Pioneering Solutions to End Homelessness with Morgan Lopes of New Story Charty

Everyone deserves a safe place to call home, but around the world, up to 1 billion people struggle with homelessness. For those affected, this struggle cascades into problems in virtually all aspects of daily life. Without a safe home, kids don't have a place to do their homework, families don't have reliable access to clean water, and parents struggle to get on a stable financial footing. 

In this episode of The Digital Footprint, we're joined by Morgan Lopes, CTO of New Story Charity. New Story is on a mission to end global homelessness, starting with a goal of housing 1 million people in Latin America by 2030.  By leveraging innovative approaches and technology, New Story is creating a system and mindset that opens up potential for real transformational impact.

We talk with Morgan about New Story's mission, his perspective on innovating in the non-profit space, and lessons he's learned in entrepreneurship along the way.

Guest-at-a-Glance

💡 Name: Morgan Lopes

💡 What he does: Morgan is the CTO of New Story Charity, a non-profit focused on pioneering solutions to end global homelessness. 

💡 Company: New Story Charity

💡 Noteworthy: Although he spends most of his time focused on his mission with New Story Charity, Morgan is also one of the authors of Code School Book, a book that helps more people transition into careers in tech.

💡 Where to find Morgan: LinkedIn

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Connect with our cohosts Richard Simms & Carlos Gonzalez on Linkedin

Transcript

E661389B_14 - TT - Digital Footprint - Morgan Lopes

[00:00:00] Morgan Lopes: Something that I try to remind myself of is, don't expect them to believe you or to trust you Show them what's possible. It's not our place to say, like, "Well, you should just believe me 'cause we've done some other cool stuff that has nothing to do with this," and somehow that gives us some clouds. Absolutely not, right? I want to hear what they have to say, take their judgment and their wisdom and their insight, and then evaluate the problem based on what I understand, and then try things. Hello and welcome to the Digital Footprint. I'm Richard Simms. This podcast is brought to you by Tyrannosaurus Tech, an award-winning technology partner dedicated to designing and developing high-impact software products. Very excited to have Morgan Lopes, CTO of New Story Charity as our guest today.

[00:01:17] Richard Simms: Welcome, Morgan. 

[00:01:19] Morgan Lopes: Hey, thanks for having me.

[00:01:20] Richard Simms: Yeah. Good to see you. So, you and I have known each other for probably eight or nine years now, it's hard to believe. We've had some opportunities to work together, which has been a lot of fun, and, and, you know, I think, very much to your credit, you have, you know, I think you've kind of become, like, a fixture in the Atlanta tech startup scene in a very good way.

[00:01:40] You've built a great reputation as someone trusted in the community and someone who's helped a lot of folks either, like, break into tech or launch new products. So, you know, all just to say, I'm really excited to have you on the show. I think you've got a lot of great experience to kind of speak to and hopefully share some of that with listeners.

[00:02:00] So, as far as, you know, your career and all the years that I've known you, you've worked on a lot of interesting things. Today, for

[00:02:07] Richard Simms: the purpose of this episode, I figure, you know, I mainly want to focus on your role at New Story, because I think what you all are doing is really important. It's an amazing story.

[00:02:18] So, with that being said, let's, let's jump right in. Do you mind just taking a minute or two, introduce yourself and tell folks just a little bit about New Story? 

[00:02:27] Morgan Lopes: Absolutely. Well, I appreciate the generous introduction. I'll do my best to try and fulfill some measure of, one thing, looking back over the course of my career and you alluded to it a little bit, if you try to put all the pieces together, it would seem pretty disconnected maybe, and what I really feel like is happening, and this is what I'll get to New Story as well as there's a, I think a focusing happening of my interest and my skills, and it's really been exciting,

[00:02:53] and I think part of the journey that we've witnessed together as our careers have taken shape over the last decade to see how those are really just, like, building intensity over time as the narrowing starts to happen, and so, today, most of my day is spent with New Story as the Chief Technology Officer,

[00:03:09] and I would say we are being pretty generous with the term "technology" at this point. Over the years it's been building the team of software engineers, building a lot of tech for New Story, and today I'm actually working on a real estate development project in Mexico. So, we made the shift a couple of years ago to start focusing more and more on Latin America, specifically Mexico due to its proximity to the States, as well as the need within North America and the opportunity that's there to help families in need.

[00:03:42] And, you know, as things have evolved over the last couple years with a global pandemic and us learning a lot about the struggles of positively impacting people's lives, helping them interstate housing, we recognized an opportunity to take more and more ownership and invest more heavily into really building a sustainable path to homeownership

[00:04:03] for what we would call the "bottom billion", so, people living without adequate shelter, there's about 1.3 billion people around the world who kind of live at that part in the pyramid and we want to create a sustainable path to home ownership for them, which is the project I'm working on today.

