IDL36 Season 1: Building a Dynamic Team with Brett Hagler
How do you build your team to build your business? What power does momentum have for your business? Why should you do things that do not scale?
I am super excited to interview Brett Hagler, CEO and founder of New Story. Brett gives us a look into what it’s like to be a top non-profit CEO in the world today. He shares his insights about recruiting the right people and managing a dynamic goal-oriented team.
After a life-changing trip to Haiti when he was 24, Brett co-founded New Story to employ new technology and rethink the traditional charity model. When he started the organization, he couldn’t have known it would grow as fast as it has. Through New Story’s innovative approach, Brett’s team has achieved nearly $55M+ in revenue within five years while funding 2,000+ homes for 11,000+ people and broke ground on the world's first 3D printed community in Mexico.
Brett’s been recognized on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in 2016, named one of the Top 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs by Goldman Sachs, and his company was named among Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies in the World” four times.
With a staff of all millenials, Brett showed the corporate and nonprofit worlds that thinking differently can have an exponential impact. Bold risks, like launching a 3D printer for homes for the world’s poor, has proven technology solves real problems and that people with a dream who take action can make a massive impact.
He’s brought his story to a variety of organizations, including Architectural Digest, Goldman Sachs, Y Combinator, DocuSign, Q’s Annual Leadership Conference, Plywood Presents, and Sotheby’s International Realty. He’s also been featured in NPR, WSJ, Forbes, Huffington Post, the CBS Morning Show, CNBC, and more.
To learn more, visit his website here or watch the New Story Apple Documentary here.
Connect on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin and listen to his interviews with Carey Nieuwhof, Henry Kaestner and Jon Gordon.
Email Brett at brett@newstorycharity.org
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
Your team
Recruiting your team
Movement and traction
YOUR TEAM
A strong and successful company can only be built from a foundation of capable and inspired people.
“The team you build is the company you build. I think that is not always at the forefront of leaders, and I think that I just get more and more conviction that that’s the most important thing.”
Recruiting and hiring the best team for your company is a make-or-break situation:
Your team becomes your company: hire people that share your value systems, that are aligned with your goals, and that have skills that you know the business can benefit from.
Allocation of resources: when you are growing or expanding your team, it is best to properly allocate your budget and your time to do so.
RECRUITING YOUR TEAM
“Having more of your hiring managers have an even higher sourcing quota for the week [means] that they’re going to have to spend more time there, and less time working somewhere else. So, that’s an investment of time … and [the] return is going to be better candidates that are coming through which is ultimately going to lead to more high-impact team members. ”
Be intentional and committed when it comes to hiring your team.
Understand that it is a long-term investment, and taking the time and spending some money on finding and hiring the best people for your company is what will help it to grow faster.
“I just block out time. I have recruiting blocks and I think it’s probably even going to double and I’m just sitting there trying to be creative, resourceful, think outside the box, write compelling emails to folks that can introduce me to people, and that’s it … Doing that, and when you do that consistently it compounds, and you start to have some really interesting conversations. ”
MOVEMENT AND TRACTION
In terms of creativity and business, there does not need to be a binary of either going fast or slow. You can move fast and be smart about it, even though there will be times where it makes sense to be cautious, have the patience or wait a bit longer.
However, there is a lot of benefit to having people work fast, be precise, achieve goals and build momentum and appreciate the progress.
“Momentum solves a lot of problems”
Pick one metric to follow and work hard on. Measure its progress every week so that you can see how the movement and momentum work, instead of working on everything without observing progress.
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
To learn more, visit Brett’s personal website or his company’s website. Connect on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Instagram.
Email Brett at brett@newstorycharity.org
The Impact Driven Leader YouTube Channel
Join the Impact Driven Leader Community
Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn
Emai Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com
About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast
The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.
Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.
Don’t be capped by certain limitations that you feel are what’s expected or what’s normal. Try to stretch and try to go higher in order to get better people and figure out what that takes.
Brett Hagler
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER]
As you know, as you've heard, part of this podcast is also doing the Impact Driven Leader round table. I want you to listen to this quick message, this is an invitation. I want you to come sit at our table. You're going to learn, you're going to grow and you can't help, but have a great time with us. And I invite you. You're listening. There's a seat for you with your name on it. Come join us.
