Inspiring Good

Will Weed on the Power of Community Collaboration

• Community Foundation of Elkhart County • Episode 14

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In this enlightening episode of the "Inspiring Good" podcast, explore the profound impact of community engagement and leadership within Elkhart County, Indiana. The episode features philanthropist, board member, and leader Will Weed. It delves into how the generosity and dedication of local leaders have created a thriving network of nonprofit organizations. Listen as our guest discusses his experiences and contributions, sharing insights into the vital role of nonprofits in supporting mental health, education, and childhood development.

00:00:06: Introduction to the Inspiring Good Podcast

00:00:20: Introducing the hosts, Marshall King and Kevin Deary

00:00:27: Introducing the guest, Will Weed

00:00:41: Will's contributions to nonprofit organizations

00:01:38: Will’s experience growing up in Elkhart County and in a family business

00:03:36: Will's motivation to get involved in nonprofit sector

00:05:48: Challenges in the nonprofit sector

00:08:27: Formation of Stable Grounds nonprofit

00:11:00: Will’s involvement and support for Stable Grounds

00:14:52: Measuring success in nonprofits

00:17:01: Importance of cross-collaboration in the community

00:19:24: Introduction and shared services for nonprofits

00:20:23: Personal collaboration and leadership style

00:20:55: Creating stability and transparency in Elkhart County

00:22:22: Importance of addressing broader issues for effective solutions

00:23:12: Leadership qualities and board involvement

00:24:07: Stepping up in unexpected situations

00:25:11: Value of attending regional Boys and Girls Club conferences

00:25:51: Prioritizing giving and values in the decision-making process

00:28:05: Opportunistic giving and supporting new leaders

00:29:12: Returning on investment in philanthropic efforts

00:29:22: Service in Horizon Educational Alliance

00:30:36: College dropout rates and alternative pathways

00:33:52: Appreciation for community involvement

00:34:30: Vision for Elkhart County's future

00:36:02: Show credits

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This show is a production of the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded in The Riverbend building in Elkhart's River District. Editing is done by the award-winning communication students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen to Globe Radio at 91.1 FM. Learn more about the Community Foundation of Elkhart County at inspiringgood.org You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Music is provided by Sensational Sounds. Thanks for listening. We hope you are inspired and inspire good and your community.

