The Ripple Effect of Real Leadership

is what we're trying to solve is it a problem to solve or is it a tension to manage okay and the difference here is a problem actually is solvable right but when you try to solve a tension you just get into this thing and you get frustrated and you go why can't i solve this where it's like you know what you actually can't solve that that is a tension you have to so welcome back everybody to the future of hospitality as you know this this episode is part of a special series unscripted hospitality which i have the pleasure just to talk honestly and without filters to our guest and today episodes is powered by aohigh our leading global sales organization representing luxury hotels and resorts and today i have really nice opportunity to speak to someone that i admire as a person as a professional and got to know over the last few years stuart brown the executive director of the inspire brands foundation where you're gonna learn he leads amazing initiatives focused on youth empowerment education community impact and really brings amazing experience across corporate nonprofit startup and so listen stuart thank you welcome and it's an honor to have you here with me oh man well hey thanks for having us on here we are always fired up to have the chance to talk about all the incredible opportunity there is around us to talk about you know i like to talk about the privilege i have to not only sit in the seat that i have here with the foundation but also to work for an incredible organization like inspire so i'm looking forward to the conversation thanks cesar likewise and just before we start actually one thing that i i was really blown away when i think was the last spark i couldn't make the most recent one yeah but i think i was in the second one where you came to stage and you gave a speech for a few minutes and man you're an amazing speaker thanks for saying that for real well i appreciate that it's a lot of fun in a previous job i had some opportunities to kind of hone the craft and at this organization the way you know you did well was you got an invite back i didn't get an invite back so this was not always something that that i felt like i was great at but it's something i do want to work hard at and it's something that i feel like it's important because when you're on stage you get a chance to represent your entire organization and and most of the time when i get to shares for a few minutes and one of the things that's really kind of shaped how i think about that stage time is think about if there's a thousand people in the room and i've got five minutes that's 5,000 minutes of time that i'm owning and so i feel the burden of that responsibility because sometimes you think well it's only five minutes people are going to move on but,000 people five minutes each and just thinking about being a steward of that time and going what can i say that will be authentic and hopefully connecting sticky and you know and you never know there might be something that really changes someone's the direction of their life you know can't you can't expect that but you can hope and go man i do my job really well what could happen if if you connect so i appreciate you saying that and the hope and the intent is that you really do say something that matters yeah no you definitely did and did in a very you know what's the word ah i don't don't have the vocabulary today but a very authentic and very engaging manner thank you for saying that yeah yeah and so before we start and talk a little bit about the work you do with the team and the amazing stuff just tell a little bit about inspire right because i think inspire brands because a lot of people know your brands and they use you know perhaps on a daily basis but may not correlate so first of all i've got to say you set me up to fail here you just started out by saying i'm a great communicator better because expectations are up here so so thank you for that so yeah so inspire brands we were founded in 2018 so we're coming up on our eighth anniversary and it's been just an incredible ride to be a part of that so a lot of people know or maybe they don't know but inspire brands we have six incredible brands we have arby's buffalo wild wing sonic jimmy john's duncan and baskin and so we feel like we've got food for everybody every day part every taste appetite every food experience you would want to have we have you covered and it's just incredible incredible to be around so many leaders who are creative and thoughtful operationally sound as they steward these iconic brands right and there's a you know there's something there's a pressure that comes when you're like hey we're working with this brand that's been around for 50 60 70 maybe 80 years and there's so many memories there's so much nostalgia with food brands right we all think about what we grew up with and yeah when i was eight we went down to arby's we had the five for five or my first ice cream experience was baskin or man that day when my grandpa would come in and bring in the dunkin donuts you know all that kind of stuff there is a preciousness to it and now it's our responsibility to create those same memories for everyone else for all the 8 year olds and 12 year olds today for all the dads and moms who are trying to create those memories right our responsibility as parents if nothing else is to make sure our kids have great memories growing up right there's so much more to parenting we're not a parenting podcast we don't have to worry about that but part of it is how do we create those great memories and i think our brands have an incredible opportunity to be a part of all those stories if we do it well and so i just feel privileged to be able to come into this office every day and help tell a little bit of those stories of each of these brands that means so much to so many people yeah it is great and you know love going to your offices too and i think it