[MOLLY SLOAN]
Hey, this is Molly Sloan. The Impact Driven Leader book club and round table have been transformational for me. I've been involved for the past six months and it's taken me on a journey to be a better leader and a better person at work, at home, and really in every interaction with people. Tyler's done a great job of guiding us through the books. They're current, thought-provoking and they apply to all of us. The weekly round table has become an accountability team. I've done lots of leadership trainings in the past where you feel on top of the world, the week after the event, but ultimately it wears off over time. This group is better. We're on a leadership journey with each other through frequent, ongoing discussions and continual growth. I strongly recommend this group to anyone aiming to continually develop as a leader.
Welcome to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. So glad for you to be joining in today. Wherever this episode came to you, whether you're a subscriber, whether someone shared it with you so glad they did, and I hope you get tremendous value out of it today. I'm super excited to interview Brett Hagler, the CEO founder of New Story. Maybe it's an organization you've heard of. Maybe you haven't. This is a first for me. I'm recording this intro before Brett and I ever speak, but we have had the opportunity to interact over text messages, emails the last month or so, as we're trying to set up this episode, and it's one of the pleasures of doing these conversations and interviews. It's learning about the people that I get to speak with. And one of my goals and hopes through this podcast is one that you learn and grow in leadership as I have through the stories that I've struggled, I've had in my life, but also hear from others.
Brett is a very interesting, amazing character because what he's been through his life, and I say that with admiration, I haven't even talked to the guy yet, but how he's carried himself in our interactions, how he has presented himself and all my prep work that I've done. I can't wait for you to listen to this episode. I don't even know what we're going to talk about, because we haven't talked about yet, but I know you're going to get tremendous value because that's the type of person that I know Brett to be. So get a notebook ready and get ready for this episode. You're going to love it. I'm looking forward to it. I'm anticipating it. I got 14 minutes until we record and I'm ready to go. So I hope you are too.
[TYLER]
First off, Brett, thank you for joining me.
[BRETT HAGLER]
Thank you, Tyler.
[TYLER]
One of the things, is we're talking about this traveling and trying to catch up with each other. You've been on the road. I can imagine your heart is heavy with what's going on in Haiti. We'll touch on that. But one of the things that I've seen myself and you brought up the leaders, like you went from a lot of travel to no travel, and now all of a sudden it's like everything that you've missed the last 18 months, it seems to be like coming at everyone. That's what I've seen and experienced. What are you seeing there?
[BRETT]
The one word I'd say is just confusion because yes, like confusion and we thought there was going to be more travel and then Delta variant comes out, maybe other variants, so it's just like this state of kind of confusion. And I'm trying to figure out how to be smart, how to be safe, but at the same time, like go out and try to make some things happen. So I don't have a great answer. You know, it gets into a little bit of, it's a little bit of confusion and kind of learning as we go.
[TYLER]
So let me, I mean, what are you confused about personally?
[BRETT]
Well, from a travel standpoint, just with where COVID was, where it is now, where it might be, that affects things that we're trying to do organizationally. It affects conferences that I might speak at. It affects the trips that we might put together, events that we might put together. So those are the things that are just kind of up in the air.
[TYLER]
I was on a call this morning and we're trying to plan a local event like September 25th and it's up in the air and one of the big things, and again, being transparent, it's like, well, do we even proceed forward to have it because is there going to be tremendous mass mandate where now we can't have it? We live on the state line in between Washington, Idaho. They have shown that they have two different ideas of what this looks like. So we right now are like, oh, well, let's have it in Idaho, but it's still this massive up in the air. How has that made it, we're both experienced in that. We're not the only people experiencing it. I'm not experiencing to the level you are, but back and forth is how has that really been hard for New Story the last 18 months to two years to really meet your mission?
[BRETT]
We definitely have had to adjust. We like to, we're fortunate to employ and hire all kind of local contractors and local workers, so we can still get our ground work done. But we also like to be there so that we can learn things, observe like prototype, new concepts, just be as close to the work as possible so that we can get better and we can bring back ideas and work on them. And that's been really hard. We had a pretty high-profile 3d printed community of homes project that we were starting and did an amazing, got off to an amazing start, like literally in the beginning of COVID. And that was a lot of travel between the US and Mexico. And no, it was just, we couldn't put a predictable schedule in place. That means that it was hard to figure out what we would need to rent, but how do we do labor? So we just ended up having to basically stop the project until there was more certainty of how we could plan things. So it's been more challenging than I thought it would be and at the same time, we've learned a lot and we're okay, we're fine. We're actually doing quite well right now. And I'm just at some point, a lot of these constraints will change.
