Turning Adversity Into Opportunity with Buddy Teaster

In this episode of The Better Leadership Team Show, I talk with Buddy Teaster, President and CEO of Soles4Souls, about turning adversity into opportunity, leading with transparency, and building a mission-driven leadership team that performs.

Buddy shares the story of how Soles4Souls moved through financial crisis, bad press, COVID, personal loss, and major organizational transformation by staying committed to truth, accountability, and purpose. We also explore the TEAM values framework, what for-profit leaders can learn from nonprofits, how social enterprise can create lasting impact, and why leadership requires both business discipline and heart.

This conversation is a powerful reminder that great leadership teams are not built only in moments of success. They are revealed and strengthened in moments of pressure, uncertainty, and adversity.

Thanks for listening! Connect with us at mike-goldman.com/blog and on Instagram@mikegoldmancoach and on YouTube @Mikegoldmancoach

Transcript

Buddy 0:02

But two is how arrogant do you have to be to think you're gonna show up in some community with a pair of shoes one time and you're gonna change the world. People smell that. They're like, so I think whether you're a for-profit or not-for-profit making, like it should be inspirational and aspirational. But it shouldn't be something that people are like, man, that does not match up to how we actually act here. there better be a lot of congruence between those two things.

Mike Goldman 0:35

You made it to the better leadership team show, the place where you learn how to surround yourself with the right people, doing the right things. So you can grow your business without losing your mind. I'm your host and leadership team coach, Mike Goldman. I'm going to show you how to improve top and bottom line growth, fulfillment, and the value your company adds to the world by building a better leadership team. All right, let's go.

Mike 1:07

Buddy Teaster is the president and CEO of Soles4Souls. A global nonprofit creating opportunity through shoes and clothing, a passionate leader and advocate But he has guided the organization to distribute more than 116 million pairs of shoes and garments across 139 countries, supporting communities through both intermediate relief. And sustainable micro enterprise programs, a dynamic thought leader, speaker and host of the Re:purpose Podcast, buddy has been recognized as A YPO Global Impact Award finalist and named in Footwear News Power list. He's the author of Shoestrings and more recently from Tailspin to Tailwind. His innovative approach has helped transform soles 4 souls into a movement that blends generosity with long-term impact, earning it recognition as one of the non-profit times. Best nonprofits to work for five years in a row. We're gonna talk to Buddy today about turning adversity into opportunity. Talk about the importance of not just running a profitable business, but one that has impact. Buddy, welcome to the show.

Buddy 2:25

Great Mike. It's always like slightly embarrassing to have that intro read, so tha thanks for doing that. You know, it's in some ways much simpler than that, but I appreciate the chance to talk about leadership with you.

Mike 2:37

Yeah, really looking forward to it.

Transparency and Vulnerability

Mike 2:39

And Buddy, from all of that leadership experience that you've got, what do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?

Buddy 2:49

I think it's somewhere Mike in the intersection between transparency and vulnerability, you know, strategy and operational experience, all that stuff really matters. Our executive team, when I look over the last. 13 years at Soles 4 Souls, it's changed obviously, but when we were at our best is when we were totally transparent about what we were doing and why we were doing it with each other and with our team and our board, and not shying away from saying, I don't know, this is hard. I'm stressed. I'm excited When those two things intersect regularly, that's what I think unleashes a great leadership team.

Mike 3:28

So important. and I remember seeing a dose of that when COVID happened.

Buddy 3:34

Yeah.

Mike 3:35

that shows you where my head. So, so when COVID happened in the world, shut down You know, I had client, CEOs that felt like they had to be wearing the superhero cape and get on and everybody's freaking out. We don't know when things are opening, what's happening to, to the company, what's happening out there. are we all gonna get sick and people are dying? and I had CEOs that didn't show vulnerability at all. They felt like I have to be, I have to be strong for my people. And they have the superhero cape on. And it, it was interesting, you know, they, the best leaders learned a way to, you know, be vulnerable, at kind of, I would say an appropriate level. I'm like, you know, my advice was don't curl up in the corner in the fetal position and cry and say, I don't know what's gonna happen to our business. But you also can't just put the superhero cape on and say, everything's fine. Don't worry about it.

