236 | Breaking the Rules to Make a Difference with Tom Vozzo

Our guest on the pod this week is Tom Vozzo.  Tom is a global business executive with a proven track record of leading highly successful businesses in the service, retail and distribution industries.  He is currently the CEO of Homeboy Industries, a social enterprise that offers hope, training and job skillls to formerly gang involved and previously incarcerated individuals.

Resources mentioned in this episode are:

Interview with Tom Vozzo, CEO of Homeboy Industries: Starting and Growing a World-class Social Enterprise

NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.

SPEAKERS

Paul Zelizer, Tom Vozzo

 

Paul Zelizer  00:01

Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection, someone who has market has that experience, and is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce today's topic, and our guests have one request, if you could go over to Apple podcasts or whatever app you're listening to this show on, do a rating and hit the subscribe button, it helps tremendously. Thanks so much for considering. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Tom Vozzo. And our topic is Breaking the Rules to Make a Difference. Tom is a global business executive with a proven track record of leading highly successful businesses in the service, retail and distribution industries. He's currently the CEO of Homeboy Industries, a social enterprise that offers hope, training and job skills to formerly gang involved in previously incarcerated individuals. Tom, welcome to the show.

 

Tom Vozzo  01:08

Thank you, Paul. Good to be here.

 

Paul Zelizer  01:10

Boy, you personally and also Homeboy Industries. Y'all have been out this quite some time, we got a lot to talk about. I think so. I'm so grateful you're here. Tom. One of the ways we like to get to know somebody, before we get into this specific content area, is to ask you about a wellness or resiliency practice that you personally use to help resource yourself for this really important, but not always easy work.

 

Tom Vozzo  01:38

Yeah, sure. I know. And a lot of this goes with my story of being a homeboy, I was a corporate guy for many years. And it was always very hard charging. And what I learned coming to Homeboy was you need to find balance. And I saw that through the homeboys and homegirls. And so, you know, modeling them in many ways, some of them and father, Greg, our founder, you know, I do a daily meditation and contemplation. And for me, it's spiritually based. And so I make sure I get up each morning and do my time. And it really puts me in the right frame of mind for the for the rest of the day.

 

Paul Zelizer  02:13

Like many people I first heard about homeboy, through the writings of father, Greg Boyle, which we're gonna talk about famous book, tattoos of the heart, I don't think I'm alone, I think a lot of our listeners might be familiar with that, before we get into that party are worth, you know, the current work, which is where the most of our conversational focus, just give our listeners a little bit wake when I was doing research, Tom, you are having leadership positions of, let's say, a certain degree of scale and one of your positions, you were in a very significant role in a company that had 250,000 Plus individuals. So just give us give our listeners just a little bit of like backstory, you know, your working career what you did before homeboy, because that's important to what you're doing now?

 

Tom Vozzo  03:01

Sure, sure. Yeah. So in many ways, I feel so fortunate to have the second chapter of my career. But for 26 years, I was in the private sector. And the last role I had was Executive Vice President of Aramark Corporation, which is a food services, uniform services business, a service business. And you know, so there's three executive vice presidents, the chair and the CFO. So, you know, very high level very high up job in a $11 billion plus Corporation. And my responsibilities were for the uniform businesses, which was, you know, in scale, $1.8 billion set of businesses. And so I love my corporate jobs. I love that time there. And so I find what's interesting is I say this many times, folks, I I ran a $1.8 billion business for many years successfully, and, and I loved it. But yet, coming to Homeboy and starting up there, and it was $11 million when I started as a nonprofit and is it these last number of years I've been a homeboy has been more stressful and, and more pressure than running a $1.8 billion dollar business. And then it just but it's, it's, it's worth the effort and worth the time, and we're trying to help people out along the way. And so I greatly value my corporate experience and all that training I received because I use that quite a bit in my role as CEO of Homeboy Industries.

 

Paul Zelizer  04:28

So we're gonna talk a little bit about that transition. And what you've learned before we do that just give us like, if somebody's never heard of Homeboy Industries, they had no idea what this is. They just listen to this podcast, and like, give them a lay of the land. It started in 1988. So it's been around for quite some time. Like, what does it do and how has it grown over the years?

 

