Transcript 0:00 I've told people that if you build the right culture architecture, which is not my playbook, it's timeless principles that are imprinted on the human heart, and all you have to do is intentionally deploy those even when it's tough, even when it seems counterintuitive. 0:16 And by doing that, the culture not only outlasts my exit, it continues to grow and thrive. Welcome to the Purpose Driven Capital podcast, where we help you align your money with your mission and maximize your impact. 0:28 Here's your host, Matt Johns. People often assume that aligning their money with their values starts with better opportunities, but really it starts with the person, and today's guest focuses on that better than anyone. 0:43 He's built a career around living a fully integrated life, one that's true and consistent across all aspects. He does this for himself and frankly, anyone around him who will listen. 0:55 Jeff Schefelbein is an award-winning entrepreneur, culture builder, and leadership coach who has launched, scaled, and transformed organizations across the non-profit and for-profit worlds. 1:06 He's influenced organizations spanning the life cycle from early-stage startups to publicly traded companies. 1:13 Now, over the years, Jeff has helped lead turnarounds, founded mission-driven organizations, and co-built one of the nation's premier energy advisory firms. All right. 1:23 He's earned repeated recognition from Inc, Fortune, the Financial Times, and Entrepreneur for growth, leadership, and workplace culture, even landing at number one on Fortune's best places to work. 1:36 But the common thread across all of this is Jeff's genuine conviction that business should be a blessing. He makes it clear that profitable growth and human dignity should not be competing goals. 1:49 He sees culture as that foundation. 1:52 Now, recently, that conviction led Jeff into a new role as a majority/minority owner and CEO of Howdy Homemade Ice Cream, a company built around joy, dignity, and meaningful work, particularly for people with special needs. 2:09 Jeff is a shining, joyful example of what happens when capital, leadership, and vocation are all rowing in the same direction. And even today, recovering from surgery, he brought his best energy. 2:21 Welcome to my conversation with Jeff Schefelbein. So I got... I do have to ask you about the disco fairy story because you left what you were doing, and it seemed like a fairly comfortable gig. 2:31 Maybe it wasn't your dream gig, but a comfortable gig, to go become a disco fairy in New York. What was the appeal and the draw for you to go do that, and what on earth were you doing? That's a great question. 2:42 After college, I was working at Frito-Lay, which is such a great company. I mean, we all know that they have a, a, a robust organization. But I was in the wrong role. I was in charge of three lines of corn product. 2:52 I literally didn't even know what people were talking about because there was no part of me that resonated with the manufacturing [chuckles] process itself. 2:59 So I did my best, but I always joked when I found out that my official title at the end of my first week was that I was now a corn resource. I was like, "What is a corn resource? I went to college for this." 3:10 Anyways, went on vacation to New York, saw a bunch of shows and met up with friends, and the last show we went to was an all-night... 3:18 or it was, it was the story of Midsummer Night's Dream from Shakespeare told through disco music as if it was in a discotheque and not in the, uh, the enchanted forest. 3:28 Off Broadways are pretty, uh, interactive for the most part, and I got pulled up on stage by one of the actors, danced around and had a good time. When the show was over, it turned into an all-night disco party. 3:37 This show was unbelievable. It ran for 10 years. It's one of the most successful Off Broadways in history. 3:42 And while I was dancing during the after party, a woman asked if I would ever come back to audition, and I was like, "Ma'am, I'm really important back in Texas. I'm a, I'm a corn resource." Corn resource, right? Come on. 3:53 What are they gonna do with the corn if they don't have me? And, uh, so I flew back up there. I've never been trained in any dancing, acting, singing, anything. 4:01 I've trained myself in probably the most narcissistic way of watching myself give speeches and perform long before people had TikTok. You know, I'm a kid of the '80s who had a camcorder on my shoulder. Mm-hmm. 4:13 But, um, I just... I learned a long time ago that I'm never getting over my fear, so I'm just gonna go with whatever's in front of me anyways. Hmm. And I had a ton of fear, flew up there. 4:21 They auditioned 300 guys that day. I got a private audition. I had no idea what they were talking about, so I just watched what they did, and then I did what they did. 4:29 And they suited me up for the first part of the show before the choreographed portion starts, and I slipped away and put on my street clothes. 