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The Two-Year Assignment That Became a 19-Year Mission: John Hoey and The Y in Central Maryland · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:14
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
• 0:17
  today's guest is John K Hoey, President and CEO of the Y in
• 0:22
  Central Maryland. the Y runs neighborhood centers, camps,
• 0:26
  after school programs and community health efforts, all
• 0:29
  focused on youth development, healthy living and social
• 0:33
  responsibility. It's simple goal is to help
• 0:36
  every child and adult thrive no matter their background or
• 0:40
  income. Since taking the helm in 2006,
• 0:44
  John has LED a sweeping transformation.
• 0:47
  Under his guidance, revenue has tripled, and the Y has become
• 0:51
  one of the largest in the nation.
• 0:53
  His work has earned him honors such as Ernst and Young's
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  Maryland Entrepreneur of the Year and the Daily Records Most
• 1:01
  Admire CEO award. Before joining the Y, John spent
• 1:05
  over a decade in the Education Center with Sylvan Learning and
• 1:10
  Laureate Education, and he held executive roles at Citigroup.
• 1:14
  He holds an MBA from the University at Albany and an
• 1:17
  English degree from the University of South Carolina.
• 1:20
  But before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
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  back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
• 2:17
  today, President and CEO of the Y in Central Maryland, John
• 2:21
  Hoey. Thanks for making the time to
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  Share your story today. It's great to be with you,
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  Anthony. I appreciate you having me on.
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  So, John, your background includes more than a decade in
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  for profit education as well as roles at Citigroup.
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  What inspired you to make the move into the nonprofit sector?
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  Yeah, I wish I had this great story where I had this epiphany
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  and one day and made this big switch.
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  I will say I was very, very much enjoying my career when this
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  opportunity came along. I was running the division of a
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  public company called Educate Inc, which is AK through 12
• 3:05
  services company and minding my business, if you will, and I was
• 3:14
  perched about this role. I will say I had no idea why
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  they were interested in me. I really had no interest in the
• 3:22
  role. I kind of really didn't have.
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  I didn't call them back for a while.
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  They kept calling me. Long story short, I agreed to
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  get together with a couple folks were on the board here.
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  And, you know, they told me that the organization was in trouble.
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  It had to be turned around. And I'm kind of a sucker for
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  turnarounds. And at the time in my personal
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  life, I was a single dad with a very young child, traveling
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  pretty much non-stop. And so, you know, I loved what I
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  did for a living. I love the business I was
• 4:02
  running and the people I was working with and everything
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  about it. But, you know, my life was
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  logistically challenging, as, you know, anytime you travel a
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  lot. And so the idea of maybe doing
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  something locally, not having to get on a plane every Monday
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  morning and doing something for the community was kind of
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  interesting. So, you know, strangely enough,
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  I went and spoke with the folks I was working with at the time
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  and you know, I said, these people keep calling me about
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  this job. And you know what?
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  My boss at the time, it was the CEO of the company said, he
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  said, you know, why, why don't you do this?
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  You know, thinking about it as like a two year thing, like an
• 4:52
  executive on loan and and then just come back and I really this
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  guy who's Aceo is just a great guy.
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  I mean, we're friends and, you know, he understood that I was
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  I've been divorced, you know, I was a single dad and and, and,
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  you know, he was just a very understanding cat.
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  So I said that's a cool way to think about it.
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  So Long story short, I decided to accept the job thinking this
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  is a 2 year thing and this be a lot of fun.
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  It would, I'd be able to help an organization in my, in the
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  community in which I live. And, and they do it.
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  You know, they were doing interesting things that related
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  to education and health, both of which are things that I, you
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  know, things I really care about.
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  So that's what I did. I took the job.
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  I jumped in with both feet. And here we are 19 years later
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  and I never went back. So you speak with a little bit
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  of humility when you say I had no idea why they were contacting
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  me, but what did they see? Why were they so persistent?
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  I think at the end of the day there are a few things that
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  reasons I ended up being on their target list. 1 is I was
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  working in the for profit education space for a very well
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  known company locally and you know the Y is a not-for-profit,
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  but it has to compete against for profit providers and we do a
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  lot in the education space and I was in the for profit education
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  world. So I think, I think they thought
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  I would be capable of sort of understanding this world in
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  which they live and that the kind of businesses and
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  operations to why I was running are things that I would be, you
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  know, able to grasp quickly and and give some guidance to.
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  Also, I had been and somebody who had been involved in a bunch
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  of local organizations. So I chaired nonprofit boards
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  and chaired capital campaigns locally.
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  And so I think they said, well, you know, he's very involved in
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  the community. He seems to care.
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  And so I think, you know, it's those two things.
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  The funny story was, you know, during the quote UN quote
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  interview process, I, I, I just showed up to meetings.
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  I never prepare. I didn't really think about them
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  as interviews. It was board members.
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  They were really impressive people, smart people.
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  And basically, you know, they would talk about the challenges
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  and the problems and the things they were concerned about.
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  And we would just talk about it as it was a business, like it
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  was a business case. And I would say, well, here's
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  what I would do. So I was, you know, I was
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  thinking about it more as you know, you run into somebody at a
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  restaurant, sit down and you have a 2 hour conversation and
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  somebody pays the check and we all leave.
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  I mean, that was I really didn't, I don't believe in my
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  head. I was never, I never interviewed
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  for the job. I mean, clearly I did, but I
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  never thought of it that way. I.
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  Just you just showed up and you were being yourself and you were
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  answering the questions. That they threw out there.
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  So you know, and like I said, the board members were really
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  impressive who I met with. So that was that made the whole
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  process, you know, that kind of got my attention.
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  So what were some of the big challenges that needed addressed
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  right away? Yeah.
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  Well, the organization, you know, the why is a brand I think
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  everybody knows, but you know, it's certainly not an it's not
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  as an organization or as an entity, particularly here in
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  Baltimore at the time was some something and that people really
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  fully understood at the time. The organization had a lot of
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  debt. It had no strategy.
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  It was losing money. It had some facilities that were
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  frankly just terrible. It sort of wandered into
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  different grant programs and really had no understanding of
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  how the pieces Coheed, you know, we're really, we're brought
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  together to to make a sort of coherent whole.
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  They didn't really know what they were trying to do.
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  So it was kind of there was no strategy financially.
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  They were going to run out of money pretty soon.
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  The assets they had were really in poor shape.
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  And candidly, a lot of the people they had were well
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  meaning but not terribly capable.
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  So for me, that was like, that's fascinating.
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  I love that. To me it sounds like a rat's
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  nest, but you're like, hey, give me that.
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  But. But I love rat's nest and you
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  know the that, that, you know, to me it was a solvable problem.
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  And, and you know, I, when I was offered the job, I mean, the
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  really the only criteria I had was, you know, I would run the
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  organization that I would talk to the board about strategy and
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  general approach. But if they, you know, that you
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  have to let me run it and you have to, there has to be some
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  trust because we're going to change a lot.
