An Army of Normal Folks - How to Turn Your Spending Into Someone's Second Chance. Or First Chance (Pt 2)

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

What if the thing that changed someone’s life wasn’t charity — but a purchase? In this episode, Lauren McCann shares the deeply personal story of her brother’s struggles with mental health, addiction, and homelessness — and the $10,000 art purchase that helped spark his transformation. That moment didn’t only restore his confidence, it also inspired Lauren to build Procure Impact, an extraordinary marketplace connecting businesses to mission-driven suppliers such as ones who employ survivors of trafficking, people in recovery, and those returning from prison. You’ll learn why opportunity often works better than intervention, how bottom-up solutions outperform top-down programs, and how your everyday spending decisions can become part of your service journey. This conversation might just change the way you think about helping others.Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks, and we continue now with part two of our conversation with Lauren McCann right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby.

Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, doubt the case of Lucy Lettby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it, to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing. of any skepticism or doubt.

It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast.

I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's the unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS. and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast.

This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Tremaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Germain was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth.

For 22 years, only two people knew the truth, until a confession changed everything. I was a monster Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone

into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions. to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP, might actually work. This is wild.

Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to tell you a story. I'd love to hear it. Okay. When I started my business, I also still wanted to save the world because I was 31 years old and thought, I had my the way I grew up like we all grow up and while I was evolving and developing my own ideas about what's right and wrong in the world, I still had my perspective as a kid and a young guy in college and I think we all evolve over time. One of the things that I have always believed from my own personal experience is that the nuclear family matters. I think a kid needs an involved mom and dad and, if at all possible, an organic mother and father in the home.

And that comes from the fact that I'm the product of a mom who's been divorced five times, whose father left him when he was four, who until in his 40s dealt with some trauma that I never really reconciled until my 40s, right? So as a result, that's something that I'm very opinionated about. And I probably hurt people's feelings when I say that sometimes. And, oh, well, I grew up fat and red-headed. I've had my feelings stomped on since I was six. They can get over it. So with that in mind, I started this business on a wing in a prayer when I was 31 years old. And one of the guys that I cared very much about who came to me as a former Marine,

who then became an addict, who was actually. actually living at Lighthouse Ministries named Sam Quinn. He recently passed. I had an enormous prospect for Sam because he was in his early 40s when I first met him, working for me for $8 an hour in a very labor-intensive job, like a 22-year-old guy. But he was working, and he was trying to get his life straight. And one night we had some machinery breakdown, and he stayed the entire weekend. to help me get the machinery going so we could run Monday.

And this was back when I had no money at all. First year in business, very tenuous. I could not run. Also couldn't pay him overtime, and he did it for nothing because he was buying into the idea that if we built this business, maybe he has a place on it. Loved Sam. Miss Sam today.

At any rate, it's impossible to spend 48 hours with somebody in Greece and dirt and soot and not talk. And so I talked about my background. He talked about his. And one of the things I found out is that he had a girlfriend who had two children, who he loved, and the children he'd taken on as a father and was really working hard to figure it all out.

And I started in on my kids need an organic family conversation. with Sam. My high and mighty, all-knowing, I have the cultural answer for everything, very condescending conversation that was extraordinarily well-intentioned on my part, but I had no idea what that I was talking about. And when pressing him on why he wouldn't go ahead and just marry the woman that he professes to love and make him, maybe adopt or at least be a steady father figure for those children and create an organic home so those children would see what that looks like to break this cycle of single parenthood issues that plague our inner cities. Why in the hell? He just wouldn't man up and do the right thing. It was then that I learned that although his wife worked 40 hours a week as a maid for a

hotel chain. It wasn't enough to pay all her bills, and she needed some, I think it's Section 8, or I don't remember the words, but she got some assistance for housing, and she got some food assistance for her children, even though she worked 40 hours a week. This is not, this is not the quote, welfare queen story that we heard during the Reagan years, right? This is a working woman full-time, raising her two children, keeping a roof over their head, but, couldn't make enough money and provide food for children a roof overhead. And I said, well, Sam, y'all combine your incomes, two can live cheaper than one. And I went into that trope, at which point he finally looked at me.

He said, Bill, you don't understand. If I marry her, the government assistant stops. And he looked at me and he said, so on the one hand, you and the government tells us that the best thing for our children is to have an organic household and be married. And we don't disagree. But on the other hand, they disincentivize the very thing they say we should be doing or incentivize us to not do the very thing we should be doing. And he looked me dead in the eyes and he said,

what the hell would you do? Get married and have your children starve. It was then that I understood what the dangers of even well-intentioned top-down policy is. Yeah, I had a similar experience actually reading a book, which is not a known, well-known book, but it's by a man named Maricio Miller. It's called The Alternative. It's pretty radical, but it had the same profound impact on me. It was like everything I know is wrong. That's how I felt.

Yeah. I also felt undressed by this man that worked for me. And rightly so. He was respectful, but he looked me dead in the eyes and tight lips said, basically, get off your high horse. You don't know what the hell you're talking about. And you know why? Because I never asked. I told.

Yeah. So it's interesting when you talk about your time I stand together and the top down. verse bottom-up things, and it's important to me that our listeners hear. The true answers don't come from an ivory tower with somebody spouting policy because of all the things they learned in academia. It happens when you actually ask the very people you need to serve. What do you need? That was the theme of this book, The Alternative, and I'll just share very quickly, because I don't even know if it's on Amazon. It's that kind of rare of a book. It's not a bestseller. but it had a profound impact on me.

Maricio Miller used to run a poverty program in California. And his name is Maricio Miller. Okay. And at one point, he was, like, invited by President Bill Clinton to sit in the box during, like, the state of the union address. And that's how the book starts. And he's sitting there, and he's getting all these accolades about the program he started in California.

And he's thinking to himself, I would never send my mother to this program that I started. His mother grew up in poverty, and he's feeling all this shame, like, I'm a fraud. I have this shiny program, but I would never send my own mother there. And the entire book goes through his realization that the key to helping people like his mother was listening to her, was empowering her, was getting out of the way. And so the alternative is about this radical idea of not intervening. So he started pioneering like direct cash assistance programs where you give and you observe and you learn and you get out of the way.

