Jeremy Weisz 6:25
There’s an amazing story, Tom from the book that and I, I don’t remember the person’s name, but they were an amazing salesperson. And they were going to the market every weekend. And they were like the top person. And can you tell that story? And what happened? Because it’s kind of similar.
Tom Vozzo 6:45
Similar thing. Yeah, George. So we have Homeboy Industries, we have farmers markets. And you know a good part. Let me first say about Homeboy, we help former gang members and felons change your life. And what I learned from Father Greg, the founder of Homeboy, and still still there leading us along the way, is that all of these folks are victims of complex trauma at a young age they join the gang think it’s gonna be their, their family, their friends, but it’s not to false hope. Right? So people have to have to come ahead of the when they come out of prison system, they’re choosing to leave that gang lifestyle. And they again, they want to sort of do it the right way. But they have no support system around them to pull themselves out of gangs. Well, Homeboy does it provide that support system, so a lot of what we do is brought healing and therapies. But a good portion of what we do is work therapy since 90% of our population, which is former felons, and inmates have never worked in their life for more than a month. So if you think about that, this side story on commentary on our society releasing 10s of 1000s of people out of the prison system each year in California, and to think that a government agency with is going to help them look, do a little resume and get them a job and for them to keep the job when they’ve never worked anywhere else, they have so many challenges in terms of how to get mainstream back to life level and not knowing how to work. So while Homeboy does both, we help them heal, and we help them know how to work. So a big part of teach them how to work is the work on our social enterprises. long line up to the story. So we have we have a bakery, in in our bakery, we send our guys out to there’s 26 farmers markets around the County, Los Angeles, and we sell our bread and it’s a good job in the sense of teaching somebody how to interact with customers who aren’t like them, and just sell the bread and eye contact, and also our bakery. And so it’s farmers markets. It’s run by our trainees, with our clients, we call our clients trainees, you know, each day they the guy in charge of each farmer’s market, picks up the bread from the bakery, drives out on our vans, sets up a table, sells the bread brings the cash back and hands it back can’t cash in. Any corporate auditor would have a heart attack, looking at the lack of processes we have in controls we have in place, but it works for us because people care about Homeboy and not gonna abuse us. So okay, so George, one of our best farmers market. Sellers always sells out his bread. And so I remember there’s probably like two or three months into my time a Homeboy, you know, I’ve walked through the bakery, you know, it’s leadership, I walk around, you chat with people, you talk to them. And over here, George talking to our bakery manager saying you need to take the weekend off Fridays, Saturday, Sunday markets, which are best markets. And it was asking for the time off and so I’m thinking I just got mad at a corporate American thing. Oh, well, he must be taking vacation days and doing something worthwhile on his vacation along the way, has enjoyed what’s going on. So well. He says I have still have a lot of debt from prison. So this was a time when people come out of jail in prison. You have to pay you have to pay not this restitution for your crime but be at the pay of the parole officer that is working with you have to pay your court costs and so for sight again. We have people in prison. They were putting all these debts on court costs parole officer costs da costs, and people coming to prison have to pay that debt. And so for George, to pay that debt, there was a time you can report into his county jail and burn off that those dollars will by spending three days in prison. And so he was doing a responsible thing I’m thinking, so I walked him thinking, He’s saying he’s reporting it’s a prison just perfect. So I’m walk away thinking that’s a very responsible, and he’s trying to do do what what society wants him to do is to do it correctly. But he’s got to go to prison for it. And I’m thinking, Wow, I wonder if I would have made that choice? Or if I would try to find them find the money. Alright. So So I see him now the following Monday. And I say, you know, how’d it go? You know, I was thinking about you all weekend. So it was a struggle, or something, he’s gonna tell me something happened in the jail. And then he says, and then he says, Well, he was worried the whole time, because the person now he’s a single father of a 10 year old, and in April, the person was going to watch his two children couldn’t make it. And so he went to jail, left his 10 year old, eight year old in their apartment for three days, on their own. Thinking about and he spent the whole time thing, but are they going to be okay, now, turns out, they were okay. But the point of my story is two things. The struggles that people are trying to get out of being poor and get out of being a felon to move forward is this massive. The other point of story has come to learn Homeboy is you just got it. It’s impossible for folks who grew up the way I grew up, not pretty typical in the United States. He can’t, our tendency is to judge his decision, George’s decision making right there. And we learn Homeboys, it’s almost impossible. So two choices our folks deal with. And so it’s a good reminder, let’s not judge, but just figure out how we changed the system and improve it going forward. Because people get put an awful circumstances to try to sort of make their life better.
