An Army of Normal Folks - Lisa Steven: The Former Teen Mom Empowering Teen Moms (Pt 2)

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Lisa Steven is a former teen mom who went on to build the only home for teen moms in the entire state of Colorado. Their resource center serves over 280 teen moms per year with free empowerment programming and early childhood education. And now 3 other communities have adopted their model!Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc. And send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you.

Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money.

And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History, about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight its way into the airline. The most Texas story ever. Listen to Business History on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream, and one of the most iconics it comes of all time? You get Desi Arness. On the podcast star in Desi Arness and Wilmer Valderrama, I'll take you in a journey to Desi's life,

how he redefined American television and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines, waiting for a face like hours on screen. Listen to starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Podcasters, it's time to get the recognition you deserve. The IHeart Podcast Awards are coming back in 2026. Got a mic? Then you've got a shot. Every year, we celebrate the most creative, compelling, and game-changing voices in podcasting.

Is that you? Submit now at iHeartPodcastawards.com for a chance to be honored on the biggest stage in the industry. Deadline December 7th. This is your chance. Let's celebrate the power of podcasting and your place in it. Enter now at iHeartPodcastawards.com. The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day.

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Hey, everybody. It's Bill Courtney with the Army and new folks. And we continue now with part two of our conversation with Lisa Stephen right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to

create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us.

I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to ShowGame on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History

about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business.

The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses,

along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the Electoral. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream, and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time? You get Desi Arness, a trailblazer, a businessman, a husband, and maybe most importantly, the first Latino to break primetime wide open. I'm Wilmer Valderrama, and yes, I grew up watching him, probably just like you and millions of others. But for me, I saw myself in his story. From cleaning canary cages to this night here in New York, it's a long ways.

On the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderama, I'll take you in a journey to Desi's life. The moments it has overlapped with mine, how he redefined American television and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines, waiting for a face like hours on screen. This is the story of how one man's spotlight lit the path for so many others

and how we carry his legacy today. Listen to starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama. That's part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Podcasters, it's time to get the recognition you deserve. The IHart Podcast Awards are coming back in 2026. Got a mic? Then you've got a shot. Every year, we celebrate the most creative, compelling, and game-changing voices in podcasting.

Is that you? Submit now at iHeartPodcastawards.com for a chance to be honored on the best. biggest stage in the industry. Deadline, December 7th. This is your chance. Let's celebrate the power of podcasting and your place in it. Enter now at iHeartpodcastawards.com. The forces shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know that you are interacting with them. And even harder to understand. Donald Trump's trade war, 2.0, is only accelerating the process of de-dollarization,

which in a way is jargon for people turning away from the dollar. That is where the big take from Bloomberg podcast comes in, to connect the dots. How unusual is a deal like this? Unprecedented. Every weekday afternoon, we dive deep into one big global business story. The biggest story of the reaction of the oil market to the conflict in the Middle East is one of what has not happened. Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing.

They are. Explain that. Why is that the case? And unpack what it means for you. Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You know, my mother-in-law was just so accepting of me and more than just accepting. Like, she wanted good for me. She wanted good things for me, for me, not just for, you know, her grandson and for her son. New wife, but she clearly just had empathy for you as a human being. I think she was... Another very important part. Yes. And she was acting out of her own faith.

I mean, I'm quite sure personally. She spent a lot of time talking to God about what in the heck, you know? But what she reflected out of her faith was, you got this, you can do this. I didn't have any friends at that point. Even Liz kind of, you know, when you become a teen mom, you either never had good friends in the first place or you lose your friends because you're in a different place in life than they are now. And come on, we're high schoolers. Yeah, we're high schoolers. And can you imagine the girls you were hanging out with when you got pregnant, the crap they were hearing at home from?

their parents about what a whore you were and all this other stuff and don't hang around bad people. I'm sure. I mean, I don't mean that bad, but I just, if you conceptualize how those conversations went, you're not to hang around her, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I'm sure. And, you know, I was. But that's also more of a stigma for the people you serve today that they deal with.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, so essentially, you know, she became my kind of my mom, really. I mean, she had a baby shower for me and called her friends and had her friends go over. It was so cute. So this group of women is known as the Fenton Street gang because they all lived on Fenton Street at one point in time. And they were the first group of women to start Mops, mothers of preschoolers. It's now called the Momco. But for many years was called Mops.

And they were the, they're kind of famous for being the group that started Mops International because Mops is now this international, huge, hundreds of thousands of moms groups. Go ahead. I know. I actually thought about it, too. Kate had done it in Oxford. Like, it's a big. Really? Yeah, it's a big. Well, we need to find out who the grand pooh bios that all started at the original.

She wrote a testimonial on your book that maybe Elisa would be a good interview. Yeah. It would be so good. So she was instrumental in helping you form a different view of what a family look like. Yeah. So when the first time Johnny goes to the bathroom on the potty, you know, we're potty training. Johnny is your son. I call her, I call my mom.

My mom's like, that's what they're supposed to do at this age. I call his mom, and she's like, come over, we're making a cake. Like, she celebrated everything. Like, to this day, like at Hope House, we have this enormous gong, like an orchestral gong. And every time one of the girls gets their GED or passes their driver's test or whatever the thing to celebrate, we make them ring the gong. They have to ring the gong. And they usually don't want to. Is your mom still around?

Yeah, she is. What's her name? Michelle Stephen. yeah Michelle you are a rock star and I know you're going to listen because if you make a cake for poopie when your daughter-in-law is on a podcast I know you're going to listen so Michelle I just want to tell you I would love to meet you one day what a phenomenal human being you are um you change lives so yes thank you now you're going to get me all choked up yes so she you know she then told me uh so by this time you know mops has been in existence for whatever 20 years at that point

she says you gotta go to you gotta go to mops i'm like i'm not going to mops like this is a bunch of women who are all married and like did it right you know like when you're a teen mom you face judgment everywhere you go that's what i was saying that's what i was trying to say a minute ago yeah like the stigma yep the stigma goes with you and so you didn't feel like again back to something else we said on the reset conversation you don't feel like yeah you look Even when you live in the crappiest houses ever, most all of them have a mirror. Yeah, that's true.

Good point. And you know what you're looking at. Maybe not everybody else does, what you do. Yeah. And oftentimes you don't like what you see. And when you don't like what you see or you feel beneath or whatever, it is so hard to feel like you could go to a place like mobs where these are organic families,

with perfect mommies and children. And when you're looking at the mirror, you're seeing a very broken person who did it all wrong. You just don't feel like you belong. Yeah, you don't feel like you belong. Exactly. To culture, to society, not just to Mops. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, to church, all the things. Yeah, oh, you're going to church. Yeah, yeah. And Mops was a Christian, is a Christian ministry. So it's like, oh, man, this is going to be. But my mother-in-law wanted me to go, and I would do anything she wanted me to do because I just wanted her to be proud of me. So it's important to understand all of that stuff again when we get to hope.

Yep, yep. So I go to my first Mops group, and, man, it was nothing like I thought it would be. They were super welcoming. All these moms were just, they treated me like any other mom, super non-judgmental, just and even gave me an opportunity to be a leader about a year in. They let me be the co-leader of the Mopets group, which is the little kids program. And I wanted to, like, ask if anybody wanted to see my ID. I'm like, I think I'm 20 at this point.

