Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Hey everyone is the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Thanks for downloading us once again this week. We have a special guest today, Amy King. Amy is the founder and CEO of Pallet, a social purpose company working to end unsheltered homelessness and give people a second chance at employment. And while this endeavor alone would be enough for most people, not for Amy, though Amy’s involvement doesn’t stop there. She’s also the owner of Square Peg Development, a general contractor and a founding member of Weld, a nonprofit that provides previously incarcerated people with housing, employment and other resources to help them reintegrate back into society. What do all three of these ventures have in common? Well, with Amy and her husband, Brady is the driving force. They’re doing whatever they can to care for those who often live on the fringes. As Amy says, one of the best things you can do to contribute to our community is to help the people who are the most marginalized and who have the least amount of opportunity. Today on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, we’re talking to Amy about her desire to do more than just eradicate homelessness. She’s on a mission to demonstrate God’s abundant love through practical and tangible ways.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. I’m here, as always, with William. William, we’re without Rusty. But welcome.

William Norvell: It’s good to be here. It’s good to be here. There’s like. There’s, like, more space in the zoom room without Rusty here. Do you feel that he’s really?

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, but he’s also really, really missed. I think.

William Norvell: That. Oh, I mean, obviously, obviously that too. Yeah. And that goes without saying. That’s why I didn’t say it.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. I think that he thought it’d be a lot of fun to go spend St Patrick’s Day in Ireland, which I think is actually pretty cool.

William Norvell: It’s pretty cool. Yeah, he’s probably the one missing us the most, though.

Henry Kaestner: I’m sure that’s I guess after 200 episodes, I think it’s probably all right that we get it episode off once in a while, and so we’ll grant him one or two. Mm hmm. But we do. Miss Rusty, if you’re listening to this sometime in the future, know that we’re missing you desperately. But the angst of missing you is replaced by the fact that we have Amy King on the show. Amy, welcome.

Amy King: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Henry Kaestner: And as we’re getting ready to go live, we were talking about why Amy is a mini celebrity around here. And William, I think we’ve talked about this a bit on the podcast, but we’ve been super encouraged recently by this FDE group that we have here. If you’ve been listening to this for a while, you probably understand that Faith Driven Entrepreneur worship is a decentralized movement among lots of different great organizations all around the world. I think that’s the one in Africa intrigue and Praxis and OSHA and others. But we’re all united in this concept of this common DNA of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur that we talk about in the book and we talk a lot about in the podcast. But it’s around this concept of a call to create identity and Christ being faithful rather than willful. And in season one, we did this show, the season one of a show to be able to undergird these marks and illustrate them with different stories of faith driven entrepreneurs from around the country. And it’s gone really well right now. And the cohort we’ve got, I think we’ve got entrepreneurs from 88 different countries that they’re going through these volunteer led teachings that we have and we’re getting ready to film seasons two and Seasons three here and another couple of weeks. And one of the things we do is we marry a great partnership we have with Seattle Pacific that goes through a mini documentary for seven or 8 minutes about the life of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur and they’re done really, really, really well. And then we marry that with some teaching that talks about a particular mark of a faith driven entrepreneurs. So in preparing for filming Seasons two and Season three, I have just been recently watching and rewatching Amy and Braden King’s story, and it’s so super cool for me to go from having watched them on the big screen, so to speak, to having Amy in the studio, our virtual studio, talking about that story, because there’s so much that came out from that podcast and that episode that I think is really, really relevant for people listening to this. If you don’t know what I’m talking about with the group, please check out our website and check out the groups page where you can join with other faith driven entrepreneurs from around the world in groups of 12 to 15 and you’ll understand more about it. But I don’t want to spend more time on that. Exactly. I spend more time about what Amy and her husband Brayden have done in their company. So, Amy, welcome. Thank you very much for being here.

Amy King: Thanks. Thanks for having me. I’m excited.

Henry Kaestner: So also happened to be talking to you on St Patrick’s Day, but also the day that you have announced a major funding round, which is really cool.

Amy King: Yeah, we just closed the $50 million series, a round for our manufacturing company called Pellet. And so we’re really excited to use that money to grow and scale the company and increase and expand our reach first across domestically and then eventually globally. So we’re really excited about that.

Henry Kaestner: Outstanding. Halelly And congratulations.

Amy King: Thank you. Yeah, it was a long, hard process and now it’s done and I’m really grateful. So.

Henry Kaestner: I know what that feels like. Okay, so we’re going to end up there and what your mission is. But before we do that, please give us an autobiographical flyover of palate. And you as a person.