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  If you told me, by the way, if they told me everything was
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  great and they wanted me to, I wouldn't have even had a second
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  discussion because I would. Great.
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  Good. I don't know why you want to
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  talk to me. And they were they.
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  They said, yeah, I mean, we're hiring you to run this.
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  We're board members. We don't want to run the
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  organization. And my predecessor at the time,
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  he was a wonderful man that spent his whole career in the
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  wild, but really had no business skills, big heart, but really no
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  business skills. And this is a business, you
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  know, we are A5O1C3 the IT, we do this, our shareholders really
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  are the community, but it's a business and he really didn't
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  have business acumen and and so you know what I think?
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  If we can just pause for a second on that, John, if you
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  don't mind, because I think what you just said there is going to
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  hit people is a little bit odd. Some people anyways, when you
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  talk about a non profit being a business, say more about that
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  because I think in a lot of people's minds they're like, oh,
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  they don't have to make money for a nonprofit.
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  Well, you know, it's funny, people say nonprofit, it's not
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  an industry because it's a tax status, right?
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  And it requires you to do everything you do to be the, the
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  benefit to the community. But there's very different
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  business models across a lot of, you know, wide range of not for
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  profits. You might have a, a
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  not-for-profit like a United Way, which is a great
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  organization. Basically, what do they do?
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  They raise money. They're a fundraising
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  organization, right? That's great. the Y is totally
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  different. We about 70% of our revenue
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  comes from the, the, the consumer.
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  We are operating things, you know, hospitals are not for
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  profits, universities are not for profits, Some of them, some
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  are not, but most are. We have large capital assets,
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  you know, we, we have to generate, I'll call it profit,
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  but in the not-for-profit sector we call it positive cash flow
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  and you know, and, but we have to generate profit every year to
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  reinvest back into our assets in the community.
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  So the profit, it's really a matter of where is the money
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  going? Where is the profit going in a
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  obviously in a for profit enterprise, it's going back to
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  the owners or the shareholders, right or into the business and,
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  and the, the owners and, and the board make that decision with
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  us, it's going back into the organization or into the
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  community. But we have to make money.
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  If we lose money, we cannot invest in our assets, we cannot
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  invest in the work we do. So the we have to operate.
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  We do have a positive operating margin, but it's much thinner
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  than a for profit business would have.
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  And so you said 70% of your revenue comes from consumers.
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  Where does the other 30% come from?
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  It comes from mostly grants in our organization.
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  We run Head Start which is federally fed in program and and
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  we are the largest Head Start provider in the state of
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  Maryland. So in our case there we have
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  about 20, 5 million and Head Start funding fed federal
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  government. We also have other grants that
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  fund things like Community Schools and programming for at
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  risk youth. And then we raise money from the
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  public and foundations, the numbers to support a lot of the
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  different things we do. You know, the wise operating
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  model is for, I'll call it the consumer side is we try to
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  charge reasonable rates for things like membership and
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  preschool for that school, but we scholarship people who can't
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  afford it up to four times the federal poverty level.
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  So you and I may both be preschool dads, if you will.
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  And you, I may be paying half of what you're paying because, you
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  know, I just lost my job. And so nobody needs to know that
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  our job is to get everybody in and serve the community.
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  So we we have to raise money to fund that sort of thing.
• 15:31
  Again, if you were running the Y as a for profit enterprise,
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  there's a whole host of things that we do that you would not
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  do. And that's fine, right?
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  I mean that's we do those things because it's our responsibility
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  as a, as a community based organization that does have that
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  tax status of to do everything we can to support community.
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  So it is, it's a very complicated thing to do.
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  And in our case, we basically have 6 or 7, we call them
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  product lines, but they're basically side by They all have
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  different business models. Can you tell us more about
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  those? Because I'm hearing you talk
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  about preschool, I'm hearing you talk about what I know about the
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  why, which is the fitness center in the pool.
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  What else is there? Well, I'll start there.
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  You know, we don't, we'll run fitness centers.
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  I think that may be a perception.
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  We run, we call them why family centers, They're sense of
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  community. They're healthy centers of
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  community. And yeah, there's a lot of
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  fitness and health activities that go on.
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  But we're, we're providing programming for young people.
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  We're we're providing opportunities for active older
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  adults to be engaged with one another and others in the
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  community. We're doing a lot of things that
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  are designed to really serve our core audiences, which are
• 17:12
  families, kids and seniors. And so that is health and
• 17:16
  fitness, but a lot of it is not. And so you, you join AY, what
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  I'll call AY Family Center. And some people, yeah, they may
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  just come in and use the fitness stuff and leave every day.
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  And that's fine. By the way, that is a very small
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  percentage of people we serve. Most people come and they engage
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  in a wide range of programs available there.
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  We have healthcare providers. So, you know, we provide health
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  education. We do the BDS prevention
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  programs. We do all this sort of thing.
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  We have book clubs for for folks.
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  We have, you know, a bunch of youth programs, we have family,
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  you know, we have family programming things to come and
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  do with your family. Your parents night out.
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  So drop your kids off and you and your spouse go and get a few
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  hours of. I like that you talk in my
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  language. Always our most popular offering
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  so they're they're real. You have to think about centers
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  of community, right healthy centers of healthy community.
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  You join that, it's a membership and you, you pay a a monthly
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  membership fee, you don't sign a contract.
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  And so that's that membership and Family Center, I'll call it
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  business, is in our case about almost 45% of our revenue,
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  right. OK.
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  So we also run a series of consumer, consumer paid youth
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  development program. So preschool programs,
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  traditional, you know, preschool programs for kids one to five.
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  One we run before and after school enrichment programs in
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  public schools. So, you know, parents don't get
• 19:17
  off at 3:00. You know, most parents don't.
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  So after school your kid will say, I go to the Y and basically
• 19:24
  they go down to a program room and they, we, we engage them and
• 19:31
  we do a lot of what we enrichment activities, things
• 19:34
  that they might not be doing during the school day.
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  So whether that's art, recreation, you know, a lot of
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  fun and that. Takes place on site at the
• 19:43
  schools or they come to. Your location, that's right.
• 19:47
  So that's a, you know, that's another business, youth
• 19:51
  development business that we run summer camp, both day camps and,
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  and overnight camps run during the summer.
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  Those are again, all of these are consumer pay with that model
• 20:08
  that I discussed, which is basically a sliding scale for
• 20:12
  people based on income. And so those are all.
• 20:18
  Those are, if you will, businesses were running, they
• 20:21
  have very, they're, they're different, but they're related.
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  In our case, if you are in and if you have your child in any of
• 20:29
  those youth developers, you become a member of the Y.
• 20:32
  So you have access to the Y family centers.
• 20:35
  In addition to that, I mentioned Head Start, which is a very
• 20:37
  highly regulated federally funded program for kids and
• 20:45
  families. Kids basically zero and I'll
• 20:51
  explain zero in a second, zero to five who are whose families
• 20:58
  are at or below the federal poverty law.
