Stepping Out of Poverty: Buddy Teaster of Soles4Souls

Eva: We wanna pass as much of that final sales price over to the entrepreneur? That's where the impact happened. That's what matters for us. What matters for our partner, and its certainly what matters to the entrepreneur. Because we're social enterprise and a not for profit. We bring this for profit and not for profit together everyday. So I feel like all those experiences, sort of, came together here. Once you figure out how to network and connect with people on the network and the cheesy old, but in that meaningful way, like, give first before you get that is gonna be an invaluable skill, no matter how things should go. Eva: Welcome to the Beyond Capital Podcast. In our purpose driven world, leadership is increasingly crucial. Now more than ever, stakeholders are demanding the integration of social values and causes in everything, from shoes to soap to investments. We're bringing you the stories of leaders that are marrying profit with purpose. I'm Eva Yazhari, CEO of Beyond Capital. Ed: And I'm Ed Stevens, CEO of Preciate. Eva: And this is Beyond Capitol Podcast. Ed: Today's guest is Buddy Teaster. Buddy is the CEO of Soles4Souls, a nonprofit committed to fighting poverty through the collection and distribution of shoes and clothing. But he is a serial entrepreneur, having founded and run a number of companies, including Click Patrol on Online Advertising Company and RTM, a professional development network for university alumni and membership organizations. Welcome, buddy, it's so great to have you. Buddy: It's a real pleasure to be here. Ed: Thank you so as and mentioned you've started several companies. I would love to kick this off by hearing your story and you telling us a little bit more about your early start ups. Buddy: Sure, So I think one of the things and it certainly wasn't a plan, but that has led me to be super happy and feeling productive. Where I am now is that my career has been a mix of not for profit in for profit, and none of the for profit has been in the startup world. So I I went to the theater right after college. I went back and got my MBA in arts administration and is up working at Waipio, the president position for a while, which gave me a lot of insight into business and not for profit. Then I left to start in one of the early online learning kind of company. We're still using CD. So online, maybe being a little generous, came back to Waipio for another stent left to do Artie and Networks, which was really trying to leverage something that was starting to get traction in in the world around. How do you leverage alumni network, Cindy? And to use that more effectively for learning and for business and then back to wipe here where we started the network program. And then after that, really, the opportunity came to Seoul for souls. And because we're social enterprise and a not for profit, we bring this for profit and not for profit together every day. So I feel like all those experiences sort of came together here. Ed: You know, it can be hard to leave a company that you started, and we've heard from entrepreneurs that it's challenge challenging to know when, as the CEO and founder that you should make an exit. What? Just tell us a little bit, kind of what? What motivated you to transition and also maybe even kind of what your personal motivations were to start your current organization. Buddy: So I did not start soles for souls. I like to think really, that I restarted it when I came. Those poor souls was about six years old and was sort of it circling the drain. Really? We were broke. They inspired the founder and CEO. The board had dwindled down to three people and they weren't very excited about being here. A reputation was kind of in tatters, so there was a lot of ways that it felt like a startup, although it was not. But over time, some of those choices were not mine. Um, the Quick patrol, for example. Technology changed, and literally overnight we went from having a growing, thriving business, too. No customers, like in one day that one away. So, you know, I guess I've learned lessons like all of us the hard way. And one of them is it for me, the ability to adapt and be collectible is one of the most critical skills. And so now, whether that it was a choice about when to get out or wins like a it's a new day and everything you thought you knew about it doesn't apply anymore. I think that's probably in one of the biggest takeaways for me, and it works whether you're an entrepreneur or, you know, the CEO here now, and the Russians are just as valid. So I think for me that flexibility is probably one of the most important feels that I see in great entrepreneurs. They might be focused. They might be really clear about where they're headed, but super flexible about how they get there. Ed: That's really well put. I was looking at your academic background, and you studied religious studies and French as an undergraduate before you went to business school and then started your company's now business school. Probably I can understand why behind that, as with religious studies, but I'm really curious. What