The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 324: Jedidiah Thurner— Bonus Day

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

The disrupter and co-founder of Love Has No Limits talks about how the organization engages communities to tackle society's problems of families in crisis, foster care, and medical debt. He also reveals what he learned from his near-death experience and the incredible power of hope. Learn more about Love Has No Limits at lovehasnolimits.com  

And here we go again with another episode of the way I heard it, specifically number 324. This one's called Bonus Day with Jedediah Thurner. To be clear, Chuck, not a bonus episode, but a bonus day. Porcoa. Well, he gets very real at one point and talks about a near-death experience. And after that near-death experience, every day seemed like a bonus day after that. that's exactly what happened in our completely unscripted conversation

Hey, it's something that we've all experienced You know all of a sudden you like survive a near death Experience and suddenly everything smells a little better Tastes a little better you know It's a sensation that's always interested me And Jedediah Thurner is a guy Who is living pretty much every day like it's a bonus day He's in charge of a nonprofit called Love Has No Limits

and if you haven't heard of these guys, I bet you will. If you remember returning the favor, this guy is like the father of all bloody do-gooders. He did something that I tried to do on a modest scale, but he's doing events, Chuck, that, I mean, frankly, I find him kind of intimidating. Yeah, I mean, he did an event in L.A., I think in 2021, called One Day L.A., where he brought together a bunch of faith-based organizations, NGOs. knows, all these people with charities. And he's like a force multiplier. Love has no limits. Brings people together. And they bring together volunteers, tens of thousands of volunteers. And in fact, they bring together A-list talent like Justin Bieber. And then they put on a concert for the people who have volunteered. You can't buy a ticket to the concert. You got to come and spend some time with some

of these organizations helping to solve the problems of L.A. in that day. And then, you get entry into this concert. And it was a huge success. Yeah, I mean, it's been a success everywhere. They just did one in Houston, raised over $100 million. And the money goes straight to families in crisis. So basically, all the guys trying to do is solve poverty, homelessness, get an overburdened child welfare system turned around. And he's doing it by rallying local businesses and faith communities and nonprofits and government and NGOs. It's basically George Bush's thousand points of light, and he's connecting them,

and he's actually moving the needle. The guy, look, he's a man of faith, but he is completely engaged in this effort to take, if you remember returning the favor, it's the best way I can think of to say it. He's putting returning the favor on steroids, and he's bringing it to places like Miami and Houston and New York and Chicago.

and of course, L.A. He launched this thing at the height of the lockdowns. Crazy. He's not intimidated by the degree of difficulty. He's a guy who got on my radar because Charles Koch and the Stand Together organization is firmly behind Love Has No Limits, in much the same way they're behind MicroWorks. So again, I'm finding a deep well of really interesting people over in this community who I think you should know. Jedediah Thurner is the latest.

Love has no limits. Episode number 324, it's a great conversation. I know you're going to love him, and it all happens right after this. Duda, do do do do do do do. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you miss the rotary phone?

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And so it's awesome to spend some moments with you. And thank you for all the stuff you've done for, I think humanity and obviously for Americans and a lot of undervalued overlooked positions. So just thank you for, I'm just getting to learn all of some of the foundation. Jedediah, you're killing. What a tragedy that we weren't rolling five seconds earlier when people could have heard this amazing compliment paid to me from this amazing dude. Jedediah Therner. No, no, no, look, that's okay. The truth is easy to repeat. The

lies where we have a problem. So true. Well, then let's start by repeating the remarkable analogy you shared with me vis-a-vis my dog, Freddie, and your youngster, both of whom just run off and do whatever they want with no real understanding of what the consequences might be. What is going on with the dog and the human condition in these divided times, Jedediah? I think there's a lot of parallels to the nature and behavior of animals and the refined version of them called humans. And unfortunately, my three-year-old and Freddie, your dog, to find themselves in the same category of basically doing whatever they want, whenever they want to do it. And there's nothing we could do it about it. But thank God they make us feel good at the end of the day.

You know? And so we continue to take them on walks and pick up their crap, right? Yes. Just so the listener understands, I was a little tardy because my dog, he got it into his puppy brain that there was something more interesting off property. So he left the reservation just before I got in the shower and suddenly I'm half naked running through an otherwise very civilized. zip code screaming my dog's name. And Jedediah's point was, you know something? The dog has run a calculus. He has, through years of experience, determined the consequences for a certain set of behaviors. And human beings do the exact same things. And in this way, we seem to be so predictable, Jedediah, and I think this is a good jumping off point because so much of your good work is rooted in changing the patterns of people and getting them to see, you're right, cause and effect that causation

is not necessarily the same as correlation and that we can change the path that we're on. Well, you said a lot there. I did. He never says a little. He never says a little Jedd that I am. I'm thinking about whose behavior are we talking about. My sons, your dogs are our response to them, right? Because I saw a little Freddy on your lap getting tongue kissed, you know, in essence.

And he was like, come on, man, don't make it weird. How severe is the die? I mean, you guys didn't witness what I saw. I wish you could see it. You know, we might put it on Facebook or YouTube. But there's a lot of love after this disappointing decision, you know, that, you know, there's a lot of comeback. I think, you know, relief. And relief.

And relief. Right. I think what, what's maybe the, how we can connect the dots is, I do think we have a capacity and we should to believe in people, right? I think that's why you're believing in your dog. we're believing our son, my son's going to make a different decision the next day, right? And what we're hoping we're doing is providing enough capabilities or support or understanding and perspective shifts so that they will. And because we are all flawed and fractured and filled at some component of our life, we're hoping that if they eventually make the right decision one day,

we will too, right? That's probably what's going on in the journey. But I do think people and given the opportunity are capable of incredible things. And that's probably what I like to. to figure out how to do is give people more opportunity to be incredible, of capable of things, instead of talking about what they can. Well, it's hope, right? It's hope. You know, we put our hope in our dogs. We put our hope in our families.

We put our hope in our friends. And we put our hope in ourselves. And look, I'll just return the compliment, even though my listeners didn't really hear the full extent of your largesse. But you are, I think, maybe one of the greatest bloody do-goaters that I've come across. And I say that as a guy who it's not so much a compliment as it is a really sincere observation. And I'm not an expert in this area, but after 100 episodes of returning the favor, I've met a lot of people who have dedicated their platform, their influence, their life, their breath to making a difference in their zip code. Now, you, my friend, have taken it to the next level. So I want to hear about love has no limits because I was under the impression that everything was ultimately limited in some way.

But you actually seem to be proving it. Your events are enormous. You're returning favors on a gargantuan scale. So just kind of give me the background if you would. And then maybe if you could sum up, how in the world have you managed to move the needle in so many ways so far? Yeah, super kind words. And I'd say, especially to our listening, audience, because this is what would be important to me. I think the challenge even about this

conversation is I have to do the talking, you know, and it would be foolish for any of their listeners to think that the hero or the hope of city transformation or bottom-up empowerment or solving the greatest problems facing our families and our communities would be because of one individual or group of individuals. And if someone would to look at us and say, oh, you guys did it, that would be the antithesis of what we're trying to do, right? the goal would be that no one thinks we did it. The goal would be that there's a whole other bunch of people that agree in a unifying narrative

that hates not working, it never has, and it never will, and love's the only thing that can work in their efforts, and their humility, and their desire to collaborate, and their desire to sacrifice, and take time to not just make a living and make a difference. That's what really matters, you know? So the great news is that if you're listening,

you have the opportunity to be the hero of the story, because the hero of the story is not the guy's talking right now. I just say it, you know, and I think that's what you've done. so well, Mike, with all the different things you've ventured often to, it's you, you've never pointed it to you, your name's on it, but you're pointing it to all these other people. And I think in that, we would be extremely parallel. The heroes are the people that are actually doing this work day in and day out.