Amy King: Sure. Yeah. So my husband and I own and operate three companies here in the Seattle area. We started with my husband’s construction company, which is called Square Peg Construction and sort of the centerpiece of the film that you mentioned. And then Palette was born out of that. And another company we started, World was also born out of that. But to go back a little bit further. My husband’s been a contractor for 20 years here in the city of Seattle and for a prerecession pre the Great Recession, he owned a construction company with my dad and my brother that lost everything during the recession. So the company didn’t survive. It was, you know, typical construction real estate thing. And during that time, you couldn’t move real estate at all, which is crazy to think back on now, considering housing prices the way things are today. But that was a much different world then and it was a crazy time for our family. Lots of loss, lots of you know, I was just crazy. There’s just a lot of things going on there and God definitely felt really decent during that time. For us, it was a big time of trials for us. And so and even for my husband and I personally, our marriage kind of fell apart during that period of time as well. And we had to go through a lot of effort and work counseling and, you know, digging in on a lot of stuff. But we are really grateful to say today that, you know, we were able to put our marriage back together and keep our family intact, which we’re really grateful for. We have two daughters. And so as a result of that experience, we learned a lot of really important lessons about what it takes to make it through hard times and how important other people in community are in those circumstances. So when we started these companies and we started interacting with the folks that we now employ, which are people that are coming out of the criminal justice system, addiction recovery programs and homelessness here in our state. We initially thought, this is crazy. Why are we doing this? Why are we hiring these people? Like most people don’t hire people coming from these backgrounds, but we felt this very innate connection to them and their struggle and their process because we had been there in some form or fashion, not the same way, but it was a really relatable experience for us. And we said, Well, gee, there was lots of people in the community that stepped up to support us. And these folks don’t have that. They don’t have a supportive community. And here in Seattle, which is the least churched city in the nation, it’s really hard to find a church community that will support you. And a lot of our folks are interested in that as well, because they have really poor examples of community and family that they come from. And so that faith based kind of experience of God as a father is kind of really distant for them. And so we felt called to do this work and to provide jobs and community and training and opportunities to these folks. But we also wanted to bring into it this opportunity to invite them to Jesus and whatever way that played out for them. So that’s kind of where we are today. Today we have thousands of people that we’ve touched across, the three companies that have come to us for jobs, but then have been able to learn a number of other skills and participate in being part of their community and sobriety with other people around them, that kind of thing. So it’s been a wild ride, but these three companies really focus on workforce development, job training and education opportunities and then building housing supply across the spectrum. So everything from permanent housing to manufactured shelters to utilizing vacant properties for congregate, living, that kind of thing.

Henry Kaestner: There’s something that you’ve been able to find in working with employees across different socio economic backgrounds and different ethnicities and different languages that really is applicable to any type of company this employing laborers, manual laborers. But I think it goes much beyond that of course as well. And maybe it’s because in the stories, in the video of folks from Vietnamese backgrounds and just different ethnicities, just really fascinating. But that’s taught you something about knowing who the employees are and understanding what their stories of struggle are. And my sense is that a lot of that comes out because you’re so open with sharing your own story of struggle. What does that look like as you bring employees on board and you tell your story about what you do or why you do it?

Amy King: Yeah, that’s a great question. So we are really passionate about our people and in terms of getting to know them. One thing that’s important to know is the vast majority of our folks have come from the criminal justice system, and I wasn’t aware a lot of people probably are, but I wasn’t aware until I started getting to know our folks better that, you know, when you’re in prison, you’re a number, you don’t even call you by your name. They call you by a number. So you become this very dehumanized kind of being that has no purpose or value. And so in learning more about that process, that really strips them of their humanity. We really want this to be a place where, yeah, you’re coming to work, but that’s not the point. You’re coming to be a part of something. You’re coming to a place where you feel a sense of belonging and and where you feel known and loved and appreciated. And that was a big part of our personal recovery process was, you know, my husband in particular struggled with some personal choices and felt really like his community had sort of cut him off. And part of the recovery process for him was feeling accepted into something. And so we sort of learned from that and wanted to replicate that to say, we see you as you are tattoos, drug addiction, past mistakes and all, and we love and accept that person. You don’t have to be somebody else to be loved and accepted, which is very difficult. God accepts us as we are. Right. And so I’ve always experienced that in my faith. And so we wanted to provide that experience here in a human way to say, well, here’s a group of people who are willing to love and accept you as you are. You don’t have to change to be accepted here, but we’ll also help you learn and grow. And that doesn’t mean you have to change who you are, but learn and grow up to become who you want to be. So part of our onboarding process as we hire people is we talk about our core values. So we have a set of core values, as many companies do, but we also have a set of core beliefs that we are really honest about and talk about all the time and reiterate them regularly at all staff meetings. So those core beliefs drive everything we do, and one of them is housing as a human right. So all of our companies, as I mentioned, increase housing supply. So the purpose of what we’re doing here is we believe housing is a human right and everyone should have access to it. So that kind of drives like the work you do every day with your hands. This is feeding into providing opportunities for people to have that right. And then there are three total. The other core belief is all lives have value. So we tell them we believe every life, every human life has value to it. I don’t care if you’re incarcerated, if you’re sticking needles in your arm, if you’re living under a bridge or in a tent, we believe your life has value and nobody can tell you otherwise. And we want you to know that value here. And the last one is we believe people are made up of potential, not past mistakes. And so we want them to see who they want to be and what they want to become. And we want to help them get there. So that takes on a lot of different forms and functions. But those are the three things that really embody our work from a workforce development perspective, but also from a product in terms of what we build perspective. And I think it gives our stuff kind of purpose and meaning and it allows them to connect with us because those are things that we believe that we needed and we believe all people should have.