Like, are you sure? I've never been in a meeting. I've never seen an agenda. You got an early start in all this. I don't know if I'm... I mean, they saw something in me. I didn't see in me, I guess, to let me have a chance to be in leadership. And it was life-changing.

I came to know Christ in a whole different way. Came to know, you know, kind of what my mother-in-law knew about being a believer. Like, she was the one who said, you know, you can ask questions. like read the Bible and ask God questions. He doesn't mind if you ask him questions. There's a very different perspective of people like your mother-in-law. And I think the inaccurate portrayal of people like your mother-in-law are the biggest deterrent to people sitting on fences to faith. Oh, true. Yeah. And that perception is the little gray lay. gray-haired lady at church who's going to guilt you into reading the Bible.

Right. Or who's going to judge everything about you. Right. Yeah, unfortunately, probably a good bit of the judgment that comes to our teenage moms comes from the church. Yeah. I mean, if they have a church experience. And the point is, I think with, as we have had continually over the decades, reduced numbers of membership at church. going to church, engaging in church, I think the church itself has been one of the biggest problems.

I would agree, yeah. The organization, not the church of Christ, the organization of church. And it's because maybe many have forgotten that Christ was a revolutionary. Yeah. He surrounded themselves with stinky fishermen and hookers. Yeah, the least of these, for sure. And served them. Yeah.

So being Christ- And his mama was a teen mom. Right. She was 14. So being Christ-like is not sitting on a throne judging the crap out of everybody. It's actually engaging with the least of these, right? So when you say that your mother-in-law showed you what faith is supposed to look like and how it works, I feel that. Because I also have felt the judgmental part before.

Yeah, yeah, unfortunately, I mean, it's not the way to welcome people to church is to be judgmental. Yeah, she definitely was, she just loved me like Jesus loved me. And that is, you know, exactly what we try to do now today with all of the teen mamas we work with. Just love them like Jesus loves them and they don't need to know that. Take us to the Mops evolution. And I think a really interesting other thing that helped you to be. really effective is, didn't a doctor say your kid had scratches or something? Take us through that. I tell you, so that's just a great example or not very good example, actually, of the kind of judgment

that teen moms face. And why, myself, but also the moms I serve now, are so scared to ask for help. Because asking for help can be almost dangerous on some level. So I had taken my son to the clinic to get his shots and knew, away the minute the doctor, a lady doctor, came in and she just was, she sized Joe. She just sized me up. Yeah, you just knew. She's like, oh, man, she doesn't like me much. I think she might hate me, actually. I'm like, what the heck? I don't even do anything. So she tells me to, you know, undress Johnny and put them, set him on the little table. Well, it was a metal table and there were no coverings on it. So I got him undressed and he's poor kids sitting there six months old. I'm standing there holding him freezing. And she finally comes back in and, like,

gives him his shots. And about two weeks later, I was doing home daycare at the time, and I get a knock on the door. And this woman says, hey, I'm from social services, the child protective services, and we've had a claim about your son. So you need to go get him up from his nap, and I need to check him out because the doctor you saw. Just showed up unannounced. Totally unannounced.

Oh, that's scary. And I don't even think she was supposed to tell me this, actually. But she told me that the doctor had said that he had deep scratches on his back. And I'm like, what the hell? What kind of scratches? Deep scratches. Just like something, I don't even know. So I go get the kid out of his bed.

I'm like, oh, geez, this is going to go badly. Like you're waking a six-month-old up from a nap. Good thing, he just charmed the pants off that girl. He was in a happy mood. And, of course, he didn't have any marks on him. Yeah, he is a charmer. Charmed the pants right off. Go ahead.

That's good. I got that now. I got that out. Yeah, so, you know, it ended there. She left and she finished. her report or whatever, and I never heard anything more about it. But the fact was in that moment that as a teen mom, you're like, oh, my God, that woman could have just taken my son and walked out the door.

And I don't know that that's actually, maybe, she could have, she for sure could have had him removed if, you know, who knows, you know, babies bump into things when they're learning to crawl. What if he had a big bump on his head or something? It could have gotten worse than it did for sure. But for me, it was just this feeling of like total, you have no control, no agency, like no control of your own life, like other people have control of very important things in your life, like whether you get to parent. And so I get it when our moms today are like, I'm not

saying my kiddo needs extra services or he's got a developmental delay or speech delay, because someone's going to call CPS and I'm going to lose them. And I get that on a heart level. Been there. We'll be right back. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this,

from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game,

I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents in small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History, about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business.

Having a genius idea without a need, for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the

electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time? You get Desi Arnest,

a trailblazer, a businessman, a husband, and maybe most importantly, the first Latino to break prime time wide open. I'm Wilmer Valderrama, and yes, I grew up watching him and probably just like you and millions of others. But for me, I saw myself in his story. From plening canary cages to this night here in New York, it's a long ways. On the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderama,

I'll take you in a journey to Desi's life, the moments it has overlapped with mine, how he redefined American television, and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines, waiting for a face like hours on screen. This is the story of how one man's spotlight lit the path for so many others, and how we carry his legacy today. Listen to starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama.

That's part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Podcasters, it's time to get the recognition you deserve. The IHart Podcast Awards are coming back in 26. Got a mic? Then you've got a shot. Every year, we celebrate the most creative, compelling, and game-changing voices in podcasting. Is that you? Submit now at IHart Podcast Awards.

Awards.com for a chance to be honored on the biggest stage in the industry. Deadline December 7th. This is your chance. Let's celebrate the power of podcasting and your place in it. Enter now at iHeartpodcastawards.com. The forces shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know that you are interacting with them. And even harder to understand.

Donald Trump's trade war, 2.0. is only accelerating the process of de-dollarization, which in a way is jargon for people turning away from the dollar. That is where the big take from Bloomberg podcast comes in, to connect the dots. How unusual is a deal like this? Unprecedented. Every weekday afternoon, we dive deep into one big global business story. The biggest story of the reaction of the oil market to the conflict in the Middle East is one of what has not happened.

Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing. They are. Explain that. Why is that the case? And unpack what it means for you. Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So. all of this experience. And I think really you're deep into mops, right? Yeah, I'm deep into mops at this point. I've been volunteering with mops for years. My kids are all in school by now. How many kids now?

Three. So we have three kids. Johnny is at this time is. Yeah, at this point he was probably 10. And then our middle son was seven and our youngest was five. Nathan. Johnny, Nathan, seven, and five is. Heather.

Yeah. Yeah. So I get the last one in school. I'm like, yes, I'm going to go to college now. So something that's important to know is that even though I grew up in a chaotic household, I grew up in a household that experienced what's considered situational poverty, which I didn't know what any of that was until after we started Hope House. But I didn't.

Clearly the way you've described it, it had to have been. I mean, food stamps and red milk or whatever that. Yeah, my mom's milk, yeah. But it was, we grew up in a household with middle class values. So generational poverty and situational poverty are very different things. And I still grew up in a home where you were expected to go to college. Education was a norm. Saving money was a norm if you had it.

