The School of Greatness - 199 The Power You Have to Make a Huge Difference with Jacob Lief

Episode Date: July 7, 2015

"We are defined, as people, by the way we treat each other." - Jacob Lief If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/199.

This is episode number 199 with Jacob Leaf. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to today's episode, a very special episode with a guy by the name of

Jacob Leaf who has dedicated the last 15 years of his life to serving people and to serving a specific community to change their entire mindset, their entire process, their entire way of living, to have it all in life, to improve their lifestyle in a place where poverty is extreme, to improve their education process, to improve the way people feel about themselves. And for those who want to learn how to make a bigger impact, who want to start serving in a deeper way, and who want to learn how to do this for themselves, then this is the episode for you. His name is Jacob Leaf. I'm going to give you a little bit more of an intro about him here in just a second when I get started. But this is all about

living a life of service. Again, one of the principles of my book that's coming out later this year is living a life of service. That's one of the principles of greatness. And Jacob has done an incredible job doing that and serving people. And he's done it for 15 years, done it since he was in college. And it's a really powerful story. He's also got a book out called I Am Because You Are. How the spirit of Ubuntu inspiredired an Unlikely Friendship and Transformed a Community.

So this is a powerful episode, guys. I hope you get a lot out of these stories and you're inspired by it. I want you guys to take action from this. Make sure to share this episode, lewishouse.com slash 199. You'll get all the links to the information and the resources that we talked about in this episode. So excited about this. And I'll talk to you guys more at the end. But without further ado, I want to dive into this episode with the one, the only Jacob Leaf. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about today's guest. His name is Jacob Leaf, and he is the co-founder and CEO of Ubuntu Education Fund. And in 2010, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

And in 2012, was selected as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative Advisory Board. He splits his time between Brooklyn, New York, and South Africa. Welcome, Jacob, to the show. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic. I'm very excited about this. We were just having a conversation about some mutual friends with Adam Braun and a lot of other people at Summit Series.

I'm excited to hopefully meet you in person one day, even though this is over the phone right now. Sounds good. Yeah. Next time in New York, I'll have to come by the offices. Absolutely. But you've got a new book out, and I've actually never heard of you until my publisher, Rodale, which is your publisher, said you've got to connect with this guy and you've got to learn about this guy. You'll really love his story.

And you've got this book out, and it's called I Am Because You Are. It's how the spirit of Ubuntu inspired an unlikely friendship and transformed a community. And can you start us back with your first time you went to South Africa and what opened up for you when you traveled there? Sure. So I'm American, and my family moved to the United Kingdom when I was 13 years old. So I get to London. It's a big city. I moved from a sleepy suburb in New Jersey. And before I know it, I was getting into a lot of trouble. I was having a hard time sort of fitting in and so forth. And one day I came across this giant march in Hyde Park.

It was a free Mandela march. It was to end apartheid, keep economic embargoes on, and ultimately to release Nelson Mandela from prison. And before I know it, I started volunteering, and it just inspired me. I'd never been to South Africa. I had no connection to the continent, but it was the music, the colors, and maybe this just needs to be part of something bigger than who I was. I have no idea, to be honest, what it was, but I was sucked into this.

And, you know, volunteering when you're 13 years old means handing out envelopes, licking stamps, you know, nothing too exciting. But when I was 17 in 1994, they decided the elections were coming to South Africa. And they decided they would take 15 of us from 15 different countries down to observe the transition to democracy. And, you know, 17, I grew up in privilege. I had two parents who went to university. I went to good schools. I had, you know, it was a very easy life in a lot of ways.

So it was probably harder for me to have failed and succeeded. And I get down to South Africa, and we toured the country, meeting with everyone from sort of your right-wing neo-Nazis, your Eugene Tareblanches, and sort of everyone on the other side, your Robben Island freedom fighters. People spent their life imprisoned with Nelson Mandela and so forth. One evening, I was in an area called Alexandria, which is shacks as far as you can see, and it sits in the shadows of Santon, which is the economic hub of the continent.

It's right in the middle of Johannesburg, looks like lower Manhattan, huge skyscrapers. And I come across this woman, and this is really what changed my life, or my sort of moment that drew me to the country. And she was quite old and quite large. And, you know, you're 17, you think you know everything, right? You're overconfident. And she says to me, and we start talking, she tells me she's waited in line for 30 hours to cast her ballot. And I'm thinking, I take one look, and I'm like, I don't understand.