was really caught my attention because i attended there i think it was lgbtq event that took place a few years back on meeting room right you know and also you know i was kind of shocked that from my understanding that was kind of an open space right that you know a lot of non you know non business and can can use that space to do something that's good and and that is really speaks to the culture and to what you guys leave on the day to day no i appreciate you saying that and that that use of the word culture i'll probably use that a lot over the next few minutes as we chat but i think there is this culture of hey we have this incredible space let's open it up and one of my favorite things to do is with some of the nonprofits and organizations i get to work with is invite them into our building and say hey guys we have this space we have this theater we have this basically sports bar on the second floor that we'd love to open up or we have this conference space and not just to show it off because i believe it's an amazing space and i'm proud of it but to give people access to something and sometimes they'd say oh i didn't even know this kind of space was possible they can go back to their organizations go hey what if we designed it this way what if we thought about it this way or what if we created our own space i think oftentimes in the roles that you and i have and other people that we connect with have part of our job is to show what's possible and to remind them this is something that could happen because i think sometimes you were talking earlier before we started about we're both in that square in the space of middle age me a little bit further along that middle age than you are but i think sometimes we forget to think about what's possible right like we think about kids and one of their favorite and best things that kids can do is this idea of wonder right by the time you're our age that's all stomped out it's like no no one want no more wonder no more sense of wonder it's all about accomplish and purpose and you know and all this kind of stuff and i think sometimes if we can just give people a sense of wonder and a sense of hey this is what's possible or what if right that phrase what if is so powerful and for us to be able to lean into that just a little bit and say hey there is more out there than what you think you could possibly be or do so and i could go on and on with that for 20 minutes but that's you know i'll restrain myself just a little bit not at all this is great and you know a perfect segue so you know people know okay now you spoke about the brands and now they can relate to it but talk a little bit about your role within the organization because it's very unique and you know you really i think help lead along the team and the different boards that you have is really that what's possible right to our space where people want to come and potentially see a career path within our industry just talk a little bit about that like how it came about what the vision is and a little bit of the day to day yeah so i get to sit in the seat of executive director for the inspire foundation and one of the things i'm very aware of is it's not my job it's not my role it's just a seat that i've got the privilege to sit in right and so i think that creates again a sense of stewardship and and one of the things that i'm very aware of is that with what we do we're at this like intersection of all the brands and we get to meet and work and become a resource for these incredible leaders as they try to lead their brands well and make impact and drive sales and all the things they do and so one of the easy ways for me to talk about it is years ago i had when i was in grad school we had the speaker came in and he said this he said look and at this point we're all in our 20s and early 30s he said look in your 20s your 30s and your 40s i can promise you the key word in your mind is success success success you're being driven you'll be going out there trying to make money and get all the accolades and everything you can and success is the driver he said what's gonna happen is one day you're gonna wake up and you're gonna be 50 you're gonna realize that success is not the key word for you the key word for you is significant and what can you do to be significant in somebody else's world right and he said so here's the deal i'm already telling you the future you're 28 and i'm telling you right now you think it's about success but i promise you when you're my age in your early 50s you're gonna realize it's not so here's the deal don't wait go ahead and make your life about significance now right that sounds easy to do and so one of the things that i often try to share around the building and really around the country as we are doing the work on behalf of the foundation as i said look i will share that message and go i'm not telling you not to pursue success but what i'm telling you is that we want to be a resource so that as you're pursuing success we can bring the significance and in parallel because sometimes you think that you got to do it in series right and you've heard people say hey i'm going to work till i'm 50 i'm going to make $10 million and i'm going to give it all away you're like well that's great if you are actually that person that's going to make all that money but most of us don't right and so now you get to 50 and you're like oh i didn't make the money so now i got to keep chasing the dollar right so it's like this idea of hey we want to be that partner so you can chase success and do significance at the same time and so we really feel like our job is to yes be that community impact piece that makes every community that has one of our restaurants excited to bring one in excited to support it but internally one of the things that's become more clear to me over the last few years is that we're not just philanthropy we're also culture right we are one of the reasons that