I grew up with what are considered middle class values. So your situational was your situation you were in poverty. But your attitude about it was not. It wasn't generations of. So both of my sets of grandparents. It was not systematic. Exactly. Exactly. It was not systematic. So even though my dad stumbled and fell, his parents were, you know, healthy financially. My mom's parents were healthy financially. They came from backgrounds of, you know, having financial health, not necessarily wealth, but financial health. There weren't generations of people who had lived on the system and experienced poverty, domestic violence and addiction and abuse and homelessness and the things that our moms deal with.

That's so interesting. I don't know that I've ever really thought about the difference in situational poverty and what you're calling generational or systematic poverty. Same thing. Same thing. Exactly. So you came from situational poverty, meaning the idea of, yay, they finally are all in school. I'm going to go to college.

To you was natural, even though you came up with nothing, that was still a hope, a dream, and an expectation. And something was attainable. Exactly. Yeah. By this point, one of my sisters is, an attorney and the other is a doctor. So this is the, yes. This is the expectation of, you know, you go to school. The three of you pretty strong. You all overcame, didn't you? We all overcame. Yes, we did. I'm proud of those girls. Doctor of what? She's a Mose surgeon, so she's a dermatologist.

And your other sister's an attorney. She lives in a small town in Colorado, so she practices several different kinds of law because they don't have a ton of attorneys. A lot of real estate. I mean, they overcame all the same. Absolutely. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. So again, the difference in generational and situational poverty is they still had at least a model and a vision and a dream of being able to get out of this mess. Yeah, exactly. We were raised in a way that the expectation was that you go to school. Yeah, and not so for the moms that I work with today. So your kids are gone, you're going to college. I'm going to college. And then Mops International decided they were going to start this thing called Teen Mops for teenage moms. Our group at this little church, our Vata Covenant Church, they decide we're going to be the first group to do a teen mops group.

So I'm like, oh, this is cool. I'm going to volunteer for this because my kids are now in school. I've got a little time. I can handle that and going to college. So I get, you know, involved in teen mops. And, man, just like blew my mind what those girls were dealing with. Like, you know, I thought. Because they didn't have a John and a John's family.

Absolutely not. Okay. So when I read that, my. initial reaction was that is really interesting that a church who teaches abstinence until marriage yeah because that's the gospel yeah and who um some might think would look down on teenage pregnancy actually wants to start a program for team moms to me that is an illustration effect faith. Yeah, that was, I didn't find out until later that the pastor of that church, West Swanson, at the time, got a lot of crap from a lot of other pastors in town that, oh, you're just promoting teen pregnancy now. Right. What are you going to do next? Give out more control on condoms? Yeah, I'm sure. He probably heard those things. And fortunately, he was a true man of God who went to God and God said, no, you're supposed to love like Jesus. Like you said, who did Jesus hang out with? Well, and we had no idea. Would moms even, would these teenage moms even come to our group?

if it's out of church. Like, I didn't know any teen moms at the time. I just had this heart and I had experienced it and wanted to be. I loved mops and I loved teen moms and made sense. So I was going to, you know, volunteer for this thing. And at the time, you used to get these, like, big fat notebooks when you were in charge of a mops group with, like, all the directions of how to run a mops group. But they were new to it.

They didn't know what they were doing yet. So we got four little pieces of paper stapled together. We're like, oh, man. And said, hey, make a big, fat notebook, would you? When you figured it out. Which we did. We ended up making a big fat notebook for them after when time passed. But, yeah, we didn't know what we were doing.

We were just inviting these girls to, you know, where do you even find teen moms? It was like, what do you even do? So we start talking to schools and nurses and just telling people we were going to start this group of support group for teenage moms. And the thing is, once you kind of love on them, then they tell their friends, hey, you should come here. They'll love on you, you know, and you can get brownies. Like, we made them homemade brownies. And how long did that go on? That went on for about four years and got to know these moms had gotten pretty good, deep relationship with them,

started really understanding what was happening in their worlds and how difficult it was. We had some very unrealistic expectations of being able to help them to kind of overcome things and maybe move towards self-sufficiency. I don't know if we used those words back then, but it was like, oh gosh, maybe we can help them get their GED or finish high school. Well, the truth is, you know, they're living in homes where, you know, one mom I went to pick her up, brought her, a whole plate of cookies. I go up to her door to pick her up. This guy answers the door. He's like clearly about to die from alcoholism.

I mean, he was so yellow and big, like, patches under his eyes and his clothes were all in disarray. And I'm like, oh, man, this is, you know, this can't be good. Well, it's her stepdad. He did die about five months later from alcoholism. Like, they're dealing with things that no plate of cookies is going to. Fix. Fix.

And certainly us, unexperienced, you know, just normal folks, like an army of normal folks, we're just normal folks volunteering with these girls. I was the only one who had even been a teen mom. We didn't know what we were doing. Mops didn't know what they were doing at the time. They just wanted to love, you know, love moms, all moms. But the key to being a part of the army of normal folks is the first step. So at least you were taking it.

Yeah. But you quickly found out how unequipped you were to really deal with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, tragically, one of our moms ended up being killed by an ex-boyfriend in a domestic violence incident. We ended up pooling our money to even have her buried because her family didn't even have money to release her body. And her twin sister ended up taking her daughters to raise. And it was just, it was a terrible situation that, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, I'm mad at God.

I'm mad at our community. I'm like, who's doing anything about this? Why isn't there somebody doing something about this? And, you know, John will say, that was kind of the moment when God's like, well, what if somebody is you? Oh, you mean, who is somebody? Who is somebody? Yeah. I think we say that a lot.

Exactly, who is somebody? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you had to look at that same mirror. Yes. What if you're that somebody? Which for me meant, and I knew it was a calling. I mean, I was super excited.

about this whole idea of, what if we start something for teen moms? Because there isn't a place for teen moms to go in the Denver metro area. We literally are still the only, after 23 years, we're the only residential program that a parenting teenage mom can go to. And so it sounded exciting. It sounded like it made my heart leap. Like I knew it was something God was asking me to do. But it also meant that I wasn't going to be, and I knew that. Deep down I knew if I say yes to this. I'm not going to college. I'm not going to be a teacher. I'm not, you know, whatever it was I thought I was going to do.

Like, I'm going to have to put my plans aside and pick up God's plans and trust him, which that's a biggie. Like, it sounds good when you're just saying it. Like, oh, yeah, I just trust God. We're going to start a home for teen moms. Well, the truth was, okay, that's, first of all, you're totally not qualified. This is terrifying. You have no business doing this.

Like all the things. You have no money. You have no money. All the things playing in your head. Yeah, like we had no money. I literally have a background of working at J.C. Pennies and doing home daycare. I don't know how to start a nonprofit. I don't have a social work background.

You probably don't even know what the 501C3 even is. We had to figure it out. Yeah, it was one big like, and this was before Google and before computers. So it wasn't like you could Google it. So we're, you know, on the phone trying to call the IRS. Just imagine. Nobody answers the phone at the IRS. Let me tell you.

But yeah, we figured it out. The little group of us that were the leader. of that teen mops group and our husbands, and I think that was what was key, is that our husbands were, it was John's calling before it was my calling. And I think that's, that was really crucial because the husbands in that kind of group,

that first working board of directors were the ones that asked the, they asked good, hard, tough questions. Us girls, we would have been like, we want to save the moms and their cousins and their grandmas and their babies and we just want to save everybody. And make cookies. And make cookies.