Jeremy Weisz 11:56
You know, it’s when I was reading that it’s really a heart wrenching type of story. And let’s say there’s someone within the Homeboy Industries there that has maybe some extra money or has the means to do that. How do you stop yourself from just stepping in and helping every time you can’t help every single person you’re like, I just wanted when I read that was like, I just wanted to give him the money. So he wouldn’t have to go into go back in and pay that debt by going into jail again.
Tom Vozzo 12:28
Yeah, it’s very hard. And that’s so hot. Where do you draw that line? Right. I mean, I’ve you know, it did go through my brain when I walked away that first time you say is gone, Johanna, maybe I should just sort of give him the money. Let him know how much it was probably like over $1,000. But it’s not that big a deal. But it’s like, how do you think about it? So let me tell you another story that along about money does make it so the one of the things about book is, money makes a difference before people you know, it’s like we have this adage, William, it doesn’t make a difference in life well, for people are struggling with so many things, it makes a difference. Homeboy, for many years, we struggle struggle financially says we have very generous donors. But our mission is to help as many people as possible. And so we run payroll, the payroll a month, a month, and it’s not a lot of resources in the bank. And we actually, oftentimes we will loan money to people, we will give money to people. And so but this time that this next story, we just didn’t have money. And then there was a story of Pauline, this is one of the driver forces of why I keep showing up every day, African American woman, multiple since in jail, a gang member a lot of drug addiction, and a little bit of mental illness. But when she was on her meds of mental, she was a good worker, she was friendly, she would be engaging. But then she would struggle and she was struggle trying to get by. And so there was one time she came to our case manager and asked, you know, because she had she owed $500, to get her around $500 to get her car at a to fix your car, get our car out of the law, and is important for our folks to have cars because taking public transportation generally means they’d have to drive through rival gang territories, which makes it very dangerous for them. So having a car is an important way for them to safely to us or wherever else they’re going. So she asked on this Thursday, can she borrow money? And as to the case manager, and at that time, we didn’t have any of those financial reserves. And so we said no, but maybe on Monday, you know, we’re expecting more donations to come in. Maybe on Monday we would have the money. And so Monday comes along. And for bowling, it’s you know, so it’s Switch comes into Monday morning, and she’s crying with her case manager feeling that shame. And what she did was she was forced in such a tough spot she for her. She went to prostitution, she prostitute herself to earn the money to get so as you get the car so she can drive safely. It’s like it’s again It’s like this struggle of like the choices people, our society of putting people in now, I’m not saying Pauline doesn’t have our problems, but what there’s no support structure around Marlene. And the other thing that Pauline has been sick, and she passed away a couple years ago, she had heart, she had heart problems, she went in for heart surgery, she came back out. She came back to work a couple months later, too. So you balling you get to get the smile, the big smile and embracing of what you’re about where you get the pain of what she’s going through in terms of the trauma. And she was very well was respectful for me. And we were very engaging to me. But then like two months later, she passed away. And I know deep down that if she was my daughter, I would find a way, healthcare in America is different for these two Americans, one for the poor, and one for everybody else. In my America, probably excuse my daughter will probably find some way of getting her health care. But being poor, you don’t you don’t get those opportunities. So it’s to your conspiracy questions. It’s hard. Where do you draw the line? Where do you sort of extend yourself and we will all extend ourselves? But how do you kind of help people out? And it’s to me, my big theme here is how do you as a society, as businesses, we need to change the way we think about the poor, the working poor, and the formula incarcerated and how to help them
Jeremy Weisz 16:12
talk about the different social enterprises. So I know it started off with because there was a bakery that happened to be across the street from the church. And so that was the initial social enterprise, right? So talk about where it started. And then kind of what is there now and how it’s grown?
