Latest / Commander's Intent / The Power of Human Connection with Jason Wright

Transcript

The Power of Human Connection with Jason Wright · Commander's Intent

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever frozen in the key moment of making a critical decision?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Whether it's in business or in life, it can cost you everything.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Commander's Intent will teach and inspire you how to lead with clarity, courage, and purpose.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: So here's your host, retired Air Force Colonel, fighter pilot, and your leadership mentor, Derek Oakes.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm Derek Oaks, and welcome to another episode of Commander's Intent.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here with a relative of mine, actually.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's married to one of my awesome cousins, Cody, Jason Wright.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's an author.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's got multiple best-selling books.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's been writing since he was in junior high elementary school for a long time.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And from a writing perspective, he's one of my heroes because I'm not that creative.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I read a lot of his stuff and I think, where did he get those ideas?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know where to start.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I can regurgitate information.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can write historical.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell a joke occasionally, but I can't, I can't even think where to start.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's always amazed me how much he's able to put pen to paper and come up with entertaining, educational, inspirational stories.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm happy to have him on the show.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to let him do a little bit of an introduction of himself and some of the things he's working on right now.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'll ask him some questions about a lot of the interaction that he has with really everyday people and what I call everyday leaders.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, I married your best cousin.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, I should be your best cousin and your favorite, I'm sure.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's you're very kind about the writing, but I don't know how to fly a jet, and I'm not gonna try because that would not end well for me or the jet or anyone on the ground near the jet.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we all have our thing.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: It is fun to see your success as you dive into this world in this season of your career.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: So congrats on all the good things that are happening to you with your writing in this new show.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm a writer, I'm a full-time writer, speaker, consultant.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I live in Woodstock, Virginia.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm coming to you from today.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're about an hour and a half west of DC in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Been here about 20 years.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: So people introduced me as a writer, and that's certainly true, but writing has changed since I first made the leap 20 years ago to being a full-time writer.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at a pie chart of my time and my kind of professional day, writing's a pretty small sliver of that, as you know from what you're now doing.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's promotion and communication and working with vendors and business partners and creating other content that's not writing but that supports the writing.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: I do a lot of speaking engagements around the country, school visits, book clubs, churches, conferences, et cetera, et cetera.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it actually pulls me away from the writing a fair amount.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So there are not very many writers in the world today who just really truly only write.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably less than 1%, based on what I've read, of writers that just sit in their office, write all day, and send it off to their agent.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Most of us work pretty hard to support the writing, doing all of the other things.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So all the books behind me have, you know, years of work, often in, you know, quiet places and spaces without anyone having any idea what you're working on, without any human connection.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the best way to end any kind of intro of myself is to say that I really write books because they give me an excuse to meet people.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I first started thinking that during the pandemic when that the speaking side of my career was like everyone else's, was basically shut down, right?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I found myself in this very room, just writing and writing and writing for 12, 14, 18 hours a day sometimes.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it really hit me how the books over the years had become just a vehicle, an excuse to be at a book club, at a church, you know, at a conference somewhere or in a bookstore connecting with real people about what matters to them.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, people will always come before the books that they read.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope that's true for most of us, but it's certainly become, I don't know, my own little personal motto.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it's a cliche and maybe there's someone listening rolling their eyes.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: But it's true, the books are just kind of an accessory to just my love of people.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I love that explanation because one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if anybody follows Jason on any type of social media, every single time he pops up in my feet, it's about meeting with really a regular Joe on the street.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the things I things I enjoy about your writing, and I enjoy about the skill that you have is your ability to connect with people.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think you and I speak quite a bit about empathy and about how a great leader is able to see the person for who they are and see the person, maybe not how they're dressed, maybe not for the mistake they just made, but for the kind of person they are, and really extract their talents and extract really how God sees them, and so that the to help the rest of us see those individuals as they are.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's a great skill, and it's something that more of us need, and it's something that helps us to remember that it's not about the book, it's not about the airplane, it's not about the quarterly report, it's about the person and it's about the people and all of us mashing into each other and interacting.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh I wanted you to talk about how you started doing that.