Leading Through COVID Loss

Buddy 4:26

Yeah, Mike, for us, I think COVID is a great example for us too. So the guy who was our COO at the time, David Graben, he'd been, he was the second employee at Soles 4 Souls. He and I had been shoulder to shoulder getting Soles 4 Souls, turned around and healthy and growing again. And in January of 2020 he was rediagnosed with cancer and. That was late January and it was devastating. he's one of my best friends. He's super critical to the business. He got sick really fast and then 60 days later, COVID shows up like that happened and at a moment when we really needed his expertise and contacts. And man, he was an amazing operator. he was gone. Like he wasn't in the picture. And I think to our credit as a team. We came around and said, we really don't know. So here's how we're gonna basically flatten the organization. There's no, not no, but very little structure left so that we shared information. We met every day between COVID and David. We didn't know what was going on in every way. And so it transformed the organization. I mean, there are things that we're doing now that came right out of that moment, and it was because we could all be, I mean, we were so sad, Mike, David, watching David die, not actually being able to be with him 'cause of COVID, like it was heartbreaking. And so to deal with that in the moment when we also, our friends and colleagues in the world was all falling apart because of COVID. I don't know. I think through a little bit of luck and a little bit of modeling kind of what we wanted to see, we got through it as a team in a way that I would never have imagined before.

Mike 6:11

Well, I think though what I see is those are the times. Where you find out what your team is really about and whether your purpose as a business is really your purpose, or is it just words on a website? Are your core values really your core values or are they just the core values when things are going well? So, so I think

Turning Around a Crisis

Mike 6:33

that's so important. But I wanna go back eight years before what you just mentioned in 2020, and my understanding is, you know, back in. 2012, you walked into, you know, soles 4 souls facing, financial mismanagement, bad pressed, you know, demoralized team. what, how did you handle that and how should leaders be thinking of, you know, what they need to do if they've got a company in trouble?

Buddy 6:59

Yeah, so all that was true. Soles 4 Souls was losing lots of money. Most of the board had quit. There was bad press here, not just in Nashville, which is where Soles 4 Souls is based, but some of that got picked up nationally and our. Partners are all across the country. So that was a really bad moment and the team found out about all this stuff in the newspaper when everybody else did. So that demoralization was not just what was happening, but how they found out. So look, I guess I've seen enough and been around enough to know that it's hard to draw lessons from other people's stories. So I'll be clear about what worked at Soles 4 Souls, and maybe that doesn't work everywhere else, but. Coming in. The thing that I said right away to the team is we have to be transparent about what is happening, what's gone wrong, what the truth is about the finances, about how the business model. And I can just promise you that I will always tell you the truth. I expect the same from you. That's how we'll get through this. And that was the foundation, Mike. because people didn't know what was going on, you know, they were told. We don't sell shoes. And I came in, I'm like, well, yes we do. And that's the. It underlies the whole business model, so of course we do. So it's things like that. And being honest about the financial situation, they, everybody was told, don't worry about it. We got plenty of money. I'm like, Hey guys, we have no money. Like this is gonna be week to week for as long as we can imagine. So people say they want the truth, some do, some actually don't. They would prefer to be sort of kept in the dark about that. And so there were some people who were like, if this is the way it really is around here, I'm out. But level setting that. We're gonna be transparent about the good and the bad allowed. Everything else that happened to be built on a, something that we really are proud of how we work, not just the results that we get. And our other values came outta that, Mike. We, transparency is first, but we also said we wanted to be entrepreneurial. We wanted to be accountable to each other and. When you're in an organization with revenue of 4 million and you're losing two and a half, somebody's not being accountable somewhere. And we wanted to make sure the work was meaningful that not only to the people who worked at Soles 4 Souls and who volunteered, but the people we served, like it didn't matter to them what we were doing. So all of those values came out of that really terrible moment for Souls 4 Souls when there were a lot of people betting that we wouldn't make it, including people who'd been on the board. So it was a tough environment to come into.

Mike 9:30

So I don't know if any of you caught it, but if you rewind back to the transparent, entrepreneurial, accountable, meaningful. That spells team. So we're gonna come back to that in a minute, but before we do, I'm interested buddy.

Brutal Truth and Hope

Mike 9:46

You know, if you've probably heard the term, Stockdale paradox yeah. and you know, the idea of confronting the brutal truth, but also believing that we will be successful. You know, in the end, and that comes from Admiral Stockdale and his times as a POW in Vietnam. So how did you balance that? You know, I heard you talking about, hey, you were transparent, you know, you were really transparent about the brutal truth. How did you balance that brutal truth with, you know, hey, there's, you know, we believe there's a brighter future out there.