• 21:01
  And so that looks a lot like traditional preschool programs,
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  but it provides a whole range of additional services for the
• 21:10
  children and the families. Those include health services.
• 21:15
  Those improve include a lot of family support services.
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  These are people living at below the federal poverty level.
• 21:22
  They they have a lot of challenges, right?
• 21:24
  You know, for sure. So that's a very big operation
• 21:30
  for us. You know, it's very large.
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  It's across the entire region and it's a very, and it's highly
• 21:40
  regulated by the federal government.
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  And so it's it's, you know what? Did you mean by 00 to 5:00?
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  Well, zero to five, it starts with what we call with what is
• 21:54
  called early head start. So a woman who's pregnant can
• 22:00
  just play an early, early head start.
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  So we work with that mother and the family to ensure that, you
• 22:09
  know, the child comes into the world and is healthy and as and,
• 22:15
  and, and the family is as prepared as possible.
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  Or you know, I always say, you know, you, you're, I think
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  you're a dad. I'm a dad.
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  You know, I'm a dad. Kids don't come with handbooks,
• 22:25
  right? Yet people like you and me, we
• 22:30
  have enough resources that hopefully we can at least try to
• 22:36
  be prepared. For that, went through it pretty
• 22:39
  well, yeah. Right.
• 22:40
  But you know, if you're if you're operating at the edge
• 22:45
  economically and otherwise it's a it's an even bigger thing.
• 22:48
  So that's what early Head Start does.
• 22:51
  So we do that and then another huge thing that we do, which is
• 22:57
  called which called communities, that is work in schools that are
• 23:03
  in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty.
• 23:07
  And they can, they are designated as Community Schools
• 23:12
  where we work with the principal and the, and the school
• 23:17
  community to provide resources to that school to help the kids
• 23:22
  in that school and the families in that school stay on track and
• 23:26
  deal with some of the major distractions that kids and
• 23:30
  families like that have that in wealthier school districts or
• 23:36
  schools you don't have to worry about.
• 23:38
  So you've got kids who are coming to school hungry, right?
• 23:41
  So we have food pantries. You have, you know, kids whose
• 23:46
  families are in crisis in, in lots of different ways.
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  So you have a lot of resources you're providing there, you're
• 23:54
  running after school programs. All of this is funded to grants
• 23:59
  and philanthropy. And so basically you, we have
• 24:04
  people in those schools who work, as I said, with the
• 24:07
  principal and the school community to ensure that kids
• 24:11
  can come to school and focus on learning and that we should deal
• 24:15
  with a lot of wrap around things that, you know, in, you know,
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  our kids, we, we go to the grocery store and then we, we
• 24:24
  make sure they have everything they need.
• 24:25
  And, you know, we, you know, we, we sign them up for after school
• 24:30
  programs and etcetera, etcetera. The Community School might have,
• 24:35
  you know, GED programs for parents.
• 24:38
  So they really, you turn these schools into sort of a much more
• 24:43
  than a school. It's, it's a sound again, a
• 24:45
  different kind of hub of community.
• 24:48
  So that is another and we do that at a massive scale. 29
• 24:52
  schools in the region. Wow.
• 24:54
  So I just ran through I don't know how many that was, 6 or 7.
• 25:02
  That's a lot, I mean. Clients that are, I think
• 25:05
  there's, they're very, they operate very differently.
• 25:10
  They all have ultimately the same, bound by the same mission
• 25:16
  and the same purpose, but that you getting back to the business
• 25:20
  discussion, they are we have to operate them differently,
• 25:24
  different kind of skills, different financial bump holes
• 25:28
  and we have to make that all, all work cohesively.
• 25:33
  So it's fun, but it's it's it's not simple.
• 25:41
  Yeah. What would you say to people who
• 25:43
  have the perception that running or working at a nonprofit is
• 25:47
  easier than the for profit world?
• 25:52
  Yeah, I mean, I would say that. Try it, I dare you.
• 26:05
  The thing that's really, and I think I mentioned it for you
• 26:09
  know what we we operate on a really thin margin right of you
• 26:16
  know, for profit businesses once they reach scale and you know,
• 26:21
  their model is, is a margin that is you know is going to be much
• 26:29
  higher than what ours is. You do you, you don't do things
• 26:34
  that don't make financial sense. You know, you, you stop doing in
• 26:40
  our case, we have to, we have to do things that make financial
• 26:44
  sense, but some of them make less financial sense than
• 26:49
  others, right? And so I have AY in West
• 26:52
  Baltimore in a historically African American neighborhood
• 26:58
  that is, you know, the has a lot of challenges.
• 27:02
  It's a very challenged neighborhood and that Y has been
• 27:06
  there for 107 years. You know what it loses?
• 27:09
  It loses money. If I was running this as a for
• 27:13
  profit business that would have closed, that closed years ago,
• 27:17
  what do I do? I invest in it.
• 27:20
  I invest in it heavily to make sure that people in that
• 27:24
  community have as great AY as people in a wealth community.
• 27:29
  You wouldn't do that if you're running it as a for profit.
• 27:33
  You would just close it and move on.
• 27:37
  You wouldn't give away stuff to the degree that we give away
• 27:40
  things. You would be fine with fewer
• 27:44
  members, but all of whom could pay.
• 27:48
  We have a lot more members, but many of them can't pay as much.
• 27:55
  You would provide a lot less services.
• 27:58
  You know, you would be a lot of people intensive.
• 28:01
  You would cut your, your people cost quite a bit.
• 28:06
  We're very high touch, high engagement.
• 28:09
  My you know, we have a lot of we have a lot more people than you
• 28:16
  would have in a for profit just fitness club, if you will.
• 28:22
  You know, the for profit and this is not a knock on them.
• 28:24
  I mean, it's a good business. The for profit fitness club
• 28:27
  model generally is to get you to sign a contract for a year and
• 28:33
  hope you never come. That is the truth.
• 28:38
  That is the truth. And if you want anything other
• 28:42
  than access to their equipment, you have to pay extra for
• 28:46
  everything. There's not the why.
• 28:48
  Pretty much everything is all inclusive with a few small
• 28:52
  exceptions. So it is more complicated and I
• 28:58
  will say that I I was probably under the delusion when I took
• 29:03
  this job that it would be a bit of a piece of cake, you know?
• 29:08
  So you fell into that same, this notion, that same trap.
• 29:11
  Yeah, maybe there's a little hubris involved there, but I
• 29:16
  didn't think it would be easy. But I I thought, well, you know,
• 29:19
  how hard can this be? It's a business that's broken.
• 29:23
  Let's fix it and move on. And, you know, you learn a lot.
• 29:28
  You learn, I mean, and that's true, I'm sure in any business,
• 29:32
  you know, you walk in any business thinking if you've had
• 29:35
  some success in your career, I can, I can, I can fix this.
• 29:40
  And there's always, it's always the stuff you don't know that
• 29:44
  kills you. And as long as you're open to
• 29:48
  the reality that you're not going to know a lot of stuff,
• 29:52
  then I think you can navigate your way through that.
