Transcript
Speaker: Bigger Talks, Bigger Talks.
Speaker: Welcome back.
Speaker: We have another episode and this one is gonna be a really good one because it's about the homeboy way, but it's more about the CEO of Homeboy Industries, Tom Bozo.
Speaker: TV, he don't know, I just gave him that nickname, but Tom Bozo is in the building.
Speaker: He's the CEO of Homeboy Industry.
Speaker: He's a philanthropist.
Speaker: He's a business guy.
Speaker: He's very intelligent, very spiritual, come to find out.
Speaker: And he's gonna share the homeboy way, his life,
Speaker: what he's been through, and what is it like to be where he's at today in his livelihood.
Speaker: So Tom, welcome to the Bigger Talks podcast.
Speaker: Glad to have you.
Speaker: Thank you, Eric.
Speaker: Good to be here.
Speaker: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker: How's your day?
Speaker: How's it going?
Speaker: Oh, it's going pretty well.
Speaker: I got up to my morning exercise, and now I'm ready to kind of put my brain to work.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So to the people listening, because, you know, I think what happens in the world, it's easy to just go type a person's name in Google with the bio or the stats are like, who is Tom and where did you come from and how did you get into becoming who you are today?
Speaker: It gives a quick synopsis and we can get into the details of it.
Speaker: Yeah, so there's a lot behind all that, like everybody's story.
Speaker: But for me, I view myself as a committed, I still am a committed capitalist.
Speaker: 26 years, I worked in the for-profit sector of our economy.
Speaker: I ran a $1.8 billion set of businesses, lots of employees, public company, private company, went public again.
Speaker: I understand what Wall Street's about.
Speaker: But then I sort of saw something lacking in what was really motivating me to keep going.
Speaker: And now I have this second chapter of
Speaker: of my life, of my career, and now I'm running
Speaker: a nonprofit organization, Homeboy Industries, we help former felons and gang members change their life around.
Speaker: And I've been doing that for 10 years, and I have learned so much more about being a homeboy than all my other years combined.
Speaker: And for me, it's very interesting to contrast the two.
Speaker: So when you ask me what I am, sometimes I think of myself as a corporate executive, but other times I think of myself as a guy who's sort of in a community of people who are looking to change your life forward, which
Speaker: has helped me understand my own spiritual journey as well.
Speaker: And it's beautiful that you put it that way, because, you know, the 26 years of business experience, you know, because you get people who want to be entrepreneurs, like, oh, yeah, I just want to jump in.
Speaker: And it's like, oh, it takes time.
Speaker: It takes effort.
Speaker: It takes, you know, volume and experience.
Speaker: But for you, because we know we live in a world where everything is the material realm, the
Speaker: material currency and be successful in business.
Speaker: Who was your inspiration to be in business the way you are to have big businesses?
Speaker: And would did your relationship start with entrepreneurship or being successful?
Speaker: Or did you have someone who you looked up to as a child?
Speaker: Yeah, look, I grew up in New Jersey.
Speaker: My brother and I were essentially first-generation college graduates.
Speaker: My parents did not go to college.
Speaker: They worked two jobs to get us into college.
Speaker: And I realized I wanted to do well because I knew my parents were borrowing money to get me there.
Speaker: And so, but I had this natural affinity.
Speaker: I understand I had natural affinity for businesses.
Speaker: A little bit motivates me.
Speaker: I say it may come out bad, but I just hated being poor.
Speaker: I hated not having money to do things.
Speaker: You love money.
Speaker: Yeah, like you wanted money.
Speaker: No, we love that.
Speaker: I just wanted to kind of go forward.
Speaker: And so I'm like the type of guy who like, give me the rules of the game.
Speaker: I'm going to work really hard within those rules to succeed.
Speaker: And so I came out of graduate school.
Speaker: I started at entry level in a business.
Speaker: And I just kind of went up the corporate ladder.
Speaker: And eventually, as I said, r an a business with 18,000 employees and
Speaker: and really live that life of a corporate executive, it's private jets, Wall Street meetings, all that stuff, right?
Speaker: So that's what motivated me to be, because I love business.
Speaker: I think, listen, I want to be very clear, well-run companies are good for our society.
Speaker: Say that again, please.
Speaker: Oh, say that again.
Speaker: And sometimes it doesn't get enough credit, but like there are a lot of well-run companies out there.
Speaker: Well-run companies are good for our society because in my mind, what's the hallmark of a well-run company?
Speaker: Three things, three clear things.
Speaker: One is that it competes effectively in the marketplace.
Speaker: It does well for its shareholders.
Speaker: Secondly, it has products and services that people want to spend money on.
Speaker: You're not forcing people to buy from you, but if you have a good enough product, they'll buy from you, right?
Speaker: The third is very importantly,
Speaker: it's a great place to work for its employees, that their life dreams have come true.
Speaker: And so a well-run company has those three things in balance in that it creates quality jobs where people can move their life forward.
Speaker: Now, the businesses I was at, we had a lot of first-generation Americans as frontline employees.
Speaker: And so they worked really hard, just like my folks did, and they
Speaker: They worked hard to get their kids to go to the next generation to go to college.
Speaker: And that's sort of the aspect of a well-run company.
Speaker: What's good for our society is that it creates jobs, it creates a structure, and it's a much better environment all around.
Speaker: And it works, right?
Speaker: Like, if it works, it works because you believe it works.
Speaker: But you said a few things that I took heed to is that, one, you said when you were young, you didn't like being poor.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's one that stood out.
Speaker: Then you said, it wasn't that you value money.
Speaker: You wanted money.
Speaker: You just had a better relationship with money because you love business.
Speaker: So to people listening, you know, when you have a better relationship with things, usually that relationship with you is better.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So because of your, your, your, your technique or your gift in business, you were able to scale and do numbers and be well, but also provide opportunities.
Speaker: That's what people forget.
Speaker: about creating a product that can have 18,000 employees and people who are well taken care of.
Speaker: So I always like to harp on those things because I think there is a misconception in the public about big businesses, about money and these things, and it's not what people think it is.
Speaker: That connotation sometimes is bad because then people create this ideology that's false about people who are in a C-suite, right, who are owners, who have money, they work for it.
Speaker: but also because their intentions and attitude about it was different.