And actually it was so radical too in reading the book is like even in his organization that he built after this realization of like top down versus bottom up, his team wasn't able to intervene to help the people that they were working with. So a good example in the book was very extreme. It's like they're working with someone in poverty who does not speak English. And somebody's like, well, I just can translate that letter for that person. I'm happy to do it. And he's like, no. Because if you do that, they're not going to build the community and connection

to build the long term, to fill the long term need of their lack of understanding English. Like they need to figure it out. You helping actually hurts them. And so it was this like radical idea of like stop helping, stop intervening, listen, empower, and get out of the way, give them agency. And I remember at the time we were thinking about how we could build stand together in our working communities. And that book had a profound impact on us. So it was like, how do we not helicopter and how do we empower? How do we support, you know, from the bottom up?

because ultimately, if you're not giving them the opportunity to figure it out, you're hamstringing them. And it actually goes to my brother's story. Like, he applied on his own to art lifting. My knee-jerk reaction was, no, I should have helped you with your application. I could have supported you. He needed that win. He needed to figure it out.

That was a skill that helped him long term. But, like, those were stepstones. Like, don't take away the stepstones. It dawns on me as I'm listening to you. that is the precipice of the very thing that becomes institutionalization. It is. Yeah. When you tell people to stand here, line up here, go get this, go get that.

Eventually, the government becomes the biggest paternalist on the face of the planet. So there's your experience at stand together professionally. As you're evolving, understanding of how you think things did work. And in your personal experience with your brother, we often say on the show that amazing things happen when passion and opportunity collide. And it feels like there's a collision starting to take place for you. Passion about folks who suffer from the same deals that your brother suffers from.

And obviously, the opportunity you're starting to see it stand together. So I'm sure Procure Impact has morphed, but I'm collecting that, or I'm arriving, and maybe inaccurately, you can tell me. But somewhere at the Stand Together Brother thing, this Pure Impact became a concept. Yeah, there's actually a project I worked on at Stand Together that was really bringing it to life. So my brother had this transformational purchase, changed his life, and I'm thinking, how do you scale that? At the time, at Stand Together, I was given the project of building out our office space. Totally random. But I had to literally work with architects and designers to think through the physical office.

And we care at Stand Together. We were working on projects that helped people break the cycle of poverty. and I thought, well, why not actually do that in how we're building space? What I actually do what we say? Yeah, why not actually put into practice what we're preaching around this joint? Yeah, but in this project of our office, which is such a small thing, right? But what I realized is like by building a space, could we purchase products for our office space that actually helped people transform their lives and get out of poverty?

And we started building up lists of enterprises that made products that helped survivors of trafficking or that helped people coming out of incarceration or snack products that supported individuals with disabilities. And I had never thought of these organizations as suppliers. We were thinking of them as entities we would invest in philanthropically, right, to help them through the programmatic ways they were supporting the populations they serve. And when I met with architects and designers, they had never thought of them as suppliers either. So we were building out the office space, and every piece in the office had intention and purpose. I mean, down to the coasters that were made in Appalachia by people in poverty. I got to say, this little farm lavender soap is amazing. It smells awesome.

What? Is it still in the office? Yeah, yeah. Are you actually going to invoke lavender soap into our conversation? It smells so good when I use it. Tennessee-based, too. Who's it? The lavender soap made by? So it's made by Thistle Farms.

They're based in Nashville. They support survivors of trafficking and addiction. Are you kidding? They support them with housing for two years. The job is part of the transformation process to help the women heal. And so you're like the soap at stand-together is coming from these folks rather than Dove. Exactly. That was literally the idea.

Just a corporate deal. Nothing wrong with Dove. Gosh, they may be. We're going to go to commercial. break and it's probably going to be Dove and we're probably going to lose that sponsor right now. Nothing wrong with Dove, but the point is you decided to take that job of making the office space to use intentionality about buying everything you could, spending those dollars with organizations that had some social purpose.

That's it, right? It was a simple concept, but what I realized is there were. wasn't an easy way to execute the strategy. No one had ever aggregated product-based enterprises that were helping people transform their lives. They were all fragmented, you know, in different communities. And so this was almost like the first manifestation of what became Procure Impact before I knew I was going to become an entrepreneur. But we had conference tables made by carpenters that had experienced homelessness, high-end beautiful conference tables.

We had coffee, we had snacks. I mean, it was the whole thing. So when we did the ribbon cutting... You know, we have one of those in Memphis. Oh, yeah. It's this one B, I think, is the name of it? No. Thistle and B is a...

And the tea company here. Yeah, no. Who... Oh, Jess and... Oh, Ben-in-in-Wing. They started a woodworking shop. Yeah. And people who had struggled with

both addiction and homelessness, and they make cutting boards. Send him my way. I will introduce you when we're done. Because he is amazing. Yeah, and the thing that was so exciting about it. Ben and Jess Owen, yeah, sorry. No, no, it's great. We want to be able to identify more suppliers we can work with in that way.

But when we did the ribbon cutting for the space, what was also so magical about it, I remember because it was Martin Luther King weekend, our team members, were walking around the space and there were plaques that talked about the impact of each product. And it actually set the stage for our culture in terms of like opening people up, making people think more intentionally, connecting to the stories of the products. We would open meetings and people would pet the tables and like explain. Yeah. They would explain where they came from. They were so proud of the tables.

They were gorgeous tables. And so that's when I started to realize like, oh, wait a second. this is a business idea. Like the architects and designers I was working with had no concept of these suppliers and the opportunity to be that bridge and to actually help their clients or help the corporations they're working for

leverage their purchasing power to create impact. And what's so interesting to me is when you think about corporations and they're working communities, they often think about it as like, here's my business, And here's my philanthropy or my corporate social responsibility. But they don't realize that their biggest levers for sustainable change are the people they hire and the products they purchase, which are much more sustainable than philanthropy alone.

Like philanthropy is great because it can help people stabilize and it's important. But when you buy something and bring it into your supply chain, it's creating that repeatable, sustainable revenue that actually... sustainable parts. So many philanthropic endeavors are only as good as the people who keep empty in their pockets every year to provide whatever works being done. But this can help philanthropy sustain itself. It gives it philanthropy the opportunity to be targeted for supportive services, stabilization, et cetera.

And that enduring revenue that companies get through personal. purchases that corporations make become the foundation for helping them impact more lives. We'll be right back. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, texts, emails,

even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS

and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. A nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppie. Lucy Letby has been found guilty.

But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt the case of Lucy Lettby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived in, to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpbright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun. Tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Termine. Hudson as the perpetrator. Germain was sentenced to 99 years.

I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth, until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the IHeart Radio Act.

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult?

NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all?

NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And so I was super intrigued by this idea. And really, you stumbled over it because you put together the office. But you had the background of the top-down, bottom-up thing and your brother. And so it's almost this kaleidoscope of things kind of coming into focus, it feels like. It was surreal, actually.

I remember writing a two-pager about social. impact procurement on a plane that sat there for a little while. Just in your own brain. Just kind of thinking about it, right? How long did I sit there? Yeah. I mean, it was a couple, it was several years before I actually had the courage to start to like test it out beyond that office space project.

Because I was, I was working in philanthropy, so I was doing good. But I wasn't really thinking about betting on myself, taking a leap, leaving safety and security to build. Yeah, all that stuff's scary as hell. It's very, I mean, I have two little kids at this. the time. So it was very like, that's something you do later, right? But it was nagging at me. I also realized that I knew the suppliers. I had this passion because of my personal lived experience. Like, I was equipped to do it. And I started thinking about what industries

buy a lot of stuff. What would create more sustainable revenue for these suppliers that are working with our most vulnerable and marginalized populations? And I just kept imagining mini bars, like hotel consumption of product. I had no hospitality background at the time. And yet, because of my philanthropic connections, I knew a couple of owners of hotels. And these were owners of hotels who deeply care about their community and were investing philanthropically. And I approached them and said, hey, would you pilot with me? I don't really know what this is going to turn into, but what about this? Well, could we? use your hotel and your purchasing power as a way to create the impact you're trying to create

in communities, are there products that would fit your needs? And it started with a handful of hotels that we were working with. First products. I've been dying to ask this. First products. Yeah. So this a farm says that... No. Absolutely. So soap, I wouldn't expect. No, absolutely. Soap candles. So think about a hotel. A hotel's almost like a microcosm of our, like, multiple businesses. You have spas, you have restaurants, you have retail, you have snacks, you have food and beverage. So there's quite a lot of consumption happening in hotels. And hotels are trying to create unique guest experiences, not just kind of the cookie cutter same same. Like they want hotels to be a destination where you're able to align to your purpose, your why, get respite, relaxation.

They're places of belonging, right? They welcome people from all over the world. And I really, I was like, okay, if you're in the mini bar, you're in every room, you know, there's consumption happening. These are repeat orders. If you're in their retail store, if you're their amenity program. And so we went to Pacific Hospitality Group, which is our first partner, literally had nobody. I had no staff. I didn't have a, I didn't have a big vision for what it was going to happen. I just said, you in a napkin. It was me in a napkin. And I asked them to pilot with me, and they said, yes. And that pilot turned into. to, you know, fast forward to now. We have 2,500 hotels.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold it. What did you, what did they buy the first time? Oh, buying. Okay, snacks for their retail store, candy, pretzels. What snacks? Who makes snacks? So, they're, their companies like the Women's Bean Project. So the Women's Bean Project is in Denver. They work with women coming out of incarceration, women in recovery. Women have experienced homelessness. They have raspberry gummy fish, jelly beans, plantain ships, trail mix. They make it. They do.

For real? Okay, so where would they sell these before you came along? A lot of these groups had partnerships in some local grocery, local boutiques. Would they sell enough product to actually be profitable enough to sustain themselves? So sometimes that's the goal. Sometimes they have philanthropy to pay for the kind of like deep case work, case management work that they have to do with the populations they serve. So oftentimes it's a blended model where they have like some philanthropy and they're making revenue. through the sale of their products.

Another good example, Cameron's chocolates is in Fairfax, Virginia, just like 15 minutes from my house. I didn't know they existed until I started this company, which is crazy. They work with individuals with disabilities, and they make high-end Belgian truffles and chocolates and baked goods. And these are some of the best chocolates. So where do they go into the hotels now? If you imagine, like, the chocolate on the pillow from back in the day, right?

Yeah, it's like a wealthy... There's still hotels that do that. Yeah. It is the well-com. gift you get when you come in. Several of our hotels have four-piece chocolates that tell the camera's story. I'm time stamping. I get so much trouble with this producer guy. You chased up too many squirrels in the first part of the interview? I don't hear. It's my show. I'm allowed to do it. And don't edit this out either. Yesterday, we interviewed an organization in McKinney, Texas,

that the restaurant is run, 70 employees or so, is run 90% of the employees are individuals that suffer intellectual disabilities. Some folks with downs, some folks on the spectrum, whatever. She brought me a box of cookies that her people made. Fantastic. Lisa and I almost got sick on them last night. Yeah.

Do you know Hugs Kappa? Cafe? Oh, yeah. You know them? We're not working with them yet, but I know of them. They should make check-in cookies wrapped in little bags for the hotels. So there are thousands of those types of groups all over the country. And the point is, but how do people even really know about them?

Because typically they're selling their stuff probably at, I don't want to besmirch what they're doing, but they're probably selling them locally. and they're probably at farmers markets or whatever, but how do you like scale it? Yep. And what you're doing is you're challenging, this is all just coming to me now, I'm starting to understand what you do, you're challenging large corporations

that have true buying power to be intentional about trying to direct their purchases. Yep. As long as it's, I mean, profits are a necessary measure of any business success. So these hotels can't just go pay extra money. But if it can be reasonably competitive price-wise, why not put your buying power at places that intentionally help society?

Exactly. And they have to perform well. So these have to be amazing cookies. They have to, right? They're amazing cookies. And our products do outperform the typical snack or typical cookie. and they have a story that helps connect the guests to their community and inspire them and allow them to take care. Do they tell the guests the story?

Because I got to believe then the guest is like, oh, and with that number of scale of people coming in, that's got to also heighten the awareness of, one, the good that the hotel or the corporation is doing, and two, the actual people doing the work. Yep. We create the storytelling assets for the hotels. You do. We do. So we make it super easy for them to engage with their guests and allow them to create that meaningful moment upon check-in or when they enter their room.

And when I mentioned Camerons, Cameron's was never in a hotel before they came on our platform. We have a B-to-B marketplace, like an actual e-commerce platform that it makes it really easy for hotels to buy from us. I walked into that chocolate shop one day in a baseball hat and just said, hey, I have this vision. Would you guys want to partner with us very early on? they're in over 200 hotels. They are now shifting a lot of their production to wholesale because it's allowing them to hire more people. I have met families and individuals who've been impacted by jobs that didn't exist before the purchases from our platform came to Camerons. When did this concept, because you asked Pacific somebody,

Pacific Hospitality Group, to kind of hang out with you, but you're still working. I mean, this is not your thing yet, right? No, it took me. you go, all in. This might work, and I'm going to toss in, quit my job, and tell my little kids we may starve a little while while I do this. Yes. And to add to that, my husband also works for Procure Impact.