is the why behind Studying French? Buddy: It's actually a compromise. So I was the 1st 1 on either side of my family to go to college, and when I got there, I was planning to study economic. That seems like a responsible thing to do with this kind of opportunity, but I got there and realized that's not what I loved and religious studies. I went down that path very hard. World religions really attracted me out. Super intrigue. My father. It's still the biggest one we've ever had and when I said that that I'm not gonna major in economics. I'm gonna major in delicious study. Think he's like, What are you doing? You're throwing away this amazing opportunity to get a great job, I said to him, I thought I was here to learn. So French was the compromise. Like if I had a a second language skill, maybe I would somehow be more marketable. So I don't know that there are medications in the world where majoring in friendship to compromise, Eva: But that's how that works out. Buddy: And but it also when I went back to get my MBA, I think it was another way for me to think about this hybrid idea because there's an MBA. But it was at the same time getting a master's in arts administration. So I kept the other side of my life the creative, interesting service give that kind of peace. Was it totally interwoven with the MBA? And again, I think that's been a big part of what led me to where I am today, finding ways to combine both sides of that. Ed: Well, the reason I ask that is because I majored in Russian literature. Eva: I actually minored in French. Ed: You did? Eva: Yes. Ed: Well, that's interesting. So we all have a little je ne sais quoi? Eva: Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit more about Soles4Souls. Tell us, what does it do? What's the purpose? Buddy: So Soles4Souls, we really think about using shoes and clothes to create opportunity for people. And initially, when we first said that, it really resonated and we thought about how would give opportunity to other people, especially entrepreneurs in the developing world, as a way to create a small business or an income for themselves so that they could provide for their families in the long term and not be dependent on aid and charity. But as we sort of unpeeled that we realized that opportunity meant a lot more than that. So in some cases, it's the opportunity for a kid to go to school because she has the right pair of shoes is an opportunity for people to not have to walk barefoot and be at risk of injury and disease, which can, you know, we might not worry about it as much, but in a lot of places that can, that small accident can lead to really dramatic consequences. And it's also an opportunity for people to volunteer to clean out their closets, to do something good for the planet. So that's first of all, how we think about opportunity, then the mechanics of what we do. We collect new and used shoes and clothes. This past year we collected about five million pairs of shoes, about five million pieces of apparel, some of that on when we give it away for free. It's always new, and we do that, to, to help people in need and short term. That might be after a natural disaster. We're recording this just a week after really severe tornadoes hit middle Tennessee, where I live now, and we were there just a few days later with shoes and clothes for people who had. So that's one way and we do that around the world for just people in need as well. Then all the used shoes and clothes that we collected, the new if we have permission from the donor, we sell to people in the developing world and then they resell it, and that's how they're able to create something where they have control over their own destiny and most places, and for most people that something. It's hard to come by, so it means a lot. They already know how to work really hard, and then that opportunity word that I mentioned, that's where it really applies. We help them leverage that hard work that they're willing to do by giving them tools and a supply chain that cannot actually allow them to make some money instead of just sort of be status assistance level. Eva: There are a number of dynamics at play here. I mean, one of them is that one in five children and developing countries are living on less than $2 a day. And that means that there are about 385 million girls and boys living in extreme poverty without access to basic goods and service is including shoes and clothes. Um, but I would love to dig deeper, knowing that you do have a global reach. How does the distribution of the donated shoes and clothes work? Buddy: Yeah, it's a great question, and it's part of what I love about what about what Soles4Souls does because there's a giant for profit sector around this right? These used goods and excess foods move around the world. It's all cash. It's washes around. It's not always super above board dealing in countries where the import of goods is the one place where the government can kind of get their hands on tax revenue and control the flow of things. That could be a pretty messy situation. And so we have found a way, I think, to navigate that. We always have a local