An Army of Normal Folks - You Walk Past Them—Here’s How to Actually Help (Pt 2)

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Most of us walk past someone on the street because we don’t know how to help—or if it will even make a difference. Jonathan Kumar built Samaritan to change that, giving normal folks a simple way to offer relational and financial support that empowers people experiencing homelessness. They’ve helped over 5,000 people so far and they need us, An Army of Normal Folks, in the game to serve the over 650,000 people who experience homelessness!Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks. We continue now with part two of our conversation with Jonathan Kumar, right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. You know Roll Doll, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll,

is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy.

Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever, and what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roll Dahl 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. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl. You may know me from my It Girl series I've done on the streets of New York over the years.

Well, I've got good news. I am bringing those interviews and many more to this podcast. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work with the women's shaping culture right now. As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard and you have to push the narrative in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja.

Each week, I have unfiltered conversations with female founders, creatives, and leaders to talk about ambition, visibility, and what it really takes to build something meaningful in the public eye. Because being a Nick Girl isn't about the spotlight, it's about owning it. I think the negatives need to be discussed and they need to be told to people who maybe, don't do this every day just so they know what's really going on. I feel like pulling the curtain back is important. Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Josh from Stuff You Should Know with a message that could change your life. The Stuff You Should Know Think Spring podcast playlist is available now. Whether

spring has sprung in your neck of the woods yet or not, the stuff you should know, think spring playlist will make you want to get your overalls on, get it. outside and get your hands in the dirt. You can get the stuff you should know think spring playlist on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go! Our IHeart Radio Music Awards are coming back. Thursday, March 26th, live on Fox. Watch as we honor the biggest stars from all genres of music that you loved listening to all year long on your favorite IHeart Radio station and the IHeart Radio Hosted by Ludacris.

Icon Award recipient John Mellencamp. Innovator award recipient. Miley Cyrus. With performances by Alex Warren, Kailani, Lainey Wilson, Ludacris, Ray, TLC, Salt and Pepper, and Invoke. Taylor Swift makes her first award show appearance this year. Big Culture Singer, Nikki Glazer, Sombor, Weiser, and more. Watch live on Fox.

Thursday, March 26th, Eddie 7th Central. on IHeart radio stations across America and the free IHeart app. How did you get the 500 people to say, okay, I'll download the app? Would you go to all the jolly do-gooters in Seattle and say, hey, jolly. How did you get people to buy into the app?

Yeah, I mean, it's easier and harder said than done, I guess, because everyone's dealt with the problem, right? If you live in a city, you're walking by these folks. And first, it's like, we're in America and this person's out here. Like, why does this? Why is this happening?

And then, like, the next problem, once you sort of get desensitized, it's like, okay, he's asking me for money or she's asking me for money. Do I have any money? I don't. Or if I do, I don't want to hurt this person. I want to help. I don't know how. I don't have time. So you sold that idea and people said, yeah, I'll download that.

Yeah, I'll download that. Anyone can download an app. So, you know, we went on radio shows and TV and Reddit and all of the stuff and got 500. And the funny thing is, like, the app didn't do anything. Like, we didn't turn on the necklaces. until 500 people downloaded the app and equipped it and installed it. So we got the 500 people that we turned the 50 necklaces on, the beacons we were calling them. And then, yeah, like people started encountering each other.

I remember the first time, like, we had an encounter. I saw it in our database. And some guy, I think his name was, like, Shiloh, gave a dollar to this guy named Charles. and I was like brought to tears. And it was just so cool. We had this function where you could add a message of encouragement to your gift and the person would receive it via text if they had a phone, via email if they had email,

or if they didn't have either. And maybe a third of our members didn't have a phone or an email address. It would go to their case manager. And the case manager could read it out to them the next time they encountered them. Another thing that's interesting is the people experience, experiencing homelessness with the beacons around the neck are called members. That's right. Which has a air of distinction.

It's not demoralizing. You're a member. It's actually what back on my feet calls them, too. I know. Yeah. We've had them. We've had back. We've had back.

Well, they're in 15 cities across the country. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. All right. So. That's how you start. That's why I'm wearing purple.

You got your 50 beacon members and you got your 500 app people. A dollar transpires. You're sitting there crying at your computer screen, which I think I would be too. Yeah. And it's brilliant. And you're reaching these people through the organizations that actually, you're reaching the members to the organizations that are actually already providing some services. Keep going. Sure.

Yeah, yeah. Which, by the way, that in and of itself is such. a cool idea. It answers and erases so many issues. So go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I mean, and I'm using past tense because, you know, we had to kind of work away from a lot of that, which I can get into if there's time. But, you know, yeah, we call members, you know, they, they, we gave them these, like, beanies, these hoodies and, and, like, we wanted, we used purple because it is, like, tied to royalty or, yeah, dignity, recognition. And we wanted it to be something where people felt honored, loved. And so yeah, so we're doing this and we're seeing

these encounters and people are getting money and they're able to feel seen and encouraged and loved and recognized and valued for the first time in years sometimes. And we see that this, I think our biggest finding was that this turned a switch in people's, our members' minds, to keep pushing to say yes instead of no when they were offered a job or a housing opportunity. In a lot of instances, like their whole perception on life would change when we started just honoring people and recognizing them and giving them $10 that I can easily afford for you to use for your needs. Some of it probably went to alcohol.

some of it probably went to drugs, but it doesn't really matter because they started checking in with their case manager to get a new battery for their beacon, or we developed these bonuses that people would earn. Like we'd have a donor give us $1,000 and say like, hey, give it to anybody that needs it. And that $1,000, we would kind of bonus out based on people doing healthy behaviors. So checking in with their case manager or making it to an appointment or attending a peer recovery group. And so sometimes they were like earning these bonuses or these rewards for doing things that, you know, long term had much more lucrative benefits than $5, $10, $20, job interviews, resume workshops, whatever it was. And yeah, so I think, you know, it's some,

it was very, very hard because we needed to get like the nonprofits and the members and then the Samaritans. We had to figure out our own funding. It was very difficult over two or three years, but I think we made a really impactful difference on that first Seattle cohort of, you know, 500 to 1,000 people. And then, you know, the story gets a little bit more complicated because we built Samaritan very much focused on who our end user was, but we didn't, and we just sort a trusted coach that the money, the funding, the revenue would, we would figure it out, if we create enough value for this particular user, someone's going to pay us to do this. Who that someone is and why, like, that's, that's, it's yet to be figured out.

Most startups focus on, like, how we're going to make money and grow this sustainably. And we were focused on a really cool product that served a really cool user base that had no real revenue plan. behind it. At first, we're like, okay, maybe, you know, donors will give us 10% of whatever they give to our members. They'll add 10% and that'll come to us. But for us to generate, you know, even 100K a year in revenue, 250K,000, we'd have to be processing so many transactions. That didn't work. Okay, maybe we'll have cities pay for this, foundations. And we actually did get a contract from a downtown real estate group that was like, hey, you know, if you help these folks living in our doorways on their way, that helps our real estate values.

If this works, we'll pay you some amount. And so we got some early funding from them for our Seattle pilot. But ultimately, you know, we were trying to sell to cities and say, hey, this is something that will eliminate panhandling, will drive civic engagement, and ultimately will it drive outcomes for your homeless population. And they liked the idea. They liked that we were doing it, but they're working with tax dollars and they're pretty risk-averse. Cities, counties, you know, they might have offices of innovation or offices of technology,

but they typically don't invest in things that are not like bulletproof, proven to work. And we were a startup. So we got... Which, understandably so. It's tax dollars. It's how you lose your job as a bureaucrat. You go waste a bunch of tax.

