199 The Power You Have to Make a Huge Difference with Jacob Lief

"We are defined, as people, by the way we treat each other." - Jacob Lief If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/199. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 199 with Jacob Leaf.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to today's episode, very special episode with a guy by the name of Jacob Leaf, who has dedicated the last 15 years of his life to serving people and to serving a specific community to change their entire mindset, their entire process, their entire way of living, to have it all in life, to improve their lifestyle in a place where poverty is extreme, to improve their education process, to improve the way people feel about themselves. And for those who want to learn how to make a bigger impact, who want to start serving in a deeper way, and who want to learn how to do this for themselves, and this is the episode for you.

• 1:15Lewis Howes?

  His name is Jacob Leaf. I'm going to give you a little bit more of an intro about him here in just a second when I get started. But this is all about living a life of service. Again, one of the principles of my book that's coming out later this year is living a life of service. That's one of the principles of greatness. And Jacob has done an incredible job doing that and serving people. And you know, he's done it for 15 years, done it since he was in college, and it's a really powerful story. He's also got a book out called, "I Am Because You Are: How the Spirit of Ubuntu Inspired an Unlikely Friendship and Transformed a Community." So this is a powerful episode, guys. I hope you get a lot out of these stories and you're inspired by it.

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  I want you guys to take action from this. Make sure to share this episode, lewishowes.com/199. You'll get all the links to the information and the resources that we talked about in this episode. So excited about this, and I'll talk to you guys more at the end. But without further ado, I want to dive into this episode with the one, the only Jacob Leaf.

• 2:19Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about today's guest. His name is Jacob Leaf and he is the co-founder and CEO of Ubuntu Education Fund. And in 2010, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. And in 2012, was selected as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative Advisory Board. He splits his time between Brooklyn, New York, and South Africa. Welcome Jacob to the show.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  How are you doing today?

• 2:47Lewis Howes?

  I'm doing fantastic. I'm very excited about this. We were just having a conversation about some mutual friends with Adam Braun and a lot of other people at Summit Series. So I'm excited to hopefully meet you in person one day, even though this is over the phone right now.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 3:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so next time in New York, we'll all have to come by the offices.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 3:05Lewis Howes?

  But you've got a new book out and I've actually never heard of you until my publisher, Rodeo, which is your publisher, said you gotta connect with this guy and you gotta learn about this guy. You'll really love his story. And you've got this book out and it's called, "I Am Because You Are: It's How the Spirit of Ubuntu Inspired an Unlikely Friendship and Transformed a Community." And can you start us back with your first time you went to South Africa and what opened up for you when you traveled there?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Sure. So I was, I'm American and my family moved to the United Kingdom when I was 13 years old. So I get to London, it's a big city. I moved from a sleepy suburb in New Jersey. Before I know it, I was getting into a lot of trouble. I was having a hard time sort of fitting in and so forth. And I, one day I came across this giant march in Hyde Park. It was a Free Mandela March. End apartheid, keep economic embargoes on, and ultimately the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. And before I know it, I started volunteering and it just inspired me. I'd never been to South Africa. I had no connection to the continent, but it was the music, the colors, and maybe this just need to be part of something bigger than who I was. I have no idea, to be honest, what it was.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  But I was sucked into this and, you know, volunteering when you're 13 years old means handing out envelopes, licking stamps, you know, nothing too exciting. But when I was 17, in 1994, they decided the elections were coming to South Africa. And they decided they would take fifteen of us from fifteen different countries down to observe the transition to democracy.

• 4:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  And, you know, seventeen and I had, I grew up in privilege. I had two parents who went to university, went to good schools. I had, you know, it was, it was a very easy life in a lot of ways. So it was probably harder for me to have failed than succeeded.

• 4:49Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Um, and I get down to South Africa and we toured the country, meeting with everyone from sort of your right wing neo-Nazis, your Eugene terrible launches and sort of everyone on the other side, your Robben Island Freedom Fighters, people spent their life imprisoned with Nelson Mandela and so forth. One evening I was in an area called Alexandria, which is shack as far as you can see, um, and it sits in the shadows of Santon, which is the economic hub of the continent. Um, it's right in the middle of Johannesburg, looks like Lower Manhattan, huge skyscrapers. And I come across this woman and she's, and this is really what changed my life forever, my sort of moment that drew me to the country. And she was, uh, quite old and quite large. And, you know, you're seventeen, you think, you know, everything right, you're overconfident.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  And she says to me, uh, and we start talking, she tells me she's waited in line for thirty hours to cast her ballot.

• 5:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, I, I looked at one look at her, I'm like, I don't understand. You waited thirty hours? And she taps me on the head and says, no, boy, you don't understand. I've waited eighty-five years. And she walked away.

• 5:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  And, and I'm seventeen and that just shook me to my very core. And it was sort of that moment when I said I want to become part of what they were calling the new South Africa.