Welcome to the Inspiring Good Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the Community foundation of Elkhart county, which serves a vibrant community in Northern Indiana, known for its generosity and strong network of nonprofit organizations. I'm Marshall King, your co host with Kevin Deary, a veteran nonprofit CEO who now coaches others. Today our guest is Will Weed. Will is the third generation CEO of the privately operated Robert Weed Corporation, which is in Elkhart county and services various recreational industrial markets. Will is a committed board member for nonprofits, having served as chairman of the Boys and Girls Club Middlebury Unit Board as well as Horizon Education Alliance. With those two roles ending soon, Will will be transitioning to the CAPS board as well as several others. Welcome, Will. Yeah, thanks for having me, Marshall. And thanks for having me, Kevin. Looking forward to the conversation. Will, it's been. I have been a big member of your fan club for a long time. I've watched you grow up, I've watched you learn, and have watched you take this next generation into community leadership, which is so very, very important. And as a retired CEO, we need that intergenerational wisdom. This new group that's coming in of leaders that think with no borders, no boundaries, international technology is all you've known. You know technology, how to utilize technology, and yet you have this incredible heart for kids and for community. And so the first question is, growing up in Elkhart county and in a family business, what was your experience just growing up here? Yeah, interesting experience, certainly. You know, a lot of people ask me, hey, Will, when did you know you were going to run the family business or take over the family business? And I knew that from day one. Kind of born and bred to do that. But it's an incredible community. I had the pleasure of going to private school and also finished up at public school. So I have kind of both experiences and both were constructive and both were incredibly valuable, equally as important, in my opinion, but also just kind of witnessing what was happening in Elkhart County. Very entrepreneurial, as we all know, but great leaders in that generation of folks, good people. A lot of independently owned and operated organizations here that take care of people, take care of the community, good stewards. And so kind of learning as I watch folks and what they do and things like service and volunteering, getting onto boards, stroking a check, whatever that happens to be, were just kind of expected in my eyes. I just, I saw it happening every weekend, all over the place, all the time. And so it was very quick for me to understand, hey, that's important. I've always said that, you know, hundred Dollar bill is not as important as one service hour. And so how do you roll your sleeves up and get engaged and get involved? And really easy to see that in Elkhart county with, with the great people that we have here. So great upbringing, great county. And I saw that directly through your leadership, through the Boys and Girls Club of Middlebury when I was privileged to be the CEO there. And I watched you come in and immediately say, why do we do this? And begin to question strategic plans and to be able to bring some clarity to things that maybe have become routine, not only from fundraising, but also just in how we serve kids, particularly in the areas of mental health and not just in education. Can you share your journey into the nonprofit sector and what motivated you to get involved like you were a young man moving into a really big leadership business in your family business? What was the motivating factor that said, I'm going to get involved and do it right? You know, I had a question over at Boys and Girls Club about, you know, why do I decide to give back? And it was actually part of a campaign. And I think what I wrote down was, I don't need an ROI to understand that giving back to the community is the right thing to do. If you've talked to me before or you talk to folks that I'm connected with, I talk a lot about ecosystem, specifically ecosystem of Elkhart County. And it is so critical that our people, our children, our. Our businesses and organizations are healthy. And I believe very clearly that the more we put into our community and how we take care of those folks, early childhood development education and skilling up mental health, the better our community is, the better it is to operate. So a lot of times I have to check myself, right? It's easy for me. I'm a process person. I'm a data driven person. I am black and white, zeros and ones. That is how my mind works. My wife gets mad at me because I do everything aggressively, like how do I shave two seconds off a brush my teeth today? But that's how my mind works. So I have to often, you know, kind of check and balance that with the, the spirit of caring and the human nature. And I believe that both those things are kind of in balance. It's a really good thing. But yeah, it's easy. It's easy to understand that if our ecosystem is healthy, our kids are educated, our public school systems are doing great work, we have good nonprofits, good community foundation. It's easy to kind of connect those dots and understand that great place to operate and live, work, play and learn is what I say. And we certainly saw that in your time with Boys and Girls Club. But you've also expanded that. You're now served on Horizon board for a period of years. You are now finishing those terms and moving on to caps, which is a very large organization of service of children. So tell me, what are some of the nonprofit challenges that you see today from the board view? Yeah, certainly leadership is one of them. How do we get more engaged folks onto these boards? Serving and realizing the value of serving. Right. And it's not, it's. It's certainly to give back. But I think sometimes folks don't realize the self fulfillment piece that comes out of serving as well. I mean, this is where I get my energy from. The day to day grind at work can be very frustrating and you know, sometimes tactical and blocking and tackling or in a basement working on strategic plans. But to get out and serve in the community and be a leader