William Norvell: That’s amazing. And you know, and as I think about that, you work with this every day, right? I mean, I think when I hear something like housing is a human right, I nod my head, I say yes, right. But I’ve never not had that right. And so I want to give you an opportunity to say, you know, just what is shelter in place? How does that bring community? How does that bring humanness to people in ways that a lot of us who maybe haven’t had that experience can’t quite understand?

Amy King: Yeah, it’s a great question. I get like I don’t have that experience either. I’ve had the privilege of being housed my entire life and having all my needs met. So the majority of what I’m going to say right now and what I’ve learned is not from me. It comes from the people that we work with, who I’ve taken the time to listen to and wanted to understand their experience. So for a person who’s unhoused, it’s really important to remember you hear these things all the time from people who don’t have that experience, that say things like, Well, people want to be outside. Some people choose to be outside. That’s not true. I’ve talked to thousands and thousands and thousands of people across the country, and I have never once, ever, ever, ever, once encountered a homeless person who said, you know what, I really want to be here. I woke up today and said, I want to go live out on the street and repeat cycles of trauma every day and constantly live in states of anxiety. Nobody chooses this, right? And the reality is that everybody who’s on the streets and everybody who comes through our doors for employment, for that matter, no matter where they come from, they have a history of significant trauma. So the more we start acknowledging the reality of the situation, of what it is that drives people into these scenarios, the more we can then be responsive and effective and that response in working with them, right? So the reality is they’ve experienced significant trauma. They have significant things that are impacting their ability to function on a normal level and to participate in society. Being unhoused is just a perpetuation of that cycle of trauma. You’re living outside your cold. You’re susceptible to the elements are susceptible to people robbing you or hurting you. For women, there’s a special challenges as well. And there’s just a lot more there that people don’t understand. And so it’s important to remember that the basic concept of having a place to go, that you have a place to lay down that’s comfortable and not the ground. And the biggest thing about shelter from palettes perspective are units or individuals. You have your own space, but you have a locking door. And as someone who has never been unhoused, I go in and out of my door every day and I don’t think twice about it. For someone who sleeps outside, even in a tent, someone could come up with a knife and slice your tent open and have access to you like that. Right? A locking door in a stable shelter with four walls and a roof where you can close your eyes and rest. I mean, I don’t think we think to about how much sleep matters because we have the privilege of sleeping when we want to. But when you don’t get to sleep ever, because you’re constantly in this alert survival state, you eventually start to have some mental issues that result from that. And a lot of times people say, well, this person has a mental health issue, you know, so they went outside. And the truth is, there are lots of people who end up outside and homeless. And the mental health issue comes as a result of living outside. One begets the other, right? Or they start using substances to numb the pain and the trauma of having to live outside. They didn’t start out using substances and they go outside. So anyway, to answer your question, shelter and a locking door is really like a starting place for stabilization. You can’t ask someone to deal with their trauma when they don’t know where they’re sleeping tonight and they don’t feel safe when they’re trying to sleep. Does that make sense?

William Norvell: It does. It does. And thank you for walking us through that. And my next question, I’m curious because, you know, obviously, we talked about your fund raise a minute ago, so you started out as a social purpose company. I’m tempted when I hear your talk to go. Okay, this sounds like a great nonprofit operation, right? This is where my head goes. It’s going to be honest, right? Yeah. But you just raised venture capital funding for a for profit company to address this problem. Yep. Walk us through that framework. That’s just fascinating to me.

