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, exactly, So microad addresses, but it's also things that
you're not aware of. Oftentimes there's a great book called
Portfolios of the Poor that talks about South Africa and
people go into debt for the funerals of their loved ones.
So pulling together lumps some somebody to weather storms, whether
the low points is really important as well as not
(33:48):
being able to capitalize opportunities because of the lack of credit.
Lack of lump sums compound all of those things good
and bad.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
So interesting, it's beyond this, beyond the purposes of our conversation.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
You can fix a lot if you could fix that.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
So this micro credit thing, you answer the Monster dot
com and the Whole Foods guy likes this whole micro
credit idea and this.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Is a story gets crazy. So John Macki meets Mohammed Unis.
Mohammed unas, as we can replicate the grid. John Macki
is a founder and CEO of Whole Foods. Mohammed Unis
is the founder and CEO of Gamen Bank in Bangladesh.
So they come together and Muhammed Unis as, we can
(34:40):
replicate the Gamen Bank anywhere in the world as long
as we have money.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
John Macki is like, well, I got money.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
So they partner to have Whole Foods now the foundation,
Whole Planet Foundation fund all of the necessary capital to
build a sustainable replication of Gamen Bank in Guatemal and
Costa Rica.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
So we're going to take what they learned in Bangladesh
about micro credit. And because I've made all this money
with Whole Foods, We're gonna make whole what bank?
Speaker 1 (35:11):
What's the foundation they start was called whole Planet.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
The whole Planet, I get it. So the foundation created
by the success of Whole Foods is now called Old Planet,
and we're going to replicate in Costa Rica and Guatemala
with micro credit. What the success has been in Bangladesh?
And how are you balled up in this?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
They air dropped ten Bangladesh.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
He's from Grimen Bank, Okay, into Costa Rica and Guatemala.
These guys definitely don't speak Spanish and they English is
a little broken as well, so that is their their
support is bags of cash and like a connection to university.
So they quickly say, well, they've we've got a problem.
(35:56):
Let's hire somebody, Let's hire a residence.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
They need a Mexican wrestler, that's what we profile.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Have you been in a Mexican wrestling ring? You do
love to give me back this.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yeah, so I was fortunate to be the right place
at the right time. I could not have dreamt of
a more ideal situation.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
And that concludes Part one of our conversation with Steve
Wanta and you don't want to miss Part two that's
now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change
this country, but it starts with you.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
I'll see in Part two.
Host
Bill Courtney
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