Tom Vozzo  04:53

Yeah, so Homeboy Industries, but first and foremost, what we do is we help formally forming the cars baited gang involved individuals change your life. So men and women who had really went into gang life at a young age, then went to prison. And then as they're coming back at society when they from prison or jail, when they want to get out of that gang, we're really the place that they turn to and help them transition out of gang life and life of crime. And so what we're about is our core competency is helping gang members leave the gang and, and that was started over 30 years ago, Father, Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest, one of his first stations as a priest was at the Loris mission in Los Angeles, which was Portia Parrish of the whole archdiocese. This is back in the late 80s, early 90s, which, anyhow, in Los Angeles was the epicenter that Laura's mission was the epicenter of gang violence. Back in the late 80s. And in divorce missions perished, Father, Greg saw all these young men being killed, often through gang violence. And he wanted to figure out a way of helping out that gang member, that young man to get out of that lifestyle. And what he hit upon was pretty simple. If you sort of can get that young man a job where he has enough money for food and shelter, he's not going to be running with the gang to find the money for food and shelter, and his life could be changed. And so from that simple concept 30 over 30 years ago, homeboy industry was born has grown. And so what we are today, in fact, today, we're over a $30 million nonprofit, we help over 10,000 people each year, in our target population, or the formula incarcerated folks who've been involved in gang in to a whole host of services. You know, we remove tattoos, we give anger management classes, Na Na, and case management education. And lastly, we have social enterprise businesses, to give our folks purposeful activities with a bakery in a cafe. So the whole point is, we help somebody transform their life from being a gang member, to contributing members of our society. And its tremendous success. Well, now I've been a homeboy now nine years as a CEO, I'm here to cheerlead on behalf and it's not hard to truly because you get to see how people change your life right before your eyes. And not only can we see it, have people leave their gang behind. But you know, we have we have studies and the good folks at UCLA did a research on us a number of years ago, it is show that people are part of home we program only have a 30% recidivism rate after two years after leaving our program, which means going back into the jail system two years later, that 30% compares to the statewide average is 70%. So so here we are, at Homeboy with the sheer our magic sauce is just caring and loving people and giving them a chance. And we're able to get guys out of gang life and and live a more straight and narrow lifestyle. So it's been truly successful. And it's, as you can tell my voice hopefully I love being a homeboy and being part of the team.

 

Paul Zelizer  08:12

Yeah. So listeners listen to what Tom just told us. Please state average is 70% recidivism rate for somebody who's been system involved. And when they get involved with Homeboy Industries, it goes down to 30% recidivism, which is still high, we want to change that. But that's pretty darn good. And I thank you for your service. And I just wanted to highlight that the other thing, I'm really glad you said, Thomas, like he said, Well, we just we just give them a job we might help them with, you know, tattoo removal, a couple other things. And then right towards the end, he said something that I'm really glad you said because anybody who's read tattoos of the heart knows, it's maybe not only although giving somebody a job is a huge thing. And I'm a big fan. And thank you, I don't want to minimize it all. But you, you also talked about love and a sense of belonging. And I wonder if you could talk about the balance of that we're going to certainly talk about the social enterprise part of things and giving them a job and helping somebody be able to afford, like you said, have a place to live being able to feed your family. And suddenly some of these options when you grow up in certain neighborhoods like again, seem a whole lot less attractive. But there's also this love and sense of belonging that Father Boyle wrote very extensively about, can you talk us about that balance and what you've learned on? Let's start with that sort of heart end of things like that sense of like, you matter, we care about you, which Homeboy Industries is renowned for?

 

Tom Vozzo  09:43

Yeah, no, I'm glad you you're trying, you're highlighting this. And that's to me a preface before I get into the explanation is that one of the things that just was stunning and head turning for me as a corporate guy, coming into homeboy to be part of the team was to see how it the team that the culture cares for each one each and every person. And so we're homeboys, you know, we have lots of services, which I was just went through. And there's organizations with lots of programs for sure. But what it's about is really in this is the lesson of life I've learned, it's about helping people transform their pain, and helping people who have been victim to complex trauma. And how do you do that? You do that by just being affirmative and in relationship with them, and then kinship with them. And so very early on, what I learned was, you know, Greg would go out of his way to say yes, and so we would teach everybody when someone walks through our doors for the first time. And they kind of have this gut instinct that they want to get out of gang life. But there's really, it's really hard to lead gangs only because of what society throws against a person who has been in a gang, that it's hard to kind of overcome those obstacles. When they come to Homeboy, Industries, they're looking for help. And we go out a way to say, yes, we're going to help you, we're going to get you some service, we're going to get your food, we're going to get some shelter. And we're going to help. And it's through relationships, that enable somebody to kind of have to really deal with the pain that they've had from their complex trauma, and move past that. And so oftentimes, it's not about teaching somebody better behaviors, it's not about kind of wagging their finger at somebody, because they know what they've done wrong. They've had known who have cared for, and, and we become their family along the way. And so the key is, is this simple sauces, is don't judge him for the color of the skin of tattoos, or the gang they've been in or their crime, give them a chance, because it's really the first chance in life to get a job and try to move my life forward. And don't stand a judgement, just standing kinship, be with them in their pain and be with them in their in their good times. And that's what makes the difference Homeboy Industries.

 

Paul Zelizer  12:00

Beautiful. So Tom, walk us through, like, on those two levels, were known as being really interested in granularity, really trying to help our listeners like, unpack it so that they can learn and take what has worked in other social enterprises and apply it in the area that they're really excited about. So if somebody is listening, and they say, Yeah, I can well imagine that at a conceptual level, but like, how does that work? I walked in the door, I've been gang involved, I look a certain way. I had this history of like surviving on the streets from a history of complex trauma, like, on one level, that belonging level and that care and that love that you're talking about another just like, on they're really gritty and granular, like what are the steps of like, where are you going to live? And how do you get them working? And what if they don't have a lot of history with job skills and being in a more traditional employment organization? Like, how do you balance all that? And what are some of the first steps in your process?