Tom Vozzo 16:34
Yeah, so it started as simply as Father Greg Jesuit priest, his first station as a priest was in Dolores Mission, which is the poorest parish in all of Los Angeles archdiocese, a long way and also visit back in the late 80s, early 90s epicenter of gang violence. And so you know, there’s been indoors missions, probably 10 or 10, different gangs all around that area. Greg saw these young men just violent and killing themselves and he wanted to come up with a way of getting them out of that situation. And he hit upon the such a simple notion if you get them a job where they have enough money for food and shelter and not going to run with a gang to get that money for food and shelter. You know, basic needs food and shelter along the way. And so that’s how it started. And then there’s opportunity to buy bakery and the one the famous movie producers Ray Stark, read about Father Greg story came down as gray. How can we help Greg? That was a bakery across the street. How about having a bakery, but fundamentally, what Greg knew was purposeful activity for people and have gang members work. Side by side. You know, in our bakery today, we we make artisan bread, we have 11th round bread routes, though around the county, we deliver the restaurants, but it’s handmade. And so guys who are rival gang members are rolling dough right next to each other, right on the tables in our bakery. And it’s it’s a wonderful sort of work therapy in the sense of, of, of, of how to help people understand what it’s not just about working but work with work with the rival. So that’s how the bakery started. Now, from there, we have our home girl cafe. So it’s more of a women’s only business women who are gang affiliated or gang involved. Run a cafe. And I like to say, you know, we are Zagat rated cafe, we’re downtown Los Angeles. We have there’s only eight other restaurants downtown Los Angeles to have as high rating, as we do. And it’s run in I’m saying the Zagat rated run by former gang members and found period all food management team are our clients. And so the speaks to you give somebody a chance. In the waves normal society thinks about it, they can do a good job. Yeah, and I guess my point is, is other than downtown Los Angeles was aggravating, but ours is run by former felons and gang members. And which is, which is sort of another lesson or the what I want to tell everybody is that here we have a population, former felons, formerly incarcerated who most of America most businesses don’t look to hire, but I’m running social enterprise businesses. And they’re not just the frontline workers, bro. But they’re the management teams. And they’re driving those businesses forward and driving those businesses forward successfully. And so what I’m saying is, you know, here’s a population that we should invest in and try to get them better, better jobs and move them up the economic ladder, without a doubt. So we also have Homeboy electronic recycling. And in here in the state of California, every, every electronic items could be recycled properly. And so we have a electronic recycling company. We actually acquired a smaller version of this. It was smaller about four years ago, and we’ve grown it nicely since then. And the years we pick up people’s electronic waste, we take it back to our factory or warehouse we deconstruct it and sell the components along the way as well as refurbished computers and sell them so we look to see how that business can keep on growing and then we have smaller businesses, food businesses, we have a diner and City Hall. We’re going to have one in the New LA County. Behavioral Health Center along the way, and then you, you already mentioned our silk screening screen printing operation with our Homeboy merchandise, as well. So, so we’re running these social enterprise businesses. Not only are they training programs, but also that they can grow and provide good jobs for our, for our graduates of our program.
Jeremy Weisz 20:19
So how did you decide to grow into these different niches? Right? Like electronic recycling?