And it's a lot of CYA attitudes when they're selected positions. They're not looking to really put themselves too far out there. And they're like, hey, we funded this guy with an app to solve homelessness. Yeah, I can imagine that going over great at a city council meeting or something. Right. So their money for homeless response goes to building apartments and caseworkers, which I get. There was no room for us. We lost the city council vote five to four November of 2019, around.

on Thanksgiving, a deal I'd been working on for a year and a half. And that was really hard. Like, we had 20 of our members, 10 case managers, show up the city council, tell them the impact that this had had, and we still lost the vote. And so the pandemic hit the next year, 2020, the world sort of ended. And, you know, we were, like, kind of running low on funding, and a lot of our projects froze. And we just didn't know exactly how we were going to grow. to serve tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people on or near the street. And I guess what ended up happening was I had this hypothesis given to me by a family friend who was like, hey, I heard about what you're doing and how you're helping people on the street

get into social services, housing services, employment services through this generosity. could you add a layer, Jonathan? He was in healthcare where you could get people to go to their primary care appointments to behavioral health appointments. Because if you could do that and you could generate

six primary care visits a year, you would save hospitals a ton of money. Because all of these folks, because of their exposure to homelessness like we were talking about earlier, they end up in the emergency room, they end up in ambulances, they end up in the hospital.

And they have no money to pay. and so the hospital loses a lot of money. It gets complex because you put in Medicaid insurers and stuff. But even Medicaid insurance doesn't pay the hospital enough to cover their expenses. That's right. That's right. So either they don't get paid at all or they still don't get paid enough to even cover the basics. That's right.

That's right. And it is such a big problem when I was reading this about your story and this is where it gets really interesting. Well, it's all been interesting. But this is where the eureka happens for you. for everybody needs to hear this, and this may be happening all over the country, but in the South especially, we are starting to build hospitals without ERs. Just not even putting an ER in. Just building a hospital with Dr. Soft's downstairs and rooms upstairs, and here's why.

If you don't have an ER, you don't get the indigent walking in, and you don't have this massive outflow of cash that you can never, massive outflow of expenses that you never get the cash for. So they are now building hospitals without ERs for this very reason. I actually had no idea. That's insightful. I was actually surprised that's legal. It's not only legal, but it's happening.

It's happening. That's tough. But the point is, and that seems so callous and mean, but there are also hospitals today shutting their doors because they can't overcome the burden of the ER. Yeah. So do you have a hospital at all? Do you have any hospital?

I mean, it's a real problem for the healthcare world. And so... They have to be sustainable too. That's what this guy says to you? Yeah. So what do you do? That's right. So we took that and we were kind of at the end of our thread and we got to find something that will help us grow at the clip we need to.

Then we had picked up a couple projects here and there. We were testing in Orange County, testing in Oklahoma City. But we were like, okay, we're going to try and hitch our wagons to selling hospitals instead of elected officials at cities. And if we make it, we make it. If we don't, we're going to all be at different jobs in a year. And so, yeah, there was like a hospital incubator in Washington that kind of gave us a shot. We started testing out our approaches. And then, yeah, like we said, like, hey, to your ERs, give this.

And we ended up switching from the Bluetooth beacon. We had to kill that technology because of the pandemic, actually. We didn't have any, like, organic encounters anymore. You know, foot traffic stopped in our downtown areas, and the beacons were expensive operationally and financially to keep up. So we switched to this membership card as well. It's like this, like, heavy metallic thing. It's pretty nice, I think.

And so we just told these hospitals, like, hey, give this to your homeless population on their way out of the ER. they'll start earning rewards for taking positive actions like going to primary care, going to social services, connecting with their case manager, getting their dialysis treatment at the clinic this week so they don't end up in the ER needing an emergency transfusion next week. We'll start giving them these rewards based on capital we've put together. And then we'll give them the social support as well from everyday volunteers, everyday Samaritans that were able to sign up in your region. And our expectation is that if you give out 100 of these cards, 200 of these cards, and pay us a sustainable rate, that 60% of these people you give the cards to, so 60 out of 100 will significantly reduce their future ER visits, their future hospitalizations.

One hospital in Los Angeles, because of the pandemic, hadn't used their catering budget for the year of 2020. because they weren't doing in-person meetings. So their executive catering budget was still on the books. And they were like, well, we have 100K about in catering budget that we haven't used. Why not try it on this for 2021? You got their catering budget. We got their catering budget. That's hilarious.

Yeah. And that's what kind of gave us our start in 2021 to start working on this use case where hospitals are the ones holding the bag, maybe even more than cities. It's a lot less complex in a sense. And if we can solve for the stability of people outside the hospital walls, there are a lot less likely to come back to the hospital in the future. And if we can prove that, there's a lot of money that we can generate

to solve this problem for hospitals and Medicaid insurers. And so that was the pilot, I guess. Yeah, yeah. And we proved it. Yeah, tell us how it worked. Yeah, so we gave out 200 cards, watched them for a year with a third party, Kaiser Permanente's research group actually did a third party evaluation on this. And I guess because the card, when it's tapped or swiped, you are constantly collecting data on your members, right?

So you know what they're doing. Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't even like we were watching how the money was being spent, but we are tracking what the person is earning these bonuses for doing. And it's like all of these positive action steps related. And so the, when the person gets the card or the membership on their way out of the ER or sometimes on the street or in a clinic, the person activating the membership with them is asking them their goals, where do you want to be, and then developing action steps for the next two, seven, 14, 28 days around what's going to help them get closer to those goals. So those action steps are different for everyone.

There's a lot of common things like get your ID. Yeah. And so if they go to a haste manager or something or they go get their dialysis, they- Five, ten, twenty bucks. Okay, so when they go to the dialysis person, how do they get the ten bucks and how do you know they're there? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So either the dialysis clinic has the Samaritan app and kind of marks, hey, this action step was completed,

or they're able to provide some verification back to their primary case manager, like some sort of validation that, hey, I did that. A lot of work on your part because you've got to get all these clinics set up to accept and give out these cards. That's why our Samaritan has evolved into less of, we haven't had the capacity to do as much volunteer activation, army of normal folks activation, as much as health care activation, clinic, social services activation.

We're partnering with these frontline. on care teams who are giving these cards out, capturing the goals, action steps, and then, like, marking on the back end when they've been completed, which awards these dollars. We do have additional dollars, unconditional following in from donors. We don't have as much of the passerby thing anymore, which is sad. But we do have donors who live in L.A. who are like, I want to, I want to make a dent in this homelessness crisis. And I want to do it most efficiently by giving to the people. themselves in a way that $100, which makes a huge difference in someone's month, you know, can actually really help.

All right. So that first pilot, what did it prove? These people that chased? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we gave out 200 cards and the 120 or 150 of them materially improved their access to care, to health care, to income or benefits or housing. And we saw that show up in the following years data on. health care costs. There was an 18% reduction in cost of care from like when from the year prior

to getting the membership to post membership. And that 18% was actually when they compared the population, the 200 people that got the card to the rest of the homeless patients that didn't get the card initially, the rest of the population, their cost increased by about 36%. So it was really a 54% difference. That's right. That's right. That's right. So we bent the cost curve down, instead of them rising 36%, they bent down 18%, a 54% difference from people who had access to Samaritan to people who didn't. Did the hospital give you a sense of what that equated to in dollars? It's about $5,000 per person per year in difference. Holy smokes. Yeah, 200 people is like a million bucks.

That's a hell of investment for $100,000. of sandwiches they didn't eat. That's exactly right. So for their $100,000 investment, they netted a $1.9 million gain in the outflow of services. Yeah, so it's like a million, something like that, yeah. 5,000 times 200 a million. So they netted 900,000.

900,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So 10 to one return on investment for doing the right thing and helping their unhouse population in a new way. Well, the hospital had to do. of styling. Yeah. And so obviously, we raised our rates and they raised their commitment in terms of, you know,

how many lives we'd served for how many years. And it was sort of a seminal study that has helped us now get contracts with, you know, Fortune 100 insurers and hospitals. We'll be right back. You know, Roaldahl, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.

Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans.

What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman.

And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney. and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast.

This is a story about a horrendous lie that does. 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 Termaine 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.

