13: Alan Graham
Alan Graham: [00:00:00] And when you get on a food truck and Westlake Hills, And you drive into the bowels of Austin, Texas, and get down on the streets with the crack addicts, the glue sniffers, the prostitutes, the convicted felons and begin to build relationships with them. There's a discovery there that is nothing short of profound.
Chris Suarez: [00:00:36] welcome back to the experience growth podcast, where the collective mission of our community is to build big experiential businesses and more importantly, build big experiential lives. Now we do that ultimately by learning, we learn from others.
Why?
Chris Suarez: [00:00:50] Because the leaders are learners and whether we're leading ourselves leading our families, leading small businesses are leading massive organizations being on the forefront of leading a movement towards experiential living is our goal.
I'm your host, Chris Suarez. And today we will introduce you to a, just a mission-based experiential focused human being, Alan Graham Alan founded, and is the CEO of mobile loaves and fishes. This is a program , that has been in existence for over 21 years. They have mobilized over 20,000 volunteers.
They've served over 6 million meals to those that are hungry. Primarily those that really began. As homeless. One of my favorite parts of this conversation is Allen's definition of what home really is and how experiential finding a home and creating a home and building a home really is for everybody involved back in 2005, Allen.
Created what has now gained and garnered some national and international exposure and press. He created community first, which is a 51 acre master plan community that provides affordable permanent housing and a supportive community for the disabled, the chronically homeless in central Texas. It has now become the home for over 500 formerly homeless.
Humans Alan is a as an author. He wrote the book welcome homeless just incredible book recounting stories and passages of homeless humans that found a home and to place and experienced life differently because of this mission that Alan is going to talk about. And we're going to end with me sharing just a few passages from that book and getting Allen's perspective on, on what really creates the fabric of humanity wives.
So please listen from, start to end. Please share this conversation with as many as possible. If you find value in it and please join and welcome Alan into our community and become part of his here is Alan Graham.
I'd love to just, jump right in. My understanding is that the story of mobile loaves and fishes began.
At least on the ground around 19, 1998. And maybe we'll get pre 1998 because I know stories don't start when they began. They start well, before that and truly loved the mission of really what led to that. So I'd love to get there. But maybe for those in our community and audience that are not familiar with mobile loaves and fishes and MLS, maybe tell us a little bit about the purpose of it, how it started what the heart of the organization is all about, and then we can go from there.
Alan Graham: [00:03:34] Yeah. Great. Yeah. So, it was founded in 1998 backed looking at the framed a 12 page agreement that the priest at our church had signed. Authorized him the start of Buffalo's ambitious in September of 1998. And of course your ride, it goes back further than that, but in a very simple way a spiritual journey on my part where I just began to ask God, what do you want me to do?
W what are the little things you want me to do? I didn't ask him for the big things. Just what do you want me to do? And I started doing a lot of the little things at church and my family, I have a fairly large family of five kids and we just got more engaged and in that life and.
And there was a time when my wife and I were having coffee with a girlfriend of ours. And she was telling us about a ministry in Corpus Christi, Texas, where on cold winter nights, multiple churches would come together and pool their resources in order to take out to the men and women that were on the streets of Corpus and Chris, for some reason at that moment that I can only attribute to Providence.
The image of a catering truck entered my brain as a distribution vehicle from those that have abundance for those that lack. And I'm a serial entrepreneur I think little things and take them big instantly [00:05:00] and this idea wouldn't go away. Thank God actually. And and here we are 22 years later.
With a tiger by the tail, but it was really simply euphemistically five white guys from Westlake Hills Westlake is the kind of the Tony neighborhood of Austin. And that's where I raised my family. We were on the low end of the Tony. But nonetheless, it was kind of that neighborhood pretty Milky white upper middle-class to some of the richest people in the world type of a deal.
And and here we are going to go out and feed the homeless on the streets of Boston. It was pretty funny, but again, providential. So, let me ask you this.
Chris Suarez: [00:05:40] It's interesting, as I listened to you talk about how you started doing little things right in, in everyday life and your family looking to serve and little ways that group.
And then you said, well, gosh, I'm I'm a serial entrepreneur. I love taking the little things and making it. Big you start with one trout, actually, maybe not even a truck. Was it a minivan or how did what let's go back to when it was little, what did that look like? Cause now let me just, for some perspective, 21 ish years later, over 20,000 volunteers, or just about maybe just over 6 million meals served to those that are hungry.