Buddy 10:19

so Mike, the Soles 4 Souls Business Model and philanthropic model is pretty clear. We collect new and used shoes and clothes. Some of those we give away to people in need right now, and some of those we sell to people in. Mostly low income countries outside the US as a way for them to help create economic opportunity for themselves. And when I came, look, I, the board told me everything they knew about what was going wrong. They just turns out they didn't really know how bad it was. But what attracted me, in spite of all that, was this idea of using business to help people get off poverty for the long term by them using their own talents and skills and motivation and finding a path. That was incredibly motivating to me. So that's this, the paradox piece was this organization was like everything was on fire, Mike, but inside of that was this incredible idea that I don't take any credit for like somebody, the founders came up with this idea of instead of not talking about that, instead of saying we don't do it like we should lean into that really hard, that's something to be proud of. And so as we started to change the conversation and bring in real stories of, look, this is what happens when we say, not only do we. Do this. We believe in this for these reasons. People were like, oh my God, this stuff that I was kind of embarrassed about now I'm proud of. And so that balanced the brutal truth. That balanced the fact that we really didn't know sometimes how we were gonna get through the month. And that scared a lot of people. Scared my wife often. But to know that actually no, this is, this really matters to people. Like we could see that. People who didn't know how they were going to eat, how they were gonna keep a roof over their heads in 12, 18 minutes, months, went from that to I'm stable, I'm safe. My kids are going to school. My kids are eating three times a day instead of once a day. Suddenly like that mattered. The meaningful part. The m part of teams, people could reconnect with that again, and so when they felt like they were being told the truth and they could connect it to the bigger picture, that was when everybody was like, the ones who wanted to be there knew why they wanted to be there.

Mike 12:26

Yeah, so it's about that bigger picture and having a true purpose

Buddy 12:30

Yeah, absolutely.

TEAM Values Framework

Mike 12:33

Back to that acronym of of team, you know, transparent, entrepreneurial, accountable, meaningful, let you talked about transparent. let's go, kind of step by step through, through the other, through. When you say entrepreneurial, what does that mean?

Buddy 12:52

Yeah, so it, the first part was really clear, and that is if we were gonna serve entrepreneurs, and that's how we think about these people that we sell shoes to and their partners. Then we need to act entrepreneurial. We can't be this sort of bureaucratic or think somehow we're doing them a favor. We should be entrepreneurial like they are. How do we partner with them in ways that further being entrepreneurial, but also it's gonna take that mindset to solve the problems that we're in. It Soles 4 Souls. Like we cannot wish our way out of this bad situation. And that gave people a lot of freedom and responsibility to come up with solutions like, how can we do this stuff better? Differently, or maybe for the first time in a way that's gonna get Soles 4 Souls on the right path again. So I think there were a lot of people who came to Soles 4 Souls. It was new, it was exciting, it was found. This is our 20th year, so founded in 2006. So the first four or five years, Mike, it was a lot of exciting growth and good press. You know, it was 2010, 2011 when things started to get rocky. So people came because they were attracted. Then it got really messy in the middle and they wanted that to be okay again. And so when we came in and said explicitly, yeah, that's one of the things that we value here. They were excited about that. The other piece is Soles 4 Souls. This year is about a $20 million revenue organization, so we're not very big, but. $12 million we earn by selling shoes. So we're running a business inside that's not-for-profit, and we have to be entrepreneurial. How do we find more ways to get shoes, to distribute them better, to get the cost down, to get the quality up things that any business has to worry about? That's where we were. So it was totally congruent inside. That's how we needed to work. It's, it was how we got the mission accomplished in part, and it was what the people on the team wanted.

Accountability in Action

Mike 14:47

And then tell me about the, the, you know, accountability is probably the word I use most often when I'm working with leadership teams, and partially because teams have such a problem with that word and what it means, and hold people accountable. So when you say accountable is part of. Is part of that team acronym. how do you define accountable?

Buddy 15:08

well, it's evolved from where we started. I remember this was a few years after I first came to Soles 4 Souls. I found the budget for the year before. It was one page. Like you can't run a, I mean, some people can. I can't. I don't know how to run an organization with a one page budget. And we were, at that point, we had operations in four or five countries. We had, we have two locations. We have our main distribution center in Alabama, we were in Nashville. Like you can't do that with revenue expense, net income, and think you're gonna get to any kind of good result. So the first thing was just to say, what are we doing? Who was responsible for what? That sounds. Terribly simplistic, but it didn't exist. So the first thing was that we said, here's what you're responsible for. I'm responsible for, we're responsible for, and then we held people accountable, like people. So when I came, we were about 65 employees, and over the next couple years we got down to about 35. And the only people who wanted to stay were those who wanted to be held accountable. There were a bunch of people who were riding. Riding the wave up and down, and when suddenly the spotlight got on them, they're like, well, this isn't as much fun as I thought when I could sort of hide and throw cheap shots at people. And now everybody's got goals. You're in a daily huddle. You're responsible for a quarterly priority. there's no place to hide. And some people didn't want that, so that wasn't the only way, but that's part of how we cut the staff down to, okay, these are the people who really want to be here, and now we're back up to about 90 and people know why they're here. And accountability is a part of that. Everybody here knows what their job is, what role they play, look, and there are places that it's still hard. Our finance team sometimes will say. How does what I'm doing connect to serving somebody in Haiti or getting a homeless kid, a new pair of sneakers? So, look, we're not done with that work, but it's clear what their job is, at least right in, in terms of the organization, if we, even if we can't connect it all the way to the mission every time. Yeah.