4:38 And Matt, I completely expected that I would tell you that I had this one-day adventure in New York City, like, "Can you believe they called me in for this?" And instead they said... 4:48 And it was, let me tell you, pressure. 14 people that created the show, about 700 people at the show. One of the women up in the mezzanine had won two Tony Awards already. My word. Like, like Broadway gold in this room. 5:01 The son of Daryl Roth, which is the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square, the son is Jordan Roth, and he was the producer of this show. I mean, again, I don't actually care who these people are. 5:10 I'm just saying, like, people that are all into Broadway can't believe that these were my friends. They come up and they said, "We love it. You got the spot. When can you start?" 5:20 And that's when the reality hit me that I made it into an Off Broadway show on accident. And so the appeal was I love adventure. I love... I'm gonna give you a really weird answer to this. 5:32 I can't remember, and nor can you, what you had for lunch three Wednesdays ago, and you also can't tell me about the 13 times you've been to the same steakhouse. You can maybe name a couple people that were there. 5:42 Mm-hmm. There's nothing unique about that moment. But the time that you fell and broke your finger riding a bike when you were little- Never forget it... or the time that you... Yeah. 5:50 And it, the pain, the crazy, the time that it actually worked, the buzzer beater, you actually remember those moments in life. 5:57 And I believe if you have more of those moments, and you stay in the moment that you're having- 6:03 You slow down time because now I have all these anchors, lots of them, you know, almost in my life weekly or daily anchors of this like, "Oh my gosh, how cool is this? Can you believe this?" That's about being present. 6:16 It's about being excited, even if it's something that I don't know if I'm gonna like. I've tried things that I'm like, "I'm never doing that again. That was boring. That was weird. That was whatever." 6:28 But I don't forget them. And so to me, quitting a job that I didn't love to move to New York to dance off Broadway for a year was like the ultimate reset of I'm gonna come back from this a changed person. 6:44 Some people go backpack Europe and they go in debt. I went and I danced off Broadway. I was treated like a celebrity. I met celebrities. I realized I never wanna be a celebrity, and 6:55 I said, "I'm gonna come back to Texas and get back to work." You know, funny story, so you were talking about being Frito-Lay. I pass by that same Frito-Lay plant multiple times a week. 7:05 It's, uh, it's like down the road in my backyard. [laughs] Yes. So I know exactly what you're talking about. 7:11 They built up a lot of stuff around there since I was there, but I used to watch the cotton crops cycle because I was in the middle of nowhere, you know, going to the Frito-Lay plant. 7:20 And look, there's a lot of great people there. I was just in the wrong role. I, you know, Frito-Lay... 7:25 I actually say this, thank God I didn't get put in corporate in some sort of a cool partnership role because I'm really grateful that I didn't stay there. That's interesting. That I was in the wrong role. Yeah. 7:35 When you talk about being in New York, and, and I'm sure it was incredibly exciting. 7:38 I don't know if you found your purpose while you were there, but it was something that I'm sure brought in a, a new aspect of your life or a new aspect of your personality that you may not have known was there. 7:47 But you've had your fair share of wild times in your life, and sou- it sounds like maybe you enjoyed college a bit and got some good times and maybe got in some challenging times, maybe sometimes of- Right... 7:56 other people's making, sometimes of your own making, but you learned a lot from that. You started Karpool, national award-winning nonprofit to help people avoid getting into drunk dri- drunk driving situations. 8:06 Purely student-led, not, nobody's paid in the organization, so enti- entirely volunteer, entirely student. 8:12 And that was just something you did as a result of recognizing a need, responding to that need because you felt a personal call to do that. And, and I think that a lot of that comes- Yeah... 8:19 from what you were just talking about, too, in that you are responding to, to wanting to be in that moment. So I guess that's been there pretty much through your whole life. 8:27 Would you, would you argue that it's all- Yeah. You recognize the gifts you've been given. 8:30 I, I have a gift of presence that I can be very intentional and, and encounter the human being in front of me for who they are, which if you can do that in every direction with every level of, of human... 8:41 Not every level, but every type of human being, then I don't care if you're the CEO. I don't care if you and I have the same political beliefs. I don't care if you're somebody who's shy. I care about you. That's it. 8:51 Mm-hmm. And in doing that, I can find out what makes you tick, and I can share some things about what I am excited about, what's giving me energy. 