• 5:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow. That just gave me chills. So you're seventeen, you're seventeen when this happened?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:06Lewis Howes?

  And you were only there for what, like a week or two or how long?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  We were there for six weeks touring the country, but I, that was towards the end of the visit and I heard a woman speak the next day, uh, who was working on the new constitution and she was a professor at University of Pennsylvania. And I'm thinking, oh, this will be my ticket back to, uh, South Africa, cause I was getting ready to graduate high school, apply to college in the States and I'll go to U Penn and she'll help me get back. So I apply, I get in and I go down there and go to find this woman and she's a law professor who wants, of course, nothing to do with an eighteen-year-old, but I bug her and bug her, we become friends and. I had, uh, we just got internet in our dorm and I found, uh, I found a job down in Cape Town. I'm like, this is great. I bring it to this professor, uh, Dr. Mary Frances Barry. She was a US Commissioner on Civil Rights and a big anti-apartheid activist and so forth.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  And she says to me, okay, well, um, we'll, um, we'll sponsor you. We'll go down, you go down there for six months. And I get down to South Africa and of course, there's no job waiting for me in Cape Town. It was a complete scam. And I'm thinking, God, I can't call this woman and tell her this, you know, there's, what am I gonna do? And so I, I left Cape Town that evening and I got on a train and I didn't really know where I was going. About eighteen hours into this train ride, a guy convinced me to get off in a place called Port Elizabeth, South Africa. And Port Elizabeth, I like to say, it's an industrial port town on the Indian Ocean side. It's, it's one of these places you leave, you don't go to. It's, uh, I hope not to offend anyone, sort of like a, a Detroit of, you know, South Africa. Oh, man, okay.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  And, um, and I, and he convinces me to get off there and come to the townships with him and have a beer. Now, the townships, you know, this is three years after I'm a apartheid. I'm a white guy, I symbolize everything wrong in the country. And this guy's a black South African teacher and, but I'm up for an adventure and I was nineteen years old, at twenty years old. And so I go with him and we go into this, uh, he calls it a tavern. It looks like a shack to me. And as you know, seen in the movies, everything goes quiet, everyone looks at me and music stops. No way. I'm thinking, I'm gonna get killed tonight. That's, that's what I thought, right? And at the corner of the room, one guy motions me over and it's this guy Banks, Banks, uh, Guacamola. And Banks says to me, we start talking, we have a bunch of beers.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  And at this time, I was an entrepreneur, but I had nothing to do with education or social, anything, uh, really. And he says to me, I'm a school teacher, why don't you come work in my school? And I said, okay, I needed a job. I said, but I need a place to live. And he said, why don't you come move with my family then? So that night I moved in with his family. No way. I'm just living in this community. Um, and you know, these communities have all the poverty that's. I mean, you could, you know, it's as poor as any community in the world. Uh, I don't like to compare poverty's, you know, one place to another, but yes.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Ninety percent unemployment, there's rampant abuse. Uh, the one through the girls that, you know, we work with today are raped by the age of eighteen. It's very, the violent place of her, it's, but it was also, I probably overly romanticized her, right? Cause in the back of my, my mind, I knew I could always leave. And these six months in these communities, I, I didn't leave this, this area during this entire six months. And I immersed myself here and what I saw though, were all these organizations, big global nonprofits. You know, everyone dumping money into South Africa post apartheid, all this philanthropic money. But everyone was defining success by, you know, how many computers they'd pass out, how many library books they'd hand out, or how many cups of soup they'd hand out. And I kept looking at these little kids who'd been abused or living in these shacks.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, how is a cup of soup and a wind up computer gonna change your life?

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  It's not how I got to where I was. And I just kept thinking of how much was invested in my life. And that was really the beginning of a, a boot to education fund. So I, um, I left South Africa after six months and I went back to, uh, Philadelphia and held a raffle on my campus. Back then, uh, uh, how old you are, but they used to give out credit cards on college campuses. I took eight of them. And, uh, I started a boot to education fund and the idea was, let's take the bottom of the bottom. The kids who've been raped, the kids who've been, lost their parents and let's invest in them the same way, you know, someone invested in me. And let's work with them every day of their lives. You know, in our non, nonprofit sector, it's all about what's the exit strategy? You know, there's no exit strategy when you raise kids.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  And, you know, there's in, and, you know, the last seventeen years, we've built this model where today we call cradle to career, but we actually start with pregnant mothers today. We ensure, we take HIV positive pregnant mothers and we ensure a healthy birth. And then we work with these kids every day of their lives until they're into, they're employed. Are they through a job training program or university?

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 10:43Lewis Howes?

  So wait a minute, you're, were you still in college when you took this six month trip there?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yes, I was.

• 10:48Lewis Howes?

  So did you like skip a semester or?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, my professor helped me take the, my exams early and I went through the summer and I sort of stayed later than I was supposed to.