NGO partner on the ground. They have to deal with the same stuff. So I'm not saying we gotta wait around that that would be fantastic. But once they learn how to do that, getting high quality used shoes and clothes to people who already have some experience are certainly willing to work hard to learn. It transforms them right, because in many of the places where we work, the only supply for the only access to shoes and clothes the used market, there's very little new and there's very little formal retail, so this is the way people shop, and often by the time shoes and clothes get to them, they've been really picked over right, especially that comes from the U.S. It might go through a system here like Goodwill, which is a not for profit or Buffalo Exchange or Plato's Closet, which is more profit. And so what? And then so the best stuff gets picked out. Then they sell what's next to somebody else, and the best up gets picked out, and I'm gonna happen five or six times. So by the time it gets to Haiti, Honduras, Zambia, the good stuff's gone. The price is really high because everybody had to touch it and get their little piece. So they've got low quality product at a high price, which is a lousy recipe for being able to make money. And so our model is. You don't have a thrift piece. We'll take it right to the special and the used side, right from your closet, or if it's new right from brands and retailers, warehouses or factories. We get it to people, so then they flip it around. And now, it's high quality product at a low price because our goal and we're aligned with our local NGO partner. We want to pass as much of that final sales price or into the entrepreneur. That's where the impact happens. That's what matters for us. What matters for our partner. It's certainly what matters to the entrepreneur. Ed: So what does a pair of shoes cost in Haiti for, like, if I end up giving a pair of shoes with Soles4Souls? Men's 11 running shoes? What do those go for when they get to the your other end? Buddy: Sure. It, It's to me. It's fascinating. So, like everything else depends on brand and quality, right? There's no, the marketing that Adidas does globally is super effective, right? So everybody knows that that's a work more than an unbranded shoe, even if it's new. But I'll tell you how the math works for us on a pair of new shoes, because I think this gives you an idea of the power of a pair of shoes. So we only sort our shoes by grade. We don't take out men's women's running anything like that. We just say, If it's B grade, it's high quality. If it's B+, it's lower quality, if it's C its lower quality. And then there's always some usually sort of 1 to 2% that's unusable so that we take out and then we sell it by the grade. So for us, I'll stay with Haiti for a second, we sell it to our NGO partner there for a dollar a pound. He pays shipping and customs and transportation to get to his location. He runs in this case, a school. They do English as, uh, second language, and they also have a microcredit program. This is a way for him to help fund that through an earned revenue stream. So he let's say he has another dollar in it, So his cost is, two. He might sell to the entrepreneur for four, and she might get on average 10, okay? Before, as I mentioned often women are already doing this job. She might be paying $8 for something that's still going to go for 10 and it takes a lot longer to move because it's the same as everybody else. The quality is kind of low, and there's no differentiation in the market. Ed: I see. Buddy: But here's the here's the part where your shoe, I think, is interesting. So that's the average. So what might happen is in that box there is a, a new unbranded shoe that she sells for $6. You still making money, but not much, but you're branded running shoe. Let's say you've got a Nike running shoe and they're still in pretty good shape. Well, Nike, she might get $25 a pair for that, like she paid the same per pound. But there, that opportunity because we don't sort it or grade it, it happens a lot. You know, she might have one or two pair in there that really make a big difference. And then she's got the rest of that. You could make money on every pair, So that's kind of how it works. Ed: If I was gonna go make a pair of shoes like just purpose made to serve this population, you know, in some large, reasonably large monte-, quantity. And I went to a factory and said, I just want to make a super basic shoe like more on the order of the $6 one than the, you know, obviously wouldn't be branded. You know what's like the most? What would it cost to get a shoe like that made like, I mean, not it probably cost more than a dollar a pound? Buddy: Yes it would. Ed: What would it cost? Buddy: So, we're working on this right now for a different reason. There's a huge, you guys probably both know this. There's a huge homeless population in our public schools. Kids, it is about a million and a half kids every year experience homelessness in some way. It's a big problem, and people are working on housing and food and school supplies and thank God for that. But shoes are not really in the