So we, like, push the chips on the table. Frankly? Yes, he does. You both did. We too. What did he do before this? He was working for S&P. He was in, like, finance and capital markets.

So you both have really good jobs. We have good jobs. Yes. You have good jobs. You're living in outside D.C. Totally irrational. You kind of got the Norman Rockwell, two kids? Two kids, yeah.

I mean, you're good. Yes. Your brother's good. Yes. So you decide to screw your life up and just say that. We're going to be entrepreneurs. Yeah, you know, I think there's this feeling like safety and security. You know, I was always pursuing that as like a part of my growth path.

It's like, I'm going to get a good job and I'm going to stick with it. And then when my kids graduate college. you're supposed to do. I will go do the fun things. But I realized I only have X amount of working years left, right? I only have a certain amount of time to be able to creatively build. And I was like, why not bet on myself, right? I think being around a lot of change makers in philanthropy

made me realize that, like, what sets them apart from everybody else is they got in the arena. Like, they tried. Worst case scenario, I fail and I learn a lot. But there wasn't, it was really just a question of, do I have what it takes? to get in the arena. And then once I got in the arena, I was like, there's no going back. Like, I am a builder. Can you recite the man in the arena for us? Yeah. I mean, it is life-giving to be able to see, to bring something to life and to be able to see it grow and to impact lives. Like, I have the best job in the world. Like, we create demand for

chocolates that allow people on wait lists to get access to jobs who wouldn't otherwise have access to that kind of work. So I pinch myself every day. day. I have to ask you, do you have a vendor? I'm going to call the people, I would think, is that what you call them? Yeah, it's a supplier vendor. Do you have a vendor that are artists? We do. So we do work with art lifting. We have had hotels by art lifting art for their lobbies. That is so cool. Art wrapped no books. I mean, just tailoring back to your brother. Well, to bring that home, I was at an event. And my team knew this was going to happen. I didn't know this was going to happen. But I was speaking at a hospitality conference.

and I get into my room and there's like a setup, you know, with a couple of in-room amenities for the participants, including art-wrapped notebooks with the story of the artist inside. And I walk in and it's one of my brother's art pieces. Are you kidding? No, I was sobbing. You had to have just been a ball of mush. Yeah, I FaceTimed him. Yeah, it was a whole thing.

But it was a very full-circle moment. I was like, this was the dream to be able to actually help other people and scale the opportunity for more people. But I want to share a quick story to bring to life the scale of the opportunity here. Last year, we heard that Marriott

that has like this glamping brand called Postcard Cabins. They're like pods in the woods. They were not happy with their smores kit. Now this is so specific, but you're going camping and they have smores kit

as an amenity when you arrive. The marshmallows weren't melting. It was just kind of a bad smores kit. So. I didn't even know there was a smoreskid. Yeah. Yeah. Good, bad.

And how hard is a smore? We're talking about a graham cracker, a hersey bar, and a marshal. I mean, you would think, right? But we seize this opportunity to pitch this brand on an elevated smore using stoop waffles instead of graham crackers. And so do you know what a stroop waffle is? It's like two waffles with a caramel center. Oh, those things are good. You get them on airplanes sometimes.

Yes. So these are handmade. Actually, they're like Swedish or something. They are Swedish. Overseas airplanes instead of peanuts. Get those things out. Exactly. I think it's in Norway or Air France.

No, I'm serious. I'm Adam. I know what you're talking about. 100%. So we have a supplier that employs resettled refugee women, and they make strup waffles. And we went to them and we said, hey, could we scale a smores kit using your stoop waffles?

Now, postcard cabins is nationwide. This was a million dollars. opportunity. And we won that contract for these smores kits with postcard cabins. Immediately, five women got jobs who were on a wait list, who wouldn't have otherwise had access to that work. They get supportive services like access to English classes. They get like a whole community of support around them. And they're often coming from war-torn countries, right, with nothing, except their family. And what's so awesome about this story is the smores kits have gone viral. on Instagram and TikTok

because people walk into these cabins and they're like mind-blown, a stoop-waffle smore, different than your average smore, elevated, ooey-gouy, and it's changing lives, right? And so for us, it shows, like, the commercial success isn't a compromise. Like, if you're purchasing with intention

and you're purchasing high-quality cookies from a group like Hugs Cafe, it is a win-win for the brand and for the customer. It's a win-win for society. There isn't a compromise in that equation. And so what we're trying to demonstrate is by shifting a percentage of your purchase to products on our platform that are uplifting communities, changing lives, you have this trickle-down effect into the communities. You're creating sustainable revenue. You're uplifting people that wouldn't otherwise have access to that work. And they're amazing products. And so it's a superior experience for the guest.

And so that's what we've just been doing all across the board. But the Smoor's Kid is a really good of how scale can happen. When did you take the plunge? What year? So, Procure Impact's been around three and a half years. I went full time two and a half years ago. Yeah. Yeah.

She's got a Marriott contract. Come on. Well, just hang on. You really took the plunge. I thought we were talking about five, ten years. Yeah. It's been a bit of a rocket ship in that when we identified this market gap, that we could be the glue and the bridge.

that made it easy for people to purchase these products. We had to build a tech platform. That was not in the bingo card either. Had never done that before. It's also not inexpensive, is it? No, we actually ended up going to the market, got some investors who were deeply vision and values aligned in what we were doing.

And I found co-founders to support me. One has 20 years experience in hospitality. The other actually worked at Stand Together with me. And so that hospitality experience, we were able to go to management companies, brand executives, and essentially get the right to sell and the ability to galvanize their hotels towards action. Yeah, knocking down that door is probably pretty tough.

Those are some big companies. It is tough. But for us, that's really why individual suppliers, like it's impossible for them to break down those doors. No way. Can't do it. It's too complicated. The decision making is too fragmented.

Even as big as my company is, the prospect of selling Home Depot is just, Two Arjus, I don't even try. The layers you have to get through and to get into a company like that. Or two, for instance, Alex has said it twice now. I'll tee it up for you. Mary Young. Yeah.