• 10:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so what, how did you have the courage to just jump on a train and go eighteen hours in any direction they had no clue where you're going? I mean, how did you?

• 11:05Speaker 01

  I had to get out of Cape Town. It wasn't what I was looking for at that. You know, I got there, it was just, I was totally scammed and I felt afraid and I just was looking for something. I was, you know, I felt very comfortable. I was, I traveled my whole life and I felt, you know, I was quite young then. I felt very comfortable doing that and part of it was right, just my own naivete, right, to, you know, and that's a venture, you're nineteen.

• 11:27Lewis Howes?

  That's true, and you were by yourself?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  You know, far you'll go.

• 11:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's crazy. So, okay. So you, so tell me what is, what first does me, uh, does Ubuntu mean?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  So, Ubuntu is best described to me when I, the last, after six months living with Banks and his family in the townships. He brought me to the train station and, uh, uh, it was interesting. Actually, that morning, he woke me four in my morning. It was the last day I was there before bringing me to the train station and he wakes me at four in the morning, takes me somewhere to this area called White Location. It's a shack as far as you can see. And in front of each shack was a fire and I saw these little girls in front of each shack holding bricks over the fire and then using the bricks to iron their school uniforms so they look proud to go to school. And that was the moment I'm like, shit, I gotta, we gotta do something. Like, that was, uh, that was like, the fire was literally burning. Like, these kids wanted to go to school. There was more, something we could do and, um, and so Banks brings me to the train station from there.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  He thinks he'll never see me again and, you know, I'm gonna go aboard this train. I said, let me ask you something. What, what is this thing that you have that you just invited me into your home? Like, I represented everything wrong in South Africa as a white guy on the surface. Yet you get, you know, you brought me to your home. You have a tiny home. You let me share a room with your children. You and he said, he said, oh, that's Ubuntu. So what do you mean that's Ubuntu? He said, well, it doesn't matter your race, your politics or your religion. Shouldn't the fact that we're human beings be enough that we treat each other with respect? And I'm thinking, God, what a beautiful concept. And it's what I experienced. It's a way of life. You know, Archbishop Tutu, uh, Desmond Tutu, uh, who's, who's worked very closely with us, always describes Ubuntu as

• 13:03Speaker 01

  a person is a person through a person, which is something I really like, that, uh, you know, as human beings are defined as people by the way we treat each other. It's amazing.

• 13:13Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  And that's why I called the book is I am because you are, which really means Ubuntu.

• 13:19Lewis Howes?

  Right. So, so what did you decide to do next? You did the six month experience there. You went back and then what made you want to come back and really?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  I went back and I said, um, I couldn't care less about school by the time I got back. I was like, I gotta do something and I had to, I knew I could do it.

• 13:35Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  I knew I had that ability to mobilize resources and people and, um, I just started gathering friends around and telling them my stories and, and, and this was a time before, right? Teach America before all these social, before social entrepreneurship was even a word on college campuses, right?

• 13:53Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  In fact, my college advisor said to me, oh, this is nice, but what are you really going to do in the summer then? This is a nice little project. It wasn't like today where everyone goes into the nonprofit sector.

• 14:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  I had all these people telling me, you can't do that.

• 14:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Can't do that. You can't do it. And I think that probably, uh, drove.

• 14:11Lewis Howes?

  Fire the fuel, fire the fuel. Yeah, yeah. Fuel to fire.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I hate being told I can't do something.

• 14:18Lewis Howes?

  I love that. So, so when did you go back then? After you, you came, you came back when you were twenty, twenty-one and then you went back.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  So I'm twenty-one. We, I'm graduating college. I, uh, raised some money and I decided before, I was like, I decided I'm really going to do this, right? But I had no money. And the first thing I did actually with a buddy of mine said, um, is I got in my car and we drove up to Arctic Ocean. And we spent, uh, four months driving through Canada and Alaska and camping and fishing and just trying to get away. And I sort of worked on my whole business plan, worked on this all as I was out there. Um, by the time I got back, I, uh, my family lives up in Maine. I took a job on a commercial fishing boat. And in the evenings I would write these grant proposals. And when I got my first grant proposal, I quit that job and moved to Philadelphia. And we really got a Ubuntu going. And that was nineteen ninety-nine.

• 15:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So how much have you raised to date with this organization or is that, is that?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Oh, over forty million dollars.

• 15:14Lewis Howes?

  Forty million. Wow.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:15Lewis Howes?

  Fifteen years, right?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's the center of what we, at least we raised six million bucks a year right now. And the centerpiece of everything we do is our Ubuntu Center. The Ubuntu Center was a, it's a really fascinating project. So about two thousand and five, I realized we had outgrown our space. And we need to build a a new complex.

• 15:33Lewis Howes?