Speaker: So I'm glad that you said that and you shared that with the audience because people need to know that.
Speaker: And I appreciate you kind of like echoing that and putting positive efforts behind it because I really do believe well-run business are good for our society.
Speaker: But in this last chapter, this chapter of my career, I've kind of like looking back, there was something that always still bothered me about even my corporate job in that, well, I try to say everything is in balance, but there are often sometimes when push comes to shove, shareholder wins out over employee.
Speaker: And that sort of, I think, is a fatal flaw of our U.S. capitalist system.
Speaker: And so I've been trying to, so back in 2008, you're young, but 2008 was a great recession, right?
Speaker: Not because of a pandemic, just because the economy imploded.
Speaker: And I had this sort of seminal moment for me, whereas I was running my businesses.
Speaker: In that first year of the recession, we're still going to make a lot of money.
Speaker: And the chairman of the corporation called me up and said, Tom, you need to get back to the original plant because we committed to Wall Street.
Speaker: What profit numbers are we going to deliver?
Speaker: And I was within 5% of that number.
Speaker: And he said, nope, not good enough.
Speaker: And I knew to do another round of layoffs.
Speaker: I'm now laying off people who dedicated their life to the company
Speaker: People probably couldn't get another job anywhere else.
Speaker: And I'm thinking to myself, I'm doing this because, well, I know once the recession's over, I'm going to need those people back.
Speaker: So I'm affecting these people live just so we can brag to Wall Street that we were the best at financial acumen and delivering the results.
Speaker: And I also know that 5% missed, it wasn't going to have a hill of beans difference to our long-term valuation.
Speaker: So I'm thinking, cool.
Speaker: when push comes to shove, employees got put second.
Speaker: And so from there, I said to my, something in my brain said, look, there's gotta be a better way where you can balance off employees as equally as shareholders and move this forward.
Speaker: And quickly fast forward, lo and behold, I show up at Homeboy Industries, I can tell you how I got there in a bit, but I show up at Homeboy Industries and here's, I'm sitting there in the Homegirl Cafe for the first time having lunch and with a friend of mine,
Speaker: and I already left my corporate life behind and I'm having lunch and I'm realizing here's a group of employees that are working hard, enjoying themselves.
Speaker: And I'm realizing back in my old world, I would never hire them.
Speaker: Cause you know, not only do they have felonies, but they have tattoos on their face.
Speaker: I mean, just don't fit the profile of what we would have hired.
Speaker: And yet here's this workforce doing pretty well.
Speaker: And so when I, when they asked me to get involved with Homeboy, I realized, well, wait a minute, maybe in the context of a job,
Speaker: here's a homeboy helping people dramatically change their life for us.
Speaker: And maybe that's the way of actually having employees be more important than actually the business results of a company.
Speaker: And lo and behold, I joined Homeboy and it turned out to be totally true in that here we have in the Homeboy approach is that it's about people first, right?
Speaker: And I'm telling you, we run six social enterprise businesses.
Speaker: They are as effective and as good a workforce as anywhere else.
Speaker: And the only difference is that Homeboy gave them a chance and helped them heal from their trauma, incarceration in their earlier life and move them forward.
Speaker: So there's a lot to be learned at Homeboy, but I just want to say why I wrote the book and why I'm talking to a lot of folks is that our business community can do better and should do better and change a little bit their attitude and still be able to perform in the marketplace.
Speaker: Yeah, because it's a thing in the world is that we go off what something looks like or what we think it should be and then realize it doesn't feel the way it looks, right?
Speaker: Like you can have the nice things, you can have the money, you can have the nice body, but if you don't feel the way it looks, it's like, what is it all for?
Speaker: In my experience in life, it's great to have success, but what does it mean if I can't share with the people I love and care about or pass the baton, right?
Speaker: Share the information, share my experiences, write books, right?
Speaker: Like the homeboy way,
Speaker: a radical approach to business and life.
Speaker: This is a great book for someone to get a deeper perspective, what someone like you as a CEO, as a business and entrepreneur went from to who you are now.
Speaker: And I think it changes the perspective of how you develop and how you got there.
Speaker: So let's talk about when did you come into Homeboys and how did that connection happen?
Speaker: Yeah, so a friend of mine, it was about 10 years ago, a friend of mine, I serve on the board of Salvation Army of Los Angeles.
Speaker: A fellow board member there is also on the board of Homeboy.
Speaker: And he invited me to lunch at the Homegirl Cafe.
Speaker: And I will say, here's Homegirl Cafe.
Speaker: It's a Zagat-rated business.
Speaker: There's only seven other restaurants in downtown Los Angeles with as high as a rating and it's fully run by former gang members and people with felonies.
Speaker: So I just wanna say that on its own, this stands like we deliver a good product and it's a good workforce.
Speaker: So I'm having lunch with my friend.
Speaker: And at that time, Homeboy, it's a nonprofit organization.
Speaker: It was going through a financial crunch.
Speaker: And Father Greg Boyle, the founder, was out on the road speaking quite a bit on behalf of the organization, raising awareness.
Speaker: And yet the board thought that they saw a crunch coming.
Speaker: And there was a consultant in place.
Speaker: And the consultant said, hey, Tom's having lunch over here.
Speaker: Why don't you see if we can get Tom involved?
Speaker: And so the board member asked me to get involved as a board member, but I hadn't done enough board work.
Speaker: Something beyond thought about like, look, I got all these business skills.
Speaker: Is there a way of using business skills to help people who are struggling?
Speaker: And so the values of the organization met up.
Speaker: I started as a volunteer helping the businesses, the social enterprise businesses get a little better.
Speaker: A couple of months later, probably Greg asked me to be CEO
Speaker: never thought I would be in charge of anything again.
Speaker: I didn't want to work full-time again, but yet I couldn't pass up the opportunity to be in the orb of Father Greg.
Speaker: He's amazing living saint.
Speaker: He's pretty amazing sort of how he has lived his life very authentically, and he puts everything in front of shining a light on his goodness of everybody.
Speaker: So I said yes, I'd do this for a little bit of time, and
Speaker: Look, I had all the hubris of a corporate CEO thinking, look, I can do this for six months to a year.
Speaker: I'll come in, fix things up and move off and do something different.