Meaningful Mission Work

Mike 17:13

And then the end is meaningful I have a sense we've already started talking about that one, but, is there more to say on that one or have we

Buddy 17:19

I, you know, I think. The first part of that is more emphasis, and that is to say people who join a not-for-profit most of the time are looking for more than just a job. So we had to be, we had to deliver on that promise, like it needed to be work that mattered. But the piece that I think was, new and different, and now it's, I hope, baked into who we are. I've already touched on that, is the work needs to matter to the people that we're serving. So we've all heard stories of. Charitable organizations who show up in a community and they do something to the community there, like they're not working with them. And maybe that's not what the community needs. an easy example is somebody shows up at some community in Ghana and builds a well, they don't train people how to maintain it. There are no parts. So they're like, yeah, we did this great thing. And the people, they're like, well, that wasn't, that's not helpful to us. So how do we make sure that what we do is what people want? It helps sustain them and helps them get to their goals, not our goals. So that was really important to keep those things in balance.

Purpose Beyond Profit

Mike 18:23

Suggestion and you know, when you're talking about a nonprofit, it is sometimes easier to speak about purpose because it's.

Buddy 18:33

Mm-hmm.

Mike 18:34

That's why the nonprofit was created regardless of what kind of nonprofit you are in the for-profit world. Very often you hear, yeah. We're about making money. You know, I'll sit with the leadership team and very often, you know, that I'll get some of the leadership team saying, yeah, you know, our reason for being is, you know, we wanna help people with X or we want, and the CFO will say, come on, are you kidding? we're here to make money. That's what we're here to do. And. You know, I always believe, you know, money is the fuel to make the car go, but it's not why you are in business. It's a byproduct of adding value. But any suggestions for the listener who is, a leader within a, in the for profit world, how to get people to take that idea of purpose and impact a little more seriously.

Buddy 19:26

It is a great question, Mike. and we have, I mean, one of the things maybe we can talk about, we have an incredible board at Soles 4 Souls, and it's almost all corporate people, right? They are in the footwear apparel industry, but finance, technology, logistics, consulting, everything. They are all, like, when they first come in, often they're like, what are we doing here? And people on our team are like our COO Now, Mike, he spent 25 years in the for-profit footwear business at his first year. He was less like, I do not understand one damn thing that we're doing because I wouldn't do that if we were here to just make money. And now he's the first one to sta stand up and say, what about the mission? So I think part of it, Mike, is, and I know this turns me off. When somebody says, we're here to change the world, I'm automatically like, that is bullshit. you're not gonna do that by selling your widget. You're not going to. So I think part of it for us is we have a big, we set a big goal in 2017 of having a billion dollars in economic impact by 2030. Nobody really cares about that, Mike. We care about it a lot. It motivates us. It orients us. It aligns us, but we don't make any great claims about changing the world. Or you know, one of the things that, a change that I made when I came to Soles4Souls with our team, our sort of mission tagline was changing the world one pair at a time. One problem with that is at that point, apparel was more and more important to soles 4 soul. So that didn't really capture everything. But two is how frequent arrogant do you have to be to think you're gonna show up in some community with a pair of shoes one time and you're gonna change the world. People smell that. They're like, so I think whether you're a for-profit or not-for-profit making, like it should be inspirational and aspirational. But it shouldn't be something that people are like, man, that does not match up to how we actually act here. there better be a lot of congruence between those two things. And you know, At Soles 4 Souls. And in a way it's probably a reflection that we're doing a good job. We do this survey every month called the ENPS. And every month people are like, we've talked too much about money. Where's the mission? And then we have people say, this is the most mission thing I've ever done. So to me that probably says that we're getting the balance right. Because I think if you only lean into one, if you're only about the money, if you're only about the mission, I think you fail. I don't think either of those approaches get you the holistic. Way that we all wanna show up where this is integrated into my life. I don't have to be one person to have a mission and one person to make money. I can do that together. And that's, to me, that's the magic point.

Destination and Compass

Mike 22:15

and I think in your book you talk about having a destination and a compass, and is that what that is? Is that kind of the money and the purpose?