And the guys are like, Can we just do teen moms and figure this out? And then we'll figure out the next thing. Let's rifle shot it. Yeah. Instead of just throwing a shotgun and buckshot all over everything. Yeah, it was a good thing. But nobody in that group of, you know, normal folks had a background and anything related to any of this.

I mean, one guy who sold insurance and another guy worked at a gym and John's a machinist. You just all happened to care. And we just all happen to care. And I say this often, we are the embodiment of when God calls you to do something he will equip you to do it. And he surround us with like the most amazing people. And we learned so much. The story of how it goes is great. And that's what's coming next. But I do want to say to you this. And our regular listeners are probably rolling their eyes because they've heard this 100,000 times. But I'll just say it to you. I believe after doing this for almost two and a half years that I have

been taught a very valuable lesson, which is magic happens when. one's passion and discipline, and I don't mean discipline in terms of doing the right thing, I mean discipline in terms of their toolbox, when one's passion and discipline collide with opportunity. And the opportunity was there were teen moms that you knew about from moms, and you were passionate about it because it was your life. Right. And you had a discipline for it because it was your life, and you cared.

Yeah. And it seems to me that you were yet another example, example of where your discipline from having been a teenage mom, so it was in your toolbox and your passion, because you cared about these people, intersected at opportunity. That, to me, is yet another example of when amazing things can happen in the world. I've never heard it put together quite like that, but that, I mean, that is what happened, that, you know, all those three things did collide. and yeah, and we just, in terms of discipline, it was, you know, once we made that decision, we were going to move forward, then we were moving forward. And it was a long journey. It was almost three years of meeting with this group of people to, you know, we were looking

at programs from all over the country, who's doing what, how does it work in other states, you know, we're trying to raise money for a dream, which is hard. We did finally get our 501C3, finally had to pay a lawyer to do it. That's so easy, isn't it? Yeah. It's awful. I've done two of them, and you want to peel the skin off. Like, how about this?

I just give you a finger, and you give me the 501C3, and we call it even. There you go. Because that's easier than, yeah. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So we finally did get that, and we're out there, you know, telling everybody that'll listen to us, we're going to open a home for teen moms.

And we had a potluck on Saturday night with Alex and a bunch of the Army of normal folks, just amazing families. And I told them all that it's just, it's crazy how God moves and works. And when you say yes to him and are willing to take that first step, how he will provide then the next step. But we had met with a guy named David Nestor, who at the time was the president of a board of a organization that built low-income town home like villages. And he was nice enough to have lunch and tell us about his work.

And so we brought him homemade brownies because that's how we thanked people after they graduate from cookies to brownies. Yes. Yes. Any jokes today? You got your house because of homemade brownies. So we met this guy and, you know, another year, year and a half goes by, finally getting to the point where it's like, maybe we heard God wrong.

Like, we've been at this, trying to make this happen for so long now. And really honestly, getting close to just saying, we're just going to give up. My co-founder kept saying, we're going to keep doing this until there's one day where there's not one thing to do. Like not one phone call, not one meeting, not one project. something that we can do. Is that person's name Job? Yeah.

It felt like Job, man. Right. But we finally get a call from about ready to give up and got a call from David Nestor. And he said, hey, we've got this land we've purchased. It's got a ranch house on it. You can move in, get started, open your home. You'll probably have about two years. And then we're going to tear it down when we build our townhome community.

So we did. We moved into that house, took in our first teenage moms. My son's friend's band raised $350 for the first month's rent playing a concert. It was crazy. And I thought $350 was a lot for rent back then. And we, you know, we didn't have very much money. Now we have to hire staff because Amy and I weren't planning to sleep there. And this is a residential program. So we take in our first two teenage moms. Fendia was our first mom. She was from Haiti and had been in the States for about five years had gotten pregnant and her family, her mom kicked her out. It was not acceptable

in their culture that she was pregnant. So she comes to us with a five-week-old baby girl and a broken car seat and a bag of her clothes and a trash bag. And how old was she? She was 18. Wow. And Tiffany was 17 when she moved in. Her daughter was six months old. And so here we are trying to figure out what looks great on paper, all this program we developed of how we're going to help these girls become self-sufficient, and we're trying to now make it actually work with real-life people, and, you know, go figure it doesn't all just work exactly the way you think it's going to when you're dreaming it up. So we're barely figuring it out, and we get a call from David, and he says, okay, we got annexed into the city of Arvada, like way quicker than we

thought, so we got to tear the house down. And I'm panicking. I'm like, what do you mean you got to say what? And I had never heard of a capital campaign at that point. So we have no, hardly any money, barely paying payroll, waiting for miracles in the mailbox all the time just to pay payroll. And now they're going to, you know, tear the house down. I'm like, oh, geez, well, I don't know what we're going to do, but we're not going to make these girls homeless. We're going to figure something out. And about a week later, I get a call in the second call from David Nestor. And he says, well, we met as a board and we've decided you can have the house. But you've got to pick it up and move it off our property. Like, hmm, okay.

I guess this was a wooden house. Yes. Well, yes, it was a stick belt. It was, but crazy. Like, I mean, none of us knew anything about this on our little board of directors. And so... You thought 501C3 was tough. Yes, now we got to pick a house and put it on a truck. But it was also like awesome. It was like, okay, this is great because now we can get a loan. So we get a loan against the top half of this house because now the house belongs to us.

So we have collateral. The bottom half of the house was a basement. It's going to get plowed under. So we get a loan on the top half of this ranch house. $100,000. We think we're rich. We go out, get a real estate agent and start looking for a place to move this house. Find a house mover.

only bad guy in the whole story, he tells us that you can only move the house seven miles within a seven mile radius. And we believed him like idiots. Like you haven't seen a house driving down the highway from Iowa or something. They can go more than seven miles. Why?

Because he just didn't want to do it more than seven miles? He didn't want to get a permit to go down Sheridan, which is a state highway that ran in front of the house. Got it. We didn't know. So we're out there looking for land. We think we've got 60 grand left because he was taking 40 of it.

can't find anywhere within seven miles or 20 miles or anything. And finally, the reloader calls me and says, you've got to be done. And a lot in the book, you'll hear me talking about me arguing with God. Like, I'm just, I cannot understand this guy. Like, why you give us a house and then you don't give us anywhere to put the thing? So we're just going back and forth. Well, I'm going back and forth. He, of course, knew exactly what he was doing as usual

and probably has a lot of things to say to me someday when I get up there. But I'm like having a heart attack and finally get a call. Paul from this pastor and never met the guy. And he says, hey, are you the people looking for land? And I said, yeah, we are. He said, well, we've got something we want to give you. And I'm just like, who are you again? What are you even talking about?

Like, I don't think I said, thank you. I just was, what is even happening? What do you mean you have land you want to give us? He's like, yeah, come on over. I'll point it out. We're like 64th in Sheridan. There are five blocks down and one block over, six blocks away. Within seven miles.

They're within six blocks. We'll be right back. Hi, Kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc, and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet.

My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan.

have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people. Horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all.

It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons.