Tom Vozzo 20:26
Yeah, it’s almost happens. Um, let me say this way. So, because of Homeboy, so many people support Homeboy Industries, and they know that we, we employ people most of society doesn’t employ a lot of folks, good hearted folks come to us with business ideas. And so thankfully, we’ve had a choice. We’ve had to be able to pick and choose among some good opportunities along the way. But the aspects for me, what I’ve come to learn is, am I married together my for profit world with my nonprofit world, is that we want for Homeboy, we want to have businesses that are people dependent, you know, labored Pangea, we don’t want to be in the software business where we’re selling vaporware, right, we need something where people come in and and, you know, work at it and be able to use their hands and their, their minds along the way. And we also want businesses that have upward mobility that can keep growing, because it’s very important for us, you know, this all issue in society, thankfully, the last couple years is about providing economic justice. Well, to me, that’s getting them a quality job that has upward mobility so they can provide for the families. And so if we’re in a growth business, in a part of that business, actually, you can contract with local state government, that’s even better, because we don’t get really state or government funds along the way to do what we’re doing. We’re privately funded through donors and through our businesses. But if our business can can contract with the city or county, that would be that would be a good aspect of and so as we think about what businesses want to grow into is, do they need people? Do we see upward mobility for our clients? And do we can we see some sales growth putting the Homeboy brand on top of it? I want to talk about,
Jeremy Weisz 21:56
you know, the whole process kind of soup to nuts, you know, when someone comes in and applies to the hiring process to the training process and everything like that, but I’m talking about the breakdown because the the the enterprise’s make a fair amount of revenue on their own. So you have donations and in the revenue from the businesses.
Tom Vozzo 22:19
Right, right. Well, let me quickly answer that. So we’re, we’re about a $25 million organization. Not we’re nonprofit, so we bring $25 million was spent $25 million. Of that 8 million is our revenue from our social enterprise businesses. About 2 million is from government all forms of government, city, state, federal, county, and then the balance, which is 15 $16 million is donor support. That’s either foundations or individual donors and, and we’re blessed with so many generous donors who really believe in what we do about giving people not a second chance to have a first chances in life and organized that way. So that’s how we’re set up from a financial standpoint, to your question of how people come into Homeboy.
Jeremy Weisz 23:07
The reason I ask is because it’s like, when I was reading the book, and I’m gonna have you explain it, but there’s 1000s of people, I don’t know the number that you have to turn away. And you have to choose between it’s, it’s sometimes, you know, bring someone in, is the life or death thing for someone to survive, you know, to come in, and it’s, it’s to turn people away, it’s gotta be very tough. And it’s not always us, you know, it’s a revenue thing, right? You just have to you have to have the revenues to sustain it. So talk about that, like, how many people are coming in? How are they coming in? They just walking in the front door? How does that look, logistically when people apply and, and then how does the process work? Yeah,
Tom Vozzo 23:51
sure. I mean, I’ll say that, let me first say to your point, how tough it is. And just put in a frame of reference, you know, it’s in corporate America, I work at it. I ran a $1.8 billion set of businesses 18,000 people work for me, I came Homeboy, we were around $11 million. At the time. I there’s been more stress and strain in my time at Homeboy, you know, running 11 $15 million dollar now $25 million nonprofit, then $1.8 billion business, not because we have less resources now. But because we know, I know if we don’t make the right decisions and have to cut our labor force that’s cutting people out of our program, and they’re going back to the streets running with the gangs causing violence, and is a tough, tough call. So to the question of Listen, so we here in LA County, there’s over 200 different gangs 150,000 gang members in LA County, LA County, unfortunately, is the gang central for the United States almost for the world along the way. But when people come out of it, when these men and women come out of the jail system prison system, am I here’s my my interpretation of it. They know all their life. They don’t want to be in a gang they don’t want to be crime, they just kind of stuck into this, they can’t get out of it right. And so they leave the prison system, they need something different. And they know if they can come walk through our doors a Homeboy, we we not only represent hope, but we could offer in some tangible effort to help them not run back with the gang. So we have two parts of what we do at home where we have our paid program where we hire 300 people on their on our payroll every every day, 300 people working on our businesses and working on themselves. And we have what we call community clients where they come in and take advantage of our services for free. Everything’s for free. So whether it’s tattoo removal, you know, we take out 12,000 tattoos a year, or whether it’s anger management, DV counseling, a and a and that type of thing. So but it around 15 People interview each week that come part of our paid program, and just the way the turnover works for many of the years is of those 15, you can only take one or two. Right? And to your point about the money. And so they walk