Bring us back to what was that little thing that
Alan Graham: [00:06:27] started it? A little thing was simply but the catering truck was the spark, the idea, but in order to take that spark cook, could these five white guys actually go out on the streets and do this because there's a lot of stereotypes around our friends on the streets.
Criminals, drug addicts, mentally ill, dangerous, lazy, all the things. And so we had to test it first. And so one of my buddies had a green minivan and one night we loaded up 75 sack meals September 13th, 1998, actually. And and went out on the streets with a sixth person onboard who was formerly chronically homeless, a guy named Houston Flake who's deceased now, and we just, Chris, had one of the greatest evenings ever. It was beautiful. We were hooked and we were going to buy the one truck and, the one truck was going to be the one truck but the one truck led to probably 20 trucks. That led to doing street retreats that led to doing community first community works.
It's always the one thing, the first step that leads ultimately to that last step
Chris Suarez: [00:07:41] I heard you say we can't go and fix homelessness unless we understand what home is.
What was that part of the journey? Did Houston flake teach you what home was or did you have to figure that out or define that?
Alan Graham: [00:07:55] I think I had to figure that out and have it defined for me. But I do believe that Euston put me on the path of loving people and not fixing and repairing people.
And that's kind of how I see that, that piece of it. If
Chris Suarez: [00:08:11] I were to ask you how, what goes into the definition or defining home as you see it, or as you think about it or feel it what would you say.
Alan Graham: [00:08:21] What I'm able to say today built on a book that was published in 2008 entitled beyond homelessness, Christian faith in a culture of displacement subtitle written by a couple of theologians one out of hope college up in Michigan and another w and both of them are friends of mine now.
Guy out of the university of Toronto, Brian Walsh. And in that book, it talks about the phenomenology of home and within the phenomenology of home or eight characteristics of home. And I'm just going to blast through these. If you want to touch on them. Number one, home is a place of permanence.
Secondly home is a dwelling place. Three home is a place of embodied in habitation. Fourth home is a place of hospitality. Five home is a place of safety and refuge six home. Is a place of stories and memories. Seven home is a place of orientation and last, but very not least home is a place of affiliation and belonging.
And so within the context of that, phenomenology has nothing to do with a physical structure of four walls and a roof. And to me, that was. Revel a story to be able to marinade on what that means and how you and I would [00:10:00] easily give up all our possessions to ensure that we don't lose those human possessions, wife, children, parents, brothers, sisters Close personal friends that we've had for decades that, that kind of thing.
And so that that became our driving force. There's an understanding that if you want to understand homelessness, you have to understand home. And just because somebody moves up off the streets into a, an apartment somewhere Does it say, sir, homelessness. And then one of the things that I like to tell people, in order to have a accomplished what we've accomplished, we've had to raise a lot of money or raise a lot of money.
You have to know a lot of people with a lot of money. And and so we have a lot of millionaires, billionaire friends and supporters, and I've been in some of their homes that are extraordinary and have met some of the most homeless people you'll ever meet. Yeah, I've been under the bridge and disgusting third world country environments and met some of the most harmful people that you'll ever meet.
And so it's a, it's an American cultural thing, that we think that if we keep buying all this stuff and surrounding us with all the. Accoutrements of what we perceive as success, that these things will make us happy and they frankly, they don't
Chris Suarez: [00:11:25] one of the things that that you wrote in your book welcome homeless.
There was a statement in there that I wrote down that I would love. I would love just some perspective around, around it. You said you, you've got to get outside of your comfort zone. You've got to go down to the places that allow you to connect with people. How do we do that? What does that mean to you?
Alan Graham: [00:11:45] Well, if you take Westlake Hills for instance where I raised my family that the high school, there was one of the top high schools in the United States. It has at a time, I don't know if the data is true today. It's still that it's still that top high school, but more number five on advanced placement exams in physics than any other school in the United States ever.
Primarily white air It's pretty random and usually brought in to play football. We just won state championship second year in a row football. And and so it's a bubble and, people have a lot of income. There's no suffering no visible yeah. Suffering. There's plenty of suffering.