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of just explained it, but how you started identifying the man on the street and what got you that idea to really do that and how it's changed you as a person.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Terrific question.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think the seeds of this were planted when I was really young, and my my dad was a people person, and he very much enjoyed talking to people in the checkout lines or stopping to change a tire on the side of the road or giving a ride to somebody or giving a few bucks to somebody that was hungry, you know, in front of the drugstore, gas station, or restaurant.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I saw a lot of that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And some of those memories are real simple, like a few bucks to a guy on a street corner, and some were really profound where my dad paused his life for a considerable period of time to allow someone in to serve them in pretty unique, miraculous ways.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that didn't come as naturally to me as it did to my siblings.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the youngest of four, and they seemed to all sort of get it.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I really didn't until I was married and started seeing how my wife treated people.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess I finally looked in the mirror and said, Oh, maybe I'm not the most important person in the world.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe my dad was onto something all those years when he was trying to teach me to see people first, you know, see potential and not problems, which is a, I think, a huge issue in the country right now.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: We tend to count our differences before we sort of look at what unites us.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so as I began traveling for my career, as I said, the books have put me in a lot of conferences and bookstores and school visits and campus visits.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: I just started talking to people and I would try as best I could, I'm not perfect at it, but to keep the phone away in an airplane and to strike up a conversation with the person next to you.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they don't want it, and you obviously respect that, and I'll go back to whatever I'm doing.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I have made lifelong friends, people I'm in touch with from 20 years ago that I met on a three-hour flight.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And as I began to hear their stories and where are they traveling and why are they traveling and what's their background, I just learned some remarkable lessons about life and love and family and loyalty and leadership.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't remember the very first time I could probably find it somewhere, but I said, I can we take a selfie, like you have really like you've changed my lens today on how I'm viewing my life and this trip I'm on.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And can we take a selfie and can I post it and just share a short one, two, three hundred-word version of our experience?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And people said yes over and over and over again.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: People said yes.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I've done that a lot on airplanes and trains.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then it just kind of grew from there.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I've told this story many times, but I was speaking at a church in Virginia about four years ago.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: They were aware that I was beginning to have more of these conversations with strangers and to share them on social media in particular.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And they gave me a wallet full of gift cards, had about$400 worth of gift cards to well-known, you know, national fast food drugstore, Walmart, et cetera.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, in your travels, we'd like you to feed people and make sure they know that they're seen and loved by this small church in Cozy, Virginia.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just such a strange, at the time, I just thought this is cool and beautiful and weird.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And what is this going to look like?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now coming up on four years later, the wallet's long since emptied, and we've given away, we're pushing probably$60,000 now in gift cards, most of them$10,$15,$20 a pop to people that need a meal.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And more and more as I have the conversations with them, I realize that the meal is secondary to the conversation.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Someone asking their name, someone looking them in the eye, I hear their story, I ask what they like to do, what are their hobbies and interests, and then I try to circle back and highlight those and make sure they know that those things are still there, right?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Even if they're living on a street corner somewhere, and to try to awaken some desire, maybe to kind of rediscover some of that.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I also just at a practical level, I try to connect people to local resources, food banks, P3 shelters, things that might get them some help beyond what I can give.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that's an extension that we call it the kindness card movement.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's a 501c3, and it is kind of an extension of just talking to strangers.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: If someone punched out of your show right now, Derek, and said, I don't have time for anything else, I hope they would just go talk to somebody today.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Look them in the eye.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be a 5, 10, 15, 20 minute conversation.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to spend an hour in a street corner with someone.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've done that, they're life-changing experiences.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do that.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Just look them in the eye and express genuine love and concern for even a stranger, and you'll be surprised at the difference that it makes in their day and in yours.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you made me think back to when I was a missionary in Spain, gosh, almost 40 years ago.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say, as the fourth of six kids, I was a very, very quiet extrovert.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I like being around people, like observing people, but I wasn't one to initiate a conversation.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And as a missionary, that changes, it's you're forced to change that a little bit.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things we used to do initially was a game.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of ashamed to admit, but we would find widows.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in Spain, all the Catholic widows, they wear black and they're almost ignored by society.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: They walk through the streets carrying their daily groceries, very much alone.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they're kind of a forgotten element of society in many ways.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we made it a habit, you know, we would see a widow, you could tell wearing their black, and we would walk up to them and throw our arm around them.