Episode 20

January 15, 2025

01:08:43

Episode 20 of the LOVE JUSTICE podcast with special guest: Mike Beckham/CEO of Simple Modern | hosted by Hannah Munn & Jason Dukes | LoveJustice.NGO

Hosted by

Jason Dukes Hannah Munn
Episode 20 of the LOVE JUSTICE podcast with special guest: Mike Beckham/CEO of Simple Modern | hosted by Hannah Munn & Jason Dukes | LoveJustice.NGO
the LOVE JUSTICE podcast
Episode 20 of the LOVE JUSTICE podcast with special guest: Mike Beckham/CEO of Simple Modern | hosted by Hannah Munn & Jason Dukes | LoveJustice.NGO

Jan 15 2025 | 01:08:43

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Show Notes

This week’s conversation on the Love Justice Podcast features an interview with Mike Beckham, the CEO and co-founder of Simple Modern, a company renowned for producing premium drinkware and prioritizing corporate generosity.  Join hosts Hannah Munn and Jason Dukes as they interview Mike on the role of for-profit organizations and companies and how a posture of generosity can have a major impact in the nonprofit world. Included in the interview are insights from Love Justice International's Founder and CEO, John Molineux.

Mike Beckham is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Simple Modern, a global producer of premium drinkware and lifestyle products. Founded in 2015 and based in Oklahoma, Simple Modern currently generates a nine-figure annual revenue and is committed to generosity, donating at least 10% of annual profits to nonprofit organizations. Under Mike’s leadership, the company has grown into a category leader for Amazon, Target, Walmart, and Sam’s Club, serving more than 20 million customers worldwide.

Mike is a teacher, leader, and entrepreneur at heart. Before founding Simple Modern, Mike began his career working for the worldwide Christian ministry CRU. Equipped with a deep understanding of the nonprofit sector, Mike transitioned into the business world and helped found and operate several e-commerce businesses, which cumulatively generated more than $1 billion in revenue. Mike graduated with a degree from the University of Oklahoma Price College of Business, where he currently serves as the senior entrepreneur-in-residence.

For more info on Mike and Simple Modern, visit:

https://www.simplemodern.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/simple-modern/

https://www.instagram.com/shopsimplemodern/

https://www.facebook.com/shopsimplemodern

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikebeckhamsm/

https://www.instagram.com/mikebeckham/

 

To find out how to volunteer for Love Justice, please visit:

https://lovejusticecareers.com/#volunteer

 

You can learn more about Love Justice International at https://www.LoveJustice.ngo or @LoveJusticeIntl on social media and YouTube. 

Become a part of the LJI community as one of our generous donors by clicking "DONATE HERE" at https://www.LoveJustice.ngo OR donate cryptocurrency through our partnership with Endaoment at https://app.endaoment.org/orgs/71-0982808