8:58 We can start to find common ground, and it turns out we all have tons of common ground. And so I had already been very active in, call it student organizations when I was at Texas A&M, 9:10 and then got in some pretty good trouble. I got a DWI. I was guilty of driving while intoxicated. I pled guilty. It was... 9:16 Praise God I didn't get in an accident or hurt anybody, and I wanted to own the consequences, but I also wanted to be very logical. If I'm gonna be in trouble, let's start that right now. Let's plead guilty right now. 9:26 [laughs] Mm-hmm. 'Cause then eventually that period ends, and I can start the after probation period of my life, and it was truly that I was inspired during that at a MADD victim impact panel. And from there, I just... 9:39 The light bulb started going off. I know how to encounter the administration of the school and the student body and the potential sponsors in the community and the local law enforcement and national agencies. 9:53 I know how to be connected to while still being true to myself every type of person in this puzzle. So somebody's gotta solve these problems. Somebody's gotta take the risk and kind of put themselves out there. You... 10:06 Everything I've done comes with probably more chance of failure than success, and that failure is reputationally could be cataclysmic when you're on the front page of a bunch of newspapers and all over the radio, and everybody- Mm-hmm... 10:20 is watching you speak. I used to give three or four speeches a day, which is why two or three a week is nothing to me. Hmm. 10:27 Two or three, three or four a day promoting and raising money and, and building up this Karpool organization at A&M. 10:35 But then to see that when you have purpose that's so much bigger than yourself, you treat every human being with a dignity that they inherently have and have to do nothing to earn it, and then you're operating this place where you're giving tremendous amounts of agency and responsibility and freedom and accountability to even 19-year-old, 20-year-old college kids. 10:58 Treat them as fully formed adults. Brother, the outcome is Karpool's 27 years old and has given over 300,000 rides home to bar... Not to other- Private... 11:08 bars, clubs, or parties, and is now also the same model all over the US at other colleges and universities. Oh, I didn't realize that. I didn't realize it expanded to all these other universities as well. 11:17 That was- It's the same organization... my second nonprofit. 11:19 Yeah, so at my second nonprofit was right when I was graduating, I launched something called Closing Time, and it was so that I could map out for everybody what the Karpool model was so that they could then mold certain pieces to fit their school. 11:30 So they wouldn't use the name. The name Karpool says Aggies, and it carrying Aggies- Uh-huh, right... Karpooling changed our lives. 11:34 But we started Watch Dogs in Georgia, Ram Rides in Colorado State, Cat Rides in Arizona State. It just kept going, and now there's this umbrella organization that oversees all of them. 11:44 I, I shut down that nonprofit, but, um, the fruits of it continue today- Mm-hmm... as they all share best practices. That's incredible. And, and you carried that spirit into a lot of different things. 11:53 You've made some waves in the in- energy industry. You founded a huge, what ended up being a huge advisory firm, Five. And you learned a ton- Yeah... 12:00 it sounds like, in that process of, of building that from ground up to, to something that was... Was that Fortune 500 or... It wasn't Fortune 500, but it was- Fortune Magazine's- Right... 12:09 number one place to work in America right now. For small and medium businesses under 100 employees, the num- we've been on that list for years. Yes. It's the number one place to work. 12:18 And Matt, I think what's so cool is I was the co-founder and chief culture officer of that company from zero employees and nothing, you know, to start off with. I had left an energy company that we all sold. 12:30 It was a really neat exit. No employees to now being the number one place to work in America. But I exited from my own company three years ago this month while you and I are recording this, 12:42 and I told people that if you build the right culture architecture, which is not my playbook, it's timeless principles that are imprinted on the human heart, and all you have to do is intentionally deploy those, even when it's tough, even when it seems counterintuitive. 13:01 And by doing that, the culture not only outlasts my exit, it continues to grow and thrive. Isn't that the story of Carpool? Mm-hmm. That I had to graduate... They made me graduate. 13:12 I had to graduate, and then you have 100% turnover every four years of your entire leadership and membership. Mm-hmm. 13:19 And then you do it over and over yet the organization looks and feels the same, even if the specific details of what they might call something or what technology they're using- Mm-hmm... that changes. 