And I think some of my journey is, I never, even when you said, I never thought I'd be on this side of the conversation. I never thought I'd be doing this, you know. I grew up a poor missionaries kid. My parents are my heroes. They're still alive. I lived in 100 homes before I was 20. years old. Not an exaggeration. Thank God they picked sunny locations to love out their faith and their

belief system. I always told my mom, I was like, you went running to Hawaii and Tahiti and Costa Rica, but you said no to Ohio and no chance to Michigan and shut down the door to Alaska. Like he just like, you never went to the back 40, you know, like it was such a different, you know, so I grew up in all the Hawaiian islands but Kauai. I literally lived in every city in Maui, but Hana, lived in Tahiti, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Miami. I was born in Seattle, never claimed it until the Seahawks started winning. I did a couple stints in California. And to be honest, for me, my journey was one of, by the time I got to call or was leaving high school,

I just didn't want to be poor, like, to be honest. Like, that was the primary objective. Now, I wanted to play professional sports. I got a scholarship to play football. I was the first one of my entire family, including my parents of seven to go to college. It was the first one of my family to graduate from college. Still, I was the first one of my family to own a home at 23. I had the privilege of being successful, you know, relative to success, young,

and was able to buy my parents a home at 25 years old, give them a $400,000 home. And I was doing all the things I wanted to do. You know, when I met my wife, she basically said she didn't want to really be married to anyone connected to charity or philanthropy or ministry. Basically, no one that was going to be asking. people for money. She just wanted to be, you know, part of a family that was able to give money. And I was like, that's what we're going to do. And we sit out to do it. And I think the,

what's comical about this conversation is the stuff we do now and the, I mean, maybe the laugh of sacrifice was at that stage back on the day a nightmare. It was like, this is what we never would want to do. This is what we'll never find ourselves doing. And I think at that stage in the life, we had some stuff that I never had growing up. And I remember one morning, waking up being like if you add more zeros or more square footage or more cars or more possessions, like what changes? You know, like I got the stuff that I never thought we would ever have. I finally own stuff. When did you realize you weren't poor, Jedediah? Do you remember? Like one day you wake up? Such a great question. You got like, you said the words, Mike,

I don't know why. I got really emotional. Like I don't, here's what I realized. I didn't realize I was, I knew we didn't have stuff. And my parents provided endlessly. sacrifice. My dad worked multiple jobs, hitchhike when he didn't have cars. Like the work ethic was unbelievable and he was a pastor and a minister. I think when I realized I was poor, and this was when I was no longer poor, but I realized I actually had poverty behind me was when I would go to grocery stores, like regular Ralph's and, you know, just a regular grocery store and I'd be gone for an hour and a half. And my wife would go, I sent you to buy milk and eggs and bread. And she's like, what are you doing? And guys, guys, this is a true story. I would just

buy stuff on sale discounts. I'd be coming back with mops. And I mean, I would just buy so much stuff. Every time I go to the store. And she was like, what are you doing? And it hit me. Like it was months of, she's like, you go to the store. You come back with literally, you spent 400 bucks at a grocery store and like 20% of the items were food. So I was just buying all the rent, like the candles and a grill thing. And she's like, what are you doing? And then it hit me. I never could buy anything going to the store as a kid. We didn't buy stuff. We shop for a period of time. We bought and thank God we could buy anything, right? There's other people listening to this. They couldn't buy anything. But we bought what we were going to eat that day and nothing more. And we went to the store every day to buy what

we were going to get that day. And there was no running around being like, hey, can you throw this in the cart? Or this is really cool? Or can I get the bouncy ball? Or what about this lufa? Because I want to get created with my bath time. Like I didn't. It was like, there was, well, it's such a great. answer because it proves a thing that I've always suspected, which is you can sweep stuff under the rug and you can delay all sorts of things, you know, virtue and vice, gratification and greed. But it's going to come out at some point. And all those years bottled up of not being able to get what you want somehow translates into, honey, can you pick up some milk and eggs and you come home with aromatherapy candles and a magic eight ball.

I mean, it's just great. That's exactly what I was doing, you know? And I think so to get to the changes, I think one day I woke up and, you know, I'd use words providence or, you know, divine. Like I do believe in that, but I got a lot of margin for people to put a thousand different words there or different entities there. But for me, I remember, like the challenge was at this stage of now founding success that your family hasn't had. none of your siblings have had, I'm the second youngest, if every dream came true now, or every prayer that you prayed got answered now,

what would change? And I remember that moment being like, my life would change, but no one else's would. If my prayers got answered, if my dreams came true, my life would get better, the world would say the same. My life would advance, and, you know, my family and my legacy would be different, but I wouldn't be helping anyone else.

And I remember that was the challenge where it was no longer about generating revenue or making a living. It was about how are we really going to make a difference? And I think if you're going to do good, my desire is when you started saying some stuff in the beginning about maybe some of the scale that we've been connected to, I'm just like, if we're going to do good, why not do it the best way possible? You know, and at the end of the day, I don't think, and I've learned this from being a missions kid, right?

Because what you have is a lot of people that are doing good, but not the best way possible. and you get away with continuing to do a bad version of a good thing because you're trying to do a good thing. That is an unhealthy perspective that perpetuates a model or a framework of serving others that actually never gets them out of the thing you're trying to serve them through. Yeah. Forgive me for jotting as you're talking, but I'm going to forget some things. Like before we get to the big, big stuff, like the macro, there's the micro, no pun intended. And I want to know what it felt like for you to buy your parents a house. Right? I mean, I did.

What are we? Are we on offer today? Like, are we on average? If you can't see my eyes, people. Like, ah. It matters to me because I had the privilege of doing something very similar. Not because my parents couldn't have swung it on their own, but because they wouldn't leave the home that we were all more or less raised in.

And it was time. And I was very fortunate to be in a position where I could get a place and then go to my dad and say, look, the only way he would ever leave that house and go into another house is if his son said, I'm going to lose all the money if you don't move into it, you know. And it wasn't a lot of money. It doesn't matter. He's my dad. He's just a little bit of money's enough, right? So they're like, okay, we'll do it. And when I look back, man, that was a much bigger day for me than I thought it was at the time. So before we get to the hundreds of thousands of people that your organization's impacted,

what was it like to do a solid for your folks? I think, well, I think I'm still trying to do that every day, right? Like, if I'm being honest, I'm trying to, when I joined this organization, one of the things we committed to each other, you know, my best friends that we run it together is giving our parents their best decade. It was actually a part of our conversation.

So we said, hey, we're going to do this thing and we're going to execute on these outcomes. But if our parents and some of our parents were in ministry, some of them were maybe at seasons of not success, we're just so committed to our moms and dads having their most fruitful, blessed years. And it's probably because we have parents who did it all for the right reasons and gave everything. And to be honest, no one showed them a better model. The only reason why my parents didn't own a home sooner is because the ministry they were part of didn't say was valuable. Like, why would you do it? So they were told, I mean, we grew up in Hawaii.

If we bought one house, they would have been millionaires. They didn't not buy a house because they were stupid. They didn't buy a house because the community they were part of didn't find that owning something was valuable. You know, so like I would defend them. And they were doing it not because maybe at times they didn't have the capacity, but, you know, they could have gotten help or support. I think for me, Mike, the, I've never been asked that question. So that's probably why I got emotional.

No one in my entire life has ever asked what it had. feel like. So when you hit me, I felt the feelings. I think what I have more emotion around was the conversation before, you know, like the, so the conversation before with my dad, and my dad's my hero. He's 73 as of last week. My mom's turning 79 this year, and they're just the best humans, and my dad's just, and he just taught me, I love him. You know, he's one of my best friends. And, you know, my whole life I grew up with the reinforcing narrative of poverty that we just didn't know that was with happening. And the narrative that my dad would say over and over again as my sister needed stuff or my older siblings needed stuff, he would look at me because I was more like him

and be like, hey, I won't eat my lunch for a month to get my shoes for basketball, which I did. Eighth grade, didn't eat lunch for a month, save money so I could buy my first purse shoes to alleviate the pressure on my dad. Like I didn't want him to have that pressure. And so I remember my whole life, he would say, yeah, all we need is three squares a day, a roof over our head, and clothes on our body. Like, he'd say it all the time. And so when I looked at any need that was beyond that, we would look at each other and it was almost like this prideful humility and go, Dad, you know, I mean, I'd set him my whole life, high school a lot, because my sister was like trying to spend money in prom dresses and she just loves spending money. And I'd be,

a dad, this is crazy. You know, all we need is a roof over her head, three meals a day, clothes on our body. And before we were letting them know about this house opportunity, he was sitting in another house we owned, second house we had bought. And I told my dad at a dinner table, I said, hey, dad, I just want to let you know. And we're talking about life and changes and you've grown.

And he's just honoring like, hey, you think different than you used to. And I said, hey, dad, just want to let you know, like, you were wrong. It's my exact words, Mike. I go, you were wrong. And he goes, excuse me? It's not words I've said to him often, you know? He's like, you were wrong.

excuse me, I said, Dad, my whole life you said, all we needed was a roof over our head, you know, three meals a day and clothes on her body. And we wore that like a badge of honor. And I go, you were wrong, because if that's all you have, you have nothing for anyone else. I go, I know you created that narrative to be selfless, but it actually within its framework is selfish because all you're going to have is a place to sleep and food to eat and clothes to cover your body, but you won't have a meal to share, a room to lend to someone else. and you have no capital to give to a cause that could help.

And that was probably the more emotional moment is that I had a, in an active generosity, I still had a challenge a mindset of poverty. Because at the end of the day, I don't want you to just think this house is all you need. Because then again, it's still going to become a selfish, self-fulfilling prophecy is all I need is all I have. And for me, the point of any income or any success is to have more impact, right? It's like, so the more money we can generate or the more volunteer power you can garnish or the more awareness you can have, it's not to build a brand, it's to build a movement.

And if we make more, we can do more, you know? And so, yeah, that was, sorry, man, you got me through a little emotional journey there. It was, do, do, do, do, do do do, do, dumb. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. and if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments. They're hysterical. In this commercial, you'll not only see Peggy Rowe gently criticizing her oldest son for his longstanding and well-established commitment issues.

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for just 3499 a month. At puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Pure Talk. Hey, look, I'm sorry to come out hot like that, but I'm not asking you anything I haven't asked myself. ever since returning the favor came and went.