 

Tom Vozzo  13:03

Yeah, so let me let me say this, it takes a lot of takes a lot of effort, right to help, it takes a lot of resources. Beyond the Add having the right attitude of accepting of where they're at, and helping them move forward. It takes a lot of resources, provide all that food support clothing, for housing support, tattoo removal, and all that. And so if if many listeners who are business people and they running a business, but I want to take it down to the granular level of if you have someone walk through your door applying for a job who has a record, right? Yes, don't you know, don't look past their record, don't worry about the record. But then how do you the real question is how do you help somebody who's never been employed before become employable, and be employed in your organization? And that takes a lot more resources and a different mindset. So let me give you sort of two examples. Right, so many people come out of prison and they're on parole. So there's an example of I have it. My administrative assistant. She's a former home girl, really, it was in our in youth, youth prison. A number of times she came to us when she was about 18 years old. She went through our charter high school with us along the way. And then one of her jobs was she became my executive assistant and she was teaching that job. She has a lot of struggles because you single mother, no family support gangs trying to pull her back in. So all those dynamics are happening. And yet she was very dedicated to the job, very dedicated to doing well. It even so much as you know, we would have we have a homeboy has a board of directors and we would have we would have a board meeting early in the morning and she would come in early in the morning, make sure the tables were set up and be there. Half Before the meeting would start what you would want out of any dedicated employee who really cared for their job. But the situation was one of the board meetings was happening the next day. And she got a call from her parole officer at four o'clock in the afternoon. And the parole officer says to her that she needs to report at 8am The next morning. And as my system was explained to the parole officer, hey, he or she has responsibilities, there's a board meeting, she's set up, Prophet says, if you're not here, by 8am, I'm going to violate your parole, and you'll come back into the jail system. And so because we're homeboy, we understand what the dynamic and we don't want to put that extra stress on our employees. We said, Go Go to your parole officer do all we have to do. But my point is, if we weren't an employer, who sort of have a wider knowledge of what it's like to be previously incarcerated, to try to get a job, what it's like to be poor and trying to work your way out of that system along the way. Yeah, it'd be really hard. And so what tangibly what you need to do is have a bigger support system around people and a higher level of forgiveness that you're not going to have one or two tardies and they're fired from your from your organization, you need to need to think about it differently is like, Hey, you're helping them move their life forward. And if they're showing you the instinct, they're really caring for the job, you need to be a little bit more patient and allow that allow that to play out.

 

Paul Zelizer  16:25

Thanks for sharing that, Tom. So help our listeners understand you've got as best I can count at least three different social enterprises part or social enterprise ventures as part of homeboy, you got homebuy bakery homegirl cafe and this electronic recycling program. Tell us a little bit about those enterprises. And are there any others that I didn't find in my research?

 

Tom Vozzo  16:48

Yeah, actually, there are, there are others, but they're smaller businesses. So you know, we have a silkscreen operation and we have a merchandise store, we, we have a little cafe, coffee shop in City Hall, we're gonna have lay we actually have this is a pivot that we've done through the pandemic, as, as most restaurants early on were closed in the early part of the pandemic of March of 2020. You know, the women of our homegirl Cafe came to us and asked us, if wows if we have food in this store rooms and food in the refrigerators, if we can cook up our food and deliver it to our community who are now it's called food insecure, but don't have food. And of course, we said yes. And then a board member found out and help raise a couple $100,000 to fund having more meals produced to be handed out to the community. And in so that got a light life of itself. And so then we try, we got a little city contract and a county contract. And so we've pivoted to what we call our feed hope meals program where you think about it's the star population of, of all former gang members, all formerly incarcerated who are working in our businesses. So here is home girl cafe, women's most mostly women's focused business. And they're making prepared meals, fresh ingredients to be handed out to the folks who are food insecure. So we were able to get a county contract. And so we we now make 10,000 meals a week prepared meals, and we get them delivered to senior citizens in East Los Angeles. And so that's an example of a business that sort of was born out of the pandemic, but really came from our folks thinking about how do we help more people and how do we help people feed along the way so be fed along the way. And so we have a bakery that has a fairly sizable pre pandemic, we had 11 Bread routes running every day. And we were two artists in bread to two restaurants around Los Angeles. And it's, you know, so there's nothing more emblematic than the homeboy bakery where you have folks mostly guys from different gangs, working next shoulder, shoulder each other on the table, rolling dough making bread to be sold to restaurants along the way. You mentioned homeboy electronic recycling. It's been a terrific business for us where we gather all electronics, DIKTI manufactures and sells components. And we look into grow. We're looking to grow that business, electronic recycling, we're looking to grow the cafe and catering business along the way. And our homeboy bakery with our baked goods on homeboy.com. So it's what I like to say is when you think about I'll sum it up by this by one of our flagship businesses is our cafe. They're right in our headquarters. And it's Zagat rated business. So two years ago, last time Zagat ratings came out there were only seven other restaurants in downtown Los Angeles with as high of a rating as we had. And so we here we are Zagat rated Restaurant, run by former felons and gang members, all our management are grown from within. And they, they, they run the business each and every day. And so it's a real testament to our population can work should work, it just you got to give them a chance to make it happen.