Jeremy Weisz 25:54
in the door front door, like how does that
Tom Vozzo 25:56
know, they come in, you know, Father, Greg still goes a lot of youth camps, which is youth jails, and does Saturday services. And so they have his business card and they walk yes, they walk in the front door and say, I want to be part of Homeboy, with a very welcoming environment, baby is in LA come visit us, there’s a real good energy there you we have our our folks run the system, run me up, over half our management team, our former clients. And so, you know, a person will walk through the door and say I want a job. They think it’s a that’s what they asked for. But really, we brought more than a job, we provide help, they help transform their pain and, and help them heal from their trauma. But they started enemy for job, which means they didn’t have you have a job, you have to test that you’re drug free, Substance Free, you have to have been in a gang and you have not been incarcerated. So we have three sort of basic criteria. And then once they get through those three basic criteria, then they go to what’s called selection committee. And I tried being as many selection committees as possible. I bring the board members in this experience in sometimes some outsiders and at that committee, and we have other case managers with us as well. Well, we asked the person is Why do you want to become part of Homeboy, we’re looking at really what we’re looking for, we’re doing reverse cherry picking as father, Greg would say, we’re looking for the hardest of the hard case, because we know if we’re not helping them, there’s nowhere else in LA County that’s helping these folks. But if someone comes in, and they sort of have a little education, and they see they can have a family support, and they seem they can get by on their own, we make that decision that will come take advantage of our programs, but we’re gonna give the job to the other person who has no other support. And so we go out of our way to take the hardest of hard cases, which means that we don’t like unfortunately, a lot of nonprofits just by nature of getting government funding have to prove your results all the time. So thereby, instinctively, if you always have to hit government statistics, you’re not taking the hardest the hard case, because you know, you know, quote, unquote, washed out, right, but we go out of our way to take that person who’s the harsh and hard cases, and lo and behold, we’re successful with them, too. Let me give you this one statistic. Number years ago, UCLA did ran a study on our effectiveness of Homeboy independent funded study. This showed if someone was part of Homeboy Industries, you know, our profile our client profile, but two years later, they only have a 30% recidivism rate. That means going back into the jail system and our new charge 30%. That’s versus a statewide average is 70%. So we’re over two times better than the statewide average. And we’re privately funded, we do it our own way. And we take the hardest of the hard cases along the way, but the stress is on this is on our organization. Because when you have to say turn someone away, can’t give them that job. It’s heartbreaking. Because you know what’s gonna happen, he doesn’t know where we’re heading to next.
Jeremy Weisz 28:40
So you they go through this process, then you end up hiring them, what happens when they come on as far as the training goes? Because like you said, most of these people have not a job longer than a month.
Tom Vozzo 28:50
Yeah, so sure, in trying to say this quickly. So in essence, people with Homeboys The other thing, people with Homeboy, about 18 months, it takes a long time that overcome all the challenges our folks have, and to start healing from the trauma that they’ve experienced. So we’re not a 30 day program, or a government funded 90 Day Program. We are a we’re here to help people in many, many different ways. So when they first come in, it’s about building relationships to your to the word use. So well put at the beginning of this. It’s trusting relationships, because these folks have never had anybody support them in their life. Anybody invest in them, anybody who welcomes them and so Homeboys about is it’s it’s this, it says, radical kinship, it’s compassion, and through relationships, they start opening up and healing so their day what their day looks like, though is we pay them to to go to their, their anger management class, we pay him to go there and a class we pay them to get their tattoos removed to go to God. And then about another two hours of their day, they’re out washing windows and sweeping floors of Homeboy. They do that for four or five months and then eventually then they we move that it flips they move into our social enterprise businesses. About two thirds of the data working in the business is baking bread, no washing dishes in the cafe, making making food in the cafe, about 1/3 of the going back for their classes, their therapy, their mental health counseling along the way to eventually after 18 months, then we give them a job outside of Homeboy.