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the game was let's see how quickly, without them realizing it, we can get them to say their name, and then we'll start having a conversation with them using their name.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'd go up and we start asking them questions, put their arm around them, and these women would be dumbfounded that we would talk to them, that they were actually still seeing, that there were still people.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then they would say, How do you know my name?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Not realizing that they had just said it to us.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we would have a great conversation.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: We would create great friendships with many times women that I would never see again for the rest of my life.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it taught me something about how people desire that connection and they desire to feel like they matter.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And not just that they have a job title or that they're earning a paycheck or that their team needs them, but that they personally, even if they were terrible on the team and if they didn't have a job title, that they still mattered to somebody.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've kind of carried that with me throughout the years through varying degrees of success and application.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I've learned it's helped me a lot to try and pay attention to other people and see who is the one who's sitting on the side of the room, wondering what in the world am I doing in this room.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: As a younger kid, that was always me, I felt like.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure that everybody's in a room and they feel exactly the same.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: But that was my feeling.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: I realized that people just want to feel like they matter and want to feel like they're making, not even that they're making a difference, although that is important, but just that that they are recognized as a person and they're valued by somebody.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: That they have dignity.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that comes up in a lot of these conversations that I have with people in need.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Again, the meal is wonderful.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: They usually end up with, you know, three or four days worth of meals by the time we're done.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they very much appreciate that and they express their gratitude, but they just they feel like for a few minutes they're like the rest of us, right?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it gives them this sense of dignity that someone stopped on the street and saw them.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you, there's some really interesting research on the power of hearing your own name and how they've studied the brain when you hear your name said back to you.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty profound.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: It is the most beautiful to most of us, our own name, and not from a prideful place or to juice our ego, but when we hear our name back, it connects us to birth, to love, to our mothers.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's some really interesting research behind it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you ever want to dive down a rabbit hole of what the brain does, my wife and I are Cody, your cousin, we're especially big on making sure that when we have these conversations, whether it's in a Walmart checkout line with someone who has plenty, or it's on the street corner with the guy with a sign, that you ask their name and then you say it back.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's really important that they get to hear their name back.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've had several really interesting conversations on this particular topic with people in need, but one man in particular said to me, looked me right in the eyes, and said, No one's asked me my name in months.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't said my name aloud in months.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Broke my heart.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the transparency, the honesty was just something I hadn't expected.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: But he went on to kind of explain, even the people that are kind and give five bucks out the car window on their way through the intersection, they don't have time to ask their name.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I get that.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's not being judgmental of those people, but that someone looked at him and cared enough to say, what's your name?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: What did your parents name you?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that means a lot to people.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's pretty powerful.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's a good leadership tool too.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Just, you know, if a leader who doesn't know the names and details and interests and birthdays of people they lead, well, I think you can do better.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm terrible in a conversation.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: If I don't say the name back, I have to ask it again.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm meeting somebody for the first time, if I don't say it right back to them after they've told me, then I forget it and I have to and I'm embarrassed to ask them again because it's indicative that I was that I wasn't listening as much as I should have, as should have been.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people do that, but I still hate that.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I see the power in that, you know, made me think of the, you know, when somebody dies, when you have some of these tragic events, you'll see on in the news and social media people say, say their name.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Say their name so that you're recognizing who they are.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's important, but I don't think that's nearly as important as saying the name of somebody who's standing right in front of you, of saying the name of somebody who actually gets to hear it.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, somebody who's gone and passed on, we don't want to forget them and we want to remember how they suffered, why they suffered, and their value to us.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the person sitting in front of us is still sitting in front of us.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: How do we make them feel valued so that they can, whatever time they have left on the earth, they feel like they're there for a reason, not just uh passing time wondering if they've got another meal or why am I going to work again today or you know, whatever the issue is.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it grows.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you these little habits, these little small moments of kindness that you can have with these folks, they grow exponentially.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: They learn to then do that to other people.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, they're there are some pretty powerful habits that come from just seeing people, right?