EntreLeadership - #350: Saving Lives, One Job at a Time with Barrett Ward

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

When ABLE Founder and CEO Barrett Ward and his wife moved to Ethiopia in 2008, they came face to face with an unspeakable tragedy: young women forced into prostitution as a means of supporting themselves and their families. But instead of relying on charity alone to help them, he set out to create a more sustainable solution—one that has since evolved into the thriving fashion brand he heads up today. Join us to hear Barrett share his incredible mission to end generational poverty by empowering women around the world, one job at a time.   entreleadership.com/podcast ABLE's website Use the code ENTRE20 to get 20% off an ABLE purchase, one-time use per customer, valid through December 31st, 2019. The True Cost documentary Shoe Dog by Phil Knight Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a lie in today's news, politics, and national discourse that too many have bought. The lie is that you can't simultaneously increase productivity and preserve humanity. The lie is that you can't make money and treat people well at the same time. The lie is that capitalism is evil. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Alex Judd, and today's guest stands in stark contrast to that all. all too commonly accepted claim. You see, Barrett Ward founded the women's fashion company Abel just over nine years ago.

With their clothes selling in over 1,200 stores, the business is already making a national impact. But that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the real story. Because this company is not just about women's fashion. Oh, no, not at all. The clothes are the means for accomplishing a purpose so much bigger, so much greater, and so much grander. A purpose that was uncovered when Barrett and his wife moved. moved to Ethiopia. My wife, Rachel and I moved to Ethiopia in 2008.

We had just gotten married in 2007 in September, and our pastor was telling us, you should not move to Ethiopia at the beginning of your marriage. No joke, yeah. But we spent a lot of time, honestly, praying about it, and felt like there was a lot of clarity for us. This is what we're supposed to be doing. In fact, we had to feel that way in order to make that move, because we had to feel that move because we didn't want to get there and a couple of months in start wondering if we had made

the wrong decision in the midst of what was surely going to be some adjustments we would have to make our lifestyle, right? So we felt good about it. We moved in 2008 and, you know, I think one of the things that I noticed right out of the gates was you are fully immersed in both wealth and poverty. There's a lot more poverty in Ethiopia than obviously there is in the United States. But there's also people of wealth, and they all kind of exist together and community. It's not, and certainly there's more wealthy neighborhoods than others, but it's not so segregated, where you might never cross poverty if you lived in a certain town or city in the United States, right? And because of that, it was all around. And so that starts affecting your soul. What you see

gets in you, changes your mind, and then trickles down to your heart. And one of the things that we saw that I had never seen up close and personal was young girls soliciting men for sex. Oh, my word. And you come to find out that it's sex slavery. And then you come to find out that there's women that have gone into prostitution or the commercial sex industry to meet their basic needs of life, right? So at that moment, are you sad? Are you angry?

What do you feel? So when I first found out that girls were turning tricks for 25 cents to a dollar, it was complete anger. I just was welling up with this feeling of justice, right? And that's where I lived first. But then when I started hearing their stories, it turns into sadness. Because that's where empathy happens, right? And when I heard from women telling me things like I went into the commercial sex industry to save my sister from breast cancer, oh, my word.

Right? All of a sudden, you're like, this is not. someone that's made a bad decision in their life to end up here. This is someone that has made one of the most heroic decisions I've ever heard of. I can't even imagine having to make a decision like that. It's sacrificial is what it is. Completely sacrificial. I mean, I have four girls of my own, Rachel and I do. And of course, I would do anything for them, but I've never been in a position where I'd have to make a decision like that. So that was really a big moment of developing a real heart for working with these vulnerable women. And then the next kind of seminal

moment was hearing from them, look, we got involved with a charity while we were there. There was a local charity, locally Ethiopian run that worked to rehabilitate these women out of the commercial sex industry. So that may be health care, child care, counseling, group counseling, those kind of things, learning just to even live during the day versus the night like most these women did. In fact, most of the women would work at night and just latch key their children in an unsafe little home at night or even on the streets with a friend. So what I'd learned from them was while we're grateful for this charity, at the end of the day, if we don't have a job at the end of this road, we're going to end up back on the streets. And so that was a moment for me of saying,