• 29:55
  So what's 1 big thing you didn't know?
• 30:01
  You know, I didn't know how I'll tell you one good thing and one
• 30:07
  bad thing. One good thing was I didn't know
• 30:11
  how deeply people felt about the Wah I as a brand and it was
• 30:16
  about a like people. I didn't grow up around AY.
• 30:20
  You know, I had been a member once or twice of AY in my life,
• 30:24
  but it hadn't been a transformative experience for
• 30:27
  me. People who we have people have
• 30:32
  been members of of our of AY or RY or AY for their entire life
• 30:38
  who you know, can't imagine a world in which they don't have
• 30:43
  AY. You know that they go to 3-4
• 30:46
  times a week that it is it whose kids went to preschool and then
• 30:51
  they went to camp and you know, they still know their old camp
• 30:55
  buddies from 40 years ago. It's like it blew me away.
• 31:01
  I didn't know I didn't I mean, I knew the why I existed, but I
• 31:03
  didn't know it was that had that much impact on people's lives.
• 31:11
  You know, one of the biggest supporters of our why you sadly
• 31:14
  passed away of cancer about five years ago was this gentleman who
• 31:18
  was born and raised in a small town in New Zealand that had
• 31:22
  nothing going on but a tiny little Y in this town.
• 31:26
  He ended up in the in the financial world in London,
• 31:31
  eventually moved to New York and then ended up here in Baltimore
• 31:34
  running a hedge fund. So he became very, very
• 31:38
  successful, very wealthy. He told me when I took this job,
• 31:45
  this was like one of these conversations, a guy, the guy,
• 31:48
  wildly successful, very unassuming, but wildly
• 31:52
  successful. You said, John, you know, the
• 31:55
  minute the why is not for all is the minute I'll stop supporting
• 31:58
  you. He did.
• 32:01
  He was supporting us at a nice but not a crazy high level at
• 32:05
  the time. By the time, you know, by the
• 32:08
  time he passed away, you know, he had probably given us well
• 32:12
  over $10 million. Wow.
• 32:15
  And since he passed away, his Family Foundation continues to
• 32:19
  be, in general, incredibly generous to us.
• 32:21
  The why was transformative to him.
• 32:24
  So like these, well, not everybody has those kind of
• 32:28
  resources. These kind of stories just came
• 32:30
  out all the time. And I was just taken aback.
• 32:34
  I'm like, wow, I didn't know all that.
• 32:35
  I didn't know any of that. Maybe I should take that
• 32:38
  seriously. What I also didn't know, I
• 32:47
  didn't real I certain, you know, you work in the private sector
• 32:50
  long enough and I worked in bank, you know, Citibank.
• 32:53
  I worked and helped build a very successful set of for profit
• 32:58
  education businesses, started my career in a publicly traded
• 33:03
  apparel company, etcetera in New York.
• 33:06
  You know, you work around really smart people.
• 33:09
  You kind of take for granted that the people around you will
• 33:13
  all sort of have a common set of skills, while they might have
• 33:18
  different skills like everybody understands basic financial
• 33:22
  analysis, everybody understands the concept of ROI, everybody
• 33:28
  understands, you know, operating margin, they can they find their
• 33:33
  way around AP and L, etcetera, etcetera.
• 33:36
  Man, you know, I got here virtually no one understood any
• 33:41
  of those things. And you know, even my CFO at the
• 33:50
  time was a nice gentleman, but boy, the garbage he gave me for
• 33:55
  financial information was just appalling.
• 33:57
  So I had to, I had to take all this data he gave me, which was
• 34:01
  terrible, and, and set up my, all my own spreadsheets to
• 34:05
  figure out what the heck was going on.
• 34:08
  My predecessor, again, it was a really wonderful man.
• 34:11
  He passed away several years ago.
• 34:14
  Heart of gold. He didn't really know the
• 34:16
  difference between AP and L and a balance sheet.
• 34:21
  You were working with people who came from a very different set
• 34:24
  of experiences and skills. Yeah, I mean, a lot of them kind
• 34:29
  of more social worker orientation.
• 34:31
  So really good human beings, good human beings.
• 34:35
  So I want to talk more about those first days the the first
• 34:39
  year because you talked about sort of the bad state that
• 34:43
  things were in. They were about to run out of
• 34:44
  money, facilities were in bad shape.
• 34:47
  What what was the first thing that you did or first series of
• 34:52
  things that you did because it sounds like this was on the
• 34:55
  verge of collapse. What was your plan to turn it
• 34:58
  around? Well, the first thing I did was
• 35:02
  I, you know, well, I did two things.
• 35:05
  I, I really did several things. I, I really spent a lot of time
• 35:09
  going out and about. I needed, you know, you need to
• 35:11
  see stuff, right? Like I'm a very tactile guy, you
• 35:15
  know, I need to see things. I need to see what we're doing,
• 35:18
  how we're doing it, you know, not to judge, but just, I need
• 35:22
  to see it. I, I don't want to be
• 35:23
  theoretical about anything. So I, I went around and I saw a
• 35:30
  lot and it was alarming. Can't do it.
• 35:34
  I also spent time talking to people I respected in the
• 35:38
  community to get their impressions of the organization.
• 35:43
  And then the third thing, I'm very data.
• 35:45
  Well, then I was then I really dug into data, both our own
• 35:49
  data, which again was in poor shape.
• 35:52
  Things were not tracked. Even the financial data made no
• 35:54
  sense. And then I, I can, I spent money
• 35:58
  in an environment where I had none.
• 36:01
  I spent a little money to do some market research and to get
• 36:06
  an understanding of what the community thought about us and
• 36:11
  our services. Long story short, they didn't
• 36:17
  think much. They, they thought, you know,
• 36:21
  and they thought the why, you know, was kind of yesterday's
• 36:25
  news. And so our bread taken a big
• 36:28
  hit. And so, you know, so you got to
• 36:35
  ground yourself in data and information, you know, both
• 36:38
  quantitative and qualitative information before you kind of,
• 36:43
  and then I really, I made a decision that, you know, we're
• 36:49
  going to, it's going to take a little time to fix a lot of this
• 36:52
  stuff. And we actually had a few
• 36:59
  building projects that they borrow a lot of money for that,
• 37:03
  you know, we're on the books. And so I, I decided two things.
• 37:10
  We, I decided that it's going to take some time to fix all of
• 37:15
  this stuff, but I needed for people, I needed to tap into
• 37:19
  that feeling that so many people had about the why that it was so
• 37:23
  essential in their lives, even if it's stung, even if it the
• 37:26
  current, the why they're engaging with was really not
• 37:30
  very good. And so we actually created a
• 37:34
  marketing campaign to kind of get people excited about the why
• 37:42
  again, even though candidly, a lot of it was, you know, the
• 37:47
  house was under some serious renovation and the tagline was
• 37:54
  it's deeper here. So we came up with this.