13:27 That's the story of Carpool. That's the story of an energy company that we ran until, uh, our parent company wanted to sell us, and- Mm-hmm... 13:34 it sold for a gigantic premium because of our culture, and that's the story of this energy advisory firm, Five, that started from zero and now it's a top three size-wise, serving some of the greatest brand name clients in America while also being a thriving culture where people, people are formed in the work. 13:54 They're not cogs. They're not inputs. They're not our best assets. They're not on the balance sheet because they're human beings. Mm-hmm. And work was made for their growth, their development, and their contribution. 14:07 Yeah, and you've turned this into something amazing in the undivided life. Yeah. It's, it's kind of taken the nation over. I mean, you're, you're going speaking on a regular basis to people all over the country. 14:15 They're bringing you in to change their own culture and their companies and even to see in- individually what they should be doing to create this undivided life for themselves. 14:24 You've kind of coined this into our English lexicon at least, but I, I wanna know, how did you personally experience that shift? 14:31 Because at some point, I know that you've kind of had this linear path, but there's, there had to have been a light bulb moment for you personally- Yeah... 14:38 uh, where you realized that this is what was happening and this is the change that had to happen for you to live authentically. What was that and what did that look like? 14:44 How did your resources kind of [laughs] change your time- Yeah... all that stuff? Great question. We launched Five, and I love my business partners. We're not equally yoked in life stage. They were all older than me. 14:54 Mm-hmm. 14:54 Different faith backgrounds, different beliefs too, but just great, great human beings, and they knew that by putting me in there that I see culture and strategy as the exact same thing, and they said, "Just go build." 15:04 And the first 10 people we recruited all said yes, and we were off to the races. It was beautiful. 15:09 Along the way, though, I kept finding myself drawn into these incredible reflections on what is the meaning of work and what should our relationship to work be, and what does it mean to not just understand or, or attempt at virtue, but to live and lead with virtuous leadership. 15:28 So reading all these different books along the way, and there's so many of them, right? Mm-hmm. They... Many of them are behind me. 15:33 They, they started to put these light bulbs where I was like, "Oh, that's what I did that was successful." It was putting words to it. In 2015, I read an 30-page document called "The Vocation of the Business Leader." 15:46 It put to words everything I ever believed so clearly that I immediately... 15:52 my brain turned on that, oh, I'm called to even drop the thin veil that I currently have between the work version of me and the version of me that I want to be, between the, the man who wants to, at all times, dignify and honor my wife, my faith, my kids, my, my community, and didn't want to ever have that bifurcated soul. 16:16 And in the first page of that document, it says, "The bane, the bane of man's existence is the divided life." Mm. 16:27 Think about that, the friction we have to have when we are putting on different hats and taking them off, the friction we have to have when we're going through our careers, and in order to get ahead when you're in your 20s and your early 30s, you go along to get along. 16:41 You act like other peoples. You say the same gossipy junk. You, you talk a little bit... You at least just don't speak up when people are talking bad about their spouse. You eventually kind of start doing it, too. 16:51 Then you start justifying some things like, "Oh, you know, we do care about people, but this is just business. 16:56 And oh, by the way, Matt, don't be friends with your employees because if you start doing that, it's gonna be way harder for you to ever have honest conversations about their performance." And we start to buy into this. 17:07 Well, just look ahead of you 20 or 30 years at people that will tell you, "What did I just do?" Mm-hmm. "Why did I just put in all this effort to be a miserable human being? Was it about the money? 17:17 Was there something in that great year, the most financially successful year I had, that made me a better person?" 