So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the clerks. classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the Electives Chess. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream, and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time? You get Desi Arnest, a trailblazer, a businessman, a husband, and maybe most importantly, the first Latino to break primetime wide open. I'm Wilmer Valderrama, and yes, I grew up watching him,

probably just like you and millions of others. But for me, I saw myself in his story. From plening canary cages to this night here in New York, it's a long ways. On the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderama, I'll take you in a journey to Desi's life. The moments it has overlapped with mine, how he redefined American television, and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines,

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Deadline December 7th. This is your chance. Let's celebrate the power of podcasting and your place in it. Enter now at iHeartpodcastawards.com. The forces shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know it that you are interacting with them. And even harder to understand.

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So we'd hop in the car, me and Robin, my program gal at the time we go over there, and here comes this guy gets out of his car, and he's the pastor, and he's like, yeah, we just, we've got this two and a half acres, and we want to give you about a third of an acre, and well, whatever you need for your house and your playground, and I got to go to lunch, and he gets back in his car. And we're just standing there going, what? And then, of course, you know, the deacons get involved and the city gets involved. it gets more complex than just here you go and waving his hand at the land.

So Robin and I go down to the city of Arvada and we're talking to the city planner. We're like, well, we got to subdivide this piece of land from the church. They're going to give it to us. And she's just cranky. Carol. I love Carol. She's so cranky. She's like never going to happen.

You're going to have to rezone. That'll take a year. This house has to be moved like now because they're going to break ground next month. And we're like, I'm standing there at the counter arguing with God. Like, what do you mean? We got a house. We got land. and now, God, you're not going to let us zone it, whatever it needs.

And she says, yeah, you've got to have a, I think it was an R4 zoning. And I'm mad. Robin's just like, can you just go check what the zoning is? So she goes over to this big old lateral file cabinet in the back and pulls out this huge plat map and down in the bottom. It's like, R4, big green stamp. And she's just looking at us and we're looking at her and we're like, what the heck? Well, it turns out that church had 25 years prior zoned to just a third of an acre for a

maternity home and never put ministry on that land. So before I was ever a teen mom, before, I mean, any of this had ever happened before Hope House was a glimmer in anyone's eye, God knew exactly what he was going to do through that land, through me, through John, and through an army of people that he sent around us. It was zoned 25 years earlier on a whim, and it just happened to work. Yeah. And it was big enough to plop your ranch house on. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it was a miracle. I mean, it was really literally nothing short of a miracle, which is why I wrote the book, because John said, you got to tell people God still does miracles like today, not just like back in the Bible times or overseas. Like, he still does miracles in our own backyard.

Yeah, when I read that in the prep, I paused. I just stopped and thought about before you were ever a team mom. Yeah. the plot of land was set aside for what eventually would be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it was just an old-fashioned barn raising from there. Literally, I didn't know the term an army of normal folk, but if I had, I would have used it, and I probably will use it now.

Because that's what happened. An army of normal folk just came out of the woodwork. Like, we had a contractor who was like, oh, I'll donate my time to be your general contractor to oversee the project. And another guy says, oh, I own a. company that does excavation. I'll build you, dig you at basement. I go to a small group at a church to tell our story. And some guys like, oh, by the way, I own a company that does fire sprinkler systems. I'll put that in for you. Like, literally that house was donated from the digging of the basement to the roof. It was all rebuilt. And it was just, it was just our community. Everybody came together.

So when did the door to the new house? Yeah. The new hope house on the new hope house on the third of property that'd been waiting 25 years for a structure on it. When did it? The door swing open. Yeah, I tell you what, the one thing about having an army of normal folks who are so amazing and volunteer all their time, it's also on their time schedule. So it took almost two years to get that thing rebuilt. So we're in a town home with our moms for a number of years. And on Easter Sunday, 2006, we moved back into. Yeah. Really? Back into that. First dinner was on the front porch with all the kids running around, a white picket fence, just for symbolism.

And the house was completely rebuilt in 12 bedrooms. We have room for six moms and their kiddos. How many? We have room for about six or seven moms at a time, depending how many children. And are you still that same house? We still have that same house. We purchased the rest of the land from the church. In 2011, we started a capital campaign.

It took until 2015 to raise the money by the land from the church. And 2019, we opened the doors to our brand new research. source center right there on the same property. And then last year we opened an early learning center for the children of our teen moms so we could do full-time child care. So our moms can go to school and work full-time. You're right. Don. Miracles do happen. Yeah. So tell us now. We know you. We know why. We know everything. Tell us what it does. Yeah. Tell us what Hope House is. Yeah. Well, our mission is to empower parenting teenage moms to become self-sufficient. Our heart desire is that our moms come to know just how much God loves them.

There's nothing. I love what you're saying, parenting teenage moms. Yeah, so our mom is all parenting. Not a teenage mom who's dropped their kid off with their mother and is out partying. You're talking about teenage moms who are making the choice to be a mother actively daily. Yeah, exactly. And also, I mean, so they have to have already given birth to their child to come into our programming. So we're not a maternity program per se, where they're still trying to make a decision about

whether to keep the baby or give it up for adoption, because we build on what we call a mommy motivation is our secret sauce, their desire to be a good mom, and their really, really deep desire to create something different for their child than what they've experienced. We're building off of that. So today we serve about 280 teenage moms from across the Denver metro area. 280? We have... And you have, how many residents?

Just six, but we have a housing support program that provides all sorts of navigation of housing in general. So lots of partners, transitional living programs we partner with, lots of just helping a mom understand, like, what is this lease even say? What is this language? I don't know what I'm signing up for. Or she doesn't understand eviction and why we don't want eviction on our record. And our moms come into our program between the ages of 15 and 21, already parenting. You have 15-year-old teenage mother? Yeah, we have 15-year-old teenage mom.

moms. We have moms. Probably youngest mom was 12 when she got pregnant. That's not typical. Yeah. It's not typical. Did that break your heart? Yeah. Yeah. It breaks your heart. And this is really hard statistic. But the younger, the mama, the more likely that it was something inside the home. Yeah. A stepdad or a boyfriend of the mom. Not just statutory right, but like rape rape. Yeah. It's the misconception that a teenage mom got pregnant on prom night and then her mom got mad and kicked her out. That's baloney. Like our mom. literally are growing up in generational poverty, every one of them. We don't have any middle-class mamas at Hope House. So all 280 of these moms have experienced more trauma than I did. Because if they're not, they probably have a family like Johns to support you and they don't need you. They don't need us. Exactly.

You're dealing with not situational poverty, but generational and systematic poverty. Correct. because the situational poverty, somebody in that orbit can step up. Yep, exactly. Which is interesting that you made that distinction a little while ago because that makes, I mean, what you just said just dawned on me, oh, well, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, that's why the book is called A Place to Belong.

It is the place our moms come and say, this is my home. This is my second home or this is my family. So the people, the moms that you're serving that are not residential, but are coming to the resource center. Right. What are they going home to? Well, so just a typical way that it might look for a teen mom. So she's 16.

She gets pregnant. She and the boyfriend are going to try to make it work. They try to live with boyfriend's parents. Boyfriend's mom is an alcoholic. They get kicked out. He goes one way. She goes back to her mom. Her mom's got a new boyfriend.