Speaker: And here I am 10 years later, just loving what I do and feeling like this has been so powerful for me.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think, you know, I don't know what your religion or your beliefs are, but, you know, to me, you know, God, the universe, the creator, I feel like gave you this gift of business, right?
Speaker: To know how to run business, to scale business, to be successful.
Speaker: But that was the bait to do what you're doing today, which is your more purposeful, meaningful life.
Speaker: And so you said two things.
Speaker: The first one was,
Speaker: when you were at a company, 2008, there was an opportunity where I guess you'd go public and with the shareholders and we're laying people off or we can impress Wall Street or whatever.
Speaker: And so that was a moment in your life.
Speaker: And then you said, I had all these business skills.
Speaker: How can I put these to use?
Speaker: So I wanna know personally, in those moments,
Speaker: Like where did that inclination, that epiphany or that thought come from?
Speaker: Was it where your spiritual journey started or have you always been spiritual?
Speaker: Did your wife tell you?
Speaker: Like how did that even come to mind to even think that way or you just was, you woke up one day and like, I wanna do this.
Speaker: Cause those are profound moments that were turning points in who you are and in your career.
Speaker: I think there's a phenomenon.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a couple of ways I wanna answer that question.
Speaker: First is,
Speaker: Look, in retrospect, I see how it all got pieced together, but at the time it wasn't so obvious, right?
Speaker: And so, listen, I left my corporate world behind.
Speaker: I had this yearning to think, how can business be done differently?
Speaker: I always admired family-run businesses because they're multi-generational.
Speaker: They think about the longer term.
Speaker: But then part of me, growing up, I grew up Catholic, but I was very light in my spirituality and understanding I wasn't a Bible reader, it wasn't any of those things.
Speaker: And yet, obviously, I invite all listeners to come visit us at Homeboy.
Speaker: You walk through the doors, you feel a vibe, you feel an energy.
Speaker: It's pretty great.
Speaker: And so even at that first day at that Homegirl Cafe, you can feel that energy.
Speaker: You feel like saying, oh, I want to get involved and see what this is about.
Speaker: And so I would come there the first several, obviously, weeks and months.
Speaker: And we start each day with a morning meeting where there's a thought of the day and announcements and all.
Speaker: And
Speaker: And while Homeboy is not a religious organization, we're a nonprofit, but we're, as Father Greg would say, we're soaked in spirituality.
Speaker: And then when I started seeing our homies, our clients, talk about how they've transformed their life and they found their own spiritualness, I started thinking, well, geez, if they can find it, well, maybe I should dig a little bit deeper and start trying to lean in as well.
Speaker: And listen, listen to the other thing I want to say.
Speaker: Here's a guy, a guy, 26 years in corporate world.
Speaker: Give me the rules, I'm gonna live by the rules.
Speaker: So, you know, like, you know, you get all this HR training, you kind of get like, you get everything drummed out of you.
Speaker: You know, you can't hug people, you've got to worry about what you say to people and, you know,
Speaker: all those things.
Speaker: And you never talk about God or religion in the business setting.
Speaker: I mean, you can almost push the boundary and talk about anything else.
Speaker: But once you start bringing in your own religion, then it's like, whoa, stay clear.
Speaker: And so then I contrast that to it is so deep at homeboy about how people talk about their own.
Speaker: It's not the same religion we're talking about.
Speaker: It's their God, the way they want to pray.
Speaker: And they talk about what they found
Speaker: their spiritual journeys, starting me saying, cheering inside saying, yes, this is what it should be about.
Speaker: People should feel free to express themselves.
Speaker: And so that sort of, it's actually not obviously Father Greg has sort of has terrific wisdom, but as equally as the clients who are changing our life, because listen, they've all been victims of conflict trauma, horrific trauma.
Speaker: They join a gang and think it's gonna be their family, false narrative.
Speaker: They go into prison.
Speaker: They come out of prison.
Speaker: They're tired of their life.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they really change their life around once they learn to start loving themselves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they can only start learning and loving themselves once they learn that God loves them.
Speaker: And you put those two things together.
Speaker: That's how they move it forward.
Speaker: And so to me, I can say that so clearly now, but early on, I can see myself witnessing it again, but not really kind of connecting at all until time goes by.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that's beautiful.
Speaker: Because in order for, I always say, in order to be
Speaker: In order to be free, I must be me.
Speaker: And I think at Homeboy Industries, I don't think I know people feel more free than they can be themselves.
Speaker: They're not judged.
Speaker: They're not criticized for their past mistakes or their felonies.
Speaker: And it's like, come here.
Speaker: We're going to welcome you in open arms.
Speaker: We're going to give you agape love, unconditional love.
Speaker: And we're going to bring you in.
Speaker: And I think when people feel accepted by people they don't know, but they feel compelled to move, they feel free.
Speaker: So it's just a beautiful thing.
Speaker: You're right on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, doing that homeboy.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, right on.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: We all grew up learning, right?
Speaker: But it's hard to implement.
Speaker: But you walk through the doors of homeboy, and it's like you see it right there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you see it right in front of you.
Speaker: That's what makes it so special.
Speaker: That's a great statement.
Speaker: Why do you think we all grew up learning, but why do you think it's hard to implement?
Speaker: Like, what is that?
Speaker: What do you think causes that second part to execute and implement or apply what we know we've been through?
Speaker: Well, I think in some ways it's the business culture sort of drums that out, that we're worried about, how do I say it?
Speaker: We're worried in the business world, worried about being fixed.
Speaker: fair and equal to everybody.
Speaker: And so you don't wanna sort of lean on one religion versus another.
Speaker: But I think what's so interesting about it at Homeboy, it's like we're fair and equal and equitable to everybody.
Speaker: And yet everybody has the freedom to express it the way they wanna express it.
Speaker: And so it kind of, it's the oddest thing that it actually works when you actually become freer and we're willing to talk about your faith versus trying to squash it in a certain environment.
Speaker: And that's good, you know, because everybody deserves to be heard, felt, and seen.
Speaker: And when you have a space and a place like Homeboy Industry, we can do that.
Speaker: You know, I think people listening want to know, like, I was, I want to say a great thanks to Melanie.
Speaker: I was telling her, I said, do they have a Homeboy in like every city?
Speaker: That would be pretty awesome.
Speaker: Like in Baltimore, I'm from Baltimore.