You've waited 30 hours? And she taps me on the head and says, no, boy, you don't understand. I've waited 85 years. And she walked away. Wow. And I'm 17, and that just shook me to my very core. And it was sort of that moment when I said I wanted to become part of what they were calling the New South Africa. Wow.

That just gave me chills. So you're 17 when this happened? Yeah. And you were only there for what, like a week or two? We you're 17 when this happened? Yeah. And you were only there for what, like a week or two? We were there for six weeks touring the country, but that was towards the end of the visit. And I heard a woman speak the next day who was working on the new constitution. And she was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And I'm thinking, oh, this will be my ticket back to South Africa.

Actually, I was getting ready to graduate high school. I'll apply to college in the States, and I'll'll go to UPenn and she'll help me get back. So I apply, I get in and I go down there and go to find this woman. She's a law professor who wants, of course, nothing to do with an 18-year-old. But I bug her and bug her and we become friends. And we just got internet in our dorm and I found a job down in Cape Town. I'm like, this is great. I bring it to this professor, Dr. Mary Frances Barry. She was a U.S. Commissioner on Civil Rights and a big anti-apartheid activist and so forth. And she says to me, okay, well, we'll sponsor

you. We'll get on there for six months. And I get down to South Africa and of course there was no job waiting for me in Cape Town. It was a complete scam. I'm thinking, I can't call this woman and tell her this. What am I going to do? I left Cape Town that evening, and I got on a train, and I didn't really know where I was going. About 18 hours into this train ride, a guy convinced me to get off in a place called Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Port Elizabeth, I like to say, it's an industrial port town on the Indian Ocean side. It's one of these places you leave, you don't go to. It's an industrial port town on the Indian Ocean side.

It's one of these places you leave, you don't go to. I hope I don't offend anyone. It's sort of like a Detroit of South Africa. Oh, man. Okay. And he convinces me to get off there and come to the townships with him and have a beer. Now, the townships, you know, this is three years after the apartheid. I'm a white guy. I symbolize everything wrong in the country. And this guy's a black

South African teacher. But I'm up for an adventure. And I'm 19 years old. I'm 20 years old. And so I go with him. And we go into this, he calls it a tavern. It looks like a shack to me. And, you know, I've seen the movies. Everything goes quiet. Everyone looks at me. And music stops. I'm thinking, I'm going to get killed tonight. That's what I thought. Right. And at the corner of the room, one guy motions me over and it's this guy Banks, Banks, uh, Guacamole. And Banks says to me, we start talking, we have a bunch of beers. And at this time I was an entrepreneur, but I ain't nothing to do with

education or social anything. Uh, really? And he says to me, I'm a school teacher. Why don't you come work in my school? And I said, okay. I needed a job. I said, but I need a place to live. And he said, why don't you come move with my family then? So that night I moved in with his family. No way.

I'm living in this community. And, you know, these communities have all the poverty that's, you know, as poor as any community in the world. I don't like to compare poverty, you know, one place to another, but it has 90% unemployment. There's rampant abuse. One of the girls that we work with today are raped by the age of 18. It's a very violent place.

But it was also, I probably overly romanticized her, right, because in the back of my mind, I knew I could always leave. And these six months in these communities, I didn't leave this area during this entire six months. And I immersed myself here. And what I saw, though, were all these organizations, big global nonprofits, everyone dumping money into South Africa post-apartheid,

all this philanthropic money. But everyone was defining success by how many computers they'd pass out, how many library books they'd hand out, or how many cups of soup they'd hand out. And I kept looking at these little kids who'd been abused or living in these shacks, and I'm thinking, how is a cup of soup and a wind-up computer going to change your life? It's not how I got to where I was,

and I just kept thinking about how much was invested in my life. And that was really the beginning of Ubuntu Education Fund. So I left South Africa after six months, and I went back to Philadelphia and held a raffle on my campus. Back then, I don't know how old you are, but they used to give out credit cards on college campuses. I took eight of them. And I started Ubuntu Education Fund. And the idea was, let's take the bottom of the bottom. The kids have been raped, the kids have been lost their parents, and let's invest in them

the same way, you know, someone invested in me. And let's work with them every day of their lives. You know, in our nonprofit sector, it's all about what's the exit strategy. You know, there's no exit strategy when you raise kids. And, you know, and, and, you know, the last 17 years, we've built this model where today we call cradle to career, but we actually start with pregnant mothers today. We ensure we take HIV positive pregnant mothers and we ensure a healthy birth. And then we work with these kids every day of their lives until they're into their employed either through a job training program or university. Wow. So wait a minute. Were you still in college when you took the six-month trip there? Yes, I was.

