Part 1 of What I Learned From Tom & Jeff Of Howdy Homemade

On this Autism Labs episode, Mike Carr talks with Tom Landis (Howdy Homemade Ice Cream) and investor Jeff Schiefelbein about creating meaningful employment for people with autism and developmental disabilities. They explain how clear routines, checklists, patience, and support let employees thrive and how mission-driven businesses can scale financially to create thousands of dignified jobs.

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Transcript

Mike Carr (00:07):

Well, welcome back everyone to another episode on Autism Labs. And we truly have something this week and perhaps next week if we divide this in two episodes that I think you're going to be excited about. And that is vocations and jobs for your kiddos. Every parent I've ever talked to, and probably many of you that are watching this right now that have a special needs teenager or young adult is not just concerned about their future in terms of where they're going to live and how they're going to live and how independent they can be, but what are they going to do? I mean, where are they going to get the joy and the fulfillment out of life? And it's hard to find jobs for a lot of these folks. But today we have the founder of Howdy Homemade and I think one of his key partners or financial investors on to take you through that journey from their perspective.

(00:53):

And so I think you're going to find this valuable. And certainly at the end of the episode, if you have any questions, shoot us a note, DM us, and we'll try to get those answered for you. So I'd like to ask Tom and Jeff to introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about how you guys ever hooked up to start with and what this journey's been like for you.

Tom Landis (01:09):

Thanks so much for having us on and just such a big fan of you and what you're doing for your son and the one in 31 Americans that are born with what I call turboism. You call it autism. You know what? We met because I think amazing things happen as it does in the Bible when you cry out for God unto God. And after many years of trying to make a simple idea work, taking people with special needs and that are super friendly, that just God created for them to truly revolutionize the workforce and have them serve ice cream. I couldn't do it. I'm not a business guy. I'm not a numbers guy. I'm not a whatever. But I also did it because with all due respect, I'm not sure how many churches or private schools or whatever teach us to put others first. And that's what I wanted to do to teach my kids that we would put the needs of others before our wants.

(02:04):

And if that meant running out of money for private school, then so be it. So I went to the private school and said, "I'm done. I'm out. I just tilt, whatever." And this wonderful, beautiful, amazing Catholic school said, "Man, you need to talk to some smart people. " And so they connected me with Jeff here. And Jeff is, it's just wild, right? Something I've prayed for for 10 years is a group of people that would see the vision that you know what? People on the spectrum can do not as good, but a better job than others. And then from here, it's time for me to kind of try and keep on figuring those things out. But man, Jeff, and really his whole team should be on because it's fascinating what these Ivy Leaguers, these high powered consultants are doing with the mission.

Jeff Schiefelbein (02:52):

Tom, you sell yourself short. Tom is one of the most amazing founders you'll ever meet in a legend, both locally and nationally because of all the amazing work that you did by truly trusting this prayer that you entered into and betting everything on it. So none of us would be here without the founder of Tom who knew that there was an opportunity to build a homemade ice cream company with an amazing award-winning product, but more importantly, with the type of employment that brings dignified work to folks on the spectrum and other folks with special needs. I went to A&M, so we can't quite call that Ivy League. I think maybe there's a higher level than Ivy League maybe. So I don't know what that is, but there are some guys around here that are in that world. But it's hard sometimes to put into words how people come together or why God puts people in your path.

(03:32):

And I often don't want to completely understand it because I think that's my need for control instead of just trusting that these things happen for a reason. And I was aware of and a fan of this company called Howdy Homemade Ice Cream for about nine years before we finally got to sit in the same room, me and Tom and his wonderful wife, Margaret. He brought along his vice president boss man, Brandt, who's been with the company for 10 years. Brant has Down syndrome and he also has biceps that can intimidate anyone. He's an awesome man. He loves great music. He loves the Lord. He loves wrestling. He loves to have a good time with us. And they all came to that very first meeting. I didn't tell Tom at the time that I was dairy free, but I went ahead and ate the ice cream in front of them and it was awesome.

(04:12):

It was awesome. And know when you know, and I think people that are connected to their prayer life and to the right ordered priorities of their life don't have to have a whole lot of explaining when the right things line up and that's where you're supposed to step into next. And so I've been very blessed that for the past few months, folks that I've worked with for a little while have now become full-blown teammates with Tom and all of us just sprinting in the same direction all in for this idea that not only do we embrace and care for the heroes that are working today at Howdy, but that we find a way to multiply this impact so that we can hire many, many more throughout more stores, more catering, more regions. Well,

Mike Carr (04:48):

I think that's a great introduction and I think it brings to the forefront several things. So Tom, you mentioned that sometimes folks with special needs, whether it's autism or down syndrome or whatever, can actually do a better job than a neurotypical individual. And there's actually been some research around this, right? That there are certain special needs where focus and structure is super important. And I know our son thrives in environment of repetition where he takes great joy and cleaning a table or cleaning a window or doing whatever it is. And a lot of his buddies do too. Whereas someone else might get bored with that or might not find that same fulfillment and dignity to doing that job. So what has been your experience there in going out and seeking employees that have special needs, even your partner who's Down Syndrome, where have you sort of found that with God's guidance, these are people that we're not being charitable to.