mix, and they're really important. So we're trying to find a sustainable, fundable way to get shoes to these kids. And so we're looking for this. We're trying to find it. The best that we can find is about $10 a pair. For a decent pair of unbranded athletic shoes that are gonna last a kid 6 to 8 months. Ed: Really? Buddy: Yeah. Ed: Wow, that's more than I thought. Eva: That's actually less that I thought. Ed: That's less than you thought? Eva: Yes. Ed: That's more than I thought. Eva: Knowing how much my son's Nikes costs. Buddy: Yeah, well, it's, you know... Eva:You know how much they probably make of of them. Ed: But like Pay-, then Walmart... Buddy: There's a pretty big, there's a pretty big margin on the Nike shoes. But they are branded stuff. It is not as cheap as you think. That has been our experience, and two, you have to order in such giant quantities to drive the price down that that doesn't work for us, right? I mean, WalMart might be able to do that, but Soles4Souls can't do that. Eva: That would be a good partner. Buddy: Yeah, so we're trying to figure out is this is, this the kind of thing where we have a supply chain partner? Is this the thing where we try to raise money and say, you know what? We can get shoes on these kids for 15 bucks a pair, which you can't touch any place else. So we're trying to figure out what that looks like, but it really is driven by what's the cost of getting the shoe from Honduras or China or Vietnam, to the U.S. so that we could get it on kids. Ed: They'd be a good partner, but they also that's kind of their customer. Yeah, absolutely. Buddy: That is their customer. Exactly. Ed: So it's kind of weird. Eva: But that's that's super interesting. And you know something I think about a lot is how fashion is changing. I am more way more frequent shopper on the Real Real of late. Ah, number of my peers are also doing exactly the same thing and that also, you know, we're also more conscious of wearing things more often. I think your average piece of clothing is worn once, or less than four times something between one and four times, which is shocking to me. But I would love to hear your thoughts on the supply side of the donations of the shoes and clothes. Have you seen a change since there are more kind of sustainable means of recycling your clothes and also even, you know, making money of your closet? Buddy: I love talking to smart people. Yes, there's a huge impact, and it it took us a while to figure it out because some of this, like the Real Real, has been gording, growing quickly. But there's a lot of other channels now than there used to be. So when I came to Soles4Souls, I mentioned its B and C grade. So when I first came to Soles4Souls in 2012, we had about 65% B grade and about 33% C grade. That was roughly how that worked. So the difference for us financially is B grade is worth a dollar a pound. In that scenario, I just told you, and C is worth 30 cents a pound right. So big deal to us. Over the last six or seven years, those numbers have switched. So the B grade is only 35% of what we get now. So if you do the math on that, it's a big financial impact. So we're having to run harder to just stay even. And one of the primary reasons for that are these other channels to monetize your use product now. Real Real, ThreadUp. You know, Buffalo Exchange, Plato's Closet, all, eBay. They're all these places now where and because consumers are comfortable buying and wearing used products, that's changed, and all the platforms make it easier to monetize it, ship it, etcetera. So we've had a huge impact on us. Eva: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then also. I mean, I know this is a trend in Africa. The over picked clothing is undesirable because everybody has a smart we're not. Well, not everybody has a smartphone, but most people have access to social media and they kind of see, see the trends, um and so I think that they're also not interested so much they prefer fash-, real fashion. Um, not just discarded leftovers. So you think you brought that up and it sounds like you have a solution to that as well. But that was just something that really got me thinking about your business model. I would love if you could tell us perhaps what some of the difference are differences are for you in running a nonprofit versus the for profit companies that you have run previously. Buddy: So I the hard thing is the biggest one is one that probably in other conversations that you had. But it's around. How do you know if you're having an impact? So for most for profit companies, the easiest one is what your profit, profitability. And so there are lots of metrics in standardized metrics to compare that really doesn't exist very many places in the non profit world and even though we are profitable, way make money that we then reinvest back into our programs that are people, which is really important to us. But that's not the only metric that we can use that we would make a lot of dumb decisions here, given our mission, you know, helping construct the cycle of poverty around the world. So what do you come up with is metric for us that we call