people are proud to work in inspire we're one of the reasons that people want to come and work for inspire and if we're not yet that for everybody that gives us something aspirationally to chase say we want to be that and so if we can help drive culture if we can be even for just a few people the reason they go i'm going to stay here longer i'm going to keep working here i'm so proud to put on this logo on my vest or my shirt or my socks or whatever it is it makes me feel better then that's a win um and let me tell just one more little anecdote here that i think pertains to this um one of the things i often hear is hey stuart that must be such a fulfilling role you're in and it's said in a way that is very authentic but it also positions the ability and the chance and the responsibility to have impact in this little box that says foundation or nonprofit or whatever it is and so one of the things i often try to do is hold hold up a mirror and reflect back to people that hey here's the truth and this is not my truth this is from a guy named clayton christensen who is an author harvard business school professor wrote the innovator's dilemma it was considered the best book of the 90s or best business book of the 90s but he wrote this little book called how will you measure your life and it was based on a series of seminars he used to give and in this book he says this he says that management is the most noble of profession he says here's what i mean he says people wake up excited about their day feeling good about who they are because of the way you lead they go home as better moms dads brothers sisters coaches volunteers board members whatever it is because of how you lead during those eight to 10 hours that they are in your office and so i look back and try to especially for our folks who are in operations and say your ability to impact your ability to drive change your ability to make the community better is way more than mine yes i've got this opportunity to sometimes you know get on stage and share to help write checks that make nonprofits run smoother better whatever but your ability to impact those 30 50 60 maybe 70 people that work in your restaurant you look at the ripples of that maybe let's go let's say it's one of our buffalo wild wings and maybe they've got a larger staff of 70 just just for fun let's say they each have a spouse and two kids at home now you're at 280 and let's say that those each have four or five people they're pretty close to you now we're roughly 1400 people that you've impacted just because you are creating a healthy environment at work and now let's say you got 33,000 restaurants all over the country who are all impacting another 1400 people like that ability to drive culture and change and impact is astronomical and i think that you know so part of that i want to hold up hold up at mir and go when you're a good manager there's nothing the foundation can do that can compete with what you're doing because you're so hands on day to day with those people and so yes it's supplementary it's complimentary whatever word we want to use there but those things go hand in hand and so we could be the best foundation in the world but if our people our team members are not being treated well and they don't love coming to work and the work we're doing is not really going to be all that impactful so the degree to which you said early on that what we're doing is and this may have been before we got on i can't remember anymore but that what we're doing is impactful and it's good and it's an example to a lot of other companies it is all of those things because the culture that paul brown on down that they're creating works if that didn't work this stuff would just be seen as inauthentic and really irrelevant yeah yeah and so many great things there you know one thing that keeps resonating i wrote down a few times here is like when you first started speaking about hey is not just five minutes on stage right it's you know five times how many people are in the audience and then now you're mentioning hey it's just not that people interact with is what that carries on and impact then those people in their lives and never really thought that way and it's so true right because i think we have the ability to influence many ways right every interaction we have we can leave people feeling one way or the other right is either going to be energized feeling good and positive or neutral or you know negative and like oh you know i can't see that the person anymore right and and i think choosing to make a positive impact and knowing that hey even if it's a 1% change right to that third or fifth person that you're going to change you know impacting directly that's that's powerful yeah and it's and i think it's also one of the things it does for us when we have that mindset it gives us the gift of agency and what i mean by that is you know we've probably all been in that space at some point where we felt stuck and whether it's in a job or a relationship or stuck in traffic whatever it is right and when you feel stuck you feel like there's nothing i can do right or if you feel like hey having impact or creating community or cultures outside of my world i'm just stuck doing my day to day then i think that's when we have given up agency to someone else and said well i can't do anything but when we own that we have agency right the decisions i make matter the people i influence matter my ability to change a life is possible agency gives us really a catalyst it moves us in a direction it gives us the ability to go i can take action right and if i've got agency and and or if i feel the need to be a good steward of this time this conversation this role at work or whatever it is now i feel like i've got to do something to make that person's life better make a community better make that relationship better whatever it might be or to or to redeem this time where i'm sitting in traffic who