hold on. Are we on the right side of figuring out poverty right now? And while charity is critical, Let me say that clearly. There are people that are desperate in the world. What I feel like there's a lack of is people that are serious about the other side of the solutions to poverty, of empowerment, creating jobs, creating commerce. Because if we don't increase trade with these countries, in a lot of ways, they can't buy into that world economy. So it's more sustainable is what you're saying. It continues the cycle. Like once you get someone off the streets, you're able to empower them with a job. I'm curious to know prior to that moment. So that click happens in Ethiopia. Prior to that moment, whenever you were in the United States, did you have this thought in the back of your head that you wanted to one day start a business? Or was that a dream of yours?

Really? No way. That's funny you asked that because it was the furthest thing from my mind. I was just working with a nonprofit that I had started a few years earlier. And I kind of thought that was the rest of my life. And in fact, what I thought was, you can only do good. in the framework of a nonprofit. Wow.

Those capitalists are bad. That was truly your viewpoint at that point? Maybe being a little hyperbolic on thinking that capitalists were bad, but I really kind of thought if you wanted to do good to change the world, you needed to be in the nonprofit space, right? And so that was the furthest thing from my mind of starting a business that could help before. So you start to have this idea that, okay, they need jobs, and jobs will create sustainable

and start to ease the chronic poverty that occurs in that. nation. What happens next? Well, my wife was at the marketplace and we were looking at some of the indigenous Ethiopian products. We didn't want to try to figure out manufacturing they had never done before because we knew we would need to sell a product. And what the women decided was, and what Rachel saw at the marketplace is that scarves have been around since the Queen of Shiba in Ethiopia. She's a real person. And the women said, we would love to make scarves. Let's do this. And if they would have said, we'd love to make coffee cups, we'd be a coffee company today. I don't know anything about fashion at all. Okay. So the passion was not scarves. The passion was

not fashion. The passion was truly just getting these women a job. Right. Are you looking at me? Look at my shirt. I am not a fashionable guy. Well, yeah, this is. Well, you're talking to someone that would never be able to recognize a good shirt versus a bad shirt. You and I both. You and I both. You look fantastic. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. But I think that's so powerful because so often I think business leaders can get cornered into this line of thinking that, okay, I own a plumbing company. Does that mean I need to be passionate about plumbing? Or I own a restaurant. Does that mean that I need to be the most passionate person about food? Right. And what you're saying is you weren't passionate about those

things at all. You were passionate about people. It was a vehicle. And that vehicle could have been, they might have said, let's open a restaurant like you just said. And, you know, I probably wouldn't recommend doing something that you absolutely have disdain for. But to me, fashion was neutral. And if it was a way to give them a job and it was something that women loves, well, then that was exciting to me. So there seems like this gap in my head between, okay, you see this need, you even see a potential solution to a need. But there's a gap between having that recognition and then actually taking action and starting a business. So what was the decision maker, or was there a tipping point where you said, okay, we're going to.

to go at this and we're going to dedicate both my life and my wife's life towards this mission. Well, I wouldn't call myself someone that creates the five-year plan. I didn't create a business plan. I didn't kind of vet through all the problems I was going to run into, which I kind of wish I had because soon after I was in fetal position on the bathroom floor begging God for mercy. but you know I've heard that a characteristic of many entrepreneurs is that they figured out as they go and so for me it was never about this major decision stake in the ground let's do this as much as it was just okay well let's start a website and put some scarves on and see what happens and so that's what we did and we were also really fortunate that an actress named Minka Kelly had heard about us

well that's helpful that's helpful and she did a video about what we were doing with the scarves. And she came over and met the women and she helped promote it. And so she was a huge, in fact, the reason probably why we got off the ground. But it did get off the ground at that stage. Got off the ground at that point. The first couple of months, we had sold over 4,000 scarves. And we realized we had something. And what we knew we had that I think our female consumer was identifying with is that if we're going to be serious about solutions to poverty, you've got to do two things. You have to create jobs, and you have to do so for women.