(05:41):

I mean, we're really getting a valuable partner or valuable employee on the team.

Tom Landis (05:45):

You know, that's a great point. And I think it's one of the things you touched on earlier. The most important thing for probably, if not all of your listeners is the final frontier, which is jobs, right? And how do we truly create that and tap into that potential? We could focus on Howdy, but I would love to focus on anyone that's ever been to a hospital. I don't know if anyone has ever been to a hospital before, right? But nurses there with a graduate degree are getting paid 60, $65 an hour often to sterilize a cot and to put surgical instruments in order for the surgery coming up. You could pay someone from 29 acres, from a nonprofit special needs organization, 15 bucks an hour, a good amount of money, 20 bucks an hour to do that work, which would then elevate the entire atmosphere of the hospital because those nurses that went through graduate school don't want to sanitize stuff.

(06:34):

You know what? Everything, there's a wonderful book called The Checklist Manifesto. It's why the B2Bomber, the first flight it ever took off, it crashed, right? They didn't do a single thing differently. They just put a checklist in place. People with a sense of entitlement won't follow those checklists. People when the spectrum live and thrive by those checklists and those will see our absolute future of the power of this workforce that's coming up.

Mike Carr (06:57):

Let's talk about checklist in general and how you incorporate that kind of rigor or step by step and making sure the job gets done properly at Howdy Honda. I mean, I think anybody, regardless of their IQ or their education, needs some level of organization and some goals to achieve every day. And whether I've even found myself writing things down on my to- do list that I completed so I could then check it off. I mean, so that's a bit backwards, but what have you learned at the ice cream stores that you've started that really help those with special needs, especially those that are higher support, that they maybe require even more guidance or assistance that has really helped you guys be successful that maybe you didn't realize with the opening of that first store, but now that you've got a bunch under your belt, boy, this has really been part of our secret sauce.

Tom Landis (07:50):

That's a great question. And I think frankly, I made so many mistakes when I first started out. And one of them was frankly, not being able to delineate between someone having special needs and not wanting to do it. And then finding out where areas of interest are and where they're comfortable starting out. And one of the most beautiful things that happened was when I started out very naively, I thought, well, we'd have people in the front with Down Syndrome that were friendly and greet people and people on the spectrum in the back and they would follow directions very quickly on ingredients and recipes and things like that. And what happened over time is that just gosh, you could see somebody that perhaps was kind of on the verbal, nonverbal edge, started to realize that, "Hey, you know what the reality is? If I don't greet people, I'm going to be stuck in the back doing dishes over and over and over again." So you know what?

(08:43):

I'm actually going to say hi and I'm going to ... We found these beautiful points of contact with baseball, right? Baseball is nothing but numbers. It's box scores. And so baseball Benjamin on the autism spectrum, whose parents didn't think he'd go to college, their Ivy Leaguers, right? He comes in, works at Howdy, and 400 times I'll walk in and out that door and ask him to say Howdy. And maybe after 300 he'll start or something. But after enough time, he got to where he felt comfortable enough with the EQ, whatever you want to call that. He went to local Dallas community college. Of course, he aced that. He ended up UTD. He aced that. He just got his master's degree in computer science from University of Texas, Dallas. And I think those are some of the type of things we see that can happen when you bring two things into this equation that are never talked about, and that's grace and love, right?

(09:35):

Just grace it over and over again.

Mike Carr (09:37):

I think grace and love, both spiritual grace, a gift from God that you can sort of then pass on down to others. And part of what I think about when I think about grace is inordinate patience. And you talked about that, right? And Jeff, I'd like you to weigh in on this from a financial perspective because I suspect, and I could be wrong here, that the financial metrics that one uses for a howdy homemade may be a little bit different, maybe not on some of the other investments. But what we've seen happen, Tom, and I think it goes back to what you were saying is you don't know what potential is inside a human until you put them in a situation and you allow them to grow at their pace. And their pace is often not your pace. And so we go to crux climbing gyms here in Austin and everyone climbs.