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Love Justice Podcast where we hear from different voices who are joining us in the fight against modern day slavery. Please welcome today's guest, Mike Beckham. [00:00:16] Speaker B: Today we are thrilled to be joined by Mike Beckham, the CEO and co founder of Simple Modern, a company known for creating premium drinkware while leading the way in corporate generosity. Under Mike's leadership, Simple Modern has donated over $6 million in the last eight years, supporting more than 100 nonprofits. Through his innovative approach to business, Mike has shown how purpose and profit can coexist. And we can't wait to dive into Mike's insights on business, generosity and impact. Mike, welcome to the Love Justice Podcast. [00:00:48] Speaker C: Thanks for having me. Great to be with you. [00:00:51] Speaker D: We're excited you're here. And John, we're excited you're here too. Our CEO of Love justice and Grateful you're with us, man. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Mike, to kick us off, just tell our listeners who is Mike Beckham? [00:01:02] Speaker C: So, grew up in Oklahoma, probably the key points in my journey up until this point went to the University of Oklahoma on an academic scholarship and really came into college with a very achievement oriented mindset. That's how I was going to find purpose, success, and ironically, through more or less achieving the things I wanted to achieve. I think I realized that that was a dead end. Led to me making a personal decision for Christ right around my 21st birthday. In fact, I was in college for five years. And so if you kind of saw that down the middle, that's about when I became a believer and had two really radically different halves of college. And truly everything after that point in my life has looked different as a result of that decision. It was incredibly transformative from Go for me and I was a business major. I really discovered that I was naturally gifted at finance. It just made sense to me. I'd always been pretty good with numbers, but for finance was kind of a next level. Just intuitively it really made sense. And I remember in college thinking that, well, clearly God's plan for my life has to have something to do with giving because I seem to be good at numbers and money and I've got, you know, my faith is making this huge impact in my life and that's really what I thought was going to happen. And then through a series of, I would say, unexpected events, met my wife and she was going to be at OU for another year. After we got married, I ended up kind of realizing like I wasn't quite ready to go into the workforce. I had kind of a gap year and that led me to saying yes, to a full time ministry opportunity with Campus Crusade. Now it's called crew, where I was just basically engaged in ministry to students. And that was a pretty life changing experience. So much so that I went from thinking I was headed to the professional world to I spent the next eight years in full time ministry. So I really intimately know what it's like to be in the nonprofit world, to raise your salary, all of the different dynamics that come with that. And by the time I got to 30, I just assumed that this is what I was going to do. And I think maybe for, I don't know, one of the first times in my life I felt really comfortable in my own skin, that even though the way that things had unfolded was different than maybe I'd anticipated when I was a college student, I felt really good, I felt really meaningful about investing my time and making an impact in the lives of other people. And then ironically, right at that point, my life takes a pretty significant turn towards the business world. My younger brother had a business idea that I helped him to start. It was supposed to be me helping him out on nights and weekends. But the thing that we started got so big so fast that very quickly it turned into a second full time job. And then we had our first child. And I just realized that I had, you know, I was trying to ride multiple horses at the same time and I was really going to have to make a choice. And that led to me moving full time into the business world. And the thesis behind it was just I really felt like I could make more of an impact in the world, potentially through the business world, than I was even making through the nonprofit ministry world. So worked with my brother for several years and then in 2015, I got really, I think I got kind of burnt out on the kind of typical company building and some of that. I'll tell people sometimes I feel a little bit like a nonprofit refugee in the for profit world in that a lot of the most formative things that have happened in my life happened when I was working in the nonprofit world. And so I tend to look at everything through a little bit more of that frame. And I was just not very motivated by the idea of simply growing profit. So I got to kind of a fork in the road where I needed to make a decision was I going to stay in the business world or I was going to go back into the nonprofit world. And I made the decision that I wanted to stay in the business world. I felt like that was the calling, but that I wanted to do it in a really radically different way that instead of kind of asking, well what do other people do? What are kind of the archetypes out there to just kind of say from a first principles perspective with what I believe and the way that I think, the way that things could be and should be, what kind of a company would I build? And that company had two co founders is what Simple Modern was started on that idea. So people will ask me all the time about how we came up with insulated drinkware. And the reality is the idea that we would sell water bottles and tumblers came, I don't know, a good five to six months after the initial ideas for the company. Because the initial idea for the company was really a lot more about purpose and about culture than it was about what we would sell. And so we had a lot of really great ideas about culture and purpose. And then it was like, well, how are you going to fund that? You know, how are you going to pay for it? And fortunately we were able to find a product that we've, we've been really successful with. But it's, it's probably the most atypical thing about the company is that we started with asking those bigger questions about what were we trying to build, what was the environment we were trying to create, what would it feel like to work inside the company and then we worked outward into what the company would do. And that's what I do today. I'm the CEO of that company. We are in about our 10th year. We were a bootstrap company, which means we didn't take outside investment. I tell people that's two reasons. One is that we really, we had such radical ideas about what a company could be that we really thought it would be a bad idea to take on investors. Because most investors would not want a company that's giving away a bunch of its profits and doing some of the things we're doing. But the other reason is everybody thought it was a terrible idea. They thought we were going to get crushed in this industry. Nobody wanted to give us money. So that was great. It's great that we didn't want to raise it because nobody wanted to give it to us. But as a result of being bootstrapped, now that we've gotten to the scale that we're at, we are able to be pretty idealistic in terms of how we handle the finances of the company. And I'll tell college students this all the time, this generation of college students is probably the most cause driven I think I've seen in my life. And the Research bears that out. And what I will communicate to them is you earn the right to be idealistic. That through operating with excellence and serving people at a really high level, the market will reward you with profit. And then, you know, when you do that, you get the right to choose how you're going to use that profit and you can be as idealistic realistic as you want to be with it. And that's kind of the story of how we've gotten here. [00:07:54] Speaker D: That is amazing. I love all of that. And there's several quotes, several things you said that we could probably spend the whole podcast talking about. I mean, I know one I can just based on even our notes, I can tell one that stood out to Hannah was non profit refugee in the profit world. I mean the purpose idea, the, the, the, the, the focus on culture above product even. Right. Like you weren't exactly sure. I mean, that's not the typical journey, right, for a company and it's not the typical journey for a company as successful as yours. I mean, talk, talk. So maybe just as an addendum, add on a little bit to how that's evolved since. Right, like how, how you, you, you. So it went and it all of a sudden you had this product where. And it worked. And then you're selling like in Target and you've got these crazy contracts with brands and like it kind of evolves from there. Talk about that evolution. [00:08:52] Speaker C: Well, I think that it builds in pieces. But one thing that I think it really starts with is that when you build a great culture and you build a great team that is really motivated by the cause and when they can draw kind of a straight line mentally between the work that they're doing and impacting other people's lives, then you set yourself up for success. And there have been, you know, a thousand things that have broke our way or big moments in the company that have led to us being at the scale that we're at. But I think it's all an outflow of building a great culture that is truly purpose driven. And then I think it starts to become inevitability. Like, you know, you can't control so many things. You