Amy King: No, I’m really glad you asked this question. I will love this question because people always assume we’re a nonprofit, and rightfully so. We’re doing things in the world that a lot of people would normally do as a nonprofit. Here’s the reason why we’re not a nonprofit. So we are a social purpose corporation or social enterprise is the common term that everyone’s hearing a lot these days. Why did we do that? Because, unfortunately, homelessness is a problem that has reached a scale of total crisis. Right. So we believe homelessness is an emergency and it should be treated as such. Again, these people are not choosing to be outside. They’re in emergency situations. If a hurricane hits your town, what do you do? You mobilize to respond to the needs of the people who have been displaced by the hurricane. So think of it this way. A poverty hurricane has hit America, and instead of mobilizing to address the situation, we have said, well, most of them want to be there, so we’re just going to ignore it. And as a result, we’ve got more and more. We haven’t addressed the problem that led us here the poverty, the racism, all the systemic issues that have led us to this place. We’re not addressing them at scale, so we cannot make an impact on the problem. There’s more people filtering into the streets every day than we can help, than we have the resources to help. That’s true in every city in America right now. So I’ll give you one example. In Los Angeles, there are 273 people a day who become homeless, 273 people a day. They have 60,000 homeless people in Los Angeles. They have enough resources in Los Angeles to help 200 people a day get off the streets and into services and permanent housing. So you have a delta there of 73 people a day who are falling through the cracks. The longer they’re outside, the worse off they are. And so you add every other city in America. Now you see why we have hundreds of thousands almost. We’re at like 600,000 people a night sleeping, unsheltered in America. So when we saw the volume of the crisis, we said, well, we could go out and raise money. Right. And do this as philanthropy, as a nonprofit. And it would take us a long time. Or we could take this as a market based, scalable solution, treat it like a company so that it’s got the capital and everything that it needs to be sustainable and to allow us to build and grow and evolve the product design and the model with the changing people, because people are people. And if we do that, then we have the resources that we need to treat this issue with the scale and speed that it demands. And that has proven to be true. When we need to increase demand, we can go out and raise capital and we can do it like that. And because we’re for profit and not nonprofit, we have the resources and ability to invest in the development of our people through education and training programs they all make living wages, have 41k plans, full benefit packages, wraparound services and support. Access. Housing. That’s how employment should be done. It costs more. So we had to make a profitable business model so that we had the money coming in to cover those things so that our folks would have extra access to opportunity, if that makes sense.

Henry Kaestner: It does make sense. And ultimately, what happens is I imagine that the public policymaker, the state, the county, the federal government will look at what you’re doing and saying, who’s the best partner? And they’re seeing that the market based partner that’s providing the service for the government, for the felt need that they have, is the best way to go. As you talk about that, it makes me think about the concept of a social impact bond. And I’m wondering if you’ve seen any of that play out where there’d be a public private partnership, where there would be an outcome that a city wants to see. Maybe it’s an end to homelessness. Maybe it’s getting refugees resettled, maybe it’s getting formerly incarcerated people getting jobs where there is a social impact bond with a third party service provider that’s brought in. Do you see that facility at all? It’s relatively novel. You see that in the U.K. there’s a company called Social Finance. It does in Boston. Do you see any of that or is that effectively what you’re doing anyway?

Amy King: I haven’t heard of the social impact bond. I’ll be honest. I don’t know how that works exactly. But basically so what a social enterprise is and how it works in the state of Washington where a social purpose corporation, what that means is we’re required to establish our mission as part of our charter for our business with the state. Our board then has the responsibility to designate profits in the companies first to achieving the mission. Whatever’s left over gets dished out as dividends to the investors, and those investors don’t have a right to clawback their dividends because the board decides how much of the profit goes to the mission. So for us, our mission is actually to create jobs and workforce training opportunities to people that are marginalized. Our product provides services and support for people that are experiencing homelessness and displaced by disaster and conflict through the product offering. Right. But our actual mission is the workforce development piece. So when my husband and I set this company up, the plan always was, let’s bring in the capital to grow and provide these living wages and opportunities to our staff knowing that the profits which we’re not profitable yet as a side note, because we have so much R&D going on, investment and growth of the company, but at whatever time we become profitable, which I think will happen, those profits get diverted first to creating more jobs. And our plan is to set up production plants for pallet all over the country in cities that have the highest rates of homelessness and recidivism. So we can replicate the workforce model we have here in Washington. We would do it on Skid Row. We would do it in very impoverished cities that are industry and food deserts all across the country, replicating this opportunity for other people. And then if there’s money left over, great, your investors get dividends. Our investors don’t expect that right now.