and drive impact, man, that's fulfilling. It's really awesome. So getting more people my age, I'm 37, a little bit younger, a little bit older, but getting more, more folks in my age range on the boards getting kind of their first dose, first taste of nonprofit work and what that's like. And again, it's one thing to go to an event and raise your paddle, which is great, that's equally as important. But to really roll your sleeves up and engage and drive impact, I think is awesome. So that leadership piece is critical. You know, the market ebbs and flows. Sometimes it's really saturated with nonprofits, sometimes they shallow up a little bit. But understanding in the nonprofit world, what are those organizations that can help you drive impact and making sure that you're appropriating your energy and time and commitment to the ones that fit you best. So kind of creating that awareness and hoping that there's good nonprofits out there that you can align to. And then again, I think process. If you watch Elkhart county and how we've grown up over the last 40, 45, 50 years, but specifically the last 12 or 13 years coming out of the 0809 financial crisis, there's a lot of growth, a lot of acquisitions, a lot of mergers, and you saw a lot of that at some of the nonprofit levels too, just in terms of growth. So how do you keep those ships together? And that's tough. We've got some major nonprofits out there relative to me and my perspective of what I've seen in other communities. And so as those leaders Move on to the next and greatest thing. And inevitably, new leaders come into these nonprofit roles. They're great people, but they don't have all the experience. Right. They don't know. They don't know how that house was built, so to speak. And so how do we make sure that they're successful in their roles and support and help guide them? And, you know, they're good people. They're more than willing to ask for support. You know, my generation is a little bit of a different generation, but happy to surround ourselves with good folks and ask for help and ask for support. I think I've seen that with our leaders. But they got a tall task. They got a tough task to keep this community intact and carry the torch. And it's really important. So both of you played a key role in the formation of a new nonprofit in our community. Stable Grounds started a few years ago. I think all of us would be members of the Jane Allen fan club. Jane's an amazing leader in our community, but we have an opportunity today. This is pretty cool to hear from the two of you about kind of how this happened. Jane went to you, Kevin, and, you know, was interested in starting this nonprofit offering therapy using animals for kids in need. I'll let you take the story from there and then hand it off to Will, because it's a beautiful story. Jane Allen is the retired Middlebury community school superintendent, and she has a giant heart for kids and education. But she could see the mental health issues that were hitting the students that was preventing them from growing, preventing them from not only adjusting in education, but also growing as human beings into adults. And she really had a heart for that. And one of her folks, one of her social workers, her counselors, came to her and said, I got this crazy idea. I really want to start this stable ground for bringing little ponies and little donkeys. She had seen this somewhere. About it was Mrs. Cripe, and she wanted to bring this mental health therapy because it immediately gives you a chance to take kids out of school who are having anger issues or some kind of instability and bring them out to the ponies and the donkeys, who are trained in being patient and loving with children. And so Jane had this vision to be able to carry this out. And then from there, I partnered with her and particularly Jane and Mrs. Scripe. And then we thought of. We approached the weeds and said. And Will saw the vision right away. He already had a heart for mental health and for children. And then this is. He graduated from Middlebury Community School. So that made it just a perfect fit. And then they really responded as the investors into this project. First to say, we believe in this. I mean, Will, you once told me the story, you said yes, almost immediately to helping this get off the ground. Why? Yeah, so I was actually in the blue Ribbon capital campaign for the Middlebury unit expansion there for Boys and Girls Club. And again, I'm a process person, right? So I'm thinking about, okay, we've got this capital campaign and this potentially tied into that to some extent. And I said, hey, if we can get the funding for this, let's not convolute that capital campaign. Let's keep those two things separate. Let's keep it clean, and let's really focus on that. And of course, in my mind, I said, hey, you know, my grandmother Peggy is a great, incredible person. The legacy of my grandfather, Robert Weed. And I thought there was some money there that we could probably participate in and get involved in. And we were able to make that happen, which I was really proud of, and just want a second. Jane Allen is an incredible person. First of all, if she asks you for something, you're going to find a way to help her out and get it done. Because as Jane, she is part of the reason I am in nonprofit work and service. She came to me directly for my first board experience, was joining the Middlebury Boys and Girls Club Unit board. And, you know, things went from there. But. But why did I do it? You know, I look at all the communities in Elkhart county, and we were all great communities and we were all unique. But if you're, you know, somebody growing up in, I don't know, downtown Elkhart, you may look at Middlebury as this incredible community and, you know, kind of white picket fences, and, you know, we have some really great organizations in that community, so people have good jobs, et cetera, et cetera. But I grew up there. I played, you know, I went to school out in South Bend through eighth grade, but I played soccer there. And then I transitioned over to Northridge High School, and I got a heavy dose of the challenges in that community as well. So, as nice as we may think communities are on the outside, we all have our own unique