[TYLER]
You asked me before and like I told you, this would be conversational and we're going to get more kind of engaged here as we get to know each other. But I'm just thinking about it as like this podcast, hope is to really speak to people my age, between your age, people that are leading in the trenches per se, leading between different generations as we've talked about at times. And I'm challenged here to sit here and it's like, Brett, what support are you as a leader doing what you're doing? What are you looking for right now? Or I even say that vulnerable, like, how can I support you? Like what's facing your day to day. It's like, "Man, Tyler, I don't know how to do this or man, I'm challenged here." I guess there's a part of me. It's just like, honestly, I want to ask, how can I help? What can I do? I don't know if that's fair or not. And again, this just conversation ---
[BRETT]
Yes. Let's see. I mean, right now we are, I mean the main things on my mind are just recruiting great people and team members and obviously revenue. So those are the main things that come to mind. Probably ---
[TYLER]
I think you just hit on every challenge and every single person, as you're saying that, and I'm stopping, I'm thinking, all right, Tyler, the two things that you're thinking about this week are how do we recruit people and drive revenue? Oh, okay. Yes, you check the box, man.
[BRETT]
Yes, pretty much. And I mean, at the end of the day, those, I think they're definitely seasons and there's times where people can be helpful in other ways, like for sure. Maybe it's a specific initiative or specific introductions. But I think the what's pretty consistent is are those two things right, and yes, that's, what's on my mind.
[TYLER]
Well, let's talk about, because I know you've done, you know as I prepared for this and really one of the things that I realized that you've built a pretty amazing team and you've done that, you've been able to scale and grow. You've had great experiences through YCombinator. What do you focus on in recruiting, because you've done a good job of it? And what's important because I believe this is, if you focus there, the rest of the stuff will come, but that's my thought.
[BRETT]
Yes. I mean this morning I had a long conversation with one of my executive team members and it was all around how I personally should be doing even more with recruiting of setting up the next few years. And I really do think the companies that I admire most, the founders and the leaders that I admire most that have built just really impactful organizations that have, whether it's for-profit, nonprofit, whatever it is, I mean, sports teams, it's like, they know that the number one thing is your talent and your people and your culture. And there's a mantra that we kind of took on from a venture capitalist, a famous venture capitalist told us this, the story simple, but the team you build is the company builds.
And I think that is not always at the forefront of leaders and I think that I just get more and more, more conviction and that's the most important thing. So that is as far as how we do it, it's really, I think it really comes down to how obsessed and maniacal are you about it. And the people that are usually the most are the ones that are getting talent and getting better at recruiting, getting better at the experience once somebody comes into the organization. And it's also an allocation of, I say, allocation of resources, which to me is usually budget and time. So for example having more of your hiring managers have an even higher sourcing quota for the week, that means they're going to have to spend more time there and less time working on somewhere else.
So that's an investment of time. And what you're basically saying is, well, it's going to, the return is going to be an better candidates that are coming through, which is ultimately going to lead to more high impact team members. So yes, I don't think it's rocket science, but I think it is just being intentional and being really committed and like really like putting your money where your mouth is both with how much time you're spending on it, but also what you, the package that you offer to people, which is a whole nother topic I can get into of where my head's at on that. And yes, just being, just being obsessed with it. That's what comes to mind. That's not the most philosophical or, I just think the more leaders I'm around, the more CEOs I'm around that have kind of ingrained that into the company and into their team, those are the ones that have the best teams.