Because what we understand about women, and this is not even a heart thing, this is a socially, scientifically proven fact, that when you create a job for a woman, she typically reinvest 80% of her money back into her family, whereas a man does typically only 30 to 40%. Wow. So that means more health care, more education, et cetera. And, you know, we never set out with that thought process when we just were working with those first three women, but what we've realized years later is we've landed right where we would have chosen had we strategized it, which is, let's create jobs for women because we're serious about

poverty alleviation. We run into people all the time that have this passion and this fire for starting something, but then they tell themselves the lie that I'm not a visionary so I can't. Right. What would you tell that person? Well, you know, it's funny. I would actually say maybe you're not a visionary and maybe you're not a details person and maybe you're not a finance person but you're going to need all those elements so the first thing to do is go out and just share with people your idea you know i just met with a woman the other day that has an idea for a pajama company and what she wanted to do was know the next 40 steps right and i just said hold on let's really lock down steps one and two and steps and step

Steps one and two are start talking to as many of your friends as you possibly can and see would they buy this. But open it up to them to be negative about it. So, first of all, see if you've got a viable product and a viable brand. It's market research. Like, it's just, I mean, and words like market research scare the daylights out of me. I mean, I was a Japanese language and literature major in college. So when I hear people use terms like that, it starts to make me feel inadequate, to be honest.

You're saying, ask people if they like your PJs. Yeah. And then also market research. Yes. And then the next thing to do is to understand how much money would it take to get that thing started. You know, how much money would it take? And talk to your spouse and see how much are you okay losing?

And then if that's not enough to get started, then go talk to some friends about being a part of it and see if anybody would be interested in it. Now, again, in the technical world, they call that a family and friends investment round. Again, to me, it was called begging some of my closest friends in Nashville. But people came around us. They believed in the vision, and we had something. So what was the vision at those early stages that you were casting to family and friends? And then what was the mission or the why behind it that you were articulating at that time?

Well, you know, really the storyline was that we started it under the nonprofit that I was with. And a couple of years later, our lawyers came to us and said, here's the news. You guys are earning enough money, at that point maybe like $250,000 to $300,000 a year, that you cannot stay a nonprofit anymore. There's a certain thing called U-Bid or unrelated business income tax. And so they said, you have to convert to a for-profit. And what I learned from talking to some friends was that that means that I would have to buy the assets from the nonprofit and raise.

a little capital for ongoing operations to hire a couple of people. So we actually raised about $600,000. Wow. And again, I did that through friends and family. And to your point of casting the vision, you know, again, it was just this simple, I guess you called a pitch deck. And it said, slide one, here's the mission. We are trying to create jobs for women out of poverty. And we eventually want to do that in the United States as well. So help us come beside that part of the vision. Okay, but I think that is super powerful. The mission didn't say anything about scarves or clothes in it. Right. I'm sure that was intentional on your part that we're going to focus entirely on empowering women with jobs. Right. And we knew that it was going to be in the wheelhouse of what

we were already doing because we wanted to keep it with the same consumers. Of course. And not try to go too far down the road. So it was very easy for us to add leather to that mix. And, And then when we moved the operations to Nashville, we started working with women coming out of Nashville, and they started making jewelry. So in Nashville, there's a group called the Magdalene House with women coming out of the commercial sex industry as well, and women coming out of the Hope Center, which is addiction. And so we started creating jobs in Nashville, Tennessee in the same way. But again, that pitch to the investors was, here's the mission, here's the products we're selling, here's our track record. here's what we believe we might accomplish and growth. And then you have to create a valuation, right?

You have to create a valuation for the business, which again was, if any of the original investors are listening, I just threw that number out in the air and they bought. I had no idea how to genuinely create a real valuation. It's very speculative. You know, if you watch Shark Tank, you just go for it. So sounds like you were very much figuring this out as you were going. Totally to say.