I've been so personally interested in such a long time, not in good people versus less good people, but in why good people do what they do. I don't know. Is it the Sixth Commandment? Honor thy father and mother, right? Is it the sixth? I don't know the numerically.

I don't know the number, but it's in there. You know what? It's in the top 10, for sure. Yeah, for sure. But again, back to the scale of it. I just got it. It's in the top 10 guys. There's only 10.

If you didn't, no. Thank you very much. Yeah. It's that great scene in, uh, what is it, Chuck? History of the World when Moses is coming down from Sinai and he's got three tablets. And he says, I bring you these 15 and one slips out of his hand and breaks. 10. Oi.

These 10 commandments. You forgot the Oi. He goes, Oi. Oi. 10 commandments. Yeah, it's number five. Honor thy father and mother is number five. I just looked it up.

Thank you. That's awesome. So, yeah, I probably put the cart before the horse. Figuring out why you do what you do is not fair to the listener until we really understand what you've done. So if you don't mind, we'll just take a hard right and look at love has no limits and kind of jump ahead. And tell me about L.A. Tell me about Houston. Tell me what one man can do with a one-day event if he checks all the right boxes.

So much to say, and thank you for asking. Yeah, I think when you think about love has no limits, which it's early in its journey, you know, I think it's pretty awesome to see what's happened already, but it's early in its journey in America. You know, it's technically at this stage of recording. It's three years old. Now, our body of work is not three years old, but this expression of it is. You know, it's three years old in America.

And if you think about love has no limits, if someone listening is just going, hey, just give me a snapshot of what this thing does. Love has no limits, you know, really unite. hundreds of nonprofits, hundreds of faith communities, alongside hundreds of businesses and entrepreneurs, alongside tens of thousands of volunteers and Tier 1 artists and influencers, to really solve the greatest problems facing our community. And it's really understanding what would it look like of we would collectively, intelligently, sustainably in perpetuity, team tackle the same problems.

And what's the best way to bring a solution to that problem? There is, you know, millions of nonprofits in America. There's hundreds of thousands of people trying to do good, but we often don't work with each other. We don't know each other. We don't talk to each other. And I think love has no limits. Why that wording or phraseology is for us, we just,

the time we're all living in, right? I mean, read the news, look at your Twitter feed, look at Instagram, you know, especially in the time of love has the limits really being birthed in 2019. You know, hate was front and center stand. age and I don't think it's going anywhere and the nation was divided like it's never been before and homes that would have happy holidays were hurting and and torn apart and we just and we just sat there my consensus which I kind of say everywhere is hates not working like in case you didn't know

in case you haven't taken a step of you're listening and you've never just paused to take a step back at the narrative hate has never worked it never has and it never will it is a horrible return on investment. And what is the antithesis of hate? It's love. You know, love's the only thing that can bring us together. Love's the only thing that would allow us to listen to a person. We don't want to pay attention to. Love would be the only thing that would cause us to drive the extra mile, give the extra buck, you know, sacrifice that extra step. Like this is this only, and it's a universal word and a part of culture everywhere that everyone can resonate with. You know, when we're thinking about what we would call this movement and this entity, this expression. You know, a lot of people

refer to us as love without limits. He say it all the time. These are the love without limits, guys, you know, and we would actually be like, actually, no, it's not us loving without limits. It's a declaration and it's a statement. It's a definitive truth to us that actually love has no limits. And if you study human history, the best version of that love does break every barrier, builds every bridge, removes every wall, and reconciles narratives and lives and marriages and families and cities and countries that never thought could be reconciled, right? So that's the version of it. And, you know, so it's love without limits.

And we looked at, you know, how do we want to make a difference? We had to figure out what's really plaguing our communities. You know, back in the old days, people would do outreach or social good out of great ideas, right? Like, that's how we used to do it. I got a great idea. Put a brand on it. Let's market. Let's raise money.

Let's do it. And it's awesome. But we're like, hey, we're in a, you know, the technological age. why aren't we doing outreach and social good out of great information? Like we call it intelligent outreach or data-driven outreach. You know, like, let's just be intelligent. And so we actually, you know, hired some scientists and some surveyors and found out what was really going on in America.

And what we've come to realize, like, I'll be honest with this audience, what we realize, which a lot of people don't want to hear, and this is just the stats. This is not Jedediahy, or Love Has No Limits perspective. This is just what the data would. tell us that the number one root cause of all of the issues that we see. So whether that's incarceration or corruption or violence or poverty or homelessness or human trafficking or child welfare, you know, it's teenage pregnancy, whatever it is. The root cause of all of these problems is

actually fatherlessness. Fullessness is actually the root cause. Now, man, that is something hard to take on, hard for any individual movement to conquer. And fatherlessness creates families in crisis. Now, there's families in crisis that have fathers, so it's not the only indicator of a family in crisis, but 70% of families in crisis have some forative dysfunction around this father figure, whether he's present but not present, whether he's absent completely. And so for us, we realize that if we were going to make a difference in these outcomes, that we really wanted to focus on families in crisis. So when you think about every major issue facing our cities, our communities,

it's because the family is in crisis, period. Now, that could be because that family's struggling with poverty or that family isn't bilingual and it speaks a different language at a first language. It could be because there's no financial literacy. It could because there's a broken home. You know, there's so many. It could be because addiction, exactly. It could be because they're refugees that got, you know, migrated from warntorn cities.

Like there's a thousand things that create a family in crisis. But that's where you want to enter into the conversation. Because when there's a family in crisis, it leads to neglect and abuse. neglecting abuse funnels hundreds of thousands of kids annually into an overburne child welfare system. That's just one of the verticals. And that child welfare system, ladies and gentlemen, becomes a statistical cesspool of the worst of the fruit in America, and most people don't know it. You know, 56% of all female foster youth that age out of the system will be pregnant by 21 without a partner present. 40% of all foster youth that age out of the system

will be homeless within two years, not could be or should be. There's about 100,000 boys and in America right now being trafficked within our borders. I hate to say it. It's just a reality. I live with this stuff every day. 100,000 of our boys and girls within our borders are trafficked into human slavery. Every year, 70,000 of them are directly connected

to foster care homes or group homes. 60% of all men in prison spent time in child welfare. 60% of the incarcerated individual. So when you just think about, hey, when we're talking about love as a limits, it's, if we're gonna make a difference, as I said, if we're gonna do good, let's do the best version of it. of it, and let's make sure that we're actually solving the root of the problem, not just the fruit

of the root. And so that's kind of- The symptom, right? The symptom. A cause and a symptom. I appreciate you saying the thing about fatherhood because I know, I know how politicized everything can become today. And I know how a lot of people will hear a different thing, but we just can't shy away from

the underlying problems, you know. And that doesn't neglect. I want to say for women listeners, like I know the challenges with that statement because what about all the single moms that are raising these kids? What about everyone that was a massive radical success that grew up without a dad?

You know, like there's so many, you know, what we do need to know is it is a part of the problem and it would be ignorant at us if we really want to see a greater America and win the war for the future of our children's children to not at least consider it being a cause and effect. And then if you can't read it, wrap your head around a male or that identity or that relationship framework, which I completely

have margin for. Well, let's focus on families in crisis, which have a lot of different definitions and descriptions. But that's the next layer, right? So how do you reach them? How do you reach the family in a way that is persuasive? And by that, and tell me if you think I'm out of my lane or wrong, straight up, but I don't, I feel like the barriers that go up with people today typically happen. Sometimes when they hear a term that they don't like or a turn of phrase that they don't like. But mostly it's when they sense a lecture or a sermon. And I use those words because they're two very different things. And look, when I was in school, I enjoyed lectures. When I'm in church, I enjoy a sermon. And by the way, I've heard your work, you are extraordinary in that medium.

But out in the world, out in L.A., in Houston, how do you not lecture, how do you not sermon in a way that resonates with the families who are really in need, in crisis? Yeah, I think that it's a really great question. I mean, if I was to maybe give the listeners like some context for L.A. Because we have talked around it and then we get into it. you know, so L.A. was, you know, was in the heart of the Delta variant. You know, we launched this campaign in COVID. If you don't remember, if you lived in Los Angeles, it wasn't the most friendly towards COVID restrictions. The governor, the mayor. You don't say. You're getting,

you're getting tickets, you know, walking out the streets. And to be honest, all of our surfing and all of our NGO partners, like, their doors were closed. To be honest, if I'm being honest, no one was doing anything. The county was shut up. Like, we were in all these conversations. No one knew what we didn't know what to do. No one knew what to do and how to do it. And this is when we felt we were supposed to launch, you know, really this movement. And the narrative was what the narrative we shared. Like, we didn't start off by saying, hey, let's rescue families or in power families in crisis. Because what we've realized, guys, is a lot of people don't want to ever drill down to the problem. We're just presenting this, what we would call this unifying narrative

that different groups and different beliefs and different spheres of influence could rally around. Like, people aren't going to connect with each other, but they'll connect with the cause or the narrative. And so for us, that was, hates not working, you know, loves our only option. And what would it look like? Frederick Douglas 101? What would it look like? What would be the potential, the possibility if we'd be willing to unite with anyone to do good and no one to do wrong? So we didn't start off by saying, here's the problems we're going to solve. We had to create the framework, the team, the army, the infrastructure to actually serve and solve the problem first, right? So for us, it was, hey, what would it look like of this is what we would do? You unite with anyone, you know,

to do good and no one to do wrong. And man, I'll be honest, like, no one thought it would also work in LA, you know, with the political environment in close context. But to be honest, there's so many people that felt the, the tension of what wasn't working. They're in the heart of, you know, pick a side, pick a team, pick a party, pick a politician, pick a faith narrative. Like, they were so exhausted with it's got to be us or them and whose side are you on versus we're on humanity's side.

and I could stand with a lot of people I disagree with because the one thing we could probably unite around is loving our neighbor, you know, so that was really what was happening in LA and what did that manifest like? It manifests, you know, just so some people get a picture and then we'll move back to the question, you know, is about 641 partnering organizations,

it's NGOs, that's diverse faith communities. I mean, everyone from the archdiocese to the Jewish, you know, federation, you know, so diverse faiths that didn't work together, you know, all uniting over a common good. I think through those 641 faith communities and partners, which are the heroes of the campaign, we were able to eradicate 47 million in medical debt for 23,000 families living no more than twice the poverty line. So every family got a letter in the middle saying your death's been forgiven on behalf of love has no limits and our partners. Feel free to start your financial future, no strings attached.