economic impact, and it tries to capture the value of a pair of shoes or a piece of clothing in the country where it goes, and depending on the channel and whether it's new or used. We can do the math on that. And so it is wet us to say financial performance is important, but also if we wanna have a $1,000,000,000 economic impact by 2030, which is our goal, we have to make decisions every day that are that balance those two. And so I just give you a small example. Few years ago, Toys'R'Us went out of business, and so that impacted Babies'R'Us, one of their subsidiary brands. So we had a warehouse company call us. They got stuck with 144,000 pairs of baby shoes in one of their warehouses, and they said, do you want them? So we talked to some people around when we worked in Eastern Europe with a terrific social enterprise in Moldova. And so we said, hey, Mark is what we have. What would you pay for this? He's got. He's got a network of thrift stores there. We've got a way to move a lot of product and he came back and I don't know what the numbers are. But the number he gave us. It doesn't work. We have to unbox the shoes, transport them. It just didn't make any sense. But because we had this number around economic impact, like well wait a minute, there's another. There's another thing here rather than just say no, which is what we would have done before we had that lens. We said, okay, Mark, if you can cover the cost, we'll do this because we want to have the economic impact. We want to get you these shoes. We don't want to go in the ground, or go to somebody else, we want it to go to you and it, it was another way to think about it. And so to me, that is. The biggest difference is finding the right way to have a North Star away to evaluate every decision that allows us to balance the mission in the financial performance. Eva: Yeah, that's excellent. I really appreciate the way it's, you put that with the North Star being able to on and really the vision. Ed: Do you find that there are any special techniques you need for sort of recruiting and engaging in retaining your staff. I sort of like the cliche is that a nonprofit doesn't pay as well. Um, you know that the people there, I don't know if that's true or not, but I just wonder, how do you think about your staff and you're bringing them on board and keeping them engaged and, and, and happy? Buddy: Yeah, it's such an important question. And I think there are some things that are easier in the for profit world and some things that are harder. And I think there are some things that are just about being small. So I, we work hard to pay competitively in our market, right, looking at the not for profit sector, but not just a not for profit sector. We just went through this in the last few months, and we are like, I was shocked at how much sort of at the midpoint for most people we were. So I feel good about that. We pay people bonuses. We have really hard metrics that our board approves and measures that's all against, and if we get them, we get we get a financial benefit from that. But we also have some caps that if we were to have an incredible year, unlike a for profit world, we say Okay, great. We earned all that. That doesn't happen here, right? So we pay people fair. We make make it really clear about what the triggers are and what the impact is if we get those targets and people I think here feel fairly compensated. The part that is great is that we also get to share stories here every day of having an impact of somebody who got to go to work because they had the right pair of shoes or who was able to buy a house after being almost homeless through the microenterprise program. Those things you don't get that every day in the for profit world and we thrive on that here. So that's a benefit that we have a competitive advantage, against some for profit companies. But the hardest thing for us is the fact that we're small when we have 70ish employees now and we have hungry, smart young people and there's not a growth path here. So how do we how do we help them grow professionally so that when the day comes, and for most of them, that will come when there's not an opportunity to match what they want to do and what they can do and what we need here so that when they leave, they don't they feel like it was time well spent, like I learned a lot. I have a high bar for what I want to do next, instead of treating people like they're disposable or like, hey, you have to take a crappy salary because we're not for profit, we're not playing that game. But the hardest thing is knowing that it's really difficult, given our size, to give people a path that would keep them here as long as they would like. And that sometimes is a really painful thing. Eva: I couldn't agree more. Um, one of the books that kind of help for my thinking around Beyond Capital, which currently as a nonprofit but raising a venture fund was, I think, called, called Charity Case, um, around how we should fund are non profits that they could thrive. Buddy: Yeah, I'm gonna write that down. I don't know that book, so thank you for mentioning that. Eva: You're welcome. Let's pivot a