[00:04:20] Richard Simms: Very cool. Very cool. So, homelessness is obviously a very complex issue to, to say the least. In preparing for this interview, of course, I was looking over the New Story website and I think it does a really good job explaining, you know, the broader kind of public health implications of this issue. I mean, of course, people should have a home to live in and have shelter, but it goes way beyond that,

[00:04:44] right? Can you expand a bit on that and just the overall impact, you know, that New Story aspires to have? 

[00:04:52] Morgan Lopes: Definitely. Well, I think when most people consider the idea of homelessness, right, we, we often think of the lady or gentleman who's on the street corner with a cup and a sign,trying to get some money and that's actually a pretty small percentage of the overall picture of homelessness, right? And so, if you had to try and get a little bit more objective about how you think about homelessness, I really want to push you to think about inadequate housing, right?

[00:05:17] So, we have it, so World Bank or the UN has the standard by which they would say housing is adequate or not, right? It's about 10 points and there's kind of a scale and cast a much wider net in terms of what constitutes homelessness and housing instability and, as you do that, you realize, one, how privileged we are,

[00:05:36] I know for myself and most of the people I interact with have only ever experienced a safe, stable home. Now, there's all kinds of things that may have happened inside of the home, but the structure itself and the opportunities that are provided for most people in America is pretty consistent, right, very accessible for most people,

[00:05:54] and what we are looking to do is bring that experience to everyone, right? Everyone should have access to this because all things in life converge at the home, right? When we think of health, sleep, education, all of it hinges on micro behaviors or the lifestyle that is nurtured at home, or just provided for, by having a place to live that's safe

[00:06:18] and it's the source of everything, right? If you have a shelter, then you're sleeping better. If you're sleeping better, then it's easier to pay attention in school or at work. If you, you know, when it storms, you don't worry about, you know, a tree ripping your entire shelter apart, or just the wind and the rain, all of these different factors,

[00:06:38] they kind of create what I would call, like, "victory by a thousand wins", right? When you have a safe, adequate house, all of these small things that are very real factors for many people all over the world, you don't experience them the same way, right? They don't create the same level of fear, insecurities, doubts, and those winds compound over the course of our lives and in much of the same way, those that don't have those, right,

[00:06:59] Morgan Lopes: it's a death by a thousand cuts, and so much of that comes back to the home. One of the biggest things that we've noticed though is, the home is really expensive compared to a lot of the other needs in people's life, and what that's led to is really a lack of innovation and creativity when it comes to addressing a lot of these needs on a global level is, it's just expensive, it's complicated, and it takes a long time to do,

[00:07:25] and a big part of what we've invested in at New Story is bringing different innovations to decrease the cost, increase the speed and make the power of a home more available to everyone.

[00:07:38] Richard Simms: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, that, that's a great answer. And, again, that's exactly what I was kind of thinking is, without that foundation to draw from, there's of course just cascading effects of making all aspects of life more difficult, and kinda how you closed out that answer was a good segue. So, let's get a little bit more in the weeds on how New Story operates.

[00:07:58] You know, I understand, and obviously someone that glances at the website, you all help folks build homes, but as you just alluded to, you all have come up with some really innovative approaches to do this at scale, right, so can you, can you tell us a little bit more about that?

[00:08:13] Morgan Lopes: Yeah, a lot of our approach, you know, it includes software, it includes hardware. I mean, probably most well known for our work with 3d home printing, and we partnered with a great group out of Texas called Icon to bring that technology to market, specifically for the income bracket that we seek to serve, but another part of, you know, innovation and creating a system of change is, you know, creating better business models, right? So much of what pulls a market is for-profit business, and how they think about things and the perspective and just approaches that, you know, the traditional market provides is, is pretty compelling.

[00:08:53] That's not to say we're getting in the for-profit game at all, but when you have to create a financially viable business, you start to think about things a lot differently than if you're using pure philanthropy, which is pretty customary with most non-profits. And so, we're looking at a blended finance approach in most of what we do so that we aren't just a fully reliant on a pure philanthropy to push the ball forward.

[00:09:20] Recently we've been kind of narrowing in on a mission to house a million people. We want to do that by 2030, and if you start to do the math on what it would take to house a million people, the numbers look very big if you're just looking at a traditional philanthropic approach. As we've tried to crack the code on that and get creative about how we're able to still hit our goals in impacting a million people, but do it in a way that we think we can actually be successful

[00:09:44] Morgan Lopes: you start to realize that there's so many other types of capital in the market and, you know, we've looked at impact investing plus philanthropy, plus just commercial debt and how might we apply a more sophisticated approach to financing to really move this opportunity forward, and so as we head into kind of the next wave of the work that we're doing, Innovation around how financing is being applied to housing in the social sector is something that we're particularly excited about.

[00:10:13] Richard Simms: Cool. Awesome. Yeah, and tell me a little bit more about when you all are in a community, in Mexico, for example, like, what are the, different partners that are coming together? 'Cause there's of course a lot of stakeholders. I mean, there's the families, there's the more immediate community, you know, there's maybe

[00:10:31] particular region, of course, the country, you've got to get those supplies there, I'm sure work with some local folks that have the construction equipment and skills, it's gotta be a pretty complex undertaking, so I'm curious what all comes together, you know, onsite there?

[00:10:47] Morgan Lopes: Yeah, the, I'll speak mostly to the program I'm currently working on because we're really looking at an end-to-end experience where, for the first time, we're interacting more directly with the families that we seek to serve, but are having to coordinate every stakeholder in the process of bringing a home to the market,

[00:11:05] and so the first thing for us is land. Over the history of New Story, we've had a lot of land provided to us by the government, but that land isn't always in the most desirable areas, close, closest to opportunity. or it's just not the fastest land that you can get. And so, there's a lot around acquiring really good land,

[00:11:25] the permitting that goes with that. We want land that ideally has all the utilities, that are near the edge of the property, so electrical, sewage, water, all of those things, right, converge at the home. And so, we want to make that very close to the land. After that, we start to think about a promotion, so the sales and marketing to the families that we seek to serve. Moving into a home, regardless of the cost is still a choice that people have to opt into,

[00:11:50] and so, we take that very seriously and have a promotional cycle around presenting that land to families and giving them a compelling offer to opt into. The next part is the construction. So, constructing the physical asset of the home, the walls, the foundation, the roof, and as you can imagine, you know, everything of a traditional construction process we have to do as well,

[00:12:14] both for the kind of permitting and quality control on the home, as well as just getting the concrete and materials to the job site, and something that is becoming a larger and larger percentage of what we're thinking about and investing time and energy into doing well is actually what I would, the industry would probably call just "property management"

[00:12:33] but it's maintaining that relationship over the course of time with the families that get this home, right? We know and we believe intrinsically that a home impacts people's lives positively, but we want to be able to track that, to prove what is that actual quantifiable life change that a home provides,

[00:12:52] Morgan Lopes: and that takes years and years and years afterward, and so, those first three steps I mentioned, the land, promotions and the construction, now, that ideally is less than a year to get it done, where the relationship building over time, decades, and, you know, all of those pieces have different skills and competencies for doing them really well, which we are having to crack the code on.

[00:13:16] Richard Simms: Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of logistics at play there and a lot of good project management skills. We were talking a little bit about this before we really began the interview, you know, you obviously have a technology background, you've done a lot of, you know, actual heads down engineering, you've led engineering teams,

[00:13:37] but we were kind of talking about how, in your space, non-profit space, what New Story does. It's not necessarily just writing apps to, you know, solve one, one small need. I'm curious, just what it's been like trying to inject that type of innovation into the non-profit space and kind of what your day-to-day role has become over the years with New Story as things have evolved?

[00:14:03] Morgan Lopes: Yeah, there's, like, a mantra that a mentor of mine shared with me early on. So, he taught me software engineering, computer programming, and he said it all the time, which was, "engineers solve problems," and what I love about the simplicity of that statement is it has nothing to do with electricity, inherently, right?

[00:14:22] We think of software engineering or technology, and our minds go to computers, they go to, you know, stuff with screens, but the reality is the underlying discipline or craft is actually just solving problems and using technology or, you know, stuff with screens as it, as a tool to do that, but the underlying need that there's like, there are problems out there that need to be solved,

[00:14:45] and I think a lot of traditional non-profit and impact work is in some ways, like, accepting the problem for what it is, maybe just throwing more people at it to get the job done, and a big part of what is in the DNA of New Story is challenging those assumptions, looking for every opportunity to simplify and to get an edge,

[00:15:07] because all of these complexities really start to compound, and when you look at why there aren't many, many organizations having a massive, massive impact in housing it's because over time, all of those inefficiencies or complexities compound and become quite crippling and taking a very engineer-minded approach toward each part of this process,

[00:15:28] we're looking to weed out any of that complexity because at the end of the day, it impedes our output, which our output is families moved into safe shelter, and if we aren't thoughtful and attuned to ways of simplifying and increasing the speed, decreasing complexity, all of those pieces, then ultimately what we're doing is we're depriving

[00:15:49] families of getting access to, say, shelter, and so, it's bigger than just a, a curiosity or a desire to solve problems, but really recognizing that the better we can do that, the more lives are impacted and, you know, that's, that's it, that's, that's the ball game, that's the most important thing for us to think about.

[00:16:07] And so, you know, what is technology to me? It's really, you know, going back to, back to the basics, which is, engineers solve problems, and as we encounter these new problems that are ultimately barriers to us moving forward at the speed that we want, we need to address them and try and work out creative ways of solving those problems.

[00:16:26] A lot of times it involves a borrowing business practices or things that we've learned from others in our industry or in other industries and seeing how we might appropriate those for the work that we're doing. Maybe we can, you know, reduce time and complexity by taking, you know, copy, copying and pasting what somebody else did and moving it into the business model that, that we are creating and refining, ultimately, this, our families.

[00:16:51] Richard Simms: Yeah, I love that, and I think we share that perspective that technology is a tool. It's not a silver bullet or a cure-all, and I know we have some overlap in just the type of work we've done over the years and in our work, I think it surprises people in a lot of our kind of early stage consulting, how often we counsel against building an app, you know, because it might not be necessary to really

[00:17:19] bring, solve the problem they're looking to address. So, I'm right there with you. It's not just about building stuff for the sake of building something, it's, you know, thinking more holistically about how to accomplish your mission and what role technology plays in that along the way. So, I love that.

[00:17:34] Okay. So, my next question, taking a step back, really, New Story was founded in 2014, I'm sure it has evolved a lot over that time, and it seems like, especially over the last several years, it's really grown a lot in terms of the head count and the impact, but if we look back at kind of the founding, you know, taking on homelessness is a tall order, for sure,

[00:17:57] I'd love to know more just about the origin story, you know, how it was started, what was kind of that, that light bulb moment where, you know, the founders really made the move to start something new and take on such a big challenge, can you speak to that a little bit? 

[00:18:14] Morgan Lopes: Yeah, so, in the beginning New Story, or since the beginning, New Story has been pioneering solutions to end global homelessness, that's kind of the tagline and that has not changed since founding andorigin of New Story came about when Brett, one of the co-founders, was on a trip to Haiti for a different business

[00:18:31] he was a part of and really solved the level of needs that the Haitian people were enduring due to hurricanes and earthquakes and a lot of natural disasters that had struck the area and was moved to do something about it, and he went home to Atlanta where he was living at the time and through a series of meetups and kind of a manufactured serendipity, if you will, came to meet Matthew and Allie and in partnership with Mike, a friend of his, and they started New Story, really with the goal of, at first, funding one home,

[00:19:01] right? Keeping it very simple, very clear definition of success, which was, "Do we think we could fund one home?" And it was really important to Brett and the team at the time to not just become another non-profit trying to do, you know, work like it had always been done. So, innovation was very key to the DNA of New Story at the time.

[00:19:19] A lot of that came out just in how fundraising was done. But, another thing that was tied with that, even from the beginning was, one, the idea of transparency. So, New story has a model where a hundred percent of the money that people give toward housing goes to fund homes. When people hear that, a lot of people are like, "Oh, well, isn't that

[00:19:38] how all non-profits work?" That, no, it's actually not the case. We have a separate bank account, completely separate for all of our salaries, overhead operating costs. So, those are two separate bank accounts and that allows us to be very transparent with how money is being spent. That's a big part of New Story.

[00:19:56] Another part is around connecting donors with the actual families that their money serves. So, when we build a home, the donors get to see the families that moved into those homes, and so, you know, kind of closing the loop on what would historically be a very black box experience. You pay money toward a non-profit and you're hoping they

[00:20:15] did what they said they were going to do. We provide photo proof for everyone who gives, which is a very unique part. Those came together, funded the first home, went on to fund dozens more homes before getting into Y Combinator, which is a startup accelerator in San Francisco and has produced incredible startups,

[00:20:33] and only recently, so around the time of New Story's founding had, Y Combinator started allowing non-profits into this program. Most of the time, they were making investments hoping to produce outsized returns by investing in for-profit businesses, and they started allowing a small percentage of their portfolio of startups to actually be non-profits.

[00:20:53] Morgan Lopes: So, the money was not investments, it was donations and these are organizations committed to having an impact, not merely producing a profit, and that was one of the things very early on that drew me to New Story. I had kept up with one of the founders, Matthew. since, you know, before he got into New Story, but I was always impressed by the idea that the team would pitch to the same group of people, you know, that were being pitched Airbnb, Dropbox, Uber, all of these, like, very successful, wildly profitable ventures that you could stand in front of the same audience and sell them non-profit. The idea that, "Hey, give me your money and I'll be back later to ask for more,"

[00:21:35] and when all is said and done, you're not going to see any money back, you're just going to see lives impacted. People who can sell that is very, very interesting to me because you're having to engage a very different part of somebody's minds and a New Story is able to do that very well

[00:21:51] early on and I think donors really connect with the transparency and just visibility into where their money is going. That's been true, it's still true today. We provide that experience. We still have the a hundred-percent model where we give a hundred percent of the money given and what's happening over the years,

[00:22:11] the biggest transition is really good and just, like, narrowing in of the focus. So, we are still pioneering solutions to end global homelessness, but what we've noticed in all of our work from Haiti to El Salvador, Bolivia, Mexico is how big of a factor financing is in making a home accessible to people,

[00:22:30] and so, today, the way that we would share about kind of that refined focus is creating a path, a financially sustainable path to home ownership for the bottom billion. So, still requires a tremendous amount of pioneering, creation, innovation, but it's more and more narrowing around the financial mechanisms within a market that actually make it possible for more and more people to unlock a safe, stable house.

[00:22:56] Richard Simms: Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Another question I had, obviously COVID has, you know, disrupted just about every company and industry in one way or another. I imagine for you all, not only has it probably made it more difficult for you all to kind of execute boots on the ground on what you're trying to do, but it's probably

[00:23:17] exacerbated some of the crises that, you know, the families you are trying to support are experiencing, so I'm just curious how you all have evolved over the last couple years and managed that, that new frontier? 

[00:23:32] Morgan Lopes: Yeah, we, we went into COVID in a unique position. Our CEO was on a sabbatical so every five years, a team member gets a one-month sabbatical, and so, that was around the time our, our five-year mark and our CEO is, the first team member, you know, took the first sabbatical and he was just coming back,

[00:23:49] and at first, he seemed a little like chicken little, right? He's been gone, pretty disconnected. We removed him from Slack and all these things, and he's coming back very nervous about this thing that he's hearing about, and we're like, "Look, man, we're here, just, like, you've been disconnected, it's not that big of a deal,"

[00:24:06] and I believe it was three days after he got back 'cause when shutdown started our team was pretty quick to respond. We, our executive team locked ourselves away for about a week and a half looking at budget, projections, trying to figure out, you know, what is the impact on our work on the grounds, on our fundraising state side, we immediately shaved probably 35% percent from our budget, prioritizing, keeping peak team members,

[00:24:29] but also recognizing that we exist to impact people's lives, and what does that mean in this climate where the world is shutting down, and the population that we traditionally serve is in a lot of ways inaccessible. So, while they may be, their need is increasing more than ever, our access to help is, is kind of disconnected. For a season, we made a

[00:24:55] decision to invest locally, which is, historically, we've always worked internationally, but our options were really, hangout out and wait, or do something and recognize that it's just not going to be forever. And so, we invested in a rent relief program, raising money and deploying funds to contribute to local families who were negatively impacted,so still high-need, income families in our community, because there's such a high concentration of people who rent, we were trying to create some financial relief to get them through this period. So many people lost jobs and, you know, the, the lower income that people are living with, they tend to not bounce back or they may bounce back just as well as everyone,

[00:25:37] Morgan Lopes: they're just falling from a farther distance, right? So, it kind of takes them longer to hit the bottom, they feel that way more and they have a longer distance to bounce back from. And so, we created a rent relief program, we ran that through most of 2020, and then, once things started to shift in the States, we began to shift our attention back toward families internationally.

[00:25:59] I will say though, and this is very hard to communicate to donors domestically, which is, you know, whatever we felt from the impact of COVID, from our economy, from just, like, society and all of that, much of the world was lagging a months or years behind, right? So there are, I took a trip, my first trip back in Mexico was about a year and a half after COVID started.

[00:26:24] And, you know, around the States, we have the luxury of debating whether or not things are real or whether or not masks should be worn, a restaurant should be opened, and going into Mexico it felt like I was stepping back in time, almost a year and a half because so many restaurants were shut temporarily or permanently, as a result

[00:26:43] the economic implications were just super heavy, people from the city to the country were wearing masks. It was wild how stark of a contrast it was between the world that we get to live in and have all kinds of opinions aboutentering into a population that was hit hard and not just hit hard economically,

[00:27:01] Morgan Lopes: right, but, but physically hit hard, family members, entire families decimated by, you know, this disease that, for communities that are naturally less connected to loved ones and live in less close-knit social circles just don't feel the same weight. So, that's been a big part. Things are slower to open up, but

[00:27:19] noticing that they're definitely getting there and we're excited to see as we move forward, you know, it seems like more and more, we will have an even bigger part to play in helping, helping families recover from such a really tough, tough global event.

[00:27:32] Richard Simms: Yeah, well, kudos to you all for being very adaptive, and I think that probably a lot of that tech background kind of startup innovation focus helped you all be able to move quickly and make some hard decisions and figuring out how to keep the impact going, so, I think that's great that you all have managed through all of that chaos to, to really keep going on the mission.

[00:27:59] So, a little bit of a change of direction here, but, you know, we started this podcast primarily, so it could be a good resource for folks who are in the process of or considering launching a new product or starting a new business, or non-profits specifically looking to have an impact in healthcare, public health, education.

[00:28:20] You, of course, have started a few business, a few businesses over the years, you know as well as anyone how daunting it can be getting something new off the ground, so I always like to ask guests to whatever scent they're comfortable just to speak to, like, what have been the biggest challenges for New Story,

[00:28:38] Richard Simms: you know, over the last few years that really have thrown you for a loop, how have you all managed to overcome them? Any big takeaways or lessons learned there? I'd love to hear.

[00:28:50] Morgan Lopes: I think one of the most common sentiments that I hear that is, that can be a pretty big blocker to moving things forward is, that's not how things are done. A belief or a kind of a deep-rooted conviction that things have to function a certain way. I go back to this, like, a paradox that I have, or this, these tensions around laws and rules and society has all kinds of rules that aren't quite laws, right?

[00:29:15] If you break them, you're not going to jail, they're just, like, social norms and conventions that people fall into, and really, those are, that's one of the hardest things that we interface with, most consistently, at least, because you don't, we don't often see the difference, right? We, in our minds, we kind of group them together in the same category of our minds,

[00:29:36] and so, the way that it can be done or how, how we might, you know, accomplish a goal is really, that's slowed down or impaired by how we perceive what's possible. So, we confront that all the time on the project I'm working on now, I am just very curious because I'm learning a lot for the first time. So much of the building businesses in new industries is very exciting for me.

[00:30:01] I'm an input person. I love new challenges and to understand and learn, and so, coming into a real estate development project, you know, we're buying land, we're building homes, we're selling and marketing to direct, to consumers and all this stuff, and my first question is, how long is it gonna take? For everything, just 'cause I'm trying to anchor against what I know. I can build an app in a weekend,

[00:30:24] you can't do almost anything in developing countries as quickly as that. And so, I'm just trying to get a good baseline, and over and over again, you know, I'd hear estimates on like, "Okay, well, what takes so long? Like, what, what of the process is the most cumbersome?" And as they're sharing things, I'm like, "Oh, I'm kind of trying to sort them into groups,"

[00:30:42] Morgan Lopes: right? Okay. Those are laws that we don't want to break, and then, "Oh, wait a minute. So, the difference of if it takes day or a month is just somebody being out to lunch when you call them?" "Oh, let's go visit them," right? So,trying to look at problems from a different lens, but it comes up over and over again

[00:31:00] and I think, one thing that I've learned over the years is showing up to most situations, I can't expect that people have had the same, lived experience or journey that I have had along the way, and so, I'm continually surprised by how every new interaction I have, we're going back to the basics, laws and rules, trying to understand this person's perspective,

[00:31:21] it's never ending, right? Each part of this process that I mentioned, so we do this with the land and I think we got very lucky. We bought land in less than a month which most of the people we'd worked with were like, "Whoa, that's super fast," and I'm like, "I don't know any different, like, who am I to say, I couldn't have done that?"

[00:31:36] Like, you know, we're figuring it out. And then, we go right into sales and marketing of this product. Again, you know, "Here's how it's done. This is the process. You have to do it this way." We heard from many people, "No, the population that you serve just isn't going to want what you're trying to sell them,"

[00:31:52] and we did it and we tried it and we, you know, they showed up and like, "Oh my gosh, this wasn't what I had in mind," and I think that's an important part to remember, if the biggest challenge is people kind of being rooted or digging their heels in on the way that it's always been done, more often than not, they're not necessarily imagining it quite like you are,

[00:32:12] and so, what is really a kind of a big downside or a struggle in the work can also be a really big opportunity when you remember that so much of our lives comes back to our perspective and what we think and assume, and we bring a lot of that into every interaction, andsomething that I try to remind myself of is, don't expect them to believe you or to trust you. Show them what's possible, and if we can have a willingness to just be humble and walk into these situations, recognizing that people will have different opinions, but we've earned nothing, right? It's not our place to say, like, "Well, you should just believe me 'cause we've done some other cool stuff that has nothing to do with this,"

[00:32:51] and somehow that gives us some clouds. Absolutely not, right? I want to hear what they have to say, take their judgment and their wisdom and their insight, and then evaluate the problem based on what I understand, and then try things, and instead of expecting them to just buy in without any proof or evidence, show them that maybe there's a different way that we could be thinking about this and

[00:33:14] my, my hope would be that, over time, people just start believing you and trusting you easier. That's not usually the case, right? Each, each new challenge or hurdle is a kind of a re-centering yourself around this idea that, hey, they are, they have a set of beliefs they're operating against, and instead of being frustrated that they won't just let me do my thing, recognize that, "Hey, it's my job,"

[00:33:34] as somebody who may see something differently than they do to show them what's possible and give them the opportunity to learn, or just be inspired by a different way of thinking about something. I think that transcends every industry. I don't know anybody who has come into a space and tried to do anything different and not met that type of opposition or tension and

[00:33:56] doing all of that while staying inspired and encouraged is pretty challenging, and it can require a level of kind of intrinsic motivation and inspiration that I think burns a lot of entrepreneurs out over time. It's this constant feeling of, like, you're having to, like, resell or renegotiate something to push the project along because oftentimes those deeply entrenched beliefs are pretty hard to overcome.

[00:34:19] Richard Simms: Yeah. Yeah. That's great advice, and again, I'm sure, especially for you all going into different countries that have, you know, of course, language barrier, but, yeah, just different government processes and bureaucracies, different kind of expectations, yeah, different kind of cultural norms, I'm sure that just learning to put your assumptions aside and kind of approach each thing very open-minded, you know, has served you all well, so that's, that's great advice and a good answer.

[00:34:52] With New Story, you all have some really impressive, you know, impact data on the website, you know, what do you see as the biggest wins so far for New Story? What really kind of stands out in your mind or memory over the last, you know, five years or so? 

[00:35:11] Morgan Lopes: There's a level of recency bias coming out of COVID. I think that there is, output of that entire season was good. I think what I'm maybe most proud of is the posture with which we handled that, it, at times felt like you're just being confronted with, like, six impossible decisions and you're picking the least terrible one and expecting to, like, rally behind that and buy in and get everyone excited.

[00:35:36] Heading into that season, we prioritized people's jobs, we prioritized on being flexible, still impacting people's lives so that season and I feel good about that. It's easy now, looking back, I had so many friends who struggled, I had friends who had to close their businesses and that could have been us,

[00:35:54] Morgan Lopes: and we had some really great counsel early, and this came from an advisor who said, "Cut deep, early,"

[00:35:59] and, you know, we took that to heart. I mentioned us spending a lot of time, really, like, reviewing the budget and our projections and forecasts, our CEO did a great job of, you know, and we'd have the final budget. I'm like, "Okay, you know, here's where we are. We, we think this is good," and he was like, "We've got to cut more,"

[00:36:16] and I'm like, at a certain point, we're like, "Look, we, enough, when's enough enough?" But those days that we spent there saved us weeks and months over the course of a year that felt like an entire decade crammed into one, and so, just the, the posture through which we approach COVID I was very proud of.

[00:36:34] And, before that, I think of, you know, we've built an incredible team of really talented people. My definition of a great company culture is a place where the people you're working alongside could go get jobs anywhere but they choose to be here and it used to be committed and bought in, and I think we've done a great job of that at New Story and, are continually getting better, right?

[00:36:54] So, we're not done by any means or we're tweaking and evolving how we do that, we've done some really cool flashy stuff that I love, and I'm proud of bringing the technology to market. We've built awesome offline first mobile app to serve a population that most people are just like, "Yeah, you know, take your notes, pen and paper, and put it in a filing cabinet,"

[00:37:12] and, you know, we've really pushed ourselves to create something that allows us to collect and analyze that data, and 3d printing was another big thing, right? Today, if you Google New Story, it's hard to miss all of the stuff that came out of that 3d printing project. A lot of our team put so much blood, sweat, and tears and effort and frustration and hard work into that project,

[00:37:35] and a lot of learnings came out of it. I think that the technology, generally speaking, is a little bit early for us to apply at the scale that we want and we need, but a big part of why it exists is because, you know, we helped bring that to market, which is incredible, big picture, and this is, I mentioned early on, you know, really being enticed to New Story because,

[00:37:55] the group that could stand toe to toe with the same people who are pitching very profitable companies and pitch a philanthropic message, I think in much the same way. I drew a lot of inspiration and hope from the idea that I could help build the type of non-profit that I would want to give to.

[00:38:10] Morgan Lopes: I'm generally a pretty skeptical person, I'm not instinctively very trusting of others, and so I think a lot of that cynicism has made its way or realism has made its way into how I look at a lot of non-profits, and being given the opportunity to help build the type of non-profit that I would trust and that I could hold myself accountable to, wanting to give to, and nurture and help grow over time,

[00:38:35] that was really important to me and, you know, each year I look back and of course there are ups and downs and there are deviations as we kind of learn and evolve, but I think that is still true. New Story is a very good bet. We spend a lot of time and energy thinking about and holding ourselves accountable to being that type of organization that is really setting the bar, not just for non-profits, but for companies to be a great business, not merely be a great non-profit, but be a business that others can look to and draw inspiration and encouragement from, and see the way that we function and hold themselves and their teamto the same standard

[00:39:08] I think this may be the cherry on top, so to speak, of things I'm proud of.

[00:39:13] Richard Simms: Awesome. Yeah. that all sounds great, and I do think that, just generally the way New Story presents itself, the type of PR you've gotten, you know, it all ties back, of course, to the non-profit, but I think you all do a good job really putting yourself out there as innovators, really energetic, young,

[00:39:33] you know, I think that you're kind of breaking out a lot of the kind of stereotypical, you know, bureaucracy, slow-moving non-profit space that I think a lot of us, you know, want to work to shake off. So, I love that. For New Story, if you look at, you know, five years from now, like, what does success look like?

[00:39:52] What kind of impact do you all hope to have, looking down the road?

[00:39:57] Morgan Lopes: Yeah. As, I mentioned by 2030, our goal is to house a million people. We won't be quite halfway there in five years from now on, but we expect to see massive gains in that direction. A big part of this is not just housing a million people, but it's building a system by which a million people can be housed.

[00:40:14] When you look at most housing initiatives, again, very expensive, they take a long time. Personally, I believe this is part of why most politicians don't run on a housing platform because they're going to come up short, and if for no other reason than time, right? Typical election cycle is four to five years, doing anything of substance at scale

[00:40:35] in housing just takes way longer than that. But, by us working to create a system by which significant numbers of people can be housed and then taking that information, that business model and making it available so that more people can get in the game, I think that will really be planting a lot of pretty significant seeds toward our overall mission of ending global homelessness.

[00:40:59] You can't really get there without a proven repeatable system, and we aren't going to be able to do this alone. We're putting in the time, the energy, the investment to bring about a business model that we believe will scale and be replicatable across countries, not only in Latin America, but around the world,

[00:41:15] Morgan Lopes: and five years from now, we should be pretty darn close to something, to that consistent business model that we are just applying pressure, we're testing or iterating, you know, tweaking to increase speed, drive down costs, all the traditional things that businesses work to do once they've nailed something.

[00:41:31] We are in the early days of fleshing out that financially sustainable model for, for families, but five years from now, we should be well on our way, we should have tens of thousands of families impacted under our belt with our eye on the system that will house a million, and in subsequent years we expect things to keep moving faster, more people to come join us,

[00:41:54] and I'm not talking about just our team, which, yes, we've got a lot of opportunities for people to join at New Story specifically, but once certain business models exist and are proven, we see this in all industries,other people follow, right? So, it's part of the reason why, when you look at most businesses, very few businesses break a million dollars, right?

[00:42:14] Something like 4% of businesses break a million. There's not a long line of people signing up for that, but franchises on the other hand have massive wait lists of people who want the franchise because it's proven, right? "There's a known path that I can invest this time and this money and get this results,"

[00:42:31] and there's a level of that consistency that we are trying to produce in the housing space for low-income families, because we believe that if we can prove a clear path to meaningful scale, then more people will show up and start to do it, and somebody has got to incur those initial costs and we're willing, we believe so much in the vision of creating safe housing for everyone that we're willing to incur those initial costs,

[00:42:54] Morgan Lopes: and we believe that, as we do that, more people will show up and participate with us because they, they're not betting on this hope or this dream or this unproven thing, but they're able to see, "Oh, there's a path here," you know, "I can, I can go buy land. I can go promote this offering to these families and build homes and grow this into something that is impacting people's lives and is more financially sustainable than traditional models."

[00:43:21] So, five years from now, we should be well on our way to that. My hope would be that others, and this is a quote that I borrowed from many other people, but the story goes, if you see a turtle on a fence post, you know that he didn't get there by himself, right? And the more, slightly more, like, motivating version of that is, we want to be the giants upon which others can stand and raise everything to new heights,

[00:43:43] Morgan Lopes: and I think there's so much work to be done in social housing and we hope that others can see the work that we're doing and not just be inspired to form better companies, but join us in housing more people, because right now it's only getting worse, right? More and more people, year over year, decade over decade are falling into inadequate housing conditions,

[00:44:06] so step one is, we've got to slow the speed of increase, and then ultimately bring it to a place where it's decreasing year over year. We will not be decreasing year over year yet in five years, but we should be well on our way to a proven model that others can look to and replicate.

[00:44:21] Richard Simms: Awesome. I love it, you know, and I'm really excited to continue following you all over the years and seeing the impact grow. So, I think we're about out of time. This has been really great. I really appreciate it, Morgan. It's a lot of fun having you on. before we sign off, where can listeners go to connect with you?

[00:44:39] Learn more about New Story? And, what can they do to support you all's mission if they're hearing this and they want to help out?

[00:44:47] Morgan Lopes: newstorycharity.org is the place to go. You can find most of what you want from there. You can also check us out, go to Google, type in New Story, we've got lots of videos and all kinds of content available for you to check out. If you are looking to do meaningful work alongside passionate, talented people,

[00:45:04] I'd love to invite you to check out our careers page. We also have a podcast, it is called a Founder's Lab and you can learn all about the, the attitude and posture that we bring into our work at New Story. So, I'd encourage you to check that out as well. I think it's on Spotify and Apple podcasts and all that as well.

[00:45:19] Richard Simms: Fantastic. Well,

[00:45:20] thanks, again. It's been great having you on and, again, looking forward to continuing to follow New Story. Thanks for being on the Digital Footprint.

[00:45:29] Morgan Lopes: Thanks, Richard. Appreciate your time.