We are able to activate the largest recruitment campaign for foster and adopted parents, really in the history of L.A. County, which is pretty awesome. This was a need they had. They said, could you help us here? We have 31,000 kids stuck in child welfare in LA County. 31,000 kids, guys. And 7,000 of them are right now American legal orphans. They have no route to being with any relative or any family member. They're completely legal orphans.

And only 700 of them have raised their hand and say, I like to pursue adoption. And the reason why is, is they've been rejected and dejected for so long. They can't handle potentially being said, we don't want you again. You know, so that was part of the narrative. But we had about 2,500 families step up to pursue foster and adoption, you know, in a short period of time. We were able to launch a hope community in all 35 prisons of the state of California, which for us was massive. It was an L.A. problem because if you do crime in L.A., you do time across California. You know, you might get sentenced in L.A. They'll move you from L.A. up to Eureka. To San Quint. Yeah, to San Quentin. And then

you're going to leave there and go to a halfway house and Indio and Palm Springs. And so we basically said, how do we create a network of people that care about the incarcerated individual who's an overlooked, marginalized person who can't even vote anymore, has lost all their rights? Like, how do we make sure that if someone gets sentenced in LA, there is a community for them at that prison in San Quentin? And if they get, and they leave incarceration and go to a halfway house, there's a community for them because we just didn't want, you know, we didn't want convicts, you know, to not have community in incarceration or have to rediscover it post-incarceration, which is what's the greatest proponent to recidivism.

But the cool thing is these hope communities, they're local partnering orgs that are in proximity to the prison. They're providing community for those inmates. There is rat classes, which for those who don't know, it reduces the life of sentence of an inmate. So right now they can take a recovery program, and it reduces the life of the sentence. We have a financial peace program.

to reduce the life of sentence. We have about, I'd have to look at the numbers in the last 30 days, but there's about 35 to 4,000 inmates, you know, that are in one of these communities at these locations. So we have about at least 100 on average that are gathering every week, which is really awesome. But that was new to L.A. We were able to serve about 100,000 families. Of course, in the middle of a Delta variant with a closed city, we activated an army of volunteers to say, hey, will you come serve this city to celebrate at a concert?

You know, and it just happened to be the most expensive venue in America at the time, which is the SOFI. And we partnered with a kind of up-and-coming artist that some people might know, Justin Bieber, who was a part of that in Chance the Rapper and Jaden Smith and Pink Sweets and Kid LaRoy and Tori Kelly. And the cool thing is, is this was their give back, right? So we used that moment to say, hey, you can't buy a ticket to this concert or event, you have to actually do good, take action to get access. You have to serve to have a seat.

And in 20 days, 20,000 random individuals, you know, paid money to get off their phones out of their homes, to help people they did not know, to serve with people they did not know, to be a part of an event that night, which kind of gives some of the snapshots. You know, sorry, I just want to let some people know. That was kind of some of the snapshots of what took place in L.A. and how we are now saying, And so the question is, is how do you create the story where a family wants to receive the information they need for transformation, right, to not be a family in crisis? I think part of it is making sure you're providing a holistic approach, right? And a lot of times that means it's not one organization.

Like what I've learned is it takes hundreds of great organizations to actually provide enough holistic support for one individual to get out of crisis. And hold on, man, because this is such a. big point. What I've noticed, certainly in the mercenary world, there's a lot of competition, right? It's a knife fight in a phone booth. Everybody's trying to get, you know, Verizon and AT&T and pure talk. They're all gone after the same consumer. It's very competitive. I was so surprised to find that same dynamic in the missionary world. Oh, man. I didn't think I would, but I did, you know, and there's so many great organizations out there that it just feels like they get in their own way.

And I'm just making stuff up now. I don't have, it's just anecdotal, but, you know, it's like wounded warriors could get on the same page as tunnel to towers. And if tunneled towers and so forth and so on, all these great organizations doing great work. But they just wind up stepping on each other. And they create a super noisy environment. and the average person is just like, ah, you know, whatever. So did you experience that? And I'm asking, because I know the answer, obviously you must have.

So how did you get all these other bloody do-gooters and these grassroots organizations to sing out of the same hymn book, if you will? So great. Who knows, Mike, you know? We're figuring it out. We're on this never-ending journey of not arriving, you know, so we're never going to be like, we figured out. I would say what I loved about what you said, and this is for anyone, I mean, this is for a business, this is for anyone in the NGO space, because I'm always

thinking of the listener, when you stop, when you want creditor control, you stop the viral nature of anything. So doing good should be viral, guys. Like doing good should be viral. It is contagious. It feels good when you do it. Even if you're doing a bad version of it, it's still better than doing bad, right? And it should be contagious. It should be viral. If you think about some of the face, you know, multiple religions have good written into their bylaws, and they spread and they grew, right? Like the early, some of the, you know, when you think about, you know, Judeo-Christian faith, like, it survived because it did good. It's not because it had a great message. It had a great mission, right? It had a great mission. And I think when you

want creditor control, it stops the viral nature of all of it. And so if you were to say, how do you get anyone to buy in? Well, one, we're not looking for credit or control. So the fact that I'm talking on behalf of the org, which is something we do very little, is because we don't want it to rise or fall on the ability of a person. And we're not asking everyone else, hey, we got the better idea. Come help us take your average ideas and build our idea. And everyone will know it was our idea. When we say we're nameless and faceless, so our posture in every city, and this is a fact, it's not just our posture is we're not the hope. Like, we're not the hope. We're simply the help. We are not the hero. We are just one of the many guides. Everything this organization,

Love Has No Limits About, is actually standing behind and beside and beneath community champions, influencers, activists, Tad Scope and Skill and Sustainability, which means the people who do get the credit are actually the incredible partners that are doing good. Like if you want to know who's going to, who's the hope of L.A., it is the community champions that are never leaving L.A., that have been in those backyards for 40 years that just need a better model or more resources or greater awareness or strategic collaboration. Who's the hero of Houston? It's going to be the people of Houston, you know, born and bred built in that city that simply just don't know how to collaborate. And so I think when you walk in and say, guys, the point of this is at the end, what is not the

point of this thing in L.A., we're going to be on a media tour to talk about all that we did. The point of this is that everyone's going to look at a moment and we're standing on the stage getting in the ward going, thank you, you know, for the proclamation. Like, if that was the point, everyone's done partnering with that type of model, right? But when you actually say, hey, we're going to lead the way, we're going to do the work, we're going to be behind the scenes, we're going to build the team, we're going to raise the capital, you're going to get all the credit. Because actually, the credit needs to stay with the people closest to the problem, not the people farthest from the problem. That's why I always have issues when government gets credit for large outcomes. You didn't do any of that

stuff. You did it. You did not do it. The people did it. Whoever you paid actually did that and those people should be the heroes we talk about. The people that actually did the work, you know, not that just raised the money. The people that, anyways, I could keep going on that tangent. He got me fired up on that. Do do do do do do do do do. Dum. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company, but he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as domestic and decided to fix the problem. The result was a company called Good Ranchers. It's a completely honest, totally transparent meat company that deals directly with American

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If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a... a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. It would be simple if everyone were incentivized to the same degree by the same thing. It would be simple if cookie cutter advice and bromides either serve to inspire or discourage those behaviors we wish to encourage, inspire, or discourage, right? But everybody's different. And so, you know, I'm thinking I went down there, L.A., early in 21 for the first time since the lockdowns, and Chuck and I went for a walk. He lives down there. I'm up in the Republican Marin here.

And we went for a walk down through Venice. And I swear, I didn't think it was going to come back. Just tense as far as you could see. Just, you know, depravity. and it just felt lost. I point this out because around that same time, you were reaching out to Justin Bieber to see if he would do a concert.