Buddy 22:24

A hundred percent. And so. I mentioned this goal of a billion dollars in economic impact, that's totally idiosyncratic to us. Like it, it wouldn't make sense for any other organization necessarily, but for us it is. The thing I love about it is we use it every day to make decisions. This isn't something that's oh, it's time for the annual report. Somebody go figure out how did we do? We use it every day, and the thing that I love about it, Mike, is there are three components. It's about cash, it's about mission, and it's about serving our partners. We can usually get two of the three things, which means that every time we make a decision about should this shoe be sent down this path or this path, is this coat need to go here or here, we know that we are gonna have to not deliver on one of those three variables, so we have to think about it. And that kind of discipline has been unbelievable for us. Like I, I'll just give you a great example. we have this program called For Every Kid that we launched in 2020 where we provide new branded sneakers to kids experiencing homelessness in, mostly US public schools. We also have this program called For Opportunity where we sell the shoes that we are, that we have permission to sell all the used stuff and some new, so let's say that a brand donates 10,000 pairs of shoes and they say, do whatever you think is best. Well, on one hand we could monetize those and sell them to a partner in Honduras, and that's a, that serves our mission of creating economic opportunity. Or we could provide those shoes to kids here in the US who don't have shoes. It is a, we want that to be a hard decision. We don't want to say, yeah, we sell everything that comes in 'cause we can get the most money for it. But that's not our mission in every way. By having that tension, that means that I, that we

Mission Fit By Role

Buddy 24:17

think about it. We, there's no automatic and I think that's made us better over the last 10 years.

Mike 24:24

What do you do when you find, you know, if you have folks within the organization that are. They may be super talented, but they're not necessarily an evangelist of that vision and an evangelist of the mission. Is that okay? are they still able to do a good job and be great employees, or do you find those folks in time, you know, kind of lose the energy to do what's necessary?

Buddy 24:49

I think it depends on the role, Mike. I mean there, listen, if you're on our business development team and you don't have a passion for the mission, you aren't gonna be good at the job because you're gonna have to go into a major brand and convince somebody who is saying, I could sell these for pennies on the dollar, but I still get some cash. I could destroy them or I could give them to Soles 4 Souls, and you guys could maybe do something with them. If our team member doesn't show up and say, look, I know you have this option that maybe puts money in your pocket. I want you to give them to us 'cause this is what we can do with them. This is why it matters to those people and it matters to you and your employees. If you can't sell that because you believe it, it won't work. You don't have to have that. On the finance team or on the team sorting shoes in Alabama. We want it. We try to connect it to the them, to the mission as much as we can. But there are certain roles where you can't phone it in. You can't just be like, this is a job. 'cause if it is, it won't work.

Business Discipline In Nonprofits

Mike 25:52

Very often, you know, in, in the past when I've worked with nonprofits and I don't do a lot of work with nonprofits, but I've done some. Very often they believe, well, we wanna run more like a real business, you know, we wanna run like a for-profit business, which is not always the right direction. But sometimes they, you know, you understand their point sometimes say, Hey, we've gotta get, you know, we do need to do some planning that we're not doing, and, you know, all that stuff. It makes sense. but I wonder are there lessons the other way, are there lessons that for-profits should be taking from the nonprofit? Yes.

Buddy 26:27

yes. My favorite question in the world, Mike. 'cause look for 30 years now, probably mostly it's gone the other way, right? Of how not-for-profits should act more like for-profits. And there is a tremendous amount of truth in that and it Soles 4 Souls. One of the most important things that we've done over the last. 10 plus years is put in business discipline. We have this 2030 goal. We have a three year goal. We have a one year plan, quarterly, monthly financials. You could walk into a lot of meetings, Mike, and you'd be like, this is a not-for-profit. So there's tremendous value in that, only when it is yoked and tied to the mission outcome. So that's true.

Leading Without Authority

Buddy 27:10

our board chair right now, she's this woman, I adore her. She's a senior person at a big financial institution, Voya Financial, and she works a lot with their board. And I asked her, I said, so what things have you learned by working with the Voya Public Company Board that you bring into Sole 4 Soul. And she said, let me stop you right there. I learned just as much from working with the Soles 4 Souls Board that I can take into the corporate boardroom. Because the things, Mike, that I think at that level, one thing that you can learn is you do not have any positional authority. In a not-for-profit. You have influence, you have how you act and how you model behavior. But it's not very often that you can walk in and say, you do this 'cause I said so, or you do this because, it's gonna matter to our earnings per share. There's almost none of that. So it requires a tremendous amount of skill to just use influence to use the things that really be care about, right? Nobody wants to be forced into these things. How do you persuade people? How do you invite people in? I see that happen to a lot of people who are corporate and come into the not-for-profit department as a board member, as an employee, and I think they're surprised by that. I think often they think that's easier, though it's easier to work in the not-for-profit. I'll tell you, it. All the jobs are hard and it's hard in a different way. And if you are used to, this is the org chart, I do this and you do this. 'cause I tell you that doesn't happen as much in the not-for-profit world. And that requires a different skillset. So just to come in and be like a super hard charger, 'cause that's how you were successful in the corporate side might mean you fail on the not-for-profit side. And it's, I think it's much tougher than most people imagine, which means that there are a lot of lessons there.