[TYLER]
Yes. One of the things, and again is listening to all your different conversations and that's how I've gotten to this point to know about you and thankful that Brad connected us to just learn about you. And I didn't know much about Brett. I didn't know much about New Story and glad that I do because it's a part of life. That's like, okay, that's one really innovative and cool and two it's also driven by this desire, hey, there's a different way to do it, but it comes down to, one of the things that I picked up so much is that let's focus on the culture, let's focus on why we're doing this, who we're doing for which as I've continued to hear from leaders, it's like the more you speak your vision and live your vision and let that flow out, the right people will be there. And when you allow the right people to be there, man, again comes back to that things fixed themselves. So when you'd mentioned people are challenging or you're saying, "Hey, I need to do more in this recruiting," what does that look like for Brett to do or what are you wrestling with how do I do that? Maybe that's a question ---
[BRETT]
Yes, I mean, a lot of it is just a grind and a slog of dedicating time and just like really thinking through, reaching out to people, asking for conversations, going through by network figuring out who can introduce me to who, what can I do that could drive inbound traffic, meaning like candidate traffic. And it's really just like, I just block off time. I have recruiting blocks and I think it's going to probably even double. I'm just sitting there trying to be creative, resourceful, think outside the box, compelling emails to folks that can introduce me to people. And that's it. It's not this shiny and sexy. It's just like doing that and when you do that consistently it compounds and we start to have some really interesting conversations and also learning from people.
So for example, there was this really great, there was a tweet that I kept seeing in kind of the tech and venture capital Twitter world. It was from the former head of people and recruiting. He basically started their people team at DoorDash. DoorDash for those listening has become a breakaway success. When I was living in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, there were so many competitors to DoorDash. I mean, there still are, but DoorDash has like very much pulled ahead. I think it's now a 60 or $70 billion company after they went public. It's just like incredible.
And there were so many competitors. They were all trying to do this, deliver food, right. And DoorDash, didn't say just they recruited. They recruited the best people from the best places and that was their strategy. So I saw their former head of recruiting and people tweet about some of their strategy and so I reached out to him and I got on the call with him and I'm going to have another call with him and I'm going to ask him to be an advisor and to teach me. And I recorded, I'm being very practical right now, I recorded our conversation and I sent it to my exec team, to my hiring managers, to our directors, to our new head of people and culture and said, "This is basically the modern Michael Jordan of recruiting. How could we not learn from what they did?" Which is very different than what the traditional normal, like expectations are when it comes to recruiting. And that's the kind of stuff that like really separates and really differentiates you. So that's a very practical answer to how we spend time doing it.
[TYLER]
Well, here's the thing about that. It's what works isn't necessarily the craziest, randomest idea. What works is what works and sometimes it's just putting that idea into action. I'd love to know, and just a little bit what's one or two things that he's doing that you're like, "Oh, I need to be doing that more."
[BRETT]
The first thing is very obvious, but it's not, and this is somewhat difficult for New Story because in our space, we've started to build a decent awareness and brand as an innovative social impact organization. So we do get really good inbound candidates, really good and valid candidates. We've hired a lot of folks from that. We'll put on a role and sometimes we'll get hundreds of applicants for the one role. So what you normally do is you'd be like, gosh, this is fricking amazing. Like we're getting 200 inbound applicants for this design role or for this. And it's like, let's figure out who's the best one there, but what the best companies would do is yes, you have that, but you also have a very, very select targeted outreach approach where you're going after people that aren't looking for a job, right.
If you're hiring for ahead of social media yes, you take your inbound candidates, but also go to the brands that you admire the most that are doing the kind of work that you really respect and you admire. And maybe don't go after the head there, but go after the person that's right underneath the head and pitch them, poach them, and then get them on the phone to get them interested in what it could look like to have a role. So that's the kind of stuff that like, that's one example. And the companies that are recruiting are doing that, and they have a process for it and they have a system and that's what they're doing and that not a lot of folks are doing it that way.
[TYLER]
So looking at that, we're off of learning about Brett, but I love this subject because it's so applicable. It's like, okay, so you do that. And maybe he shared, but this is one of the things that you have to work through because there's a downside, everything, which is fine. You have to accept that it's like, if that's the case, what do you have to guard against? What are you looking at saying, okay, you have all these people that love the story about New Story. They love this idea of how to really be a cog in the wheel of homelessness and building structures. And they're coming to you saying, I just want to be a part of what you're doing. And you're saying, well, that's great. I want you, but I'm going to go find someone else ad then I have to convince them that our culture and our mission is for them. What do you see as that challenge?