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Learning to see the, as I said, the potential and not the problems.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had a lot of conversations with people that I believe they left better and I know I left better.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully next time they're in a similar situation, they'll ask the name, they'll say the name back, right?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've shared this before with the audience that my wife is really good at meeting a stranger and finding something to compliment them on.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that feels a little corny or contrived, but it's never contrived with her, and it's never corny.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I've watched how people have responded to her just saying, I love the way you did your hair, to somebody in the checkout line, or or you know, the woman at the post office where they will, she constantly looks for something good to compliment that individual in.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's amazing how different that person treats her, and it's amazing the countenance of that person, how differently they feel.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell they feel better because somebody noticed something about them.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I've tried to take that I don't know, not nearly as good as she is at it.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And she's just able to take something and her genuine, disarming approach and the way she talks to people makes them light up and makes them grateful and really absorb any compliment that she gives them.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And they remember that for a long time.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly, you know, a year or two or five years down the road, if she sees that person again, they might not remember her name, they might not remember the store they were in, but they will remember the interaction because I just think those experiences are so powerful.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have met people, I've gotten mail, I'm pointing over here.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: I have a box of letters I've gotten from readers over the years, and I've gotten mail from people that said, You complimented my writing when I was in the seventh grade in 2011.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I still think about the fact that a real writer thought my writing was good and I was only 13 years old, and a decade's past, or some people will come to book signings and remember, much like your wife, a quick interaction where you complimented their shoes or their hair, or how great their kids were behaved in the line at the book signing.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: And those things really they do make a difference and they become a part of our story and theirs.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: So have you had any follow-up?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: You said that some of these people that you've met are have become lifelong friends.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Share one or two stories of people that you have met in odd situations that because of their circumstances or where you met them and how the conversation went, it's really changed your life and changed their life, if you can think of any or know of any.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've got lots of those.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um one here kind of close to home years ago.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: My son Caseon gave a pass-along card to our church to a guy at an off-ramp out the window, and it had my cell phone number on the back, if they were interested in coming to church with our family at some point.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um, we were on the way to a soccer game and in a hurry, and it was a really quick discussion.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And this was about a dozen years ago, 13 years ago.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And a couple months later, his name is Bill.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: He called me and said, I got this card, I think maybe from your kid.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was hitchhiking and homeless at the time, and he was back in the area.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the family took him out to dinner and we hung out.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And a month later, we got together again.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And a month later, we took him to the drugstore and then he was gone for six months.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Then he was back in the area and he came to dinner at our house, and then he was gone for six months.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Then we took him to church to our little congregation here in Virginia.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been about a year and a half since I've last heard from him.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the number that I have for him is sounds like it's been disconnected.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I've spent hours and hours and hours and hours with Bill and learned some fascinating lessons about how to be a good American, you know, a good citizen, a patriot, really, really special guy.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then a couple of years ago in LA, I met a guy, I was on a Christmas tour for a Christmas show with another of your cousins, Jenny Oak Sbaker.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we were in LA near the hotel, and I met a guy that was mid-20s, college grad, had moved to LA to follow his dreams.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Things had completely fallen apart on him.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he was living in an airport at the time.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we spent the morning together, took him to IHOP, had breakfast, gave him some cards.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, I really appreciate this, but I'd like to pay some of these forward.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we got in an Uber and drove around LA, giving away gift cards to other unhoused people, though he could certainly have used them.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then we stayed in touch.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And about two weeks ago, he reached out and said that he had just moved back to the DC area with a job and an apartment and a fresh start on life.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so we spent the day together and he got to meet Cody for the first time, my wife.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I can go back and look at my phone, and we've exchanged hundreds of text messages and phone calls over the last few years.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just two kind of diverse, you know, opposite ends of the spectrum.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: The first man I should say, Bill, he was, this was his choice.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: He had chosen to kind of wander the country.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: He probably had enough tucked away somewhere that he could have rented an apartment or something like that.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: But he was just, he felt like God had asked him to wander for a bit, and that's what he was doing.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas my other friend went from, you know, an apartment to friends' couches to conflict to his first night on the street in his life, having to, you know, figure out where he's gonna lay his head and stay safe.