 

Paul Zelizer  20:20

Then, one of the other things that I think is on the newer end of things, you've created kind of this network like people, it started very LA, you know, very local right bakery and a bread route and recycling electronics in LA, right. And now there's this kind of extended network that if I'm reading correctly, is global. Tell us a little bit about that.

 

Tom Vozzo  20:42

Yeah, you know, this fits in with Father, Greg, our founders, just the way he operates, you know, he wants to share the message and share what we're about. And so, you know, I mentioned that we have, through our doors in Los Angeles County, we have 10,000 people pre pandemic that we've helped each year. And what's interesting is over the years, you know, we've had about 8000 visitors come visit us each and every year, and we've always been open sourced and willing to share how we go about helping people get out of gang life, right? And, and always, and then a lot of organizations come to us and ask us, can they start up? How do they do it? We give them that technical assistance. They spend days within our businesses, so they learn how we run social enterprise businesses. And, and so about eight years ago, we had our first we had a conference, let's say, we said, let's have a conference of people who are interested in doing this work, and share best practices. And from there that was born there, our global homeboy network. And so here we are. Now there's over 150 organization from around the country and the world 42 states, eight countries who have modeled their programs after how homeboy Does, does, we do our program. And so some are more programmatic and others are more business focused. But they kind of take elements of, in my words, what what's it take to this to give a job to people really never had a job before? And how do you get that them to succeed in behind all that is about the healing and the trauma, and the resiliency that you look, you look at the grow within those within those employees are those workers.

 

Paul Zelizer  22:28

And you've written a book about some of that, you know, the healing and the recovery and the resilience. I want to get to that in just a second. Before we do that, Tom, I want to have our listeners one of the things they listened for us to kind of get some of the granular like information about how social enterprise works. And let me just say this, right, many social enterprises are of a scale, or were not publicly traded companies. So like, what you might see in a very large company, like in some of the ones used to work for there be like an annual report and said, we'd tried this marketing strategy or introduced this mark, and this new product and had this effect on profits. And here's how much we made. And here's how much we spent on different things, including our people. And none of that is public information for this sector, which can make it really complicated. If you're trying to understand anything you can share about like, how much of the revenue for homeboy industry comes through social enterprises, as opposed to donations, your nonprofit, right? Anything you can share just about, like how the how the engine keeps going in terms of revenue coming in to feed all these different ventures that you have going?

 

Tom Vozzo  23:41

Yeah, there's a lot of different angles on this. So let me start by a few. And you can redirect me as I go along. So 20 Last question. So we do annual revenue of our social enterprises, is a little over seven and a half million dollars. Right. And so let me say the second thing and I'll frame up as to how I showed up at home boy, you know, it's in longer part of the story. But essentially, as I was leaving my corporate job, what I loved about I love running businesses, and I love I love my corporate job, but those jobs have a certain shelf life. And I wanted to kind of do something different a second chapter in my life. But while I was in my Aramark job, I was, you know, we were encouraged to sort of get involved locally. So I was on the board of Salvation Army, Los Angeles, and a fellow board member on that board was also on the homeboy board. And so once he heard I left Aramark, he asked me to get involved, homeboy, I didn't know much about homeboy, but we had lunch at the homegirl cafe and, and, and he wanted me to be involved but didn't want to be a board member any longer. I want to see if I can use my business skills to to help an organization now to help people out in some different way on the line. So I started volunteering, homeboy, and I volunteered I was helping them run their businesses because what was happening was back then, you know, whatever it was like, businesses were about $3 million in size, and they were losing about $3 million. And so it was sort of bleeding the organization of other funds that they could put towards their programs. And so I didn't know those numbers when I joined on as a volunteer, but I joined on as a volunteer, they quickly fell in love with the organization because, for me the aspect of being in businesses to be a great business as the hallmark of its kind of product, and, and and service that customers want to pay for. And it has a place where people want to work. And so what I saw when I was having lunch in that cafe, that first time was, here, you have a bunch of folks who I never thought would work hard. But they want to work. And they're looking customers in the eyes, and they're finding value to what they do. So I wanted, you know, so when the opportunity came along the volunteer, I said yes. And so I so the, so I jumped in, I started volunteering. And what I realized was that while they're running social enterprise businesses, they weren't running very much like a business, they were running a more like, a like, it was a nonprofit mission. And so why I'm making this distinction to deuce to run social enterprises successfully, you really need to kind of run it like a for profit business, in the way we're doing it, but with the exception of the labor line. And so homeboy is blessed with having a lot of donors. And so we run we have our businesses so we can provide jobs and job opportunities for people. And so our labor line is subsidized by heart, donor community. And so thereby, so thereby, it's so I want the business managers to run every every other aspect of that p&l Like we're a for profit business, because I want the product to be as good in the marketplace. As elsewhere, I don't want people to come to us, because we're this nice nonprofit and give people a chance, oh, people that buy our, our bread or come to our cafe, because we provide good value. And by the way, the other benefit is they'll feel good about contributing and being part of our broader community. So my point is, you got to run it like a business. And the key there is you got to find people who have run that type of business before, if you're going to move this into a nonprofit social enterprise space, you better not run that as a non as a for profit first. And be clear about where you now you're going to where's the mission going to be for us, it's in the labor line, our social enterprises have two to three times as much labor as a for profit business would have. And that's okay, because it's funded by having donors who recognize the value of someone coming in every day and working and working on themselves. But it's clear everything else in that business runs, like a for profit business. So we've been over the years grown our top line pretty well. We've, we've shaped up the p&l of that. And so everything else runs competitively with a for profit business, except the amount of people we have on staff. And so tangibly, if you're thinking about getting into the social enterprise world where you're, it's not so much a green business, but it's a jobs business, we're providing employment, you just need to be careful about where that funding comes from, for those employees, the extra employees you have in and be clear that you're still running this business to have people engage with customers and be successful in the marketplace.