Henry Kaestner: So tell us more about that. So are they thinking about this and saying we may end up having to write this all off, but because of the underlying model that’s based on market pricing, etc., that’s just going to be able to advance our social mission more than traditional philanthropy. In their modeling, do they say, Well, we’re in a discount it back and said that there’s a 20% chance we get paid back. Talk to us through the mindset of an investor, because our sense is that there are a number of different social entrepreneurs that are seeing problems in their city, maybe around homelessness, maybe something else, and thinking, Oh my goodness, maybe I can set up a business to do this. You know, Amy and Brandon King have gone ahead and raised $50 million to do this. But is this just like this one off investor that’s doing this $50 million deal or is this relatively commonplace? Walk us through the mindset of what that investors looking at.

Amy King: Yeah, great question. So I think the reality is most of our investors do expect to get a return and I expect they will get a return as well. So at the outset, because we’re growing and learning and evolving and engaging in R&D, trying to figure out is there more products here? Is there better products here? Is there you know, we don’t have a perfect product today. We don’t claim to. Right. It’s evolving. So there’s lots of investment in improving what it is that we’re doing, making sure that it meets the needs of our people eventually will narrow in on that, I think. And we’re talking about are there additional product lines and things in the housing market that aren’t addressed today? Like right now, what we provide is a very temporary product, right? There’s a temp to perm that’s missing. There’s workforce housing that’s missing. Lots of people are doing modular design and there’s all kinds of issues with that. Could we get involved in all that? Maybe there’s some market saturation in some of those areas that we wouldn’t want to touch. Right. But the point is, I do think that we’re learning a lot of things that can allow us to expand and diversify our revenue streams and opportunities to a point that eventually we will be quite profitable and our investors will get something out of it. The return is longer. This is a long play, right? So social enterprise, not always, but in our case, because it’s housing and it’s physical product base. This is a long term investment that over time is probably going to have a cash out strategy of some sort. For our investors, what does that look like? I couldn’t tell you that today. I don’t know. Because we’re really trailblazing in a market space that didn’t exist before we came. We didn’t have any competitors until very recently. So we’re creating a market that, you know, what does profitability look like? I don’t know. We’re not a tech company. We’re not.

Henry Kaestner: At. But some of these underwriters, when they go to you and say, am I going to get my $50 million back? And you say, I don’t know if we’re ever going make a profit. And if I do make a profit, it probably is going to go to you anyway. It’s going to go to my mission. How do they receive that? Where are these people that are writing these $50 million checks?

Amy King: Well, so we don’t say that because we think that eventually they will. It’s just again, it’s a longer term play. Like you’re going to get the benefit of knowing you’re doing a lot of good in the world and we’re producing something that’s going to make a big difference. There’s a whole nother aspect of what we want to do that we haven’t got to yet. So things like refugee housing, global response, disaster response, which we have started to tap into, climate change is a huge problem beyond the homelessness issue that we have today. Right. People displaced by disasters. That’s going to be a profitable marketplace for us. Right. We’re talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of shelters in cities and countries, in places all across the world. So they will get a return on their investment. When will that be? I don’t know. So the statement is not you may never get your money back. The statement is you’re probably going to get your money back. It might not be for a while. It might be sooner. I don’t know, because we’re trailblazing. We’re developing markets, places that didn’t exist before. This is catching on faster than we thought it would like. I’ll give you an example. We just recently started creating bathrooms because our sites where we put our shelters out, the service providers were coming back to us and saying we can’t get the bathroom shower trailers because of an aluminum shortage and supply chain issues. Right. So we said, okay, could we convert one of our models into a bathroom? Yeah. So our engineering team started creating bathrooms. We projected that we would sell in quarter one of this year, a handful, 4 to 5 bathrooms to some of our customers. I’m currently right now today producing 56 that are on were 56 bathrooms in one month. So that gives you an idea of like we don’t really know what the market is going to bear because of the changing landscape around housing and supply chain and all of these societal issues that we see. And so I can project and say, you’re not going to get your money back for five years right now. They might get it sooner than that because we’re exceeding our projections and expectations, because the demand is so high for the product across a variety of market areas. Does that make sense?

Henry Kaestner: I think it does. Quick question and then I want to move in a different direction. Currently, revenue stream, is it just coming from a not for profit or government or do any of the folks that are homeless pay rent as well?