Jeremy Weisz 30:16
Well, I want to pause for a second for the first part of the training. You know, part of it is the rehabilitation part. Like you said, the anger management, Narcotics Anonymous, the alcohols anonymous, whatever it is that they build the tattoo removal, but the first part you start is just making sure Homeboy is clean. Looks good. And you talk about in the book about subordination. Yeah. Can you just talk about that because I think that relates to this part of the
Tom Vozzo 30:45
certainly as I advocate for everybody to hire our population, right? But it comes with a you have to think about a different and when I took me a while there’s a lot of heads spinning for me to think out what I need to think about differently and one is insubordination. And so here’s There’s one story. I remember Gary telling the story to other he’s now in that navigator mentoring other new folks in the program. I heard him tell him the story, that when he first came into Homeboy, his supervisor Jose is his navigator Jose said Hey, Gary, this trash over there, can you go can you go pick that up and Come on this way? In care? I turned to him says you saw first you pick it up. It’s sort of funny to hear. But that actually happened. I mean, it happened with like in real anger. Right. And so our folks all their life that have been will have fingers wag Adam told what to do told him not good enough. Right? And so it’s what so what we’ve come to learn is what you got to get what’s behind insubordination. What happened that day? I mean, what kind of baby mama drama was there? What kind of like pasal did they get from the parole officer meal insert, but there’s something beyond the insubordination no one just wants to be insubordinate, just to be you know, so, so I’ve come to learn is that to help our folks out, if you just don’t know, so interpret their act, actions and behaviors you get what’s driving those behaviors is an important lesson coming from Homeboy is to understand,
Jeremy Weisz 32:11
I mean, in part of the book you talk about, is it that the person sees is beneath them to do that type of thing, or what’s
Tom Vozzo 32:19
there’s part of that. And that’s why it’s so you know, you will get our folks with lived experience when our managers and senior managers, they go out of their way to talk about you got to humble yourself. They had to humble themselves, that there’s no job beneath them. That’s why I see a lot of our managers sort of get down there and clean the bathrooms with our folks, right. And that’s not about kind of like oppressive type of humble yourself. It’s a mom, we got to change the way you’re thinking about things, you know that they start taking care of ourselves along the way.
Jeremy Weisz 32:47
I want to talk about, so what happens after the 18 months, but yeah, it reminds me I was listening to Kareem Abdul Jabbar wrote a book about his life lessons from John Wooden. And now, you know, we’re talking about UCLA for a second. And he talks about how, you know, cleaning up the garbage in the visitors in their locker room, you know, it’s not their, you know, their visitors. And that’s just the type of person he was it just, it wasn’t too low for him after a huge game just to clean up, make sure all the picking up trash after his meal players or locker room, you know, so it reminds me of that. What happens after the 18 months. So now they go through the program? Yeah, they go through
Tom Vozzo 33:33
the program. And we have a workforce development team. And we get them jobs after they leave us after 18 months. And, and this is where the next evolution, the Homeboys coming about. And but I talk about the path forward is, unfortunately, we’ve only been able to get our folks really minimum wage jobs as if the Homeboy and I know just by looking at the businesses, we run that our folks who are more talented than that. And so what we’re now trying to do is push forward on growing more Homeboy businesses, so that then we so that we can not just muscle get jobs outside of Homeboy, but we want to take our graduates quote, unquote, and and get them jobs within our growing business enterprises, as well. And so that’s why we’re pushing behind humble recycling. In fact, I started fundraising for it, you know, it’s trying to take take all the lessons you learn from the business world, right. And so you gather up money, and you see them grow. And so, you know, as I said before, I was blessed with a lot of generous donors. And a lot of these are very self made entrepreneurs who did well and they sold their companies and now they’re, they’re giving back. And so they would say to me multiple