challenges. And one of the things I noticed in the Middlebury community was there was a lot of mental health issues and challenges. Sadly, I've had more than a couple friends commit suicide. One of them just recently, in the last several months. And these are good people, good family, good kids, good jobs, and life is just tough out there. I don't know, you know, my generation, 37 years old, you know, people struggling to cope with some of these things and some of these challenges. So as I watched all of that happen and just kind of, you know, very observant person, I just said, hey, you know, this is a no brainer for our community. I'm always a process person. Right. I've said that a couple times. But to me, this is something that could potentially be scaled in the future as well. I mean, I just think it would be a beautiful thing if every school system had access to some type of mental health programming that is similar to this concept in Middlebury. And you know, Middlebury is in the, you know, out in the field, the cornfields, right. A little bit more rural, so barn makes sense. And maybe that looks different in downtown Elkhart or Elkhart Community Schools, but kids need help. That's all there is to it. I mean, you look at how many guidance counselors are on hand at Michigan State University, you just, you look at what my employees want. Number one thing is I want access to a career coach and a life coach. So people are accepting this mental health and kind of removing the stigma. And so the earlier we can make positive impacts on that piece, I think the better. And so to have that on campus there in Middlebury and be able to literally walk over there in the nice weather and get access to those services is just an absolute no brainer. So very, very thankful to Jane and her vision there and my grandmother Peggy Weed, for being able to put that money up and help see that to fruition. It's an incredible thing. And to watch a child who is having a meltdown in a classroom spend 15 minutes on the stable grounds with a little pony or little donkey and to see them go back to the classroom and be okay and finish the day versus a parent having to leave work, come get the child, take them home, miss work, figure the child misses schoolwork. And it has been a game changer for Middlebury Community Schools, even though it is a separate nonprofit, because it has to be. But thank you for your, your part in that. When you look at measuring success in nonprofits, what are some of the measurements? Like, how would you like you talking about having impact? How do you measure non profit impact and what are the metrics they should be paying attention to? Yeah, this is a tough question. I always come with a disclaimer when I do non profit service board work, et cetera. I think you got to ruffle some feathers. I think you've got to break down status quo. I think you got to be bold and kind of own that vision and be willing to step out into traffic a little bit. So subjectively, that's kind of one of the first things I measure is, you know, does this. Does this organization have the leadership that's willing to do that? Do they have a board that's ready and prepared to put those hours in and that time together? And. And are we really willing to go out there and kind of change the world? People ask me if Elkhart county is a special place, and, you know, we all know it is, but sometimes I go, I don't know how special we are, but we have the ability to be incredibly special. There's so much concentrated wealth and great people here and a great community foundation that we can really drive impact. How do I measure it? Gosh, it's a good question. I don't know that I'm on the spot on this one. But, you know, people are putting money, nonprofit dollars into organizations, and they want to see tangible results. With one of the boards I serve on, you know, when you're looking at education, that result can take 5, 10, 15 years to really come to fruition and see the positivity that's coming out of that organization. No different than a boys and girls club. You can have an immediate intervention, but some of the real success stories are going to come at high school graduation and at the point that they got their first job. And you may never even know it. Right, because their life went down one path, and it could have easily gone down the wrong path. So those early interventions are important as well to me. Cross collaboration around the community. How do we get the nonprofit organizations working together? Standardizing process of best practices. I've heard so many folks say, there's four of you guys doing the same thing. Why can't you just get together and figure that out? So I think one measurement for me is how do we identify everybody in the community that's focused on this specific initiative, and how do we get them in the same room and say, all right, let's all work together. Let's all play together. Let's figure this out. Let's define really clear scope of the work we're doing with clear objectives and targets. Let's time box that this can't go on forever. We can't wait until we get perfect data and perfect information and be kind of an analysis paralysis. But how do we come together as a collective, cross organizationally and collaborate and drive impact and whether that's, again, education and development of our workforce, early childhood development, mental health, you name it. There's so many good initiatives out there. But that collaboration piece I think is a. I don't want to say it's a big part of what's missing, but getting people on the same page. And you look at, you know, the seven great superintendents I get to serve with, they all have their own requirements within their organizations to keep their school boards happy to hit their state goals. That one might be missing in this category and the other one might be missing in another category. But some of the work that we're doing at Horizon Education alliance is okay. What does a community need to see? What do we want to be? We wanted to be the best doggone place to educate your people, your kids, your family in the entire Midwest region. And what are those goals that can be aligned to across all seven school systems versus the individual goals that we all know they still