• 37:56
  I had a really talented marketing person.
• 37:58
  We came up with this imagery of a pool.
• 38:01
  Everyone knows wise have pools of two young people sitting at
• 38:06
  the bottom of the pool playing chess and and and then we put
• 38:12
  other images, you know, we exchanged this with other images
• 38:16
  of of things we did and in the, you know, doing at the bottom of
• 38:21
  the pool, you know, and the pool was just simply the image of you
• 38:25
  think we're just a pool. If you think we're just a pool,
• 38:28
  it's deeper here. And so that got a lot of
• 38:33
  people's attention. It started to allow us to tell a
• 38:37
  bigger story that in fact, we weren't just a crappy fitness
• 38:43
  center and very smelly pool. We were an organization that
• 38:49
  really, even though we didn't do things terribly well, kite
• 38:52
  honestly that we were trying to have a lot of impact, that we
• 38:56
  were trying to serve people. So that got a lot of attention
• 39:00
  while doing that. We, you know, we basically, I, I
• 39:04
  really became, you know, I, I, I told everybody that, look, we're
• 39:10
  going to embrace quality. We're not, you know, we've got
• 39:14
  to, we've really raised the bar while we, you know, we don't
• 39:19
  have new buildings yet, we don't have new this, but everything we
• 39:22
  do has to be high quality and we're going to measure that and
• 39:27
  we're going to have, you know, basically we're going to be
• 39:31
  ruthless around quality. And that was like for our
• 39:37
  organization. People were just stunned, you
• 39:39
  know, I that. It's a big culture shift.
• 39:44
  How did you get people to buy? Yeah, I'm like, I don't care.
• 39:49
  You know, I mentioned that why that we have in West Baltimore.
• 39:54
  And, you know, I went in there and it was really dingy and
• 39:59
  really poorly maintained and kind of the the the attitude
• 40:02
  people had was well, you know, it's in a very challenged
• 40:06
  neighborhood. Like people, what do people
• 40:07
  expect? I'm like, hell no, you know
• 40:11
  what? It's what do people deserve?
• 40:14
  We alter, you know, well maintained things.
• 40:19
  We all deserve clean things. We all deserve people to look us
• 40:23
  in the eye and engage with us, right.
• 40:26
  So quality in terms of also human engagement.
• 40:29
  So we really set the bar and said Nope, gigs up and.
• 40:35
  So how did you, how did you start to implement some of these
• 40:38
  big changes though, John, you guys don't have any money.
• 40:41
  You need money to start improving things.
• 40:43
  And I appreciate what you're talking about around changing
• 40:47
  the culture of raising the bar, but it takes money to do some of
• 40:52
  the things that you're talking about.
• 40:54
  It does. And so a couple things.
• 40:57
  Like I said, they had borrowed some money to start some
• 41:01
  building projects and so I had some of that capital.
• 41:09
  So we started to think about what those projects were going
• 41:12
  to look like and and we started to reinvent what AY could look
• 41:18
  like. And so we started to think about
• 41:22
  that the some of the other things we did were really the
• 41:30
  truth is we were starting because of, we were changing the
• 41:38
  sort of the quality level of a lot of things.
• 41:40
  Our revenues started to creep up a bit, not wildly, right.
• 41:44
  So you know, we got to slightly positive cash flow, you know, in
• 41:50
  the 1st 12 months. And so we started to build some
• 41:55
  confidence, right. And then we, we, we restructured
• 42:05
  a lot of how they organized. We, we restructured how we were
• 42:08
  organized. And I sort of brought in people
• 42:13
  to run these various product lines as, as businesses, right,
• 42:18
  which is not how they ever ran things before.
• 42:21
  So I brought in better people. I We.
• 42:34
  We also then not long after I started was the big financial
• 42:40
  crisis of 2008, right? So all of a sudden we hit that.
• 42:45
  We all remember that not so fondly, but we remember it.
• 42:49
  It actually proved to be a godsend because two reasons.
• 42:55
  One is real estate became very cheap and so we did a bunch of
• 43:02
  deals to to for new spaces at crazy low rates.
• 43:08
  And so we jumped on those. We did some interesting things
• 43:11
  on our balance sheet which I won't get into.
• 43:13
  We did some set at lease backs to to free up capital and things
• 43:18
  like that. Things that like people are
• 43:20
  like, you're going to do what? Like this is what we're going to
• 43:24
  do. And so we were able to generate
• 43:28
  some capital, some opportunity. The other thing that happened
• 43:32
  during that financial crisis, because again, we are starting
• 43:35
  to change things. And even though the built, not
• 43:38
  all the buildings looked that great, they were clean, the
• 43:40
  programming was better, the people were more engaging.
• 43:47
  And the truth is, you know, as why you have a bit of a Halo,
• 43:50
  you know, if you could do those things, the controllable things,
• 43:53
  right, it's amazing. I mean, our membership really
• 43:56
  began to grow and the so we were able to actually open some new
• 44:05
  wise that were result of, you know, getting some great
• 44:08
  opportunities during that financial crisis when real
• 44:11
  estate was really cheap and we really start the flywheel really
• 44:16
  started to move. And the other thing during the
• 44:21
  financial crisis, I will say was what I've always said is Y needs
• 44:26
  to be essential in your life. So it can't be AI if we, if
• 44:32
  people think of it as sort of a discretionary item, like, you
• 44:35
  know, a lot of things we're in trouble.
• 44:39
  They have to think about the Y membership as essential in their
• 44:43
  life. And so during the financial
• 44:45
  crisis, we were really, we doubled down on on the value
• 44:50
  proposition for families. And a lot of families, you know,
• 44:54
  they stopped going to Disney, right?
• 44:56
  You know that the big vacation every year, but they still
• 44:59
  wanted to do stuff as a family. We became the the more, the more
• 45:06
  cost. Effective entertainment cost.
• 45:07
  Effective thing that they could do as a family.
• 45:10
  So they weren't just like, sorry, kids, we're not it's
• 45:13
  going to be a rough year. It's like, all right, well,
• 45:16
  we'll join the Y and I'm doing something for my family, but in
• 45:21
  the in the midst of a time when I don't have the same resource.
• 45:23
  So we really, you know, to me, if that old phrase, I don't know
• 45:28
  who, you know, invented it, everyone claims it, but you
• 45:31
  know, never waste a good crisis. You know, I really, we were very
• 45:35
  much, that was really kind of our motto at the time.
• 45:41
  So quick sidebar, throughout this entire conversation, we
• 45:45
  have always said the Y, not YMCA, not YWCA, the Y, And as I
• 45:52
  look at your website address, which we'll provide to folks
• 45:54
  again at the end, it's just the letter ymaryland.org.
• 45:59
  Why is that? Yeah, well, there's a it's a
• 46:02
  great story and it was another thing I did, which I'm glad you
• 46:07
  brought it in. I didn't, I didn't bring it up
• 46:10
  yet because I thought we were going to get to it.