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I've got lots of those.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've got probably a hundred contacts on my phone of people that I've met where we've exchanged some communication post-initial meeting.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, there's a guy in the Midwest, for goodness sake, that I met driving cross-country that I then met again driving back, that six months later I met again driving back.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Long story, but I had to drive cross-country three times in a short period of time.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we connected each of those times in Nebraska and we talk all the time, and he's trying to get his whole life back on track, hoping someone will give him a second chance after some mistakes he admits he's made.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: There are stories like this all around us.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to have the patience to hear and to ask.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, they don't have to be unhoused or going through hard things to have a story to tell.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: That person you sit by at work probably has a really interesting story and has probably overcome some incredible things.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Just ask.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as you were talking about, you know, people not having a place to live, not sure where they're going to be.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody grows up and says, you know, nobody's in high school and says to themselves, When I grow up, I want to be homeless.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: When I grow up, I want to not know where my next meal is coming from.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some people make some catastrophic life decisions that put them there.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And some people, whether it's by not making a decision or a series of bad episodes, they end up in those kind of situations.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so they get judged and they get looked down upon by a lot of society.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, some of them may be there by their choice, some of them may be there because they ran out of options otherwise.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it not doesn't make them a bad person, doesn't make them any less worthwhile.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes them puts them where they are.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, how do you help them get on their feet?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: How do you help them to move forward?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: How do you help them to feel recognized and to feel like, you know, I actually can do something.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a loser, I'm not anything.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And to your point about people sitting next to you, I worked with a lot of amazing people in all the different careers I've had.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I loved about being in the Air Force is that you took a typical squadron, typical squadron, you've got Kids from every walk of life.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have kids who came from a very wealthy New England family to somebody who literally it was jail or the military, people who happened to stumble into, you know, ran into a recruiter at some point when they didn't know what they're going to do with themselves and ended up in the military.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved that constant, you know, for me, feeding me of my the stories of people's lives and where they came from and how they got there.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it always fascinates me of you're standing where you are today or the decisions that you made to get you there.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Invariably, none of us have made a perfect string of decisions.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: We all make bad decisions, and but where we are is what really matters and how we're able to move forward what matters.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And how people move forward to a large degree, I think we forget this, has to do with how we treat them and how we appreciate them.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you're in a leadership role.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: You may not be working with people in your organization that don't, they all have a job.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: They may all have a place to live, but you know you don't know what's happening with their ongoing divorce.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know what's happening with their custody battle.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know what's happening with the financial strain they're going through because of unforeseen medical payments or even strains that because of bad decisions they made themselves.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: But helping people to understand that, hey, we're here with you and we're going through this together, I think it overall lifts yourself and it lifts everybody around.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: You just, amen, brother.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: So much of what you just said resonates with my experiences.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: A couple of real quick follow-up points in case someone's listening and kind of has questions.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing I'd say is I understand, particularly with the gift card movement, that we're not trying to solve global hunger.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: We can't do that.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: We cannot solve everyone's problems.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: We're giving them a few days of hope and something to hang on to next time they're hungry, to not give up, to know that there are really good people in the world.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't refer to myself because I'm just the vehicle for other people's kindness.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the other point.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's important people know that the money that we give away on street corners across the country, most of that is not mine.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is money that has been donated to the cause.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I am the vehicle for people who maybe are not as comfortable talking to strangers or who don't necessarily want to go approach somebody in a parking lot holding a cardboard sign.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm happy to do that.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I love doing that.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: I always love talking to strangers and having those experiences.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm happy to kind of be that kind of that vehicle and that connection for them.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing I'd say is that a lot of these folks, some are there by choice, some recognize that they've made poor choices that put him in or her in this situation and some bad habits.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of stereotypes about people in this category who have a drinking problem or a drug problem or a gambling problem, or you name it.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: Those are really dangerous.