 

Paul Zelizer  28:21

Thanks so much for sharing that, Tom. I'm thinking of what you were talking about as you really want the product, that and what you offer in the marketplace to really stand on its own and I was thinking of, we had an interview with a wonderful social entrepreneur named Nora Shirov. She runs Citi, social enterprise. It's it's a they make way olive oil based soaps and other products that are made by women who are in camps in the West Bank. And really tough situations are people without a country, they don't have papers, they can't leave to go work somewhere, even though they really want to work. And there's almost no employment in the camps. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Anyway, Nora and her team have created this fabulous social enterprise called City social enterprise where they sell these products, women can make it there. And then they've created the infrastructure to sell it. One of the things that Nora said And I'll never forget it, and I repeated as often as they can. She said as a social entrepreneur, you do not want to pity purchase. Let me say that again, you do not want to already purchase. That's right. You want to have a fabulous product that people love and it's also helping make the world a better place. In you know, in your case in terms of helping people who've been gang involved or formerly incarcerated in her case, you get to help these families in the West Bank that are really stuck in an incredibly challenged and by the way, it's some of the best freakin soap you could possibly buy in planet earth. Right, right. You have a cafe, that is Zagat rating, and it's awesome food. And by the way that people Who are cooking it and serving in and running business are have made profound changes, and they are helping others make profound change. That's how you succeed as a social entrepreneur. So I just want to highlight what you're saying. And thank you so much for saying,

 

Tom Vozzo  30:14

Yeah, golf also true.

 

Paul Zelizer  30:17

So let's do this. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, I want to hear about the book and some suggestions you have for Social Entrepreneurs. Before you do that a word from our sponsor, do you have a business that's about making the world a better place, and you want it to grow, both in terms of helping more people, and and also in terms of your income, allowing you to have the good quality of life? If so, I'd like to talk to you about some research about what scientists tell us contribute to making positive changes in meeting our goals. When scientists look at humans making change, whether it's getting in shape, or quitting smoking, or growing your business, the single biggest thing that they have found that contributes to actually not theoretically, but actually making change is what they call social support. In other words, other people who know the journey that you're on, you can share the ups and downs, wow, I just signed my biggest client ever in the business space, or I thought I was going to sign my biggest client and it fell through Ouch. People who can share tips and strategies, take a look at your latest offering, have a conversation and help you find your aligned pricing for it, etc, etc. If you're looking for that kind of support to help grow your social enterprise, but we're printers has the AWARE printers community. It's affordable starting at $25 a month. And we're there a generous global community of social entrepreneurs who can walk every step of the way with you from thinking about how to market your business where you can get a website built somebody who can help do a logo for you, a lawyer who understands these kinds of businesses in many, many other sources. That sounds interesting, you can find out more aware printers.com forward slash community. And thank you to everybody in the AWARE printers community who sponsors this podcast. So Thomas and the second part of the show, we'd like to put on our glasses and get even more granular. And one of the things after all of this experience and getting to know you've been at Homeboy Industries about nine plus years now, right? That's correct. You decided to write a book. Tell us about the book and why did you write it?