• 46:12
  But, and, and, and it bears a little bit more explanation.
• 46:16
  So the other thing, I came back to our board with sort of this
• 46:19
  plan, which I've some of which I've explained already, right.
• 46:23
  And the other the, the thing I said is we're going to rebrand.
• 46:28
  We're going to rebrand as just the why.
• 46:31
  Well, why is that? Well, based on research, you
• 46:35
  know, it wasn't me just seating the pants.
• 46:36
  Hey, I got a great idea. People were confused,
• 46:41
  understandably, about the YYMCA. Like, are you guys just for
• 46:48
  Christian men? Because it's kind of like that's
• 46:51
  what your acronym. And yes, the YMCA was founded in
• 46:56
  the 1840s in London then to serve Christian men who were
• 47:02
  coming in from the farms during the Industrial revolution coming
• 47:05
  into London and wreaking havoc. And so it was the way of
• 47:10
  socializing these young men around organized activity, which
• 47:15
  had a religious bent, but that also included exercise and all
• 47:19
  these other things that the Y ended up inventing over the
• 47:22
  years. So yeah, that's our origin
• 47:25
  story. But man, it's so.
• 47:29
  There was some confusion there and the rebranding.
• 47:31
  You did some market research and came up with this idea.
• 47:34
  So would you know, to me, we say we're for all, but our name does
• 47:41
  feels like we aren't. There's a cognitive dissonance
• 47:45
  there. And so the truth is the way most
• 47:49
  people refer to us anyway is the why.
• 47:52
  It's just shorter. And I used to joke like with
• 47:55
  the, you know, the acronym can be challenging because, you
• 48:01
  know, not, you know, not everybody is a male, not
• 48:06
  everyone is Christian, and no one cares about the association
• 48:09
  part. But we all were either young
• 48:11
  once or we are young, right? We all all fired to be at least
• 48:16
  youthful in the way we think about things.
• 48:19
  So that's like we can all rally around that part of the acronym,
• 48:22
  right? Let's do that.
• 48:23
  And so we took embrace that and I would candidly look, we're the
• 48:29
  Y. It is what's called a Federated
• 48:32
  organization. So all the YS across the country
• 48:35
  are independent 5O1C threes. We're not you know, I don't
• 48:39
  report to somebody, you know, in a Home Office somewhere.
• 48:43
  We're kind of what I call a loose confederation of States.
• 48:47
  And so the, the, there is a national organization that we
• 48:52
  found. And at the time, I mean, they
• 48:54
  had no control over the brand. Everybody was expressing it
• 48:57
  different. The logo looked different
• 48:59
  everywhere. It was a mess, quite candidly.
• 49:02
  So I just said, you know what, everyone seems to be doing their
• 49:05
  own thing. We're going to do our own thing.
• 49:07
  We're the what? And we redesigned the logo and
• 49:10
  we embrace that. It really resonated locally.
• 49:17
  I did get a ton of crap for it nationally.
• 49:21
  I mean, people said, you know, I got called all kinds of names,
• 49:25
  none of which I could repeat on this podcast for what I did.
• 49:30
  You know, like, you don't, you know, are you, you know, do you,
• 49:35
  are you, you, you don't care about our Christian heritage.
• 49:40
  That's, you know, that's sacred blah, blah, blah.
• 49:43
  And I was like, no, I just follow the research.
• 49:46
  You know, we want to be for all. So we need a name that's for
• 49:51
  all. Like don't make this
• 49:53
  complicated. And I got, you know, I got
• 49:58
  threatened by a lot of people that in the national office,
• 50:01
  we're going to pull your charter.
• 50:02
  I'm like, you know, go try, look around the country.
• 50:05
  Everybody's doing this differently.
• 50:07
  You guys are not serious people. And eventually the cool part of
• 50:12
  this, eventually the I convinced the national office to do this,
• 50:19
  to do a national market study like I had done.
• 50:23
  And they did one finally and they got the same results
• 50:27
  basically that people were confused.
• 50:32
  The why was what was kind of universally thought of and that
• 50:36
  the brand was the the brand had a lot of equity, but it was it
• 50:42
  was confusing to people and a lot of people did not see
• 50:46
  themselves in the brand, whether that was women or people of
• 50:50
  certain who either have other religions or not religious.
• 50:56
  And you know a lot of women, you know, which is, by the way, 51%
• 51:03
  of the population and. And so did any of the other
• 51:07
  offices follow suit? So they did the research, I saw
• 51:11
  that, and the national organization ultimately
• 51:15
  rebranded as the Why Now? They did.
• 51:20
  They did some stupid things in addition to that which kind of
• 51:23
  kept the YMCA to the side and they still use it in different
• 51:27
  ways. I won't get into the wherefores
• 51:29
  and why. So they like they couldn't quite
• 51:31
  give it up, but at the end of the day they did rebrand and I
• 51:38
  think they will admit that that it was the best thing they did.
• 51:42
  So yes, we're still OK. Technically the YMCA and a lot
• 51:46
  of people call us the YMCA and that's fine.
• 51:49
  But we're the why and the why, yeah?
• 51:55
  OK. And whatever, we head into the
• 51:57
  home stretch here. Right.
• 51:58
  You know, it's like the right. That's how my kids know it.
• 52:04
  So what's a big challenge, John, that you've had to overcome in
• 52:07
  your life, personal or professional?
• 52:09
  We've already talked about obviously some of the big ones
• 52:11
  with the Y, but maybe you've got a different 1 you want to focus
• 52:14
  on here just for a few minutes. Yeah, well, I was another, I
• 52:21
  think the biggest existential challenge we've had to deal with
• 52:24
  here, and, you know, it was personal too, is COVID right?
• 52:30
  The, you know, COVID affected everyone, you know, but it
• 52:36
  affected different things, different entities differently.
• 52:40
  In our case, we were really, you know, we were really rolling,
• 52:45
  you know, we were really rolling in 2019.
• 52:48
  We had an amazing year, lot of optimism into 20 and 20.
• 52:52
  We were starting to think bigger about some, some new things,
• 52:57
  etcetera, etcetera. And you know, I, I grew up in
• 53:03
  the Irish Catholic family and sort of one of the Irish ethos
• 53:07
  is, is every silver lining has a cloud.
• 53:11
  So I was always a guy who like didn't, didn't quite trust
• 53:15
  success. Like, you know, I, I just like
• 53:18
  if you, whenever you feel like things are going well, like
• 53:21
  something bad is going to happen, right?
• 53:24
  Like, you know, we're all products, we're all products of
• 53:27
  our upbringing, like, and so I'm not saying I saw COVID coming,
• 53:33
  but I was like, things are going really well.
• 53:35
  I don't know what's something's going to trip us up, right?
• 53:38
  I didn't think it was something major.
• 53:41
  So then COVID hit. We all know it closed the
• 53:45
  country down in March of 2020 and closed our why.
• 53:50
  And why is across the country down in in March of 2020.