And we have a partnership with Hilton. We're working with all the four major brands. And to get... How did you get there? Grinding it out. I mean, truly. But also, you know, all of us, I said this sort of at the beginning. One in six families has a story like me and my brother, right?

when we talk about what we do, I cannot tell you how many times there's a person across the table that has a similar story. A mentor of mine said once to me to never, when I was a very young man, I was a sea level guy on another business for a little company. He said, just to always remember an organization or corporation will never be loyal. it's the human being behind the plaque that you build your loyalty with. Likewise, breaking into an organization often is just finding that right one person who your story resonates with, and then all the rest of that corporate crap gets out of the way. And I hear you saying, and that's how we approach sales of my business. But I hear you saying it's almost invariable that when you tell your story, there's not somebody inside that organization that feels that story because they've dealt with the similar issue with someone in their family.

It is, I mean, we give speeches at hospitality conferences and talk about our why and give the case studies. And there's usually a line of people that are waiting to share their story with me. It almost feels like ministry in that moment. Like, it's very different. At the top, you said one of six families experienced difficulties in us. 29 million Americans are in recovery. Odds are. There's plenty of people in that room when you're presenting that.

Yeah, I mean, example, we were doing a tasting with the head of food and beverage for IHG. And he was actually tasting Cameron's chocolates to bring it full circle to Cameron's. And he is blown away. And he's like, I have to get on the phone with the founder. and tell them how amazing these chocolates are. So we set up this call. We have no idea other than he wants to talk to them and share his positive feedback.

But in the call, he says, you know, I grew up with dyslexia and I see myself through the people who make these chocolates. And I mean, those types of human moments that happen to us in our business is pretty frequent. You know, parents of children who have disabilities, People who express, like, their openness around, like, their recovery journey. And hospitality as an industry is that way.

Like, a lot of people started as dishwashers and become general managers and become, you know, C-suite executives and hospitality. It's an industry that provides that on-ramp. So the level of passion that we tapped into, we don't sponsor. We don't do ads. We don't actually have the traditional marketing sales strategies. It's been very direct referral and person to person. We'll be right back. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world.

But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats. texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn.

No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. A nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppie.

Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it, to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong.

Listen to Doubt the case of Lucy Letby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpbright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun. Tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Tremaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Germain was sentenced to 99 years.

I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth, until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to burden of guilt, Season 2 on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.

NLP, aka Neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work.

This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So two and a half years later. Yeah. How many vendors or suppliers? What word am I supposed to use there? I use supplier. Okay.

Yeah. How many suppliers do you represent? We have over 100, and we have 200 to 300 prospects right now that we're actually evaluating. And we exclusively work with mission-driven brands. And so from a supplier-fit perspective, and we exclusively work with social enterprises that employ people who have barriers to work, products that have charitable contributions tied to them, where they're uplifting communities in their backyard. And we've started to also onboard local brands, independent brands, that wouldn't otherwise get access to the market for hotels that are looking for local. And it's all

about economic mobility. And you say you, as in your organization, your impact, you guys make it easy for the customer to tell the story about the products you're buying. So when you bring on a new vendor, you also have to cultivate the story. That's right. We're building out shelf talkers, merchandising, signage. We have video assets that show the products being made. We're doing blog stories. We're constantly giving. You're branding. We are. And it's creating an experience on site at the hotel. So you're grab and go snacks marketplace. You could have the same, same products you see at the grocery store or convenience store. Or you can create a guest experience through those shelves. And so we're like taking the shelf. We're building the retail experience

for the hotels, which for them, it's taking the birdie. enough of them to coming up with the ideas and curating the collections. For the suppliers, it's giving them repeatable purchases that help them hire more people. And you have this at Dulles Airport, too, right? We do. We have a 10-foot wall at Dulles Airport. There's probably about 15 suppliers. We're actually going into two other airports this year. That was my next question. How many ongoing, like, I guess, customers do you have right now? Thousands, yeah. Thousands?

Yeah. How really was expecting 50? No, no, I mean... When you say thousands, do you mean thousand different hotels or thousands? Yeah, because we work with management companies, and nobody really knows this. They think like Hilton and Marriott,

and we do partner with the brands, but they're franchises. Right. So they license and then monitor and have compliance standards around the license for the brand. The management companies are these companies that actually operate the hotel. There are customers.

They're the ones who make a purchasing decision. So when you say you're with Hilton, some family-owned management company owns eight hotels that are branded under Hilton. And they use the Hilton name and they get direction from Hilton, but they're running their own. So those eight hotels may not have your products where these other eight Hilton hotels do. And so when you say thousands, you're getting all of these different entities under these big marketing brand names.

Yes. And for the brands, if you want to become like the double tree cookie, like our smores kit, that is a brand level decision because it's essentially a mandate across the brand. So we're pursuing all those things to try to get leverage. But the management companies are really our customers. And we have 29 management companies we work with. That's unbelievable. Some of them have.

In only two and a half years. It's been three and a half, but we went full time. And our first platform, like the tech, launched two and a half years ago. So that's been like the scale. I mean, that's really phenomenal. So what about now my mind's running. Now my business mind thing is we've talked a lot about foods. Yeah.

There are places who make furniture. There are people who make mirrors. There are people who do toiletries. There's all kinds of vendors out there that are purpose-driven in terms of who they employ. I mean, honestly, this thing has no bounds. When I first started, I was like, anyone can buy from us. It was kind of like, if you have four walls, you can buy from us, right? Because my office-based example was a great.

case study for anyone who's purchasing can purchase the intention. And that is the scale pathway. We're starting with travel and tourism, hospitality, and adjacent industries first, because the storytelling around it is actually a differentiation opportunity, and it creates brand loyalty, it creates unique guest experiences, it increases guest satisfaction, and their consumption's really high. But essentially, we're testing in spas, we're testing in airports. We're testing in convenience stores within hotels. And so the opportunity for us to expand is pretty substantial with the same products that we're currently using. But yeah, we have hotels buying furniture from us. The hotel Emmeline bought a coffee table and stools, you know, and supported

people coming out of incarceration. We have spas that purchase candles and wellness amenities like thistle farms products. We do a lot in like textiles too. Like, handbags. I was wondering about textile. That was my next question. It was textiles. Yeah. We have an amazing group that I'm actually joining the board. My first board meeting is this month, but Unshattered works with women in recovery, and they upcycle

textiles and make handbags. So they've actually partnered with JetBlue, and they have the seats, the seat covers, and they make handbags out of that. So it's a sustainability strategy, but it's creating skill development for women in recovery. It's phenomenal. It is such a cool.

Is anybody else doing anything like this? No. And I think that, you know, it's hard. It's hard to be working with two different sides of a marketplace. Like our customers are the supplier and the buyer. Yeah, you're a broker. You're in the middle. It's very hard.

