Tom Vazzo

How do we think once they get out of prison, they're going to be able to get enough of a job to live and to pay their debt? Nutty, nutty, nutty. But George wanted to do it the right way. He didn't want to go ask his homies in his gang for money because then he was going to be indebted to the gang. He didn't go to a loan shark.

At the time, you can report it for three days of county jail, which is not the safest spot, and earn money off your debt. All right. So I'm talking to him. I'm amazed. I walk away really amazed by him that he's doing it the right way, that all these societal challenges are stopping him, but he's going to still do it the right way. Well, so all weekend long, I'm thinking about it.

I'm thinking, should I have given him money? Should I have loaned him money? Should I have done some other thing? I make a beeline in the next Tuesday to see how it went. And I go right to George and I see the stress on his face asking how it went. I said, what happened? He said, well,

George has custody of his 10-year-old and 8-year-old, which is pretty unusual for a male to get custody as soon as they leave the prison system. And the caregiver who was supposed to show up to watch his kids didn't show up, and he still had to report into county jail. Yeah. And so imagine leaving your 10-year-old in the apartment by themselves for three and a half days. You're in jail.

Now, the kids end up being fine, so nothing went wrong with the kids. But imagine the stress as a parent. So I'm telling the story for a couple of reasons.

One is the rest of us in society can't imagine the challenges that the poor in our society face every day, the choices they got to make, whether it's George trying to choose to go to – having to go to jail to pay off debt and leave his kids alone, or the homegirl who comes in doesn't – one of our employees doesn't eat for breakfast or lunch so she can save money for diapers. Impossible choices.

Right. And so we have to recognize that our folks have to make impossible choices and we have to resist the urge to judge, resist the urge to think, what would I have done? Would I have done something differently?

So I tell the story in relation to your question is as you hire these folks, don't judge, just lean in and help and know that they're working as hard as they can and they're trying to get through it, but lean in and help and don't sort of judge them by their actions in their private life in that sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Let me, I want to come and come at it at two ways. Right. And I just want to be clear to the folks listening. Like I've been in the business world 26 years. I've been doing nonprofit 12 years and I can, I know when I tell these stories, people are saying, well, that's true in the nonprofit sense, but I'm running a for-profit company and you know,

What you guys do is nice, but I got to still do the bottom line, right? And so I recognize that. And so what I want to say is like, even the way you framed it up, like if someone's not doing their job, that's going to impact the whole organization. And we have to feed the whole organization. People got to put food on the table, right? And so even at Homeboy, look, ours is about a mission.

It's a people-oriented business. It's a mission of helping people leave gang life behind. So if someone's coming in every day, now we have... We have 500 people on payroll who we pay to work on themselves. In addition, we have another 150 staff, right? But if someone's coming in and they're still running with the gang, they're not programming. We're saying, come back when you're ready.

So we have our limits too. But the other part I want to say is to your question, And it's funny, I've never really said it this way, but it's, listen, there's no exact science to this, right? Now, if you're a good leader and you're running and your company's successful and you're growing all that, you can have a sense for people. You have a sense whether they can do the job or not.

And so when you're interviewing, just focus on whether you think they can do the job. Forget everything in their background. Just forget it. It's no impact. Now, do you sense where they can do the job? Are they stable enough to show up and get there? And obviously, you're going to have their challenges. You're going to lean in and help. But just it's about can they do the job today?

And don't worry about what was in the past.

Well, you ask good questions.

Questions you got to think about. You know, let me see if I can get the words to it.

Yeah. So, boy, another add-on to your good question. I want to actually dive in the middle there and talk about your example that you used about the murder type of thing, right? And I want to be careful about the words I choose. Okay. It comes down, again, not to be judging. Like, we don't know what people have carried in their life.

We don't know situations of where they've been at and the trauma they've been under and what caused them to do certain things, right? And so we're not ever, we don't condone violence. We never accept that. But let me jump a little bit. People leave the prison system. They've done the time for the things they did. They serve their time.

So are we going to always sort of judge them for the rest of their life? Right. And so on the intellectual side, no, we're giving people a chance. We're not judging them from their past. Now, to your question of the management style and how that comes about, right, you know,

This is where I've actually, you know, interestingly, I've been on my own faith journey by being here at Homeboy and learning about how faith in God and God loves us all, how that affects how I think and how I think as a leader, right? And so I've kind of, through Homeboy and through Greg, our founder and all that, kind of come to this point of understanding that. I'm finding joy through others.