Speaker: I think we need a Homeboy Industries in Baltimore.
Speaker: It's tough out there.
Speaker: It's challenging.
Speaker: Philadelphia, we spoke on that.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: My question is, we got the book, The Homeboy Way.
Speaker: First of all, homeboy industries.
Speaker: Where did the title, the name of the company come from?
Speaker: You said, it's Dr. Gregg, right?
Speaker: It's the founder?
Speaker: Father Gregg.
Speaker: Yeah, let me give you a quick thing on the founding.
Speaker: So Father Greg Boyle, Jesuit priest, his first station as a parish priest was in early 1990s, actually late 80s, at Dolores Mission, which is the poorest parish in the whole archdiocese of Los Angeles, happened to be the epicenter of gang violence.
Speaker: And clearly LA in the late 80s, 90s was the epicenter of the country for gang violence.
Speaker: You know, there's over 200 different gangs in the county of Los Angeles, over 200,000 gang members in the county of Los Angeles.
Speaker: And so as Greg was a parish priest walking the streets, seeing these young men die and go into gangs and gang crime, and he wanted to come up with something to get them out of gang life.
Speaker: And he hit upon a simple notion that makes so much sense.
Speaker: If you can get them a job so they can make enough money for food and shelter,
Speaker: They're not even go running with the gang for food and shelter, make money for food and shelter.
Speaker: And so it began as a little bit of a jobs program, realizing that's sort of hard.
Speaker: Then it eventually became, we had opened up its first business was a bakery.
Speaker: And so they started baking bread.
Speaker: And there's nothing better than having, today we have our bakery.
Speaker: It's artisan bakery, handmade.
Speaker: It's nothing better than having rival gang members, rival gang members standing shoulder to shoulder, rolling dough.
Speaker: Fundamentally, Greg says, you can't demonize somebody you're in relationship with, and these guys have to make the dough and get a certain amount of bread done in a day.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And that breaks down the barriers, right?
Speaker: And so it's not, we deal with gang members, not gangs.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: So one business led to another, and then someone had the idea.
Speaker: It was always called homeboy.
Speaker: Hey, let's call it homeboy industry.
Speaker: So while it's like a business type of name, we're a human services organization helping 8,000 people get out of gang life every year.
Speaker: And so now we have six or seven social enterprise businesses, which is an important aspect of our program.
Speaker: But more, it's about we do a bunch of reentry services when people leave the prison system.
Speaker: how to reenter back in society.
Speaker: We have all the services of, we have the case management, mental health services.
Speaker: We take off 12,000 tattoos a year.
Speaker: We remove tattoos.
Speaker: We have a charter high school.
Speaker: We have anger management classes, AA, NA.
Speaker: I mean, all that you have to kind of work on to heal from the trauma.
Speaker: So you can be resilient enough to take on what society throws at you.
Speaker: So businesses are important aspect in terms of pride structure, someone's day, but most of the day they're also working on themselves.
Speaker: And I think the biggest takeaway for me in that, you know, instance, which you were speaking was that I think it's not enough to reverse psychology.
Speaker: And I'll be versus psychology is kind of like, you know, you hear the thing that you said corporate America, they wouldn't even allow like religion in or certain things you couldn't do.
Speaker: You couldn't hug people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Then there's something when you got code switching right when you switch your lingo so when you think of homeboy i'm from baltimore but when I came to la.
Speaker: Always people would say what up homie so it's actually.
Speaker: A phenomenal way to connect to people who understand the language, and I think most times people don't understand how slang language dialect matters in certain.
Speaker: cultures and spaces and it helps right because if you're not speaking someone language why would they listen to you so i think with father greg and you guys done for homeboy industry and the people that come there you make them feel comfortable because you're relatable and i think that's what life is about relating like you've been to the highest of highest in a wealth you know regime and it's like great but you're coming and dealing with people in a different space but you're relating to them so you're finding ways how can i relate to these people how can i help
Speaker: And how can I evolve within this?
Speaker: I know what that other world is like, but when it comes down to it, we're all the same, right?
Speaker: The challenges are different, but the emotions are the same, right?
Speaker: Emotions are the same.
Speaker: Let me add two things to what you said.
Speaker: You're exactly right.
Speaker: That's why the beauty of our organization
Speaker: over two thirds of our senior staff are former clients, people lived experience, people walked in those shoes, people who've been in gangs, people who've been incarcerated, who have transformed their life, moved their life forward.
Speaker: And they have all the expressions.
Speaker: I mean, I sometimes feel like I'm just the rube here.
Speaker: Things happen in front of me and like three or four of our guys would say, what just happened?
Speaker: And I said, I didn't see any of that.
Speaker: How did that work?
Speaker: What do you mean by all that?
Speaker: So thankfully, we have folks who've been in that lifestyle, who've changed their life and are great mentors to get the men and women out.
Speaker: The other thing I want to say is we have a global homeboy network where for many years, organizations have come and visited us.
Speaker: This is pre-pandemic.
Speaker: They've come and visited us, and we happily share what we do.
Speaker: and take our model, take our approach, but bring it back to your local community because just as you said, sort of the challenges of the gang issue in Baltimore are different from in LA and different words, different codes, all that stuff.
Speaker: And so it kind of has to grow from within as to having the leaders that understand the local dynamics, but take the homeboy model, which is as simple as love, kinship and compassion and apply that in your local community.
Speaker: So now there's 150 organizations around the country and the world who have modeled themselves
Speaker: after Homeboy.
Speaker: Well, that's interesting because maybe that just answered my question.
Speaker: So as you were speaking, you know, I get epiphanies and things just come up.
Speaker: And I was thinking like, this guy is so successful at building things and selling them or scaling them.
Speaker: I was like, I want to know if it's possible for Tom and Homeboy Industry to build an entire community in that infrastructure with
Speaker: you know, just say like, you know, you have the West Hollywood, you have the Hollywood, you have the Studio City, they have their own community, right?
Speaker: But there's a certain type of people, even in Baltimore.
Speaker: Just imagine, you know, like they got Chinatown, downtown, this is part of LA or anywhere, and that community is fluxed with
Speaker: you know, former felons, but people that come through your doors and you guys train them and you build up.
Speaker: But it's a community, though.
Speaker: Like, it's not just homeboy industry.
Speaker: No, that's right.