little bit to you and the personal side of things. Ed: The best part of our show. Eva: We think it is. Buddy: I don't know about that. I think we just covered the best part. Eva: So how do you has your morning? Look, um, what is your morning routine? How do you get excited for the day? Buddy: So probably for the last well, 30 years now, a little bit more running has been an anchor for me. So five days a week running is how I start my day. I tried to get in about 10K every morning. And for the last 20 years or so, I've been in ultra Marathoner. So, like Saturday, I'm gonna do a 50K just a little bit west of Nashville with the goal this June of running another 100 miler out in Wyoming. So running is a key part of my social life and certainly my mental health and physical well being is tied up in that, um and for me, some other routines, back to work for a second. But it's been it has been one of the most effective things that I think we do is every morning at eight o'clock, the executive team there are five of us. We have, uh, 10 to 20 minute phone call to check in with each other, like what's important, what's going on that day. And for me, that is such between the run, breakfast and that eight o'clock call. I feel like I've got a really fantastic running start on every day. Ed: How are your knees doing? Buddy: So I did two years ago have knee surgery, but since then I've done 100 miler and a bunch of 50K's and other stuff. So knock on wood, seems to be okay. Ed: That's amazing. Eva: That's very impressive. I do not identify as a marathon runner myself. It's something I don't think I'll ever be able to do. Ed: I know, I know. I've done triathlons. I've done plenty of half marathons, but that's the the max for me. Buddy: Triathlons seem impossible. The amount of time it takes the train triathlon blows me away. So kudos for you. Ed: Yeah, yeah, I've done a couple half iron men, but the train for a marathon one time and I my body ached so much. And ultimately I couldn't do it cause I got sick and then I was like never again. So yeah. Eva: So just I would love to hear about the vision of Soles4Souls moving forward. Um, you know, it's possible that one day everybody will have a pair of shoes. Although we always need more shoes. One say they get worn down. But is there a larger vision of how shoes and clothes can expand out to other categories? Buddy: You know, but we decided, at least for the next few years, know that I mean, and you said that so much of what's made and worn now clothes and shoes especially clothes, winds up in the trash, not worn very much. It's not very well made. In many cases, it's not warm for very long, and then people just throw it away. So the gap between what's out there to be collected and used and turned in repurpose an opportunity for other people like we don't need to chase anything else because there's so much there to do. You know, we just started. We opened last year, ah, warehouse in an office in the Netherlands to start working, and Western Europe just opened a small office in Singapore to start working in Asia. So we have nothing in South America. So when you think about the opportunity its enormous and it seems like with our name, our track record, the incredible relationships that we had special on the corporate side with apparel footwear companies. There's so much more room to go that I think we're gonna stay in that lane for the foreseeable future. Eva: And how do you measure the environmental impact of your work? Buddy: Yeah, we need to be more sophisticated than we are at that. Mostly to date, we track how many pounds we've kept out of landfills, and that's something. But actually, I'm just having a conversation this morning of how do we translate that into carbon footprint? Or pounds of C02 caps. There are more sophisticated ways now to do that, and we need to get on that bandwagon for so long Soles4Souls, the message has been more around the let's get everybody a pair of shoes. Let's create business opportunity for people that the sustainability piece has. It's been there, but it hasn't we haven't led with it, and that has really changed in the last two years. Companies coming to us now and saying we need your help in telling a sustainability story like we're working on a surprising we're using better chemicals, thinking about how the cotton is grown. But this sort of second life piece, what happens after you're done with it? Companies don't have great answers for that yet, and so increasingly they're coming, they're coming to us saying can you help us make it real and then bring those stories back to our employees our investors our customers so that they understand the impact they can have it and you can have together. Ed: But for what it's worth to me, the big sort of pink elephant in the room on sustainability with footwear is durability. I don't think people talk about it very much, particularly with athletic shoes or skate shoes, because with my son growing up, some brands would wear out so fast. You're just like, why are they putting this? I mean, I know, like for grip, you know, softer rubbers or more grippy, but for like, a kid was just