 

Tom Vozzo  32:37

Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about the book for a long time. And it's the books called the homeboy way. breaking the rules the homeboy way. And it really the the genesis of the book was, you know, after my first couple years of homeboy, I would go all along, I would just kind of be nodding my head that I'd be learning things that were so counterintuitive, or counter to what I have learned in the business world, of how to help people. In that, it's like, I would think, Boy, if I was ever to go back into that for profit world, what lessons would I take from learning, I learned a homeboy and take back into that for profit. So that that's what got me starting to, to write the book. And and many ways it's I call it rules to break because there's so many notions out there about, you know, the meritocracy and hard work and, and do things for the organization. That it's like, you know, those rules aren't bad, but but if your help if you're trying to help people, people have never had a job, people who are poor people aren't house, you have to go about it differently. And so the book came more about, you know, me telling the stories of what I learned from the homies, homeboys and homegirls. What I learned through my own spiritual growth, my own faith based path that that developed now enough, in this nonprofit world war, you couldn't talk about that in the for profit world. And then how do you kind of how do you really get the unemployable to be employable, what do you got to what kind of investment union you need to make along the way so? So the book is about those three areas and really trying to say like that I view myself as a sort of a typical person who could do well in corporate America, learn learn the rules of the game succeeded. Wow, now, I've learned so much. Now I also know that boy people can make a difference through their action. So I'm trying to get people to take action. How do you help the folks become unemployed young in this world of racial inequities and economic inequities, homeboys man standing on the forefront of changing that dynamic. And so there's a lot of the stories in there that that touched on those issues as well.

 

Paul Zelizer  34:49

Beautiful, Tom. So give us one example. Let's start on that kind of deeper spiritual, I mean, homebuy Industries was started by Father Greg Boyle, a father A clergy member, right? So let's go there, right? Let's talk about on a spiritual level, just very personally, what needed to change for you, as somebody who had a more traditional business background and was coming in as a leader and you say, Wow, things at home were kind of different. What was one on that more spiritual level for you that you had to kind of recalibrate, to understand one of the rules you had to break to be effective as a leader in this new environment?

 

Tom Vozzo  35:33

Yeah, it's a it's a, there's so many, there's it's good question. So what's interesting is, so again, 26 years in the corporate world, I went through so many corporate trainings, that you be careful about not saying certain words. And so if we actually had our video on who you're talking to see me sweating right now, cuz I'm about to talk about God, which you're not supposed to do in the for profit world. So it's still I get, I still have to work

 

Paul Zelizer  35:57

myself to just say you were called to wear printers and like, our audience would be cheering for you right now. That makes it. Like, we love talking about the deeper meaning of things. And we explicitly talk about conscious business practices, including whatever is larger than us. Okay, anyway, if that helps at all? Yeah, is on the edge of their seat cheering you on. Right?

 

Tom Vozzo  36:18

Yeah, good, good. Appreciate that. And I mean, sometimes they need to push. So listen, so but we grew up, I grew up, Catholic, I grew up, you know, going to church, my wife and I are church goers, and all and you believe that, you know, people, you shouldn't judge people, and you should treat people with respect, and you should you love thy neighbor, right? All those words, actually, you know, I got it in my life. But it wasn't until homeboy where I really got in that what's that mean? In Action? And, and sometimes you have to kind of break loose some of the business things you've learned. So an example. So about judging people, right? And so when people break the rules, well, let me first say, at Homeboy, we have what's called Council where the leaders of the organization get together three mornings a week, and talk about we call trainees or clients, right, who have are having problems. And so it's really trying to brainstorm around as a team, how do you help somebody in a situation so can I would be sitting at counsel, my head would be spinning, listening to, you know, talking about the stories in that someone would dramatically break a company rule. And, and we wouldn't fire them. We wouldn't even write him up because y'all want to shame cuz I learned you don't want to shame people. You don't judge people why they're breaking the rules along the way. It's so early on, my inner voice is saying, oh, wait a minute that in my old world, that person would have been fired on the spot. But what I learned through Father Greg and the others is, well, what's behind that? insubordination? What's what is going on in that person's life that so many stressors are happening outside, that they're bringing their pain, and they're transmitting their pain within work? And so it was that idea of like, don't judge, look what's behind it. And, and also NERT, find the goodness and everybody and nurture that and lean into their goodness. And that's how, and that's how people grow themselves. And that's how, as an organization, now, there's sort of other examples of, well, I mean, now it's more on the, you know, you learn not to hug people, right? In a corporate world. homeboys full of hugs, homeboys full of people just caring about each other, and embracing in a way that for a business guy like me, it was very uncomfortable being hugged all the time, and said, Well, there's not good, but then you, you realize it's about people opening themselves up, and be willing to be real with each other. And so I say this now, after all these years, you know, if, if sometimes you've struggled to find out where God is in your life, and it's hard to see God all the time. My touchstone is going to Homeboy and seeing you can see God and action there, because you see how people change your life from the most traumatic, dramatic, awful circumstances. And they're changing it because they're touching upon the goodness that God put in them. And then moving that forward. And people are real and authentic along the way. And so to me, as though how I my faith journey really took off was sort of just paying attention to the men and women that were in community with and seeing how they rely upon God, their own spirituality to move their life forward. And it was constantly sort of trying to me in two worlds the business world and me now me as homeboy world and kind of merging that all together. That I've just feel so fortunate to have spent this time at home point and to learn this about not just other people but learn what my own spirituality is like.