So did you skip a semester? Yeah. My professor helped me take my exams early, and I went through the summer, and I stayed later than I was supposed to. Wow. So how did you have the courage to just jump on a train and go 18 hours in any direction that you had no clue where you were going? I didn't know how to get out of Cape Town?

It wasn't what I was looking for at a bad, you know, I got there. It was just, I was totally scammed and I felt afraid and I just was looking for something. I was, you know, I felt very comfortable. I was, I traveled my whole life and I felt, you know, I was quite young then. I felt very comfortable doing that. And part of it was right. Just, uh, my own naivete, right. And to, uh, you know, and then you're 19. That's true. And you were by yourself just my own naivete. And it's a sense of adventure. You're

19. That's true. And you were by yourself. You don't bar, you'll go. Wow, that's crazy. So tell me, what first does Ubuntu mean? So Ubuntu is best described to me when I, after six months living with Banks and his family in the townships, he brought me to the train station. It was interesting. Actually, that morning he woke me up at four in the morning.

It was the last day I was there before bringing me to the train station. He wakes me at four in the morning and takes me somewhere to this area called White Location. It's a shack as far as you can see. In front of each shack was a fire. I saw these little girls in front of each shack holding bricks over the fire and then using the bricks to iron their school uniforms so they look proud to go to school and that was the moment I'm like shit I gotta we gotta do something like that was uh that was like the fire was literally burning like these kids wanted to go to school there was more something

we could do and um and so Banks brings me to the train station from there he thinks he'll never see me again and you know I'm gonna go to the boy this train I. He thinks he'll never see me again. And, you know, I'm going to go aboard this train. I said, let me ask you something. What is this thing that you have that you just invited me into your home? Like, I represented everything wrong in South Africa as a white guy on the surface. Yet you brought me into your home. You have a tiny home.

You let me share a room with your children. Wow. He said, oh, that's Ubuntu. I said, what do you mean that's Ubuntu? He said, well, it doesn't matter your race, your politics, or your religion. Shouldn't the fact that we're human beings be enough that we treat each other with respect? I'm thinking, God, what a beautiful concept. And it's what I experienced over, it's a way of life. You know, Archbishop Tutu, Desmond Tutu, who works very closely with us,

always describes Ubuntu as a person is a person through a person, which is something I really like, that as human beings we're defined as people by the way we treat each other. Powerful stuff. It's amazing. And that's why I called the book I Am Because You Are, which really means Ubuntu. Right.

So what did you decide to do next? You did the six-month experience there. You went back. And then what made you want to do next? You did the six-month experience there. You went back. And then what made you want to come back and really? I went back and I said I couldn't care less about school by the time I got back. I was like, I got to do something. And I knew I could do it. I knew I had that ability to mobilize resources and people.

And I just started gathering friends around and telling them my stories. And this was a time before Teach America, before social entrepreneurship was even a word on college campuses, right? In fact, my college advisor said to me, oh, this is nice, but what are you really going to do when the summer ends? This is a nice little project. It wasn't like today where everyone goes into the nonprofit sector. I had all these people telling me, you can't do that. You can't do that.

You can't do it. And I think that probably drove me. Fire the fuel. Yeah, yeah. Fuel the fire. Absolutely. I hate being told I can't do something. I love that.

So when did you go back then? You came back when you were 20, 21, and then you went back. So I'm 21. I'm graduating college. I raised some money, and I decided I'm really going to do this, right? But I had no money. And the first thing I did, actually, with a buddy of mine, is I got in my car and we drove up to Arctic Ocean.