And at the same time, you were reaching out to volunteers and dangling this carrot in front of them. Hey, you can go see Justin Bieber. Here's what we need you to do on the day of. And you went to a lot of different groups with a lot of different propositions. And I can only tell you that my,

business partner, Mary, has a teenager. And she went, she was there at a time. It's so cool. Like literally, at the same time, I was flying home going, I'm pretty sure Venice is going to slide into the ocean. I'm pretty sure this is Old Testament stuff going on in L.A. right now. I just don't know how they're going to come back from this. And then there you are. Thousands, tens of thousands of thousands of people, millions of dollars being raised. So, you know, I just want people to understand that you didn't do it at the end of some rainbow. You didn't do it on a nice sunny day when all the stars lined up and everybody felt like let's go for it.

You did it in the midst of what felt like the end of days. And it is worth leaning into that because, man, God, it was just, it seems like a thousand years ago already, but it was just a year or two back. Well, and if you were in the real story, I mean, we don't know if the city is going to be open. We're contracting a venue, installing it in legal reviews. I mean, to be honest, if so if I was listening, I'm sorry, you're hearing it now, just because we didn't know if you'd be able to do it. You know, the city's open, the city's closed, or people are going to come into the streets, are people going to sign up and volunteer? You know, what's going to be our

restriction? You know, so you had all of that crazy flux where you had no idea what was going to happen. But I do think what helped us is the question we started asking ourselves, Mike, because so many people ask themselves like, what would you do if you couldn't fail? Right? Like you've heard that said before. What would you do now if you couldn't fail? And that's a decent question, but we kind of move the question from not what would we do if we couldn't fail, but what would we do that's worth failing for? Like that was a question we asked coming into this COVID campaign.

It was what must we be willing to fail for? And I can tell you, there was a thousand targets created by that campaign. We hit probably 900 of them, which is awesome. There's 100 failures no one knows about because there's a lot. of successes. But we were saying there has to be a new model. Like when he comes to outreach or if you're in the faith world, missions as some people would call it, or when it comes to, you know, just any social good, like we're sitting there going, it's not working. We have tons of money being spent and our cities are worse off than we were before. You know, like it's not working.

So what would be worth fighting for or failing for, you know, that if you did fail, it was, and that LA was. Like, we leveraged, we leveraged everything in previous reputations. And, but we just thought, and I also say, like, we had never been focused on America, but, you know, for us that live in this country, like, this is, America's become a primary focus of what I would call missions or outreach. The need here is extremely great, greater than it's ever been, in my opinion. And so we're just saying, what's going to be this new model that actually produces transformation, you know, and how are we going to, and we can't wait for a government. We can't wait for a government. We can't wait for hand out. We can't wait for the welfare system. Like we have the power within our communities to

solve these problems right now. And the best way to solve them is from the bottom up, you know, because as I've said, I think before on the podcast already, people closest to the problem, best mission to solve it. You know, they're best positioned, you know. And so that was kind of this community model. It wasn't coming in going, hey, let's raise money for vaccines in some other country or I watch some other charitable and I just want to be so careful because I love anyone doing anything in the name of good but I'm also just going as it best but I watch this other great organization that raises significant capital and they give that capital away and it has entertainment value so I'm just trying to be as very broad as possible so people can't really figure it out but they

could have they tried and I'm watching one of their events you know and I was studying it and now these events, it is the leader of a bank coming up and saying, we're committing this amount of money. And as a city leader saying, we're giving this amount of money. And all of the segments are all of these big institutions and organizations, I'm glad they're doing good. You know, there's not like they're losing money. And they're going, we're giving this. And I go, there's not, when I watched it, I go, who's the community champion? Like, who's the recipient of the money? Like, I don't care what brand or what national conglomerate or what's Fortune 100 companies giving money, who's doing the work? And what is that work producing?

Because the heroes are not the people that simply cut the checks. You know, the heroes are the ones that during the dirty work day in and day out, you know? So we got to see it from that way because then if we do, we'll invest in it and we'll back it. It's such a delicate balance, this whole business of virtue. Because the minute you put signal after that word, then we have exactly what you've described. But we need press. We need PR. It makes very little sense for you guys to simply build a monument to yourselves, right?

It'd be like preaching to the choir every single week. You've got to get outside of the sanctuary into the place where, in your case, right, the families are actually in crisis. And so how do you tell your own story without patting yourself on the back, right? How do you get it past the water's edge without becoming this very thing that you don't want to become? You don't want the spotlight on you. Ever. But I'm sorry, brother. You know, you...

Well, it could be on you. You know, like, that's what I loved about L.A. Here's what's what so cool about L.A. is people didn't know who did it. You know, like I still in ruins all the time and people go, hey, that thing that Justin Bieber did or that thing that chance did or the thing that one faith community that showed up big did. or the thing that the county of LA did, that's the point. Like, the point is, is own it. Take credit for it. Like, if everyone thinks it's everyone else's thing,

then it's inherently not just one single person things, and that actually works. You know, you want to package it. Okay. I hope I'm not getting it into an awkward spot. But no, I like it. When I first looked at your organization, I thought, you know, one big day, one big day of service,

a big celebrity, a big star, a bunch of people coming together doing something, the cynical part, or maybe just the part that had lived through something similar, said, now what? Exactly. What next? So much PR, like, leads up to an event.

I remember trying to get a bunch of farmers together from both the, like, the poultry industry, and the meat industry, and wheat, and all the growers of food in the same room because farmers are under assault. And I was very interested in, doing something to help the plight of the modern farmer. But the infighting among those organizations was such that we simply couldn't get past

this idea. I think it was called Table for Millions. We'll do one big event, a table for millions, and then we'll be done. And I'm like, I don't want to do that. You know, to me, the real initiative begins the day after the event. That's right. So that's what I'm curious about now. You raised hundreds of millions of dollars for people who desperately need it. Is there a plan to tell their stories? And how do you capitalize on the event once it's in the rearview mirror? Yeah, I think so for us. And it's a great question. If I would say, if you were saying, hey, this is a one and done or a one off, I would just go back to making money and be with my four beautiful babies and my wife. Right. Like I'm just, I can't leverage my life for that. You know, like we want sustainable fruit. I always tell people I know how to give you a great photo, but I want great fruit.

We want to return on investment. So we don't build towards a finish line. We're building towards a starting line. So the public facing value, they see an influxion point called this one day and tens of thousands of people. I think in Houston, we had 219 service locations where you could get millions of dollars of practical aid. It was beautification projects. It was brand new soccer fields. It was medical clinics.

It was prescription glass distribution. Like, there is thousands of things happening in a single day. But that is an inflection point of what the city experience is that is living off of a network of community champions that have aligned to do good long term. You know, so when we think about America, and we think about, let's just use two classes. Because we give to businesses and entities, but let's just move faith communities, which I think covers a lot of groups, right? That's every faith that has a community. And if you're just say NGOs, let's just use these two. subgroups. We see faith communities and NGOs in America as an unempowered, unconnected energy grid.

That's what we see them. And very similar to get the picture for our listeners, it would be very similar to what Solar City is to Tesla. And when Elon got involved and started dumping billions of capital, raising capital, buying land, developing infrastructure, creating technology, harnessing the sun in essence, he created an energy grid that allowed a vehicle to be plugged in anywhere it across America. And when we look at what we want to do in these cities and eventually in this nation, it's turned on this energy grid of good. But the challenge is these different entities don't know each other, they don't talk to each other, they don't know where they can make the greatest difference. So that's the challenge. The good news is, is we don't have to buy land. We don't have to

build buildings. We don't have to raise billions of dollars. We don't have to find a volunteer army that says do good or love your neighbor, that narrative, that bylaws is a 99% of all face. And the 1% it's not in are the weird ones. I'll just let you know, stay away from it. If you have a faith that doesn't say love your neighbor, get far away. But all the rest of them, right, all the rest of them actually have that. So we sit there and go, that the good news is, is faith communities and NGOs are the most strategically positioned and leverage entity in America to create a compound multiplier of social good. It just has not been able to connect to each other or turn on. And so when you think about what we did in LA and even better in Houston,

because we weren't into COVID, you know, we're in the great nation of Texas. We're not in a COVID pandemic. It's not our first time doing it. And we're just learning. We sat there and said, our job is to create an unbelievable energy grid, faith communities, NGOs, community champions, that are collectively tackling this problem together. And that is behind the one-day Houston moment or the one-day. So right now in Houston, there's like over 350 orgs that have agreed on serving and solving one specific problem. You know, and they've picked five of them.

So, hey, we got this, you know, refugee crisis. We have an issue with the next generation in schools. We have families in poverty and families in crisis. We have child welfare. And so if you'd imagine in our model, you're going to have 50 or 60, maybe churches, NGOs that have never worked together, talk to each other, now going, I am standing behind this best in class nonprofit, who serves this problem better than everyone else, who simply needs more volunteers or resources or awareness or whatever it is, wrap around support. And will we agree to run this play together? And so, I mean, that grid lives right now. And, I mean, Houston, we've called it internally, like, this is our lab.