can i call what can i listen to that helps me get better and sometimes you may just say you know what i'm going to take my agency and i'm just going to zone out because i'm stressed i'm tired and i don't want to create this like this vision that every moment is utilized sometimes you just need a break right and so i've got the agency and i'm going to choose to listen to my favorite whatever podcast that's just escapism and i think that's okay as well but i think the message and part of this is what i'm learning right now is i've been through a season where i felt stuck and that's not you know that's just more in my personal world where i'm like oh what am i going to do or how can i make this better or whatever it is and what i realized at some point was like and we all know this right we know that no one likes being around someone who claims that they're a victim all the time right the victim mentality is toxic right we know that you didn't know you're gonna get a therapy lesson today sorry to jump in but but it hit me over the last few months that but the stuck mentality is just a cousin of victim mentality it doesn't have the same negative connotation i can go oh i'm so sorry cesar you feel so stuck what can i do right but these are coming to me day after day week after week saying i'm stuck in this no no no no you are never stuck we have agency in so many situations that we don't think we have agency in and when we own that we will by definition move we will take a step we will go one way or the other because we now know that my voice my role my actions matter and that should give us energy and confidence that what we're doing is making a difference so i may be a hammer looking for a nail on that comment because that's something that's pretty fresh that i'm processing through but thanks for giving me a chance to just kind of share a little bit of that because i do think it's so important for all of us yeah no and that is great i think you know especially in your role i think you see and correct if i'm wrong but i believe you see you know the extremes of like hope as you engage with the young people and see the potential the dream and you know to your point earlier the why not and all the possibilities and then also you see a lot of the challenges right because you deal with a lot of the non profits that are tackling very difficult you know problems that we're trying to solve for as a community but you know is been persistent for decades and decades so how do you you know balance that and i don't know how do you navigate what a great question and i think that you know as you share that you know i i used to work at a church and i grew up going going to church and i've got all these preacher stories that come to mind right and and this is not mine this is but there's a there's a story that the the pastor that i used to kind of work in his organization he shared this story and he said you know imagine you're on a beach and you see this little kid and this little kid is walking down the beach and there's like thousands upon thousands of starfish that have been walked up that have been washed up on the beach and that little that little kid in my mind's a little girl she's going in just throwing the starfish back throwing the starfish back throwing the starfish back and and you or me because of our advanced age in life right we've got all this wisdom and we're like hey you can't save all of them it would take you forever to get all those starfish back in the water right because we got all this wisdom right we know these issues have been around for 70 80 years sometimes 2,000 years right and that little girl in all her wisdom looks at you and says save that one save that one right and so i think that to answer your question both things can be true right both things can be true which is hey this is almost an unsolvable problem right like we can't possibly wrap our minds around this huge issue whatever it is and that can feel like it makes you just not want to try right or it can say well i don't have to solve all of this today today i can solve this little bit and then tomorrow i'll try this a little bit right and i think that you know my mentality growing up i was a i played a fair amount of basketball never all that well but i was always the point guard on the team and we had a lot of teams that weren't very good and so oftentimes we were down 15 20 25 points and my mentality was always such that hey even when we're down 20 there's only three minutes left i'm like all right all we have to do is score hold the other team right score hold the other team you can't tackle it all at once but what little bit can we do build some momentum and then who knows right who knows what happens maybe there's enough momentum that you and maybe you figure something else out maybe a new technology like ai comes and all of a sudden all the stuff you thought was impossible becomes easy but it's that mentality of creating momentum and saying here's what i can do in my little world right like we often oftentimes we'll talk about this idea of hey let's just do the best we can with what we have with where we are that's all we can control right now right i can't control everything that's happening over here but if i can do the best i can today with what i have with where i am you know that kind of mentality then i think you start to see a little bit of progress a little bit of progress usually leads to more progress and momentum and people like to be a part of things that are having momentum and building momentum then all of a sudden you're like oh wait you want to help too oh that's awesome or hey we want to be a part of that story how can we be a part of that we'd love to have you be a part of that story and now instead of having a team of like eight or 10 maybe you've got a team of core team of 10 but you've got you know 500 champions all saying we've got resources and we'll help out as well but i don't