And we spent four months driving through Canada and Alaska and camping and fishing and just trying to get away. And I sort of worked on my whole business plan, worked on this all as I was out there. By the time I got back, my family lived up in Maine. I took a job on a commercial fishing boat and in the evenings, I would write these grant proposals. And when I got my first grant proposal, I quit that job and moved to Philadelphia and really got Ubuntu going. And that was 1999.

Wow. So how much have you raised to date with this organization? Oh, over $40 million. $40 million. Wow. 15 years, right? Yeah. And it's the center of what we... We raised $6 million a year right now. And the centerpiece of everything we do is our Ubuntu Center. The Buntu Center was a really fascinating project. So about 2005, I realized we had outgrown our space and we need to build a new complex. Is this your space in South Africa? Yeah, South Africa. And I realized we had outgrown our headquarters. And I set out to interview architects. And everyone I interviewed in South Africa kept saying, well, you can't build this in the townships.

Or show me an example. I'm saying, no, this building's never been built before. And I finally met a guy out in Northern California who'd originally from there had been working, but had been kicked out of the country in the 60s for opposing the police and so forth. And I spoke to this guy on the phone. Within three minutes, I hired him. And we set out to build a building that would win global architecture awards. And people said, oh, that's Jacob's vanity project.

What's the point of that when there's so much poverty? Why do you have to spend $7 million just on a building? But the point of it all was because we wanted to prove that access to great education and health care should be a privilege for those raised in London or New York or LA. It should be a child's right. And that was important. So we set out to build this building and five years later we opened a center that's as nice

as any education or health facility you'll find in Manhattan. And it's powered by wind and sun. Cisco wired it. Beck and Dickinson built our pharmacy and our clinic. Apple built the first iMac lab in the whole country there. And it's state-of-the-art education and health care in the middle of the shacks. And that's the way how you change people's lives. It's not about, you know, the question I'm always asked when I'm in New York fundraising or in Northern California is,

we love what you're doing, but how can you reach more kids for less money? And that's the wrong question. Interesting. It's not the question I ask of my own children, right? It's what does it actually take to take these kids out of poverty? And what we've learned is it takes a huge amount of resources. It's not cheap. And a child living in a shack in Africa who's been abused needs as much, if not more,

than your child living on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Right, right. Yeah. Wow. And they probably need to feel like they're worthy of it too. And if they just get a little bit, as opposed to having it all essentially right in front of them, then they're never going to believe they're worthy to have it all until they see that and they experience it and they get a taste of it. Well, you see, that's actually such an interesting point because when we were building this center, it took us three and a half years to construct. We had one of these huge billboards outside where it was going to be outside the grounds, and it was a rendering of what the building would look like.

And the kids would come around every afternoon and they would talk about it, and the word they would use as a museum is how it translates, basically, in their language, Okhmosa. And they would say that, why aren't you building this in town? Town meaning the other, because they felt it didn't belong in their community. It was too nice. And that's why we had feelings of inferiority. It's one of the greatest legacies of apartheid.

Yeah. You know, that I don't belong, and we needed to build this. Sure. The people who criticized us are from the funding community. Why would you spend that much money when there's so much poverty? They're the same people who send their kids to $50,000-a-year elementary schools. Exactly. And it's okay.

And I'm dealing with the good people here. Right. Exactly. Wow. So what does it all include in this center? Healthcare, schools, what's included? Like a social support, emotional, you name it. We do it.

Everything from, we've got a robot. Right now our kids are building, our high school girls are building a robot in the robotics program. We've got kids doing a yearbook in a computer lab. We've got an early childhood program that's on par with anything you find anywhere. And so our whole model is about not geographic. We're not about geographical expansion scale for us. It's about more locations across different regions. It's about how deep do you have to go into one child's life to change. So we've got 2000 children in our program from ranging from zero or in the mother's room all the way through to university and post-university into employment.

And if we can take 2,000 children who would have otherwise gone down a life of crime, survival, who knows, right? And get them into employment, we'll have changed the world. And so my question is about how do we challenge people to think differently about philanthropy and not just say it's about reaching more and more kids because what we're doing is reaching them with a cup of soup as opposed to reaching less kids and actually changing their lives. Right. That makes sense. So do you, and this is so fascinating, do you build schools as well or is it just a center that has all these different programs there or do you work with the whole community or how does it work? We work with the whole community. We work in a seven-kilometer zone.