17:23 Or, "I'm doing this and putting in all this ruthless effort at work so I can provide a better life for my family, but my family doesn't see me. All they care about-" Mm-hmm. "... is seeing me. 17:35 All my kids wanna do is be with their dad. They don't care if I'm rich or poor, if I got a, a raise or just got fired." Yet we buy into this, like, work version of our definition of self. I wish work was... 17:52 It's a place that we grow. It's not who you are. Mm-hmm. I've had cool titles. I've had cool levels of authority. I've... Brother, I've, I've had... I've been on stages of all sorts. None of that's who I am. 18:05 Like, it's almost just the key that'll unlocks the door to get me into the next room. Who I am 18:14 is the man who puts his faith above everything, puts my love of my wife, Amanda, second to that and above everything about my kids. My kids, then, and my love of them above everybody else. 18:25 And the work I get to do is just a detail. Like, it's an awesome detail. It's an important detail. Mm-hmm. It's a critical detail, but it isn't me. You can take me out of it immediately, and I'm still me. 18:35 Nothing, none of those first three things change, but the logo on my business card might change. That's okay. Mm-hmm. So it was reading that document, 18:46 then it took me, mm, another seven years of navigating my way through the growth of Five, all the places I was able to lean in, the hard parts about being in a pandemic when you're running a company that deals with a service level that you're doing a lot of face-to-face work at the, at the time. 19:03 And, um, yeah, it was just on my heart. And so every day, more and more, I realized that I was called to live and lead others to live an undivided life. Yeah, but you say it, it's not about the work, but I, I don't... 19:16 When I hear you talk, you never talk about the work. It's the people. It's always the people. Yeah. 19:20 It's the, it's the individuals who are, uh, affected either as your, your employees, uh, yourself of course, and, and y- your families, the people who are affected by them, e- the, your customers down the road. 19:31 That's what you mainly focus on when you're talking about work. 19:34 It just, it, it kind of comes out from you, and maybe that's just been something that you've developed in, in the way you've thought through this philosophy over all these years. 19:41 But nonetheless, it's very clear that that's who you are. And I, I- Thank you. Well, it, it's genuine. I'm, I'm not trying to say anything, uh, that's not genuine. But what is it like? 19:51 'Cause, uh, this isn't the way most people think. Most people are thinking in terms of, what can I produce? My value is what I can produce, and therefore I produce, therefore I can live, right? 19:59 So what is it like for you when you see the light come on for people when they, they hear this whole concept of, of the undivided life, and what changes do they immediately think that they can make? Yeah. 20:10 I watch it all the time. My business partner was all in mentally when we started this. His name's Nick Besner. He's an amazing man. 20:16 He came from the only private equity company I know that has a soul, or they actually care that a larger company means a better, a better life for human beings. 20:25 [laughs] So pretty unique place that he came from, but he still would grapple in the early days with, like, trying to understand the purpose of what we were doing, tying it all the way back to his w- his work that day. 20:37 And I remember one day, he said, "The way that we do work is leading people to find the truth of what they're called to be in their life." And I said, "That's it," right? 20:48 That's us truly, like, sharing great news or great opportunity or great purpose, not with our words and not with, you know, the slickest presentation. 21:04 It's how you work every day. Examples can be how you recruit. What is it like when you're bringing somebody on board? 21:11 Are you, are you playing games with somebody, or are you going to truly match their needs or even their needs when you're telling them they're not gonna get the job? So it's, it's a dual role. 21:21 It comes when people do things differently than you would've at work, and what if it ends up leading to a loss? 21:29 And instead of berating the person for, you know, if they would've just done it your way, it's trying to figure out, how do we strip out the emotion and capture the learnings? 21:40 I would much rather work with somebody who is willing to take 21:45 healthy risks and make meaningful mistakes that make all of us grow than to work with somebody who plays in the very comfortable middle and never actually takes a step forward, and that's just my personal view. 21:59 But what's ne- what's hard is most people can't act that way because work is about your output. You either did or didn't hit the output, and now you're fired. What if there's goals and metrics and KPIs? 22:10 I believe in all this. The metrics that matter are super important to running a healthy business. Mm-hmm. 22:15 But your formation as a human being is more important, and if I help you to know that every day, then you're actually probably gonna show up with better creativity, better ownership, less complaining, less backsliding, back talking. 22:29 I think you can run a more lean organization 'cause I need less of the headache material around HR and legal, and we get to focus on we're serving more clients. We're producing more goods. 22:40 We're having a blast solving hard problems together. So I probably derailed myself on this answer, but I see that light bulb come off in a place like with Nick, where he was like, "Oh, 22:54 I've overweighted and have been trained to overweight just the numbers"- Mm-hmm... when it's implanted on my heart that I actually care more about and would want to put more weight into the human beings. 