That boyfriend doesn't want her and her baby at the house. So she gets kicked out of there. Because he gets kicked out of there. Because no, because they're. very abusive. I wish it was because they liked naked Pizza Tuesday. Frankly, that'd be way more healthy. But it is. It's, it's abuse. They're just homeless and moving around. I have also read, this reminds me of something I read, gosh, I hadn't thought about this in ages, but oftentimes in that situation, the boyfriend is mad because the mother he's dating is choosing to spend time

in allegiance with her daughter and her granddaughter rather than him. And so there becomes a power struggle in Laos. Yeah, it could be. You know, all the situations are different. They're all really ugly. They're just ugly situations. We had a mama that was, she's a Hmong. Family came from Laos.

She was born here. But her mom does whatever her husband says, because that's the way their clan works in the suburbs of Denver. and he pays a dowry and marries off this kid at 14 to another Hmong family. She's not pregnant. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Just marries her off. He paid a dowry and just married her off.

Yeah, in the suburbs of Denver. She's 14. She's 14. So now her job is to, it is legal. It is, but nobody knows it's happening. And so, you know, of course. That's going on in the United States. Oh, yeah.

A year later, she's pregnant. Oh, no, the dad just tells them on this way it's going to be because this is our culture. Yep. And he takes money. for the 14-year-old and marries her off. Marries her off. To how old of a person? He was 16.

She was 14. So her new job now is to take care of her husband's, in quotation marks, family. So she's going to school still. She's going to high school. But she's cooking, cleaning, doing the dishes. So she's a servant now? Yep, she's a servant now. And still trying to go to high school.

Of course, she gets pregnant. By who? By the boyfriend, by her husband. and didn't quotation marks, who he's a petty theft criminal ends up in jail. And her and her sister, who's also a teen mom by this point, end up sleeping in a park by themselves and call us. And they're like, you know, we got nowhere to go. So I say this.

Now, the beautiful piece of that story is this young woman's name is Tina. Her story's in the book. She is married to an amazing guy. She's got four amazing kids all thriving. They own their own home. She's doing all the things. And not every mom ends up in, like, a perfect world, but 65% of the moms we serve at Hope House

will become fully self-sufficient. Like, they are stable. That's the numbers? Yeah. How many teen moms have you served since opening the doors that Easter? Oh, man, somewhere around 1,500, maybe, 1800. I don't know. And 60, let's call it 1,500.

So 65% is 1,000. Yeah. You're telling me, since you've opened the door, there's a thousand team moms in and around Colorado that are now fully self-sufficient. Yep. Fully self-sufficient. What do you think the number would be without Hope House? Well, only about 50% of teenage moms nationally graduate high school and 2% graduate college. So their chances of, and it's like two-thirds of them will, their children will become teen parents.

I mean, the statistics are the statistics for a reason. They're hard to break. Two-thirds will become, so. Their child will become a teen parent. So it's a reciprocal. You go from two-thirds that will be this again to two-thirds self-sufficient successful. I mean, it's a complete reversal of the numbers. It's a complete reversal.

They're tax-paying, saving. It saves our taxpayers in Jefferson County, Colorado, about $45,000 when someone is, like, off of all governmental assistance. Her mom. Her mom, yeah. And her child and her child's child, because, again, this is generational. So Fendia, that very first mom I was telling you about her daughter is now 20 years old. She's getting a degree in psychiatric nursing at Metro State University. And Fendia is also a nurse.

So these, my favorite story is our 20th anniversary gala. we had 20 moms, one from every year that we'd been in existence. And we went down the stage, and my son was the first. He stood there first and introduced Fendia. And then Fendia said, you know, I was the first mom. I'm however old I am now and I'm a nurse. And then she hands the microphone to her daughter. Her daughter says, I'm going to school at Metro.

I'm going to be a psychiatric nurse. And then she hands it to the next mom. Next mom says I'm a stylist and hands it to her daughter. Her daughter's got a full ride scholarship to go to school. hands it to the next mom. The next mom is now our housing support or our, yeah, our housing support manager. She works for us, and her daughter has a full-right scholarship to play volleyball. And they just keep going down the row until we get to the little one.

The four-year-old said he wants to work at Target. So that's pretty good. But the point is, that is a beautiful illustration of the chain of hope. Yeah. Yeah. And that they have literally broken the cycle of poverty for not just for two generations, but for generations to come, because now Fendia's daughter, of course, is not going to, I mean, as a psychiatric nurse, I would presume she won't be in poverty, but they're breaking the cycle for generations to come. And all because they're so motivated for that little one, they just need someone to model it, just like we did.

Like, you just need someone to model what it looks like. And to be clear, you're not just providing them a place to stay. Oh, yeah, no. GED, teaching. And when we say teaching, not just teaching. what a healthy lifestyle looks like, teaching how to healthy take care of your child. You are engaging with these people to reverse all of the things that created the trauma in their lives in the first place. Right. Yeah. So we have a proprietary measurement system. We use a rubric

where we measure self-sufficiency in seven domains. So we look at economic self-sufficiency and personal self-sufficiency. Economic is all the things you can think of. You're going to, like we provide a college and career program, high school and GED, financial literacy, budgeting, transportation assistance, what we call economic navigation. A lot of times you're starting out without even your birth certificate or a state ID, so where do you go from there if you don't know how to get that? We have a legal advocacy program. And then on the personal side, it's healthy boundaries and healthy relationship and your spiritual life, which is all optional. Everything we do is optional. Our moms are here because they want to be. Nobody's court ordered. They're coming in and out as they choose.

as it allows for their life to take classes and move forward. By the time they hit what we call graduation, which means they're hitting stable scores on our measurement system. They've typically been in our program about four or five years. They've completed 100 hours at least of class time with us on a variety of things, and that's totally separate from getting their GEDA or going to college or getting a good job. We always say you want a job that's going to be a career,

so we want to be able to move up. And, of course, we're looking at healthy relationship. So somewhere along the line before they turn 25, which is when they become an alumni, they've typically gotten into a more healthy relationship by that point. And that helps, you know, having two incomes is we have many moms who've purchased a home. We don't have any single moms who've purchased a home. They've always been in a healthy marriage by the time they are able to afford to purchase a home. Yeah, and then we're essentially staying in relationship with them after they become alumni.

So I think at this point, we have seven of our moms who work for us as N1 alumni, always on our board of directors. And lots of them that give back through volunteering or monthly donations. Lisa, this is really not bad for a J.C. Penny clerk who didn't make it to college. You just used a lot of big words. Look what God can do. Rubric and Rubik's Cube or something. It was just to tell you a secret, it was developed on a paper, like, table. cloth at a restaurant with some lady that was telling me how to do it. I'm sure because you didn't get a big

fat binder. No, I didn't get a big fat binder. We made this up and kind of did it as you go. Yeah. Do you pinch yourself? Yeah, there are definitely times I pull into our campus and I just sit there and I'm like, oh man, like how did this even happen? Like, yeah, really literally, how'd this even happen? We'll be right back. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman.

There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a wonderful. person, billion dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now it will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan.

Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History, about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing.

It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business.

The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic

great moments of famous business geniuses along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the Elections Chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood,

a Cuban musician with a dream, and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time? You get Desi Arness, a trailblazer, a businessman, a husband, and maybe, most importantly, the first Latino to break prime time wide open. I'm Wilmer Valderrama, and yes, I grew up watching him, probably just like you and millions of others. But for me, I saw myself in his story.