We don't actually build – we have schooling from zero to five and then we have after school and weekend and so forth. Programs. At five years old, yeah, we put the kids back into public schools. So it's more like an after-school program, a health care center, an educational learning center where they can continue to come in and get additional support. But also the glue of it all is, and what people don't realize, it's a kid, no matter how good your school is or your center in our cases, the child will always spend more time at home, right? your center in our cases, the child will always spend more time at home, right? So if you're investing a kid in math and science and education and then sending them home to an environment where they're being abused or there's no roof or there's no food, it's not going to work. It's a bad investment.

And I hate to be like that, but that's just the truth. So much of what we do is what we call household stability. Go into the child's home, stabilize it. Make sure the young mother's getting what she needs. Because we found that once the mother dies, the house becomes destabilized, right? And that's where kids move into transsexual sex or crime for survival. And keeping the young mother alive is 65% of the battle. Wow.

So how do you go and support these homes? Or how do you go into these homes? Do you have locals? We have family support specialists on our team who go out there into the home. We analyze what's happening in the home. We make sure there's a roof that's not leaking. There's electricity. There's HIV drugs available for young mothers.

Basically anything they need. And, you know, what we always say, sort of our slogan, you know, internally is, you know, we believe our children deserve what children all around the world deserve, and that's everything. Sure, yeah, having it all. Having it all, and you need it all. And that's the truth. And you know what?

We don't talk enough about it, and this is why I wrote the book more than anything, is how much of this doesn't work. This is really tough work. It is. Most of what we do, most of what everyone else does in this sector doesn't work, and that's okay. We need to create an environment where it allows groups like us, like Adam and Petra Promise, to talk honestly about what's not working without fear of losing funding or people criticizing us. If we were

all doing half of what we said that we were doing, there'd be no poverty in the world. And we need just allow, it's an effort not just from the nonprofit organizations, but also from the funding community to come together and say, that's really, failure is okay. Risk is, you know, this really is okay. You know, you go to Northern California, everyone's running around talking about all the startups that never made it, that failed, right? Right. In California, everyone's running around talking about all their startups that never made it, that failed, right? In the nonprofit world, you get a summit series, not one person there will talk about a nonprofit endeavor they did that wasn't successful. Why is that? I don't know. Yeah, and it's taken 15 years and you're still growing and learning and probably making a lot of mistakes along the way and figuring out ways to go deeper into these lives as opposed to expanding right now.

Do you have any great success stories of young kids who've grown up and who have maybe moved to Johannesburg and now is a leader in the community or making an impact in other areas of the country or moved outside of the country? You know, one of the families I sort of weave through my book, and the book is not just the narrative of building a Buddhist education fund, but it's also sort of, old at the time, and she had two younger siblings, and both their parents died of HIV within six months of each other, and they were left, this 12-year-old, to raise her younger siblings in a shack. And we move in, and the family's now been with us for over 12 years. Zaytu now has a university degree

and is now working in a headhunting agency, actually, a recruitment agency. Her younger sister, Lungi, is studying to be a radio multimedia DJ type thing, and then the younger

brother, I'm sorry, the middle brother, Star, is in prison for life life for armed robbery. So it's an example. You know, there's never, nothing's ever perfect, right? Sure. And I use that example because I want us to remember that there's a lot of ups and downs, and there's a lot we can't control, meaning we can work with a family, but, you know, there's so many extra.

People make their own decisions still, whether you, they have the best of everything. You know, some people who have the most privilege and grow up in the most wealth actually rebel the most sometimes and go to prison. And that happens, you know, my brother went to prison for a number of years as well for selling drugs. And now he came out and he's the greatest jazz violinist in the world and he's redeemed himself. and now he came out and he's the greatest jazz violinist in the world and he's redeemed himself. But sometimes people have internal emotional battles that they can never get through, and that causes trouble for them.

Absolutely. I mean, you nailed it. That's exactly right. I mean, we talk so much, but I think we've learned two big lessons in all this. One is if you're not motivated to take control of your life, there's nothing we can do. Exactly. Meaning we only work with what we call motivated clients.

If you don't want to work with us, that's okay. We'll never kick you out for giving effort. If we're failing a test, you won't be kicked out. You'll get kicked out if you don't show up. We need the effort. Exactly. The second big lesson I think we've learned is that you've got to start early. And for us, most of the world, parenting begins when a child's born.