Because there's such energy and connectivity around, yes, we have collective might to accomplish these outcomes together and build a better future for our children's children, you know, that that's what's living off of the one day. And so people go, oh, what's the sustainable aftermath? It's the fact that we have, you know, five initiatives that have long-term adoptions to actually solve the problem. And the most brilliant minds and some of the brilliant bank accounts think this is how we do it. And let's try, you know? Well, speaking of brilliant minds and brilliant bank accounts, I remember talking to Charles Coke about before Stand Together became Stand Together and full disclosure, I know they support your organization, they support my organization. And I think I can't speak for him, but I've interviewed him enough to know that he looks at some people like grout, right? Like the connective tissue between tiles.

I really love that. If you think about a mosaic or a wall with tile on it without grout, it all just falls to pieces. It's got nothing to stick to. So the organizations that he tends to gravitate toward and that earn his support are exactly like yours. And you're probably too young to remember this guy. Well, I'm sure you remember President Bush, but do you remember the speech he gave the first one when he talked about a thousand points of light?

somebody asked him about the future of decency and the best hope in the country. Come on. I'm telling you, man, it's, I mean, you are singing his song. And he's like, look, he didn't use the word top-down solution, but he was basically saying, our government can only do what it can do from the top down. The guts of it, the country isn't tile, it's grout. and there are a thousand points of light out there. And nothing is connecting them except the light that they generate themselves.

I think what you're doing, Jedediah, a fantastic name, by the way. Jesus, whiz. You're the only Jedediah I know. Thank you. Not Jedd. Jeddadiah. Getting those lights under an umbrella, getting them connected. That's the job.

And it creates that light picture, the thousand points of lights, that's 100%. and I'm sorry because it's so clear in my head, but that's how I see it. And it's when you do good well. Because if you do good well, it empowers people, right? So there's a lot of good that people leave the soup kitchen or the clothing line and their head's still down. And they have no other option to make their life better. So they might experience what looks like a beacon of light, but they don't in turn become a beacon of light because they never really found dignity or hope or personal value.

And so when we think about the framework of doing good, you should be delivering dignity. That's what you're delivering. You're delivering hope. Now, it might be packaged in a resource or, you know, this part of the campaign. But if you do it that way, imagine you have an NGO, a nonprofit, and you have a faith community that don't believe the same thing, theologically, but they want the same outcome for their city. That's what I want to talk about. There's a light.

Yeah. Put them together, makes a brighter light. and then the person that they actually serve doesn't stay dark and dim, that now becomes a light. Because at the end of the day, man, if we're going to get our cities back, we have to get our communities back. If we're going to get our communities back, we've got to get our families back. You know, and so when you can empower every family to be a source of light in its own community,

then that is the multiplier. And that is it. And I would say one last thing. I know you got a question here, Mike. I think that I learned in LA, which I just haven't stopped saying, the reason why love is the lens is that when you love some, or assign love to it. Love comes with it assumed value.

So for example, I love my parents. My mom and dad are so different than me, drastically different, think differently. We're so different. A lot of parallels, but it's so different. But I love them. So because I love them, their differences are allowed to live around me. And I have assigned value to them, right? Although we disagree.

It doesn't remove value. And the reality is, is when we begin to look at, and this is what I encourage all Americans, all humans, do is begin to look at the world around you through the lens of love, which means I've assigned value. So when I see the homeless who's not just a homeless person or for some people, a human speed bump, it's actually an individual who has a name and a person. When I actually see them through the lens of love, I value them, which means I give them dignity. When I see an orphan through the lens of love, there's value and now there's dignity. When I see someone with what would be a

quote unquote disability through the lens of love, I value them. When I see someone who votes different than me, but through the lens of love, I've assigned value, which creates dignity. And when I think people that, quote, unquote, have faith, have lost is dignity. Is actually representing themselves with dignity and being able to give dignity. Like, we've lost that art. Look, I think words like dignity and integrity and honor, they still matter. They get thrown around a lot. I'm not sure how much time people spend really, really cogitating and ruminating on it. But as a man of faith, Do you care in this endeavor that you're currently immersed? Do you care why people do good things?

Like overall, like at the mass concessants, the consensus are on the individual level, like for specific people or for generalizations? Well, no, on the nonprofit level, on the organizational level. And look, as you formulate an answer, just know I'm asking because I was surprised again and again on returning the favor to see how many people that I good naturedly refer to as bloody do-gooders are doing what they do for reasons that they themselves would call selfish. They're doing it because it makes them feel good and right and whole to do it. a happy consequence of their doing is an improvement in the quality of the life of the person

that they're assisting. But their motivation, Jedediah, is not rooted in, I'm going to save you or I want to help you. It's, hey, this is who I am and this is what I do. And now you're a family in crisis and you're in my lane. So guess what? You're going to be the object of my attention. as opposed to are we being called to save the world, or are we free agents out there on our own deciding,

this makes me feel good to call Justin Bieber during a lockdown and organize a giant concert. I'm just wondering. Yeah, I think I can answer. I can answer how I feel, because it's so different than all those answers. I'm just a different. I would say at face value, I do not.

Now, I would be speaking individually, not organizationally. We've leveraged all types of incentives that people want so that we can get the right type of good done. You know, there's brand partners. You know, we have a lot of people because we're nameless and faceless that don't want to be named,

which is unbelievable. We have people that have funded things that have a brand that should get awareness, but they've actually hidden their brands so other brands in that city could win. But for me, I mean, you're dealing with governments, right? You're dealing with entrepreneurs, you're dealing with investors,

you're dealing with humans. and for them, like, we know how to make it a brand win. I mean, it's like Houston was $100 million of social good. Like who, what brand would not want to be attached to it. Now, we might be selective on what brands we let get credit. Like, but I don't care initially. And I also think of, I'd rather be people connected to doing good for the wrong reasons than doing bad for the right reasons.

You know? There you go. I would rather, like, because I think you still have good in your equation, which has the potential to get you to more good, right? But this is, look, this is still the essential challenge of a guy like me who sees himself as an avatar who wants to help get a little more publicity on an organization that's run by a guy who really doesn't want any credit or any publicity. Okay, you can see the tautology in which I find myself engaged.

I mean, we're an hour and six minutes into this completely unscripted, an absolutely riveting conversation, and you finally got around to the point of mentioning that your one-day event in Houston generated over $100 million in actionable social good. So far be it for me to offer advice to anybody, Jedediah, but you buried the lead. The needle is moving. People need to know. They need to know that there's an organization that doesn't want any credit for anything called Love Has No Limits.

And every now and then they show up and they throw a party. They raise over $100 million. dollars and many many, many families in crisis are suddenly experiencing something that looks a lot like improvement there. If you won't say it, I will. Thank you. And obviously, you know what I'm going to say is I want you to love the idea of it more than an individual is connected to it. Because you don't have to wait for love has the limit. You know, we have some audacious goals, but you don't have to wait until this movement quote unquote brings what we would call like a flagship into your city. You know, I mean, Miami's next. Chicago, New York.

There's a reason why we're focused on the five biggest cities in America, which also have the worst statistics, you know, in America when it comes with social. Like, this is a fact. But for us, I would rather, like, what am I going to do? Like, please join us. Join the movement. Follow love has no limits. I don't care if you follow me. Go to the websites. But what could you do in your community right now? If you were wanting to do good, what would it look like if you did good and didn't get the credit? I can just tell you you'd be able to do more of it if you don't want credit or control. Like if you're sitting here wanting to do good, I I would say don't wait. Like, don't wait. Just start, you know, like fine. And then, of course, I would say for everyone who has a nonprofit or is doing good, let's not reinvent the will and create a thousand versions of the same thing in the same backyard. Like, if there's someone doing it better than me, have the humility to just go build their thing.

I mean, I have tons of college students and young kids that reach out to us and know what we're doing kind of and go, hey, I want to be an inspiring philanthropist or an entrepreneur. I want to step into the human trafficking space. And my advice to every one of them is here's someone who does it, go learn from them. And if you can do it better than them, just build what they're building. I would rather that get into our culture. And of course, if you're a person listening to this podcast and everything is selfish intentions, I would just say try some good stuff, you know, like try some good stuff and see what it feels like.

Yeah, you're right. It's a really hard narrative, you know, and I'm sorry, I made it hard on your team on all these pre-calls, you know, because I'm just like, here's. Dude, I'm sorry. I had no idea. My team talked to you three times before you came on the podcast. I didn't know. I just literally learned that today. We did 17 pre-podcast before this podcast. You know, which is great.

17. This is the part where I learned. There is hope. Yes. You know, like I want listeners to know there's hope. Like right now, first of all, there's some incredible people probably in your city that could help you get out of a circumstances situation and could empower you. And just start looking, like literally, like just start looking.

Second of all, I don't believe, I see all the oppositions when it comes to our country. I have a completely different look on what's going to happen over these next 10 years. You know, I think we're going to be a part of the greatest turnaround in America's history. I think we're going to see massive, long-term city transformation from the bottom up. And that is worth risking everything for. I got four kids, you know. So when you say, when you talk about why I do. all that we do in people's motives.

Like I didn't feel special about LA. Like I don't, we don't go in a room and pat her backs. Like, I'm just like, how can I make the, my passion, if you could fill it through the screen

or those listening, how do I make the most of these minutes? This is fleeting. This is not forever. You know, on the run to L.A., I almost died twice. It's another story.