can't control the economy, you can't control what the market will prefer, you can't control inflation. But what you can control is culture. And if you have a great culture and you have people that really have a missionary mindset as opposed to a mercenary mindset, which interestingly, that idea was coined by Jeff Bezos, who I don't think is particularly spiritual, but he Just made the observation that when people have intrinsic motivation, as opposed to extrinsic motivation, that they will just stick with things way longer, and they can just endure the ups and downs and vicissitudes of business and a market and the economy. And that's really kind of our story, I think, is that we built a team where, to some extent, I think it was kind of inevitable that this group was going to be successful. I don't think it was inevitable we would have this level of success. I don't think you can ever plan on the size. I mean, at this point. We just had a. A promotion last week where someone got our 50 millionth bottle that we had made. And so I don't think you ever anticipate getting to that kind of scale. But I do think that with the commitment that we had to purpose and culture, I think it was inevitable that we were going to have some level of success. But it's just kind of stacked over time. The one thing I will say that has really helped us is that we're very intentional about showing people how their work matters and how it connects to the lives of people. Whether that's the organizations we partner with, like Love justice, or that's the customers that we serve or the partners that we work with, we do a lot of telling those stories. This is something I probably took from my time in the nonprofit world, how stories are what motivate us and. And what's so motivating when we can understand. When I did this, this led to this outcome in somebody else's life and made this person's life better. So we've been. We've been really intentional in doing that in the company. And then I think the other thing that we've been very intentional about doing is saying for this culture to be strong and for it to be what we want it to be, everybody in the organization has to own it. Everybody. There's a great quote. You know, culture is like a garden. It only thrives if everyone picks the weeds, everyone fertilizes the plants, everyone waters the soil. And that's an approach we've. We've really tried to take. And I think as a result, it's just kind of grown and compounded over time. And even as it's happening, it's easy to forget what's the kind of ridiculous nature of what the company's grown into. And then you look up, you kind of pop your head up every few months, every year or two, and you kind of look back and you say, wow, how did we get here, this is really remarkable, but I think it's just that it's a very purposeful group of people that have been willing to commit a big chunk of their lives to building something. And as a result, we've been really fortunate to have a lot of success in the marketplace. [00:12:40] Speaker B: Mike, what I love about your perspective is it's the story of you being in the nonprofit and then transitioning to the for profit. And I think you hear a lot of people almost share the opposite experience of, oh, I was in for profit, it wasn't fulfilling, and then I left and went into nonprofit. And so that's what I think is so unique about just hearing you share your experience and how that has informed you in creating this ridiculously successful company, but doing it really well and very intentionally. And just even the things that you're talking about culture, I'm like, man, I know the three of us are like, yeah, we could resonate with that. We're having those similar conversations about culture of impact. And so I just appreciate that perspective. And it also just seems like you guys have had a lot of favor, right? Like, just this, you know, like, light. Light touches that lead to just crazy outcomes. [00:13:36] Speaker C: Yeah, and that's definitely true. And I think, I think some of it is explainable, and some of it is not. You know, some of it is probably providential, divine. Some of it is more explainable. I, I. Humans are reciprocal, and they tend to want to help and vote for and aid other humans that they just believe in and that they like. And so when you're about the right things and people know that they will find ways to try and help you that you could never anticipate. You know, obviously, the reason that you don't set out to be about the right things to impress other people or to give other people a certain impression, but inevitably, when you do it there, there will be ways that that comes back that are unexpected. And I could probably name, you know, 20 or 30 examples of that where it's like, wow, a kindness displayed to somebody in 2016 turned into an opportunity in 2021 that we could have never anticipated. I think this idea, this concept, it parallels really nicely to the nonprofit world, which, like, let's just take the example of love, justice. It is really difficult to understand the ripple effect on the world when someone who would have been trafficked does not get trafficked. Right. But we know it's real, and we know it's significant. And over the course of 100 or 200 years, it probably impacts hundreds or thousands of lives. Every one life that avoids trafficking, there's probably a thousand lives that are impacted. One of my favorite quotes I've ever heard. You can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can never count the number of apples in a seed. And it's really that idea expressed that when we bestow kindness to others, when we come to the aid of other people, we know that we're doing something good. And we know that we are changing the trajectory of the world, but we don't know exactly how. And that's not why we do it. We don't do it for some benefit that might come back to us in the future, but we know that we are. And. And so I think that that idea has been. Has been really powerful, like we've tried to. Just as a simple example, one of the things that we've done, and we talk about this all the time, is that we are going to be relational instead of transactional in our business. Many businesses are very transactional. If you do this for me, I'll do this for you. The moment you stop doing X for me, I will not do Y for you. And that we view people that are in competing organizations as the enemy. We view, really anybody who's not in our organization isn't on our team. And it's kind of like there's a little bit of an adversarial nature of the relationship. And we said, well, that's really not the way that we want to live life. And we don't think that's the right way to approach things. Like, what if we just treated everyone as a human that has inherent value, and we treated them with kindness and respect and dignity, and that applies even to competitors. That we're going to treat people as having value because they do have value. And we're going to sidestep this whole thing that you can get sucked into with business. And I think that's been really powerful as well. And what that does is it really draws people in. It really makes people stop and say, okay, wait a second. [00:17:05] Speaker E: Why? [00:17:06] Speaker C: I want to know more. It builds credibility in their eyes. And so I think all of these things have kind of combined to help us. But there's something important to say here, which is we're also really, really good at what we do. Like, I've built a team that are exceptional people and that are exceptionally gifted. Our success has been in part due to having strong mission and having strong character, strong focus, the way that we've treated people. And then there's another part of it that's just we've, we've gathered really, really gifted people who have been willing to work very hard at things. And I think that that's, organizationally what you're always trying to do is you're trying to find that intersection. You are trying to find really gifted people. And really it is remarkable to work with people that have such, that are such high caliber talent. So it's all those things combined, I would say, because people ask me this question that we're kind of going around all the time of like, okay, how, how is this possible? And I, I always like to preface it with Simple Modern. I think there's principles you can draw and apply non profit, for profit. You know, even if you're a teacher, if you're in different industries, like I think you can take some of these principles. But then there's other pieces that I think are unique to Simple Modern. And I don't want to gloss over that, that a lot of our success is due to kind of the unique caliber of person we've been able to recruit. But even to that, this is a thing about building organizations and building teams. We're living in a world where if the only thing you're competing on is compensation, then you're just not going to do very well. Like exceptional, talented people want to be around other exceptional, talented, driven people. And in fact, what, when you, when you get people that are intrinsically motivated, they tend to care a lot more about what am I building towards, what am I learning, how am I being challenged by the people around me? Like the extrinsic stuff starts to matter less and less to them. And so that's maybe another thing that I took from the non profit world that was really helpful. Typically people that are very, you know, kind of extrinsically motivated by money or status or whatever, while you're not going to go into the non profit world. [00:19:26] Speaker B: So in the vein of just the intrinsic value that Simple Modern has, you guys have on your website, that Simple Modern exists to give generously. The