Amy King: No. So the homeless folks don’t pay rent that live in the shelters, at least not to us. I mean, maybe they do to the site owner. So we are a retailer. Think of us as a retailer. So we sell our product. Our primary customer is municipal bodies. So cities, counties, states soon hopefully some federal agencies as well. And then we also have sometimes we sell direct to non-profits, faith based groups, individuals that have land. We do have some requirements that are important to know. So pallet never sells single shelters. We only sell in a community setting. And we have what we call dignity standards. So our customers have to show us that they have proof of 24/7 service provision on site to rehabilitate the residents. You know, we don’t want people to be living here forever. This is a short term gap filler. While they wait for permanent housing to be built, there has to be hygiene services on site. So bathrooms, laundry facilities, things like that. Food distribution has to be managed security. The residents need security and then access to transportation for other services that aren’t available on site. If a city county service provider cannot demonstrate all five of those things to us, we will not ship the product to them. We also now we’re about to launch a consulting service because we know all the service providers. Now we have over 70 sites across the country in 11 different states. We know best practices. We know where to find these things if you don’t have them. So we’re launching a new revenue stream that says if you don’t have these things but you want to for a small fee, we will help you. So as we’re learning and growing, we’re finding new ways to increase revenue and to add new diversified revenue streams for that. This is not that fast.

Henry Kaestner: So you’re putting conditions on who you will sell to. Yes, you’re really good.

William Norvell: But that doesn’t happen very often.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Yeah.

William Norvell: So here’s what the opposite of my product. Do you want it cheaper? Do you want it a different way? We’ll do that. Yeah.

Henry Kaestner: Maybe I’ll let you be my customer.

Amy King: Yeah. Part of it is when we first started, we didn’t do that right, because we didn’t have that luxury right. Like you said, most people were like, Take my product. What will you take it for? So we started out that way. But this is different than like selling a pair of shoes or a car, right? We’re selling an opportunity for people to have a better life. The shelters we create are a tool that supports and encourage that process. And that’s where we make our money. That’s how we make this business work. But the real juice, the real magic of how people shift and change and. Grow is stabilized by the shelter. But the magic happens with the service provider. They have to be there. If there’s no service provision on site, there’s no point doing this. And I’m not about to be selling shelters to be warehousing homeless people all across the country. That’s not what I’m about, and that doesn’t match my value system. So there has to be a purpose and a model behind us to make it worthwhile for everybody. Right. It’s a bad luck for cities to do that. That look for me to do that. So if we don’t have these dignity standards, nobody’s actually winning. And because we don’t have a lot of competitors in the space, we can do this. We can put these conditions. Most of these cities want these conditions. They might not know it because elected officials aren’t. Mental health and social work specialists. So we have to help them and train them and educate them and they’re open to it.

Henry Kaestner: Okay. So if you’re following along here and you’re impressed by me as I am about being able to raise money from somebody without any type of clear repayment rates and being able to select which customers she decides to sell to, you’re trying to think about what is her secret sauce? And I think that she’d agree with us that to some extent it’s divine providence and the Holy Spirit, but that beyond that. The other thing I might suggest is something I picked up in your story that I’d like for you to riff on a little bit, and you talk about your missional alignment of employees. So the people who are doing these services, providing these products and services and innovating and coming up with new designs for bathrooms, etc., are the very people that have been served and can be served by products like this. Otherwise, it’s just an idea that you think of. Wouldn’t it be nice if we did these things? But you have hundreds and hundreds of employees where you have missional alignment and everybody listening to this podcast is going to be thinking at some level of ministry. Indeed, what does it look like for us to love on our communities and what does it look like for us to do that? As part of our corporate ethos, employees are looking for something greater than just the manufacture and distribution of widgets that are looking for a purpose and a mission. And I know of no example, no company that does that better than you all. And you speak a bit and maybe it’s in the form of well, maybe it’s something else. But talk to us about what you mean by the missional alignment of employees being important.