Speaker: And then I was like, I know Tom can do that if he was put to the test.
Speaker: But then I was thinking, I want to know, can someone not patent, but a franchise homeboy industries and put them like take you guys's IP.
Speaker: your infrastructure, your standard of procedural operations, however you guys produce what you guys have, and place that, like you just said, within, it has to start, and put those in the cities that need it, you know, over America.
Speaker: Maybe you guys can get funding and do that, but my mind is just always working because I know, coming from a tough environment, what's going on out here and what's happening,
Speaker: If people don't have that infrastructure or that type of structure to go to a place like that, it is the game.
Speaker: Some people go to jail at certain times of the year just to eat and have some place to sleep.
Speaker: You got it.
Speaker: It's amazing.
Speaker: I mean, for sure, it's heartbreaking.
Speaker: And some guys go to jail, they take the rap for somebody else.
Speaker: I mean, it's just...
Speaker: Listen, for the audience here, I just want to say a little bit of gang life.
Speaker: Again, I learned this all at Homeboy.
Speaker: I didn't know this was going into Homeboy.
Speaker: I was just a typical guy not really paying attention.
Speaker: But look, these men and women, mostly men in gangs, they don't think they're going to live past 30 years old.
Speaker: So tougher sentences, sentence reform, that's not going to change.
Speaker: That's not going to stop a guy from doing something pretty violent.
Speaker: I mean, he's violent because he's a victim of complex trauma as well.
Speaker: And so what we've seen is, you know, Homeboys helped a lot of people, thousands and thousands of people through the years.
Speaker: But in this pandemic, in that first two years of the pandemic, all of a sudden this sense of hopelessness was very pervasive out in our society, which then increased the lack of hopelessness for the folks we serve, you know.
Speaker: And then thereby that's why there's more violence out there and more crime out there, because there's a sense of hopelessness.
Speaker: And so as a society, we got to get back to getting people hopeful, got to get back to the programs that work.
Speaker: I just want to say that part of this thing, as I write this book and I'm really trying to talk to the business community, let's help people.
Speaker: Now there's only, Homeboy can only help so many people, but I think fundamental theme is
Speaker: Think about back to what we were talking about in terms of well-run companies, jobs help people, right?
Speaker: And so I was a guy who wouldn't hire that population where homeboy serving today.
Speaker: I'm saying the businesses hire that population.
Speaker: The working poor in America have such a hard spot.
Speaker: And to me, it's like there's two Americas, the privileged America that most of us live in, and then there's America of the forgotten and the poor.
Speaker: Poverty rate in America has been the same for 45 years.
Speaker: We have to do something different as society.
Speaker: And in our society, in the way Homeboy does it, they have a proven model of how to help people lift them up from being poor to being into a quality job and moving forward.
Speaker: So I want not only is that you need more homeboy type programs, but you need corporate America, business America to hire the population once they're ready for a job to move forward.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think, you know, it's just, it's so important because there is a big gap.
Speaker: I mean, if you don't know, you don't know, but I've been on all sides, you know, from growing up in Baltimore, having men in my family that were kingpins, you know, being in LA, being on TV and then have clients more wealthy.
Speaker: So I'm able to see all facets of life, classism, perspective, how people think, how people show up, how people pick sides like, oh,
Speaker: I'm from the Jewish community, oh, I'm from a black community, oh, and it's like everyone justified their side, what should I get?
Speaker: But we're all human and we all experience life differently, but it doesn't mean that I can put you down because you don't believe what I believe, we grew up different.
Speaker: And so I was thinking, you said something about complex trauma.
Speaker: Can you elaborate on that?
Speaker: I've never heard that before.
Speaker: That was kind of unique the way you put it, or maybe that's just something you use to kind of like explain what it is for most people that come through your program.
Speaker: Well, listen, no, no, there's definitely, there's a very specific definition of complex trauma.
Speaker: So if any of your listeners are a sort of mental health therapist, I'll get it wrong.
Speaker: But essentially, you know, there's like this sort of scoring system, ACEs scoring system where, you know,
Speaker: Well, let me not, I mean, there's actually a scientific explanation, but the important part is they've never had these young men and women, mine, grow up without a family structure.
Speaker: They're abused as young people, whether they're sexually abused or emotionally abused or bullied, they're beaten, they've told them no good.
Speaker: The parents jump them into the gang.
Speaker: The mother jumps into the gang.
Speaker: The mother and father say, don't go to school in grade five.
Speaker: Go stand on the corner and be the lookout for our drug deal.
Speaker: And then the boy has to watch their mother sort of, you know,
Speaker: Robert B. Overdose on drugs along the way right so there's those are the traumas that people experience like there's stories and stories and so.
Speaker: Robert B. it's not just some of our folks are victims of that type of trauma all of our folks are victims of that trauma at a very young age that's what moves them into a into that.
Speaker: into the gangs.
Speaker: And then there's this whole different trauma that the gang, getting jumped into a gang.
Speaker: I mean, you're getting kicked and beaten and all that, right?
Speaker: And then they go to prison, they do a crime, they go to prison.
Speaker: There's a whole trauma in the whole judicial system and the whole prison system.
Speaker: And then they kind of come out.
Speaker: So you can see how people come out of prison
Speaker: just mad at the world, right?
Speaker: And no one's giving them a chance.
Speaker: They just want a chance along the way.
Speaker: And so how do you help people who've been victims of trauma?
Speaker: In this case, conflict trauma means multiple types of traumas, instances of trauma, is that you have to help them heal.
Speaker: And you heal with positive relationships.
Speaker: And so a lot of what Homeboy is about is building positive relationships, is that there is the theories around
Speaker: healing along the way.
Speaker: And that's a big aspect of it.
Speaker: You know, when I first joined Homeboy, I mean, to put it simply, I was trying to understand what is up with the population and Father Greg said to me, the difference is, him and I and them, is that we had at least one parent who loved us.
Speaker: You can almost say that's so clear.
Speaker: They didn't have somebody who loved them unconditionally.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Think about that as a move.
Speaker: I could cry right now because I did suffer as a kid.
Speaker: You know, my family was around, but I also felt emotionally abandoned.
Speaker: Abandoned.
Speaker: So in moments, I became the leader of all my friends because I didn't want my friends to leave me like I felt how my parents did.