company gifts at least 10% of profits to non profits. Additionally, you guys have partnered with more than 100 nonprofits and have given more than $10 million in the last eight years. Mike, why is being generous and giving to organizations like Love justice important to both you personally, but also how has it defined the culture of Simple Modern that you've been talking about? [00:19:58] Speaker C: Sure. Well, I'll just start here. I think regardless of where you're coming from spiritually, there is a tremendous amount of evidence that for some reason as humans, we are wired where generosity is important, important and beneficial to us. Not just when we're receiving it, but also when we're giving it. I, I like to say that generosity is one of the very few acts where both parties, the giver and the receiver, both come out of the, out of it better. And there's a lot of reasons for that. I think one of the things is that when the worst parts of us, the our selfishness, our self centeredness, those tend to be the world is about me and when I get things, I'm spending it on me. And we know what research says is that that leads to deeply unhappy people generally. And so I think the first thing is I think about it kind of like we all have a disease. And it turns out that the only thing that kind of the antibody that holds that disease in check is, is generosity. That giving is one of the few acts that kind of counteracts it. And so just generally, like, whether I'm talking to people, somebody that's spiritual or not, I just think I always encourage them, hey, how is giving a part of your life? Because I think it can be profoundly transformative. I think from an organizational level it makes it a lot easier to say, this is why we work really hard. But if you're having, let's say, a negotiation with Walmart or Target and they say, hey, we want you to sell this to us for one quarter less, and we say, well, we really don't want to sell it to you for that price, what is the motivation behind why we don't? And, and if the answer is, well, we just, you know, we want to make our stock price go up, you know, a quarter of a percent or, you know, Mike can buy a nicer car, that is not a compelling reason. But instead when you're like, hey, when we fight for that extra quarter with Target, that means that 200 people don't get traffic. That means that this town in Africa has clean and sustainable drinking water. That means that, you know, children whose parents are going through homelessness are able to experience a secure education. Like, that's very motivating, especially because sometimes the process of making money does have conflict. It has hard work, it has, there is a grind to it and, and there is a level of, of sacrifice and conflict that comes with it. So it's important to be able to say, this is why it's worth it. This is why, you know, if you stay up at 9:00, make sure the job gets done really well on something instead of going to a movie or doing something else that that can be purposeful, that can be meaningful. And so I think that for us, what we've been able to do is draw a really clear line to when we do our job with excellence, we are able to give more. And a lot of people's lives are improved. And that's not actually just true of our nonprofit partners. Like one of the things, I just posted it today, and it's going kind of viral on social media. We announced yesterday that we are offering $6,000 in childcare reimbursement to every employee starting, starting now, and as part of their annual kind of benefits. And so we take this idea of generosity and say, how do we apply that to everybody who has interaction with the company? That's the community that we're planted in. That's the team members that work at the company. That is the partners that we work with, the Amazons and Targets and Walmarts. And that's also obviously the love justices of the world that we're, as customers we serve. Even the prices that we charge, we're constantly saying, hey, how can we incorporate this idea of generosity where everybody's life feels enriched in some way as a result of interacting with the company? And so we take a really holistic approach. The one other thing that's worth saying here, and I think this is a pretty big unlock, is that we don't define generosity as just giving money. We define generosity as taking anything that you have and that you have an abundance of and sharing it with others to improve their life. And the reason why I think it's so important to take kind of this capital G view of generosity, is that there are people in our company that are not situated in a way where they can give very much money to charities. Right now, they've got young kids, you know, they're earning potential, whatever. And so if the idea is, well, the company is generous because we write checks, then it's like, well, I hope Mike stays about that, you know, because that's the. The entire kind of idea and purpose and mission rests on his kind of benevolence, or him and Brian, my co founder. But if instead you say, no, no, listen, generosity is with our words, with our actions, with our time, with our skills, with our resources, with everything that we have. It's saying, what do I have that I can use, that I can share with others for their benefit? And it unlocks this really tantalizing idea, which is that every single person in an organization, in our organization, can be a leader in generosity. Now, that's going to look different based on how they're situated in the company, but that everybody can fully engage with the mission and everyone can lead in that. And that was a pretty big unlock. It's part of the reason why I always felt like our culture would get weaker as we got larger. That once you get to 100, 130, 150 employees, it's just kind of impossible to really keep strong culture. And there's. It's true that in most organizations, that's how it works. The bigger they get, the more the organization starts to become kind of a loose average of its surrounding culture. But one of the things that I didn't realize, and I do now, is that in certain settings, as organizations get bigger, the culture gets stronger. And the key is that it's owned by everyone. When it's owned by everyone, then every time you add a person, there's just more people that are kind of acting out and enforcing and advocating for what you're about. And it starts to become kind of takes on a life and a momentum and a gravity of its own. And that's kind of, I think, where we've gotten. But like I said, one of the unlocks is you really have to say, okay, what are we about organizationally? And then how can every single person lead in that? So for some people, like one of my favorite examples, we have a lot of women that are at the beginning of starting families. They're young professionals that are starting families. One of the people on our senior leadership team, her children are almost all fully grown, basically, as a mentor that's helping them through the process of parenting young kids. And that's incredibly generous. It makes a huge impact in those women's lives. And for other people, like, I see it with the way that they affirm and the way that they use their words. There are other people that are really skilled in an area like Excel, and they use that skill to help teach new people and help them develop their, you know, as a professional. Anyway, there's a. There's a thousand different ways it's convenient look. But that idea, I think, was a big unlock. So the. The two main ideas I would pull out is that generosity helps us to actually become the version of ourself that we want to be. And there's no other way to get to it. There's only one way you get to it, and that is generosity is a part of it. And then the second. And people. You know, humankind has known this basically for thousands of years in this kind of modern secular world. We kind of have forgotten some pretty obvious things that have been known for a long time. And then the second piece is that I think having generosity and defining it broadly where everybody can earn it has been a really big unlock. [00:27:53] Speaker D: It's huge. I mean, it's huge. It's been so definitive for you. It's so obvious. And it's helped in recruiting, it's helped in relationship, it's helped in retention. Right. It's, it's probably helped all across the board word and everything you've done. And it's so impactful and so much that, that those who are listening can learn whether they're in the for profit or the non profit space. And so let me turn to John for just a second and, and ask that question. Like John, I mean, what you're as you. There's so much Mike saying that resonates with our organization and resonates with you. You know, you guys both believe, I think if you were cut, you would believe generosity and impact. Right? Like those are two things that would be core to who you are. And so especially for those listening, like what can nonprofits and businesses be learning from each other? [00:28:48] Speaker E: Yeah, well, I'm certainly learning a lot from Mike and, and have. Yeah, I've really appreciated everything you've shared. In some ways, Mike and I have come very different paths. You know, I was, I became a Christian when I was 18, went to college, became very passionate about my faith and ended up moving to Nepal shortly after college and was just searching for something that, you know, I was searching for the same thing that Mike was searching for, that, that sense of purpose and meaning. And of course I found it in love justice. But at that time, 20 years ago, my inclination about what businesses, nonprofits can learn from each other, I would have answered that question very differently. I had this very idealistic