• 53:54
  In our case, you know, I mean that's 50% of my revenue.
• 54:01
  It also shut down my preschools, schools got closed to my before
• 54:05
  and after school was shut down. Basically it shut down my
• 54:10
  business. And you know, we, you know, we
• 54:19
  had to lay off about 1500 people overnight.
• 54:25
  We, you know, the, there are all these federal programs that got
• 54:30
  quickly developed, you know, PPP program.
• 54:33
  We all remember that, right? Well, that we weren't eligible
• 54:39
  for that because we had too many employees.
• 54:41
  You know it was. I didn't realize.
• 54:44
  That and there were special programs developed for
• 54:48
  hospitals, special programs developed for universities.
• 54:51
  So large public serving, but not for large public serving
• 54:58
  organizations like ours. A lot of wives across the
• 55:01
  country did get the money because they're so small.
• 55:04
  I think you had to have less than 500 employees.
• 55:07
  I think that was the criteria because it was run out of the
• 55:11
  Small Business Administration. And they could.
• 55:14
  They're only authorized by Congress to work with businesses
• 55:19
  at 500 people and below. So how did you guys make it
• 55:22
  through? What did you do?
• 55:24
  Well, you know a couple things happen.
• 55:28
  Well, several things happen 1 is we for several months we
• 55:35
  basically message to members, please don't leave us.
• 55:38
  We know we're not open, but there may not be AY here if you
• 55:43
  don't hold on right. So that was proved to be
• 55:47
  amazingly effective. We lost probably about 20% of
• 55:51
  our members initially, so that was helpful.
• 55:58
  We also started up a whole bunch of stuff working with the state
• 56:02
  of Maryland. They we did emergency child care
• 56:06
  for child care for emergency workers.
• 56:10
  So our YS were closed. But you know, for firemen and
• 56:14
  policemen and you know, nurses, the state was funding us to
• 56:19
  watch their kids in AY while they had to go to work, right?
• 56:24
  They were essential workers right?
• 56:27
  Now, we remember that term, right, essential workers.
• 56:30
  So and then we also did things like schools closed and the
• 56:35
  public schools in Maryland stayed closed for the rest of
• 56:39
  school year and the next year. So we did virtual school for
• 56:43
  kids, you know, so we tried to be inventive.
• 56:46
  We also got really involved in food distribution, using our
• 56:50
  footprint to help, working with the Maryland Food Bank and
• 56:55
  others to kind of get food to people.
• 56:57
  So we tried to be of service. We had some short term funding.
• 57:02
  We went out candidly and begged for money.
• 57:05
  You know, ain't too proud to beg, right?
• 57:08
  That's for sure. And then interestingly, when we
• 57:12
  were finally able to open our doors, people stopped.
• 57:19
  People who had stayed with us. They, a lot of them left us
• 57:23
  because they said, oh, you're open now.
• 57:25
  I don't want to go because, you know, that was in the summer of
• 57:30
  2020. We didn't have a vaccine yet,
• 57:31
  but they. Figured you were out of the
• 57:33
  tough spot and they didn't. Need to search anymore.
• 57:35
  So I lost. We were down to half of our
• 57:38
  membership days once we reopened.
• 57:42
  And in all candor, I mean, I thought we were going to go
• 57:48
  bankrupt. We're starting to prepare for
• 57:51
  that process. You know, it's really, I was
• 57:54
  seething about the fact that there was no government program
• 57:57
  to help us and yet people whose businesses were actually growing
• 58:02
  as a result of COVID were getting PPP money.
• 58:05
  You know, it crazy. Like one of the things ways I
• 58:09
  kind of got myself through COVID mentally was, you know, I came
• 58:13
  to work every day a, you know, just to try to be present for
• 58:17
  the few people who are still coming in every day.
• 58:20
  But I would leave sometimes in the afternoon early and go play
• 58:24
  nine holes of golf. And I was in my course and I was
• 58:28
  playing with this guy. I didn't know him well.
• 58:31
  And we were talking and he was like, you know, talking about
• 58:33
  how COVID affected He goes, Oh my God, we've never made more
• 58:37
  money. You know, he, he worked for a
• 58:39
  business that was in the construction world and some
• 58:44
  reason construction took off drift and he said we've never
• 58:48
  sold more stuff. I guess they did heating and
• 58:51
  air, air conditioning supply. And he's like, we're killing it.
• 58:55
  And we got PPP money. And I was just like dry.
• 59:00
  I'm like, why did I get paired with this guy?
• 59:02
  And so he's like, hey, what do you do for a living?
• 59:05
  And so. Well, I'm prepping the why for
• 59:09
  bankruptcy. Thanks for.
• 59:10
  Asking right, SO, so we're, we, we really thought we were kind
• 59:17
  of running out of options, but a couple of things.
• 59:20
  One is I did one thing our national office does well is
• 59:24
  federal government affairs. And we worked on trying to get
• 59:31
  the PPP program get large, not for profits like ours to be
• 59:40
  eligible for the PPP program. And we would have been out, you
• 59:45
  know, we'd be eligible for the maximum amount, which was 10
• 59:48
  million at the time. And so fortunately in life,
• 59:52
  sometimes a serendipity, right? Fortunately, Senator Ben Cardin,
• 59:57
  who has since retired, was the chair of the Senate Small
• 1:00:01
  Business and Committee, which oversaw the Small Business
• 1:00:05
  Administration. And so working with our national
• 1:00:09
  office and Senator Cardin and his staff.
• 1:00:14
  We like, we got to get this changed, you know, and he was
• 1:00:18
  very sympathetic, like we, you know, we can't have
• 1:00:20
  organizations like the Y go under.
• 1:00:22
  And but they came back and they said, we looked at it.
• 1:00:26
  We got to figure out what we could actually get passed if we
• 1:00:28
  do it legislation. They came up with this brilliant
• 1:00:31
  idea to change the regulation that would allow the Small
• 1:00:35
  Business Administration to work with any entity that had no more
• 1:00:39
  than 500 employees in one location as opposed to for the
• 1:00:43
  entire 1 using So government can sometimes work funny in a funny
• 1:00:46
  way, and that would make us eligible.
• 1:00:52
  So I ended up testifying at a Senate hearing that I forget
• 1:01:00
  when that was, but during midst of COVID to sort of plead the
• 1:01:05
  case. And so we were ultimately able
• 1:01:10
  to get that changed and and. And so that was a big part of
• 1:01:15
  what I'll get you guys through that time.
• 1:01:16
  We got that 10 million. Another thing happened which was
• 1:01:20
  totally serendipity. It was two weeks before
• 1:01:28
  Thanksgiving in 2020. I was sending my office on a
• 1:01:31
  Friday. I got an e-mail from somebody
• 1:01:35
  who said I represent a, you know, a philanthropist who would
• 1:01:38
  like to support your organization.
• 1:01:43
  And, you know, you get some of these emails sometimes and a lot
• 1:01:46
  of sometimes they're just crazy and but, you know, I don't know.