  Is this your space in in South Africa or?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, South Africa. And I realized we need, we had outgrown our headquarters. And I set out to interview architects and everyone I interviewed in South Africa kept saying, well, you can't build this in the townships. You know, or show me an example. I'm saying, no, this building's never been built before. And I finally met a guy out in Northern California who'd originally from the area working, but had been kicked out of the country in the sixties of proposing the police and so forth. And uh, I in, I, I, I spoke to this guy on the phone. Within three minutes, I hired him. And we set out to build a building that would win global architecture awards. And people said, oh, that's my that's Jacob's Vanny project. What's the, what's the point of that when there's so much poverty? Why do you have to spend seven million dollars just on a building?

• 16:16Speaker 01

  But the, the point of it all was because we want to prove that access to great education, health care should be a privilege for the, privilege for those, you know, raised in London or New York or LA. It should be a child's right. And that was important. So we set out to build this building and five years later, we open a center that's as nice as any education or health facility you'll find in Manhattan. And it's powered by Wounded Sun, you know, Cisco wired it, uh, Beck and Dickinson built our pharmacy and our clinic. Uh, Apple built the first iMac lab in the whole country there. And it's, it's, it's state of the art education and healthcare in the middle of the shacks. And that's the way how you change people's lives.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  It's not about, you know, the question I'm always asked when I'm in New York fundraising or in Northern California is we love what you're doing, but how can you reach more kids for less money? And that's the wrong question.

• 17:09Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  You know, it's not the question I ask of my own children, right? It's, it's what does it actually take to take these kids out of poverty? Uh, and what we've learned is it takes a huge amount of resources. It's not cheap. And a child living in a shack in Africa, um, who's been abused needs as much, if not more than your child living on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

• 17:29Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Yeah. Wow.

• 17:32Lewis Howes?

  And they probably need to feel like they're worthy of it, too. And if they, you know, just get a little bit, as opposed to having it all essentially right in front of them, then they're never gonna believe they're worthy to have it all until it's, you know, until they see that and they experience it and they get a taste of it.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you see, that's actually such an interesting point, because when we were building this center, I mean, it took us three and a half years to construct, we had one of these huge billboards outside where it was gonna be outside the grounds. And it was a rendering of what the building would look like.

• 17:58Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  And the kids would come around at every afternoon and they would talk about it. And the word they would use is museum, is how it translates, basically, in their language of Kozma. And they would say that, just that, why, why aren't you building this in town? Town meaning the other, because they felt it didn't belong in their community, it was too nice.

• 18:15Lewis Howes?

  Mm.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  And that's why we had a, I mean, feelings of inferiority, um, is one of the greatest legacies of apartheid.

• 18:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  You know, that I don't belong, and we needed to, we needed to build this.

• 18:26Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  And, you know, the people who criticized us are from the funding community, you know, why would you spend that much money when there's so much poverty? Are the same people who send their kids to fifty thousand dollar a year elementary schools.

• 18:36Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  And it's okay, you know, and I'm dealing with the good people here.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly. Wow. So what does it all in- uh, in- include in this center? Healthcare, schools, what is, what's included?

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Psycho-social support, emotional, you name it, we do it. Everything from, we've got the, we got a robot, right now, our kids are build, our high school girls are, are building a robot in the robotics program. We've got, you know, kids doing a yearbook in the, you know, computer lab.

• 19:02Lewis Howes?

  Computers, I forget.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  We've got an early childhood program that's on par with anything you'd find anywhere. And so our whole model's about not geograph, we're not about geographical expansion scale. For us, it's about more locations across different regions. It's about how deep do you have to go into one child's life to change? So, we've got two thousand children in our program from, ranging from zero or in the mother's room all the way through to, you know, university or post-university, into employment. And if we can take two thousand children, who would have otherwise gone down a life of, of like crime, survival, who knows, right?

• 19:36Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  That, and get them into employment, we'll, we'll have changed the world.

• 19:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  And so my passion is about how do we challenge people to think differently about philanthropy, and not just say it's about reaching more and more kids, because what we're doing is we're reaching them with a cup of soup, as opposed to, you know, reaching less kids and actually changing their lives.

• 19:54Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. Right. That makes sense. So, do you, and this is so fascinating, do you have, um... Do you build schools as well, or is it just a center that has like all these different programs there? Or do you work with the whole community? Or how's it work?

• 20:09Speaker 01

  We work with the whole community. We work in a seven kilometer zone. Um, we don't actually build, we have, we have schooling from zero to five, and then we have after school and weekend and so forth.

• 20:18Lewis Howes?

  Um. Programs.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  At five years old, yeah, we put the kids back into public schools.

• 20:23Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  And then, uh.

• 20:25Lewis Howes?

  So it's more of like an after school program, a healthcare center, an educational learning center where they can continue to come in and get additional support.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  What they need. But also the glue of it all is, and what people don't realize, it's, it's a kid, no matter how good your school is or your center in our cases, the child will always spend more time at home, right?