view of sort of missions and sort of this, what has Christ to do with the world? And as time went by and I was leading Love, justice, and you know, we're trying to impact people's lives, I was having trouble getting people to do the things that I wanted to do and that mattered because when in this work, you know, if people aren't doing the things that you're asking them to do, that's lives not impacted. And so what I've realized over time is nonprofits and businesses are essentially doing the same thing. They're organizing people together to accomplish outcomes. And I started to see years ago what amazing things businesses were able to accomplish in terms of human organization, effective Businesses are marvels of the accomplishment of outcomes through effective human organization. And if any nonprofit can achieve the excellence of the most effective companies, it could have such an impact. And, you know, nonprofits have the same basic functions the businesses do. Hr, management, finance, sales, operations. We also have a culture, you know, and. And it's really important to get that culture right. That's one of the things that I have been learning from Mike, both on this call and in other ways from. But you can either do those things badly or well. But your organization is not going to accomplish your mission if you do them badly. So it behooves the leaders of every nonprofit to learn from business, which has taken all of those things to such levels of excellence. But I would say there's a second way that we're both doing the same thing. We're both trying to provide people things that they want or need. And with businesses, there's an accountability measure. People won't pay for it if they don't want it or need it. But nonprofits are providing things that people want or need, but perhaps either they don't realize it or they maybe can't pay for it. But we lack that accountability measure. We may end up just providing people things they actually don't want, and it's not really helping them. And we may not realize that because it's not being tested by whether they're willing to keep paying for it. If this thing really is valuable that we're offering, why do we have to give it away? And so, you know, Jesus said, whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me. And that's a big part of our mission. And I believe that non profits should focus on the least of these, a few people who need something very desperately. But either they realize they don't realize they need it, or they are too poor to afford it. But as I've looked at, as I've learned about businesses and I've studied businesses, I would discover that so many businesses have mission like Tom's is to use business to improve lives. The body shop. We exist to fight for a fair, most beautiful world. And I used to get cynical or have a cynical reaction when I'd read that. I'd be like, wait a minute, you're trying to make money, you know, but, but first of all, there's nothing wrong with making, trying to make money. But I also, I saw how effective businesses, the people both really believe those things and also they were really accomplishing those. Those things. They were, you know, serving people well, providing them things that they, they actually want. That is in and of itself a good thing. And really if you're trying to make money, the only long term reliable way to do that is to keep providing things for people that they want enough to actually pay for that they actually value. And as I thought more about this, it like, it occurred to me Bill Gates probably did more good by making his millions than by giving it away. You know, because think of how much his business has changed the world and changed our lives and changed the things we're doing this very minute. And, and almost every other person on the planet is so, but, but there's, honestly, there's no greater example that I, that I've run across of what, what I'm talking about here than simple Modern's mission. You know, we exist to give generously. That's amazing. But I would say like you're doing good twice, both by making the things that people want and by giving it away and creating impact. But I also say like that's true as you, as you said, Mike, like that mission is true even if it wasn't your mission statement. [00:33:44] Speaker C: Right. [00:33:44] Speaker E: It really is true that God created us for love and that is our purpose, whether we recognize or realize it or not. And so I would say if there's anything that businesses have to learn from non profits, it's probably what you learn through your journey. That there's something out there that is in our hearts and it is the purpose that God created for its love, it's impact, it's making a difference in this world. And ultimately we're never really going to be fulfilled until we're achieving that higher purpose that we are called for. [00:34:12] Speaker C: Yeah. I want to stack two ideas on top of that that I think are important that I've learned. One is that profit is not a four letter word. And I think that for some people it's easy to think about profit, profit that way. That profit is in some way exploitative. [00:34:29] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:34:30] Speaker C: And the way that I think about profit, and when profit's used well, profit is a better word for it is just potential that profit creates. The opportunity to invest in a better future that is not there without excess, without margin, there is no investment and without investment there is no better future. And so I think you nailed it. That you hope that you get profit not through being exploitative, but through serving people and providing them a service and that they're happy to pay for. Generally that's what happens in business is that the way that you make profit is actually by serving people and that that profit actually is part of this flywheel of making the future larger for everybody. So I had to kind of, I think coming out of the nonprofit world, I think I had to kind of get to the point of like realizing like, profit's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. The second. So anyway, that, that was, I would say that was a pretty significant hang up for me. And it took some while, it took a while for, for me to get over. Here's the second idea, which is in any organization full of human beings, you will imperfectly chase your mission. So there are definitely days where I do not feel like I'm being a very generous person. I definitely have selfish impulses. And I am sure that somebody could say, well, you have this lofty mission statement, but couldn't you be doing more here? Or wasn't, you know, wasn't this act here not quite as generous as it could have been? And they would, I mean, I'm sure they'd be right, you know, that they, they able to find plenty of examples where we've fallen short of it. And the reason I say that is I think if our standard becomes, well, if you don't apply this perfectly, this, this mission or this thing you're striving after, then, you know, you're virtue signaling, you're manipulating people, whatever. And because humans are fallible, it's like, well, that's always going to be the case, so you might as well not shoot for anything. So instead, what I think is a much more helpful paradigm is a simple question. Is it sincere? Is it sincere? If you look at the Bible, actually the reason why Jesus had such an issue with the Pharisees was this concept of hypocrisy, that there was a disconnect between why they said they did things and why they actually did things, and that that is kind of a trap or a pit that we can fall into. And so for me, the number one way that I evaluate the organization's health, I mean, I do want to ask the question like, hey, are we effective in this? Are we applying this? How can we do more of it? But an even more important question for me has been, is it sincere? When we say that the company exists to be able to be a conduit of generosity, is that real or is that just talk? And if it's real and it's sincere, I can deal with the fact that we're going to imperfectly chase after that goal. But if it's not sincere, and we're just saying it because it sounds good or it makes us feel good. That's a different thing, and that's a problem. So I think in your organization, the biggest litmus test is actually sincerity. Now, I don't want to discount the fact that sincerity enough is not. It doesn't get you all the way there. There's a great book, When Helping Hurts, that talks about, hey, there've been a lot of sincere people over the years that have given to things and have actually made things worse instead of better. But I think sincerity is the start. That without sincerity, it's like, I do not pass go, do not collect $200. You know, the game doesn't even start until you can really. There's a great Feynman quote. He says, the first principle is, you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. And so the most dangerous narratives, the most dangerous lies, are actually the lies we tell ourselves about why we're doing things and about what we're really after. If you can get a group of people to at least be honest about, hey, what are we really after and what are we chasing and why are we chasing it, then figuring out how to do that becomes a heck of a lot easier. [00:38:46] Speaker E: Yeah. If I could just respond to one thing you said there. You said earlier that generosity is one of the only. The only transaction with both parties benefit. But I would say that another example of a transaction where both parties benefit is any market transaction that both parties enter to freely and with knowledge, without deception. You know, like anytime anybody buys something, you sell the cup because the