I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl. You may know me from my It Girl series I've done on the streets of New York over the years. Well, I've got good news. I am bringing those interviews and many more to this podcast. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work with the women's shaping culture right now. As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard and you have to push the narrative in a way that doesn't

compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Each week, I have unfiltered conversations with female founders, creatives, and leaders to talk about ambition, visibility, and what it really takes. to build something meaningful in the public eye. Because being an It Girl isn't about the spotlight, it's about owning it. I think the negatives need to be discussed and they need to be told to people who maybe don't do this every day, just so they know what's really going on. I feel like pulling the curtain back is important.

Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Josh from Stuff You Should Know with a message that could change your life. The Stuff You Should Know Think Spring podcast playlist is a. Available now, whether spring has sprung in your neck of the woods yet or not, the stuff you should know, think spring playlist will make you want to get your overalls on, get outside, and get your hands in the dirt. You can get the stuff you should know think spring playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's go! Our IHeart Radio Music Awards are coming back. Thursday, March 26th, live on Fox. Watch as we honor the biggest stars from all genres of music. that you loved listening to all year long on your favorite IHeart Radio station and the IHart Radio app. Hosted by Ludacris. Icon Award recipient

John Mellencamp. Innovator Award recipient Miley Cyrus. With performances by Alex Warren, Kalani, Lainey Wilson, Ludacris, Ray, TLC, Salt and Pepper and Invoke. Fler Swift makes her first award show appearance this year.

Nicole Scherzinger, Nikki Glazer, somber, Weiser, and more. Watch live on Fox. Thursday March 26th at 8.7 Central. And listen on IHeart radio stations across America and the free IHeart app. One of my degrees is psychology, and so there's a whole lot of stuff like this where you have your control group and all of the, effectively, your control group was everybody else, your test group was the 200 card giver. That's right. The members.

That's right. I can't imagine that hospital not saying, okay, now give us a thousand cards. of these things to every single person that walks through our doors now. Yeah. Every single un-house person. Is that what they did? And that's the goal. I think, you know, what happens in practice is they can't take the financial risk up front

and pay for a thousand cards or un-capped. We're trying to get to uncapped. And both sides are. We're sitting on the same side of the table saying, we want things like this in the hands of every homeless patient we have. That's not the issue. The issue is like, how can we? We as a health system afford and kind of pay for this, we do need to see, you know, multiple years or, you know, multiple cohorts.

And so we're going to grow with you guys and we're going to let you, I mean, we were charging $42 per person per month at the time. And for a lot of reasons, that wasn't a sustainable rate. So, you know, we got up to $100 per person per month and we're continuing to grow based on the impact we're having the savings that we're generating from there. So we were able to raise our rates and the cohort size. It's so simple. If you're saving $5,000 a person and you're spending $100 a month, $1,200 a person, you're literally saving $3,800 per member that are walking through your doors. That's right.

So, I mean, it's the best, it's like the best possible scenario where you're saving cash and you're making lives better off. Yeah. And then that's not to say anything about the fact that these unhoused people are now getting taking a better care of themselves. They're going to live longer, and those years are going to be better lived. All right.

So that's Hospital 1. What's next after that back in 2021, I think you said? Yeah, so this data is coming out now. It's like 2023, and we're kind of selling to different hospitals or health insurers Medicaid plans end up being our biggest partner. And so, yeah, I mean, that study has helped us get contracts with United Health Care, Etna, Molina, Elevance, Humana, Centine. These are six companies on the Fortune 100, and all of them have this really interesting financial incentive to drive stability for their

highest cost populations, which if you look at their roles or their kind of member expenses, their most expensive patients or members are people experiencing homelessness. So we've been able to to get early contracts with these groups. And so it's working. I think that the challenging thing is, Bill, like, we used to be able to, when we had, like, city contracts, give out these cards to every person that we saw on the street. Like, you and I could take a drive downtown Memphis,

see a person in need, give them a card, sign them up. That can't happen anymore because it has to be an Aetna member. It has to be United Healthcare. It has to be a patient in this system. Eligibility is restricted to the people that, I don't want to say it like this, but that they care about most. And we can't just give it to anyone. And so my work now that we've been, and we're growing in, you know, this kind of health care use case is to double back to the counties, to the cities and say, hey, this is something that should be available for everybody. Everyone that's under the poverty line or everyone that's 10% or lower.

But now you have a story to tell because it works. It works. You can model it and prove it. So how are you scaling the tech solution for escaping homelessness without losing the humanity part of it? And the answer is you're now saying we're going back to the municipalities now to say, let's have this for everyone. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, we've had to cut certain parts of the identity that we started. We don't have like the commuter focus anymore, and we don't have the army of normal people. Because we've grown actually quite a bit, and we haven't been able to do volunteer acquisition,

Army acquisition, to match the speed at which we're growing. We want to have 30 Samaritans, which is what we call the volunteers, for every person, every member. 30, because that's the number of days in a month. Our call is that if you're on someone's team, you do one thing a month. month for that person. That's nothing. But if you have 30 people on someone's team, that person gets blessed every day of the month. They're given something to make them smile. And I have not, we have not as a team been able to sort of keep up with like getting 30 volunteers for every member. We, most of the support we provide is through hiring people with lived experience

to be like phone buddies or text buddies with their members and then providing the financial capital from donors. The hospitals and the insurers are actually providing a bunch of capital now that the members can earn from. So it looks different. Can you shut out what cities you're in? I was just about to ask. So people who are listening if they are interested in being one of those Samarisons for them. What cities are you in? Yes. Yes. So, you know, Sacramento, Oakland, L.A., San Diego are big focuses of ours in California. We've recently expanded into the inland Empire, which is east of L.A., are looking at Orange County as well.

And outside of California, a lot of our work is in Louisville, actually. They've got a big problem. Louisville and Memphis are not that similar in that regard. And Hugh Amanda's there, so I'm sure as a driver. Yeah, that too. So we had an innovation funder

called Access Ventures, great guys. They sort of brought us to Louisville. And they said, I forgot it was like 75K or 100K or something like that. Get it started. Let's get data and bring it to Humana, Etna of Kentucky. We did it. And they bought in for a year or two.

And then what I'm really excited about is there's five Medicaid plans in Kentucky. And based on the results for the two first ones, all five of them have bought in. So that means if you're on Medicaid and you're homeless in Louisville, Jefferson County, you can get one of these cars. And that's the widest eligibility we've had since starting sort of the medical model. And now we want to be able to, you know, after like the five Medicaid plan pilot, we want to be able to take that data back to Jefferson County. And then, yeah, regardless of citizenship status, regardless of Medicaid status,

if you're on the street or you're below this income threshold, you are eligible for membership from Samaritan. And it helps the people, but from a pragmatic standpoint, it saves our health care system money, which effectively saves us all money because our rates don't go up as quick when they don't have the expenses that they have. That's right. Yeah.

And there's also non-medical costs that we need to look at jail time, shelters. Yeah, that's a very good point. So I think for every dollar that the medical model spends on someone experiencing homelessness, there's a county dollar that's being spent as well in some resource. And as businesses are recruiting to your city, the cleaner, the nicer the city, the more people, there are all of that. I mean, there's an enormous amount of, I don't know how you qualify those benefits, but they're really infinite.

Yeah, it's a big opportunity here. And so, you know, we've sort of upgraded our goals to get to not 100,000 lives, but 250,000 lives by 2032. And, you know, we're in that process now. So, yeah. What about New York? Oh, yeah, yeah. I forgot the other cities.

So, yeah, we've tested in Seattle, obviously, a bunch of cities in California, Louisville. And then we've tested in Jacksonville, Baltimore. It looks like we're going to be standing at Virginia Beach this year. We've tested in New York, which is just its own animal. You know, it's funny. Like, yeah, you think about homelessness. You probably think of San Francisco. We haven't launched there.

New York is a very, very complex thing where, yeah, we've tested out in Staten Island, which is one of the boroughs in New York, and we're in the process of hopefully expanding to, yeah, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx. I just can't imagine. I can't imagine any area not wanting this. What's the barrier? I mean, innovation and these big behemoth systems move slow. And the thing is actually, and I love that you see the value.