[BRETT]
I mean, I think in the past, we've, I don't think it's an either or. We've hired some amazing people that have come in and they've been watching us. That's the other thing is like, folks are watching you. They're watching you, they're watching what you do, and then if a role comes out that they're interested in, then there can be some extraordinary applicants that apply from an inbound perspective. So that's definitely still happening and it's great. I also think that you need to have an outbound strategy as well, where you're like, you really are coaching the best people. And you're learning and you're figuring out if a lot of the best people are saying, no, why is that? And then learning that you can start to figure out, are there things we should change? Should we think about changing salary benefits, all that stuff. That's what we're kind of going through now.
[TYLER]
Okay. It's learning in the process. I mean, I love you sharing that. It's valuable because to me the stuff that we're going through and learning right now is what we can actually help others with. Because we're learning through it, you're sharing and there's going to be ideas. So let's do this. Let's put a period at the end of that chapter.
[BRETT]
I'll say one last thing for folks listening when it comes to recruiting and building your team New Story is now six years i and we can come back to this maybe towards the end of the podcast that I'm very excited about how we're moving towards different pay and benefits and all of that stuff. What I would encourage people to do if you're hiring folks, if you're earlier in your organization like stretch and what you think you should pay people and who you think you could bring onto your team don't be kept by certain limitations that you feel are what's expected or what's normal. Try to stretch and try to go higher in order to get better people and figure out what that takes. If that takes way higher percentages than what you were thinking, obviously you need to be smart and there's a limit to it, but just stretch and what you think and I promise you, you will get a great return out of that.
[TYLER]
I'm smiling because you gave me a great segue. One of the things that I learned that you learned in YCombinator is do things that don't scale. And to me, what you just said is, that is not something that was say, "Oh, you want to scale? That's what you do, is you overpay for great talent. And not boiling down what you said but if you do that, if you overpaid for great talent, to me, you're never overpaying. That's when you grow together. And I have this idea of being an incubator, not an incinerator, meaning I want somebody to grow within what we're doing and not just burn them up. And indeed, that's what you just said.
[BRETT]
Absolutely. Yes.
[TYLER]
Yes. So what is that idea of do the things that don't scale? Where did that come from? How have you tried to do that? Run with that a little bit, if you can.
[BRETT]
Sure. So this is a kind of a mantra from YCombinator. They have a bunch of these and it's very counterintuitive because, especially if you're doing something that requires technology or software or anything "innovative," you usually think about something that immediately is so much more efficient and it's like, so scalable from the gates and doesn't need any human interaction. That's what you think. But the counterintuitive pieces, you need to get to a point where you can actually prove that what you're doing is something that people want and then of course, later on, you can automate it and it can be more scalable. And one of the examples that, I'll give you two examples, one example is from Airbnb. So Airbnb went through YCombinator a couple of years before us and their founders came and gave a talk and they were talking about how in the beginning they realized that if they took better pictures of the home, that the higher quality pictures would convert better for folks that are looking for a house.
If the hosts had better, higher quality pictures you're like, and we do this now, we're like, oh, that looks nice, because the pictures are nice. Well, they didn't yet have like a whole system or software to hire on part-time photographers and go take places. So they would literally, their team, four people, their founders or one other person, they would fly around as photographers and take pictures of the homes to test is that something that is really going to increase the conversion. And it did. So they would literally fly from San Francisco to New York because they do a lot of their bookings are happening in New York that next week and they would just run around and take a bunch of pictures and they'd be like, "Okay, this is data. This is working." And then they would hire a photographer or figure it out from there.
With New Story or the things that we did in the beginning that was like the most unscalable is in the beginning New Story was a crowdfunding platform. So you would come onto our website and you could find families that were on our website that were in need of multi-generational housing. You could see their story, you could see their picture and the idea was that a group of people would crowdfund the cost of a house. So we're all familiar with what crowdfunding sites look like. This was like five years ago and crowdfunding was like even more of a thing. We wanted to control the end-to-end experience. We didn't want to use a third party because like you'd still get their emails. It basically would be like using, I don't want to call it any of them, but it's a third party. We don't want to use that. So we wanted to do it on our own but we didn't have the team or the, or the budget to build out our own crowdfunding platform. That's a very big technical lift.