Totally. Yeah, that, like I mentioned, before that equals fetal position on the bathroom floor with your two-year-old walking in the room going, why is Daddy crying? That was all in 2014 is a very stressful year. And so the advice that I always give looking back to that moment is have a mentor, have a mentor that can both walk with you through the emotional and spiritual challenges that you're going to face, but also someone that's been down this road that started a company before,

because they can just kind of look at you and go, hey, that emotion you're having right there, is not real, you know? And really more than anything is just hearing the wisdom that, look, your investors believed in you, if you fail, that's okay, you know? You're not going to die just because you fail at this business. You do not hear that message very often. I needed to hear it. I had to convince myself of that reality because I put so much pressure on myself to succeed. So it's almost like hearing, okay, if this fails, I am not a failure. Right. That's a pretty big deal to actually internalize that. Well, it took a long time to get there. But I need that. I need to be able to do that for myself. Like, you know, they talk about people being a way motivated or towards motivated, towards motivated

people, wake up in the morning. They know what their goals are. They're going to go hit them. They're fired up about their goals. I wake up in the morning as in a way motivated person, knowing what my goals are. And I like those goals, but I'm scared I'm not going to hit them. And that's what gets me out of bed. And then I go perform and I go do my best, really. But it's out of fear that you're not going to hit those goals. Yeah. I need to get to work. Fear that I might screw this out.

Now, let's go to work and do this. Gosh, I feel like a lot of people right now are saying, oh, my gosh, that's totally me. He's talking to me right now. And it's okay to be motivated either way, you know, fear of the unknown. And I think more than anything, what I needed to do with all that fear is start creating an ideology for myself that understood that it really means that. Like, for example, in the Bible when it says, don't cast your worries for to be a fertile, You know, there's nothing you can control in those worries that are not in today. And there's enough trouble for today. So figure out today, live in the present. And it's taken me a lot of years

to learn how to exercise the muscles of living in the present. And there's things I intentionally do in order to build those muscles. But man, the future and the fear of the outcomes, destination sickness, not only does it cause stress, but it doesn't make me any better for the day, right? Absolutely. So again, I needed a mentor to help walk me through those times. Yeah, I think that's maybe one of the dark sides of innovation that you don't hear about very much, is if you're doing something that nobody's ever done, you're doing something that nobody's ever done. And I read a phrase not that long ago that just hit me square in the eyes. It was talking about the role of a leader and the phrase was experiencing the isolation of ultimate responsibility.

And it's like, that's where the phrase leadership is lonely comes from. It's because you are holding that responsibility that very few people can empathize with. So how did you deal with that at those early stages? And then how do you continue to deal with that feeling of isolation now? You know, on the lighter side of that quote that you gave, I read that first year where I was a CEO. There's just three of us, you know. And I'll tell you this, too. Four years later, we had, I think, 90 employees.

So we were growing at a juggernaut pace, which that was stressful too. And the story that I could tell was that it was a juggernaut. We were growing. It was exciting. But that feels so disingenuous to me to not really share with people what I went through first to get there, right? And I heard a quote once that said, people look at entrepreneurs and think to themselves, look how brave they are writing that lion? And an entrepreneur is thinking, how the heck did I get on this lion? And how do I stop it from killing me?

Gosh, that is so true. And that was my experience. So, so, you know, I mentioned that first year I had a mentor, which is critical. And the truth of it is, at the end of that year, I actually could, I still was at a place where I couldn't control my, my fear. And so a friend told me, have you ever thought about taking anti-anxiety meds, you know? And, you know, this isn't a, I don't get paid by Lexifer or anything like that. But I needed that. It was like a crutch for me. I just needed to take that anti-anxiety. And what happened was within a few weeks, I started to feel like myself again. Really? And, you know, I guess medically, it's just serotonin flooded back into your body that maybe I had a little lack of.

And a friend encouraged me, you know, you may need to stay on it. You may not. But during the time that you're taking it, use that as an opportunity to try to rebuild how you think about outcomes and responsibility and what you're ultimately accountable and what maybe isn't in your control

that you're trying to bring into your control? It's kind of like your mental dialogue. You're refraining it. Exactly. Because the insanity of thinking that I control the outcomes of things like people buying because that's ultimately

what you're trying to do when you try to control is that end result and you can barely control what's right in front of you. So we become diligent with what's right in front of us. And I think also

just surrounding myself with team members that I was very vulnerable with and said, look, I'm really struggling right now with this. Can you come beside me in this and help me work through this? Sometimes, you know, it would get so challenging for me to even concentrate that I would just vulnerably ask someone, can you just sit down and help me work through this roadmap?