You should just join our sales team. You know, come work with us and make it happen. That's just what I need, Alex. Get out of hardwoods, man, and come self-homelessness. So let me know. But if you're a person of color in this country right now, you're marginalized in some way, it's a harder time now than it was for you a couple years ago. And like services that serve you on the street are being defunded and funding is being cut.

And it's just we're selling into a market. we're trying to grow into a market who's their funding, like Medicaid's funding, safety net hospitals funding is being cut, is being reduced. Staff layoffs, innovations, budgets being eliminated. And so we're trying to grow our share,

grow our revenue in a market that's shrinking. So that's one barrier. And then, you know, change takes time. I'd say, too, I know we were joking about you doing a sales job. but everybody, not everybody listening, but a lot of people listening will have relevant connections.

And we just take here in Memphis, right? There's Baptist Hospital. There's probably some listeners who know some of the people at Baptist, right? Or people have contacts in Medicaid. So, I mean, I really do think it's a way of the Army acting that we need to do more of, too, of, hey, who's in your personal network

that you could share this episode with and start a conversation? And you may not have been full-time sales first Samaritan, but look, you could spend an hour on this and make a huge impact. Let me tell you something. the mid-south Memphis is what's considered the center of the mid-south, the mid-south, right? And the close, I mean, we're metropolitan areas a couple million people, right?

So the closest cities to Memphis are three hours away in Nashville, two hours away in Little Rock, and Little Rock's half million people, so it's not like a big metropolitan, but it's a city. Jackson, Mississippi is only 300 people. it's three hours south, and then Louisville to the north. So, I mean, if you think Memphis is a massive footprint in terms of square miles, the only level one trauma center within that entire area is in Memphis. It's the only one. Yeah.

So if you get in a bad wreck two hours from here, they're life lighting you to Memphis. If you get in a, you know, if you're on a farm in West Tennessee, an hour and a half, two hours north of here, they're life lighting you to Memphis. Memphis. So you can imagine how important our level one trauma regional one medical center is to the entire mid-south, not just Memphis, right? Now, imagine how taxed that is, that it is the major ER in downtown Memphis as well. Yeah. And how much of their staff is tied up with the very things you were talking about that can delay. trauma work that needs to be done for people who are dying because their ERs overrun with people

sitting there with Colts. Yeah. At a level one trauma center. Right. That is the reality of what's happening today in Memphis right now. If I took you in the front of that place, you would be like, wow. Yeah. I cannot imagine that hospital not going crazy over this opportunity.

Let's do it. Well, it has to be in every city. It has to be. It has to be in Pittsburgh. It has to be in Baltimore. It has to be in Charlotte. It has to be in Chicago. Thank you.

Yeah. And so the need is there, and it's a proven concept. It just feels like we've got to get more people to know about it because I'd never even heard of this thing before then. Yeah, that's what you're helping with here. And to your point, Alex, that's right. Like, anyone who, if you're trying to bring some intervention like this to your city, Anyone that can refer us to a hospital medical director or an ER medical director, someone at a Medicaid plan, that's how we get started in a region.

Or even a big social services agency. I'm personal friends with the head of the Methodist Hospital group here in the Shelby County, and I'm going to call them about you. So here's the thing. Kind of interesting. You decided to call your tech company Samaritan, and I don't really think there's a lot. a whole lot of other tech companies named after Bible stories. That's right. Yeah.

That was arc. Where did the idea of Samaritan come from? Yeah, I mean, it came from the story. It's, it's... But did it... You know, were you that that was, you know, techie, biblis, cross paths? I'm just curious. Was that a thing at all?

Yeah, you know, it's, I've heard this term recently where it's familiar and it's strange. It's familiar. It's not offending. That's a good way to put. It's not offending, but it's strange. It's different. It's like, okay, what's behind that? The original name that I came up with first was give safe. Yeah, I get that. The whole thing was like, okay, give $10 in a safe, easy, and effective way.

But then it just seemed like it was about giving financially. And I was like kind of implying that if you don't give through our app, it's not safe, which is not true. Samaritan, if you read the story of the Good Samaritan, it's so much more. more than giving money. If you read that story, it's like crossing cultural boundaries, racial boundaries, and it's giving time.

It's giving treasure, transportation. Do you mind telling the actual story? Oh, and that's what I was going to say, tell the story, but for everybody who knows the story or thinks they know the story, the whole point is that the beauty of a man from Samaria, helping another, was that they were, those two cultures and races were sworn enemies.

That's exactly right. Yeah. And don't we see a lot of that today? And so, you know, Jesus is talking about, you know, who is my neighbor? Who am I responsible for caring for? Who is being neighborly to one another? And it's not, you know, first, the person, the Jewish person gets beat up, robbed, left for dead. First person to walk by is a priest. I think the second person is like an elected official or some sort of pastor even. They walk on by. And then you have the third person, which is, yeah, like a person from a hated group, a despised individual who comes by. And he... Almost like a Palestinian walking by a blatant Jew. It's very similar.

Yeah. That's a, yeah. There's a lot of examples we could pull from. And so, like, the hated person walks by, sees the person in need, knows he's Jewish, gets off his donkey, gives food, gives transportation, gives time, walks him to the nearest hospital or essentially a hotel. And then at the very end, gives a little bit financially for the person's stay. And it's just sort of that holistic generosity that transcends these fabricated barriers we have about ourselves. everything about that was like, okay, Samaritan should be the name. And I think, you know, still represents the ethos of what we want to do in terms of taking everyday, like reconciliation between people groups, between the rich and the poor, between the white and the black, and the haves and the have-nots, it's still there.

But we're not a faith-based organization. We have people who come from all sorts of different faiths, people who are here for different reasons. I think I've probably made it clear at this point why I'm involved. But, yeah. It's awesome. You've, I guess, committed your life at this point to solving one of our society's greatest challenges. And you're doing it through a for-profit company that also has significant social benefit. What do you have to say to the notion that even in for-profit corporate atmospheres, we can still have a social construct that matters?

I don't know if I'm necessarily an expert or know much about, like, generating social benefit in for-profit organizations. I've been a part of this network called Praxis, which is advancing redemptive entrepreneurship. That's advancing redemptive businesses that are doing things more than just ethically. They're doing things redemptively. And it's just like this another atmosphere, this other edge. And they help business leaders develop redemptive edges for what they do. And that could be a car wash business. It could be a nail salon.

It could be a hardwood business. Have you been settled through there? Sorry. They were also in the podcast settled. Maybe. She works and homeless. They build tiny home villages on church property. Oh, yeah.

Dr. Gabrielle Cloutis is a member of Praxis too. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I have not. But any business can develop a redemptive edge. I'm not necessarily an expert at it. Obviously, our work is very interesting. I think you are.

You've done it. If you've done it, you have expertise in it, my friend. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. The for-profit nonprofit thing is interesting. I have no issue with the nonprofit model, except it's hard to access capital,

especially if you're not doing direct services. So we were not a gospel rescue mission. We were not doing case managing. We weren't building housing. We weren't providing services. We were building technology. And it's pretty hard to raise nonprofit dollars to pay iPhone developers.

That makes sense. We'll be right back. You know, Real Dahl. The writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.

Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true.

I'm telling you. I was a spy. Did you know Doll got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film.

How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of guilt season two 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 mistake an 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. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl. You may know me from my It Girl series I've done on the streets of New York over the Well, I've got good news. I am bringing those interviews and many more to this podcast.

Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work with the women's shaping culture right now. As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard, and you have to push the narrative in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja.

Each week, I have unfiltered conversations with female founders, creative, and leaders to talk about ambition, visibility, and what it really takes to build something meaningful in the public eye. Because being an it girl isn't about the spotlight, it's about owning it. I think the negatives need to be discussed and they need to be told to people who maybe don't do this every day just so they know what's really going on. I feel like pulling the curtain back is important.

Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Josh from Stuff You Should Know, with a message that could change your life. life. The Stuff You Should Know Think Spring podcast playlist is available now. Whether spring has sprung in your neck of the woods yet or not, the stuff you should know, think spring playlist will make you want to get your overalls on, get outside, and get your hands in the dirt. You can get the stuff you should know think spring playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's go! Our IHeart Radio Music Awards are coming back. Thursday, March 26th, live on Fox. Watch as we honor the biggest stars from all genres of music that you loved listening to all year long on your favorite IHeart Radio station and the IHart Radio app. Hosted by Ludacris. Icon Award recipient John Mellencamp. Innovator award recipient. Miley Cyrus. With performances by Alex Warren, Kalani, Lainey Wilson, Ludacris, Ray, TLC, Saltin, Pepper, and Invoke. Taylor Swift makes her first award show appearance this year. I got up. Nicole Scherzinger, Nikki Glazer, Sombor, Weiser, and more. Watch live on Fox, Thursday, March 26th, at 8-7 Central.

And listen on IHeart Radio stations across America and the free I-Hard app. I just am, I think it's inspirational to see a young, big brain who could probably be working on the next app trying to chase the next $150 billion idea. using those talents to obviously got to make a living. The profits are a necessary measure of any organization's success, but to chase the thing that you're passionate about. And I think we have a lot to learn from that. I think my life's work is to give people a shot, you know,

a shot to escape premature death and to use their God-given gifts. And then, you know, once we've given enough people a shot, to not die early and to use their talents to help people who have a shot, you know, build better relationships. I knew MLK had said a lot about the Good Samaritan story. He's got this line of, on the one hand, we are called the play The Good Samaritan on Life's Roadside, but that will only be an initial act. One day we must come to see the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on Life's Highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.

It comes to see then an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. I've never heard, John. Yeah, this MOK guy was pretty bright. I don't know if you've ever heard this MOK guy, but he said a lot of pretty cool stuff. That's one speech I had not heard. I've never heard that either. I'll text you right, yeah. It's great, yeah.

Pretty cool. It's powerful. Jonathan, so far you've helped 5,000 people and 15,000 Good Samaritan. have rallied behind them. Five thousand people born from you having a sandwich and noticing this guy with diabetes across the street and having the temerity to go up and have a 20-minute conversation with them and develop this whole idea.

Where are you going to be 10 years from now? What's that number going to be? We've got, let's see, 2032, we're at 2026. So we've got about six years to get to 245,000. and lives. I've failed, you know, Coach Bill in a lot of ways. I've spent, you know, 10 years on this, and we've only reached 5,000 people. It's not what I started Samaritan to do. And so I know God doesn't measure me by how many members I reach. So, you know, I don't take it too, too personally or spiritually, but that's not, you know, what we've been able to accomplish is something I'm

proud of, thankful for, but is not why I got involved in this work in 2015, 2016. We have a lot of freaking people to reach, and we need help. Yeah. So, I mean, in 10 years, it's every person on or near the street. If they want to receive access to additional financial capital, social capital, they should have access to it. So for all of the people listening to you right now, How does the Army and normal folks assist you to get to the $250,000? What do you want? What do you need? Yeah.

Number one. How can we help you to help them? Number one, like the outcomes of our members drives our growth. So the better off our members are in terms of reaching their goals in life around a stable home, stable income, stable health, the more growth opportunities we'll have. So for the Army, download the Samaritan app, get your wife to put it on your phone. and, you know, open it, pick a market, any market, find a person, and start sending them texts, starts sending them dollars that they can use to reach their life goals. And we're talking about $5, $1.

Nobody's asking anybody to pony up $100 or $1,000 a month or any of that. You're talking about $5, $2 or three times a month. Yeah, absolutely. You can if you want to. People always ask us, I want to make a difference. I don't know how I don't have time. listen, anybody with a home and a job can pull up that app and give $5 a way once a week. Right.

And they're making a significant difference in somebody's lives. And if you're worried about them using that money to go buy a crack or something, they're not going to do it this way because they're getting the money back from the very things they need. Every dollar is spent in the context of a relationship with a professional case manager that can see into their life and help them use that money. effectively. And if you don't care about it from an idealism standpoint, I mean, pragmatically, all you're doing is you are helping people, but you're also helping your culture. You're helping people who are unhoused get on the steps to finding housing and making communities better.

And those dollars, I didn't mention this, like they're given to a separate 501C3 public charity that has its own board, its own financials, and has its overhead completely taken care of. It's called the Multiply Capital Foundation. And so when you give $10 to Stewart on the platform, $10 goes to Stewart. 100% of your investment goes to the person because all of the other costs have been taken care of.

Is it also a tax deductible? Yeah, yeah. So let's say I download the app and I give away $10 30 times over the course of year. Am I going to get something back from them that says I donated $300? $300. Yeah, $300.

Yeah, I'm going to get a... Taxes receipt, saying that you've given $300 to a public charity to multiply capital foundation. We figured that out, too. So it's even a tax deductible thing. Right. So we have separate arms, the one that processes volunteering and donations, and then one that process, like, that kind of manages the technology and the partnerships.

There's some non-monetary stuff, too. I think you're probably diving a little bit more. Oh, yeah. And doing the prep, like helping people with their resumes. Even I saw you were doing, like, virtual letter writing stuff. stuff if you want to dive into that more too. Half hours of hope. We just jump on Zoom with like a company or a church or a neighborhood group, student

group, and we just do virtual letter writing for 30 minutes together. Those letters are sent to the members via, again, text, email, or if they don't have a phone through their case manager. And we often see people do remarkable things because of these words of encouragement, like admitting themselves to rehab, saying yes to a job opportunity, a housing opportunity. they don't even spend the money sometimes. Just because of the words of encouragement from everyday normal people, they feel like if they're worth investing in by other people,

they start to invest in themselves. So I can't understate how impactful individual contributions are for our members. So that's how the Army can get involved. Again, the outcomes of our members drives how fast and how large we grow. The second piece, yeah, like you were saying earlier, if we're trying to reach more people directly, can make introductions to hospitals, social service agencies, city, county, so on and so forth.

How do people find you? What do they Google? Jonathan Kumar. My email is J at, letter J at Samaritan, S-A-R-I-T-A-N. We didn't get the dot com, so it's dot C-I-T-Y, on LinkedIn, Facebook. And I guess Samaritan. Dot City is a website.

Yeah, Samaritan. Dot City is the website. Got it. So come find us. What an amazing story. And 10 years of your life and for you to say, Coach Bill, I've failed, I'm not where I want to be yet. A man, you could be down 21-7 at halftime and still win the ballgame. So failure is it.

It's not where you start. It's where you end. And I feel like you're getting there. Yeah. Thank you. I think it's interesting. You shot a documentary in college. Yeah.

Are you ready for your questions now? Yeah, so that's why I asked. You're an inquisitive guy. Before we did the interview, Jonathan said he had all kinds of questions for me. And so Alex teed it up. We've got 15 minutes left. Oh, great. So everybody, this has a subsection to this thing, is we're reversing roles.

And because Jonathan has been a filmmaker before and clearly likes to run around. and ask people a bunch of questions to create hypothesis. We're going to open the mic to you, and I'm going to answer your question. So bonus, what is this bonus coverage today? What do you call this, Alex? What are we going to call it? Bonus coverage with Jonathan? Kumar's Corner.

Okay. Kumar's Corner. I've never hosted a podcast before. It's an honor. I'm glad to be here with Coach Bill. He's doing a legit intro. Thank you for making the trip in today. Yeah, sure.

Happy to be here. studio. I love doing this in person versus Zoom. Thanks. So, you know, my wife and I got to watch this documentary film from 15 years ago. I have no idea how I've heard of it because it's like, remember the Titans, but not scripted. It's real. It actually happened. And even up to the part where at the end, you're like, okay, I want to see what happens to the guys that were involved. I want to see their real pictures, see what they ended up becoming. And it's like in the credits, it's like the same people. They look the same. And like, that wasn't an actor.