23:06 That actually leads really well into, I didn't realize you had an exit just three months ago, and that now you're already- Yeah. I'm sorry? 23:13 Oh, well, I've neg- I've exited a lot of stuff, but, um, I exited three years ago from my own company, from Five- Uh-huh... to start Undivided Life. But I did just sell off a construction company at the end of '25. Okay. 23:23 [laughs] There's more to the story here. But my whole point in that [laughs] was that you exited just recently from something. You can't stay restless that long. You're, you're too restless to stay, uh- [laughs] No... 23:34 to, to stay content, right? So you found this new adventure with Howdy Homemade Ice Cream. It's an incredibly... Well, it's a wonderful business model in its own right, and who doesn't love ice cream, right? 23:44 But at what point, uh, did you say, "This is where I wanna spend a portion of my life. I wanna give my life, time, energy, whatever it is, to this particular venture"? Tell... 23:53 Maybe tell us a little bit about How- Howdy too and what it is. Yeah. 23:55 So Howdy Homemade Ice Cream, I, I first learned about this group nine years ago when an employee of mine who has an adult son with special needs shared with me this incredible new concept, an ice cream company serving super premium ice cream, so not a handout or a hand-down. 24:10 You know, a very, very quality award-winning product. And all of the frontline employees were adults who had some form of intellectual or developmental disabilities. And I was like, "That's incredible." But I never went. 24:22 I, I didn't even actually know where the store was. 24:24 And fast-forward to we start this consulting firm, Undivided Life, where we're helping people grow and promote human flourishing, all this good stuff, and I was presented by the founders of Howdy Homemade Ice Cream, and one of their employees came to meet with us, and it's because they, after 10 years, knew it was time to bring in more help to grow, and that they had heard from many people in the DFW marketplace that if you wanna go to a place where the business acumen's through the roof and the faith is the most important aspect of these people, so the both and abundant mentality, go to Jeff Shelfabine, go to Undivided Life. 25:03 They heard it over and over, so they showed up here, and they presented us with a business plan that we didn't like. It was really about franchising- Yeah... w- you know, over and over and over. And I love Howdy. 25:14 I loved the idea. I didn't love the business plan. 25:17 We prayed over it, saw all of the very clear, unique advantages of a business that has employees who love coming to work, that serve with a smile, that don't turn over like a n- normal restaurant, and who don't complain about working when they get assigned to work. 25:33 They enjoy it as a place of formation for them, and friendship. And I was like, "Wow, look at all this," and I have a great heart for special needs, and it's ice cream. We know how to pull the levers to grow this. 25:45 Oh, yeah, and one of our employees just left being a strategist at Wingstop, so we understand that world. One of our employees is a digital marketing expert. One is a sales expert. 25:53 I said, "It looks like we built the team already after hearing about Howdy, not before." And so we proposed to them, and we were able to pull this off in a really great nine-month process. 26:04 We bought in to become a major part of the minority ownership of Howdy Homemade, kept the founders in place in both leadership and also in ownership, in owning the majority, and then we started a capital raise. 26:18 We're gonna dilute both sides of the, the cap table as we bring in Class B equity owners that will just be part of Team Howdy, and I'm so pumped. When... 26:29 If I could show you the roster of who's already gone through this and joined, it's the coolest group of people that we get to own and be, uh, teammates with as we go and take what we're doing and open 50 stores in the next five years and employ over 1,000 people with special needs. 26:47 But we're not stopping there. That's just to prove out all of how this model works. 26:51 Then it accelerates even faster, both with the ice cream shops, but also just with this concept, the Howdy way of doing business, and we've been able to collaborate with and connect with great people doing similar work. 27:03 I think this is making people come alive and see firsthand the dignity of the human person when they encounter any one of our heroes, that it says "Howdy" when you walk in and offers them a free sample of ice cream, and, uh, you keep coming back for both the mission and for the high quality, super premium ice cream. 27:24 So there are two things there. You, you said you didn't like the original deal they presented you with, but then you, you had to structure this, and then you... 27:30 it sounds like you came up with a unique structure that was not part of their original plan to you. Yep. So h- what was it that you didn't like so much, and how did you end up structuring it? A- and whatever way- Yeah... 27:39 you're comfortable sharing. Sure, happy... No, that's a great question. I didn't like the franchising piece of it. I thought that it would m- lead to mission drift and to a culture issue. 