 

Paul Zelizer  39:55

You you came into homeboys and you had a certain it's a pretty unique situation it was already up and it had. No I heard of homeboys before you got there? Again, because bother Boyle's well known in certain circles, and I was in those Sure. You were asked to help scale and help, you know, make something more efficient. And you've done a fabulous job of that. If somebody's listening, and they're they earlier on they're they're being invited into something that's much younger, or they're launching and has no you know, momentum whatsoever. What would you say to a social entrepreneur who wants to combine these principles that you're talking about both very thoughtful business acumen, as well as this real care and spiritual reference for each person that you're helping? And they don't have that history? They don't have those roots to build on? They're more starting from scratch, what would you suggest to that founder?

 

Tom Vozzo  40:59

The Tea Party, your question was if there is a social enterprise, so there it's a it's a business such as what you're saying, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So the key thing is missing. So as a founder, you got to be clear about what your mission is, you got to be clear about what your what your organization's going to stand for, and that these vague words that may be more specific. So you need to run the business, like it's a for profit business. And then you need to choose where do you want to? Where is it that you're becoming a social enterprise? As you're providing green jobs? Are you providing more jobs for people, you're Are you helping the formerly incarcerated be employed, you're helping the homeless get housed, I mean, you have to figure it, so where there's going to be some part of your business model, that's social enterprise really focused, and that mission has to be clearly understood by everybody in the organization, you're not going to be able to everything, everyone from the star. So you're going to have to sort of you can have pick and choose how you get your help. Is it a long way of me trying to say, as you're growing, you can provide more and more services to people. But you got to go there a step at a time. That in the end, well you got to do is you have to have an organization that's going to thrive over the long term are in the business speak, you know, thrive or be successful? And so what am I trying to, again, I'll summarize by saying, you set the foundation, you set the values, it's a large part of this, how you treat your fellow employees, and what and so everybody buys into what that mission is you buy into your core values. And then the team's got to run the organization to be to be successful along the way. And so I guess to sum up, what I'm saying is, you're not going to be everything for everybody right away. You got to grow into grow into that. But you know, I'll leave it at that for now.

 

Paul Zelizer  42:58

Great suggestion, Tom. And I sometimes language it is, you got to know who you want to help. And you got to know what you want to help them with that really get clear about that. Because it's easy to win. We're the big caring hearted spiritual people that we are, who are, you know, listening to this podcast, and in this ecosystem, sometimes we want to help beyond the time and money and energy resource. Oh,

 

Tom Vozzo  43:21

yeah. Yeah. Like a good example is like in the home world, right? So we deal with, like, again, former gang members, folks who have felonies and all. And what's we have very few rules. One rule is, you can't be running with your gang while being at home, you have to have made the decision to to try to leave that guy or to leave that gang. And so oftentimes, when we have bring folks in and this crazy social media, they would, we would see that they're doing things on the weekends with their gang, or throwing up gang signs, and all our, our guys, we're bringing those men, those guys in and say, Listen, take it, take care your business, you're not if you're running with the gang, you're not with us, you have to make the choice. And so while we may, we and we know that if that person goes running with the gang and go back to the gang world, more likely going to end up back in prison, what likely there's gonna be more violence out there. But we can't want it more than that person, that person is going to have to want it to. And so that's we have to sort of sort of put a put a line in the mind of parents, and we're not going to go past that and tell that person to may got to make a decision as well.

 

Paul Zelizer  44:29

Thanks for saying that, Tom. And I would agree that being a social entrepreneur, in many ways, because we're rubbing up against some of the hardest problems that humans face on the planet right now. We have to make hard I mean, every business right, and leader has to make hard decisions, but social entrepreneurs, the decisions we make. It can have profound ripple effects on the people that we are most passionate about helping

 

Tom Vozzo  44:57

Yeah, no doubt. Right and like to drive that home. At the beginning, I was saying why this job sometimes is more stressful to me to me than my $1.8 billion businesses. Because early on when we were struggling for money, I had to downsize the organization. And I, gosh, I know what happens when we tell the organization, people are back. There's no other place in LA County for our folks. So people back on the streets to back running with the gang and they're back in prison. And that boy, that's that's those are real decisions through real tough decisions have to make and, and we did it. And we have, because we have to get to a long term, there's other people that we need to help as well in the future. But yeah, being on being trying to be a human services organization, helping people on the margins of our society is very difficult. It's very hard for your employee base, that's the other thing you need to learn is to your employee, just like yourself, you're you're absorbing the pain of the folks you're working with, you got to make sure they find work life balance, as well.