You've got to keep two people happy. Yeah, it's very hard to penetrate hospitality. Like our competitive mode is deep because this is hard. But, you know, when I think about the scale of impact, Like oftentimes, again, in my old hat with philanthropy, you'd invest in a model, right, in a community to help it grow in scale. But without distribution, without the infrastructure, without the demand, you're kind of limited in the scale potential. You know, we're becoming 20, 30 percent of people's revenue and climbing. And so that enables them to diversify away from philanthropy, allows them to hire more people.

It's a market-based approach to scale. and so I get super excited about like the platform play, the systemic change that we can create. I would think grocery stores, large chain grocery stores would be a possible place. They're trying to curate local. They're trying to curate different, you know, different products. Absolutely. And Whole Foods, I would say, pioneered some of this like local, independent brands as a grocery chain. But yeah, airports.

I mean, on the one hand, in two and a half years, it's phenomenal how far you've come. On the other hand, as I listen to you, you're only scratching the surface. Yes, this is why my hair is going great. Yes. You know, if you just think about hospitality alone, like the two largest procurement companies in hospitality are $15 billion and $14 billion. So we're talking a lot of resources that can help a lot of people just by shifting a small percentage. I get jazzed about the business side of it, just thinking about it. But I think I need to bring us back to the impact part.

Yeah. Your suppliers and employees have been challenged by some disincentives to work so that we remind ourselves that the two and a half years is phenomenal. Your passion started with you finding out that your brother was able to deal with himself when he found value. Yeah. and incentive. And that's what changed his life, despite all the help you try to get. And then your time is staying together, really cultivating your full belief in bottom-up answers.

And then you paired them together for this, but then the reality is still there that, like I said, some of your suppliers and employees have been challenged by some distance in its work. I think it's important. Our audience understands what that is, what that looks like. Yeah, I mean, these are often people. These are often people left out of the workforce. And by demonstrating what's possible through these models that are supportive and inclusive and driving profit and scale, those are the lessons all corporations can learn from.

You know, when I mentioned that the levers corporations have are the people they hire and the things they purchase, even though this isn't explicitly our mission, we've always said that our products are a Trojan horse. in getting people to think differently about the people behind the products. And if we can get them to think differently about the people behind the products, why not hire the people that are making these products?

Why not give them more opportunities and on-ramps to employment? We actually had a hotel recently reach out to us and ask the question. It said, hey, do you have groups in the area that we could work with as an employment on-ramp? And I was like, it's already happening, right? We're already getting them to think differently

about these levers and the value that these individuals, can create. And to give you a sense of an example of why these groups are able to support people, enabling them to thrive, there's a popcorn company called Prospector popcorn. It was actually a movie theater. So they were a movie theater that employed individuals with disabilities for all aspects of the movie theater. And in their tiny little kitchen in the top floor, they were making popcorn. And they started making gourmet popcorn flavors like strawberry ice cream. Belgian coffee chocolate in this very small kitchen.

And they're in over 300 hotels through our platform. And as a side note, they actually... They were a movie theater, and now they're in over 300 hotels with their popcorn. That is so cool. Yeah, and they're one of our best sellers. And they actually just broke ground on a new popcorn facility, a 5,000 square foot facility that should actually... They should be moving into in the next couple weeks.

and it's this beautiful place that they'll be able to double the amount of people they're employing. I mean, it's an amazing story. And they employ people with intellectual disabilities. Intellectual disabilities across the spectrum of disabilities. But there's this gentleman that works there. They call them the prospects, all the people that work there, whose name is Dylan. And Dylan was bagging groceries before Prospector. And we did this interview with him, and he's like, it's bagging groceries, and I just wanted to learn.

and my boss wasn't very nice to me. And ever since he's been at Prospector, he's been able to grow. He's done the front of the house. He's done ticketing. He's done popcorn making. He's done marketing. He's been able to learn new skills. And very unprompted in this interview, he's like, and now I live on my own.

My parents still look out for me, but I live on my own. And I just want to keep learning. And these places of employment, like this popcorn company, all companies can learn from what Prospector is doing to create a supportive work environment that enables people to thrive. They have this special sauce. Like they're creating the environments that are empowering Dylan to grow and to be self-sufficient, more so than he ever was before, Prospector.

And so we're trying to help them scale their models. But, you know, when you think about the Trojan horse of getting people to think differently about the people behind the products and getting companies to think differently about how they treat people and how they support people in their own environments. Hopefully there'll be a lot of case studies that get more systemic change in companies across the country. It's not just companies, though. No, you're right. As I listen to you, I think about, and that guy over there gets so upset when I say anything that says politics, but this is not a political comment. It's just a

general comment involving politics, which is this. Sometimes somebody does something in politics or culture or society or with policy that pisses off enough people that they go have a boycott. And that is how the individual uses their dollar to oppose something they don't believe in. you're the antithesis of that. You're the positive version of that. And that certainly the companies and everything else, but we as individuals, I'm sitting here, I can't help but think.

We as individuals have a part to plan this. You're right. Everyone asks me, when are you going to launch the B to C version of your marketplace? So I want to buy it. No, it's true. Because if I as an individual, a post- something and decide not to spend my money with something because I oppose what they did.

I mean, for instance, Bud Light can teach a lot of people about not really understand their market and having a marketing campaign that could kill about 40% of their business, whether or not you agree with that whole thing. That happened. And the public boycotted a product because of a policy they didn't. And it changed that company. That's a negative version. But the point is, if the public understood and could use and choose to spend their dollars

where there was social impact that was positive, it can literally, the scale of that is phenomenal to me, is the thought. So while I'm sitting here listening to you, I can't help but wonder. Yeah. Do you have designs on just letting Joe Blow Bill here in Memphis be aware of these platforms so that I can spend my money in support of them? We are absolutely thinking about that. And part of what we do is introduce these brands to customers who then purchase from those brands. Right. And follow on. So we get stories like that all the time of people discovering Port City pretzels because they were in a hotel and then become. a customer of Port City Pretzel, like the consequence of that is creating more impact as well.

My wife buys Biscoff all the time. I fly Delta because we're Memphisans and Delta's here. All right, well, I love Biscop. Well, I would have never bought a Biscop had I never sat in Delta and enjoyed a Biscop. Yeah. Right. That's how it was introduced to me was my travel, which is hospitality and traveling hospitality and all that. I just can't help but think that as, this continues to grow as just the Joe Blow consumer starts seeing these products and understanding the social impact behind them, that then we can purchase those on our own to blow it up in a crazy way. Yeah, I mean, the movement building potential here is substantial.