want to overly simplify i don't be all rain dogs and puppy dogs here because there are lots of hard things out there and there's lots of incredible nonprofits who are busting their tails and they're not finding that momentum it's not because they're not working hard it's not because they're not incredible people it's because what they're doing is really hard and you know and sometimes hard is just hard the other you know great message i took from where where i worked in the past is this idea of is what we're trying to solve is it a problem to solve or is it a tension to manage okay and the difference here is a problem actually is solvable right but when you try to solve a tension you just get into this thing and you get frustrated and you go why can't i solve this where it's like you know what you actually can't solve that that is a tension you have to manage right like yeah i think there's lots of those kinds of examples in life where it's like you know what i am really trying to solve the fact let's let's talk about relationships i'm trying to solve the fact that you know you think about this so differently than i do well the other person in the relationship doesn't want to be solved they want to be seen right and so if i can say well you know what this is just attention we're going to have how do we manage that you're always going to be i'll make stuff up you're always going to be the one that stays up late i'm always going to be the one that gets up early which i probably reversed in my current relationship you know but i think that there there are you know those dynamics that when we're trying to solve it and just needs to be managed let's just focus on managing it and i think sometimes that helps us out as well it's great that's a master class taking a lot of notes here i love it love it that is great and tell speak a little bit about you know spark because you know being this industry almost 30 years now i never you know seeing something so intentionally thought out put well together and really embracing not only of course focusing on promoting you know inspire itself but really welcoming and inviting as many hospitality partners as you can because it's really an industry you know opportunity you're trying to solve for and improve so talk a little bit about that and how that came about and how it's going yeah so spark is a campaign that we started on behalf of the inspire foundation the idea being that the hospitality industry is an incredible incredible has an incredible position in our economy and in our country where we are kind of the entry point for so many people into what it means to be a professional what it means not just to have a job but a career right i think we looked at that and said man there's an opportunity for us to do something here in the what we call workforce readiness space and you know so let me go ahead and define that because we were probably not probably we were definitely a little bit arrogant and saying we're going to define workforce readiness our way right so we kind of look and say workforce development is what happens to you once you have a job once you have stepped into your career right what we call it workforce readiness was anything that happens before that honestly and the reason we looked at it that way is if you have a nonprofit and you are working with kids to make sure they get meals why do you want them to have those meals well i want them to have the meals because we know kids pay attention to school better when they're fed awesome why do we want them to pay attention to school well we know that if they do well in school and they graduate from high school they have a better chance to get a job and why do we want them graduate from high school well they graduate from high school they're more likely to either move into a trade or go to college which in both those roles means they're more likely to have a successful career right so it all eventually whether it's meals mentors access to sports whatever it is it all eventually plays out into because that will make them more likely to be a productive member of the economy right and there may be a more elegant way to say that but in general we looked at it and just said hey every nonprofit that works with kids if they had kpis that could measure a long enough kind of lifespan or long enough timeline part of the measurement would be did they get a job were they did they do well in their job are they productive in some sort of career and so we said okay well if we're going to define it that way then most of the work we're doing anyway really falls under workforce readiness and in the hospitality industry that makes a ton of sense because we want more people who are ready to work we want more people who can jump into these careers and not just get a job and we understand some people are there just for a job they're there for a season but we do firmly believe that there is an incredible career for people to jump in at the entry level and move all the way up to the c suite and if we can help more people be ready then that is the right thing to do for every kid that goes through one of these one of these agencies and one of these nonprofits but it's also great for the hospitality industry so it's a win win so that was kind of some of the thinking and again you know this the thinking i'm giving you now is probably a little bit more developed than the thinking we had five years ago right so you know all these things start and you have some sort of direction of where you're going but it's way easy to articulate it now than it was right when you started so there's a little bit of hindsight 2020 in this as i describe it so let me just go ahead and own that and so the first couple years we saw some progress in that we saw that we were able to create an incredible experience where people could come and be inspired and we could give out grants to these organizations and we were really proud of