Help me just think through it, you know? Okay, but that's a pretty powerful thing to sit down with someone. But I think the only way that that becomes powerful is if you show them the roadmap and you admit the fears, the imperfections, the anxiety. Like, you have to be pretty real. Because I find myself doing this, but I also see other entrepreneurs doing this, is they'll show a roadmap and they're trying to impress you. Right. It's like, well, this isn't going to work if you're just trying to impress. It's so funny. Yeah. I was just having a conversation this morning. And we talk about this as a team all the time that it's not impressive to me that you can use really good

jargon. It is not impressive to me that you can have a quick answer. What's impressive to me is that leadership is talking way less and asking way more questions to the team. Help draw out of them, you know, what you're looking for, and maybe they'll give you something different and they'll give you a different path, right? But if it's always got to be, here's what I'm thinking, here's what I'm thinking, boy, you're limiting, you know, because you're eventually going to, land on what you were thinking anyways. You've eventually got to get that out there. So why don't you just listen first and ask questions? So I'm with you on that. I just think, you know, we do have a vulnerable work environment. We do have a mission first work environment. We do have

a very, very collaborative environment. And a lot of the credit we give, I mentioned, you know, there's some women working in our midst that, you know, one woman overcame a heroin addiction and just overcame or just had her first year of sobriety. Oh, my word. And when you're sitting down with people that are so willing to share their story, you realize there is no power in image, you know, that just doesn't get you anywhere. It's exhausting. Who has the energy to try to fake something? It's, I don't know, the time or energy, right? Hey, I want to ask you a question real quick. Are you a business leader that is currently in survival mode? Like, are you on the hamster wheel of business where you're so buried by what you do

day to day that you can't even begin to focus on leadership development or your hiring process or even think about delegating a real responsibility to anyone other than yourself. If that's you, we've got a training coming up for you that I want to make sure you know about. It's the escape survival mode training. And it's a free training that I'm going to be hosting and we'd love to have you there. So if you are in survival mode, just text the word escape to 3344. Again, that's the word escape to 3344 and then I'll help you reserve your spot for that escape survival mode free training. Are you a business owner that feels trapped because you can't find the right people to grow your company? This is one of the greatest challenges that businesses face today because finding the right

people can be really, really hard. But Belay exists to help you do that because they want to help you grow your business, eliminate chaos and start enjoying the business that you created. So if you want help finding the right executive assistant or the right bookkeeper or maybe even a website specialist so that you and your team can focus on the things that are actually going to move the business forward, then you need to contact Belay. If you want more information or to download a free guide with 25 things that you as the owner can delegate to an assistant, text the word Belay to 31996. Again, that's Belay, spelled B-E-L-A-Y to 3196. I think one of my theories is that's why people connect so strongly to Dave Ramsey. It's because he's gone through an experience of being broken, broken. I mean, it must be incredibly fulfilling for you to get to work with people who know what rock bottom feels like and now have the perspective of now getting this new life.

Yeah. You know, the truth of it is, we really talk at Abel that we kind of all know what rock bottom feels like. We all have a relative sense of that. And on a world scale, maybe heroin addiction looks different than an anxiety attack or looks different from having to work on the streets to earn income or being homeless. But everybody has an experience that is their rock bottom. Yeah. It is their rock bottom. Just wait a little bit. Just wait a minute. And be willing to share that with people, right? That's where the power lives, is that I don't have to be something I'm not. The only way to truly feel loved is when you demonstrate your unlovable stuff or the things you think are unlovable, right? So that's what we're fighting for. I love that.

So today, you're employing how many women both domestically and internationally? So we don't own any of our manufacturing overseas. And we do manufacturing around the world, from India to Ethiopia to Mexico to Brazil, and then also here in the United States. We own the manufacturing in the United States. Here we and our home offices employ, I think, a little over 90 people now. It's kind of growing every day. And then around the world, there's hundreds of women that are employed by the impact. I mean, you know, one of the examples is Fortuna Mario from Ethiopia.