(10:24):

And most of our teens and the young adults have no desire to climb when they first look at that wall. It's intimidating, it's 60 feet tall. And our son doesn't even understand the idea of holding on. But over time, with help, three people helping him, one person putting his foot on that first step and somebody else pushing his rear end up, and then he's got a little treat, three feet above his head that he knows if he climbs another three feet, he gets that little treat with somebody right next to him. It took months, but now he'll climb 60 feet by himself without any treats. He's got the belay rope around him so he's safe and he had a job there until they closed one gym down, they're fixing to open another one, but he could actually do cleaning and whatnot. And so one would never have thought that our son or others like him would enjoy that, would find it fulfilling, would enjoy the challenge and would look forward to it.

(11:11):

And so are there any other stories that come to mind, especially with folks that are never going to be able to get to that undergrad level and that master's of computer science? That's just not in their skillset or even in their aptitude range. But even if you sort of lower the bar a little bit and you say, "I never thought so- and-so would be at the front of the store greeting people and now they're one of our most exciting greeters or they never thought I'd see them busing tables, but now they like to do it. " Is there anything like that that comes to mind that maybe for someone that's got a little bit more of that high support need that you guys have been able to address and you find just amazing?

Jeff Schiefelbein (11:45):

Oh, I want to tee up Tom and give him a second. He can come up with whichever one of these stories he wants to share. But something that's so beautiful to watch is that Tom has taught all of us and even the families of our heroes, the power of the word yet. And so there's so many times that I've heard the stories firsthand, secondhand, even from our hero's parents that they would say, or somebody would say, "Oh, our son or daughter can't run a cash register, can't do the ingredients and the measurements to make the ice cream." And Tom as a coach would say, "Your son or daughter can't do that yet." And just like your example of three feet at a time that turns into a 60 foot climb with just a belay rope and you're good to go, that's how Tom has been coaching these heroes.

(12:26):

Some of them have been with him for 10 years and have just celebrated their 10th anniversary. And those are the folks that their parents said to me, nobody has believed in my son more than Tom Landis and coached them even when we all said, "My son can't do that. Tom says can't do that yet." I

Tom Landis (12:41):

Think first is where does hope come from, right? And I believe that those in the special needs community have a hope within him that is far greater than the rest of the community. And a dear friend of mine had a son that was on a young life ski trip and hit a tree and was in a coma for almost 23 years before he passed away. So 20 years into it, him not speaking, moving anything, right? If you ask me to put my hand on a Bible and say, "Is there any hope for him?" I'd have to say, "No, this is my entire friend, and this is his son, but I have no hope. It's Christmas time and his mom says, Tom, do you know what? This is three years ago. Next year is the year. I was thinking in my mind, okay, next year is the year.

(13:30):

You've kept him alive for 20 years. You've done everything. Maybe it's time to let him go. That was my thinking, my pure, clear line of thought, whatever. And then she said, the mom of a child was special. No, next year's the year my child's going to speak. That's the type of hope that we pull from. And like we're in Austin, I'm like, okay, I'm getting on 35. I'm going to come down and we're going to have a conversation. I'm going to meet your son and we're just going to try and break one glass ceiling. Because you know what? I'm going to call out most of our society that tells parents of people with special needs, your kid can do anything, but then it becomes 18 or 19. All we want is a chance, as an opportunity to create a job for them. And people, they just can't create that space.

(14:11):

So thankfully there's people like Jeff and his team and our team that are saying, "You know what? We're really not going hat in hand. We're putting our hat hand and we're coming after you and we're going to take your business. We're going to open more businesses. And there's no reason that you and the 61 million other Americans with special needs or family members with special needs are going to choose us over every other place."

Mike Carr (14:30):

Jeff, what do you want to add? What has your role been with Howdy and how have you helped Tom's vision grow and what nurturing have you provided?

Jeff Schiefelbein (14:39):

I'll try to keep this simple, but I'm like 27 years into starting organizations or leading turnarounds all in a place where I feel inspired to use the gifts and talents that God entrusted me with so that I could improve the lives of other people. We all have our different stories or examples of where folks with special needs play into our life. My own niece is a huge inspiration for me. So is the ring bearer for my wedding. I couldn't get a ring bearer. My ring bearer is a guy I've traveled to America with named Kenneth who graduated special needs from my high school. And we went all over America catching football games. But I just only tell you this because when this moment lined up and I looked at the team that we had sitting here doing some advisory work, it was so fascinating because our backgrounds, our collective experience was poised to help Howdy truly scale and grow and do kind of all the little measurements and lever pulls that you would do to make a business scale in a healthy way, but it wasn't for that reason.