And there's the success as we perceive it is there and all of its glory. And we put our children on the same escalator to go out and be the biggest, the bestest, the richest and the everything. And so we don't connect Monday, yesterday was the beginning of black history month.
And I do a recording every morning that I send out to, a group of people called goodness morning. And I talked about a moment several years ago when I gave a talk in Dallas at the Paul Quinn college, which is a historically black university.
So I get. They're early. And and I go into the library. We're, I'm going to give this talk and there's this giant wall full of all of these African-American achievements over the history of our country. And I'm going, shit. I didn't know that. Damn. Nah, God crap. Yeah, really. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And then I'm looking at black history month and where that came from and I'm reading them out other great stuff, and then there was the movie about the three black women that, you know, one of them, a gifted mathematician that basically landed the guy on the moon and, and, and what have we done?
What have we culturally done? To suppress that glorious information of the beautiful brothers and sisters. And and and when you live in the bubble, you become suppressed. You're gonna, you're gonna think you're going to look like you're going to dress like and you're not going to have any interaction.
And when you get on a food truck and Westlake Hills, And you drive into the bowels of Austin, Texas, and get down on the streets with the crack addicts, the glue sniffers, the prostitutes, the convicted felons and begin to build relationships with them. There's a discovery there that is nothing short of profound.
And and that's really what I'm talking about in that And that will
back in the day, if you go to Europe, and you go to a castle, there's a castle up top. And then right below the castle are all the people that work for the castle. There's the middle-class and then the lower class, and then the farmer class. And they were all there. They were all connected. They were all [00:15:00] friends.
Yeah. And we can Hollywood eyes, even back during the days of plantation slavery, is that it? So no, no justification. There was a lot of people that took deep care of the humans, and then we. Abolished it and begin to just abuse people through Jim Crow laws. Peonage all kinds of horrible stuff that in a lot of ways continues to manifest to this day.
Yeah.
Chris Suarez: [00:15:26] And one of the things that I'm hearing is it didn't stop with feeding people. That's a need, right? It's a basic human need. And yet the need doesn't stop once human beings have food. But you used a phrase that you began to communicate and build relationships with them.
And, I've got to believe that was part of. Y community first, right? The village was created. You could have you, as you mentioned, you could have, right. Just kept on adding trucks and adding trucks and adding trucks and feeding more and more people. And yet there was another there was another purpose behind your expansion into community.
First, maybe talk a little bit about what community first is and how it began, or me forget. How, what about why? Like, why community first began?
Alan Graham: [00:16:14] Well, if you go back to the truck, there were three components of that truck that I didn't know at the time we've learned this in the rear view mirror, everything we've learned is in the rear view mirror, we just plod along and and then we're called visionary.
And there was no vision But there were three things about that truck. Number one, Chris is the truck went to where the people were. It didn't hurt people to a centralized soup kitchen location. Number two, as I'm cut out of an abundant giving hospitality cloth. You come to my house for a party, it's going to be a party and it's going to have lots of food, lots of drink.
And we're not running out. And so when the truck went out, we didn't put dated food, leftover food. We were bringing the best out there and then the third thing, and then as part of that, abundance was people. Making a choice instead of getting your food unit, you get to make a choice based upon what's on the truck.
And then the last thing is that those that we're serving and those being served were on the same side of the serving counter. And that created a one-on-one human to human heart to heart relationship. Hello? My name's Alan. What's your name brother? Hey, my name is Chris. Well, how are you doing? And I'm doing great.
I'm so grateful for you guys being here today. And I go, well, what would you like today? And we go down the line and then I might say something to Chris that might be a, manager. Is there anything I can pray for you? And you go, God. Yeah, man. Amazing that you asked my, I just found out that my mother, that I hadn't seen in eight years was diagnosed with cancer, and then, you get your meal. I leave, but maybe I come back in a week and there's Chris and I yell across, Hey, Chris. And the most important word in the English language to Chris Suarez is Chris. It's not, Hey dude, or bro, it's Chris, and next thing you know, the white guy from Westlake Hills, that runs a real estate business, knows my name.
And and then Chris says, Hey Allen. And so now all of a sudden it's Alan and Chris. And and then I got the idea in 2002 that we implemented in 2003 to go spend the night out on the streets with my friends. And so about 15 of us embarked one night and spent 72 hours on the streets.