27:48 Our focus now is to keep our existing franchisees happy and going and, and cared for. There's six of those. 27:55 But it's really to build out the company store model and to accelerate the growth of our catering, which has been mostly inbound and, and hasn't had an outbound component, and then also just reach into the community so that this brand means something. 28:08 You know, there's a Howdy swag store that launches tomorrow, it's unbelievable, and that gives people a real chance to even just keep supporting... It's not a nonprofit. 28:17 I'm just telling you, you're not getting a tax write-off for buying our stuff or, or being a part of it. It's a for-profit company being run by great business leaders. Mm-hmm. 28:25 But it's also missional and highly impactful. So we're gonna open these stores. We're gonna go deep in DFW. 28:30 The next five stores are all gonna be within driving distance of the main corporate store here in Dallas, but we're gonna move market to market. 28:37 We're gonna come to where you are down in Houston, and we're gonna keep growing. 28:41 And then from an equity standpoint, we're bringing in these Class B equity owners, and what's so neat is I already have friends, mentors, I have a Catholic priest in the cap table, that are able to tell people, "I'm invested in that, and you should be, too," meaning, you should cater from Howdy. 28:59 We should have the next after-soccer party, let's go to Howdy and have some incredible ice cream, because we know that we might drive by another ice cream shop or two, but we're going somewhere that has a giant impact, and we can tangibly feel it and enjoy it as well. 29:15 So you're, you're not buying this thing to be a cash cow for you. Maybe it will be. I, I don't know. That's not... But that's not your, your stated goal right now in how you're talking about it. 29:22 So what do you hope are the fruits of this venture? And now that you're involved in it pretty intimately here, 'cause you're taking over CEO as well, in addition to- Right... 29:31 to the ownership piece, what do you hope are the fruits of, of this company, let's just say five years, 10 years down the road? Culture change is one. 29:39 Culture change truly actually happens one encounter at a time, but if you can have more of those one encounters every day, and you can have them- Mm... 29:45 in more locations, people open up their eyes to the misjudgment they've had about a population of people that they've bucketed into one thing in their brain that is not true. 29:57 And then people that are not maybe n- as negative or as, as passing off of the intellectual and developmentally challenged population, those same people, though, may still have the language that's off, and I'll give you a great example. 30:13 They may say, "You know, Matt's our new employee." But Matt can't run the cash register. 30:19 And w- if I tell you and I tell others, "Matt can't run the cash register" over and over, then Matt will never run the cash register. Mm-hmm. 30:26 But if the shift and the cultural shift is, "Matt can't run the cash register yet," well, then what are we gonna do? We're gonna coach. We're gonna practice. We're gonna walk together. 30:37 Someday Matt's probably gonna be the trainer of the next person on the cash register. Mm-hmm. But not if I have a fixed mindset. So the culture changes. How do I look at people? How do I look at growth? 30:47 And how do I look at human flourishing? That's what I want. I want, I want that more than anything. 30:53 I wanna make sure that we grow so much that when we have the catering vans and we have people getting picked up and dropped off, our heroes have different limitations on ability to get to and from certain locations, 31:08 I wanna set it up that there's four churches in town, and you can tell us which route you wanna be on and which church you wanna go to, and on Sunday mornings, we'll pick you up and take you there if you want to, because we're building a community, and we are both receiving that community and we're going back out into that community. 31:23 Matt, I gotta tell you, I was dairy-free for 14 years, and then we accidentally bought a ice cream company. [laughs] It is so good. It is so, so good. Well, that's one way to end a fast, I'll tell you. 31:35 [laughs] Oh my gosh. So you got all of yourself invested into this thing. I mean, it- it's very clear. So what happens if you weren't living this undivided life, that you, you did have that divided life? What... 31:46 Would this even be possible? Is that something that you can- No... see happening? No, because you would... I think that a couple things would get in the way then. One, I think your time horizon isn't patient. 31:57 It has a need, not a daily s- set of excellence in my inputs is all I care about. 