• 20:43Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  So if you're investing a kid in math and science and education and then sending them home to an environment where they're being abused, or there's no roof, or there's no food, it's not gonna work. It's a bad end there. And I hate to be that kind, but that's just the truth. So, so much of what we do is what we call household stability. Go into the child's home, stabilize it, make sure the young mother's getting what she needs. Cause we found that once the mother dies, um, the house becomes destabilized, right? And that's where kids move into transsexual sex or crime for survival. And keeping a young mother alive is, you know, sixty-five percent of the battle.

• 21:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Um, and.

• 21:20Lewis Howes?

  So how do you go and support these, these home, or how do you go into these homes? Do you have locals or?

• 21:25Speaker 01

  We have family support specialists on our team who go out there into the home. We analyze what's happening in the home. We make sure there's a roof that's not leaking, there's electricity, there's, um, uh, yeah, there's HIV drugs available for young mothers, um, basically anything they need. And, you know, what we always say, our sort of our slogan, you know, internally is, you know, we believe our children deserve what children all around the world deserve, and that's everything.

• 21:50Lewis Howes?

  Sure, yeah, having it all.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Having it all, um, and you need it all. And that's true. And you know what? We don't talk enough about, and this is why I wrote the book more than anything, is how much of this doesn't work.

• 22:01Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  This is really tough work. It is, most of what we do, most of what everyone else does in this sector, doesn't work, and that's okay. And we need to take, we need to create an environment where it allows groups like us, like Adam and Pat's promise, to talk honestly about what's not working without fear of losing funding or people criticizing us. Cause that's the only, there's no, you know, if we were all doing half of what we said that we were doing, there'd be no poverty in the world. And we need um just allow it's it's it's it's an effort not just from the nonprofit origins but also from the funding community come together and say that's really failure's okay risk is you know this it really is okay um you know you go to Northern California everyone's running around talking about all their startups that never made it that failed right?

• 22:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  You in the nonprofit world you go to summit series not one person there will talk about nonprofit endeavor they did that didn't wasn't successful.

• 22:50Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Why is that? I don't I don't know.

• 22:53Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Yeah and it's taken fifteen years and you're still growing and learning and probably making a lot of mistakes along the way and and figuring out ways to go deeper into these lives as opposed to expanding right now um do you do you have any great like success stories of young kids who've grown up and who have like maybe moved to Johannesburg and and now as a leader in the community or making an impact in other areas of the country or moved outside of the country or?

• 23:19Speaker 01

  You know one of the um the families I sort of weave through my book um and the book is not just the narrative of building the of building a boot education fund but it's also sort of as I was saying challenging the whole philanthropic community to sort of shift the conversation but I use one family's experience and it's the Injazah family and we met them um the oldest girl uh Zatu was twelve years old at the time and she had two younger siblings and both their parents died of HIV within six months of each other and they were left this twelve year old to raise her younger siblings in a shack and we move in and we the family's now been with us for over twelve years Zatu is now has

• 24:03Speaker 01

  the university degree and is now working in a uh head hunting agency actually a recruitment agency um the her younger sister uh Lungi is uh is studying to be a uh radio uh multimedia DJ type thing and then the younger brother uh I'm sorry the middle brother a star is in prison for life for armed robbery so it's it's an you know there's never nothing's ever perfect right?

• 24:30Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Um and I use that example because I want us to remember that it's there's a lot of up and down ups and downs and there's a lot we can't control meaning we can work with a a family but you know. There's so many, there's so many extra.

• 24:44Lewis Howes?

  People make their own decisions still, whether you, they have the best of everything. You know, some people who have the most privilege and grow up in the most wealth actually rebel the most sometimes and go to prison and that happens. You know, my brother went to prison for a number of years as well for selling drugs. And now he came out and he's the greatest jazz violinist in the world and he's redeemed himself. But, you know, sometimes people have internal emotional battles that they can never get through and that causes trouble for them.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, you know, that's exactly right. I mean, we, we talk so much about, I think we've learned two big lessons in all this. One is if you're not motivated to take control of your life, there's nothing we can do.

• 25:23Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Meaning we don't, I mean, we, we only work with what we call motivated clients. If you don't want to work, that's okay. You know, we'll never kick you out for giving effort. You know, for failing a test, you won't be kicked out. You'll get kicked out if you don't show up, if you don't study, you know, we need the effort.

• 25:40Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  The second big lesson I think we've learned is that you've got to start early. And for us, you know, most of the world parenting begins when a child's born. And the truth is it's not when a child's born, it's when the mother becomes pregnant.

• 25:52Lewis Howes?

  It's the mother, educating them.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're educating them and what goes into their body correlates to their child's empathy, the cognitive skills, on and on and on. And, um, and so, you know, those, I think the two lessons we've learned is you've got to start early with your intervention. In this case, it's with a pregnant mom and you need a motivated client.