money that you get for the cup is worth more than. And. And I buy it because the cup is worth more than the money, and we both benefit. In fact, development that has lifted the world out of poverty is largely built on the compiling of those little transactions in which both sides benefit. And that's precisely what makes human trafficking such an injustice, is that that freedom to enter into or choose whether or not to enter into an agreement is taken away. And when that's taken away, it becomes such a terrible injustice. And so the other thing, just on sincerity, you know, I spent in my early years in Nepal, I was kind of aware of this instinct in myself of like, oh, you just want people to think you're doing and say you're making an impact. And look at your. And I tried and tried to be like, to stop feeling that. And I kind of got to the point of just realizing that that is true about me. I do want that. And, and, And I don't need to because. Because I think what would have happened is I would have lied to myself about it and said, no, I don't care about that, but it wouldn't have been true and it was better to just be honest about it. In fact, there's not it, it, it can be, get out of control very easily. But to just have some level of concern for the opinion of other people and want to people to think well of you and want the people who you respect more to think even better, want even more for them and most of all for God is actually kind of a positive thing. But yeah, what you said about self deception and our propensity to deceive ourselves, I think that's, that's so important. And, and I've seen that in myself and the ways that I tend to deceive myself or strive to deceive myself is really important. It's been a really important thing for me to learn and grow in and learn to understand. [00:41:07] Speaker C: So it's really interesting if, if you, you think about it, that at no point in the Bible does God ever put forward the idea that we are able to do anything exclusively out of altruism. That basically it is impossible for humans to be 100% altruistic and that that's not unexpected and that God does incentivize us to do things that are not only in our interest, but there also is self interest involved. And I think that that's powerful. Like, I mean, I think when you start to claim there's nothing in it for me, then it's like, well, that you're just not being honest. And I think that that's when we tend to be less trustful of somebody because we're like, okay, I don't believe you. And you know that that thing that's in it for us might just be that, hey, I get to feel good that the way that I use my money or the way that I use my time here, I feel good about it. And that's not a bad thing. So I think the idea that having self interest in how we engage in generosity is bad. Like throw that out. Because even, you know, even like I said, if you, if you look at a lot of things Jesus says, he's like, hey, there are like actual rewards for people who apply these principles in their life. So I, I, I'm a big believer in it is good to develop a heart and a care for other people and to be in tune with the fact that their needs and the way that God has wired, you can go hand in hand and that the things that you need Your soul needs actually can, many of them can only come by helping others and engaging in the needs and the pains and the sorrows of other people. And so anyway, that's been really powerful for me as well. And it's one of the things that I think is important for me to do because I don't want, want to be some kind of a phantom where it's like, well, that's great that that guy can think that way. But I could never think that way. You know, it's like I can be just as selfish, I can be just as self centered as anybody else. I've been trying over, you know, whatever my adult life to build the muscle of not, you know, in, in scripture it says look, you know, look not only to your own interests. It's interesting. It doesn't say look exclusively to the interests of other people because that wouldn't even be a realistic ask and God knows that. But the way that the verse reads, it says look not only to your own interest. It's like it's a given that we are going to be self interested. But what's not a given is if it's going to end there and terminate there, or if we're going to be able to lift our eyes and look outward from ourselves and see a broken world that is in need of, it's in need of generosity, it's in need of service, it's in need of love. And that when we can do that, that not only does it transform the world outside of us, but it transforms us inwardly as well. [00:43:56] Speaker E: Yeah, like love, love your neighbor as yourself presupposes that you already love yourself. [00:44:01] Speaker C: And it doesn't love yourself. Right. You know, what you want to have. [00:44:05] Speaker E: And you, I mean, whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Well, if you're motivated by finding it, then you should do that, you know. And yeah, my, I, I spent Price spent five years trying to convince Kirk, our chief of staff of this, of this point, that that sort of selfish does not equal good. It is not synonymous with good. And I finally made the point like, what's your motivation for wanting to eat strawberries? Is it selfish and therefore is it wrong? And, and that somehow that point finally unlocked it for him. But I found people will talk to me about, oh, you've sacrificed, how much you've sacrificed. Because of course I moved to Rome years ago, I've lived there and it went through some things. It was hard, it was, it was traumatizing. But the just in this world, you know, Christ promises is whoever Leaves, leaves, field or home. For the gospel will not fail to receive 100 times what he left in this life and the next. And that has been very much true. Like, I haven't. I have been blessed with this tremendous community, this tremendous sense of purpose that has meant more to me than. Than anything that I, you know, when I was here trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life before I moved to Nepal, everything felt. I felt sort of empty. And then I found this incredible mission and purpose. And so I. I'm learning to trust God in. In his promises that in learning that, like, whatever we give up for the sake of the kingdom, we will not regret. Ultimately, you know, and I believe that in areas where I've experienced it, but now I need to learn to believe that in areas where it still feels scary and it still feels like sacrifice. But from. For me, I know there's areas where it once looked like a daunting sacrifice, but actually it's an invitation into something meaningful. And yes, it is sacrifice too, but the blessedness far outweighs it. [00:45:51] Speaker C: Well, and it's interesting because the gospel is really the idea that we are given an undeserved gift. And I mentioned this earlier, like, we are reciprocal in nature. And so the idea that God would give us something and then we can't really give anything back is very difficult. In fact, I would say all of human religion is kind of, except for the Christian thought process is wound up in this idea of like, okay, I give this to God and He gives this to me. It's more transactional in nature. The idea that God would give us something and there's nothing we can give back is a very hard idea. And what's interesting about sacrifice, whether that's with money or our time or our career or anything else, is that it's one of the few ways we cannot pay back. And we can't equivocate it with what Christ did for us. But what we can do is we can reflect what Christ did for us in a way. You know, the way Scripture would put it is that we're sharing with him in his sufferings. And so it simultaneously does it by of things. It's an act of worship towards God when in the way that he was sacrificial, that we are also sacrificial in some way in our lives. It also glorifies Him. It's like a way of worshiping and saying, I get it and I appreciate, you know, I can never pay back what you've done for me, but What I can do is I can imitate it in a way that it's clear how deeply that's impacted me and how grateful I am. And so that I think that's been really important for. For me as well, because my heart really longs for. Is. It longs to be able to tell God how appreciative I am, and it longs to be able to earn, which it can't. And so, you know, the Christian life is about learning to funnel it not towards earning but towards gratefulness and just kind of reflecting what God's already done in your life. And that's really what sacrifice and generosity is, is all about. It's that I am in some small way, I'm imitating the way that Christ already loved me, me. And it makes me feel good to love others the way that Christ loved me, like just in and of itself inherently. I mean, the, the early church, it's. It's very difficult for us in our day and age to understand this, but it was a high on to be a martyr. You know, like, there's a point in Acts where they arrest Peter and John, I think, and they take him before the Sanhedrin. And basically the Sanhedrin says, well, you know, we're going to beat you up, basically. And the. The little postscript on it, you know, it's basically like they went away joyful, you know, because they were. They were able to. To suffer in his name. And it's like, man, that is a very perplexing idea, and it's one worth kind of sitting on for a second, that in the early church, they found that God considered them worthy of enduring suffering. That was a high honor. And certainly that's not the way that we think about things in our culture. Like, in our culture, it's like any level of suffering, any level of sacrifice is, you know, why have you abandoned