She was a friend of ours when we were actually living there. And then she became our national director that worked with our other vendors in Ethiopia. We had three at the time. And she helped them keep on production schedule. She helped communicate back to us where everybody was at, what the needs were. And about a year in, this is two years ago, she said, you know what, I think I could run a leather business. Would you allow me to do that? We should go for it.

So Fortuna started a leather business, and two years later, she has 57 women that are all earning a living weight. Oh, my word. So that is the kind of impact that we just feel super grateful to be a part of, you know? Is that the type of story that when you see that happen, is that where you see this is our mission being lived out? Is that what you're looking for? 100%. I mean, the reality of the fashion industry is that actually only. it's estimated that as few as 2% of the people working in the fashion industry earn a living wage.

And what that means is, especially around the rest of the world, is that they can't even make ends meet. And so the part we want to play in it is I don't want to get to St. Peter and him say, man, you sold a ton of bags, but why didn't you make sure the impact you were having on the women that were making these products were matching the mission you had originally started with? And so that's been real important to us to make sure that because we've got a short time here, relatively speaking. So let's just get it. Let's do our best, right? Let's just get after it. Let's get after it, man. It's funny. I was talking to someone, it was a business owner on a coaching call today. And the question that he brought to the call was he said, I want to protect our standards and I want to hold people accountable to what we believe is creating a really exceptional product.

And I want to make sure that our standards do not suffer because we just want to. want to make sure we're treating people super well and we're not hurting people's feelings. In the position that you're in, you obviously have to set a standard for the quality of product that you're going to sell to your customer. And your stuff is some of the best, right? Thank you. And so how do you guard that standard? And at the same time, I would assume with the women that you are employing, like, just like any human being, they have backgrounds that they bring into the workplace and you've got to allow some room for grace. And like we were talking about earlier,

imperfection. How do you walk that line or walk that tightrope? Of the 90 people that we work with, 87 of them are women. And so we are a brilliantly women-led company. I've said it before that if I tried to apply for a job at ABLE today, I am positive that I'm not qualified to work there. But thank God I started it, so I still have a job. But we really empower leadership at our company. There is, I mean, number one, we attract people that are super committed to their work. And that doesn't mean that they do it perfectly every day, but it means that they are striving for perfection, right? And they want to do the best job that they can do. So I think the culture that is created by the women we work with is what lends itself to what you're asking.

So it's the culture. So how do you identify that characteristic in an interview process? Oh, boy. When I sit down in interviews, the most important thing to me, you know, it's funny. I think there's a million good handbacks out there that would be better than me. But I do just want to talk through our mission with people. I want to give them examples not only of what our mission looks like and how would they respond to someone if they did fail in a moment like that, right? If they did have back-to-back failures and whether they created the product or whether they were creating a marketing plan, How do you manage a person like that to excellence? You know? So development is a huge part of your organization. Yeah. It is definitely a journey.

That's what we focus on. What are you most passionate about right now? Well, you know, as we've grown and we have started to have more influence in the fashion industry. We're, you know, we're in 1,200 stores around the country. That's amazing. We're starting to develop brick and mortar around the country, meaning, stores, physical retail stores, branded as ABLE. Are you allowed to tell us where's next?

You're in here in Nashville. Man, I'm hoping that it's either San Fran, L.A. or Austin, but we've got to find that place first. So if you want us there, South Congress, you just give us a call. That's right. Austin, Texas is where it needs to be. Nashville's sister city. Yeah, Nashville is Austin 2.0. That's right. But, yeah, and then a lot of our, most of our business is actually done online.