• 26:11Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, yeah. And I'm curious, you know, there's, a lot of my listeners like to be in service and give back and they're constantly giving back in their businesses and, and finding other ways to give back in their communities. And I'm constantly trying to encourage that and that means I get to constantly do it myself and be the example. Um, what are some, uh, some pieces of advice or some, some tips you have for some people on, if they have this urge to give back, but they don't know where to give back, how to give back, maybe they don't have the money to do that. What are some things they could do to really start living a life of service on a daily basis? What are some practices or some places they could research or dive into to see what works for them to, to start living that way?

• 26:55Speaker 01

  I think most important is find something you really care about. You know, what are you passionate about? What's gonna, because this is, like I said before, it's really hard work and you have to have some connection to it. Um, to stick with it. I think if you're gonna commit, whether it's money, resources, time, energy, commit over a period of time. You know, I always tell people, don't give me, don't commit, uh, give us a one-year grant, for example, or donation. I can't raise a child in twelve-month grant cycle, right? You know, stick with an organization for three to five years. Really learn, you know, ask their leadership, get to this, you know, if any, I don't care how big or small a donor is. If someone calls our organization, says, I'd love to talk to your CEO and really understand, I'll make time for them.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  And ask that CEO, you know, what's working, what's not. Really try to, you know, understand their leadership, the philosophy, the dedication, you know, their, their theory of change. Um, you know, ask the right questions. Don't get caught up with these like rating agencies, these charity navigators and the stuff. It's all BS, it doesn't, they don't know what they're doing. It's about, uh, it's about getting to know the organization and believing in their leadership and, you know, uh, and, and, and committing for a period of time and saying to them straight off the bat, I understand some of what you're doing may or may not work. That's okay.

• 28:15Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm, right. Yeah, like I said, I've had, I've had Adam Braun on here and I've had, uh, um, Scott Harrison from Charity Water on here and built a relationship with those guys. And they've, they've given some great lessons as well and I'm curious.

• 28:31Lewis Howes?

  What do you feel like has really worked well for you to, in the last fifteen years? And what is still not working? What's your biggest challenges still? After fifteen years of, you know, struggling and getting to where you are now, what's the biggest challenge moving forward? And what's the vision for the next fifteen years?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  That's a huge question. So what's really worked for us, um, has stayed, is about staying focused. Right, uh, we're in one area.

• 29:01Lewis Howes?

  Not shiny balls, like going to the next, you know, city or trying to expand or do things, but just diving deep.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, being prepared and having the discipline to say no to money. Not all, I think one, you know, it took us a long time to learn, but not all money is equal.

• 29:16Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Not every dollar is worth the same. And so, you know, we used to raise eight, nine million dollars a year, um, but we were taking a lot of this huge foundation money and government money that was forcing us to do things we didn't like. You know, we called it, uh, drug money. It was sexy, it was exciting, it would get us to big conferences, but it was killing our soul. You know, we were getting a lot of, it was very glamorous, a lot of stuff attached to a lot of this money. Um, and having the discipline to say no, to turn it down if it's not right for your organization. Um, you know, I, I made that analogy to, you know, startups in Northern California, but, uh, you're in Silicon Valley with a tech startup. You're talk, you're, you spend a lot of time talking about who you want investing in your, your company, right? What type, what should your portfolio look like? And we don't

• 29:59Speaker 01

  do enough of that in the nonprofit sector. And I'm really encouraging, you know, nonprofit leadership to have that discussion with their team and not, and not just take all money because it's there. Um, cause a lot of it can do a lot more harm than good. Remember that, you know, as a nonprofit leader, you know your business better than others. And just cause some guy made, uh, billions of dollars trading Uber doesn't mean he knows how to, uh,

• 30:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  steer global health, right?

• 30:23Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  And, I mean, you might have some credit, yes, but it's a good, you know, and I say that because there's, there's oftentimes a lot of, um, those with the financial means dictate the agenda.

• 30:37Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  And we have to listen a lot more to nonprofit leadership. So you mentioned Scott and I have both spent a major, a good majority of their careers, understanding their issues, right?

• 30:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Global education, um, clean water initiatives. Let them tell you what needs to be done.

• 30:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool, okay.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  So where is this all heading for us? Uh, I think one of the biggest frustrations before I get to that for us has been, um, and what we continue to struggle with is we work in one little corner of the world.

• 31:04Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  And how do you attract the massive funding? Now, if I wanted to expand to seven regions, we could climb to twenty million dollar organization pretty quickly. Um, so how do you continue to sell people on the idea?

• 31:19Lewis Howes?

  On one little town?

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and let me tell you, sustained success isn't exciting for people. It's weird, like, you know, if you had your money in, uh, some stock that just kept going up each year, you wouldn't take your money out, you'd leave it in. But in nonprofit sector, people get bored. They want the next big magic bullet. And what we've realized is there's no magic in raising children.