That was the actual guy. That was OC. That was Chavis. That was money. And it was just, it was just an amazing thing. But the thing is, like, the documentary doesn't get to show you just of how all of this came together, Coach Bill. So, like, I've got a couple questions. How did the crew find you and approach you about the film before that season of all seasons where you got to the playoffs for the first time in a lot?

long time went down. How did, how did you know them? How did they find you? Really crazy story. So, you know, I'm not in my own business running a lumber company and coaching football. And Manassas or a different school at this point? Same place. Manassas. That was my six year at Monassas, the film year. And so we were there. And Lane Kiffin had just been hired at the University of the university. of Tennessee. And there's this guy named Rich Middlemiss who ends up being the producer of undefeated who's in L.A.

He's a filmmaker and a producer. But he graduated from the University of Tennessee, and he has this unhealthy, unhealthy obsession with all things, Tennessee football. And he's, you know, they just hired Lane. And back then, all the Tennessee people were all excited about Lane Kiffin. And in Lane Kiffin's first interview, one of the questions he was asked is, what's your first order business? and he said, one of the first things I'm going to do is get down to Memphis

and check out this kid named O.C. Brown. Well, being a producer and a filmmaker and a storyteller, obviously Rich sitting at his computer goes, hmm, O.C. Brown. So he Googles O.C. Brown, Memphis. And there's a newspaper article that the Commercial Appeal, which is the daily newspaper in Memphis did. He's an eighth grader at the time? No, he was a junior.

Okay. Junior. They did a story about OC playing football for me and living with Coach Ray and all of that. And he thought, now, that's an interesting story. So he called us. And he said, tell me more about this OC thing. And we said, well, this is the deal. And he said, you know, I want to come check it out.

So he flew to Memphis and followed us around for a couple of days, ask a bunch of questions. And he said, I was thinking of this as maybe. trying to package it up and sell it as like for an ESPN 30 for 30 short or something like that. Yeah. And he said, but I think there's so much more here. I'll be back. What did Lane tell Rich about OC? Lane doesn't tell Rich anything.

Lane has a, is just in a press conference. Got it. Right? And so he just Googles O.C. Lane never meets Rich or any of that. It's just the newspaper. So he kind of followed the trail of the stories. All the way to you.

So three weeks later, he and, Dan, Lindsay, and T.J. Martin, who are the directors of Undefeated, show up in Memphis with a couple of handheld recorders and cameras, and they rent a two-bedroom apartment, and they say, we're going to make a movie. No boom trucks, no big budget, nothing. Dan and Rich's only credit to their name prior to undefeated was a thought-provoking, heartwarming documentary on the World Series of Beer Pong. That's all they'd ever done. Beer Pong. And Rich, Dan, and T.J.

Spend nine months here, fallen us around and filming us, and they go back to L.A. and say, we're going to make a movie. So we think we may see this thing on Channel 452, some Tuesday at 2 in the morning. And a year and a half later, I'm walking down the red carpet at the Academy Awards. That's how they found us. That's how special that season was, Coach. I mean, it wasn't just the filmmaker. It was just the timing.

The timing was great, but you got to understand. Dan and T.J. and Rich, 16 hours a day. I mean, they were there when I woke up. They were there when I went to sleep. You know, some of those scenes that you see in the film, people always talk about the ending scene while I'm hugging OC. Or people talk about, you know, the money getting a scholarship. Or people talk about me driving down.

the street with Chavis on the sidewalk. None of that was staged. None of that was asked to be done a gun. They were ready. But they were there. Their presence and then their ability to take 550 hours of film and construct a story that was a hour in 45, 48 minutes. A lot of talent. So yeah, it was they caught lightning in a bottle in terms of that year and the personalities for sure, but my gosh, they worked it, and they did a beautiful job crafting a story that tugs on people's hearts. I did 80 hours of footage into 90 minutes, and that took me five years. I can't imagine 550 hours into 90 minutes. That's what they went back to L.A. with. How did you decide to invest in Manassas in the first place? I've always coached football. When I graduated, my mom was

married and divorced five times. My fourth daddy took out a pistol, and, you know, shot at us down a hallway one night. That's where I come from. I had two loving grandfathers, but the men that were in my lives every day that made the most difference in my life from my coaches. And so I went to school and studied English and psychology. I was going to be a child psychiatrist or side psychologist is what I wanted to be, but kind of ran out of money. And I started teaching and coaching football for a living because I, I think it's a calling because those are the very people that made such a big difference in my life. Got married, had four kids in four years, $17,000 years.

A teacher didn't pay the bills anymore, no insurance. I probably should have had a card back then. And I got into business. But coaching was always my passion. So in Tennessee, you can be a non-faculty football coach if you go take a bunch of test and stuff in Nashville and get accredited. And so I did. And so I always coached. Even after I did it for a living, I continued to coach even when I was working outside of the field as a profession. And when I started my business in 2001, I really thought I wasn't going to be able to coach you more

because I was, to be right. And this guy who knew me and knew my background in coaching, called up and said, we've got 17 kids. We've won three games. in 10 years. We need help. Would you be interested? And I didn't even know where Manassas was, but it happened to be a quarter of a mile from where my business was. Wow.

So the truth is the reason I went to Manassas was convenient. Stones throw away. That's it. Just convenient. I didn't go there to save it. I would love coaching football. I didn't go there, save anybody. Didn't go there.

Remember, the camera showed up five years after. Yeah. I just went because I love to coach football. I love to have an impact on. kids, and it was convenient. That is truly why. You talk about the least heroic reason for doing anything, and people want to put all kinds of tags on all of the work I did at Manassas. I'm telling you, no all Shucks false humility. I went to Manassas because it was convenient. Man, and again, the film is undefeated. If you haven't seen it, or you haven't seen it in 10 years,

look it up on Amazon right now. I bought it. You should buy it. Send it to your friends. It's incredible. You know, you, towards the end of the film, you share the tension that you had, kind of the kids of Manassas versus your own kids. And you felt that the tension, maybe a slipping opportunity. And so, you know, you sort of retire from Manassas and then you focus on your kids. Honestly, what is the epilogue with your kids? Do you feel like you were able to get back in their lives in time?

like how do you feel like that went after you left? That's a great question. Not bad for somebody who's not a professional interviewer. I got to coach all of my children in school. They were all like in sixth, seventh grade at the time I left Masses. So I got to coach one of my sons in football. I got to go to one of my sons wrestling matches, all of them. I got to coach one of my daughter, two of my daughters in basketball.

ball, I got to go to their games, ended up coaching one of my sons in both junior high and high school. And not only was I able to reconnect, it was the most enriching time of my life, because I got to have my cake you needed to, too. I got to continue to coach, but this time I got to do with fun kids. So much to the point that after they graduated and moved on to college and moved on to college. And since I've gone back to coaching and they come to my games. They hang out with me. They help feed players.

They raise money. So now they are actually involved with me coaching now. Back, not a Manassas. No, I'm not back at Manassas. After Manassas, I went to a couple of different schools. And now I'm at a school in Memphis called Middle College. and actually my youngest son during the playoffs sat in the booth and with a headset on and helped distinguish defensive coverages while I was calling the offense.

Amazing. Only because his team got crushed early in the season by you guys. And yeah. You played your son's team. My son was coaching. I played him and beat them. Wow, wow. We'll be right back.

You know Roll Doll, the writer who thought up Willie Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roll Doll, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it.

You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock

before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

guess. 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 Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine 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. I'm Bailey Taylor. And this is It Girl. You may know me from my It Girl series I've done on the streets of New York over the years. Well, I've got good news. I am bringing those interviews and many more to this podcast. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations,

and the real work with the women's shaping culture right now. As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard and you have to push the narrative in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Each week, I have unfiltered conversations with female founders, creatives, and leaders to talk about ambition, visibility, and what it really takes to build something meaningful in the public eye. Because being an it girl isn't about the spotlight, it's about owning it.