So as we're having that growth, one of the things I started realizing early on is that we were losing visibility to the impact we were having. So when we were working with 20, 30 women, we knew all of them, and we knew the impact that was had, and we knew the wages. But as we started to grow, I started having the sense of, man, I'm losing visibility to the bottom line. I really don't know if all the women in Ethiopia are benefiting from the original mission we set. forward. That's going to be kind of terrifying to have that realization. It's like I said, I could just picture sitting in front of St. Peter and him going, man, why were you so worried about selling bags? What about the mission? And so we really started digging in. And the answer was we needed to audit our manufacturers. So we started looking at a bunch of audits. And the biggest thing that

we saw missing was two things. One, there was not a real strong boots on the ground effort of annually, even quarterly, visiting the manufacturers to make sure that the equality, the wages of benefits, the safety, and all those things were up to snuff. In fact, most of the audits we saw either didn't go or did random audits or would go once every four years. And that's just not enough. An entire manufacturing business could change in a month, right? So boots on the ground through our audits was important.

And then the second thing was that it had that strong women's focus for looking. at the safety and equality around a woman's workplace. So, or women in the workplace, I should say. So we didn't find what we were looking for. And so we started our own audit. And it sounds like I like starting things. I don't. I really don't.

But what we kept seeing was is a need for greater integrity, right? And the fashion industry is pretty broken. And so there's a film called True Cost on Netflix that you should watch if you haven't seen it yet. But it really will blow your mind. and really get you thinking about the products you're purchasing and the impact that it's having on someone else. If you're getting a great deal on your product, someone else might not be. I assume that is kind of where this idea of nutrition labels for your clothes comes from. Tell our audience a little bit about that because number one, I think about it and I'm like, man, that's the most creative thing I've ever seen.

And then what is the driving purpose behind those nutrition labels? That's great. I love that subject. That is definitely what I'm most passionate about right now. when we were doing these audits, what started to rise out as the hero metric is that concept of a living wage around the world, right? And how far is that from what people are actually being paid? And it's shocking in a lot of these countries, how far that distance is. But we own some of that as the brands in the United States, and we own some of that as consumers. So we were trying to think through how do we empower consumers? with a data point that will affect this kind of poverty around the world.

And one of the examples we thought of was in 1996, a little boy's picture started going around the news. He was from Pakistan. He was a little boy sewing together a football, and it had a big swoosh on the side of it. And all of a sudden, Nike said, that's not our fault. And they talk about this in a book. Shudar. Yeah.

and that they made a mistake there. And consumers said it is your fault. And all of a sudden, shareholder value dropped. And guess what happened? They made it change quickly. And so what we know is that consumers can really vote with their wallets, right? And so what we said was, is we've got to put information out to consumers that everybody from a 16-year-old girl can understand all the way to a 47-year-old.

old PhD can understand on the issues around poverty. So how do you speak to both of those audiences? And so what we developed was, like you said, it looks just like a nutrition label on your food. Intentionally so because that feels like something that's very normal and regulated, right? And approachable. It's approachable. You know what it means. Everyone looks at a nutrition label now.

Here's the information, right? And when that information came out, all of a sudden you found out there was four times that daily recommended amount of salt in your soup. And it changed your behavior. I'm not eating that. Soup is good, but it's not that good. Not that good. And worlds came from that.

GMO came from that. Whole foods came from that. And organic came from that. And so we looked at that and said, if we can create a nutrition label that is very clear, very simple, that shows the lowest wage in every manufacturer that we work with, not an average wage, not a labor cost per garment, but the lowest wage, because that's what protects

the most vulnerable worker, right? Okay, but that's powerful because that is, it is self-imposed accountability to the marketplace. Why not? What else are we going to do? You know, why not? I mean, it's not about, it's not about money. It's not about making millions, you know? It's about changing the world to your business.

And yes, it seems a little dangerous. I certainly understand the viewpoint that you have there. But I want you to know that our consumers have reacted so positively to knowing the good, the bad, and the ugly. And when we share with them things like, hey, we just found out we had serious safety issues in our jewelry manufacturer. Or we just found out that there was some real problems in our leather manufacturing. They want to know that stuff. They applaud knowing that stuff because nobody's assuming that everything's perfect. And we just don't want to live in a space where we believe that we've got to be perfect before we can be honest about things, right?