times over the Assam. I’m gonna keep on giving the Homeboy but if you ever come up with a business idea, I’m willing to deploy my capital to help out Yeah, so So I’ve sort of taken him up on this. And so we have is our it’s our Homeboy mentors and Jobs fund. It’s a $15 million fund organized like a venture fund. Along the way. The difference is though, the profits were saved back into the Homeboy mothership, but we’ve raised 11 other $15 million and we want to add on more Homeboy type businesses, so that we can provide jobs for people quality jobs, which means, you know, predictable scheduling decent wages, benefits, upward mobility along the way, all the stuff that the rest of America sees that I want us to see for our people. And it’s, and it’s proven successful, Homeboy recycling is now one of those types of growth businesses. We have a fee hope initiative, we’re preparing meals and selling to the to the county. So our goal going forward is to create more businesses that we can have more jobs for our folks as a graduate. Boy,
Jeremy Weisz 35:29
I want to talk about your kind of growing those business in the corporate world. But talk for a second about some of the business ideas that you get, and what are some of the ones that maybe you may execute in the future? That sound interesting. Maybe you haven’t yet. What are some ones that come on across the table, I’m sure is like an idea. person, you’re like, Well, this sounds like a great idea. Let’s put it on the roadmap for a couple of years from now,
Tom Vozzo 35:56
when I tell you what I tell you what’s right on our horizon here and whether you pull them off. So for many years, we’ve been training people or our folks to be solar panel, installation, or installers, right. And so what’s great about that industry pays pretty well 20 $25 an hour, because there’s so many installers needed, there’s no barrier to having a felony in your record that stops you from getting hired, as long as you can pass the certification exam you’re hired. So we’ve done that for a number of years now, we’re considering joint venturing with this other nonprofit into manufacturing solar panels here in Los Angeles County, which is not much so kind of a factoring happening in the United States, mostly off off off shores. And but there’s a real push going forward with the government to make this a local effort. And so that would be a terrific set of jobs. Another another industry that’s that’s coming along and lost. It’s all over. But really Southern California is this battery technology industry of patting, you know, these battery cells and in and and so there’s this burgeoning low voltage battery industry happening here. And in Los Angeles, can we become the provider of the jobs for that growing, growing enterprise along the way, and then back to the old fashioned one? Selling, we call home we agriculture, but it takes think about all the warehouses that are in downtown Los Angeles run down. How do you kind of redo that warehouse? So you you grow plants hydroponically in sell, you know, if the lettuces and the tomatoes to the local restaurants? And so here you have this sort of regenerative type of business idea. So there’s a lot of those types of ideas. key is finding a having the businesses needing labor to pull it off. Yeah. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 37:47
it reminds me of one of the people I had on the podcast, which is how can how can some of the workforce you have be employed in these other industries, like regrain was a basically a, it’s a bar, that they go around to different breweries, and pick up the spent grain to transport to make granola bars out of it, or whatever it is so sure, like so what’s in the supply chain already that you and your team and company could plug into and do so it’s really thank you for sharing. Those are those are super interesting. What comes to my mind is when I was reading the book is tattooer mobile. Do you odd can people come in and pay to do it? Or is it only for the people who are part of the organization?
Tom Vozzo 38:39
It’s not just anybody who needs it done for free will. Now if you can afford it, we ask for donation along the way, you may or may get frustrated, because it takes a while to schedule it and all those things, but it’s, it’s really for me, we’re blessed with 40 volunteer doctors to do that work. And yeah, that is great.
Jeremy Weisz 38:58
I love it. I’m talking about you know, right out of school, you had a lot of offers in a lot of different amazing companies, but you chose to go with a smaller company out of the bat, I’d love to hear about how you helped to grow that company.