Amy King: Yeah. So this is actually my favorite question and so glad you asked me that. So our people are the reason why I’m here, but also our people are the reason why we’re successful. If it weren’t for their willingness to share their stories and experiences and participate at a high level in decision making, we would not be where we are. We would not be successful. So that mission alignment, it kind of it’s twofold, right? So one is they’re mission aligned because they care about what we’re doing because they themselves have been there. Right. But they’re also mission aligned from the standpoint of saying, I am the mission, I care about the mission. I also want to reach back and help the person behind me because I have walked that road. And so what does that look like? Right. And I say this so specifically as it relates to Pallet, which we’ve just been talking about the manufacturing company, but we also have a nonprofit sister, nonprofit called World Seattle that we founded. And Wild Seattle is entirely run. All the staff, 100% of the staff in that entity are people with lived experience with the criminal justice system, addiction, recovery and homelessness, or some mix of those three. And they build all the programing that happens within world. Now, it’s one thing for me who has a degree in psychology and studied mental health, I can sit down with somebody and say, Well, I see the trauma, I see where you’ve been and here’s what I think you need to do about it. And if they know my background and they know that I’ve never actually been homeless or incarcerated, they’re going to say, whatever, crazy lady, what do you know about what it’s like to be neglected and abused and whatever? Right. Fill in the blanks and then have to respond to that trauma. And they’re right. That’s a totally valid issue. You know, I get it. And I think this is part of what’s wrong with society today is we have a lot of people with really good ideas for how to fix social problems, and yet they don’t have the credibility to step into that space to address that social problem. And it feels disingenuous. Right. And so that’s for me in meeting our folks and listening to them and learning from them, I was like, man, I want to fix this. You’ve given me so much cool information, I can go and fix it. And then I kept hitting this wall, trying to work with people that were incarcerated. You said, love that you’re here. Super cool. Who the hell are you and what do you know about this? And I was like, We’re not getting anywhere. So then I realized the magic is in elevating people with lived experience, giving them the mic, giving them the platform, letting them talk. Because now we have that credibility. Now we have that related ability for people. And when we talk about on pallet sites, people that are traditionally service diverse are always more likely to come inside and engage with a service provider if they need someone who represents them. Right. And we see this with all the racial injustice stuff right now that’s happening in America. Right. It’s a fair and valid request if I’m a person of color and you’re white. Person are telling me how I can fix my life. Screw you. Totally valid, right? And I understand where they’re coming from. But if I’m a person who’s been incarcerated and I need another person who says, Hey, I just got out, I’m about five years from the gate. I know what you’re going through. Let me help you. They’re way more likely to take that person’s hand and offering of assistance they can help, right? Additionally, in America today, we have a massive shortage of mental health workers. I think everybody agrees with that. There’s not enough mental health workers. Why? Because it’s a really hard job. People burn out really fast and they struggle to stay engaged with their clients because they don’t have the Olympic experience that connects them there. So therefore, who are the best people to be the future mental health workers of America? People who are coming off the streets. People who are coming out of addiction. People who are coming out of prison. They should be building the programs and services and support for people coming after them. So we really wanted to invest in that. So we work on job opportunities, training, education, all of that. For these folks to move from positions and barriers where they normally wouldn’t be able to work to say, you know what? We can take that hustle that you had, that great life experience selling drugs as an example. Drug dealers are really good hustlers. So I’m like, You want a sales job? Tell me how good you are at selling drugs. We’ll help you get a sales job. Right. We can repurpose people’s potential from something that’s negative to something that’s positive. We can train those people to be health care workers, to be salespeople and organizations like ours, etc., etc.. And their input is valuable. Very, very, very valuable because they’ve walked in the shoes of the people that we seek to serve.

William Norvell: Hey, man, Nimi, as we come near close, I would love to just offer you a bit of a blank slate. I mean, we’ve got a lot of entrepreneurs listening. Any encouragement or challenge that maybe we haven’t hinted at or gotten to in this episode yet for people that, you know, walk outside and see problems that need solving but maybe don’t know where to start or think they don’t know where to start. Anything from that world. Just to give you a second to speak to our audience.

Amy King: Yeah. Thanks for the invitation. That’s exciting. I think, you know, there’s a couple of things. When we first started our first company, Square Peg, we had zero intention of doing this work. I mean, we didn’t seek this out at all. We very much stumbled into the workforce development model and employment model by accident. There was a labor shortage. We needed people just so happened that people that needed a job had a criminal history. And we were like, okay, well, I guess we’ll do this right. So I would say if you’re a person who’s an entrepreneur and you think, Well, I just have my business and that’s all I have space for, be open to a calling that you might not have been prepared for, right? I’m not sure we were open to it at first, but as we started to meet people and listen to them and learn their stories, we really started to better understand that there was a calling there that God was giving us that we didn’t ask for. We weren’t thinking it was coming, right. And then once it became clear to us, it was like, Well, gee, I don’t have the resources to do this work. And look at that. The resources have always, always magically come exactly when we needed them. Right. And there were resources at our fingertips that we didn’t consider to be resources like you have a company you can give people jobs. That never occurred to me before now. Right? I’ve been employing people my whole career and it never occurred to me that a job in and of itself was a resource for my community. And I think a lot of people think of it that way. But the other thing I would say is remember that there’s people in your community who don’t always have access to jobs. So if you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner, know that that job can be a total life changer for someone that you normally might not consider. Someone who has a criminal history, someone who recently was homeless, incarcerated or addicted. And you might traditionally think, well, if I’m it’s between them and this traditional candidate who has, you know, a four year degree and is amazing. I’m obviously going to go with a more experienced person. I don’t blame you. There are positions in our company where we go that route too, and I understand it, but just don’t count them out, I guess would be my challenge. Again, people with a nontraditional background have an incredible amount of experience, resiliency and creativity. I mean, some of the most creative, brilliant people I have ever met in my life. I met behind the bars of a prison and they came out and just blew my mind in terms of what they could do and what they could create. So don’t count them out just because of what you see on paper or on the Internet. If you Google them because you can see everybody’s history, if you Google them, just give them a chance, right? Take a chance on a person and know that that chance might be the difference between their family getting put back together or them going back to prison. Right. That one simple thing can make a huge impact on someone’s life.