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Trust me, having spoken to countless folks in these circumstances, the stereotype is almost never true.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: I have met accountants and university professors and guys in finance, public school teachers whose lives just collapsed for a variety of reasons and they find themselves on the streets.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the number one common denominator between them is that they all had really, really tough childhoods.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I've met people who describe in specific and horrifying ways things that they experienced as children in homes where they should have been loved and they were not.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so I will often ask, do you remember the first time that you slept on the street?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like the first time you realized I don't have any place to go tonight.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And for many of them, it is 12, 13, 14 years old.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that has come after, in most cases, some years of abuse of all kinds and them finally reaching a breaking point where they say, I can't do this anymore, until they choose the street over home.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: So be careful with the judgments of those folks that you see.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: You might be right.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that guy is there because he just, you know, has a drinking problem and doesn't want to get a job, but odds are it's a much more complex story.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think by and large it's gonna be a much more complex story.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the case.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: I love this discussion.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love where it brings my mind.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me want to be better, makes me want to help people.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I love something else you said.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna solve world hunger.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to fix everything.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because really, that's within the capacity of each individual.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: That each individual has the capacity to do that, but sometimes they don't know it.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it originates at childhood abuse, at challenging situations, but they find themselves in a situation where they don't feel capable anymore.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: They don't feel like they can pull themselves out.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: I look at my background, there's nothing other than writing good fiction novels, there's nothing I feel like I can't do.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I that comes from my parents.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: There was no question in my house that my parents loved us.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: There was no question in my house that they were going to stand up for us and help us out to where and that did something for me.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: That created an optimism and a positivity in me, in my own abilities, regardless of how many mistakes I make, and regardless of how flawed I am personally, that I can figure it out.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Give me enough time and I will figure it out.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a great gift that I think a lot of people who live in those kind of homes, in homes like mine, they don't realize how lucky they are, how blessed they are to have something like that.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so sharing that, kind of like what you're doing, even in this small little way, I think makes a big difference.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you why don't you kind of reiterate about your 501c3, the name of it, how people reach you, and if they want to participate at all.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Would love folks to learn more about what we're doing.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: You can go to the kindnesscardmovement.com or you can go to jasonfrite.com, my website.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you forget all that and you just Google Jason Wright author or Jason Wright Kindness Cards or anything like that, it pops up pretty quickly.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: I've been on the Kelly Clarkson show and some local affiliates around the country and I've been written on a, you know, a couple hundred websites have picked it up at some point.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: So there's lots of information out there to sort of validate what we're trying to do and give some credibility, we hope, to what's a little bit of a unique, you know, grassroots movement.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's donation information right on the website that's tax deductible through the IRS, just like any other nonprofit charity.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, if you want to give five bucks, give five bucks.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to give five thousand dollars, we can do that too.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we've recently started talking to folks about donating.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've had two cars donated that I was able to get to people who the thing that was most holding them back was not having a reliable vehicle.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we can do that and give a tax write-off.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of options to get involved.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's not for you, if donating to something like this isn't in your comfort zone or your budget, just go to the store and buy a$10 gift card to a fast food place or to Walmart or Target or Walgreens, whatever it might be, and just have it in your glove box or in your cup holder the next time you see somebody with a sign or with their entire life on their back, roll the window down, ask them their name, tell them it's nice to meet them, and say, I'd like you to have this.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you might be surprised at what such a small thing does for you.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Jason, thanks for joining us today.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to thank everyone for listening to participate in the show.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have further questions, go to asterisknow.com and shoot me a note, and we'll have a further conversation.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you didn't catch all of what Jason just said about how to get a hold of him, or you want to just get a hold of them through me, you can do that also.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, join us for future episodes of Commander's Intent.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and subscribe and follow, and we'll talk to you next time.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: So that's it for today's episode of Commander's Intent Podcast.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: Head on over to Apple Podcasts iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will be entered in the grand prize drawing to win a$25,000 private exclusive leadership coaching package with Derek Oakes himself.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: So head on over to CommandersIntent Podcast.com and pick up a free copy of Derek's Leadership Guide and join us on the next episode.