need to hit? So again, trying to find that buy in towards a couple of obtainable and achievable things versus operating independently. Same thing is true in the business, in the business world, right? For the for profit organizations. I can put my own educational platform in place at Robert Reid Corporation. But it's so much more meaningful if we can scale that across other organizations. So I don't know that I clearly answered your question. You know, specific KPIs. I think we all kind of know what those are. But I think that collaboration piece is what's the most important to me. I think one of the key things you talked about Will, is when you say getting in the same room to even having the discussion of program partnerships or the buzzword now is shared services. So in shared services, what do you have that I don't have? And what do I have that you don't have? And through shared services, not everybody has an HR department. Many of the nonprofits, the CEO wears many hats. What can we do through shared services like marketing and branding, HR accounting. What can we do with shared services? But it starts with getting in the room. And what I find is executive directors, CEOs are so focused in their lane. But sometimes it takes boards who serve on multiple organizations to be able to say, hey, we should get together and have breakfast and have some discussions. This is a very unique and special county. In the nonprofit sector, they're not looking to. The nonprofits are not. They don't have a for profit mentality. They really would welcome sitting down and talking, but for some reason they just don't. But you're right, that is the future and it's going to take board Members like you that say let's get together and let's see what we can do together to have more impact. So I appreciate you, you throwing that out there. What's your personal collaboration? And when you look at your own leadership style, how do you collaborate in the business world? Significant transparency. Just the brutal truth, right? So what's current state? Let's be honest about that. Let's not, you know, kind of BS each other about what's really going on, and then let's work again collaboratively to come up with solutions and answers that serve all parties. What I'm really looking for out of Elkhart county is how do we create some stability. And that stability, right. Leverages across our workforce, our students. You know, we wonder why people aren't educating themselves as much as we want. Well, the market's up, so we're all going to work. The market's down, so we can't afford to educate ourselves. How do we create stability? And I don't think we can do that until we're honest with ourselves of what's really happening in the county and what those challenges really are. And I'm not here to say I know all of those or pretend to, but I really think it starts with transparency and honesty on how we can address that. And then again, it's about creating buy in. I am not the smartest person in the room. I've always said when I walk into the boardroom and everybody in that room is smarter than me, I've come to the right board. Right. I found myself in a pretty good spot. So how do we get the right people, smart people in the room, how do we collaborate? How do we create buy in and really create hope? I mean, if you look at, gosh, some of these data sets that are coming out of Gallup, out of Omaha, I mean, you look at the hope index for our students, hope is low. Hope is really challenged. And it was bad before COVID and Covid definitely made a significant impact on that. But, you know, through these collaborative conversations, we should be able to build some hope. And through some of the impact and execution, bite sized chunks, we should really be able to take that hope and kind of harness it and drive it in a meaningful way. But I think in a lot of cases is creating that buy in. It's easy for me to say what needs to happen, you know, hey, Will. Yeah. Okay. We'll put a. We'll put the best kindergarten on every square block in Elkhart and we'll have the best education. Well, that's not really true. If the kid still goes home and has an abusive family or a family that's going through financial challenges, are they really going to kindergarten and having a good day? Probably not. So it's an ecosystem. It's a life cycle challenge. You kind of can't address one thing without addressing the other thing. And again, so how do we get buy in on what's the mission? What are the goals? What do we want Elkhart county to look like in 10 years? And then let's get everybody on board for that and let's get moving. You know, there are two things that really stand out to me. You clearly are a great leader and you're going to even be a better leader with more, with more years to be able to lay out these leadership goals for and move organizations, which is not just your own, but the nonprofits. So one of them was, as soon as you came onto the board, you asked a lot of questions. You want to know not only what we did, but how we do things and why do we do things. When was the last time somebody evaluated that? To see the impact and you wanted to see the board get better. And you brought the level of the board up. Everybody was passionate about the board, but you really changed the dial with us strategically to think differently inside our complex governance structure. Because as you know, we had kind of a very good multiple communities, multiple boards. And you were always a team player for all kids. But yet, as a member of the board in the Middlebury, you wanted to make sure that the Middlebury board was. Everybody was doing their job to the best of their ability. And you certainly lifted that. The second story was we went to our first conference down in Indianapolis, you know, it's coming, and there were three or four people that were going to their executive directors or board members that were going to do this little entertainment at night. And they all were musicians. And something happened to the drummer. The drummer had to leave or got sick and we didn't. Nobody had a drummer. And they said, does anybody have anybody? And there's like, I don't know, 800 people in a crowd. And you just jumped up there onto the stage. You grabbed the sticks. I had no idea you