So what we did is we found a company called No-Code, which has become a kind of a movement. But you could basically make PowerPoints that looked like a landing page and you could edit them very easily and it required code. It was just design. So we had a bunch of static pages that looked like a crowdfunding page, but it really was just an image basically of the page and then you could click a button to donate and we would see that donation, it would be a donation, but then we would manually update the image to move the meter and change the percentage. Then we would hit refresh and that's what would move the meter. For us that didn't cost anything. It was just our time and then it proved a concept to a donor base that wanted more transparency, that liked the idea of crowdfunding together with others. They get their friends involved and that's what we did for like our first hundred houses. It was like the most unscalable thing in the world.
I had to carry all of our co-founders. We carried our computers with us everywhere we went. I literally, we never went anywhere without our backpacks because we got a notification on our phone that a donation came through when we had to go and update it. Sometimes people would, because they would go back and see if the page updated and sometimes it didn't, obviously. They would email us or call us and we would just say that, oh yes, sometimes credit card processing will take two hours or something like that and we would update it. So that's it. And we did it for free. We proved the concept and that actually got us into YCombinator. YCombinator didn't even know that. They thought we had a fully built platform and it wasn't. It was basically a bunch of PowerPoint pages. Those are two examples that anybody can do.
[TYLER]
In total. And I think that's sometimes we live in a generation where we, and this is just my opinion, we see everything done perfectly and think, "Well, it has to be that way in order to make it work." It's like, no, it doesn't. You just do it like with the heart of, you have that heart, you were just manually doing it. It's kind of like this image of almost like the Keebler Elves, like making all the cookies. And it's like, well, it's not this big manufacturing because we're not there yet. Our desire is to be that. We want to serve people in that way and transparently, this is what we're doing behind the scenes, but it's not a smoke and mirrors. It's just, that's how the system, we have to do it. And to me, and I know this idea of being creative. I just picked this up. I learned it from somewhere.
Maybe it was even new because I have this in my notes, the idea of being creative to me as I've learned, and help direct me here is not necessarily drawing a picture or designing something or painting. It is there's a problem. What are the tools that I can solve it? I'm not a creative person in the classic, like paintings and drawings. I can't draw, I love, you give me a partner and you say MacGyver style, like, I'll do it. I'm game on. Let's go. So to me, you just gave a story of creativity. Go ahead.
[BRETT]
Yes. Creativity. What really works for us was the creativity paired with speed and urgency? I think that in the beginning, or actually not even in the beginning, because now we're six years in and I'm like now starting to try to push us down even more and more to the organization of just how important speed is. Like, I think speed is everything. That's my opinion. It's not to say it's right. I just look at a lot of the best companies and they have a, like, they can't help themselves, but to move fast. It doesn't mean that you, you can still, like, I think folks get it, they think it's binary. They think you could either like, be really wise and smart and if you say that, that means that you have to take long and you have to have a lot of patience.
I think that the best do both. Their default is let's move fast and be smart. And of course, there's going to be times where it does make sense to have patients or wait longer, but I think the default would be, let's move fast on this. Let's get traction. There's so much power and people working on things so quickly and together and seeing progress and having focus on it. And that was one of the best things that YCombinator did. They are there for about a hundred days and at the end of the a hundred days, they have everybody pick only one metric that they're gunning for. That could be revenue, that could be subscribers, that could be downloads, if you have an app, whatever it is. One metric, and you measure it every week. Every week you should have traction and progress. So you have to move fast and you have to yes, so that, I think that that is very underrated. I think that the majority of people want to just go slower because they can say that this is the wise or smart thing to do. But I think you should be doing both.
[TYLER]
I believe people want to go slower because they're afraid to fail and yet everything ---
[BRETT]
Or not get it perfect.
[TYLER]
Well, that is perception of failure, "Oh, I'm not perfect. Therefore, you know my website isn't coded perfect. There's a glitch in it. Oh, that means I can't be good at what I'm doing." It's like, well, there's a point of, hey, don't be overlooking what's important, but yet you're going to have mistakes. That's just part of and it's how do you embrace that? It's part of it. And I believe one of the things that I've learned and I've seen time, and again, is momentum solves a lot of problems. There there's a point of, I would say, what I'm gathering from you is there's this idea of being dangerous with speed, as opposed to understanding speed is a facet of what we're going to do, but we're going to make sure that we stay within parameters guardrails so we're not causing detrimental factors.