Mike 29:00

I remember one of the hardest things I've ever done is I was president. for a couple of years of a volunteer organization. It was a part-time thing. I had my business, but there was this organization that, I was president of and the hardest thing in the world was being president of a volunteer organization. Now I know nonprofit doesn't mean volunteer organization, but it's a similar idea and there are a lot more volunteers for a nonprofit. And you know, I found it so hard when. If they worked for me and they were relying on me for their paycheck,

Buddy 29:36

Yeah.

Mike 29:37

you know, they, I am their priority. My company is their priority, but when someone's volunteering, they've got about 17 priorities. More important than me. And man, I had to learn levels of influence that I never knew existed or I wasn't getting anything done.

Capital Constraints Spark Creativity

Buddy 29:53

look, you nailed it. That is, and I will say the other side of that, Mike, I don't know if this was true in this experience also that you had, but often you have way less resources. You know? So for example, if we were able to do this eventually, but a few years ago we tried to buy a for-profit business here in the us. That would've been a great add-on to what we were doing. The numbers were good. There was a sound economic case. Well, our options were to go to a bank or to get people to fund us as a not-for-profit to buy it. Who wants that deal? You know, banks better than I do. Banks don't love, first of all, the fact that we were not-for-profit buying a for-profit. Like you could just see the wheels coming off before they before they even saw the numbers. So. So there's no equity capital. And if you go to a funder or a donor and say, Hey, can you put in a million dollars so we can buy this thing? They're like, what are you talking? So on both sides of the equation, where the most obvious sources of capital work, no, go. So now you gotta fund it out of operations, maybe a little bit of debt. And so if you're in the for-profit world, you have more options at, in that example, right? Not every time, but in that example. So. Often your set of choices is narrower, so you have to make it work within that, and sometimes that can, I think that unleashes the creativity a lot of times, but there are times when it just makes me want to pound my head in the wall. I'm like, on the for-profit side, there are eight ways to solve this. On this side, there's one.

Mike 31:28

Sometimes those constraints make you all that much more creative. I was talking to just interviewing somebody early today was talking about the constraint of time. Like if you say you You got 10 minutes to come up with 10 ideas, versus take your time and see how many ideas you come up with. You are gonna be a lot more creative when someone gives you 10 minutes.

Buddy 31:48

yeah, exactly. Exactly right.

Ultrarunning CEO Lessons

Mike 31:51

Buddy, I understand you're a, you're an ultra runner.

Buddy 31:55

it's, mostly formerly an ultrarunner. My knees are kind of shot, but for. 20 plus years. I was an ultra runner. I've done, about 85 ultra marathons,

Mike 32:08

And how long is an ultra marathon?

Buddy 32:10

anything longer than a marathon, so that's 50 k. Usually it's 50 k, 50 mile, a hundred k, a hundred mile, and I'm still walking that far. I just can't run that far anymore.

Mike 32:21

What, how did that shape you at all? As as a CEO?

Buddy 32:27

Profound, profound, and in so many ways. So first of all, people think about ultra running as a solitary thing. Like you're out there by yourself in the woods for anywhere between six and 45 hours. Absolutely not. The support system of volunteers and people who are at the event. Trust it puts on your family when you're out training. Like it. Look, I, it took me a long time to figure that out, but once I did my gratitude for how many people it takes to do something like that, it informs everything I do still today. So that's one, two, patience. just take a hundred miler, for example. So let's just say it takes you a day, it takes you 24 hours. You get tired, you wanna quit, you get hungry, you get chafed, you trip and fall. all this happens and every time it does, you have a decision to make. Am I gonna get back up and keep going? Am I gonna get outta the chair and keep going? Especially at the beginning of Soles 4 Souls, Mike, when it felt like we were never gonna get out of it. the patience that I had built up over the years of There's a great saying in ultra running, it never, always gets worse. Like it was terrible. There were times that were terrible and then you'd come through a dip and you'd be like, oh, this is good. And that would carry me for a while. And that's true, that was true in ultra marathons, and it was, is still absolutely true at Soles 4 Souls. and I think the third one is. Like you gotta take care of yourself along the way. There are a lot of people who say Ultrarunning is an eating and drinking competition with running, thrown in. Like you have to do these things to take care of yourself along the way. You can't just, you can't show up at the starting line of a hundred miler if you haven't put in the work. And once you're out there, you, it's not just about running. If you don't manage your nutrition and take care of a blister and make sure you're following the course, all that stuff matters as much as whatever physical ability you have to complete it. And so there were times when being able to take a breath and say, we've made this much progress. This has gone wrong, but I'm still on the right path, ultra running. Was a hundred percent my frame of reference for that.