I think the negatives need to be discussed and they need to be told to people who maybe don't do this every day, just so they know what's really going on. I feel like pulling the curtain back is important. Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Josh from Stuff You Should Know with a message that could change your life. The Stuff You Should Know Think Spring podcast playlist is available now. Whether Spring has sprung in your neck of the woods yet or not,

the stuff you should know, think spring playlist will make you want to get your overalls on, get outside, and get your hands in the dirt. You can get the Stuff You should know Think Spring playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go! Our I Heart Radio Music Awards are coming back. Thursday, March 26th, live on Fox. Watch as we honor the biggest stars from all genres of music

that you loved listening to all year long on your favorite IHeart Radio station and the IHart Radio app. Hosted by Ludacris. Icon Award recipient, John Mellencamp, Innovator Award recipient, Miley Cyrus, with performances by Alex Warren, Kalani, Lainey Wilson, Ludacris, Lodicris, RAY, TLC, salt and evoke. I'm going to man.

I'm going to be. Flissure Swift makes her first award show appearance this year. Nicole Scherzinger, Nikki Glazer, Sombor, Weiser, and more. Watch live on Fox. Thursday, March 26th, at 87 Central. And listen on IHeart Radio stations across America and the free IHeart app. So you're an empty nester, and you feel like you saved it. You were able to get back in time.

That's amazing. Yeah, I don't want to overdo it. It's not like our family was falling apart. It's just I was spending too much time away. and Lisa was dead nuts right, which is you're going to wake up one day if you don't take the opportunity to do this with your own children to have a lot of regrets. And it really wasn't about the kids not getting what they needed for me. It was about me not getting what I needed for my family and potentially regretting something I would never get back. And it was the absolute right thing to do in my life and our family's life has been enriched by the time.

we spent together. You talk about the playoffs, going to the Manassas' playoff game, you know, absolutely gunwrenching, fumbling the opportunity to go up two scores late there. That was tough. Very tough. I'll never forget it. Yeah, man, you had a shot to kind of close the door on them and it just didn't happen, you know, throw the pick late.

How do you feel, you talked about in the film, like, I think character is defined by how you define how you handle loss and adversity not victory. How do you feel the team handled that loss? That playoff, 28 to 27. Better than me. You know, those kids knew that they were really good at what they'd done, that they developed a craft, that they'd committed, that they'd answered all of my calls to rise above so many of the circumstances

that each of them came from. And they went from probably one of the worst teams in the entire state to one of the most respected. And I believe they carried that sense of pride with them long after the days of playing or over. I felt like I let them down. And I wanted... That season or by leaving? No, that game.

I felt like there were some things I should have prepared them better for that in hindsight they weren't prepared for. And I feel like there were some calls I made in that game that I wish I had back. There's no coach on earth that after a loss doesn't question himself more than anybody on the team or the stands or the press does. It's just any coach with their salt. Because the truth is other people can speculate, we know what we did right and what we did wrong. And so I had the hardest time with the loss because I felt like I let those kids down and didn't give them 100% of everything that they needed to be successful. They played their arts out.

They never quit. There were positions that had I done a little differently, maybe we might have won the game. And so, however, you're absolutely right. I define character as not how you handle your successes, but how you handle your failures. I don't think hard times build character. I think hard times reveal character. And so, you know, learning from it, becoming a better coach from it, working harder to prepare for it, I now have a mantra that if any of my teams lose a football game, I'm going to do everything

I can Monday through Thursday to make sure Friday's loss is not my fault. And that comes from, you know, having lost and the gut-riching feeling that I could have done better to keep my kids from losing. And so now my goal is to work my ass off so hard in film on Saturday and Sundays and practice on Monday, Thursdays that if something happens on Friday that we don't get the W, it's not because I didn't do my job for my kids. Right. but you got to see and we got to see in the film that it worked. Like what you instilled in those kids worked and you said yourself that the kids responded better than you did. And they went back to the playoffs.

I mean, I looked it up. The year after that team went to the playoffs. There's nothing embellished by that story. It was 28 to 27 and then they went. They knocked on the door the next year, the year after that, the year after that, I do think it took seven more years of playoff games before they had their first win. Yeah, but they got it. They got it.

It was 2015 or something, 2014? Were you there? What, like, what did that mean when you finally saw that they won a game? I was happy for the school. But by then, listen, the memory of a coach last, a coach's generation is four years. Right? Right. Freshman, the sophomore, is gone.

By the time that team had won, there was a story about this guy named Coach Bill, and there was a movie, but I didn't know any of those kids. I didn't know the administration. I was happy for the school. I was happy for those kids. but I'd moved on and they'd moved on. But, yeah, I mean, it was, the point is the culture of that program outlived me, which is exactly what it should do.

Yeah, it stuck. Right. It stuck. And that's, I mean, they would win three games every four weeks instead of every 10 years, Coach Bill. That's right. That's pretty good. I've got it.

I'm almost done with my questions here. You mentioned one thing in the film that I didn't get, there wasn't a lot of time talking about it. How exactly did you avoid having to take the checks from the bigger schools to go get your butt kicked for $10,000? There was like a booster club. No booster club. There was not a booster club. There was something called. We created a 501C3 called Man Rise, Rise up and be a man.

But really all that was was a holding account. If you want to know the truth, I went to people. who I knew had money in Memphis, and I said, these kids come from these circumstances and here are the demographics. And in order to have a football team, they have to have about $30,000 a year to pay for referees and buses and equipment and all that. And to raise that $30,000 a year,

they have to pimp themselves out four or five times a year and go play off somewhere against massive schools and get beat to death, and it's wrong. And writing a $5,000 check will keep kids from disenfranchised places from having to be sold down the river and thought of as second-class citizens. Yeah. Give me a check.

And so I raised- Because it affects people internally, too, like the players. They come back thinking they're less than. That's it. So I raised over the course of four years, about $200,000 by just begging people to give me money. stuck at Manrise, paid for all that stuff, and quit playing pay games. And then by the time our last year rolled around, the very teams that used to pay us to come get our asses beat,

we had built big enough that we would go beat them for free. You'd ruin someone's homecoming. Perfect. Prior to keep you $10,000 to come up. I did it with middle college this year. Wow. Love it. It was a pay game.

And we went and it was their homecoming and they paid us $2,500 to come beat their ass. I actually sat down with one of those donors this morning. He brought it up that he donated to the middle college fund. Duncan? I was going to say his name, but you can if you want to. Well, Duncan's a buddy of mine, Duncan Williams' investments. And he absolutely did. I called him up.

I said, I don't want these kids having to play pay games. He wrote me a big check. The reason I was going to mention it, though, is encouragement for listeners. Would you have a righteous cause like this? You shouldn't be afraid to ask for money. Oh, that's good. Thanks for calling that out. And it's so well framed, I would give to that easily.

So that's a good call out. I have a hard time asking for money. I'm in business. I can sit down across from a guy and ask for a million-to-a-old-contract and sell my boots off because that's business. And, you know, I have no problem saying, for this money, these are the services and goods I'm going to deliver. When you're dealing with something that is a nonprofit,

it's hard for me to switch off my business perspective of asking for money to just asking for a gift. I've never been good at it. But for the kids that I coach in football, I do it. I think it's that important. A couple last kind of bullet questions here. How did you get into coaching? And then how did all of this lead to you being a podcast host and developing? All right. Last question. It's a perfect segue. How I got into coaching is, like I said, I was going to get my doctorate in psychology. I came to Memphis and was going to go to the University of Memphis to get my doctorate, and I got a job teaching school. And the guy that gave me the job teaching school was actually the headmaster of my high school at another high school. And by the time I graduated, he was the headmaster at this new high school, and he gave me a job teaching.

and he said, hey, we need a coach and assistant football coach. And I said, sure, I'll do that. It pays a stipend. I can do that during the fall. It won't interrupt school. Six days before our first game, the head coach quits and leaves.