I totaled my Tesla. I literally thought I was going to, I mean, totaled a car all over a freeway, flip, turned, I mean, I thought I was dying. Like, in all honesty, I, if you want to be honest, I said, I love you God, close my eyes. My spirit said, I'll see you in a second. I haven't shared this publicly. He's being very transparent with this room in this audience. I said,

see you in a second. And I concluded this was my last minutes, guys. It was it. Like, it was it. And I lived. I went home, like at 3 a.m. that night, I cried with my kids. I cried in the showers like the movies. Like I'm like, I'm alive. Like, God, I'm here. Like, I mean, I cried for days. Like just and then I sometimes set some candles and some music to make it like the movie. And I was in the shower and the steam's going. I'm like, ah, I was frail. I had legitimate trauma. It's the first time I created a greater sensitivity to people with trauma because I couldn't function the way I used to function. Like I was, I was in a donor room with hundreds of extremely wealthy individuals three days later. And I hid and I'm a very social person. And I remember,

I remember, I remember going to my wife and of the team. I go, guys, I got a second shot at life. I can do anything. I could leave you this org. I could just go back to making money and businesses. I could just do, and you guys would all be okay with it. Because I had like this, you know, this life crisis and this reality with death. And I looked at my team.

I looked at my wife and I go, I just want to double down on what we're doing. But I do know this might be my last conversation today of value. I don't think it is. But when you've tasted, when you've seen death that close, And at the end of the day, like, we're all fighting this clock. We don't know. Here's what we do know. If you've done the surveys, we all die.

10 out of 10, right? 10 out of 10. Unbearable statistics. Survey says we all die. So all I'm sitting there is saying, how are we going to do something that actually matters? And I don't care. The dream would be, the dream would be that there's so much good in change in statistics that no longer exists my dream and no one would know we had this conversation and no one would know we might have

touched a small part of it. You know, like that would be the dream. When was the accident, Jedediah? The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant like never before with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students participating and competing every year. Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA. And I'm encouraging you to at least consider being a part of this movement. Skills USA advisors

and volunteers aren't just teaching trades. They're launching career. and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. In high school, you could be among the people who are making this movement explode. Join the skilled trades movement. Support career and technical education programs through Skills USA. There's no better way to do it. You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town.

Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself. and see too how easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic.

That's skills, USA.org slash mic. I'm talking skills, U.S. Skills, U.S.S. Skills USA 2021 January Before love has no limits Before the event There's a lot of unique energy around that time

Holy crap You buried another lead And to be honest Just how crazy my brain is I was like if this is what needs to happen For this thing to take place Trust me my wife's heard me say it And she hates me for it

I was like I'm good Like I remember my mom goes, why did you say I love you? Like this is what I said, guys. I know I'm not trying to be a weird spiritual guy. I'm just real. And she said, why did you not cuss or freak out or save me? Like the car is spinning, guys.

I'm getting hit in both sides. I go across five lanes on the 10. Completely told my car, I have to get ripped out of it. Because I've always believed in my faith narrative that whether a lifetime or legacy, everything God's promised me is going to come to pass. It doesn't need to happen in my lifetime. It just needs to happen in my legacy. And I'm convinced that those things that are promised to me are going to come a pass,

whether I see it from this planet or I see it from what's next. It's going to happen. So I remember in that moment going, this is the way Providence and divinity finds it best for my life to finish to achieve a greater result and outcome. I was actually at peace. Like that car was going and I was at peace with the death moment being like, well, it's going to be hard on my kids. I just believe it's going to be good. You know, it's going to happen. And yes, so when you think about these are fleeting moments and minutes,

no one's going to talk about this stuff you did for yourself, man. No one goes to a funeral and talks about what that individual did for themselves, right? Think about it. Gosh, he was really in shape. Boy, boy, was he in good shape. He had his daily greens and, you know, like no one did CrossFit like him, and he was the best on his retirement portfolio, and he collected so many assets, and, you know, he really know how to change attire.

Like, no one talks about what you can do for yourself. Everyone, like the great funerals, unless you were just a jerk, unless you were just a jerk, they all talk about what this human being did for others. You know? So, like, the stuff that's going to matter is what we do for others, not for ourselves. Right. I mean, there's obviously a lot of faith and hope and love in everything that you just said. But there's also a dynamic that I think can be experienced really by anyone who's bipedal,

who's simply living, you know, I call it the theory of bonus time. Like, when you have a near miss like that, something happens. If you're a sane, sentient person over the next, it could be hours, days, weeks, or months, but everything, the flowers smell sweeter, the pancakes taste better. Everything, everything from a banal TV show to sex. Everything is better when you're in bonus time, you know? So right. So good.

And there you are. You're getting pulled out of what's left of your Tesla. You've made your piece. And now you still have these giant occasions looming in front of you. It must have been impossibly buoyant. Right? I mean, you must have just been floating through these things. I think the coolest thing, that is probably the wrong words,

but something you said that's going to impact me forever is this bonus time thought. And if we could create a mind hack, which it's actually the truth, but if you could wake up and consider today a bonus day, instead of saying, you know, people always say, live like it's your last day on earth. Well, you do a lot of crazy things if it was your last day on earth.

There's no stewardship if it's your last day on earth. You're probably making a lot of mistakes of your last day on earth. You probably don't have any money less. at the end of that 24-hour period of it's your last day on earth. So I've always wrestled with live like it's your last day. Like I want to have that ethos, but I've wrestled with it. But when you just identified, because I know what that felt like, I know what the bonus day felt like, Mike.

And if we could wake up and go, this is a bonus day. This is, I mean, first of all, my mind's cognitively processing. I got mobility in my legs. I have blood in my veins. I have breath in my lungs. Like, I have a viewer in America. you most likely have transportation and a television and stuff that, you know, most of the world doesn't have. And this is a bonus day. This is a bonus day with my kids, a bonus day with my wife.

I get to go to work. I didn't, you know. It's a snow day. That's powerful. Let's just create every day to be our bonus day. If you're 12 years old, that's called a snow day. It's a snow day. It wasn't scheduled, but it snowed. And guess what? No one's gone anywhere today, you know? That's so good. Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to remember. And it's something you said, but it's not from this conversation, so I'm going to ask you to say it anyway. I heard you give a sermon in Gainesville. In my old life. In your old life.

And you referenced a study that I had heard about, but had totally forgotten about. And I think you were talking about the nature of hope. Is this the current, yeah, this is Scott Ritter story? Ritter. It's the story of Ritter. Could you just like put that in a nutshell for our listeners? Yeah, I want to get the exact stats. So you're going to have to do your own due diligence and I probably could just look it up for a second to get the exact numbers. But this is in the 1950s. Ritter was a John Hopkins scientist and at that period of time in everyone listening, please do due diligence. I haven't been prepared to communicate on this intelligently.

And I'm going from memory. I've communicated a few times publicly. Don't always get my details. the way it's called the way i heard it okay it doesn't matter so good the disclaimers built in so he wants to find out like a lot of scientists do about some information that everyone cares about and that was the average life expectancy of a rat swimming in a bucket of recycled water so the correct terms was the average life expectancy of a rat swimming in a bucket of recycled water and this is in the 50s, and as Ritter and his team are doing the study, they quickly find out that the average life expectancy of every rat, every single rat is about 15 minutes. Swim as long as they can. They absolutely die. Swim as long as they can, they die. And then they changed the study,

which is amazing. And they had one little layer. That layer is they pull the rat out. They dry that rat off, that little rat. They let that rat rest for minutes. This is not hours. This is not tens of minutes. minutes, probably five, six minutes, and then they put that rat back into the bucket of water. And if I remember correctly, and of course, I'd love our listeners to pause. We're going to go to a commercial break. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

But if you ask, the question was, well, how long did the second rat keep swimming? You know, and a lot of people, like, in these moments, like 30 minutes, 40 minutes. And I believe it was, I think it was like 40-something hours. 60 hours. I remember 60. As I heard, yeah, it was like 60 hours, 40 something, 60 hours. And it was like 427 times longer than the initial rat. Guys, every rat died at 15 minutes.

These rats swam for hours. And the only logical conclusion that science could come up with between the rat that swam for 15 minutes and the rat that swam 436 times longer was the fact that the second rat had been pulled out of the water, dried off. In essence, it had been rescued. It had an experience being rescued. So when it got put back into the water, it had hope for a rescuer to come again. The difference between the rat at 15 minutes and the rat at 40, 60 hours, at 47 hours, was the fact that it had hope. It had hope. A reason to live. It knew that a reason to live. And yeah, that is, well, it keeps thinking, yeah, you brought it up, but that is, especially, I think, and we're not all, you know, we're still in the trauma from the pandemic. But at the end of the day, if you don't have hope, I hope we could be a source of some of that today. And if you need to find hope, there's a lot of communities that would love to help you, you know.