It's phenomenal. Yeah, it is, and that's really the premise is like our dollar, where we put our dollar matters. And those small incremental changes actually have huge impact when you think about the collective purchasing that's happening across the country. And so, yeah, we want to be able to empower more customers to purchase products and be part of this broader movement. We're doing this in service of the hotels right now, but the peripheral effect or like the sort of halo effect of what we do in hotels is customers get more aware of these brands. Like, you're going to go home and talk about

Cameron's chocolates. If you received a small chocolate box with a card at the Sheridan, Philly City Center, which is where they give out Cameron's chocolates as an amenity because of the story behind it and the sort of like surprise of who made it. And then your inquiry about like, well, wait, I want to learn more. So we're creating those like moments all across, all across the country. But to Europe, not to dive into politics, but to maybe share what I see is really hopeful, We have some of the most conservative owners in hospitality and some that would maybe be more liberal. And what's been really amazing this past year is that, you know, we are a solution for both. Like, we are a market-based approach to uplifting communities.

We are an economic justice strategy. That is true. Those are both things that are true. And so I feel like we've been able to stay in a lane that is both a platform for social change for people who have different affinities or affiliations because it's all about job creation. It's all about uplifting communities. And all of us are neighbors. All of us have people in our lives who've had these barriers. And so despite a lot of the politics happening, we've been great.

growing with people who have very different points of view about the world, because we don't argue about these things. We all know how important dignified work is for our most vulnerable and marginalized populations. And so I feel like we've created a strategy that is inclusive rather than exclusive. We'll be right back. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, The FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him.

But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's the unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes

opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. A nurse who should have been in charge. of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppi.

Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt the case of Lucy Lettby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it. to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous. that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Tremaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Termaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real.

I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real?

If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.

NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, NLP might actually work. This is wild.

Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What you just said rings so true to me. One of the things I've said a lot, and it's, you know, Alex gets tired of me saying it probably, but I truly believe I don't care who or how you love. I don't care who or how you vote. I don't care which skin color is. I don't care who you worship or if you worship at all as it pertains to this. If you're doing something positive for another person in our society and you're doing it selfishly,

for the right reasons, regardless of all that other crap that seems to divide us these days, I can celebrate you. And even if I don't vote like you, look like you, love like you, or worship like you, if I'm doing something positive in my society that's helping somebody that you can see, if you have any empathy or care for society in the world, you can celebrate me. All those things seem to melt away and not matter near as much when you're having a positive impact on your culture and society. So when you say, I have customers who are liberal, have customers who are more conservative, I have everything, all of that doesn't seem to matter as much when they can use their dollars, run their business, do it efficiently and profitably, but also have some positive social impact. It's a win-win for everybody. And those things that we tend to divide ourselves by these days seem to melt.

Yeah, and I think, like I mentioned before, there's so many times when people are sharing what's on their heart in our work. I've never been in a role where people have been so vulnerable and so real and authentic and unmasked. It's almost like we're giving them permission by sharing what we do to be that way and to show up that way. And because we have a very tangible way, they can take action. And it's a low lift, right? It's a win-win, right? It's not changing behavior. It's kind of like helping them align behavior.

It's almost like a relief. A lot of people are like, I want to be part of this. There's not a lot of salesmanship in it because it's real jobs, real impact in communities. So, yeah, I mean, I'm excited about this movement we're building within hospitality and the broader implications of it because the monumental impact in the amount of dollars that can actually sustain and support people who are waiting for that opportunity, that's what gets me up every morning. Look, you still have a whole lot to look forward to.

Like I said, you're only two and a half years old in this thing, and there's no doubt. There's no way this thing doesn't just gym. But I do got to ask you, when you, or if you, because you should, take a deep breath and take a survey of the incredibly unique circumstances of your brother and what you did for a living and your two-pageer that you wrote on an airplane and how all of those kind of collided to bring this. I mean, pun intended, how they impacted to, it's almost like a big bang to kind of bring this together. when you take note or you survey all of those unique experiences that led to what it is right now and what it invariably is going to even morph into and become,

how do you feel when you take stock of that? This entire journey, there's no other explanation than God, and I'm a person of faith. My faith has been strengthened and deepened, actually, through a lot of the struggle that we went through as a family. I found my faith, I would say, later in life. I mean, I grew up Greek Orthodox and I was kissing icons, but I wasn't like deep into my faith until much, much later. And I cannot explain the people who have come into our lives at just the right time or, to your point, the stakeholder across the table who shares, oh, my mother happens to have been someone who worked with individuals with disabilities, I'm in,

What do we want to do? Like the amount of open doors that have happened and the inexplicable nature of how all this came together, I can only point to God. And I genuinely feel like a vessel for what is happening. Like I am of service to this broader vision. And I've learned so much. Like I've been stretched to the edge of my limits in just the short amount of time many times. I've done things I've never thought I could do or we would do. Last year, we were named to fast companies' most innovative companies list. We were a baby company. Mind-blowing things like that have happened where we're like, you know, it feels very surreal. But at the end of the day, the moments that really, like, ground me are when I'm told, you know, these two people were hired because

of the three hotels that started coffee programs with procure impact. We got a video from Butler Coffee. They employ individuals with disabilities actually interviewing two people who got hired because of our work. There's a lot of happy tears in our job. A lot of serotonin hits in the sense that it's very rare for someone to be able to tangibly point to the impact they're having every day and know it. So even though there's very tough days, like grinding it out, trying to figure out how to better unlock Hilton or Marriott or get the next. management company, we're constantly getting reminders of why it matters. And so it's like a true blessing. Who put you in charge of decorating the office at staying together?

Definitely, Brian Hooks, the chairman. And, yeah, I mean, that was... Brian Hooks gets a high five. Because if not for that, arbitrary little job that got tossed on you, you probably might have rolled your eyes as at first, like, oh, I get to do this. I mean, even with unique set of circumstances, just that opened a window for you. And, I mean, honestly, you're a set of one. Who else would have had all these different little things to collide to make this happen? It's incredible. It's such a cool story of how it all landed in your lap.

And you had the courage to go for it. I also, I have to say, I had like mentors around me who recognized the opportunity before even I did. Our chairman of our board, John Boaz, heard me kind of dreaming this up in, you know, weekly conversations, monthly conversations. And then one day said, I'd invest in that. And I genuinely didn't know his net worth. I didn't even know he would be open to investment. I had no anticipation. I didn't actually think I was asking him for anything.