• 31:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  You know, it's just a lot of hard work.

• 31:42Lewis Howes?

  Takes time, energy, and a lot of love.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  A lot of love, a lot of hard work, a lot of energy. That's all it is. And that, so how do you, from a marketing standpoint, think Scott has just done, I mean, you mentioned Scott and Charity, what are they, I mean? I look at what they've done as a, uh, model from the branding perspective. And how do you reinvent yourself in a way, uh, you know, to constantly come up with new ways of selling yourself? And they do it very well. Um, really, they really do. Um, so that's what we've struggled with is, is, you know, taking, um, constantly having to reinvent ourselves to sell the same, you know, same product, really.

• 32:19Lewis Howes?

  And what's the vision then, moving forward?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Sure. So it started with about four years ago, someone approached me about, uh, um, starting in Abuntu in Bridgeport, Connecticut, these hedge fund managers in Greenwich, and they said, here's a few bucks to open Abuntu there. And at first they got really excited. We opened champagne, we were pumped. And then by that evening, we were like, what are we doing? We don't want to do that. Just to prove we can do it. I have no energy to do it. I have no interest in that community. So they started us on this journey of trying to figure out, what do we want to do? How, and so then we started looking at the franchising world. And I learned a lot from the franchise world on how to build systems and so forth. I mean, right, I mean Starbucks, you get the same latte anywhere in the world, but it's still a Starbucks latte.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  It's not your little artisanal coffee shop that knows where their beans comes from and the barista can put a flower in there, whatever. And I use that analogy because I realized at Abuntu, being in one, you know, we see ourselves as that boutique of that sort of gold standard in nonprofit work. So how do we take this now seventeen years' knowledge and share it with others and, um, really try to drill down on what it is we're best at? And what I'll figure out is, if you want to study public health, Paul Farmer and Partners Health, they do better than us, right? If you want to study global health, uh, global education, there are people who do better than us. What we've really done is created a community institution that's thriving. And I say that because I look at successful communities everywhere in the world and the cornerstones of these communities are functioning institutions.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  And in poor communities everywhere in the world, what's lacking are institutions, right? And at the end of the day, it's all we are. Today, we're dealing with, you know, these ten services. Tomorrow could be something else. We're positioned to address these other issues. And so we've fallen on this idea of creating some sort of institute where we can train, um, the next generation of entrepreneurs who are committed to building community institutions, who see scale not in geographical expansion, but in sort of going deeper into one community. So going back to that Bridgeport, Connecticut, I'd like to find the young kid who grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and he or she went on to get her MBA at Yale and wants to go back and start a, you know, a center there. That's who I'd want to work with as opposed to me building the center there.

• 34:30Lewis Howes?

  Sure, that's great, that's great.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  So that's where I see we're heading. Uh, we're a little ways off on it, but, um, it's our way of taking what we've learned and sharing it in a meaningful way with the, the larger world.

• 34:41Lewis Howes?

  I love that. I have got four questions left for you, Jacob.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  All right, let's do it.

• 34:46Lewis Howes?

  And this has been great so far, and I want to make sure everyone goes and gets a copy of your book. It's called I Am Because You Are. I'll tell people at the end here, um, I'll have it linked up on the show notes, but you can get it in pretty much any bookstore you can think of. Um, check it out and, uh, come back to the show notes when I share with you where to go for that here in a second. Uh, the first question of the four is, what are you most grateful for in your life recently?

• 35:08Speaker 01

  What am I most grateful for?

• 35:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  I think it's the, uh, health of my, my own kids and, uh, that I'm able to provide them a, I have two little boys, uh, my four-year-old's named Freedom, my two-year-old's Mediba after Nelson Mandela, and, uh, that they are, uh, just, I, I see the kids we work with in South Africa who are simply dealt the raw hand, right? Any of us could have been born in that situation.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Um, I look at my two boys and I just think, oh, they're, you know, it helps me keep everything in perspective how lucky they are.

• 35:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Lewis Howes?

  Awesome, I love that. And the second question is, if you could, from all the lessons you've learned, all your travel, the work you've done in South Africa, you know, everywhere you've lived, all the people you've served and helped, if you could distill down to three lessons that you've learned so far in your life, that you would share with the world as the three things, the biggest lessons to life, what would those three truths be about life?

• 36:10Speaker 01

  I think, one is make sure you love, right? It's this idea of Ubuntu, this live your life by loving those around you. This idea of Ubuntu has just changed my life so much, this idea that, you know, we're defined by the way we interact with one another. When I saw that really thriving in this, this, this, this idea of Ubuntu alive in the townships of South Africa, where there was, there were these communities haunted by this legacy apartheid and how brutally violent they were, yet this, this love for each other, this idea of community, it made me really believe in community and love and this idea of our interconnectedness. And so, I think, my, the biggest lesson is to sort of embrace that and find where you

• 36:54Speaker 01

  can make a difference, whether it's your own family, whether it's your religious community or school community, wherever it is, you know, we're here for such a short time, make sure you're making the world a better place and not just take from it.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  I think the second lesson is, to achieve anything, you better stick with it.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's a lot of hard work to be successful at anything in life, no matter what it is.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  And I think three is, remember to surround yourself with, with people who are smarter than you. And I say that when I look at my business, I've surrounded myself with brilliant people who could, you know, and remember that those you choose to walk with, you know, through life, are the ones who will help you either, you know, move to achieve your goals and realize your potential or take you down.

• 37:49Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful. I love those lessons. Thanks for sharing that. Now, if you could, the final two questions, if you could... Leave behind three books to the world without not being your book, but if you leave behind three books to the world, um, and only three books that everyone could read in the world, what would those three books be?

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Um, there is a book that I read to my kids every night, um, based off of the Dom series.

• 38:18Lewis Howes?

  All the Places We'll Go?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Nope. It's called, uh, the guy who adapted it, Ashley Bryant, is an old family friend and it's, uh, What a Wonderful World, based on the Louis Armstrong song. And it's a illustrated book to that song and it's, um, it's, it's incredibly powerful.

• 38:38Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Um, and it's a children's book, but I suggest, I mean, it's beautifully done and it's, uh, it's, it's very powerful. I think, uh-

• 38:46Lewis Howes?

  What's that called?

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom.

• 38:48Lewis Howes?

  What, what was the first book called?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  The, uh, the first one's called What a Wonderful World by Ashley Bryant.

• 38:54Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Second one, uh, Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom, his journey, his book. Um, it, it is amazing to see someone who spent that much time in jail, um, be able to come out and his, you know, his, his first words were, "We will not forget, but we, you know, we will forgive."

• 39:11Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  What an amazing thing to be able to do. You look around the world, um, at all of the conflicts that are continuing to go on or, you know, I meet people who still to this day, you know, survivors of Holocaust, who won't speak to, uh, and I'm not saying that's right or wrong, by the way, just speaking to a German person or, and to, to see, to see this person who he himself lived through it, um, be able to, to really just say, uh, right, I mean, to say, to say, "We will, we will, we are going to forgive." And I think that is such a, um, I don't know, I just think it's such a, a powerful, uh, um, yeah, concept.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  And then I think finally, the idea that, uh, I don't know, the singularity is near, which is a book I've read recently, um, about the future. And it just captured me, um, this idea of where technology is leading us and, uh, I'm totally enthralled by it. And I think those are three, uh, how technology and humanity is, uh, um, becoming one, basically.

• 40:18Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Um, and so I think those three books would be three interesting ones, uh.

• 40:23Lewis Howes?

  That's great. I love those. Well, before I ask the final question, I want to take a moment, Jacob, to acknowledge you because as I've been listening to you during this, this episode, this interview, and as I'm looking at the cover of your book right now, there's a, a little, a little child, a girl who's on the cover, she's probably like seven, eight, six, five, seven, eight years old, and she has the biggest smile on her face, and she looks whole and complete and excited about life. And I want to acknowledge you for your, your vision and your commitment and your love. Because fifteen years of

• 41:02Lewis Howes?

  your life is a lot to serve to one community. And just hearing about this, reading your book, seeing the image alone on the cover of this book, makes me know that your heart is so big and you're so committed to making a change in people's lives in that community that I see the change in this photo. And so I want to acknowledge you for, you know, fifteen years, man, that's a lot of your time and energy and life to stay committed to one thing and, and being focused on that community. So I really acknowledge you for your commitment, your vision to stick it out, and your love, because it's really inspiring. So thank you for all you do.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  I really appreciate that. Thank you.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And the final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Wow. I think greatness is when you can, uh, improve the lives of those around you.

• 41:58Lewis Howes?

  Jacob Levy, thank you so much for coming on, my man. I appreciate this.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  I really appreciate it. Look forward to catching up, uh, over a beer or coffee or something.

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it guys. Thank you so much for tuning in today's episode again. For me, very inspiring to hear the stories and the lifestyle of individuals who are literally changing the world by making an impact in the lives of others. And it doesn't have to be millions of people. You don't have to say, you know, I'm going to, you know, change everything about the world, but really changing one's person's life and lifestyle and mindset and supporting that growth is going to change the world by supporting a few people. So don't think like you have to change everyone's world. Just focus on improving yours, improving the lives of at least one other person. I appreciate you guys. I hope you enjoyed this. Make sure to share this with your friends,

• 42:51Lewis Howes?

  lewishouse.com/199. Share that out with your friends on social media. We are one episode away from episode 200. I can't believe we're 200 episodes almost into the podcast. Very excited about this. I'll do something special for you on episode 200. So make sure to come back when that comes out. I appreciate you. I support you. I'm here to serve you and I love you very much for being a part of this community. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.