And the truth is it's not when a child's born. It's when the mother becomes pregnant. It's the mother educating them. Educating them on what goes into their body correlates to a child's mental development, cognitive skills, on and on and on. And so, you know, I think the two lessons we've learned is you've got to start early with your intervention. In this case, it's with a pregnant mom and you need a motivated client. Yeah. And I'm curious, you know, there's a lot of my listeners like to be in service and give back and they're constantly giving back in their businesses and,

and finding other ways to give back in their communities. And I'm constantly trying to encourage that. And that means I get to constantly do it myself and be the example. What are some pieces of advice or some tips you have for some people on if they have this urge to give back, but they don't know where to give back, how to give back, maybe they don't have the money to do that. What are some things they could do to really start living a life of service on a daily basis? What are some practices or some places they could research or dive into to see what works for them to start living that way? I think most important is find something you really care about. What are you passionate about? What's going to, because this is, like I said before, it's really hard work, and you have to have some connection to it to stick with it.

I think if you're going to commit, whether it's money, resources, time, energy, commit over a period of time. You know, I always tell people, don't give me, don't commit, give us a one-year grant, for example, or a donation. I can't raise a child in a 12-month grant cycle, right? You know, stick with an organization for three to five years. Really learn, you know, ask their leadership. Get to this, you know, if any, I don't care how big or small a donor is.

If someone calls our organization, I'd love to talk to your CEO and really understand. I'll make time for them. And ask that CEO, you know, what's working, what's not. Really try to, you know, understand their leadership, the philosophy, the dedication, you know, their theory of change. You know, ask the right questions. Don't get caught up with these, like, rating agencies, these charity navigators and this stuff. It's all BS. It doesn't, you know, they don't know what they're doing.

It's about getting to know the organization and believing in their leadership and committing for a period of time and saying to them straight off the bat, I understand some of what you're doing may or may not work. That's okay. Right. Yeah. Like I said, I've had Adam Braun on here and I've had Scott Harrison from Charity Water on here and built a relationship with those guys. They've given some great lessons as well. I'm curious, what do you feel like has really worked well for you in the last 15 years and what is still not working? What's your biggest challenge still after 15 years of struggling and getting to where you are now? What's the biggest challenge moving forward? And what's the vision for the next 15 years?

That's a huge question. So what's really worked for us is about staying focused, right? We're in one area. Not shiny balls like going to the next city or trying to expand or do things, but just diving deep. Yeah, being prepared and having the discipline to say no to money. Not all – I think it took us a long time to learn, but not all money is equal. Not every dollar is worth the same. And so we used to raise $8 million, $9 million a year, but we were taking a lot of this huge foundation money and government money that was forcing us to do things we didn't like. We called it drug money.

It was sexy. It was exciting. It would get us to big conferences, but it was killing our soul. It was very glamorous, a lot of stuff attached to a lot of this money. And having the discipline to say no, to turn it down if it's not right for your organization. having the discipline to say no, to turn it down if it's not right for your organization. I made that analogy to startups in Northern California, but you're in Silicon Valley with a tech startup. You spend a lot of time talking about who you want investing in your company, right?

What type, what should your portfolio look like? And we don't do enough of that in the nonprofit sector. And I'm really encouraging nonprofit leadership to have that discussion with their team and not just take all money because it's there. Because a lot of it can do a lot more harm than good. Remember that as a nonprofit, you know your business better than others. And just because some guy made billions of dollars trading Uber doesn't mean he knows how to do global health, right?

Exactly, yeah. trading Uber doesn't mean he knows how to do global health, right? Exactly, yeah. You might have some great ideas, but I say that because there's oftentimes a lot of those with the financial means dictate

the agenda. We have to listen a lot more to non-profit leadership. You mentioned Scott and I have both spent a good majority of their careers understanding their issues, right? Global education, clean water initiatives. Let them tell you what needs to be done. Yeah, that's cool. Okay. So where is this all heading for us? I think one of the biggest frustrations before I get

to that for us has been, and what we continue to struggle with is, we work in one little corner of the world. And how do you attract the massive funding? Now, if I wanted to expand to seven regions, we could climb to a $20 million organization pretty quickly. So how do you continue to sell people on the idea? On one little town. And let me tell you, sustained success isn't exciting for people. It's weird.