what we accomplished but we also could see the gap like there's something that we could do maybe more or better and and with again paul's kind of influence and his thinking on this kind of thought was well look we do every year we're proud of the amount of money that we give out and that we're able to pour back into nonprofits but at some point there's only so much money so what we got pushed a little bit around hey what could you do that would kind of have an outsized impact and what could you do that would have potentially more of a lasting impact than writing checks and writing checks will always be a part of what we do but is there something else we could add to it and so about a year and a half ago year ago whenever it was we kind of really landed on this idea of taking this workforce ready space and say okay look if we're all about any nonprofit that's working with kids what if we kind of dial that in a little bit and say that hey spark is not about this one day where we're going to celebrate all this work spark is a year long evergreen accelerator experience right where we're going to select a few nonprofits and we're going to leverage the entire inspire ecosystem our suppliers our franchisees team members the agencies we work with and say what if we brought all that together and invested that into this group of nonprofits who've all said hey we want to grow we want to have more impact we want to do what we do better and so now we can lean in in a way that they couldn't we like a lot of these nonprofits are small small enough that they would not ever spend the money to bring in a branding consultant or to bring in a pitch consultant or to bring in an event consultant right but now we take that and we bring 15 or at least what we're going to do in 26 25 26 nonprofits put them all in the room whatever that fee is it's now pennies compared to what it would have been so now we get to amplify and really magnify the work we're doing and perhaps it goes back to that ripple effect we were talking about earlier where we're able to put fewer dollars in and our goal is not to put fewer dollars in our goal is to maximize our resources right so we take some of our dollars we put it in this program where when the nonprofits come out they are better equipped to go do what they need to do to go raise more money to operate more efficiently and and to have more impact right so it's us being better stewards we hope and believe and again you know we're we're the old saying we're the airplane that's being built while it's flying here so we don't have it nailed down i told someone the other day that we may even you may even charge us with being guilty of overly being overly generous with the word accelerator but we do think that what we're providing the work we're doing and the access that we're giving these non profits will help them go further faster and to to have more impact and the other thing real quick that allows us to do and i think this is one of the things i'm excited about to see how we can do this better is oftentimes in foundation world you're making decisions of where to give your money to based on an application yes there might be a phone call for 30 minutes there's some words on the page probably a couple of documents that are downloaded and you're like all right yeah here's your $20,000 or $100,000 whatever it might be of grant and we feel good about that but i said but as we thought about this but what we're doing now we get to spend basically a year with these nonprofits getting to know them understanding who the leaders are understanding their strengths their weaknesses and now at the end of the year when we have what we call our spark tank and where they come and pitch for more money we have so much more insight into what into who they are what they're capable of what they're trying to accomplish and so for us there's a little bit of a cheat code as well so that we know when we give out money we're being better stewards of that money as well because now we know way better what these organizations are who they are and where they're going to go right so hopefully that all makes sense i don't know if i answered your question but for us it's an exciting place to be one because we're still in that nascent stage of this and we have a vision of where it could go we're not there yet but we're excited to see where it could and we're seeing some of the promise right it's like the plant and it's just now coming through the soil and you're like all right there's growth there there's something there i know what it's going to be five years from now but right now we still have to water it and nurture it and we got to do what we need to do to make this thing grow but we're super fired up to see where it could go this is it's amazing and i think you know i hope you know many of my counterparts and people in other companies really are paying attention because i think i think that's really something impressive right because we all have the desire to help others ensure that there is a very strong pipeline of possible workforce to continue to grow and be successful in our industry but i don't think we approach this the right way or we don't do enough and i think this is a great case study and example as to what can be done other than just you know doing what's needed or what may look good from a pr perspective but what is really going to drive impact that's going to long lasting carry through not only for that effort so you know kudos to you and team and hopefully i can be there on the next one well we definitely got you there and we're we are excited but we're also aware that we're not there yet right and i think that you know one of the things that i think about a good bit is you know way back in a previous lifetime i was working with a buddy of mine and we were building this cashew processing facility in the country of benin in west africa and we had big visions of what this thing would