From plening canary cages to this night here in New York, it's a long ways. On the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderama, I'll take you in a journey to Desi's life. The moments it has overlapped with mine, how he redefined American television, and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines, waiting for a face like hours on screen. This is the story of how one man's spotlight

lit the path for so many others and how we carry his legacy today. Listen to starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valdera As part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Podcasters, it's time to get the recognition you deserve. The IHart Podcast Awards are coming back in 2026. Got a mic? Then you've got a shot.

Every year, we celebrate the most creative, compelling, and game-changing voices in podcasting. Is that you? Submit now at iHeartPodcastawards.com for a chance to be honored on the biggest stage in the industry. Deadline, December 7th. your chance. Let's celebrate the power of podcasting and your place in it. Enter now at iHeartpodcastawards.com. The forces shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know that you are interacting with them. And even harder to understand. Donald Trump's trade war, 2.0, is only accelerating

the process of de-dollarization, which in a way is jargon for, people turning away from the dollar. That is where the big take from Bloomberg podcast comes in, to connect the dots. How unusual is a deal like this? Unprecedented. Every weekday afternoon, we dive deep into one big global business story. The biggest story of the reaction of the oil market to the conflict in the Middle East is one of what has not happened. Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing.

They are. Explain that. Why is that the case? And unpack what it means for you. Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsize indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Before you get closer to wrapping, I think it would be great for you to talk about the early learning center and the two-generation aspects of it. Yeah. So one of the things that's most difficult to biggest, so the three biggest barriers to self-sufficiency are housing, child care, and transportation. So housing, we're working on it. Child care, we can't find enough child care centers in our town city that will take a what's called CCAP, the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program. Every state has a child care assistance program. It's federal dollars that come down to the state. But most centers won't accept CCAP because they don't get burst at the same rate as private pay.

So we can't find enough spots for our kiddos. And before anybody villainizes the child care facilities for that, those things are expensive to run. Oh, yeah. And the insurance rates on them are insane. I've actually did a little research on this one time for a whole other project that I did not end up getting involved in. But they are not getting wealthy.

No, they are not. Their margins are about 2%. They are. And so if you have to charge, I'm going to pick a number 500 a week, and the government will only pay you $3.80, it's not that you don't want to take them. You literally can't afford to. That's right.

Unless you can raise that $500 to $600, so all that the full-paying people are literally supplementing the government people, and you really can't do that except in really affluent areas. So the fact is, even though we have child assistance from the government, it rarely is enough to actually provide child assistance. from the government, which is the irony of ironies. Yep, yep, totally nailed it, which, of course, then keeps them in poverty because then they can't get a job, they can't go to school.

So, yes, we built a 100-spot center, two-story center on our campus that's been open a year, having some struggles because we've got a lot of, there's a lot going on politically right now, and some of it is impacting CCEP situation. and so we have 60 open spots, and none of our moms can get CACP. CACP is currently just closed in our state. Is it because the shutdown or because? No, it goes back farther than that. It's, I mean, very quick version.

Federal government decided about four years ago that we should reimburse centers at a higher rate so that more centers will take CACP kids. Totally great idea. But it didn't come with any federal funding for a federal mandate, so the cost to do this got pushed down to the states. Our state, Colorado, has about a $1.2 billion budget shortfall last year, so they can't afford to cover this new, like, $70 million increase to what you're going to have to pay. So you have a center waiting for people, and they can't get their money because Colorado doesn't have it. Yeah.

So you have counties that just basically said, because the money comes from the feds to the states to the counties. And the counties just said, nope, we're done. We're closing all the wait lists. We are not going to be able to afford the kids we've already got on our rolls. We can't take any more new kids. So now we've got, you know, hundreds of new moms coming all the time and they can't get C-CAP. So we have a mission problem because they can't get C-CAP so they can't get a spot. So they can't go to school and go to work.

And we've got a financial problem because our brand-new child care center can't enroll the kiddos who we built it to enroll. And so we've got, you know, a big financial short poll because of that. We're raising the funds to cover that. And we have, we're very, very blessed to have, you know, amazing folks around us. So at this point, we're okay for now, but something's got to happen in the next couple of years or we're going to, we'll have to start taking private pay and do a mixed model because we won't have a choice. So I get, I've also gotten to learn a lot about how the government works. But that's once again a beautiful example of how systematic poverty happens.

Yes. I mean, as bad as all of that is, it is a very real example of how it happens. And I think, in fairness, there is a civic debate, civil debate, to happen around there's a finite amount of dollars. You can't just tax everybody over and over and more and more and more and more again. So there has to be a conversation around where these dollars best utilized. And unfortunately, we have to rely on a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians who are not really business people to make those decisions. And oftentimes things like this happen. Yeah, that's so true.

But I will say, when an army of normal folks gets together to do something like what Hope House is doing, you can break that cycle. And then you won't have to rely on the government. Yeah, because one of the things we always say before we look in that mirror is if you're waiting around for the fancy people on the government, CNN and Fox to do something about it or government, for goodness sakes, to go do something about it. If that's, if those are the somebody out of do something about it, well, you can wish in one hand and poop in the other. I mean, yeah, and the truth is you don't have to. The point is this happens because you and your benefactors and you have another capital campaign and your passion, you're concerned for these kids and these moms, you just make it happen. Yeah. Yeah. I see.

say all the time. That was the reason I wrote the book. Like, whatever it is, it doesn't have to go out there and open a home for teen moms and maybe 20 years from now, it'll, you know, start spreading across the country, which is what we're doing now. It can be, hey, I love kids. I'm going to go hang out and volunteer at the children's hospital, or I'm going to go hang out and volunteer at a child care center that's struggling or maybe, whatever it is, I'm going to make brownies. I love making brownies. I'm going to make some brownies. Like, just say yes. And like, you guys always say, now I know that we're just part of an army of normal folks doing the thing. Who have an ability and a passion and fill an area in need. And if we had two or three

million people across the country doing that, your place is full of kiddos. Amen. You are a delight. John, I guess you knew it when she waved at you from the P. Green piece of crap, Buick. He just said, let me pull my Nova over, race my engine at her, because this is a cool chick. Are you amazing. Let's talk expansion, though, too. So you have other spots in Colorado doing this, and I thought I saw Orange County, too. Tell us about your grand plants. Yeah, so we have, we're building out an affiliate network.

We have one affiliate in Northern Colorado, one in the southern part of our state. Towns, names. The one in Northern Colorado is in Greeley, and the one in Southern Colorado is in Canyon City. You never know who's listening to those places right now. So you might as well throw it out there. Best-smelling town in America. Yes, exactly, Greeley, Colorado. That's all right.

Uh-huh. Yeah. And then our first out of the state of Colorado affiliate will be opening in Raleigh, North Carolina. Really? All the way across. You must have friends there or something. We have a former employees, two of them, who moved to North Carolina about six years ago. Yep.

One of them is a former teen mom and has been the executive director of a housing program for people coming out of incarceration and just felt like God was calling her to open a Hope House. So she's going to be opening a Hope House in the Raleigh area and looking at Chicagoland and Oklahoma City for the next two. If anybody's interesting. Why those cities? Why Chicago and Oklahoma City? Because we know someone there.