 

Paul Zelizer  45:56

So another population that I think you'd have a lot to offer, Tom is somebody who's in the more traditional business world, and you were talking earlier before the break about the culture at Homeboy. And I think our listeners might know, I've certainly been talking a lot about it both on this podcast on LinkedIn where I'm most active, it's my most active social, we are in the midst of the Great resignation in November of 2021 4.5 million plus Americans quit their jobs. It's the it's like, one of the biggest trends in the workforce in our lifetimes. And, you know, sometimes we compare and contrast social enterprise, and we do have our significant special problems. But this is something that the more traditional business world is like, oh, like, they're losing folks that are just hemorrhaging some of their best people. What have you learned at Homeboy that could help a more traditional organization that hasn't been thinking about itself in terms of positive impact about culture and caring for people and how that might affect organizations that haven't been thinking so much about culture?

 

Tom Vozzo  47:08

Yeah, yeah. Let me make two comments on this. I thought a lot about this, because back then trying to compare my corporate world days to my homeboy days, it's it's different, right? And and what's the biggest difference that even in this pandemic, I can't tell you, I am so proud of our team and homeboy. As the pandemic came along, and organizations were closing their doors, our team knew that homeboys in many ways, a sanctuary for our clients, for our trainees, that is the safest spot they can be in during the day, because being the neighborhood's dangerous, our teams fought to open us up within a couple of weeks. And we've not closed our doors over since May, March of 2020. Other than the first three weeks, we've, we've been open, doing it safe doing the COVID safe and all that. And so why I say that our team is so dedicated because they know what the mission is about. And the big difference, here's Lesson number one, the big difference is over 50% of our management team, are former clients. And in you know, they had a gut level visceral ground level, know what that mission is about, and why it's so important to to keep moving forward and keep helping more and more people. And then the other 50% of the folks who come to homeboy, clearly get the mission, they fall in love with homeboy, they fall in love of being part of a community where it's not us. And then it's just us. And so we've had very little turnover, we haven't had this great resignation, we've had more people come to us because they, they want to be in a mission driven organization. They want to be an organization that cares, not just for its people, but cares to help people along the way. And so I would say as as an organization is fighting this resignation issue. It's about what the mission is, and particularly your human services organization. It's having people lived experience all throughout management, and really having the right type of diversity. So your management team needs to look like the people you serve, whether it be in a for profit business, or nonprofit management, even these look like frontline employees along the way. And what I've noticed in these last couple years here is that if you have any of those things out of whack, even by a small amount, people people get peeved over and they start picking the head up and looking elsewhere. And so it's about you got to curate your culture. In the way I'm talking homeboy is not a perfect organization at all, but what we do has a very strong culture and people care about the mission. And people know that they've they've been successful at Homeboy in that's why I think we're in pretty good shape.

 

Paul Zelizer  50:13

Tom, I can hang out with you all day and you're a busy guy. Our listeners are busy, I wouldn't do that. I've tried to ask questions that would help like, kind of, oh, goodness just boiled down decades of your experience. And you know, homeboy has been running since 1988. But I'm sure I missed something. Well, if you wanted to leave our listeners with something that we haven't yet touched upon, or the or something he just wanted to, like, as we start to wind down the interview, leave them with besides listeners, in the show notes, there will be links to the website, go make a donation, go check out their OPERS to the book, go buy the book, like all that stuff. We've got that in the show notes. But if there was something else you wanted to leave our listeners with, as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?

 

Tom Vozzo  51:03

Yeah, well, let me do the first promotion, though. So in the book that the last chapter is 55, rules to break. And really, that, that leads to your a better life, spiritual life for yourself. These are better, better racial equity and better life, the business community. That's sort of that's the Promote promo there. But what I want it to be is to help the poor of our society, people are poor people on housed, we need as society action, we need to make change we need think about it differently, we need to hire that fellow. And we need to kind of bring them support services along the way. We need to promote from within we need to over invest in their development. And I believe since I'm such a capitalist at heart, I believe it's the business communities that lead that effort. And so if you listen to this podcast, you're probably already in this frame of doing the work. I'm saying, but go out and talk to your friends that really, it's not I've learned homeboy, it's not hard to to now make this difference of being in kinship with somebody and accepting them who they are, and push it forward in the business sense. So action is what I'm really, really all about.

 

Paul Zelizer  52:14

Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing so much wisdom and all of your experience with our listeners. Happy to be here. So that's all the time we have for today's interview. Again, check out the show notes to get the link to the book to Homeboy Industries and some of the specific industries that we've mentioned Father Greg Boyles book, tattoos of the heart, etc, etc. Before we go, I just want to say we love listener suggested topics and guests. If you have an idea for an episode, please go to the website, where printers.com Check out our contact page. And we have our three criteria or our guidelines, how we vet which stories we like to share on this podcast, try to be really transparent, it's right there. If you read those, and you say, this is a great fit, please send it on. And that's one of our best sources of great news stories that people may not have heard of, but they're really having a big positive impact. For now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.

Paul Zelizer