become and i should say he had big visions of what this thing would become i was the spreadsheet guy just building hr software and excel and doing all the finances and all that kind of stuff and he was just an incredible leader and one of the things that we would talk about is man this thing has to succeed because if it doesn't right if it doesn't all the good we want to come out of it won't matter right and what we're talking about is we're trying to create a company that would you know pay fair wages then provide child care and health care and this is a part of the world where you know everyone's like man i just want to be able to put food on the table i want to know that i've got recurring income and i don't have to worry about whether or not my kid's going to eat tonight next week next month right and so we had solved all those problems in the immediate but we felt the pressure of if this is not sustainable what we provided for these families for a few weeks or a few months or even a year or two will almost be meaningless but we've got to make it sustainable right we've got to make it so this thing is going to last because then that's where real like life change economic change community change happens is when it becomes sustainable and when there is something that people know is going to be there year after year after year i think for all the work that we're doing you know we do feel that like pressure how do we make sure that what we're building is going to last because if it's just a flash in the pan there's nothing wrong with that but at the end of this thing called life we're going to want to know that hey we set something up that has longevity and is really impacting for years and years and years not just for a few moments and so with spark we're still in that place where it's been a few moments but man what's possible is longevity and true legacy for everyone who's been a part of it and for the brands that help make it happen um but you know we're we're still we haven't gotten to that inflection point yet where we're going that's it and so there's lots of things we need to change we're excited about it and i appreciate you being excited about it you know it's your baby so you want everyone else to think it's pretty and beautiful as well right but we're we're also i feel like pretty objective and going hey there's something here and we're really excited this year we've expanded the nonprofits we're working with last year 25 we were testing it out it was just atlanta nonprofits this year's national so we really gave everyone who's a part of the inspired ecosystem suppliers franchisees operation leaders from all over the country and said hey you guys get to nominate a nonprofit to be a part of this so we've got i think 12 or 15 nonprofits that are outside of atlanta so we're super excited to see how this plays out how does it work i don't know but we're going to figure it out and hopefully you know we've got we do have a spark event coming up in february and we'll do a second one in december when we give out some more grants to the 26 cohort hopefully we've got a great story to tell there at that point we've got momentum attraction and we're off to the race that is great did you ever thought or did you chase a position like this your career or how did that come about oh man i am the worst person in the world to talk about career planning and all that kind of stuff i you know i never really planned out what i was going to be when i grew up i don't even think i wanted to grow up to be honest like i was too busy playing basketball and and trying to just kind of enjoy my teens and my early 20s when i was in college but i think there's a there's a really interesting framework on this that i'll share again it comes from clayton christensen so i guess i'm doing a good job of selling his book how will you make your life but he talked about for most of us when we are in our teens and you know we there's this question of what do you want to be when you grow up and when you are like a five year old or six year old it's a great question because if you just got done playing with legos want to be a lego designer maybe you just got off the flag football field maybe you want to be a wide receiver or maybe you're thinking bigger you want to own your own football team i don't know but it's a fun question filled with possibility by the time you get to 17 and 18 you're like ah i have no idea and it feels super like a pressure field question like why are you asking me that and then the thing that a lot of people don't talk about is there's a lot of 25 and 35 year olds you're like i don't know what i want to be when i grow up right and so i think what's happened is that everyone feels like they are supposed to know the answer right and so one of the things that clayton christensen said is in his book he says this he says look most people think the non profits that make it they make it because they were the smartest kid smartest guys in the room right they make it because they had the smartest leadership team they had the best strategy they had the best whatever it is they're like oh look at those guys they're the best in the world i said it's not true the startups that make it are the ones that had enough cash flow that they could fail multiple times and still have money left to find the right answer that makes sense right a lot of nonprofits or a lot of startups that don't make it it's not because they're bad leaders because they ran out of money right and so i think if i can make that metaphor that clayton makes in his book it's this idea that when we're trying to figure out what we want to do when we grow up there's this idea that when i'm 16 i'm supposed to know that i want to be a vet or run a hedge fund or you know run run a hospitality company be a c suite person and most 17 year olds even if they say they know what they want to do they are so uninformed how could they possibly know