gonna be running around a playground. Do you really need that super grip? And I just wonder if durability oh, I don't know. I want I mean, I know why nobody talks about it because it's sort of a derivative. It's, you know, you know, it's not a direct thing you think about, but I don't know. Durability to me is where a lot of that environment impact could really be made. Eva: Absolutely in quality. Yeah, holding onto things longer and wearing clothes longer. Ed: Some of it's just crap. Buddy: I think one of the things that's gonna happen a lot and I we work a lot with Adidas, but I know other companies are also thinking hard about it. I'll mention another one. But Adidas now has think they called Project Future Loop, I don't know if I have that exactly right, but they are designing every element of the shoe to be recycled, so not only reused and quality. Those things, I think are certainly a part of Adidas' brand, but that from the beginning, their thinking about what's gonna happen to the outsole, what's gonna happen to the shoe is, and can every part of it be turned back into some part of the some part of supply chain. Whether it's raw materials, that's the only shoes are super hard to recycle. There's so many glues and different kinds of fabrics and stuff that most people don't even try. Eva: Yeah. Buddy: And so, designing it from the beginning, I think gonna be a big part of the answer. And then you've also got companies on the non athletic side, like Allbirds, which I'm such a huge fan of them because their message, their marketing, their customer service, everything is allowed aligned around the sustainability idea. And that was from day one, and so that, I think, is increasingly there's still gonna be always a big, fat part of the curve for any cheap choose at high volume like that's gonna happen. But I think once Adidas figured out how to turn ocean plastic into shoes and they made 100 pairs and 1,000 pairs and then a 1,000,000 pairs and then 10 million pairs like eventually, that's going to be technology lots of companies can use. So I think that's gonna happen more and more. Eva: Absolutely and I just can't wait to see the revolution on the evolution of the fashion world because I think it's kind of gonna be the next big thing. Um, last question from us. Ah, we met through the Young Presidents Organization, and I know that networks have been an important part of your life. Um, so maybe you could just leave us with some wisdom from you, buddy, about how connecting with people has fueled your career. Buddy: I think connectivity is the key to all of it. And I mean that from how we think about what we do in our businesses and how they connect with others and connect with purpose. But I also think they were like the countries that you and I had over email, how we met at what door that's gonna open, that matters just as much. And for me like, it was an amazing example of that. I mean, it's been designed since 1915 for that kind of thing to happen. And I think in the last 15 or 20 years, the focus on creating networks of interest whether that business or personal or social are has transformed YPO. And I think that's possible in so many areas of life. I just know I have a 23 year old daughter who's just now beginning her professional life. You know, it's sort of one thing to have your old man kind of nag at you about networking, but then I will say, well, they're going to give you five examples of how this has affected me in the last month and it goes from being like, yeah, quit, let me dad to oh my God, that's exactly what I want to have happen. And I think you know I will. We sort of joked about Millennials and GenZer's earlier, but I think that's getting lost, right as people doom or virtual remote screen based things. So once you figure out how to network and connect with people, I don't mean network in the cheesy old sense. But in that meaningful way, like give first before you get that is gonna be an invaluable skill no matter how things shake out. Eva: Yeah, really well put. And we're recording this around the time of the COVID-19 outbreak. And that's actually the saddest part for me is missing out on a human to human connection. Um, as a result of, you know, lots of things being canceled. So we're so glad to have you on our Podcast. We hope to meet you in person, hopefully in Dallas soon, And thank you so much for your time. Buddy: My pleasure really thanks for the conversation. Ed: Thanks, buddy. It's been great talking to you. Eva: Bye. Once again, it's clear that a business leader with good intentions can create an impressive social, environmental and ethical impact. There is always a way to put meaning behind the mission of a company, and we can all make a difference. Ed: You've taken the first step by listening to the Beyond Capital Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Don't forget to rate and review. And if you haven't yet, subscribe on your favorite Podcast platform. For more information, go to beyondcapitalpodcast.com. You can follow me on Twitter at @EAStevens. Eva: And follow me on Instagram at Conscious Investor. Until next time. Ed: Bye, everyone.