were a drummer. And you did a complete set with people you don't know and music you don't know. But you were amazing. And I just wanted a say, acknowledge that, because I'll never forget that. And two, that was your entree in everybody wanted to know, whose organization is that guy with? And I got to say he's with us. So I wanted to thank you for that because you are never afraid to take a leadership role anywhere and I had no idea you were a drummer and a good one. Appreciate that. Yeah. So let me ask a question. I will tell you. If you ever want to find yourself in a room of, I don't know, a thousand of the best people you're ever going to meet in your lives, go down to one of those regional boys and girls club conferences and just look around. I mean, talk about having some energy built through just positivity and being around good people. That's again, kind of back to the great part of serving. You get to experience those types of things. Yep, you are so right. And for you to take in what other organizations are doing, not only around the state of Indiana, but around the Midwest and then also where we fit in that. So I just so appreciate your willingness to jump in all leadership roles. When you look at now change hats and be a donor because you're a significant donor. You and your wonderful wives there. Tell me when you guys are looking at how you prioritize giving and how you look at the organizations, tell me what you think of what kind of values do you use in your decision making process. Leadership is number one. Are you bought into who's leading that organization, their vision for it, or their continuation of the vision that was already established for it? And are you confident in their ability to kind of move that organization forward and lead? Not manage, but lead. That's number one. I mean, again, it's the same with for profit business. If you're not confident in the leadership of a company, you're probably not going to do a lot of business with them. You know, location and mission is probably number two for me. Our company is, you know, originally based in Bristol, Indiana, so anything I can do to help that town is something that's very much on my radar. But obviously the mission is critical. So things that revolve around education, development as well as mental health. But again, I said it earlier, this is, this is a life cycle conversation. Right. So no surprise that we need impact early on, we need impact later in life as well. All of those things are important. But you know, as far as how do we give this giving community is really, really connected in Elkhart county and we're fortunate for that. You can kind of feel in Elkhart county the vibe and the pulse and what's going on and what organization may need support, some support, additional support, and what organization really just kicked butt the weekend before at their event. So a lot of times When a new leader will jump on the board and you know, I'll say somebody like Rebecca Shetler Fass, who jumped on the cabs, I was like, immediately, hey, let's go in here. Let's find a way to be the presenting sponsor. Let's get Rebecca kicked off really, really strongly as her service as the lead at the CAPS organization. So I'm kind of opportunistic as well on just where I think we can really help people get kicked off, get off and run and get a good jump and get engaged. And some of the fun things too is it's, like I said, opportunistic. I mean, you can pop up at a nonprofit event, say, hey, I'll write a $30,000 check if two other people will match me. And in this town, you'll get three or four other people that jump up and match at you. And that's kind of where the fun is, is when you can double, triple, quadruple your money just because we've got such a giving nature. So, you know, again, I'm different. I said at the beginning of this conversation that I don't need an ROI to understand this is important work and good things to do. And certainly, you know, if you're a publicly traded company, you got to have that roi, and I understand that. So. But for me, you know, some of it's opportunistic and just making sure that we're supporting the folks that need it today. And some of the really well run organizations where, you know, the cash is flowing, maybe sometimes I step away from those and just support the ones that really need it today. No, your return on investment, both personally and professionally, has moved the dial for everybody in Elkhart County. And, you know, you not only are a large business leader with lots of families to feed and to take care of, but you make everybody around you better and you challenge them to be better. And you don't ask anybody to do anything that you wouldn't do yourself, which I think is an incredible leadership trait. So, including jumping up and grabbing drumsticks. Who would have known that we've talked about boys and girls because. But you also served an important role in Horizon Educational Alliance. Can you talk about that experience, the leadership, community service through hea? Yeah, there's a couple of reasons I, I joined that board. Number one was, I don't know anywhere that has all seven superintendents of a community sitting on one board. So again, when you talk about having all the stakeholders show up and be collaborative, I took a look at that from, you know, Outside looking in. And I said, wow, what an, what an opportunity to engage. The other component to that board was we kind of have three categories of board members, which is community leaders, superintendents, and then for profit business leaders. And as far as I understand it, that board was kind of built to solve a challenge coming out of the 080 financial crisis. How do we prevent Elkhart county from ever going through this challenge again? And a big conversation around that was, well, we need more education and development in this area. You know, why did I join that board specifically? I had some really great friends that went off to four year traditional colleges. They were going for education. I'm going to be a teacher or business, I'm going to go, you know, run a business or be in supply chain or whatever that may be. And then I watched them drop out at the end of freshman year, drop out at the end of sophomore year. And you