• 1:01:50
  So I think I got. To follow up on it.
• 1:01:52
  I followed up on it, responded and I said be happy to talk to
• 1:01:55
  you. She said, well, I want you to
• 1:01:57
  talk to this person at this consulting firm who we've been
• 1:02:05
  working with, and would you be able to do that?
• 1:02:08
  I was like, well, that's odd. But so the person was in a
• 1:02:14
  consulting firm at their office was in San Francisco.
• 1:02:17
  So we ended up like late on a Friday at like 5:30 at night.
• 1:02:22
  It was dark because it was during the, you know, fall and
• 1:02:26
  you're kind of like a last thing.
• 1:02:28
  It was on a Friday, last thing of the of the week and I'm out
• 1:02:31
  of here. You know, this nice person is
• 1:02:34
  going to give us $5000. So yeah, I got a call and I
• 1:02:40
  spoke to the consultant, and the person was representing
• 1:02:43
  Mackenzie Scott, who is Jeff Bezos's ex-wife, who decided at
• 1:02:50
  that time she was going to start giving away large sums of money
• 1:02:54
  to organizations with she was she had this whole consulting
• 1:02:58
  firm vetting them. You don't know anything.
• 1:03:02
  And the woman said, do you know who Mackenzie Scott is?
• 1:03:07
  Of course, I said yes, even though I didn't.
• 1:03:11
  So I was Googling her as she said that.
• 1:03:13
  And I saw quickly, like, Bezos, I'm like, oh, OK.
• 1:03:18
  And, you know, I think we'd all heard that they had gotten
• 1:03:20
  divorced, right? So we knew, and she's going to
• 1:03:25
  give you $18 million. Fantastic.
• 1:03:30
  And of course, you know, you, you're like what?
• 1:03:34
  And you know, you think it's kind of a crank call, but the
• 1:03:37
  it's a, you know, I won't name the firm, but it was a very
• 1:03:39
  legitimate consulting firm that I actually know Well.
• 1:03:42
  So I mean, yeah, I didn't know the this one that I saw her on
• 1:03:46
  their website. She was definitely a partner.
• 1:03:49
  So she's a legit person and so I, you know, you'd think there's
• 1:03:54
  probably 1,000,000 restrictions, right?
• 1:03:56
  Said no restriction. You do with it what you need.
• 1:04:01
  And then I thought, oh wait, we'd probably get it over an
• 1:04:03
  extended period of time. A week later we had a wire
• 1:04:06
  transfer of the. Full amount.
• 1:04:09
  Wow. So.
• 1:04:12
  Spectacular. Between those various things.
• 1:04:17
  So sometimes, you know, it pays to be lucky.
• 1:04:23
  It also there's there your cloud had the silver lining rather
• 1:04:26
  than the other way around. Irishman and me was, you know,
• 1:04:30
  like that was a four leaf Clover there.
• 1:04:34
  John, I want to transition into our last question, but before I
• 1:04:37
  ask it, I want to take care of three quick things.
• 1:04:40
  First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with the Y or
• 1:04:43
  John, you can go to their website, which is just the
• 1:04:46
  letter ymaryland.org, and they've got contact information
• 1:04:49
  on there, ymaryland.org. And as a reminder, if you want
• 1:04:54
  to get more employees, access to therapists, doctors and
• 1:04:57
  prescription meds that, as paradoxical as it seemed,
• 1:05:00
  actually increases the company's net profits, reach out to us at
• 1:05:03
  AD back benefits.com. Finally, if you're enjoying the
• 1:05:07
  show, a quick comment or review on your favorite podcast app
• 1:05:11
  goes a long way towards helping others discover our show.
• 1:05:14
  So thank you in advance. So last question for you, John,
• 1:05:17
  a year from now, you and I reconnect and you're celebrating
• 1:05:19
  a big thing. What's that big thing you hope
• 1:05:22
  to be celebrating a year from today?
• 1:05:27
  Yeah, there's so much that I could say.
• 1:05:32
  You know, I think I'd mentioned to you that January is our big
• 1:05:37
  membership month. And, you know, I think the world
• 1:05:42
  has changed a lot of since I came into this job and since
• 1:05:46
  COVID hit, right? You know, it's changed a lot.
• 1:05:48
  And we're all dealing with a lot of things, a lot of technology,
• 1:05:52
  a lot of issues in the world. And, you know, there's this
• 1:05:56
  notion that, you know, people are not able to engage with each
• 1:06:02
  other anymore in ways that they used to.
• 1:06:05
  And so I've heard people say, well, the why, you know, the the
• 1:06:08
  wise whole model may be flawed because, you know, people are
• 1:06:11
  going to want to engage through phones and other other ways and
• 1:06:16
  not really do things in person, whether that's work out or
• 1:06:19
  whether that's do group activities or engage with their
• 1:06:23
  neighbors anymore. Reality is that's totally false.
• 1:06:28
  I think because of all this, we are, you know, we are, we are
• 1:06:35
  going to, we're actually this month going to go pass our high
• 1:06:38
  watermark before COVID in membership.
• 1:06:42
  We, we have more people from more parts of the community
• 1:06:51
  engaging with us than ever before.
• 1:06:54
  And so we, you know, we had doubled down on saying like
• 1:06:56
  we're going to serve all, we're really going to do this.
• 1:07:00
  We're going to be intentional about reaching parts of the
• 1:07:02
  community we hadn't reached before as well, and that we're
• 1:07:06
  going to reinvent ourselves. And we didn't really talk a lot
• 1:07:09
  about sort of the reinvention since COVID.
• 1:07:11
  But we, you know, we've done a lot of things differently as you
• 1:07:15
  can, as most businesses have had to, right?
• 1:07:17
  You had to rethink. And we've done a lot of, again,
• 1:07:21
  a lot of crazy things that a lot of people think are crazy and
• 1:07:25
  they're working. And so in a year, I would really
• 1:07:29
  like to see that, you know, further validation of that.
• 1:07:34
  I'm, I'm guardedly optimistic as that Irish kid is always looking
• 1:07:38
  for the cloud behind the silver lining.
• 1:07:41
  But I really do believe that fundamentally what we do is
• 1:07:46
  essential in people's lives and that the relevance of our work
• 1:07:50
  is, has never been greater than today.
• 1:07:53
  And so, you know, I, I'm excited about the future.
• 1:07:57
  I'm, I'm also, I'm not naive. I'm not, you know, somebody who
• 1:08:04
  leaves his own BS, but I, I see with my own eyes that when we do
• 1:08:09
  things right and we serve people appropriately, that we can build
• 1:08:15
  community like no one else. And it's working.
• 1:08:18
  So I want to I want to see that further validated.
• 1:08:22
  Love it. John Hoey from the Y in Central
• 1:08:24
  Maryland, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both
• 1:08:27
  your time and your story with us today.
• 1:08:29
  I really appreciate you. Been my pleasure.
• 1:08:33
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:08:36
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:08:38
  today.