And the headmaster comes to me and he says, I really think you're the most qualified to be the head coach. So here I'm a 22-year-old guy who graduated college not only two months ago and this program gets dumped in my lap literally five days before the first game. I don't even know all the kids names yet. And two years later, that situation ran into a team that we only had like 25 kids on a team.

We went seven and three. I developed all these relationships. Lisa and I were on our second kid at this point. I actually had our second kid and she was pregnant with our third at this point. And I remembered why I wanted a teaching coach in the first place. And it just, it was in me. And so, like I said, once I start into business because I need to make more money, it was my passion that I just never quit.

That's how I got into it. How do I ended up with a podcast? While being a CEO, a coach. Yeah, so after the movie and the Academy Award, I still speak a lot, do a lot of keynote speaking for companies and organizations and stuff like that. after the Academy Awards, I was speaking, gosh, every week it's somewhere from Nike to Google to the Olympic Committee to Firestone, just all over the place, and still do a lot of that. And every time I spoke, people would be like, where's your book? So I wrote a book.

And then from the book came more speeches. And so all of that just kind of organically grew. So an Oscar, speaking circuit, book, all this secondary life. And I'm still coaching football runner my business because that's what I do. And from that notoriety, I did a lot of interviews. And one day, this guy, I'm still an advisor to my fraternity at Ole Miss. So it was a Sigma New, still very involved there. because honestly, that experience had a profoundly positive effect on my life.

And so one of the guys that was a Sigma Nu, I'm an adult now, this is five, six years ago, who I mentored through some tough times, he was actually the president of attorney, took a job, told these, took a job at this radio thing. And he told the guy who was working with about me. they called me up and interviewed me, and the interviewer's name was Alex Cortez. Nice. And he interviewed me for the show called Our American Stories. That's right.

And during an interview, as I want to do, I don't hold by tongue when I'm being interviewed, Alex asked me what we needed to do to fix the proverbial it. And I said, you know, there's, in every city and municipality, there's, there's, There's plenty of places where we drive by and we look down that road and we see abject despair and poverty and loss, disenfranchisement, or we're on the interstate. And we drive over the viaduct with the off ramp and we look over the edge of that ramp. And we see all of that. And we think, gosh, don't have a flat tire here. This is not where you want to break down because you're going to get mugged.

All right. Somebody's going to steal everything from you. And then when you safely pass by those areas, and you see all that abject despair and loss, and you safely pass by, you think to yourself, man, somebody ought to do something about that one day, as if that sentiment matters. Like your sentiment is going to change something?

And by the way, who is somebody? The government? Right. They've proven woefully inadequate. Churches, not prophets. And maybe we ought to kick that rearview mirror about 15 degrees to the left and look ourselves and say maybe I could.

could do something about what the day. And so the answer to Alex's question of what's going to fix the proverbial it is if we have an army of normal folks, millions of people seeing areas of need, using what they're good at and their passions to fit those areas of need in a very bottom-up, localized way in their communities. If we had millions of those people doing that across our country and all these areas of need, we could fix the proverbial it. So my answer is not government, not big NGO.

Not any of that. Not fancy people in CNN and Fox that are dividing us. Not people in L.A. or San Francisco or Silicon Valley. Just an army of normal folks. Senators need and filling it. That's what can truly fix our country. And I said that in the interview. Six months later, Alex called me back.

And he said, I can't quit thinking about what you said. I'm thinking about starting a show called an army of normal folks based on what you said. I want you to host it. We're going to interview a bunch of normal folks. folks have done incredible things. What do you think? And that was three years ago. That's amazing, Alex. That's so cool. That's how the whole thing started. And I'm so aligned with that. That's how Samaritan started. So I do think that's a great way to conclude the conversation. It's just like, that's what I need. I need an army of normal folks and you're helping cultivate that.

It's what we all need. It's what we all needs. It's just an army of normal folks. Just normal people using what they're good at and what they're passionate about, filling areas of need. in their local communities. We had 3 million people doing that across this planet. It fixes so much of what else us. And you've evoked race a couple of times in our conversation. In fact, before we ever began, when I tried to pronounce your name, you said, well, that's how white people say it. You know, Jonathan, I believe this.

I don't care what color you are or what you look like or what you're... what your national origin is, I don't care who you love. I don't care how you love. I don't care what your sexual orientation is. I don't care how you vote. I don't care who you love, how you vote. I don't care how you worship. I don't care about any of that because if you're doing something in your community

to serve someone who is not as fortunate as blessed as you, regardless of any of that CNN and Fox and the money and the power in New York and Silicon Valley and L.A. used to constantly divide us. I don't care about any of that. Because if you're doing something to serve someone in your community, I can celebrate you, regardless of any of that. And if I'm doing something in my community to serve somebody, you can celebrate me. And so in addition to the army of normal folks, actually fixing all of what else us, I genuinely believe it has a unique opportunity to bring people from all walks of life in this melting potted culture of ours together

because it breaks down barriers when we can celebrate one another around service. Amen. So an army of normal folks has the potential to be an elixir for so much of what else's community-wise and socially wise. That's what's standing together's backing. We give them a shout out on the show here. But yeah, we're thankful. Thankful for the time.

I'm just having you coach. Just for context, they're standing together ventures. Their investment arm is an investor in Samaritan. That's right. That's right. There you go. And yeah, I mean, Charles, Nicole, all of the members we serve, they need that army of normal people.

And it's such an easy thing. My father-in-law says, like, if everyone does a little, then I don't have to do that much. That's true. That's so true. Everybody, that is Jonathan. Now, Kumar's Corner. Kumar's Corner.

And Bill Courtney with an Army and normal folks doing a very impromptu reverse interview. And Jonathan, you actually did a really good job with that. It's not bad. There's a future in podcasting for you if you want it. First but not the last episode. I love it. Jonathan, thanks for flying down to Memphis from New York and joining us.

I've really enjoyed being with you. Good job on your interview. you. Good job being interviewed. And I wish you and Samaritan all the best. And I am seriously. We'll follow up with you. I do know a couple of people who run some hospital groups around here. And I'm going to toss it at them. See if we can't get you back to Memphis to do some work. That sounds great. We'd love to come to Memphis, get your wife to add the app to your phone. So they start helping people in your city. Wife or kids. Somebody will do it.

Yeah, absolutely. Jonathan, thanks for being here. We'll be back. And thank you for joining us this week. If Jonathan Kumar has inspired you in general, or better yet, to take action by signing up to become a Samaritan, making introductions to hospitals they can partner with, donating to their members' action funds that support their progress, or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd love to hear about it. You can write me anytime at bill at normalfolks. dot us. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and on social. Subscribe to the podcast. Rate it, review it. 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 it you can. You know, Roald Dahl. He thought of Willie Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roll Dahl, I'll tell you that. story and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true.

I'm telling you. I was a spy. Listen to the secret world of Roll Dahl on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go! Our IHeard Radio Music Awards are coming back. Thursday, March 26th, live on Fox. Watch as we honor the biggest stars from all genre.

of music that you loved listening to all year long on your favorite IHeart radio station and the IHart Radio app. Hosted by Lutocris. Icon Award recipient John Mellencamp. Innovator award recipient. Miley Cyrus. With performances by Alex Warren, Kaylani, Lainey Wilson, Ludacris,

Ray, TLC, Saltin, Pepper, and Invoke. Fler Swift makes her first award show appearance this year. Nicole Scherzinger, Nikki Glazer, Sarr. Watch live on Fox. Thursday, March, 26th at 8.7 Central. And listen on IHeart Radio stations across America and the free IHeart app.

Hey there, this is Josh from Stuff You Should Know with a message that could change your life. The Stuff You Should Know Think Spring podcast playlist is available now. Whether Spring has sprung in your neck of the woods yet or not, the stuff you should know, think spring playlist will make you want to get your overalls on, get outside, and get your hands in the dirt. You can get the stuff you should know think spring playlist on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl. This podcast is all about going deeper with the women's shaping culture right now.

Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work behind it all. As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your intent. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor 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.

The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed. 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. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.