I don't want my marriage to look like that. I don't want my life to look like that. Why do I want to PR spend everything in my business? I would rather just it reflect the way we want to live our lives, right? So, look, consumers in a day and age of total spin and what do you call it, Photoshop and everything, they just want to know. Filters, yeah. They want to know the truth. You're saying unfiltered.

Unfiltered. And I think in this day and age with as much media visibility that we have, they know it's out there. They just want to connect with it. They want to go on the journey with your brand. So we've chosen that route, and it's got us this far at least. I admire your boldness. That's remarkable. One of the ways that we teach mission statements here whenever we're working with clients

is we say your mission statement needs to include some version of an aspect. aspiration or a dream. And the question that we always ask people to help them identify what that aspiration and that dream is, is what is the thing that if you were able to solve it today, that if you looked out and you saw this problem solved today, you would be able to close your doors and shut down the business because you would be able to say we did what we came to do. Done. What is your aspiration or your dream? Yeah, that is easily articulated as, you know, creating jobs for vulnerable women to impact the fashion industry so as to connect the consumers and the makers, right? So if we can really connect you and help you understand who's making your product and what they're earning, that's what we believe is.

That's going to change your behavior and what you shop for. every piece of clothing you purchase, you would just want to know. You would want to make that comparison, right? And if that changes your behavior and we can really drive consumer demand, then we know that we will change poverty more quickly than it has in the last thousand years. Because, honestly, in this world, what a companies respond to, they respond to where the money's at. So if we can make it where the money's at to publish your wages and to be that transfer, spirit and vulnerable, the change and the impact will be mind-blowing, right?

I get so hyped up. I'm hyped up too, man. Let's go get it. I need to go get stuff. That's four years out. Okay, four years. I'm setting a timer right now. I know you said you've got a discount code for those that are listening today, so that's

super generous. So, yeah, go ahead and tell us how we can take advantage of that. Well, we'd love you to find out about us. And if it's a gift for someone else that tells a really beautiful story about the person that made it or it's for yourself, we would truly be grateful for you to be on the journey with us. So we would love to do a discount code. Maybe we could name it Entree 20.

That's perfect. E-N-T-R-E-20, which would be number two, number zero. That's perfect. Perfect. So that'll be 20% off your first purchase with Abel. Well, that's very generous. Just through on your leadership. And we'll put the link to that in the show notes.

That's Entree 20 with no spaces and the number two zero. And we'll put all that information in the show notes. I look at you and I see someone that is a remarkable steward. You are a steward of an idea and then you are a steward of a business and now you are a steward and a leader of a movement. And we are so grateful that we get to work with you. We're so grateful that you're in our city and we are so grateful for the impact that you are making on women around the globe. Thank you. And thanks for helping us tell the story.

Thanks so much, Barry. Bye-bye. Bye-bye? Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. Throughout that whole conversation, I couldn't help but think about that Frederick Nietzsche quote that says that he who knows his why can endure almost anyhow. Barrett Ward is someone that knows his why.

And I hope that you as a business leader take that as an action item from this conversation is, do you know your why? Does your team know your why? Because if you do, you will take a massive leap towards serving a purpose that is so much greater than just dollars. and sense. And also, I wanted to remission that Barrett and their team have offered that generous discount code that's going to give you 20% off of your ABLE purchase. So if you want to take advantage of that, I'll reiterate it in case you missed it. It's Entree. That's E-N-T-R-E, the number two, the number zero with no spaces. And if you enter that in at checkout, you're going to get 20% off your purchase. We'll put the link for their website in the show notes of this episode.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. If you did, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. For a chance to win a $25, Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the link that's in the show notes. And be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, and it was edited and mixed by Will Rutter. I'm Alex Judd, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like the Chris Hogan Show.

I am so excited to be able to talk to you all week in and week out. We're going to talk about your money, your life, your dreams, and your goals. You know why? Because I'm your coach. Whether we're talking about building wealth, paying off your home early, investing, paying for college, and guess what? How to become an everyday millionaire. We're going to focus on taking your calls because you matter. to me. Together, we can do this. This is the Chris Hogan Show. To hear full episodes, just search Chris Hogan wherever you listen to podcasts or go to Chris Hogan 360.com.