Tom Vozzo 39:14
Yeah, look, I was a I was a math major in college and went to get my masters in mathematical sciences. And so right had opportunity to go work at like the NSA or American Airlines having those job offers but I went for a small, what intrigued me was be more entrepreneurs, small mail order company in New England. And it was a perfect spot for a guy who was a math guy because at the end of the day, it is back in the 80s Right? Catalog world you know how many catalogs you mailed out and how many orders you got back. He did all this typical analysis and so I started my career on more bathymetric million and it was a family run business and had all the asked the pluses and minuses of a family run business, but had been a big Aramark Corporation came by and bought it and then I was fortunate enough to be in a senior leadership positions. But without when Aramark bought it, they invested in me as a leader. And so I grew up the way big multibillion dollar corporate world and went up the corporate ladder that way. But, but all along, it’s about how do you take the petty take what you learn and, and bring your work your teammates along and, and enjoy the success as a as a as a complete unit. And that’s what kind of moves if you know how to make money and lead people. You have upward mobility in corporate America. Sure,
Jeremy Weisz 40:26
you know, going in that mill, first of all, I I go and direct response related stuff. So I love
Tom Vozzo 40:34
you, oh, we can have a deeper dialogue. Now. I love that
Jeremy Weisz 40:37
stuff. And I’ve had some people on the podcast, it just, you know, also direct response, copywriting, all of that. And it’s amazing, because you see the input in you see the outcome, but then you see, you know, what the result was? What were some of the key lessons or things that helped grow that company from 50 million to 300 million.
Tom Vozzo 40:55
But certainly it was looking about the same thing about the being smart, right? I mean, so having the, the smart marketing approach, investing in the statistical technologies, typical marketing efforts. But I also say, though, it was a committed management team was very young, a lot of folk just left business school only can start his company up. And it was Matt kind of taught me that if you have a culture that’s driven towards everybody sort of driven to, to, you know, rowing the boat in the same way, right? You can be with a good idea with hard work, you can be successful, you don’t have a good idea. It’s not gonna work if you don’t work hard, not going to get there.
Jeremy Weisz 41:30
50 million to 300 million or 1 million 50 million or whatever. Was there something deeper that helped kind of drive that growth? I mean, that’s amazing growth.
Tom Vozzo 41:41
Well, yeah, I mean, so So I did that. And then I went to another company where we sold placing fire equipment through the mail. And we grew that from, you know, same thing. 50 million to 270 million, right? And so I guess, the fimea question is, we were doing we would do marketing, different than everybody else in the industry was doing. So he was doing it same as everybody else, it’s gonna be hard to do. But if you’re, if you’re actually providing a part better marketing, and providing the product at the right cost, and they’re smart about the way you’re buying it, you’re out competing, it’s as simple as out competing your competitors, they have a better business model, better mousetrap. And then with that, then having the right team in place, that’s what makes the difference.
Jeremy Weisz 42:20
Back to Homeboy for a second time. There’s there’s so many challenges to running a business in general. And now you layer that, on top of all the challenges that individuals are experiencing. And you mentioned culture, and teammates. Well, sometimes you have people come in to work with Homeboy and their enemies, right? The Rivals? How do you navigate that when they come in to Homeboy?
Tom Vozzo 42:48
Yeah. And that’s where our team is just phenomenal at I mean, and that’s the value of having people with lived experience, be part of your team leader shooters, and it’s sort of, it’s also the having a strong culture of theirs. We don’t look we we help the gang member, right. We come out of gangs we don’t we don’t work with gangs, we work with a person. So when we were really clear, whenever it is, whenever someone comes to new when they start talking about the gang, our team, the stops and dead and trapped, we don’t talk about the gang, we don’t talk about my homies we don’t say this is I’m going to do is, this is what my guy wants me to do. No, you’re an individual who’s at Homeboy and, and we’re here, we’re here for you. We love you, we care for you. And those words may sound cliche, but it’s so true that we actually care for that person when anyone else has ever care for them. That is what wins the day and starts getting the person to stop thinking about their gang and more about themselves in their teammates all around. And big Mr. Big number two is fundamentally he can’t demonize somebody you’re in relationship with and so that’s the the push to get them in relationship and working and working side by side growing go goes a long way to kind of break down those barriers.
Jeremy Weisz 43:54
Tom, I won’t be the first one to thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey. Everyone should check out the book. And then also check out homeboyindustries.org Are there any other places online that we should point people towards?
Tom Vozzo 44:10
You got a HomeboyIndustries.org is is has all our information. Awesome. Thanks.
Jeremy Weisz 44:15
Thanks everyone.