Like, you know, if you had your money in some stock that just kept going up each year, you wouldn't take your money out. You'd leave it in. But in the nonprofit sector, people get bored. They want the next big magic bullet, and what we've realized is

there's no magic in raising children. Right. It takes time, energy, and a lot of love. A lot of love, a lot of hard work, a lot of energy. That's all it is. And Matt, how do you, from a marketing standpoint, think Scott has just done? I mean, you mentioned Scott and Charity.

I look at what they've done as a model from the branding perspective. How do you reinvent yourself in a way to constantly come up with new ways of selling yourself? And they do it very well. They really do. So that's what we've struggled with is constantly having to reinvent ourselves to sell the same product, really.

Well, what's the vision then moving forward? Sure. So it started with about four years ago, someone approached me about starting an Ubuntu in Bridgeport, Connecticut, these hedge fund managers in Greenwich did. And they said, here's a few bucks to open Ubuntu there. And at first, they got really excited. We opened Champagne, we were pumped. And then by that evening, we were like, what are we doing? We don't want to do that just to prove we can do it. I have no energy to do it. I have no interest in that community.

So they started us on this journey of trying to figure out what do we want to do. And so then we started looking at the franchising world, and I learned a lot from the franchising world on how to build systems and so forth. I mean, Starbucks, you get the same latte anywhere in the world, but it's still a Starbucks latte. It's not your little artisanal coffee shop that knows where their beans comes from and the barista can put a flower in there, whatever. And I use that analogy because I realized at Ubuntu, being in one,

we see ourselves as that boutique of that sort of gold standard in nonprofit work. So how do we take this now 17 years' knowledge and share it with others and really try to drill down on what it is we're best at. And what I figured out is if you want to study public health, Paul Farmer and Partners in Health, they do better than us, right? If you want to study global health, global education, they're people who do better than us.

What we've really done is created a community institution that's thriving. And I say that because I look at successful communities everywhere in the world, and the cornerstones of these communities are functioning institutions. In poor communities everywhere in the world, what's lacking are institutions, right? And at the end of the day, it's all we are. Today, we're dealing with these 10 services. Tomorrow could be something else. We're positioned to address these other issues.

And so we've fallen on this idea of creating some sort of institute where we can train the next generation of entrepreneurs who are committed to building community institutions, who see scale not in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and he or she went on to get her MBA at Yale and wants to go back and start a center there. That's who I'd want to work with as opposed to me building the center there. Sure. That's great. That's great. So that's where I see we're heading. We're a little ways off on it, but it's our way of taking what we've learned and sharing it in a meaningful way with the larger world.

I love that. I have got four questions left for you, Jacob. This has been great so far. I want to make sure everyone goes and gets a copy of your book. It's called I Am Because You Are. I'll tell people at the end here. I'll have it linked up on the show notes, but you can get it in pretty much any bookstore you can think of. Check it out and come back to the show notes when I share with you where to go for that here in a second. The first question of the four is, what are you most grateful for in your life recently? What am I most grateful for?

Yeah. I think it's the health of my own kids and that I'm able to provide them. I have two little boys. My four-year-old is named Freedom. My two-year-old is Madiba after Nelson Mandela. year olds named Freedom, my two year olds Madiba after Nelson Mandela, and that they are just, I see the kids we work with in South Africa who are simply dealt the raw hand, right? Any of us could be born in that situation.

I look at my two boys and I just think, oh, there's, you know, it helps me keep everything in perspective, how lucky they are. Yeah. Awesome. I love that. And the second question is, if you could, from all the lessons you've learned, all your travel, the work you've done in South Africa, everywhere you've lived, all the people you've served and helped, if you could distill down to three lessons that you've

learned so far in your life that you would share with the world as the three things, the biggest lessons to life. What would those three truths be about life? I think one is make sure you love, right? It's this idea of Ubuntu, this live your life by loving those around you. This idea of Ubuntu has just changed my life so much. This idea that we're defined by the way we interact with one another. When I saw that really thriving and this idea of Ubuntu alive in the townships of South Africa