me, God? [00:48:58] Speaker E: Why. [00:48:58] Speaker C: Why is this happening to me? You know, this shouldn't happen to good people. But the early church had it just the opposite. They said when you were able to go through suffering, that was actually a picture of God's favorite, because you were. And so anyway, it's. It's very challenging to think that way, but it is clear that the way that the human heart works is. Is kind of mysterious. And it's mysterious that the. The highest levels of satisfaction and meaning and purpose often come not through great circumstances, but through hard circumstances. [00:49:31] Speaker E: Yeah, there was a. I think it's Solon, who was a philosopher king in the ancient world and someone. And he was Known for his wisdom. Somebody asked him who is the happiest man? And he told the story of these two brothers who I think their mother was dying and they, they, they needed to go somewhere to get medicine and they had to go so fast and so far and they ran and over this great distance and they were so exhausted and they came into the. The town carrying the medicine that would save their mother's life, collapsed and died. And according to Solon, those. That is his example of the happiest person. It's very paradoxical. That's the Christian worldview. You know, Paul says, I want to know Christ and the power of sharing in his suffering, the fellowship of sharing his sufferings, becoming like him in death. And so somehow to attain the resurrection of the dead. And it's hard to get that into our heart. But in a little bit of the places where I, I have, I have let it in. I have seen God, is he. His promises are true. So. [00:50:40] Speaker D: Yeah. Is that, Isn't that what abundant life is? Right? Like, it, it's a life giving life, right? And I think, I think to your point, Mike too, the idea of sincerity in the least of these story, right, it's this, it's the sheep who end up saying to Jesus, well, when did we do that? Right? Like the, like there was some aspect of how they lived and how they thought about this that embodied this notion of what the two of you are talking about and that the idea of selfish, selfish selflessness or selfless selfishness, but being sincere about it and then not even holding on to the fact that you sacrificed, right? Brendan Manning says that in his book Signature of Jesus, right? Like when someone comes to the master and says, look at all I've done for you and all I've sacrificed for you. And, and Jesus says to them, give me that too, right? Like this, you know, this idea of, of when did we do that? Jesus, like, so, like that person getting there, they love their mom so much, they didn't even think twice, right? They didn't even think twice about it. They. They got so. It's so powerful. I love, I love. And this conversation, Kali, it's been so rich to, to, to, to just listen in on. So I, I didn't even want to speak up, but I wanted to say that. So there you go. [00:52:00] Speaker B: I know. I was just gonna say, Jason, like, it's just, it's. It's such a privilege. Like I'm going in and out of like speechlessness of like, oh my gosh, this is so good. And I don't even. It's just been an amazing conversation to. To be a part of. And yeah, Mike, what you don't see, I don't think, is like, all of us taking notes as you're talking to and just hearing you speak. And it's just. What I love about these podcasts, too, is that you really get to know the heart behind the person that we're talking to. And it's these unique environments that allow for that, which I'm just. We're just really grateful for just even your generosity in giving us this time to have this conversation. As someone who I imagine is incredibly busy and has so many things to. [00:52:48] Speaker C: Do, I'll add one more idea on that, on that note, because as we're coming to the end of our time, I think it's very relevant. One of the things I think about generosity is generosity is, in its very essence, it's sacrifice, is you are giving, but there's no sacrifice. That's great, but that's not generosity. Generosity is when there is a sacrificial element to giving. Otherwise, it's just giving. And so, like, I think that's kind of an interesting idea, and I'll. I'll put a really fine point on it. When I was in college or right after college, when I was working for Campus Crusade, I made $18,000 a year my first year. And I would take students to lunch where I would often talk to them about the Bible, and God would impress upon me often that he wanted me to buy lunch for somebody. And even this is back, you know, pre a lot of inflation, $5 would buy somebody's lunch. And I remember really not wanting to do it many times because it was like, I really want to hang on to that $5. That's how precious $5 was at that point. And one of the ideas that God impressed upon me, it's interesting, is that it's just like you never get to go back and have the opportunity to give that $5 again in the future. $5 probably will not be as big a deal to you right now, but it is a big deal to you right now, and I want you to be generous. And so, anyway, I would always try and lean into that. Today, $5 is not sacrificial. And in fact, today I can write a check orders of magnitude bigger than that without even thinking about it, without even really feeling like I'm sacrificing. I have enough money, you know, quote unquote, in my name that I could probably live 100 lifetimes off of it. I've got the time for one lifetime, or really at this point, probably half a lifetime. And that juxtaposition I really feel. And I feel that now in my life where God's calling me to be sacrificially generous. I mean, obviously it plays out in the finances, but it's hard when you have every need that you could ever want provided for and the company's been so successful. And where he's really been challenging me has been in my time because it's very easy to say, well, my company's giving all this and everybody knows me as being super generous and so I can be selfish with my time. And I think that would be. Be the worst possible thing for me. I think that what I've heard from God in that is like, no, this is exactly where I need you to lean into generosity in this next season of your life. And so one of the fun kind of challenges I have for myself is I may be able to give tens or hundreds of millions of dollars away in my lifetime, but I want to make more impact through my time than my, my financial giving. And I don't know if that'll be possible, but that's at least a. It's a bar that I'm kind of aspiring to. And like you said, every hour feels costly. And that's one of the reasons why I know it's the right thing to be doing is because it is costly and because it is sacrificial. And in different seasons of our life, what will feel sacrificial will look different. But I think that's also a really good indicator of where God's calling us to actually lean into generosity. [00:56:10] Speaker B: That is so encouraging. [00:56:12] Speaker E: If I could just say one thing here I. I was as. I've been thinking about what you shared earlier, Mike, when you said like, we can never really give anything to God. And of course that's true in a sense, but Jesus said, whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters of wine, you do for me. There is one. There's at least one clear indication in scripture that we can give something to God. And, and I'll just. Regarding sacrifice, I agree that God wants our sacrifice, but all. But I'm just learning that not because he wants us to just not have that thing and then suffer. And then there's some, you know, flimsy spiritual. But it. Letting the sacrifices itself reveals itself in time to have actually been not a sacrifice. You know, sacrifices itself not a sacrifice, but the opening of your. Of our hands to receive a blessing. And I think that's kind of contained in the promises of God and, and who he is. [00:57:04] Speaker C: Yeah, it's good stuff. [00:57:07] Speaker B: Mike. We'll, we'll maybe end with this question. And you just talked about being really generous with your time and, and one of the, one of the main purposes of, of this podcast is just to have conversations about fighting the world's greatest injustices. And you have already shared so much wisdom and, and what I love about things like this is you never know who's going to be listening. It could be someone in college who's, who's majoring in business, or it could be someone who is feeling really prompted to be more generous in their own company and they don't know where to start. We have no idea the seeds that God is planting in this. And the question that I have for you is as corporate environments evolve, how do you see the role of giving changing to meet both business goals and the growing desire for purpose driven work from employees and just from the posture of like continuing just to share your experience to fuel the fire of how can there be more people? Like simple, modern. [00:58:09] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I think that really businesses, what they do is they invest resources. And I think that, I think it's a great investment to invest in giving. I think it's one of the ways we can invest money that produces a real return. And I think the smartest people, one of the things that I've noticed is in the business world there can be a lot of focus on how do I take $1 and turn it into two, but that there's not a lot of thought or intelligence about how do I turn $1 and how do I invest it and turn that into meaning, purpose, happiness, fulfillment, you know, and that's an area where we can do a lot better. And, and some of this is just consumerism and kind of the air we breathe. And it's kind of like, well, if I just get enough money, then