Mike 34:57

Yeah, it does sound a lot a lot like running a business. You know, it's it, as you said, it's that community. It's having patience, it's taking care of yourself. that. That all seems pretty familiar.

Buddy 35:08

And the last thing I'll say, Mike, is the community of people who do that are, I mean, some of my best friends have come from that world. And so this sense of community. Like we are all kind of doing this weird nichey thing, you know, it's easy to make fun of, and there aren't that many of us. Like whatever story you tell yourself about ultra running when you're in it and these people, and you see so many times I've done it and I've seen others do it. I will stop what I'm doing to help another person. Like I'm not out here to win the damn thing. There's no chance I'm winning. Right? But I wanna finish. Taking a few minutes to help somebody. Like I'll never forget one of my best friends, we started the race together. We got separated just 'cause we were running different paces and I assumed he was far ahead of me. And with about 20 miles left to go, it was the middle of the night. It was terrible. Like it was just, it was a definite valley moment. And he was thinking about quitting and I just happened up on him at an aid station and I said, dude, let's just walk it in together. It was one of the most beautiful things ever. Like we had this incredible. Hours that we ended up walking and he finished, we finished together. Like that feeling of take the time to help somebody else, to let somebody help you. Man, that's a big lesson too.

What Buddy Does Now

Mike 36:30

Speaking of helping other people, buddy. Tell me a little bit about how you're spending your time today. I know you've, you've written a couple books, you, you. Speak, you've got the podcast. Tell me a little bit about kind of your business today and if people are interested in learning more. Like what are the types of things you are doing these days and how can people, get in touch?

Buddy 36:51

so, we ended, I'll, I'll take it in two chunks. We did end up buying a business that is in the space of reconditioning new products, so we now can take in new shoes and clothes and accessories that might have some kind of problem. Some kind of damage. It could be mold, it could be the buttons loose. We can fix those. We get paid for that and put them back into circulation for the brand or stuff that is not fixable to their level, but it's still perfectly good we can put into our programming now. So we bought that business in the Netherlands and we're building it here in the us so I'm spending a ton of time on that. It was a, it's a big bet for us. And, the guy that we bought the business from is stayed with it. He's the second generation. So he's bringing a lot of enthusiasm and I'm super excited about that. So that's one big chunk. Our main business of collecting shoes and clothes is getting more and more competitive There. You people can sell it online. There are thrift stores. There are all these other things that people can do. So we are getting laser focused on how do we generate more product? That's how we have our impact. Well, we can get used shoes to entrepreneurs in Guatemala or new shoes. On a second grader here in the US or somebody who needs help after a, after the Russians invade Ukraine. Like we wanna be a part of all that. And we do that through product and we're happy to fight harder and be more creative. And then the third part is the sort of the book and the podcast. And that is this social enterprise model, Mike. It's not a B Corp. It's not a business with a mission I, it's something a little different that I think honestly is gonna be a great way to solve problems going forward for profit's. Not gonna get you there. Pure, not-for-profit is gonna get you there. This social enterprise where we build business discipline into the mission, I think is how we're gonna go forward. So B Corp gets a lot of that. Social enterprise is sort of this. Coming from the other direction. So talking about that, talking to leaders about that as a way to both raise Soles 4 Souls profile, but also get into this community and get new ideas is gonna be how I spend more and more of my time.

Social Enterprise Vs B Corp

Mike 39:13

Okay. And what, what is the difference between you a business on a mission as you say it, and a B corporation? what's the difference between the two?

Buddy 39:20

yeah, it. Look in the B Corp, I think you get all the benefits of being a business. We talked about capital formation and advertising and you can pay people whatever it takes to get your B Corp mission accomplished and the not-for-profit. You don't have all of that, right? You know, there are a lot of people who look at how much people get paid and say, that's not right. I'm giving you money. You know, so I would say you get most of it. I think in the social enterprise space, the thing that I really love is that you can really be a partner with another not-for-profit that's working in Haiti or the Dominican Republic in a way that a B Corp. It's gonna be harder to do that because I think as a social enterprise, our mission always has to come first. That's probably, it's a subtle difference. I think there'd be plenty of B Corp leaders who feel like that's what they do as well. But I think when it comes down to it, that is why we get to be a 501 C3 and you can make your donation tax exempt, and that's different than the B Corp. So I'd say probably you get 90% of the way there and that last 10% is a little different.