Speaker: And they didn't.
Speaker: My mom was 21.
Speaker: My dad was in the streets.
Speaker: He didn't know better.
Speaker: We wasn't poor, but there's circumstances.
Speaker: But I say that to say I had told my manager one day, I said, man, sometimes it's like,
Speaker: All you need is one person just to believe in that's it.
Speaker: Just one person.
Speaker: You get that one person.
Speaker: That's enough to keep going because you know, that person's on the sideline.
Speaker: Like you got it, man, keep going.
Speaker: And I learned that late in life, like, because I was so guarded, like, no, you can't love me, mom.
Speaker: People didn't love me.
Speaker: And people don't understand that pain if they haven't experienced it, but I can relate and know like what you just said.
Speaker: We had, you said you had one person that loved you unconditionally.
Speaker: And that's like,
Speaker: that changes everything and it's important.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And that's what fundamental about our program is when someone walks through our door for the first time, we just go out of our way to say yes and to care for them because that's what they need along the way.
Speaker: And it takes somebody with sort of a stronger constitution.
Speaker: So how do you get, how do you help yourself get through all that, right?
Speaker: I'm sure you have your journey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Therapy, energy healing, books.
Speaker: I've read so many books.
Speaker: I've meditated.
Speaker: But the thing is, my anchor was my pain and my, you know, anger.
Speaker: I was so angry of what was happening around me.
Speaker: Like you said, you didn't want to be poor.
Speaker: Like we wasn't poor financially, but the circumstances, people were dying, getting killed, murdered.
Speaker: You even play basketball, you so dope.
Speaker: So it was this thing of,
Speaker: I was angry, like, oh, I want better.
Speaker: I don't want to live like this, right?
Speaker: So my thing was basketball.
Speaker: That was the vehicle.
Speaker: And I always tell parents, don't allow the sport to use your kid.
Speaker: Let the sport take your kid to a place of prosperity.
Speaker: And then from there, I did well in school.
Speaker: So basketball was a vehicle to keep me focused, to get me identity.
Speaker: And then school just took me to the next level because I was so curious and educated.
Speaker: I just started reading books and I was like, oh, Tony Robbins or Les Brown, Bob Pratt.
Speaker: Like who are these big time?
Speaker: What do successful people do?
Speaker: And I started studying them, you know, and I was like, thank you, grow rich as a man thinking.
Speaker: I started becoming what I was studying.
Speaker: Then my life started changing.
Speaker: I started attracting new people and new opportunities.
Speaker: So I always tell people information changes situations, you know, you know, because I always share this quote, you know, there's a, uh,
Speaker: about school because in America, we put so much emphasis on having a college degree and having, which is great.
Speaker: I think you should be educated in the field that you're passionate about and that you love.
Speaker: But they say the A student works for the B student.
Speaker: The C student owns the company and the D student owns the land that the company is on.
Speaker: And I always tell people that's a matter of perspective because you do have people who have imposter syndrome, right?
Speaker: Because they don't know that.
Speaker: The world tells us we have to do this and do that to feel like this, but it's actually not true for everybody.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: I just think information in general is important.
Speaker: And you said something and I just want to make sure.
Speaker: So we have a line at homeboy.
Speaker: If you don't transform your pain, you transmit it.
Speaker: And that's the whole key.
Speaker: You transform your pain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And everybody all, we all have pain just how we all handle it and move forward.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I appreciate you sort of framing it up that way.
Speaker: My few questions I have left before we talk, I want to talk a little bit detailed about the book.
Speaker: So, so got like 15 minutes, but so the first question is, what was your relationship with struggle growing up?
Speaker: It don't have to be long as it could just be like, whatever comes to mind.
Speaker: You know, that's what's interesting.
Speaker: It's like, I feel like I've lived a charm life.
Speaker: Like I hated, like I said, I hated being poor.
Speaker: My brothers and I, we went to college.
Speaker: But like, compared to the population, I had like no big struggles.
Speaker: Like, I mean, life wasn't easy.
Speaker: You know, we had to work hard and all that stuff.
Speaker: But yeah, listen, I thought I was a big advocate.
Speaker: You know, it's like through my hard work, I did well.
Speaker: I was a big advocate of the American dream, right?
Speaker: But yet I come to learn at homeboy that people who are poor
Speaker: have known real shock at the American dream the way I grew up thinking about it.
Speaker: So it was clearly this different Americas have a different view of the American dream, how to put that forward.
Speaker: But yeah, I grew up with a loving family that worked hard, told me they took loans, got me to college and kind of kept always had that positive reinforcement.
Speaker: You know, life wasn't easy.
Speaker: It was at fallbacks, but it's just kind of moving forward.
Speaker: No, that's great.
Speaker: I mean, I appreciate the transparency because some people, you know, you know, you ask a question and someone just won't give you the answer.
Speaker: That sounds good.
Speaker: I'm glad you didn't do that, but thank you.
Speaker: No, no, it's just, it's just, yeah.
Speaker: What's your definition of pain?
Speaker: Because I know everyone has pain, but everybody sees pain differently.
Speaker: In your mind.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, to me, to me, right.
Speaker: To me, it's pain.
Speaker: To me, it's more of a sort of a spiritual, conceptual thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: an emotion and then by tie with emotional thing right and so the the pain is rejection people rejecting you not agreeing with you not seeing you yeah who you are uh and you know as an older person now it's easier to kind of be well more balanced than that but clearly younger folks in my first i wish i know now but i know now which i know back then in my career right uh along the way but um but pain is not being respected as a person
Speaker: Oh, that's good.
Speaker: I've never heard that.
Speaker: See, you got a new definition, people.
Speaker: Pain is not being respected by a person.
Speaker: That's probably, I hope we, I know we can pick up some of these gems in this book.
Speaker: So how do you deal, personally, how do you deal and overcome hard times or adversity for yourself?
Speaker: Like, what should you go to when you're having tough moments in life?
Speaker: Yeah, this is something I've learned through Homeboy.
Speaker: It's really my spiritual journey, right?
Speaker: And so seeing how these, you know, to me, these guys come out of prison and they actually have depth of faith and depth of spiritual awakening and awareness and so push me forward.
Speaker: So really, for these past several years, I've kind of been on my own spiritual journey within the
Speaker: tradition of the Jesuits and nation spirituality.