I'm sure all that stuff will take care of itself. And it turns out it just doesn't, you know, that it, you don't suddenly feel fulfilled or purposeful. And like I said, I think this generation comes coming up intuitively senses that one of the things that's really interesting about the world and just generations is that they watch their parents and they are very good at picking out their parents. Generations, flowers, flaws. And so when you see culture starting to drift one way, it often is going to counter, it's going to counter drift in the next generation because they are going to see all the Flaws. So I am encouraged. I think there's a lot of things that already the next generation of people that are going to be business leaders are seeing and they see the value and they see the responsibility. I think that when you're a business owner that it is more than just one. What is, what do the investors make? What's the bottom line? That, that you have a larger social contract, that you have a responsibility to more people. And I think that that's the starting point. The other thing is, listen, it just takes avatars. So I, I did not expect that God's calling for my life would be to be an avatar in the business world of how you can do it really bad. That's, that's what he's called me to. And so, like I'm, I kind of feel like, like I said, kind of a missionary in the for profit world. But if that's how God wants to use my life, then, you know, like, I'm happy to do it. The one other kind of thought that just has been bouncing around my head that's worth sharing here is that there's a couple dynamics that I know are true. And I don't, I'm going to leave this without a bow on it because I, I don't know how you resolve this, but one is that Jesus tells us that basically the world is always going to have dysfunction. It's, it's, it's a feature, not a bug, you know, and that as long as there's a world, there will be sick, there will be needy, there will be injustices to fight. But at the same time, we do know that there are ways that we can fight them effectively and that certain things, we've made a lot of progress in rooting them out. And I think that trafficking in particular, part of it is that we have to counteract and fight people that are engaged in this. And part of this is we have to figure out how to make them think differently about the world. Because as we know, as long as there's this kind of demand side, then. And there's going to be a supply side of people that are trying to do this. And so one of the more interesting questions I have is like, how do we partner with love Justice? How do we partner with other people? You know, how do we try and impact that side of the equation? And I don't know what that answer is, but I do think anytime we are able to provide a future business leader, you know, a guy on the street with a larger vision for what their life can be and Kind of lift their eyes, then it enlarges the future, it makes the future better. And, and so that's what I'm trying to do. And within my context, and I think that would probably be the way that I'd leave it is just everybody's called to a different context. You know, most people aren't called to be CEOs. Most people's calling is going to look really different than mine. And. And that's great. You know, the Bible really says in God's economy, the only thing that matters is faith and faithfulness. That it's not about that greatness. The way that the world thinks about greatness is very different than the way that God thinks about greatness. God thinks about. In the context in which I've placed you and in the way that I have called you, are you faithful to me? And so if you're listening to this, my challenge and my encouragement is that do not evaluate your circumstances or your calling through the world's eyes, but instead say, what is God calling me to? And am I willing to follow him and be faithful to that? Because if the answer is yes, then he's going to use you. He's going to change people's lives and that you are going to be proud of how you've invested your time at the end of your life as you're given an account of how you've used what God's given you. And that's what we should all aspire to. [01:02:53] Speaker D: I love it. I love it. I mean, I think I. I love hearing you say that. We, we know you feel that way, but hearing you say it in this context is so powerful and I hope those listening, those watching will take it to heart. And Mike, one way, we've been even imagining how to do part of what you just said, like how you're not exactly sure how to put a bow on it. We are neither. But we do know that micro community among our donors, micro community among those who care like you care how they want to be generous and impactful both. Right. Like they want to make sure their generosity has impact. We're trying to figure out how to leverage the expertise and the. And the strengths of our donor base and our sponsors and our. The people like you have more to give than just a check. Right. And you care about it enough. And so maybe that's a conversation we can have another time, is how to lean into that so that we create almost this donor community that doesn't just impact love, justice. Right, because it'll impact multiple non profits because we help donors think the way that you're thinking about it. I mean, I think that's so powerful. And, and so as we wrap. John, I think it would be really cool. You, you're so passionate about how generosity has real impact and you have stories you could tell abundantly. But I know one of the stories that you can tell well is ways that Simple Modern's generosity has had significant impact. Would you mind just as we wrap kind of sharing about that and your heart for that and, and then we'll kind of close to get. We'll close up things together. [01:04:34] Speaker E: Yeah. So Simple Modern started giving to us in, in 2022 and they were supporting a couple of our projects in Uganda and Sierra Leone and Uganda in particular was. It was. It's kind of an amazing story. For many about four years, Uganda sort of puttered along with getting, you know, between 10 and 50 intercepts in a month. And it was actually around the time that Simple Modern got involved in 2022 that they just saw this huge beginning of a huge impact breakthrough. They started intercepting over 200, then over 400 and over 600 potential victims in a month. Hannah actually was. Is the lead on her verification process. She traveled to Uganda after a lot of this happened to really hear more about the impact. And we had an independent researcher do a, verify a random sample to. And she determined that 100% of the sample were at high risk of being trafficked. And so they just had this real what seemed to almost impact miracle that happened. And really following Simple Modern's generosity in supporting Uganda. And so we started trying to figure out how to make this contagious across our other fields. Kenya is a neighboring country and they had a similar thing happen. Julius, who is the regional steward over both countries, he's the project manager in Uganda. So that the same thing has has since happened in Kenya. And we're now in the process of. Of trying to figure out how did they do this. You know, like trying, trying to figure out how did they do this and how can we make it contagious around around for our fields around the world. And so it all started because of the generosity of, of Simple Modern. [01:06:23] Speaker D: We're very grateful, Mike, and, and, and just so grateful for the way that you guys have partnered along with us and the way that the relationship is growing. I love that you and John connected. I love how you were willing to even have us in some of the impact stories that you guys share, you know, that that were created, were produced recently and we're just so grateful, man like you, we would love to amplify the story. And I do. Like, I feel like I, I feel like I've become one of your big evangelists. I tell all about the, the backpack or that which is brought over here or my tumbler or whatever. But you know, like, you know, and, and just, and I tell them this is a whole lot more than an incredible product. It's, it's the heart behind it is so powerful. And so you. We're so grateful and we're, you know, looking forward to how we'll partner together again and keep telling those stories. And, and so any, any final thoughts from you, Mike, before we wrap up? [01:07:24] Speaker C: No, just other than I'm really proud to be associated with your organization and proud to be associated with people that are doing such meaningful work. So we, you're a key partner for us. We've, I've, as you mentioned, I mean, I've talked to thousands of non profits over the last few years and we, we just really see Love justice is one of the most exceptional groups that we're working with. So thank you for everything you're doing. [01:07:49] Speaker D: Amen. Thank you, John. Thank you for taking the time today too. And Mike, you, like you said, just being generous with your time and we're really appreciative and look forward to keeping the conversation going. [01:08:04] Speaker A: We are grateful for the generous support of the Love justice community. Please consider joining our family of donors. Learn more at lovejustice NGO Love Justice International has internship opportunities available. Visit our [email protected] to learn more about each opportunity and submit your application. We're also looking for teachers for our dream school. Don't miss this opportunity to be a part of the solution. Join Love Justice International in our mission to bring about positive change. For more info, contact CareerSovejustice NGO.

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