what they want to do they don't even know what jobs are out there right and so what clayton says is that with with your strategies you can be deliberate or you can be emergent and deliberate is your buddy growing up when he was 15 said he wanted to run a hedge fund he's running a hedge fund emergent is most of us who said i have no idea and what clayton says is when you're in that emergent phase of your life bump into as many things as you can until you find the right thing and then become deliberate and have a five year plan or a ten year plan but it's really hard to have that five year plan when you don't know what you want to do and i think one of the things that i've learned is that it's okay to not know what you want to do right and i had an incredible example my dad changed careers at like age like 35 right and you know he went from being an elementary school principal whatever it was to working still in education but being in in the in the kind of grant writing business down at university of alabama birmingham over in birmingham and so i saw this and i'm like yeah i wonder i mean and he and i never had this conversation before he passed but it's this idea of hey dad how did that feel changing careers at 35 he probably said i was great with it but i knew what i wanted to do right and it's okay to change and so going all the way back to the question you asked like an hour ago when i started on this for me i'm like the poster child for emergence i never really thought about my career until my oh i'm a senior in college i guess i gotta go get a job so let me get a job and i thought consulting sounded fun so i got into consulting and at some point when i came to the foundation you know gosh almost 12 years ago now i thought i'd be doing this for a year or two it kept becoming more and more fun and the challenges kept becoming bigger i think one of the things i realized at some point in my 30s and 40s is that what's important for me is not necessarily the widget it's not necessarily the organization per se yes culture is important which is why i stay places but it's more is there a fun challenge and is there a pathway to bigger better challenges right and i fortunately been at inspire just the right point where the challenges kept growing and it's all the right kinds of challenges like challenge can feel like it's a negative thing there are bad kind of professional challenges i don't want those i want the fun challenges how do we grow this how do we get the word out how do we make sure people see what we see how do we take our money and stretch it further and i've just been really fortunate to have a lot of those kinds of challenges that keeps me engaged and yeah so i think i'm probably still in that emergent phase i don't think i ever woke up and said i want to be in foundation world but i'm super glad i have been and i have learned so much and benefited so much from being in this space that's great great great share it's so true it's like so hard to make decision early on here you know and then just you know just to close it out thanks again for the amazing you know kindness and you know all the knowledge what was the best advice that you ever got you know i think there's a couple things that come to mind i had a i had a mentor for years and he said you know stuart if you will just do what you say you're going to do and be where you say you're going to be you'll be ahead of 95% of the people you ever work with right and so i'll just expand on that just real quick i think what he says 100% true but you don't know my mentor and no one else does so let me share similar advice from a guy named tom hanks so everyone knows who tom hanks is he's one of the best actors in the history of acting i think you could easily say there's no one who's ever been better in their field and tom hanks has been better in his you could say there are people who are just as good as great i don't want to argue that i don't know enough about acting to be able to tell you but he's clearly exceptional what he does and he said he got this advice six words six words of advice that he got when he was on his first job and the director said hey tom there's three things you got to do show up in other words be on time be prepared do what you say that you were going to do he said have ideas and the way i translate that when i talk to high school and college kids is i'm not saying come into my office on day one and tell me everything that you think we should do as an organization because frankly you haven't earned the right for me to share i'm not even going to say you'd be wrong but what i want you to think of and have ideas really think about that and this idea of add value right it's great that you showed up it's great that you were prepared how are you adding value so six words you can do that i think that and it's so hard to do that like we are always back to back to back to back with meetings so you can't ever be the most prepared person in a meeting but you and honestly you can't even be on time to all of your meetings because they run long or you know we stack them up and all those kinds of things but if you can reasonably do those three things where you are where you're supposed to be you are prepared you and you're adding value in maybe unexpected ways then i think that sets you up for an incredible career and again i'll be i mean anyone who knows me will say hey stuart all three of those things are still aspirational for me right those are still things i'm working on trying to get better at but i think that is a really really great formula for having for finding success that is gold what a great great way to close it and take it away because you're 100% right so you know thank you again for this amazing opportunity i hope you enjoyed it was an honor to connect with you and learn a little bit more awesome well thank you so much thank you for giving us this chance to chat i really enjoyed it thank you