(15:30):

That was just where we're able to deploy the gifts that God gave us. So if you happen to be good at something, you should be using it for the greater good, the love and contribution to others and to glorify God. Where that has really kind of materialized for us is that Tom and I, I would say are a bit of a dream team. I look at the courage and tenacity and fortitude that he has shown the world going through COVID and 10 years worth of howdy and all these different jobs that have been created even throughout our franchise network, he's truly changed the face of employment, but he's also in unrest. Tom knows we can do more. He knows that more people should be exposed to this. And so he also was open to accepting the help of and the contribution of more folks. So we came in as minority investors and owners.

(16:13):

Tom and his wife are still the majority owners of this organization, but what that allowed us to all do is to wrap around and create this executive team that we're going to market with and already seeing the fruits of having to look at hiring more people because our catering has ramped up even before we know where our next door's going to be. I mean, it's a neat moment of the thesis is working. If we can create the right brand, overlapping relationships, help to control and optimize costs, all the things you would do in a business, all for and always with the mission front and center, then the outcome becomes, well, we're going to be hiring more folks, we're going to be training more folks. Tom's going to get to tell more parents, your son or daughter can't do that yet, but the yet always has that lingering, I'm going to work with them.

(16:52):

So you asked earlier about financial. I want to just share one thing with you. Raising money for Howdy, we live in America. Capitalism is so interesting. It either is or isn't a fit for somebody to eat our ice cream. Turns out if you have our ice cream, you're going to fall in love with it. So almost everybody it's a fit. But becoming an investor in Howdy isn't for everybody and that's fine. What's fundamentally different about Howdy than any other investments that I've seen people try to do is we're not going to sell this to private equity. There's no 15X return on the horizon for somebody in an illiquidity moment. There is the promise that we're going to stay the course, we're going to put everything we have into this, and you may still be getting dividends 20 years from now because maybe at that point we have 500 stores and we're employing 7,000 people who have intellectual developmental disabilities in dignified work.

(17:36):

That sounds pretty awesome, do good and do well at the same time, but no matter what, we're not leaving this mission. And that's why we've really grateful to have a team that's equally yoked, mission aligned, and that we pray together and we love it.

Mike Carr (17:48):

So let's talk about that because I think a lot of folks, especially in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and they have families and they're making good money and they want to park it and be responsible for growing that so that when they are at retirement age or their kids go to college or whatever the situation might be, they've got enough shelled away and they don't have to worry about what they're going to do when they need to retire. And so there's always this trade off of, well, I can go for the more aggressive investments, which are almost always riskier, but I might get a higher rate of return or I can go for something that's quote a little bit safer. But I wonder in your experience and what you're seeing the returns are on Howdy for the folks that you as a minority investor, it's clearly not just, "Hey, our ROI at the end of the year, at the end of two years or five years is X." It's our ROI is pretty darn good, maybe not as great as if you did something a little bit more speculative or a little bit riskier, but you couple that with the mission and the people we serve and how we're seeing a need that's largely unmet and we really are adding joy to so many lives.

(18:53):

How do you come up with an equation? Like what's your pitch? How do you go to bed sleeping so well at night knowing that, well, maybe I left a couple points off the table from year to year on ROI, but it's stable, it's growing and it's part of the reason I'm here on this planet earth from the man above. What's your rationale? What's your thinking there that you could share with everybody? I'd be interested in Jeff and your thoughts and Tom, your thoughts as well on that.

Jeff Schiefelbein (19:15):

Sure. I've never slept well at night because of money I made and I've made money before. There's zero about it. In fact, I think if we chase the things of the world, I've got a chance to experience most of them and found them to be vapid and hollow. And when I've chased the things that actually matter when I identified myself with the priorities that are implanted, I believe on the human heart by our creator, I found the love that satisfies. And so I sleep really well at night because I know that I'm able to ... By the way, it's not like I'm empty nester. I have seven little children. My oldest is 12. I'm providing for a family that has real needs, but I'm doing it in a way that every day when I'm home with them, I hang my head high that every bit of the work I'm doing is prayerful, it's purposeful, and it's done for profit, but profit isn't the reason, right?

(19:59):

If we start identifying that we exist to make money or our business exists to make money, we will be like so many that get to the end of their career and look back and say, "That was it. What was that for? What did that do for me? " And so when I think about the investment side of it, I know a lot of people that are just sick of putting their money and stuff that they don't even know what it is. There's a fund full of money, funding things that they don't actually agree with, but that's what everybody tells you to do. And that's what the button says whenever you're just on the online platform, buy this one, buy this one. And here you can invest in something that provides not just dignified work for these heroes and the ones that are growing. And investing might be you just go buy ice cream.