William Norvell: That. Thank you for pushing everyone. You know, I mean, I think everyone is just thinking through that now that I’ve lived it. It’s just like, yeah, you have to have a lot of creativity in life sometimes if you haven’t been given the clear path and if you’ve taken a different road, then you had to think differently to get there.

Amy King: Yeah, and I know entrepreneurs too. I mean, a big part of being an entrepreneur is that creativity of ideas, right? It’s based off of an idea. Again, you’ll never get better ideas from anyone than people who’ve had to survive on the streets. I promise you that. I believe crazy ideas. But they’re good. They’re good ideas.

William Norvell: Well, as you said, that’s entrepreneurship, right? There’s a litany of stories of the one crazy thought walking down the street changed the trajectory of the company. Right. That’s what it is. And you know that the way we do like to close, we do like to invite all of our guests to bridge our guests, our listeners through the word of God and kind of what he might be sharing with us. And so the last temptation we typically have is, you know, we invite you to share something from God’s word that may be impacting you today, could be something you read this morning, could be something you meditated on your whole life, but just like to invite you to share, you know, maybe something that’s coming alive to you in a new way in this moment today.

Amy King: Yeah, that’s a great question. I do have a verse. I’m drawing a blank now, of course, that you put me on the spot and the specific verse that was given to us, and I can’t remember the reference for it, but when we first started this work, somebody gave us a verse and then I’ll paraphrase it terribly.

William Norvell: But basically Google can find it.

Amy King: Yeah, yeah. So it basically talks about how we are called to free the prisoner and unchained the prisoner and how the work that we do will introduce people to Jesus. Right. And that’s really how we started this work. And at one point in time when we first started, we were going through our first kind of big challenge with the company and are we going to make it as every entrepreneur does, and are we doing the right thing? And do we take on too much? Where we started this business model, I did a three day fasting experience and prayed over the company and said, God, I really need direction here. Like, is this right? It did. We missed the calling here, which is something I very much encourage people to do if they understand the discipline and how to do it. And it’s something I do regularly. And so I did a three day fast and I got to the end of it and I was reading all this amazing scripture and these great stories that people had sent me. And I got to the end and I had nothing, literally nothing. And I was like, Great, I’m just starving now. And I got like, what was the point of this? And then I went to bed the final night, and in the middle of the night I had this very vivid dream. And I woke up in the morning with this very vivid vision. And in the vision were myself, my husband and a whole bunch of the members of our leadership team at that time. And then a bunch of people that I didn’t recognize and I didn’t know. And we were all linking arms and kneeling. And behind us were thousands and thousands of people with chains that had been broken around their ankles. And I just sat up and just immediately started crying and I was like, Oh my God, this is crazy. Like, I gave me this vision and I knew some of the people, but I didn’t know some of the other people. And what does this mean? And literally that same day I show up to work and a guy who had been working for us for, I don’t know, a year or so said, Hey, my brother got out of prison today and I’m going to go pick him up. And I’m wondering if he can come work until we figure out what he’s going to do. And I said, sure. So he goes and he picks him up and he brings them and he walks to the door. And I looked at his face and I was like, I saw your face last night. Like he was one of the people in the leadership team that I was like, who? I didn’t know who this person was. And I could see his face as clear as day. That gentleman still works here to this day. And I literally ran to him like I saw his face. And because I had had this experience, I ran to him and threw my arms around him and started crying and said, I know you don’t know me. And this is very awkward, but I know you’re supposed to be here. I saw your face last night and I know you’re supposed to be here. And I’ve had that experience 100 times since. And I would say it’s really important to just be and to take the time and have the discipline to lean in to the calling that you’ve been given and to match it against the vision of whatever it. And not everybody has as clear vision as I did. Right. But that experience changed this whole thing for me of this company. And now to this day, when I get discouraged and I feel like we’re not going to make it, I’m reminded of that vision and the thousands of people that are unchained and free and the purpose that I have and simply providing them a job that that allows them freedom in life and God, whatever that freedom looks like for them.

William Norvell: So hey man, I have nothing to add, which is rare for me if you get to know me, other than just so grateful for you and your story and for taking the time out to share with us and that you’re going to get to continue and that God continues to walk alongside you all and show you what the next steps are every day. So that just is an encouragement to me and I know it will be to our listeners. And so thank you for coming here.

Amy King: Yeah, thank you for having me. It’s been really fun.