[BRETT]
That's right.
[TYLER]
People that have had any type of growth in any business, any personal growth, whatever, that's happened with speed. That happens because you're being challenged and that happens from speed. And my speed is maybe different than yours, but why don't we do this? I'd never heard of YCombinator. I'm not a software guy. I learned about it, obviously from you. I would love for you to just give a quick little 3 second, 45 second, whatever that be. Maybe that's three minutes explanation to the audience. What is YCombinator? Why was it honestly such a big deal for New Story to be a part of YCombinator?
[BRETT]
It's become by far the world's like top startup accelerator, just measuring that by the companies they've produced and the market caps, the total value of all the companies. They've produced companies such as Airbnb, Reddit, Dropbox, Coinbase, DoorDash, Instacart. I mean that alone is like almost half a trillion dollars in market cap. So, yes, they have become the best at helping founders in a very early stage, but it's just the founders go from basically idea or starting to get product market fit, starting to get their first few customers, and how do you start to scale that up? New Story was one of the first non-profits that ever went through their program. And one of the reasons that we got in was because one, we did have more of a technical angle to what we're doing and we also had a lot of traction pretty early because of how fast we moved and they love seeing traction and moving quickly.
But then the other thing is it was very core to who we already were in the founding days, meaning myself and our co-founders before we were applying, we were already learning from all the resources that they have. So for example, they have taught classes at Stanford where they'll bring in, I would argue the best founders of the last decade, like from the companies that we all now use. You know, nine years ago, DoorDash is just an idea and Palo Alto, they had maybe a hundred customers and now they have tens of millions. How did that happen? And then getting to hear directly from the founders and from the early execs, just taught, they would teach a lot of these classes and they would talk about these early principles. They would talk about doing things that don't scale.
Actually if you Google "do things that don't scale founder of DoorDash, you'll see a video of him teaching a class at Stanford and anybody can watch, anybody can learn. And I was already learning from those resources because I was just very curious of how do these companies that start from nothing, how do they grow and how do they move forward? So yes, I would, I think it's the best resource for anybody that's interested in growing something and that's how we got started.
[TYLER]
Oh, it's awesome. It's cool, the fact that you guys were one of the first non-profits and now I think there's been a couple more, but that's is such a Testament of one, you're doing something innovative to solve a problem. So let me explain a little bit about that. Obviously you guys built the first 3D, were part of building the first 3D home in the United States, built the first 3D community in Mexico. The partner on that project is Icon. How did that partnership come about? Because I'd love to know that.
[BRETT]
New Story was in a season where we wanted to make a significant risky, but high potential R$D investment and project and we were looking at 3D printed houses, which was like, pretty much just an idea at the time, but it was a little bit of buzz about it, but it had not been done yet in the US. Or really like there was been prototypes or a few prototypes, but there was nothing real yet. Really, and a few other things and then I started telling people about that desire and came across, got introduced to the founders of Icon through a program that I went through called Praxis. Again, just the founders, absolutely loved Evan, Jason and Alex and they kind of pitched us on what a first project could look like. There was no machine yet. There was no house that was 3D printed and we wanted to do it. So we partnered with them, we funded it, we worked with them on the design, on the constraints and it worked and ever since then, it's been a really cool, really cool story.
[TYLER]
Yes. That's awesome. I think that it's fun that you have these two outside-the-box ideas to solve this problem that is everywhere. It's like, all right, well, let's go make it work and again, look for a way to solve that. Maybe everyone isn't, but that's got to be a part of what you do that's fun.
[BRETT]
Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes, it's a blast. I mean, it's one of the main reasons why I do this work. It's so much fun.
[TYLER]
There's a part of this of understanding that Brett's the person he is because of the things that have happened in your life. As you're moving forward, as you're trying to affect change, as you're trying to be this guy that is recruiting great talent to see something bigger, how much do those experiences that you had when you were younger, when you were fighting cancer, when you're going through that stuff, really make it to say, now I'm here for something bigger?