32:03 When you are focused too much on work Jeff and home Jeff, then this becomes a nuisance or a nonprofit and something that I can feel good about 'cause I sent a check to somebody. 32:13 Further, I think that when you're living in this... 32:17 Well, I don't wanna say th- if you're not living a divided life, if you're not living in this place of integrity, it's actually sometimes pretty hard to show up to people as your full self, and that's the number one thing that people need when you're leading them, when you are being led by them, when you're encountering them as a client, when you're coaching them as a trainee. 32:37 Imagine... I just had a guy at lunch with me today. This is a great finally story. He's an introvert. He worked for me for 13 years. We haven't seen each other in a couple years. 32:46 We had a, a catch-up breakfast, and I said, "John, what is it about me that made you open up to me for those 13 years? 32:52 Because when I look back, you didn't talk to very many people very much, and you elected to work from home even though you were just a couple miles away." 33:00 And he said, "The first time you ever talked to me, I felt like you were actually talking to me, that you truly asked about me with a genuine concern and that you wanted to actually know what it was that made me tick." 33:15 And he said, "I can remember going home from my wife that very first day, and I said, 'This guy does it different.'" I wish that wasn't the case, Matt. 33:21 I wish that everybody did this, but we too often would say, "Okay, here's John. Let me calculate what can I get out of John. What's the utility of John to my pocketbook? How much is it gonna cost me to get him there?" 33:35 Not that you shouldn't have metrics and measurements and hire the right people, but we shouldn't reduce people down to, "What can you give me? Who can I meet here? How can I leverage this networking event?" 33:46 What if all we just said was, "God, who here needs to meet me? Who here needs a connection from me today? Who here just needs me to smile and give them eye contact and then genuinely get to know a few things about them? 34:01 And if that's all that happens today and you use me for that, what an awesome outcome." So my five-year horizon for Howdy, 34:11 I think we will far outpace the model we put together because this, like Carpool when I was at Texas A&M or like other things that I've seen so clearly, this is a even your losing is winning. 34:25 Even the mistakes we're gonna make is progress. Even the places where we have to go back and we say we're sorry is gonna be better than it not existing at all. And so that type of momentum and that type of purpose, 34:38 that's ordained. That's unstoppable. What do you hope maybe 20 years down the road when, when you've maybe, maybe taken a moment to settle down, maybe resting a little bit, 34:47 what do you hope you can look back and see, and then maybe other people will see in, in you and your life as well? 34:54 My kids know what it means to love others and to love themself the way that God loves them, and that their kids experience that through them, and that we can look and say that as a family and as individuals, 35:13 each day that God gave us a chance to encounter people and to do good, we showed up for it. That's great. And I'm sure those seven kids are very, very happy with Howdy Homemade Ice Cream being a regular, uh- Oh, no... 35:25 aspect of their lives. It's like a mic drop moment for them. They even get to... The, the older ones- Yeah... 35:31 get to go in there and, you know, kinda do a little behind-the-scenes work, and they love it 'cause I'll give them a free ice cream as... for their payment. Absolutely. That's a... And that's a great payment. 35:39 That's- So I would, I would work for that, you bet. We're ready for you. Well, Jeff, thank you so much. 35:44 Really appreciate you, all you're doing, The Undivided Life, and the message that you bring to so many, and especially to the businesses and the work culture of our world that needs this so badly. 35:54 So thank you especially for the time with me today. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate you. All right. Take care. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Purpose Driven Capital podcast. 36:03 If you found this valuable, be sure to like, subscribe, and share. Are you ready to align your money with your mission? 36:10 Discover the Purpose Driven Capital framework, access practical tools, and build meaningful connections to grow your movement and multiply your impact at PurposeDrivenCapital.co. 36:21 The views and opinions expressed in this show are solely those of the individuals speaking and do not reflect the views or opinions of Honeyhive Capital, any broker-dealer, investment advisory firm, or its sponsors. 36:32 The content is for informational and entertainment purposes only. 36:36 Nothing in this content, nor any communications from it, should be treated as constituting financial, investment, legal, tax, or other advice of any kind, or as a recommendation to buy or sell an interest with respect to any investment. 36:48 We look forward to you joining us next time.