So there was a lot of people who best. on me before I realized the opportunity that actually helped this come to fruition. Those are other little blessings of miracles. Miracles. One of my co-founder is Jen Collins. I literally reached out to her on LinkedIn. People assume we've like known each other for years and people are like, how did you meet? We're like, God, you know, I was looking for somebody in my network who had hospitality experience because I was like, this is really confusing. Like, who's the buyer? How do I figure out how to And I went on LinkedIn and we were directly connected, but we have thousands of connections, both of us, and we have no idea how we were originally connected.

And she didn't respond at first. And I was persistent. And then when she did respond, we met for coffee. And she will often say, like, she was trying to weasel her way to my advisory board. And I was trying to figure out a way to make this her thing. And within three months of being completely strangers, she was our president. So, I mean, all of the, I can't really explain any of this other than to say, like, we tapped into an existing need and hospitality and desire to really help people feel a sense of belonging in the places in which we visit. And we had supply to do that and the right talent.

And it's been a lot of learning. So it's not all like straight up, right? There's a lot of like ebbs and flows on the journey of entrepreneurship. but the conditions that were set around us, like I can't explain that. You've also had a little bit of a personal story yourself with addiction, right? And we've actually had the Phoenix, too, on the podcast.

I was on their board before. Really? Yeah, if you could talk a little bit about your personal story. Yeah. So to unpack that in sort of the journey, when my brother was found, that year kicked off like a series of pretty monumental changes in my life.

One, I started going to church. I baptized my kids that Easter. I mean, because there was really no way to describe the miracle of my brother getting found. And it set me on this sort of discovery journey of self. And so that first step was finding God again, finding my faith. re-igniting my faith, finding the right faith home for my family. And then that summer, I started to really look at like what was in my life that wasn't serving me and trying to shed the things that weren't serving me, being honest about the influences of things around me.

And I held up a mirror to my own use of alcohol as a way to kind of weather through life. I was definitely what you'd call like a functional addict. I had a great job. I was professionally successful. I was also in bands and using a lot of alcohol on the weekends. And there was this cycle that I was noticing in my own patterns of my own behavior. And so that same year, I got sober. And I've been sober for almost eight years now. And so that, And when I think about, again, the gift that was that incident with my brother and how it set me on this course professionally, it also set me on a course personally to really realign myself towards not only impact in my purpose and my why, but in my own day-to-day life with my family, kind of facing my own demons. What a story. do you allow yourself to be proud of it yet?

I mean, my... Proud of it all. I'm a doer, so I probably don't marinate in, like, the reflection enough, to be honest. I'll tell you, my co-founder, Jen says we're really bad about celebrating. So, like, because we're just like, all right, next thing, right? I mean, I feel like I was around a bunch of courageous people because my work at Stand Together, I was around a lot of leaders who had built organizations and it faced their d. So I think I was just sort of faced with this reality that I was hiding things from myself.

And so it prompted me to really self-examine. But I know, I think you've had the Phoenix on your show before Scott Strode. I was definitely influenced and impacted by Scott's story. and I remember listening to a lot of Phoenix participants on stages telling their story, and I was like, huh, it sounds a lot like my story. And that was part of the holding up a mirror. Website, how do people find out more about Procure Impact?

There could be somebody listening to us today that owns six hotels somewhere, a management company that wants to... And Lauren said she'll share her email too. Don't be she-ish. Yeah, that's fine. I'm going to get there, go. Yeah, I, you know, if you're a hotel, if you're a place of business that wants to purchase with intention, please reach out to us. Our website is procure impact, P-R-O-C-U-R-E-I-E-I-I-E-I-I-E-I-E-Pact.

And if you are also a supplier, if you are a nonprofit leader or a business that makes a product that is helping your community, helping create job opportunities or a local brand, we are actively looking for new suppliers. We have some really exciting news with some big brands that we'll be launching later this year, where we're looking for suppliers in regions across the country, and so we want to build out our supply to be able to handle the demand that we're expecting from these big brands who want to continue partnering with us and grow their partnership with us. So if you are an enterprise like Hugs Cafe, we don't have your cookies on our platform. I haven't tried them before. We would love to try them.

We would love to get them on our platform. We're looking for enterprises like that, and we have an application process, but anyone can contact me at Lauren, L-A-U-R-E-N at procure impact.us. Lauren, I'm going to tell you something. Your story is cool. And it just, oh, I sit in this chair and talk to people all the time for all these shows and all that. And it is, it's never lost on me how so very often sets of circumstances get stringed together to create something amazing. And I think we all have sets of circumstances in our lives that equip us and we all have passions in our lives that should drive us to get involved. The common denominator for those that do

and the common denominator for those that don't, to me, is courage. And you had the courage to step away from job. Your husband had a courage, step away from job, and jump in both feet and do it, and you're changing lives. You're changing narratives. You're telling stories. But ultimately, and you're making a living, but ultimately, as you're able to help these brands grow,

they're able to hire more people who they are seeking to serve. And so through your entrepreneurship and your work, ultimately, you're changing lives of the people that work for the vendors whose products you sell. And what a way to make a living. Yeah, it is a blessing. And I appreciate your kind words. It's been a journey.

But, you know, I think if people are. have you been gone around the first turn yet. When you say it's been a journey, listen, I started my business as 31. I'm 57 years old. Yeah. I made it through 9-11. I made it through the housing crisis 2006. I made it through the first round of tariffs.

I'm making it through this round of tariffs. And I always think to myself it's been a journey until I take survey of what's in front of my business. And I realize there's miles to go before we sleep. And you haven't even taken the first turn. in this race. I can't wait to see what happens for you the next five, ten years. I know it's going to be extraordinary.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming to Memphis and telling your story. I can't wait to watch. I really am. I'm going to keep up with you. And it's impossible

that we will not interview more people who I need to connect with you ultimately. And so I have this sneaky suspicion. We'll stay in touch. Yeah, I would love that. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for being here. And thank you for joining us this week.

If Lauren McCann has inspired you in general or better yet to take action by exploring Precure Impact's mission-driven products for your own company, recommending suppliers to them, or something else entirely, just let me know. I really do want to hear about it. You can write me anytime at bill at normalfokes.us. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and on social. Subscribe to the podcast, rate the podcast, review the podcast, join the army at normalfolks. Any and all of these things that will help us grow, an army of normal folks.

I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what you can. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security. one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families, Late one night, Bobby Gumpbright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real?

If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a lot? car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka Neurilingualistic Programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.