Mike 40:31

It's a difference probably. in, in what? What's the primary goal? you know, in a B Corp? Yes, you've got this benefit, but the primary goal is still around making money. or though some might argue with that, I guess, but if that's what's out there, to your point, it may make it. a little bit more difficult to partner,

Buddy 40:47

Yeah. You know, I'll give a great example. One of the B Corps that we get to work with is Bombas socks. I don't know if you, no. No.

Mike 40:56

I'm wearing bombas right now, and for those listening, I just like to pick my foot up over my head and I think I hurt myself.

Buddy 41:03

Okay, so this is not set up. Bombas is B Corp. From day one, they've done a buy one, give one. So every pair of socks that you buy, they give a pair mostly to serve homeless organizations, to serve the homeless community through these not-for-profit organizations. This year they donated half a million pairs of socks, the soles 4 souls, and we've also now getting shirts and underwear. They're not public. I don't know all their numbers. They are insanely profitable. Like they are doing really well. They make great product. The product they give away is better than the product that you're wearing, I swear. Like they think about it's more, antimicrobial anti odor 'cause they're serving people who don't have washers and dryers access, for example. So. Look, they're making money. They have investors, they have that communities that they have to serve, but they are not fooling around on their mission and the, they are uncompromising in their product. So, I don't know. I like, they might be the example of, they are unbelievable at how consistent they are between mission and money. so, so it can happen on either side. that's why I said, you know, it's sometimes that distinction. I think the not-for-profit at the end of the day, I'll say it this way, being a social enterprise allows us to partner with for-profit companies in ways that B Corp can't, and it's gonna take all of us to do that. Like our mission is only turbocharged by Bombas being super successful as a B Corp. And we partner with lots of brands that. Can't donate product to Bombas, for example. Right. That is not gonna make any sense for them, but they can with us. So I just think it's a different part of the Rubik's Cube.

Mike 42:49

Beautiful.

How To Help And Donate

Mike 42:50

and if someone wants to find out more about Soles 4 Souls or find out more about you, your speaking, your book, your podcast, where, and we'll put the stuff in the show notes, but where are a couple of the best places for them to go?

Buddy 43:02

so Soles4 Souls.org, S-O-L-E-S, the number four SOULS.org, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn website, all that's the same. I'm old enough to not be that enamored with TikTok and social media, but we do a really good job. our, my daughters are impressed. I'll just leave it at that, with the work that we do. So it's fun and you get to see some of the work. The actual impact, not just me blabbing about it. the one thing I will really emphasize, Mike, is we all have shoes and clothes in our closets that we're not using. I know it as well as anybody, and my closet is full of stuff. I'm like, it's embarrassing that I have this in my closet. So if you're moved to, to donate that to Soles 4 Souls, you can take your shoes to any DSW store or any famous footwear store and drop 'em off in a box. So it's super easy. and you go into our website, put in your zip code, it'll tell you the closest place you can drop it off, if we didn't talk that much about it. But this program for every kid where we're providing new sneakers to kids experiencing homelessness is one of the best things we've ever done, Mike, since we started, we've searched 500,000 kids and the impact that a pair of shoes can make on a second grader. I just read a story the other day. This kind of breaks your heart. She said, I never have gotten a pair of shoes that came in a box. So you think, I mean, and kids of who like, Hey, I really appreciate the shoes, but this means I don't have to share socks with my brother anymore. 'cause they get a pair of socks with the shoes. So that's, and we serve those kids for 20 bucks a person. So if serving those kids is something that speaks to you, you can make a donation that Soles 4 Souls.org, they can go right to the four B Kid program. So any of that. But for sure, whatever's in your closet, not doing anybody any good. It's Soles 4 Souls or somebody else get it out in the world where it can create opportunity for folks

Mike 44:48

Beautiful and buy the book Tailspin to Tailwind. I imagine its out on Amazon like every other book. Right.

Buddy 44:53

like every other book. Exactly right.

Closing Thanks And Wrap

Mike 44:56

Beautiful. Well, this was great. You know so much about transparency, about about mission, about turning adversity into opportunity. I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team Buddy, thanks so much for helping us get there today.

Buddy 45:10

mike, it was my pleasure. Thanks for talking.