know, some of them went off and started their own restaurants and were super happy about what they did. And some of them went off and, you know, went and got a, you know, two year trade certification and were really happy with what they did. But what I watched was they did it with frustration, they did it with carrying the debt of two years of school and no degree to have along with that, it created a lot of challenges and a lot of hardship, really. I mean, it's not easy as a student and I mean, what are you at that point, 20, 21 years old to say, hey, this isn't for me and I'm going to make a significant change. And so for me, you know, when you look at the college dropout rate of whatever it is, 50%, give or take a couple points, that's not healthy. So how do we get more students coming out of high school to take a look at other pathways or avenues of education? That's really important to me because I think the stress and the mental health challenges that come along with choosing the wrong pathway, and let's be honest, none of us know what we want to do at that point in life. But I think there's better ways to create different exposure. You know, a lot of the student pathways, conversation around work based learning, work based experiences, I think are really, really excellent ways to give kind of early doses of what's the world like. If I had to do it over again and I worked my butt off, I mean, I was able to buy my first car before I went off to college with entirely my own money. I took every overtime hour I could possibly get. And I still, in my opinion, Wasn't ready to go off to college and like, be able to apply everything I learned to day to day life and day to day operations in a business. So if I had to do it over again, and I wish part of the model was let's send kids to, you know, go work in organizations, maybe get an apartment by yourself, right? Your parents aren't paying for that. You're paying your own bills. You're just kind of exploring life at that point, getting some experience. And then at that point, I think you're going to realize some are happy and content, some are growing within their organizations because they're great companies with great education and development, career pathways, et cetera, et cetera. And some are going to say, this is really boring, this is really monotonous. This isn't for me, and I need to go off and get my four year degree or become a doctor and get your PhD, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, that's a big reason why I joined is just how do we, how do we make sure people have eyes on various different pathways and options and make them feel good about that? I will never forget in high school sitting down with a guidance counselor at that time. I don't think we call them that anymore, but they asked, you know, how many out of the four of us who's going to college, and two of us raised our hands and two of us did not. And the way the model is built out is the two that raise their hands to go to college get all the attention because we need those numbers to look good. And the two that didn't raise their hands, they weren't dismissed. But for all practical purposes, they were pretty much dismissed from that conversation. And we just hope they graduate. We don't really care what their grades are. And so again, I'm not saying that's malicious or malevolent, but the system is or was or continues to be broken. And I just think we need to help students, help kids, help people, identify some good options, some good pathways. And I think Horizon Education alliance is the perfect vehicle for that. Well, thanks for coming onto the podcast today. I've known you and your family a long time and been incredibly generous to the community. But the one thing that I've noticed about you is you show up, and I really appreciate that. You show up for people, you show up for our community, and that's a real gift. I was going to ask you kind of what the vision of Elkhart county looks like to you, but you kind of answered that throughout this podcast. So I'm just going to ask you our last question that we ask each guest at the end of this podcast and ask what gives you hope? We have really innovative, really smart, really good people here in Elkhart County. I think we have one of the best, if not the best workforces in Elkhart County. I mean, when you look at our different populations down in Goshen or over in, you know, east of Middlebury, I mean, we, we have good people here. We can do anything we put our minds to. We are so interconnected here that if we can put some really challenging stakes in the ground, some targets, some goals in the ground out there in the future, we can make some serious progress and impact. I truly believe, to be honest with you, I'd probably pack my stuff up and left already if I didn't believe this. I truly believe we can be the best county in the entire Midwest region. I think it's tough to do. I think, you know, it's easy to get trapped in this quarterly mindset of what does my next earnings report look like and how do I make sure I hit those numbers. But we have to have our eye on the prize, which is what does this county and community look like 10 years from now and how are we going to get there? Kick egos out to the side, kick bankrolls out to the side, kick positions out to the side, get the right people around the table that are excited about hitting those 10 year targets and let's get to work. And I know they exist here, so I'm certainly hopeful. We got a lot of good things to come and you know, whenever we go through these battles and challenges, it only builds character and only makes us stronger. So excited for the future. The show is a production of the Community foundation of Elkhart County. It is powered by equipment from Sweetwater and recorded in the Viaggio Studio at We Impact in Elkhart's River District. Music is provided by Sensational Sounds. Editing is done by the award winning communications students at Goshen College, home of one of the best college radio stations in the nation. Listen Globe Radio at 91.1 FM or online. Learn more about the Community foundation of elkhart county@inspiringgood.org you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We hope you're inspired and inspire good in your community.