Speaker: And so what I've learned is through meditation and through contemplation and through having a spiritual director to kind of humble myself and have the humble before God and ask God for help.
Speaker: And so I don't think I would have ever done that as a younger man.
Speaker: And so it's in that meditation side of just
Speaker: I need help, tell them, show me the way, something to sign and, you know, and through prayer gets me there.
Speaker: And it's, listen, let me pause for a second.
Speaker: Even saying this to you now, I feel like, oh my gosh, I've said too much.
Speaker: In the business world, I'm not allowed to say these things.
Speaker: This is good, man, because people look up to you.
Speaker: People want to be the next time.
Speaker: And, you know, I just think what I'm learning is,
Speaker: And I'll share some personal stuff in my vortex of living and life.
Speaker: You know, God has allowed me to see all walks of life from, I know gang members, I know gang leaders, I know people who really committed crimes and I know them all, but I also know highly successful people, people who do numbers, you know, financially wealthy.
Speaker: So when I'm inside these spaces with these people, I'm realizing like, oh, you know, you might have people on a, on a, on a, on a, on a,
Speaker: the dark side, I would say the dark side, not that it's not dark on the lighter side, but you know what I mean?
Speaker: That have more time getting to where they want to go.
Speaker: They can deal with pain and setbacks and adversity and challenges.
Speaker: They're more resilient, right?
Speaker: So they're able to kind of persevere.
Speaker: They're survivors.
Speaker: They have the survival instinct for sure.
Speaker: And then you have people who have the business and the wealth accumulation and things, but when they deal with pain, it's just like,
Speaker: It's so different.
Speaker: You might think the world is over the way they're responding.
Speaker: So I'm realizing like I came up with this concept of spiritual currency and I think everybody needs it and everybody should, you know, get to it at some point because I think that's what we all need.
Speaker: You can have the money, you can have the car, you can have the job.
Speaker: But even when you don't have as much, I feel like on a low end, in between, the only thing I can count on in tough moments, all high moments, was my spiritual currency, was my faith in God, my belief, meditation, gratitude statements, grounding myself in nature, being thankful for someone to be in my energy, to interview on BiggerTalks platform.
Speaker: I've always wanted a podcast.
Speaker: I've always wanted to write books.
Speaker: I've always wanted to do these great things.
Speaker: I have the ability to do it.
Speaker: I'm thankful.
Speaker: So if things are not going well, I know not to make it like it's the end of the world, but some people who don't have those assets or that understanding, it's a little harder for them.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker: And that's what, so I say this to my spiritual director and other people say, why don't more people understand this?
Speaker: Because sometimes people act like it's the end of the world over like a silly thing that goes wrong.
Speaker: It's like, oh no, people gotta be grounded.
Speaker: I know you're asking questions, but I wanna ask you a question.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And cause it's interesting.
Speaker: And so you talk about how you've seen guys who you've grown up with, right?
Speaker: Now you see folks on the West side and Hollywood people, right?
Speaker: And I think the middle class and the rich people have a lot of pretences.
Speaker: I think the poor folks in our society are the most authentic and generous people I've ever met.
Speaker: Does that work?
Speaker: Would you agree with that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I will say I became a victim of what I thought I should be.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I play all sides in my life.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because I had to.
Speaker: I grew up in a city where it's tough.
Speaker: So I know how to maneuver in that.
Speaker: I've been on TV.
Speaker: I know the fake Hollywood.
Speaker: Like, you know, no one really cares.
Speaker: But if you're making the money.
Speaker: And then I have wealthy clients where I felt, oh, I have to speak a certain way or I have to code switch, you know, these things.
Speaker: And it's like, no, all you have to do is be your most authentic self, you know, to, to move, even though there's things you have to know and understand and be cordial and professional.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, we all cry.
Speaker: We all go to the bathroom.
Speaker: We all have fears and doubts.
Speaker: Like I said, the challenges are different, but the emotions are the same.
Speaker: And being your most authentic self is the best self.
Speaker: And I believe that is the homeboy way.
Speaker: You got it.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Because I want to have a little five, seven minutes about the book because you have something there called Breaking the Rules.
Speaker: And I want to know what does that mean to you when you say breaking the rules?
Speaker: I know what it means to me.
Speaker: To me is that you have to stand on something, right?
Speaker: If my gut and my intuition is telling me not to do something, but I have an authority for telling me to do something, let's just say a teacher or
Speaker: Your mother, my mom, like, I think you should go to that school.
Speaker: But my spirit is like, I need to go to LA.
Speaker: I'm going to stand on my spirit and say, my intuition says go to LA.
Speaker: So in hindsight, maybe I broke the rules of the norm.
Speaker: So what is breaking the rules?
Speaker: Some people can kind of understand that.
Speaker: Yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker: And so I wrote the book.
Speaker: But really with the thought of I show up a homeboy and 26 years corporate career, very successful, all that stuff.
Speaker: I show up a homeboy and there's so many head turning, head spinning things I'm learning and seeing and being a part of that.
Speaker: It goes against conventional wisdom as to how to help.
Speaker: how we've helped people at homeboy, right?
Speaker: And so I always thought, well, let me write a book there, but I went back to the foreclosal world.
Speaker: What lessons would I take from working with gang members that take me back there, right?
Speaker: Leadership lessons.
Speaker: And that's part of the book.
Speaker: The other part of the book is recognizing there's two Americas, is the America of the poor and the forgotten.
Speaker: We just, society forgets that how to help, how to truly help people who are poor in our society.
Speaker: Then the third aspect of the book is my spiritual journey, how I learned
Speaker: how to take that journey because I view myself as just sort of a typical guy.
Speaker: I never really thought much about it, but now I've learned so much how to help other people learn.
Speaker: And so throughout the book, there's all these stories of homeboy, which is that sort of brings everything alive, the individual stories.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: But I ended the book by saying there's 55 rules to break.
Speaker: So these are like conventional wisdom things that
Speaker: that we all grow up thinking and you learn in business and rules of what you want to call them, rules of thumb or just sort of just ways people think about stuff.
Speaker: They say, no, we have to not think that way.
Speaker: We need to swim upstream.
Speaker: Don't do the conventional wisdom.
Speaker: So let me do one.
Speaker: Rule number three we should break that people think.