And that was mindblowing. Now my relationship with Chris metaphorically is, is deepening and I'm learning lots of things. I'm learning that you're a drug addict. I'm learning that your father beat you up and molested your sister. I'm learning that your mother was a prostitute and a drug addict, and you left home at the age of 12 and you're riding the rails at 13 you know, whatever.
Mm, it's all unfolding. And and what I'm learning more than anything is that you too, regardless of your circumstances, desire to be loved and valued, you know? Yeah. It'd be nice to have a house, but more than anything, I want to be in relationship. We got an African-American guy here that will probably die within two weeks.
We call him old school and he's been in the hospital now in hospice. We're trying to move him today. Maybe tomorrow at the latest back into the village because he wants to [00:20:00] die here. And old guy, a drug addict. You know, all the things illiterate, I'm an educated hope my white wife, my white privileged wife the other day.
You're all I have. You are my family. And I want to die, with my family. Yeah. That's what this is all about. So we're scrambling like a son of a bitch right now to get him back here, you know, and get all the pieces. And hopefully that's all coming together today. So here's, to, to diverse cultural things coming together that will create phenomenal joy and happiness for all of us forever.
Yeah. Forever. Yeah.
Chris Suarez: [00:20:45] And. And the only thing that was needed was a relationship. Yeah. Human to human connection. Yeah. That wouldn't be on fit. Physical was involved, but it wouldn't be on that.
Alan Graham: [00:20:58] Yeah. And beyond who we think we would normally be hanging out with, I, I live here in the village and I don't know if they told you, but I had open heart, quadruple bypass A little over three weeks ago.
I kept it on the down low for a lot of reasons. And the announcement really wasn't made except for a very select group of people until the morning that I'm under the knife. And and so this is really my first week back in the village. Wow. And it's amazing. To be around my neighbors here and, and have them look at me people from all walks of life, gay people, transgender people, black people, Brown people, with little tears down.
I was so worried about you and it just, it's, it's crazy. Yeah.
Chris Suarez: [00:21:46] So, for those that don't know, tell us a little bit about the village. And I'll tell you Allen about maybe three or four years ago, and it wasn't until recently that I even made the connection between the village.
And mobile loaves and fishes, interestingly enough, but about three or four years ago, I had a real estate agent from one of my brokerages reach out to me and she said, we need to meet for coffee. And I said, okay. And we went to coffee and she came to me and said I love real estate. I've been doing it 20 years.
But I just heard this incredible story about a community in Austin. It's called community first. There's a village and in our city needs, that's what our Portland, that's what our city needs. And I am going to work for the rest of my career to begin raising funds to create that.
And I thought, Hmm, let me look up. Community first and the village and sure enough, I look it up and I realized that there was the connection between mobile loaves and fishes. And I call one of our team members in Austin. And I said, Hey, do you know about this community? And now this is a couple of years later, we're having this conversation.
So I, and I understood from them and from from them reading your book of what the village was. But for those that haven't gone through that haven't done the research. What is the village? How do people live there? What's the why behind
Alan Graham: [00:23:00] it? Yeah. Yeah. So in 2005 after spending all this amount of time now about seven years building these relationships with people and asking the question why in the most abundant country ever, ever in the history of the world, do we have people that live on the streets and under bridges?
How can that be? And and so I got the idea to go out and buy a gently used recreational vehicle, a fifth wheel lift one person up off the streets and plant them in the privately owned RV park here in Austin. And going back to the serial entrepreneurial real estate developer mindset, I began to fantasize about building an RV park.
This was inexpensive to do relatively I'd live in an RV all day long. And and so, this idea started to build this RV park and and I've been working on this since 2005, 2006, I'd lift a second person up a third person, a 10th person, a 20th person, all the while. Trying to get my arms around how to develop an RV park.
I've developed lots of things, residential office retail, air cargo a new real estate development business. I knew that world front and back, but you know, to build an RV park and operate one, you don't know a hundred percent. So I hire a hire consultant, pay him 15 grand, teach me everything you know about.
RV parks and put a business plan together and began to promote that business plan. I thought we were going to collaborate with the city of Austin. But that, that turned out to be, not my backyard impossible. And and then I have a leadership style. I think I have a couple of giftings.