where there were these communities haunted by this legacy apartheid and how brutally violent they were, yet this love for each other, this idea of community, it made me really believe in community and love and this idea of our interconnectedness. And so I think the biggest lesson is to sort of embrace that and find where you can make a difference, whether it's your own family, whether it's your religious community or school community,

wherever it is. We're here for such a short time. Make sure you're making the world a better place and not just take from it. I think the second lesson is to achieve anything, you better stick with it. It's a lot of hard work to be successful at anything in life, no matter what it is., I think three is remember to surround yourself with, uh, with people who are smarter than you. Um, and I say that when I look at my business, I've surrounded myself with brilliant people

who could, you know, and remember that those you choose to walk with, uh, you know, through life, um, are the ones who will help you either move to achieve your goals and realize your potential or take you down. That's powerful. I love those lessons. Thanks for sharing that. Now, the final two questions, if you could leave behind three books to the world, not being your book, but if you leave behind three books to the world and only three books that everyone could read in the world, what would those three books be? Oh, wow.

There is a book that I read to my kids every night based off of the – no, I'm serious. All the Places Will Go? Nope. It's called The Guy Who Adapted Is Ashley Bryant. He's an old family friend. And it's What a Wonderful World based on a Louis Armstrong song. And it's an illustrated book to that song. And it's just incredibly powerful.

And it's a children's book, but I suggest everything. It's beautifully done, and it's very powerful. I think Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. What was the first book called? The first one was called What a Wonderful World by Ashley Bryant. Second one, Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom, his journey, his book. It is amazing to see someone who spent that much time in jail be able to come out. And his first words were, we will not forget, but we will forgive.

What an amazing thing to be able to do. You look around the world at all of the conflicts that are continuing to go on. I meet people who still to this day are survivors of the Holocaust who won't speak to, and I'm not saying that's right or wrong, by the way, to speak to a German person, and to see this person who he himself lived through it, be able to really just say, we are going to forgive, and I think that is such a powerful concept. And then I think finally the idea that, I don't know, the singularity is near, which is a book I've read recently about the future. And it's just captured me, this idea of where technology is leading us. And I'm totally enthralled by it. So I think those are the three,

how technology and humanity is becoming one, basically. And so I think those three books would be three interesting ones. That's great. I love those. Well, before I ask the final question, I want to take a moment, Jacob, to acknowledge you because as I've been listening to you during this episode, this interview, and as I'm looking at the cover of your book right now, there's a little child, a girl who's on the cover. She's probably like 6'5", 78 years old.

girl who's on the cover. She's probably like six, five, 78 years old. And she has the biggest smile on her face and she looks whole and complete and excited about life. And I want to acknowledge you for your vision and your commitment and your love because 15 years of your life is a lot to serve to one community. And just hearing about this, reading your book, seeing the image alone on the cover of this book makes me know that your heart is so big and you're so committed to making a change in people's lives in that community that I see the change in this photo. And so I want to acknowledge you for 15 years, man.

That's a lot of your time and energy and life to stay committed to one thing and being focused on that community. So I really acknowledge you for your commitment, your vision to stick it out, and your love because it's really inspiring. So thank you for all you do. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah. And the final question is, what's your definition of greatness? I think greatness is when you can improve the lives of those around you. Jacob Leaf, thank you so much for coming on, my man. I appreciate this. I really appreciate it. Look forward to catching up over a beer or coffee or something. And there you have it, guys. Thank you so much for tuning in today's episode.

Again, for me, very inspiring to hear the stories and the lifestyle of individuals who are literally changing the world by making an impact in the lives of others. And it doesn't have to be

millions of people. You don't have to say, you know, I'm going to, you know, change everything about the world, but really changing one's person's life and lifestyle and mindset and supporting that growth is going to change the world by supporting a few people. So don't think like you have to change everyone's world. Just focus on improving yours, improving the lives of at least one other person. I appreciate you guys. I hope you enjoyed this. Make sure to share this with your friends, lewishouse.com slash 199. Share that out with your friends on social media. We are

one episode away from episode 200. I can't believe we're 200 episodes almost into the podcast. Very excited about this. I'll do something special for you on episode 200. So make sure to come back when that comes out. I appreciate you. I support you. I'm here to serve you. And I love you very much for being a part of this community.

And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Outro Music