Speaker: People think you just need to work hard to get ahead.
Speaker: Just got to work hard.
Speaker: You all hear it all the time, right?
Speaker: Let's work harder.
Speaker: Well, for us in society to wag our fingers about somebody who is poor and they've come out of being incarcerated for a number of years and they don't know how to work a smartphone or a cell phone, right?
Speaker: And they think, I just work harder at your job.
Speaker: They have so many stresses in their life.
Speaker: They want to work hard, but they have so many other challenges going on.
Speaker: They're going to get evicted because they can't make the rent payments and all these things.
Speaker: Wagging a finger on somebody to work harder is not
Speaker: going to help somebody.
Speaker: So it's like, that's like another rule of thumb, like money doesn't help solve, money doesn't solve problems.
Speaker: Like people who are wealthy say that all the time and money's not going to solve problems.
Speaker: I'm telling you for the foreign world, money solves problems.
Speaker: So stop thinking like you're going to hold back money.
Speaker: until someone does what you want them to do.
Speaker: Just be generous that people come around.
Speaker: It makes a difference.
Speaker: So there's like 55 of those.
Speaker: So you're saying like money does solve problems.
Speaker: People should be more generous and give more of it.
Speaker: You're saying?
Speaker: Yes, right.
Speaker: People who are poor money solves problems.
Speaker: So there's like 55 of those.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: I'm trying to bust up the way people think.
Speaker: Yeah, and then, you know, because, you know, coming from a, you know, intense environment like Baltimore, you know, my dad has always told me, at least these last few years, he would say, son, you cannot, he's talking about the world events of like a lot of stuff that's been going on since the pandemic and just in general with divide and disconnect and challenges that we all face.
Speaker: He said, people got to understand that you, you cannot solve a spiritual problem without
Speaker: was a physical reaction.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Like if you're using physical actions or reactions to solve a spiritual, it's spiritual.
Speaker: It's not physical that the problem is evolving.
Speaker: It's something spiritual that you can't see as an energy to pass life, all these things.
Speaker: But I like that you said that money does solve problems and it can help and people just need to give more because you got to circulate it, right?
Speaker: You can't hoard the money.
Speaker: You're going to hold on to forever and then you leave it and then what?
Speaker: I mean, of course you give it to your kids and you have more than enough, but I believe in sharing it and giving it when needed.
Speaker: And why not?
Speaker: You know, they tell us how these bank accounts and 401ks, if you need your money, you better use it.
Speaker: So one final question, well, two final questions I always like to ask is at the end is that for you in this moment, at this time, thank you for sharing all the info, insight, wisdom, gems, just everything, homeboy, your history.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: But on another note, what's working for you in your life and what is a challenge for you right now?
Speaker: Oh, working for me in my life, I know it sounds cliche and all, but it's true.
Speaker: It's to be in community at homeboy.
Speaker: It's, you know, Father Greg has sort of this way of saying that what we need to do is be willing to move to people who are on the margin of our society and be in relationship with them.
Speaker: It's not about telling them what to do and wagging our finger and fixing their problem and just be in relationship with them and
Speaker: Sounds easy to do.
Speaker: The hard part is making that first step, but when you do it, it's very fulfilling.
Speaker: And that clearly works.
Speaker: I've had more laughter and tears and joy in this time of home with them my whole life all around.
Speaker: What was the second question?
Speaker: What is your greatest challenge right now?
Speaker: What is something that might be a challenge for you right now?
Speaker: You know, it's...
Speaker: Listen, we're Homeboy, we're now a $35 million organization.
Speaker: We raised 35 million, spent 35 million.
Speaker: So there's a lot at stake making sure we raise the right amount of money.
Speaker: Because if we don't raise the right amount of money, we have to let people go.
Speaker: And we know when we let people go, that means they're running back out with the gangs and creating violence, going back in the jail system.
Speaker: So the cost of failure is very high.
Speaker: I mean, I've never been at a job where it's life and death.
Speaker: for our population, right?
Speaker: And so we all work really hard to make sure things don't go wrong, but sometimes things go wrong.
Speaker: And so the challenge is how to, it's always how we absorb, we absorb the pain and the trauma that our folks go through.
Speaker: And how do we kind of use that?
Speaker: For me, I use that as a motivator to push forward.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: And I appreciate you saying that the cost of failure and it's not easy and you guys are working hard.
Speaker: And I also like to say, too, to people listening and who will see this, that sometimes when things don't work out and they are a failure, it's really supposed to happen in a sense where whoever is experiencing it, of course, we don't want them to.
Speaker: But if they're in a position, it's for some type of spiritual growth, I believe, or development.
Speaker: You know, I've experienced things with friends and family.
Speaker: I'm just like, man, what is this?
Speaker: This keeps happening.
Speaker: It's a pattern.
Speaker: Some of us have to.
Speaker: go through things and learn things to become what we want.
Speaker: But in a business sense, I believe it's different, but I just appreciate you being on the front line, you know, leading a team to victory because I feel like the homeboy way is the way and you know how to break the right rules to stay in business, to sustain a great life.
Speaker: So, you know, before we get off here, how can we get this book?
Speaker: Where did we find a book and how do we stay connected to you and homeboy industries?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So the book is on Amazon.
Speaker: So you can you can Google it and get there.
Speaker: But Homeboy Industries, we have a Web page and a big Facebook following that we a lot of our folks heal from owning their story.
Speaker: And so oftentimes we put videos up of people telling their stories and affirmations about how to move life forward.
Speaker: So it's really terrific.
Speaker: People people love getting on there and watching those videos and being part of the greater Homeboy community.
Speaker: That's amazing, Tom.
Speaker: I just want to say thank you.
Speaker: I appreciate everything you brought today.
Speaker: And this was amazing.
Speaker: The Homeboy Way.
Speaker: Break the rules.
Speaker: And tap in with Homeboy Industries on Facebook.
Speaker: Get the book, The Homeboy Way on Amazon.
Speaker: Are you on any social platforms?
Speaker: Like Twitter, Instagram?
Speaker: We have Instagram and LinkedIn and grab it out.
Speaker: Twitter.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, I appreciate you.
Speaker: Have a phenomenal day.
Speaker: And this was a big good talk.
Speaker: All right, Eric.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Cheers.