Yeah, same thing as Raleigh. Yeah. There's just some people. A galvanizing champion, we call it. We need a galvanizing champion, and then we can go forward. WW. What? How do people go and find out more?

Yep. www. Hopehouse Colorado.org Or you've been sheepish lately. She's ready to share it. Or if somebody won't talk to you.

You can email me directly Lisa. steven S-T-E-V-E-N at hopehouse Colorado.org. John, do your kids think she's a rock star

or do they just say oh, that's what mom does? Hold on. Get it. You got to get it on the mic. All right. You got to go sit up. Sorry, it's at the end now making you move and switching years.

Yeah. Anyway, you sit in that chair. You're better than Alex in there anyway. So I'm curious. Do they think this is just what mom does or they realize this is rock star status stuff? I believe they think she's a rock star. I think when they were younger, it was kind of, they felt a lot. It was everything was about Hope House.

Yeah. A lot of our conversations and things we did were Hope House. but as they've gotten older, they think they're super proud of her and inspired by her for sure. And Johnny is now how old? 39. Three little granddaughters with him. He has a beautiful wife and three daughters. That is phenomenal because it really started with Johnny.

It did. It all started with Johnny. Let's talk about it. This could be Johnny's House of Colorado if you wanted to do it. John, what do you do? I'm a machinist at Sierra Space. Got it. Aerospace machines.

An aerospace machinist? Yes, sir. That's actually kind of cool. That's a whole other story. I remember John, somewhere in the prep, when you all had Johnny baptized, you got turned off to the conventional church because of the judgment of the pastor. Yeah, he was, you can tell he was sizing us up when you have to do a meeting before you, before the sermon. this ceremony or one or like a week before or whatever and kind of found out our ages you can see him do the math and then it just he just got cold and i was like this is no place to be you

know like but you were raised by your mom who is the antithesis of that yeah i mean yeah for sure so what's that like today uh judgment wise no um for your kids Oh, for, you know, it was super interesting. We watched Undefeated because I wanted to just understand your story. And there was a part where you kind of talked about your kids had given up a lot. And that kind of hit home, I guess. Maybe I felt a little defensive. John said, do you think our kids felt that way?

And I got a little defensive. I'm like, yeah, I know they felt that way. I know they felt like they've told me as adults that, you know, they came second sometimes to Hope House. And, yeah, that stinks. But they know we love them and we're a strong family. And I do think they're proud now. But in the midst of it, when you're putting in the 60-hour work weeks and we were pretty careful, we didn't miss ball games or award ceremonies or any of that stuff.

But we, you know, there were hours. I worked a lot. It's like a startup. You're starting up a business. You're working a lot. worked a lot of hours. It is. It's tough to balance all of it.

And you do the best you can and you love. But, you know, if it was damaging your parents, your kids wouldn't be proud today. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate that. Oh, it's true. I've told this story before.

My last game at Manassas, which is chronicled and undefeated. Yeah. Before the night before that game, we were sitting around having family. dinner releasing me and the four kids, and then I think there were like 9, 8, 7, and 6 or somewhere in that age reign, maybe until I can't remember, but whatever, they were right in there. And I had not told anybody I was leaving Manassas yet, but I'd made the decision I was because of this very thing that my boys and girls were starting to get it to where they

were starting to play sports, and that's where I needed to be. And after seven years at Manassas, it was just time for me. And I said, hey, I want y'all all to come to the game. it's really important to me, and they're like, you know, we've been to games for 15 years that you've coached, what's the big deal? I said, well, it's playoffs. And if we lose, we're done. And they're like, okay, well, we'll try

to make it, but if you lose and you're done, there's next year. I said, no, there's not. I'm not going back to Manassas. And a hush fell over the table. And they were shocked. And I looked over in Will, who's my third, eight or nine, just bawling. And I said, buddy, what's wrong?

And he said, Dad, you can't quit Menasis. I said, why? I need to quit Menasis. I want to do stuff with you guys. And he's like, they need you more than we do. Oh. When you engage in something that convinces your own children that other children need their father more than they need their own father, you have gone too far. Yeah.

And it is. then that I really started to understand the importance of balance and how much you do have to give up to do the work that you've done and that many thousands of others of people have done. And I think only you know when that line of balance is. But my kids are proud of me too. And we love each other and have a great family just like you're proud of you and you're the rock star to your kids. So I do encourage everybody, listen to us, whatever you're engaged in, find the balance, but understand time is finite. And you're going to have to be willing to put in the hours and put in the work to make a difference. But if you're passionate about it and

you're good at it and you see that opportunity and need and you fill it, you change lives and you change lives of those in your own family and those around you. And that is the miracle of an army of normal folks and how it can work to change our culture and our society. for the better. And Lisa, you are absolutely a member. You are a glaring example of exactly what that is. Thank you. And that you don't have to have some PhD or come from some big NGO or have a whole bunch of money to do something extraordinarily important. You can do it just being a normal person working. So thank you for joining us. John, I know you didn't really want to speak on Mike, but thanks for the little bit you gave us, and thanks for sharing your

wife with us this afternoon and telling your story. Alex, you got anything else? They're good. Just on that last conversation, Bob Mazzikowski had a really good line of you need to teach your kids that they're the most important kid in your life, but they're not the only kid that matters. That's so good. I love that. Yeah, that guy is one of the greatest guys I've met. He's so cool. Yeah, you have to meet him. Who said that. Going home today or 12? Yeah, we're headed at the airport. Alex is going to drop us off.

United, probably going back. Safe travels. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. I'm glad you got to enjoy a few days in our fair city. And we'll stay in touch. I can't wait to hear what happens next with Hope House of Colorado and all the Hope House that you're expanding to.

And from the bottom of our heart, from a very needy nation of people like you, thanks for all that you do. Thank you. You're welcome. And thanks for having me. and thank you for joining us this week if lisa stephen has inspired you in general or better yet to take action by buying her book a place of hope donating to hope house colorado exploring their model for your own community or something else entirely please let me know i really do want to

hear about it. Just write me anytime at bill at normalfolks. Us, and I promise you I will respond. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with friends that on social, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, join the army at normalfokes.us, 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. If a Lenovo gaming computer is on your holiday list, don't shop around, just go directly to the source, Lenovo.com. You'll find exclusive deals on the gaming PCs you want, like the Lenovo Legion Tower 5 Gen 10 gaming desktop and Lenovo Locke gaming laptop. So avoid all that shopping, chaos and price comparing, and just go directly to the source, Lenovo.com, where PCs are up to 50% off.

That's Lenovo.com. Linovo, Lenovo. Hi, Kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc, and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan.

I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline is.

The most Texas story ever. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream, and one of the most iconics it comes of all time? You get Desi Arness. On the podcast starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderama, I'll take you in a journey to Desi's life, how he redefined American television and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines,

waiting for a face like hours on screen. Listen to starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer Valderrama on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Podcasters, it's time to get the recognition you deserve. The IHart Podcast Awards are coming back in 2026. Got a mic? We've got a shot. Every year, we celebrate the most creative, compelling, and game-changing voices in podcasting. Is that you? Submit now at iHeartPodcastawards.com for a chance to be honored on the biggest stage in the industry. Deadline December 7th. This is your chance. Let's celebrate the power of podcasting and your place in it. Enter now at iHeartpodcast.com. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.