[BRETT]
So I had cancer when I was a senior in high school, came out of nowhere, was not part of the plan, and I think in hindsight, what that did was it showed me that I'm not in control and I can make as many plans as I want. And I still do. I love planning. I'm very intentional, but like at the end of the day, I'm not in control and things are going to happen. And the one thing that I can control is my attitude and how I respond to things. As an entrepreneur that has helped a lot and that was kind of my biggest takeaway from having cancer. Then, yes, I guess moving more into the impact, that to me, that came really through a revived Christian faith. Without that I was on a track to dedicate how I was spending my time and what I was caring about. So that happened a little bit after college and it really just changed my values and my worldview and what I cared about. And I got really excited to apply some of my ambition and kind of entrepreneurial passion towards an end result that would hopefully be able to help people have a better life. So that's how that happened.
[TYLER]
I appreciate it. I've spoken on my podcast about having challenges in life as well, that sometimes you start to zigzag and you understand those zig-zags are what help you understand and relate to others. As well, the person I am today is because of the faith that I've grown into and continue to grow into and realize it's not about me. Even though there's a part of life, everything I was doing was just trying to protect and thought of how to get forward. So yes, I appreciate you sharing that.
[BRETT]
Yes, absolutely.
[TYLER]
Is there anything else that, I mean, the seed for New Story was planted in your heart, as I learned from a trip to Haiti. Right now we're on the heels of, again, another natural disaster in Haiti. How, one, can people learn more about what New Story is doing and especially in communities there and other communities, but how can people really say, "Hey, I want to be a part of this solution with New Story?"
[BRETT]
You could just go to our website newstorycharity.org to learn more. You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter for information. That handle is @New Story Charity. To get involved, what I like to tell people is when you think about such a big problem that we're working on, and there's obviously other massive problems in the world as well, it's very easy to get paralyzed and not do anything, because you could be like, "Oh, come on. What am I actually going to do to help?" It doesn't really matter. There's other stuff. I can't even think about it. So I was just like punt it and not think about it." I get that. I thought of that a lot too and I still think that sometimes for sure about other things happening in the world and the reality is you can't help everything.
So I think what I would recommend is what is actually pulling on your heart or that you find yourself curious about or interested in? And then there's a phrase that I use all the time. It's a little cheesy, but I think it's so true. It's to do for one what you wish you could do for all. So now a lot of how New Story started was when we started it wasn't how do we house a million people, which is literally our goal now and what we're planning on. It was, how do we do this model for one family and how do we change that one family's life? The good news about that is anybody can do it. Anybody can do for one family or one person what they wish they could do for everybody, for a certain crisis or cause. The only thing that's stopping you is your choice. So I would just say lean into whatever you're curious about and take some action.
[TYLER]
Have you heard the starfish story?
[BRETT]
Yes.
[TYLER]
You know, when you do for one that when you say that and have said that, that's what I think of is choose that starfish, throw them into the ocean, and it's a fun way for me to think about that.
[BRETT]
Yes, totally did.
[TYLER]
All right. So I wasn't disappointed by that conversation with Brett. I hope you weren't either. I did not expect us to go into a conversation about recruitment, but for me it really was a cool experience of learning what a top non-profit CEO is going through right now. This is a guy who is looking to the CEO from DoorDash for advisement and mentoring. And that's what you learned firsthand. I certainly learned, and to me it really comes back to some of the things that Brett talked about, is being willing to do the things that don't scale. If I'm going to take anything away from that conversation, that's the one that I'm going to encourage you with from a leadership point of view. Do things that don't scale, what doesn't scale being you. You can't replicate, you can't automate you.
So do more of that. Glad you listened. I hope you got tremendous value out of that. Go learn more about New Story. Go watch the Apple documentary, go see everything they're doing, support them. I'm glad to and excited to hear in the future, thankful to have the experience to chat with and get to know Brett and watch what they're doing. I hope you guys will find out more about them. Of course, go to the show notes, tylerdickerhoof.com\podcast. Wherever you're listening as well, you click on the link and go check out those show notes to where you can get access to the Apple documentary to everything else they're doing. Newstorycharity.org.
Thank you again for listening and if you got value out of this, man, I'd love if you shared with somebody, give me a rating or review. I'd sure appreciate it as well. Hit that subscribe button. Thanks for being here and until the next episode again, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