(20:31):

I don't care what investment means to you in the sentence, but this is a tangible real way that you're creating culture change because now we're getting a chance to encounter folks on the spectrum and seeing exactly what Tom said. Maybe I should think about my own business differently. Maybe I should think about the opportunities that I'm creating differently because I'm seeing firsthand how this experience in how to homemade ice cream is not just on par, but better than almost any experience I've ever taken my kids to where I'm getting terrible customer service. I don't care how good your product is or how cheap it is or how fast it comes out. If you're mistreating me and my family, I don't want it. I literally don't want that thing. And the opposite is also true. If it's in a place of human connection, we are incarnate beans.

(21:09):

We are called to communion with one another. If it is that human touch, maybe it makes people think differently and walk away with a smile and think that there's other stuff they can be doing in their life.

Tom Landis (21:20):

I'm definitely not good at business or numbers or investing or selling you on anything. I wouldn't know what to tell someone that when a guy like David Muir runs a story on Howdy Homemade and we get 1,100 franchise requests unsolicited and we're supposed to sell those for 35,000 with a 5% royalty. I don't know what to tell you on that, right? Other than, hey, maybe actually there's something really here, right? When a company like American Airlines that for 14 years has board their first class passengers 8% a day, 48,000 passengers a day with Agendas ice cream, which by the way, the brand stands for, the name, absolutely nothing. It's Gibberish, right? And then they come to us, we don't go to them and they say, "Hey, we're interested. We realize the trends are that people care more about what your business stands for than what you're selling.

(22:08):

Is there any way we could possibly look at bringing Howdy Homemade ice cream into American Airlines with nine distribution centers around the US where we go in and maybe we open a shop or maybe we go into one of the inner city schools and work with their special needs programs to pump out 400 gallons of vanilla ice cream a day. Maybe that's something your son could do. I don't know, right? I wouldn't need to speak whatever right there. And now those are the opportunities that are coming at us and those are just some of them. And it's interesting because some of people say, Gosh, how do you make this thing work? But there's businesses out there that see that this is the future. One of the discussions that we hope will change in almost all businesses, restaurants, things like that is when someone says, "I'm going to open a restaurant," you say, "Great.

(22:55):

Is it high end? Is it low end? What category of food is it? " And then they're going to say, "What's the purpose of it? " And if you're not saving the environment or trying to do something, then it rings hollow. You're just trying to put money in your pocket, that's just not going to work in this new age. I

Mike Carr (23:10):

Think that's great. And I think one of the things that we've probably all seen, we certainly have seen it at John 13, which is our nonprofit here in Austin. And that name comes from the chapter in the Bible where Jesus is watching the feet of the disciple serving, doing the most menial task imaginable almost. And the idea is that there are going to be situations that come up that you need to have faith that it's going to be handled. I mean, you can work as hard as you want and you can do all the brainstorming and everything else, but unless you get some divine inspiration or some guidance from above, and I don't care whether you're Catholic or another Christian or Jewish, I think all those faith traditions sort of believe the same basic morality and the same basic belief in God. If you don't have that kind of help, it's not going to go well.

(23:57):

And one of the examples, our son tends to coat a soapbrush just with an inordinate amount of soap. And so he goes through a ridiculous amount of soap, but he has a curved spine, slight curved spine so he doesn't reach very high. So we really couldn't clean windows effectively, but boy, he could sure put a lot of soap on that sponge. So we paired him up with another guy who was autistic, but higher functioning, lower support, and he would put one little drop of soap on that sponge head. He was very meticulous and that really wasn't quite enough soap when you've got that pole and you're trying to clean the top of the window at a crux gym that's got 15 feet tall windows to clean. So we paired them together. And so what happened was Michael would put as much soap as he possibly could on the pole and then the other guy would take it all the way up there and he needed a lot of soap to clean the top part of those windows very well and Michael would clean the bottom part.

(24:44):

So each one individually couldn't get the job done, but together they formed this incredible team where you couple someone that maybe needs a little more help with someone that almost becomes their big brother. Together they were able to do things in a job environment. They both earned almost double minimum wage at Crux. And I think it's that kind of pairing that with the right inspiration and the right guidance, wherever you get it from, can give parents hope. Well, I just want to stop at this point and let you know that we're going to continue this episode next week with Tom and Jeff and continue to talk about what has made Howdy Homemade so successful, some additional stories about employees and how you employ the special needs and just the philosophy of what I think Tom espouses and Jeff certainly supports for those that maybe can't get employment anywhere else.

(25:36):

So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode and please come back next week for part two of our conversation with the founder of Howdy Homemade Ice Cream and his key financial partner, Jeff. Thanks so much.