Well, look, ma'am, yes, yeah, a thousand times, yes. You show people that it's possible to boil the ocean, to take a big swing, to move the needle in a meaningful way. I'm not trying to give you credit. I'm just trying to point it out because it's important. It's important Jedediah in the same way that Roger Bannister was so important to the species. It's not that he broke the four-minute mile. It's that he did it first. He did it at a time when no one thought it could be done. And then, since then, how many hundreds, thousands of people have done the four-minute mile? Somebody's going to do the three-minute mile. one of these days. We're going to be as gobsmacked by that as we were by the other. Surely as a rat, who we know has 15 minutes before he just gives up versus 60 hours. So that's why it's important to tell your story, brother. Whether you tell it or get somebody decent in the PR world

or just, it has to be out there because whether you like it or not, you could be the 60-hour rat. you could be the next three-minute mile guy. And what that's going to do for people is give them hope. That was the dream, Mike, so thank you for that. And I'll receive it. And the dream I'll never forget. You have these different things you run towards in these different campaigns. And I never forget, L.A., I started telling our team, this is our Marshot.

And I studied a lot of Elon, so I'm apologized for referencing him so much. I just love disruptors, right? I just love disruptors. So I've also studied them, okay, and Gandhi and all these guys. but I go, it's our Mars shot. And they go, what do you mean our Mars shot? And I started talking about when Elon, who would be honest, when he was starting early on going to Mars,

and they were saying, what do you want to do? Prove light, now it's changed. But do you want to prove life on Mars, build business of Mars, you know, create transport to Mars? And he said, I'm not trying to accomplish anything with getting to Mars. He's like, that was when he was working on that in pain capsule, which had soil and a seed so that he could grow this incredible grass and flowers. He's like, I want to get one photo,

which is this lush green. landscape in front of this red dirt mountain Mars backdrop. And he goes, and that one photo is going to inspire everyone else to figure out how we're going to get there and build trade and build commerce. And to be honest, that was what LA was. It was not how do we do this a thousand times. It's could we inspire to, I think, a lot of people and probably a lot in the faith community at that time, a different way to do good. And I will tell you what we've learned. And this is true to humanity is probably what Elon learned when he was taking this multi-planetary journey to space where he thought everyone had given up on hope for what could happen or what could be there.

He thought they had just given up on the possibility of going. And as you know in all the interviews, you probably heard him, he quickly realized no one had given up. Didas had concluded there wasn't a way. So when I think about faith communities, people of faith, people that want to do good, you know, recovery communities, what I've realized, is I used to think, oh, you've just given up. You no longer have passion to help people.

And what I found out is, no, no, no. There's tons of passion all over, and it's in different races and different faces and different political parties, and there's a passion to do good, but the mass consensus, as if it's just included, it's not possible. So if you say we swung for the fence

and we created a snapshot of what's possible, and that in turns means a bunch of people will go pursue it, man, that's worth, that's worth an hour and a half combo right here. Well, you know what? Here's where I'll land the plane. When you were talking earlier, and again, this is just another way to pay you a similar compliment in a slightly different way. But maybe that wreck on the 10 before that event in L.A.

At the height of the lockdown, when the world was probably about at the darkest place, it could be all things considered, what do you decide to do next? you're going to Houston, New York, Chicago, Miami. If there were a Russian judge on this podcast right now, and they were ranking the degree of difficulty for the dive that you just took, it'd be 10. I don't know how you're going to execute it. But when I say boil the ocean, I don't mean you're doing something beyond your ability.

I mean, you are. going for it. You're not going to Beverly Hills. You're not going to Orange County. You're going into the places. If you can correct the ills that we've described in those five cities alone, that transforms the country. 50% of the worst of our nation stats when it comes to incarceration, child welfare, human trafficking, poverty, corruption and violence, many studies would say 50% of all of America's stats live in those five cities. So if you think about changing the narrative for the nation, if you can win in those five cities, literally half of our country's statistics on the worst of our problems can change. And then I would say to what's also there is, I think being really transparent with this audience is we got to run to failure on some stuff.

Like you want to know what humility looks like, filling publicly consistently, right? Like, failing publicly consistently. Now, there's a lot of wins. but for us it's like, hey, if this is not going to be the model that, you know, helps our kids in schools, right? We have a massive education crisis in America. You can go on that forever. Like, if this is not the model, what is it?

And let's just keep running towards failure until we figure it out. Instead of being like, this is what we do and I hope you like it and give money to it. And let's just keep doing it. Like, for us, we're trying to run a failure. And I also think these five cities, we didn't just, like, we kind of sensed them, to be honest. Like, we didn't get the data to after. These five cities also really represent.

I think the core cultural context of America at large. Not entirely, but of course, you have L.A. This is the entertainment capital of the world. You have Houston. You know, this is Middle America. You know, this is a completely different, you know, city. And it's also got, it's the most diverse city in America. You go to Miami.

Miami is a whole different version, you know, of an American city, which has Latin towns and, you know, has massive Hispanic influences. A whole different type of city. It's also a global city. and then you go to Chicago and all those, there's inner city everywhere, like, man, we better figure out something that works for the projects, you know, like that actually works for areas of blocks and, you know, communities that we have never really been able to crack the code on, you know, besides move you away, right?

We haven't cracked the code on how do you live and stay here and thrive here, just move you away. And then New York, which is the financial capital of the world, basically it's a log of lessons learned that hopefully build us a use case to say, now how do we bring this to everywhere in America? And how can this be adopted without us ever having to come there, right? That's the real goal. So good, man.

I love the notion of running to failure. I was talking to a special forces guy the other day who I know who's in about the best shape you can be in. It doesn't really look like it, but he can run until he falls asleep. He runs until he gets bored, basically. But he was saying, look, the key to working out, it doesn't matter what you do. And it really doesn't matter when you do. it. What matters is that you do it to failure. Wow. You do as many push-ups as you can. And then you

rest for three minutes and do as many as you can. And then you rest for three minutes and do as many as you can. And then move on to the next thing. The important thing is, is that when you're done, you're lying on your face with snot bubbles and drool and just spent, finished. Run it to failure. And then rest up and do it again. Look, man, I got to be respectful of your time. You're changing the world, so you probably don't need to spend more than an hour and a half, but I sure appreciate the chance to pick your brain and see what makes a bloody do-good or tick in these uncertain times. Such an honor to be with you, and thank you for being a champion of humanity. As I said, when I did get on, which didn't make it in the recording, it's been amazing. And obviously,

you're listening because you love who this man is. It's not just who he brings on, and I can say that. I mean, I'll tell you, Mike, I was in a meeting with some investors right before I came in or do this podcast. And I was like, I'm sorry, guys, I got to leave. I'm doing this Mike Road podcast. And this guy was just the biggest fan, you know, like went off. I mean, he was just, and I was like, I'll tell Mike you said hi. You know, like Troy says hi to Mike. But it's the fact that what I love is that you've spent a lot of time and I'm not, you know, Wikipedia to know everything you've done in your life and accomplishments, but to fight for the overlooked, the undervalued and the marginalized. And obviously you did that in the workforce for such a long period of time. But thank you for being an incredible advocate for humanity. And really, I think, calibrating how people see things and who the type of person they want to be. I can tell you I've spent time with a lot of people. I didn't expect this experience. You know, so you haven't seen it, guys, but I've cried today.

I was lost my words today. I was massively, I think, encouraged today, too. Like, I don't know how you get encouraged through questions. But it resonates. And thank you for what you're doing. You're one of the great humans. You know, you're one of the great humans alive today. I mean that.

Come on, man. It wouldn't have happened. It wouldn't have happened without my psychopathic dog running away from me and me chasing him down the street of my otherwise sensible community in my underwear. If you're going to interview somebody you admire, that's probably the best way to get in. Please come back. That's going to be the name of this episode. We love you, Freddie. He's a good boy.

You know what? That's not about it. Hang on a second. He's still here. Hold on. here he is the exciting incident we love you freddie does he bark on command look at back to that nose nostril looking I mean seriously he doesn't do anything on command that's the charm of the dog if you want him to do something don't tell him tell him to do it

just no he's untrainable he's unwillable oh let's change the world together man you're hey you're invited we got a lot of stuff to do in huss and love to see my let's let's dream together. Let's be friends. Thank you for your time. Freddie, you are loved, and I'm leaving here today to get a tattoo of you on my back. I'll never forget it. I won't put the names of my kids in my body, but I'll etch-a-sketch your face and we'll get you on. Look at that. Just like that, my dog's a tramp stamp. I love it. Well, who said I was going to put it on my lower back? Like, why'd you go there? You know, you just assume there was a lower back shot? All right, man, don't hang up. We have to make sure all your wisdom has been properly uploaded, but that was

terrific. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. When you leave a review, which we hope that you'll do, tell us who you are. Tell us who you are. And before you go, won't you leave? When you manage procurement for multiple

facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Granger gets it and knows there's no time managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Granger offers millions of products in fast dependable delivery, so you can keep your facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-Grangeer, click Granger.com or just stop by.

Granger, for the ones who get it done. The ocean moves us, whether that's surfing a wave or taken in an inspiring view. The ocean feeds us. Sustainable seafood practices bring the ocean's bounty to our plates. The ocean teaches us. How our everyday choices, big and small, make an impact. The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean connects us.

Find your connection at Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects.