Building Futures and Inspiring Hope: The Moss Family's Vision

When Katharine and Scott Moss joined forces with Allen Brown, they ignited a beacon of hope for South Florida's children and families in need. Their synergistic efforts are at the core of this heartwarming episode, where each guest shares their individual journey and how they've channeled their success into the mission of Place of Hope. Scott's innovative use of his construction and solar energy business, Katharine's evolution into a compassionate community volunteer, and Allen's inspiring transformation, all paint a vivid picture of the power of supportive communities.

The episode takes a compelling turn as we explore Moss Construction's impact on both skyscrapers and lives. Our guests reveal the secret behind the company's impressive growth—valuing relationships and seizing opportunities. Their dynamic internship program and 'ninja teams' are not just about building structures but constructing futures. Each story shared serves as a testament to the company's commitment to fostering a work culture that benefits the industry, the individual, and the community at large.

As our conversation unfolds, powerful personal testimonies resonate with themes of love, redemption, and the relentless pursuit of purpose. From the formation of a youth leadership council at Place of Hope to the strategic principles guiding Moss's substantial growth, the episode is a mosaic of motivational insights. We invite you to be inspired by the shared experiences that form the fabric of our guests' lives and consider how you, too, can be an Ambassador of Hope, nurturing the seeds of community growth.

Upcoming Place of Hope Event:

• April 12th 
  • 10th Annual Angel Moms Brunch & Benefit "For the Love of Flowers" inspired by the iconic designs of Oscar de la Renta and Presented by Michelle Hagerty
  • Purchase Sponsorships & Tickets here! 

Host: Charles L. Bender III, Founding CEO and Board Member of Place of Hope

Title Sponsor: Crypto Capital Venture | Follow Dan Gambardello's on Twitter (@cryptorecruitr)

Looking for assistance  in south Florida? Visit VillagesOfHope.net

Link:  Visit the Place

Title Sponsor: Crypto Capital Venture | Follow Dan Gambardello's on Twitter (@cryptorecruitr)

Title Sponsor: Crypto Capital Venture | Follow Dan Gambardello's on Twitter (@cryptorecruitr)

Transcript

Charles Bender: 0:02

Hello and thank you for tuning in to Ambassadors of Hope. I'm your host, Charles Bender. We're so excited that you've tuned in to hear from local South Florida leaders who are making a difference in our community and region through our charity Place of Hope. Who are we? We're the largest, most diverse children and families organization spanning Palm Beach County and the entire Treasure Coast. Our goal is to help those we serve find healing and restoration, leading to a brighter future. Since 2001, place of Hope has served over 25,000 children and youth in South Florida. Place of Hope is a faith-based, state-licensed organization providing programs and services to children, youth and families to end cycles of abuse, neglect, homelessness and human trafficking in our local communities. None of this would be possible without our Ambassadors of Hope, the people in this community and throughout South Florida who use their leadership, influence, time, talent and resources to help others. Many have inspiring stories of their own that tie them intrinsically to our mission, and we hope that their stories will challenge you to get out and make a difference where you live, work and play. So much can grow from even just one small seed of hope. Thank you for becoming a part of our community, helping us grow and becoming an ambassador of Hope yourself. Please be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single uplifting moment. For further details and information on how you can connect with us, please go to placeofhopecom slash podcast. That's placeofhopecom forward slash podcast, and we'd love to hear from you anytime. Please email us at pohpodcastatplaceofhopecom or find us on social media.

Charles Bender: 1:49

Ambassadors of Hope Placing Hope in a Child's Future. Welcome to Ambassadors of Hope. We are excited today to have our good friends Scott and Katharine Moss, as well as Alan Brown. As you know, we like to highlight great people in our community that are doing big things for Place of Hope. This trio of good friends has been doing things for many years now. I'm just going to jump right into it. Give a little intro about yourselves. You know background about yourselves and why you're involved in Place of Hope and what you're doing. Scott, you can start us off.

Scott Moss: 2:21

Thank you, great to be here, great to be with Allen and, of course, kate Moss, and we'll start off there. I work for Kate and the family to make sure that she's happy at all times, which is pretty easy to do. She's a great lady and run a business with my family and wonderful people that we work with, moss and Associates, which we're a general contractor construction manager, and we also do utility scale solar. We do this business in South Florida, tampa, dallas and Hawaii as far as vertical buildings are concerned. As far as utility scale solar, we do it from Florida to Nevada to Virginia. If you get down, I think about that triangle, we have roughly 4,000 employees. Oh, so just a small little business, small little business, small family business. About 19 years. It started with me, my dad and a computer and my brother joined about a year later and we have some awesome people that make up the team you sure do, included Alan. He was a team member this summer.

Charles Bender: 3:22

Yeah, we're going to hear about that for sure, Kate. What about you?

Katharine Moss: 3:25

All right, my name is Katherine Moss and I'm a stay-at-home mom. I've got three kids, and two of which are in college now and one is a senior in high school and I found a place of hope just at the right time, when I had teenagers and they were not too happy with me. So I had to go out into the community and find some kids that would appreciate me and I could have some fun with and make some change with. So I have embraced a place of hope and found such a passion, such a loving community being involved here. Just I'm so grateful and so happy to be part of it.

Charles Bender: 4:06

And I'm pretty sure all teenagers. We all feel that way about our teenagers at some point.

Allen Brown: 4:11

Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm better out there. Oh sorry yeah.

Charles Bender: 4:15

Alan, what about you, buddy? Tell us about you I mean it's Alan Brown.

Allen Brown: 4:19

So much to tell. How much time do we have? No, I'm just a young man who was down in his luck and I found the amazing people, a place of hope, and from there it was a drive to get better and create a better outlook on life. And once I was able to do that in a place of hope, they let me find the amazing people at Moss. Oh man, I'm getting choked up because I just love the environment that I'm in. You know, it just feels so creative and loved, so that's awesome. Yeah, that's why I'm here Just to keep pushing that out there and hopefully get more young, young people in there and, you know, just create a great area for everyone. You know, just want to make communities again.

Katharine Moss: 5:04

And I have to correct you. You are not just a man, you are the man.

Charles Bender: 5:07

Down there. Okay, I'm not just a mom.

Katharine Moss: 5:12

I put that away a long time ago. Lisa taught me to take my little box of gifts off the shelf and use them. So you can't be just a man, you got to be the man.

Allen Brown: 5:24

Oh man.

Katharine Moss: 5:25

Okay.

Charles Bender: 5:25

We could literally just stop the show right now and think about it and like roll back and look at the even what you just said, which was not pretty rehearsed or anything that you know the family, the community, how you came to place hope met the love, and then you met the love of the Moss family and that's how they run their company and it's like it just shows how this is just such a perfect mixing of the corporate and the philanthropic and the charity world and the people helping business, and I mean your, your. Your story is just amazing. You know we we told you in very high regard You're going to go big place. So tell us originally how you came to find place hope and how it's had an impact in your life. We'll start with you, kate. How about that?

Katharine Moss: 6:05

Okay, so I received an invitation from Renee fader. I had worked with Renee and David at St Paul Lutheran school. Our kids grew up together. We have a Moss foundation golf tournament down at Trump. David fader was the GM there. Alan, you've been down there, right yeah places amazing.

Katharine Moss: 6:26

Yeah, pitches with a trash can, so something that it is every year at the foundation we give out checks to our favorite charities that have to do with children, education and veterans. As we're giving out the checks, there is one raffle that we do. That's a $5,000 check to a charity of your choice. Well, lo and behold, david, of all people, was the winning raffle. So he called his wife, renee, and he said what charity would you like to give the $5,000 to? And she said, of course, place of hope. So I didn't know anything about this because at the time I wasn't at the tournament, but Renee called me out of the blue and she said hey, I want to invite you to this luncheon. You'll probably know a lot of the ladies there. It's for an organization called place of hope and I had never heard of it.

Katharine Moss: 7:21

And I came and a young man spoke.

Katharine Moss: 7:24

I was very moved by his story.

Katharine Moss: 7:27

He's a young man that was walking the streets with his little brother in East Boca, eating out of the Louis Basi trash can at night, making sure that his brother got to school on time, and then he got to school after that and he would pick him up and he's basically raising his brother on the streets and I can't remember about the mom or the dad, but I was taken with tears, of course, and then I started to look around the room and I realized there were a lot of women and men leaders in the room that I had met through serving as Junior League and the PTA and the church, and I thought, wow, I know these people in this room and if these are the people that are supporting this organization, these are the movers and shakers that I've always looked up to in doing volunteer work.

Katharine Moss: 8:23

So I was intrigued by what I saw and I wanted to find out more about the organization, and so I, you know, after the luncheon I ended up doing a tour at Place of Hope and I was just. I met Lisa, I cried on her couch, I told her my whole story. I was a mess, but I just the presence, the faith, something came over me that just was unbelievable and I just wanted to be a part of it.

Charles Bender: 8:54

Thank you for that. That's awesome, Scott. What about you? Kate brought you in, there you go. That's the short end of the story, right there.

Scott Moss: 9:03

Yeah, my five foot three blonde in my kitchen told me this is what we're going to do. I said yes, ma'am, and that's how I got, that's how we got involved. And when she told me the people you know it's all of you know that old saying you're the average sum of the people that you hang out with, right? And when you hear about the people that are involved with this, you're like, okay, you don't have to do much betting, they've already done the betting for you, right? And so I'm a big trust person and you know a lot can be done with a strong base of trust. And so when these people trust that the organization is going to first take care of the most vulnerable people that are out there and then also be good stewards of people's treasures, right, and those two combination drives this incredible amount of trust that you see at Place of Hope. And so that's what Kate saw. And then she said you're going to do this and I said yes ma'am Gotcha.

Charles Bender: 10:03

Yeah Well, I mean, that's one of the primary points of this whole show ambassadors of hope, because that's what you're talking about, the ambassadors that are out there that make Place of Hope what it is. And so they look and say, oh, charles, lisa and Maya, because we're on the actual paid team, but no, no, no, what is what Place of Hope is is God's sovereign hand. And then all these people who are awoken to or awakened to the mission and get involved and make it even possible to do what we do. And you guys went from that day or that time, which was not even that long ago, just a few years right, and look at now you guys are doing pretty much everything with us. Everything we do you guys have a hand in.

Katharine Moss: 10:42

So can't thank you enough.

Charles Bender: 10:44

All right, my friend, what about you? What about you, alan Brown? Tell us a little bit about how you came to us, and so forth.

Allen Brown: 10:50

You know, I wasn't very dark place in my life. I was living on my car. I didn't know if I even want to continue anything. Really, you know, I was just searching for something, you know. So I was at FAU but not university or people don't know and it was like a little town hall meeting that they have and I wanted to know more about what they would be doing for mental health, because that's one aspect of my life that I think that if I didn't have therapy it would have. I would have been a totally different person than I am today. You know, the man I had I am today five years ago was not the same person at all. I should do that to the little bit of amount of therapy I had.

Allen Brown: 11:36

So I wanted to ask them like you know, are we going to have one therapist and what are we doing for that? And one of the presidents was actually in the board, I didn't even know. She pulled me aside and she was talking to me and I was letting her know, yeah, I'm living on my car, but I still want to do something. And she pointed to me to some people called Vista Nova out there in West Palm, and that was a little further out than what I could you know, drive all day and come back to FAU and they're like I think we have someone. They're like do you by chance know place of hope? I was like I've never heard them. Can you get me in touch? So they got me in touch and like, literally that same day I was called by Ms Teresa, ms Finley, ms Terry Finley. They called me to the, did a meeting with me and they they would hear my story and they were like yeah, we want to get you here.

Allen Brown: 12:31

We want to get you here, we want to get you some help. And they delivered. They delivered the first moment of that, that light that I was looking for. They were there, you know. And then I met some amazing people like Mr Rebecca, ms Lisa, and it just kept having me going like, yeah, I got to keep going, there's no reason to stop now. Then Mr Rebecca is like hey, you, you say you're an engineer. You know there's a company out there called Moss. See, if you want to do a little internship with them, you know, I did my first, first internship out of four years of college, didn't know anything about the company yet, didn't know the people.

Allen Brown: 13:11

So I'm going in a little scared, a little frightful of what's going to happen, but hopeful at the same time. You know, and the type of love that I, that I received just to get into the building. It made me happy, to the point to where, if I had to wake up at four o'clock to work, I'd wake up at two, ready to go for the whole day. And I'll do it. I'll do it again the next week, next day. I didn't care, because it was that great, awesome.

Charles Bender: 13:46

Yeah, Good deal buddy. That's awesome, Scott. Talk about a little bit, from what I understand, of your journey as starting as a laborer at some point in your construction career to become the CEO of Moss. Obviously it's an inspiring story and share a little bit about the leadership about that, but also about the leadership qualities and the values that you bring to the company that have contributed to the overall success of Moss.

Scott Moss: 14:11

Yeah, that's a good story. Thank you for the feedback. We strive for exactly that, as people feel super welcomed and it's a hard job, right? You wake up at six thirty in the morning and if someone's willing to wake up that hard and work for that long, that's the whole point of the business, right? So thank you for the feedback.

Scott Moss: 14:32

Yeah, I was seventeen and I made the mistake of being caught on a couch and my dad walked up and said you will be at the Miami airport at six thirty tomorrow. Make sure you have boots on and a t-shirt and some jeans, and they'll give you a hard hat. And I said, oh, okay. And so I worked as a laborer on the Miami terminal A, if you walk through the terminal A Miami. I helped build the infrastructure, the structure of the building, and I was part of the concrete crew, and so it was a good lesson about doing some extremely hard labor. It taught me I really wanted to go back to school and actually learn so I could manage, and being out there all day, that's a tough job, that's a tough job. And so the business. I worked my way through another company, centex, as a project manager, and Bob left there in 2003 and I left, maybe three or four weeks after he left. That's Bob Moss we're talking about. Yeah, bob Moss and my dad, and he had a great career which helped catapult Moss, and so we started the business twenty years ago.

Scott Moss: 15:44

The qualities, the values we actually didn't come up with until thirteen years later. Part of my journey was I had to figure out why I was going to be away from the family and my wife and also what was this all about, because it couldn't be just about money. And so we went on a quest, january twenty twenty two thousand sixteen, to figure out what are going to, what's our values. That we're going to is going to be no matter if we're in the construction business or in selling some sort of widgets. What values are going to be all about Moss and what's our core purpose? Our core purpose is empowered to create the exceptional, and so that means every person in their position is empowered to create it to create the exceptional for the client, for each other, for a trade contractor, for a community, and so, with that, people are set free to use their talents to make the best best of it, if you will, and they can do it with these three values.

Scott Moss: 16:47

First, honor relationships, care about the safety, well-being and success of our families and business partners. And that word well-being is super important because it's just not. You know, clearly, you have to keep everyone safe. It's a more obligation than the business we're in, right? But well-being means not just if you just showed up to work, but how are you arriving as a whole person, right? And in that whole person isn't just are you okay, are you or are you set up to be successful, right? What studies have shown over over the time period is well-being ends up driving a much more engaged workforce and team. And so if you really focus on well-being as a company and, by the way, it's this study only come out like three months ago then you're going to have a much better success of having an engaged team, which is pretty cool.

Scott Moss: 17:38

So the next one is entrepreneurial spirit embrace opportunity, overcome challenges and innovate, and so that drives our team to kind of think outside the box. We know you have your values right. When someone tries to or someone overdoses it, right? And so, entrepreneurial spirit people think out of the box a lot, and so that's what they'll blame it on. Sometimes You're like, well, okay, you're over the guardrails, but I know, understand entrepreneurial spirit, you're going to get back in the guardrails. So that's kind of fun. And then the last one is an home to my father, because he just has so much energy. It's called contagious energy and that contagious energy is what he felt when he walked in that office the first day. And that's you're going to work hard because that's his business, right?

Scott Moss: 18:26

This business is a business where someone's opening the gate at 6.30 in the morning and the gate may never close, right, like at F1, the gate never closed for three months, right, when we were finishing up that project. Number two is you can be nice. In this business I know it's not known for being a nice industry you can be nice and we kind of demand people to be nice to not only one another but to the client, to the trade contractors, to each other, right. And lastly, you can have fun. One exclamation mark, right, not three one. That means you know we got to keep it to where it's fun that everyone can have. It's not. Everyone's version of fun is a little different, so you have to kind of be okay with the variation of fun.

Charles Bender: 19:33

So when you were talking to your story earlier, how you got started, I mean I asked a question but then you said it and actually know the answer and our stories are similar, like when I got started, my dad was in the elevator industry and he ended up owning his own small company, but prior he worked for a big company and I went to work for them and they did the same thing with me. You know, first, like I think they called me greenie and then they put me to work stack and rails in elevators and counterweights and man 18. I mean it was. It was good workout, but boy, did I not like it all that much. It made me go back to school, the same exact thing I'm like. I got to go back to school and saw a couple of these guys that were only like 35 years old and they looked like they were 90.

Charles Bender: 20:13

You know they've been working so hard. So anyway, it just made me laugh inside. But tell us a little bit about and you can all kind of given some inputs here because I know what you were just working on solar and so forth but just some of the cool projects. You mentioned one because you know I'm a big formula one fan. But tell us some of the cool projects you guys have done over the years or might be even doing now.

Scott Moss: 20:33

There's roughly 120 projects going on across the system at one time. So when people say, hey, what do you have going on, I'm like, well, how long do you have? So hopefully I have plenty of battery in that camera and also the audio. So I think one of the one of the neatest ones is formula one, which is bund on in two phases. We built a track and half the garage one year and then that and finish the, the sweets and the kind of everything above the garage this past year and it's been a fantastic success for the area.

Scott Moss: 21:07

What people don't realize about F1, in essence, that creates a super bowl actually times two every year in South Florida, which is which is pretty, pretty fascinating. Oh yeah, another another great project that we're Set to finish over this next, next year so, is we're building a Saint Regis in and Sarasota, which it'll be the first kind of five star that's in in Sarasota. There's a Ritz there, but it's not gonna hold a candle to do this and and the kind of give you idea how opulent it's gonna be. It's gonna have 25,000 square feet of pools and and lazy rivers and stingray Petting, petting zoo it's. It's gonna be pretty cool that's.

Scott Moss: 21:50

That's a really cool project, you know, and, and when you think about solar, you know some people think about solar on top of a warehouse or they're thinking about just maybe a small field I think about 5,000 acres and and we built something similar to that in Colorado, right outside or right south of Colorado Springs. And so there's a lot of, a lot of great projects that we do that have huge meaning in each one of the, each one of the communities we we work in. So Marlins ballpark is probably one of my favorite ones, that that we had a hand in that how do you stay on the forefront as a company to be able to go from?

Charles Bender: 22:29

I mean, all you have to do really is go around Broward and here and see you'll see mall signs, right, and but most of what you see is the vertical construction, the commercial or some residential but. But how do you add all of a sudden, how do you pivot into the kinds of things you just described, like somebody has caused, as you want to build an F1 track or yeah.

Scott Moss: 22:45

Yeah, so so that I'm gonna go back to the values that on some people spirit right, embrace opportunities, right. And so some people ask are you guys gonna continue to grow? I said, well, let's go back to the values and it'll. It'll tell you what's gonna happen. Right, in order to not grow, we'd have to unembrace opportunities, right?

Scott Moss: 23:03

So that's not who we are, and that that F1 story is a great story because it is a story of a long and so that honor relationships always still comes into this, because Bob and Steven Ross who owns who owns the Miami Dolphins, is where the track is they had known each other for 25 years and and so Steven had had a bad, a bad experience with a Contractor as they put on the roof of the stadium and he called and said I need your help. And and Bob said, okay, this is a good call. And, and so we did the tennis center first there. So we did the whole outdoor court facility, the big kind of big pond they have out front there, or water feature, and then we did all of the Infrastructure and set up the tennis, the temporary tennis center that's inside the stadium, the first time for him. And so that's how we ended up in F1 Now.

Scott Moss: 23:57

Now, this is how this works, right? So that's the first job. The second job is the training facility for the Dolphins we just we finished a couple years ago, which, by the way, I'm a big Dolphins fan, so oh God, thank you, that was.

Allen Brown: 24:08

that was a huge honor.

Scott Moss: 24:13

You know, it's all the training facility.

Allen Brown: 24:17

They get paid. They get paid to train.

Scott Moss: 24:19

They work on Sundays, You're right you're right, um, and, and, then, and then, of course, we just we're finishing up, are we? We finished? Or his office building, related office building in West Palm Beach, and we're doing another job for him. So you see how the honor, relationship and also the entrepreneurial spirit.

Allen Brown: 24:39

And trust.

Scott Moss: 24:39

You trust, yeah, and and what ends up happening is, if you have an engaged workforce, then they then, at the end of the day, that's what those, those clients, feel, and so then they get honored by Getting their work done on time and also they, they get to use those facilities and monetize those facilities that they need to. It's awesome.

Charles Bender: 24:59

Yeah, american story, I love it. I love it. I like the entrepreneurial part too, Of course.

Scott Moss: 25:04

I'm Scott Moss. I am Catherine Moss's husband. That's my title. I'm also the CEO of Moss construction work construction management business and also a utilities solar Contractor business started 20 years ago with me, my dad and a computer. My brother joined a year later and we've hired some of the best people that work in construction.

Scott Moss: 25:26

Our goal is to make this the most rewarding place to work in construction. We feel like it's a more obligation to also be a part of the community that we end up Building physical assets into, and what we also do is, if someone's qualified and they have the desire to be in the Construction field, we give an opportunity to be to an internship, and I think we had two or three Placeful kids come through here and they've done a great job. We aren't so interested in being recognized. We were interested in doing the right thing.

Scott Moss: 25:54

And what are we proud of when you're recognized by an esteemed organization Like place of hope, that you're making a difference in the community. It's, it's an honor and then it's also good for Good for our team members here to understand that we're giving back in the communities they live in futures bright, with Place of Hope and with Moss looking forward to making it, making a difference in children's lives For the ongoing future. We all want our dollars spent wisely. We feel like the dollars that that are given back, or the contributions that are given back the place of hope are used wisely, and If you're considering a place to give back to make a social impact, this is a great organization to do that.

Charles Bender: 26:39

One of the other things you guys do really well, as you have a great internship program, so maybe mention something about that. But then we want to hear about your, your latest internship, so tell us why, maybe why you guys do that and yeah.

Scott Moss: 26:51

So the one constraint on the business is if you get the opportunities right. As you embrace opportunities have to have the resources right and and and they have to be the right culture in order to kind of understand that the well-being and engaged workforce kind of drives everything. And so you have to. You have to create these leaders yourself over time, and sometimes there'll be leaders outside that will get it and they'll come searching for this. But every year we, we have about 150 to 175 interns from about 20 different schools.

Scott Moss: 27:23

So we go out to schools, we, we interview people and then we bring them into the, into the family. For you know, if you think about this from and I'll talk about this selfishly it's a three-month interview, right. We get to see how people behave, we get to see how they handle stress, we get to see how they, how they handle life balances right. And I'm not, or life demands, I am not a big fan of this work, life balance thing, because we're a little. Work is work, is part of life, right? You can't have a life without work, right? I mean, that's kind of how this works.

Scott Moss: 27:56

That is the balance right, yeah, and, and I so, I so I saw this life balance like you're gonna have demands and Light in in your personal life, in your family life and your work life. You're gonna have all those demands. Now you got to figure out some way how to Sometimes it feels survived through them and then sometimes it's thrived through them and, and so that's how we view that, that that work life balance quote unquote. And so that internship provides us with that, really, and what we do is we stagger it so we'll have freshmen, sophomore juniors and seniors, so at all times. So you'll have, you have some team members that will come in with the full years of experience, because they have three-month internships and it kind of stacked up and at that point they get it and they're immediately productive. What we also do with this is super organized. So Alan will tell you he had responsibility. He wasn't just getting coffee and being treated like an intern. He's given responsibility, he's given pressure, he's given things that he needs to do for the team and the team relies on him to get it done. We're super intentional about Making sure it's gonna be experienced they get value from, because we owe that to them as well. Then we, what we also do, is we're being all of them together.

Scott Moss: 29:10

He happened to be in Mississippi, we had people in Texas and Arizona and and all other places. We didn't bring them all to South Florida. And we have a project engineers summit, and so that's some of the young engineers, or some of the young engineers they would work with as a as they go full-time, they get together and they have a learning, they get a little company overview and then they have a leadership learning moment and then they go into often different, different areas. So he, if he was in the solar, he would go into the mechanical area and learn all about mechanical Installations and what he needs to look for as an engineer. And so we do that for a couple different reasons. You build this camaraderie, so if he has a question, he can call somebody else, another, another project, right. And so now it builds this kind of intimacy with the organization Sure get. And then we give them technical training on top of it, right? So that's, that's the thought process.

Charles Bender: 29:58

I love it. Now I know you've already you've, on your own, explained like you've experienced the moss culture. You've experienced the love, you've experienced the having the responsibility, all those things kind of coming here. How was did you enjoy this last round? And I know you're back, you're doing, first of all, hang on let me back yeah you're at FAU doing engineering mechanical engineering I tell you what that's impressive by itself, because it's hard, couldn't carry your folders for you in that world, so so. So tell us a little bit about your internship at Moss.

Allen Brown: 30:28

So my last internship at Moss it was well, because I haven't been out of Florida since I've been alive for the 24 years of my life it was a huge experience trying to understand the area I was in. Thankfully, I had people who were like adamant in about hey, do you need this, do you need help here? One, one person who was like that, miss Constance Hayes. Constance Hayes, she's the administrator for the site. She knew everyone and everyone knew her. She, if it was there something that was wrong, see, would be the first person I would contact and she'd like yeah, I got you, I got to know what you need. You did this wrong, but it's fine, do it over here, you'll be way better.

Allen Brown: 31:12

And Because of that type of camaraderie that I got from them, I gave them everything I got you know. So when they were like hey, can you set up these meetings? Can you Talk with the owners? Can you make sure that the because they have any tracking the equipment. You know how, how easy this to lose your money as soon as your equipment goes in. And you have this, this pile driver, here for I don't know how many days and you don't even need anymore. Yeah, I was the guy to be like hey, your power driver been there for a couple months now, we don't need it.

Katharine Moss: 31:42

Move it away, you're right.

Allen Brown: 31:44

And so you know, even though I was up for the challenge, it was a lot, but I loved it. Yeah, I loved every second of it. And when there was a period where I didn't have it under, like I didn't know what to do, Sam will come in or Francesco will come in and he'll be like, hey, what's wrong, man, I can see it on your face. What's good?

Charles Bender: 32:05

you what's interesting about your answer right now. Your description is that you actually everything you just talked about. You spoke in a Circular fashion about the core values of the company without even maybe realizing you were doing it. You didn't talk about the technical stuff, you were doing it. You talked about the core values of the company, which I mean. I think that that's what you would want. Obviously, they got to learn the job and so forth. In the long run, I'm sure you hope to work for the company when you're all done and so forth. But and some things you'll learn as you go, but you'll, you could potentially go in knowing all that stuff already. That's awesome. I love it. It's working.

Scott Moss: 32:36

Another thing you worked on which I checked with the team about, you so I got an update. He worked on the plan of the day three month interview.

Scott Moss: 32:44

But yeah, yeah, he worked on the plan of the day, which I think is one of the coolest things that we do in that team. So we meet with the owner, who was very involved in these projects, and we talk about what. What do we plan on getting done today, what player we running, so they know what play we're running and in that way they can understand what we're doing. We do things totally different than most companies. Most companies have one person that knows kind of everything as a journalist, and what he saw was and we were talking before for this is you.

Scott Moss: 33:15

You have these many crews come in and they're specialists and so they're like little ninjas in their particular field of area. So they're super efficient and you exactly needs to get done. They don't need a lot of supervision. His job is to make sure he keeps in front of them and then was able to tell hey, this is what these group of ninjas are doing over there, so watch them right, and then, and then this group is doing this and this group is doing this, and it's pretty, pretty cool to watch, and and so it's a bigger responsibility and I love it and I'm a if I could add on to that.

Allen Brown: 33:48

One other thing I was doing Along with plan today was, like the monthly report yeah, as well.

Allen Brown: 33:55

Yeah the monthly report. You think it's simple until you start trying to add all the information and now budging gets involved. Then you're trying to make sure everyone can see exactly what all the lines and items that were was paying paid for. Like if For bought tape, tape was on there. We had made sure all everything was itemized.

Allen Brown: 34:16

And then another thing that I loved about it was safety. You, you know they had this, they have, you know, documents of everything and it breaks down the, the, the task that that's being had, and then on the back is blank. And I asked one of my safety Advisors and I was like, hey, what this is blank part about? They're like oh, that's the living, this is a living, breathing document. So if something happens on that, on that field that is out of the task area of hazards and stuff like that, we want you to document it so we can put it in our head and like, okay, we saw snakes that day, make sure these guys get their snake girders, make sure they protect it out there. Things like that made it really happy for me to be there, because it's just like that's a level of Protection over someone who might not think of that excellent, yeah, especially in.

Allen Brown: 35:07

Mississippi. They didn't know anything. They don't know anything about energy. Right, we're just talking with straight farmers.

Allen Brown: 35:13

Yeah, yeah so when we're trying to break everything down, when we're like, hey, you do this, this, this, watch out for this and watch out for these sinkholes over here, they're like, oh, yep, just see it now, thank you, thank you. And then they're then, because they're farmers, they're like, hey, don't forget, you got some type of bug in here that you need to look for. Right, I've never heard of it, what's it called? It's like a very tough little Spider, like beetle, I don't know, and it's like if you touch it like it's, it's real fast and you can't just stomp out it. You got to get away from it. That's a very dangerous. Anyways, what I'm saying is we were prepared for and the things that we weren't prepared for, we made notes of, and that's what I loved about the whole experience.

Charles Bender: 35:57

You know what my experience would have been, in that I would have been halfway through and as soon as they said snakes, I'd have been packing up and going home.

Allen Brown: 36:04

Well, I had a lot of guys from Texas. They're like nah, you go away from the snake, I'm gonna come right to you with it, yeah,

Maya Elias: 36:16

Or even the smallest seed has the potential to flourish into something extraordinary. This month, our kids enjoyed a valuable opportunity to engage with PBSO during career day at our kids sanctuary campus. It was a positive and impactful experience, particularly for some of our girls who previously held negative perceptions of the police Due to associations with family separation. This community initiative played a crucial role in reshaping those perceptions, fostering a newfound appreciation for the police as dedicated individuals committed to serving and protecting our community. Thank you for listening to this week's segment on seed of hope and please continue listening on for the rest of this week's episode.

Charles Bender: 37:01

So you don't have to look very far or dig very deep to see also the give-back side of Moss, the philanthropic nature of the Taking care of the communities that you guys do business, and I know that's a big part. But I want to jump into Kate. And I want you to talk about your experience on the big run it, which included Moss in a big way.

Charles Bender: 37:24

Yeah but you know you were, you were the the, the queen bee of Taking a project on and making one of our cottages down at the Leighan and David Rinker campus so special and talk about what drove you to even Think about doing that and then take us through a little bit of the process of how that went and how rewarding that was and so forth, because we know you've blessed a bunch of lives through it. But what, how was that for you?

Katharine Moss: 37:49

It was extremely rewarding and I first I have to say that the reason why I love Place of Hope is because I've learned from my corporate, my corporate friend that I have at my house, that Purpose and passion drives everything that you do and you have to have purpose and passion and All of the values and cultural. You know All of the morals and values and the ways we go about our business at work at Moss. It's the same thing that's happening at Place of Hope. I mean we have decorating ninjas, we have food ninjas, we have, you know, basket ninjas, we have all kinds of ninjas that are working special teams at all times and we are.

Katharine Moss: 38:42

If you're an angel mom or volunteer, whether you're raising money or you're decorating a house or you're, you know, filling envelopes for thank-you notes, you are organically Able to do whatever it is that you feel is a need for this organization. And so it's, you know, contagious energy with Entrepreneurship. And if we have an idea I mean just today we were working on the hope bash and we were we went to an architect's office and we were looking at An entryway and which we're gonna go in to the hope bash and raise money. But we were talking about other ideas that we have on the table that are creative, and you know we just come up with these ideas and then we pass it through leadership and they say roll with it, do it like this Is awesome.

Katharine Moss: 39:33

I didn't think of it. So I love that part about Place of Hope, because I am a master's degree stay-at-home mom and I have ideas, like a lot of the other volunteers, and I need to feel like I'm producing and you know make, you know doing something that's making a difference and so that, for me, fulfills that void that I have. So I feel like just as much as moss puts into the Culture of their people, place of hope has done that for me. They've made me a public speaker, which I, you know, put my feet in the sand. I never want to do it, but it's made me grow in ways that are amazing.

Katharine Moss: 40:18

You're good at it, by the way, oh, your so sweet, and so my big thing is, when I get involved in something I'm usually 110 percent. So I came in I wanted to meet the organization, I wanted to see what was happening, I wanted to meet the kids, I wanted to work with my hands. So I first came to Place of Hope and realized, well, a lot of these kids don't have clothes for church or Interviews or whatever, or they're wearing the wrong size or, you know, maybe they've never worn the right size shoe. They don't even know what size shoe they are. It was really sad. Or they were in the fields and they're in their foot Didn't grow the way that the 18 year old foot should be.

Katharine Moss: 41:06

So I first Talked to Charles and Lisa and I said you know, we need to get these kids some clothes, and I'm you know. I said you know, I know families that have clothes and I like to do design and if you could just find a room for me, I'll put together a consignment shop and then I'll get the volunteers in and we can Style the kids, we can make them feel confident, and so they. Lisa just walked me to this little room and there were some basketballs and some boxes and it was really Not being used for much, it was just empty space. And I just showed up with a truck one day and they let me Paint and, you know, put things on the walls and bring curtains, and I mean I had a ball just having fun decorating this closet. So we called it hope threads and we had special Paper bucks, kind of like monopoly money, and the kids at Place of Hope would come with their monopoly money that they got From doing good things on campus, going to the enrichment classes, showing up for therapy, helping another out, you know, working in the pantry, meeting the guy that came from Whole Foods to take the, the extra baked goods out of the truck and fill the pantry.

Katharine Moss: 42:28

So the kids at Place of Hope felt like they were contributing. Then they came to my shop. I felt like I was contributing, they were being built up and you got. You know you always have these fundraising events where the kids speak and they didn't have anything to wear, so they would come in and we would dress them all up and you know we had a great time. So that's where I started and and and that's where I started to build the relationship with the kids and I loved it and then I was there a lot, because when you get donations you have to go through the donations and you know, I mean and everybody was benefiting because Even the cleaning staff at Place of Hope we would save the best for the kids and then we would again either send them up north to the other Consignment shop or we would give them to the cleaning staff that was there.

Katharine Moss: 43:21

So we were using everything, which was another thing. Place of Hope uses all the resources all the time. If a table's on the side of the road, they will use it. They, they I mean the handyman will put cribs together and go to Home Depot and buy extra wood to patch it together. We use everything which I don't like waste no waste in my house. So that spoke to me and so I could see that they were good stewards of their money, their time. I trusted them. So I also like design.

Katharine Moss: 43:57

So I was on campus working in the store and and they asked me to come over to the cottage and see if I could help move around the furniture to make it more efficient in the Girls cottage, the mom and babies cottage, and I started to look around and I thought, oh, we can do this, we move this around.

Katharine Moss: 44:17

But then you know it's a kids cottage and there were lots of kids that came through there and I honestly don't know when it was built, but it needed a fresh coat of paint and the dishwasher even though they had a dishwasher they took had two refrigerators. It was really nice but the dishwasher wasn't working and you know, when you have babies and bottles, you you don't have much time. So I started to look around and I thought, hmm, I have a Drywall guy and I could call a painter and maybe I could, you know, take out this banquet and and move this table and make it more efficient. So I just asked Lisa and Charles if I could get in here and just kind of fix it up a little and it begins.

Charles Bender: 45:09

I've heard this story before. So it was no, simple paint up I've seen this story before at home renovations.

Katharine Moss: 45:21

I came home and I said I said just listen, sit, just listen to my idea, just sit. Here's a glass of wine. And I said I need Brett Atkinson, and I don't know if you know Brett Atkinson, he's one of my favorites.

Charles Bender: 45:35

I met him.

Katharine Moss: 45:36

He's so sweet he's the president of vertical construction.

Katharine Moss: 45:41

And I said can I have Brett Atkinson to Get me a couple of guys To help me coordinate some of these subcontractors? Oh, the eyes started rolling and he said just tell me what you want. Just tell me what you want me to do and I will do it. So we started a team and all of a sudden I was getting mossy nails and I felt like a big wig right. So I showed up and they organically, entrepreneurally, left me alone. And let me figure all this out. We had cabinets donated, we got discounts at Lowe's, we had drywall donated, paint donated.

Katharine Moss: 46:28

The community came together and it was amazing and I spent long hours there, early mornings, late nights. I saw the beautiful sunset over the lake. I saw the kids rocking in the rocking chairs on the porch. I realized that sometimes the outside of the cottage was more important than the inside of the cottage. We I helped them with their groceries, they fed my puppy, they walked my puppy. I was allowed to bring a puppy in the house on my job site. I Mean it was just beautiful and I had so much fun.

Katharine Moss: 47:04

And then I had passion and purpose and and what you don't know about me is that I live, you know, a fabulous lifestyle now, but when I was growing up I had a really tough childhood. You know, I lived in a great neighborhood with great parents that were pillars of the community during the day and at night my house got very violent and and doors started swinging off, the hinges and plates got thrown at the windows and I couldn't really say anything about it because my dad was the president of the Quantas Club or the bank manager, what you know. He was involved in everything. But it was a really bad, emotional, verbally, physical life. And I thank God for place of hope because when I was 15 and I got tired of being knocked around, I got very bold and brave and I had called the police in my house off of Las Olas Boulevard so many times that the police told me they can't come anymore and they gave me a card to the child you know, ned, or whatever, the Department of Children. I didn't even know what that was and I knew that if I called those people on that card that my dad would lose his job downtown at the big bank with the big window, and then my mom would be on the street, I would be on the street, my sister would be on the street. So I honestly I suffered in silence, but I was really. I had a lot of fire inside and it just made me mad and angry. And I tell Lisa and Charles all the time this is my testimony had I known that place of hope was available off of Boca Rio Road, I would have taken a cab and I would have gone there and I would have showed up with my backpack Because I went to St Thomas Aquinas High School, which is a nice high school A lot of people know it because of the football and I would take a cab as a 15 year old and I would go to my other nice neighborhood in Rio Vista, fort Lauderdale, and I would sleep on the floor with no, no furniture in my house until my house was sold.

Katharine Moss: 49:44

And there were cockroaches there too, because you know, when you move out then there's no food. So I was living in a house in a nice neighborhood 15 minutes, 10 minutes away from my other house. My mom was so distraught over my dad she didn't even realize I was gone and I would walk in my uniform to my neighbor's house and we didn't talk about it. I just got in her car. She drove me to school. She never asked me. She knew what was going on.

Katharine Moss: 50:15

So me going through this, when I am at Place of Hope, I people might think I'm a woman of society or I've got a nice car or whatever. It doesn't matter, I am in your shoes, I know who you are. I have been on alert since I was four years old. I can read a room in two minutes and I know who's got my back and I know who I can trust and I know who I can love, and when people upset me, sometimes I have to put up big boundaries because I'm a hurt person and I can't be touched too much Like you can't mess with me too much. So I get these children and I love you. I love these children and, and, and you know what's so beautiful is that y'all all open up to me right away, because I almost think you kind of feel like I get you, you know.

Katharine Moss: 51:15

So, anyways, through that construction project I scrubbed on my hands and knees I swear to God and I prayed in that place. I scrubbed the grout and I was just. I'm going on and on, but I really truly washed sin, I washed anger, I washed so many things away when I rebuilt that house. So I wasn't just rebuilding that house for y'all, I was rebuilding it for me and to this day, honestly, I have a great relationship with my father. He never apologized Surprise, surprise but I'm not surprised because I had enough confidence and I looked him in the eye and I said Dad, I forgive you, I know you didn't know how to be a good dad or to love, but I know you love me and I know I am loved. So that, in a nutshell, long story short, short story long, I don't know. That is why I'm involved and that's why I have purpose and passion for y'all and I just love you. That's it.

Allen Brown: 52:28

I love you too, miss.

Katharine Moss: 52:30

Kat, I love you too.

Allen Brown: 52:31

There's a true love there, you know, I understand.

Katharine Moss: 52:38

I got you. So you're not just a man, just a guy. I'm not just a mom, I'm not just a person and I'm not going to beat beat on the thing, but I pretty much am a dang ol' good girl and I work hard. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Charles Bender: 52:58

There's not a dry eye in this room right now. Thank you for Thank you for that. You know the Bible says refers to the power in the testimony. That's what we just experienced right here. It's like the Holy Spirit just come over this place. Your testimony is powerful and that will help lead people to redemption. That'll help lift people to new highs. You just heard it and you don't know this part, but there was a very peaceful bunny rabbit right out the window sitting right next to you.

Charles Bender: 53:33

And as you were, as you were talking, he felt safe enough to come over here and just hang out and maybe try to listen.

Allen Brown: 53:39

So he might actually jump in your car. They're like you know, I know Miss Katherine's here.

Katharine Moss: 53:44

I feel her, I'll be around I it's hard for me to public speak and of course every time I do and I expose myself, I feel worried that people are going to feel sorry for me or think different of me. And I know that I can. I know that when I'm in uncomfortable space and I just speak from my heart that God is putting me in that spot because he wants me to go outside of the comfort zone to share, because really, if you look at me from the outside, you don't think. You don't think these things. And I think a lot of the angel moms like from what I've learned and we go on retreat so we can trust each other and, you know, build a better leadership team I think a lot of these women and men that help serve. I think they all have a story and I think that's what makes Place of Hope so special is because we care so much and we want everything to work out for everybody. So we're all like-minded in that we wanna do better things to make life happier, you know.

Charles Bender: 55:00

We are so blessed by the team that we have at Place of Hope the ambassador ship, the people that are involved, the young people that get to come be with us and be a part of-. By the way, I found out today, nobody's called you yet and we're forming right now a leadership council, youth leadership council, at Place of-. Now, scott, you're serving on our CEO council for Place of we're gonna have a youth leadership council, so we're gonna make sure Joy calls you about that, because we want you on that as well. We have these kids that come back years later and they're saying well, I didn't have a gym when I lived here, I didn't have an enrichment center when I lived here and I didn't have this, so we wanted to get their input and so forth.

Charles Bender: 55:39

But it's interesting because there's when you and I first sat down when we started talking there's a lot of different kinds of ambassadors for the mission of Place of Hope and what we do in the lives. We together do in the lives of young people and families and trying to keep more families from breaking up with the kids ending up in the system and so forth, and that's what we're doing when we're building this housing and so forth. But there's all these kinds of ambassadors and we talked about Moss and the company, but then we just got to hear you say what drives you which I know is partially what drives you and which also lifts you and encourages us and keeps us going. But I can tell you after all these years that is probably the biggest blessing for me in my role is the people that are involved with us and that team and the why behind it, and that is the most exhilarating part of everything we get to do. I was gonna just dump this last question just because I don't even wanna talk about anything else now, but it's important because part of what we're talking about here for ambassadors of hope is from a business and a leadership perspective.

Charles Bender: 56:44

People wanna know why things remain great as well. I think you just heard a big reason why Place of Hope has survived and thrived and we continue to do more because God's got his hand on us. But all the great people and the why behind what drives them to be a part of Place of Hope, regardless of what they do and their role. But how does Moss stay on the forefront, the cutting edge of things, and as you grow, how do you keep those principles and those core values? It's tough because as we've grown at Place of Hope and staff will make fun, that I hate. When there's fingerprints on doors, right, well, that gets a little bit harder when you went from one building to owning 45 buildings, right, but you still have to have those standards. It's not always perfect, but you gotta try. How do you guys go about that? Because now you're in multiple places too.

Scott Moss: 57:35

So yeah, you have to dedicate a decent amount of time to just think and some what I think I feel some businesses make the mistake of. They get busy, so busy with their head down and doing they get kind of lost in the forest and they don't even realize in the forest because they're looking at just trees, right. So we spend as a vision leadership team, as the top 10 people of the business. We spend six to seven hours together in a meeting once a month and it's offsite and then we really talk about first, how do you make this a great place to work? Because we feel like those values really make sure that we're gonna be in perpetuity. Right, we wanna make sure we thrive in perpetuity, and so if we think about how to make a great place to work along those values, and then this is the business challenges we have, right, the way we look at it is the values are in the middle and this is Louise, who's one of my mentors. She's a great lady, she taught me this the values in the middle. Then you go mission what's your mission? You're on. Then you go strategy. This is how you're gonna get it done, this is how you think you're gonna get done and you have to go structure, and then this is a structure. You need to get it done. So, yes, if you wanna have 45 buildings, you have to have a structure to get it done right, if that's your strategy at 45, you have to have a structure. Then you infill with people.

Scott Moss: 58:56

A lot of companies just start hiring people and they're not quite sure what they're gonna do right, and so then no one what knows what play they're gonna run. They don't know what position they're gonna have. So if you start with this kind of strategy, structure people and it has to we iterate this all the time, that probably twice a year reiterate it. The business has grown so it can be kind of ideal on scale, like in 2011, we were doing about 175 million in sale and work a year. Maybe we had 142 people in the business right, and now, 12 years later, we'll do 3.2 billion this year. So when you kind of think about 30 times, how do you iterate that fast? And so that's the only way you do it. You have to do thinking time to figure out what do you want, and then how do you make sure you have strategy instructor to make sure that that's gonna happen, and so it takes a lot of time. That particular VOT they're saying they are saying is, if you wanna go fast, you go alone. If you wanna go far, you go together, right, and so going together takes a lot more time.

Scott Moss: 1:00:04

And you're feeling it as a CEO of a growing business or a growing organization and I'd love the fact that I call it a business and not an organization, right, because you guys think about this as this, and a business thrives for perpetuity, because the game of business is not a finite game. It's the beginning of the business. There's no end. End is bad, right. So once you think infinite, it's a whole different game. Right, you're setting this thing up for a longer, much longer than myself and much longer for you, charles, and so that's kind of fun. It's a fun puzzle to kind of think about. I think that's the way it lasts is. It's not for how well, how much money can we raise this year? That's not the point. How can we make this sustainable for the children and the most vulnerable people that we're taking care of here? That really is the point, and to a certain degree, we're doing the work that needs to be done that government necessarily can't do or is not super efficient at doing.

Charles Bender: 1:01:12

Right, absolutely yeah. It's our responsibility to hand this off one day when we're all gone in the afterlife, and make sure that it's strong and you'll do some version of that same exact thing with the company, with moms, oh 100%.

Katharine Moss: 1:01:28

That's exactly why we felt so important to do this capital campaign and the endowment and all this so that the buildings are paid for and that we're feeding the individuals long after we're gone. And that's what life is all about. If you have a great life, it is your responsibility to help others in need. It doesn't matter if you have $10 and you give two of the 10, it doesn't matter how much, but that you are doing that and that's gonna live on past us and that will be so unique. And that's why we have to gather the people that we know that care about these things as much as we do, to keep going and gather them up and say let's take this on as an army and let's get this done. You know we don't have much time, right?

Charles Bender: 1:02:25

Well, that's what I think of like. Was there a better way to spend our days than to do what you just described? And it doesn't matter what you do day to day for work. You should live with intentionality and purpose and meaning, and I know everybody in this room does, and so I'm grateful for that for sure. Well, listen, thank you guys. This has been. This is, can I say this, this is my favorite one that we've done so far. Can I say that you might have to cut that out?

Allen Brown: 1:02:51

Anyway, what has been, Don't cut it don't cut it.

Charles Bender: 1:02:53

But we appreciate you guys. We appreciate everything that you all do to just do what you just described. I don't even have to say anything. I mean you understand the mission here and you guys particularly you two right here you do a little bit of everything and we probably even drive you nuts with how many things we have. But you know, in leadership that's the thing if you're really good at something, people are gonna keep asking you to do stuff, but you never really say no. So a lot more to come and thank you guys for everything that you're sowing into. And, alan, we know you're going big places, baby. So you just keep going in the direction you're going and we're super proud of you and we are one grateful group of people. So thank you for being here today. Thank you very much.

Allen Brown: 1:03:38

Hey, I'll be bringing more people along with me.

Scott Moss: 1:03:40

It's not gonna be me. That just sounds like recruiting.

Allen Brown: 1:03:43

It's not just gonna be me, it's gonna be a lot of people around me, and I'm gonna make it the forefront of my mind to make sure that not only do I succeed, but the people I bring with me as well.

Charles Bender: 1:03:53

It's awesome, it's good Help lift others. I love it. Thank you for listening. Please be sure to subscribe and share with your friends so you don't even miss a thing, and if you really gained value today, please be sure to give five-star a review so, of course, we can be put in front of more listeners. For details and show notes about today's podcast and how you can connect with and support our guests, please go to placeofhope. com, forward slash podcast and please don't forget to email us at pohpodcast@placeofhope. com and, for sure, follow us on social media. Ambassadors of hope placing hope in a child's future. Music.