One of those is I'm I'm a. Really recognized what my limitations are. I know what I'm really good at, and I know what I'm not good at or [00:25:00] what I hate doing. And I don't mind knowing all that. And that allows me to bring people in to compliment, my giftings. I'm a good communicator.
I'm a promoter. Persistent all those kinds of things. But you do need engineers and architects and accountants and, other people in the mix. And so I began to build this thing out and part of that is inviting other people to join me. And I'm one of these guys that gets laser focused on a vision, mission, values, and goals.
And I don't waiver off of that vision, mission, values and goals. I'm an extraordinarily focused individual. And so if you Chris want to join me, us in this effort jump on it and. As a result, we've now created a 51 acre master plan community of 550 homes that include about a third of them.
RVs are what's called a park model RV and two thirds of these cute little micro homes architecturally designed and built by. Know, fancy custom and production home builders. We have an outdoor movie theater. We have a farming operation, a blacksmithing shop, a wood shop and entrepreneur hub built by one of the richest people in the world.
With art pottery we have our online fulfillment center there screening crafts jewelry, making We have an aquaponics operation on site. We have a car care business. We have a market I don't know if I said this, but an outdoor movie theater, Alamo draft house with a 500 seat amphitheater.
And so it's we're inviting the community hints community. First, if you want to mitigate this, you got to get involved. You've got to quit yelling at the mayor. The mayor can't do this. It's not his problem. It's our problem. We need to deal with it. And so that's our fundamental philosophy is to to do that.
It's turned out to be an extraordinary place. It has gained some national movement and growing,
Chris Suarez: [00:27:11] you know, it's interesting is throughout that. Village there's evidence of partnership. You said that by recognizing our limitations, it allows us to be able to invite people in to join that mission.
It's interesting. There's some overlap I believe the cinema was a partnership with, I think you mentioned Alamo draft house which, Austin-based KW Keller Williams who I have an affiliation with is donated some funds. We actually did an earlier podcast episode with Rob Gandy of CLO and he's helped with some 3d printing and financial donation as well.
You're a master At building relationships, how important clearly with people, but also with supporters. How important is that for anyone? Trying to start a movement or build around a
Alan Graham: [00:28:00] mission? It's like real estate location, location, location, and our business.
It's a, the three R's it's relationship, relationship, relationship, and And so, to us, it's a critical piece. People are stunned at our our ability to raise money and in our ability to attract people, to want to join in with our vision, mission values and and gold. But look it, when people.
Most people don't understand how to raise money. And I believe that we do 81% of our revenue comes from 9% of the people. And that 9% is called the Pareto principle. The 80 20 you've heard about the 80 20, but it's Pareto. We live in Renault. And that 9%. That give the 91% and the 91% that give 9% are very valuable to us, too.
But that 9% of people that are in the millionaire to billionaire class of people don't want to be treated like an ATM machine. And that's how most nonprofits treat highly resourced people. The zip there at ATM machine, they go to them with their, I need ATM card and go, if you would give me, a bunch of millions of dollars, I'm going to go solve this for you.
And that's not what they're looking for, man. They're. They're just like you and I they're in fact they're lonely because they become prey. You know, to the predators out there, they, the put up all of the shield in order to protect themselves. And I tell people that it is rare that we would ever ask somebody for money.
You want to be a part of this. You come in and ask us, that's not being arrogant. What that is value in who you are. As a human being. And if you're committed to what it is that we're doing, you're going to look at me someday or [00:30:00] somebody on our staff and you're going to go, I want to give what are the options?
And we're going to lay out a banquet table of options that meet who you are and how you want to do it. The amount, if I know that you're worth. $5 billion. What am I going to ask you for? How do I put together a plan? That's going to go and ask you for a specific amount of money. But if I tell you we're trying to raise a hundred million dollars here and here are the many ways that one could invest in that.
From a $25 gift to a $25 million. Yeah. You decide
Chris Suarez: [00:30:41] That philosophy actually goes along with your philosophy of the entire organization that you become more human through humanizing others on both sides of that table, or on both sides of the truck. We all want to be humanized.
We w we all want to feel like we are humans helping humans. And you're right. If done improperly, I don't feel humanized. In giving, I feel monetized in giving. And yet mission is built around and with humans not money.
Alan Graham: [00:31:14] Yeah. And so we have a philosophy here it's called the the HP ratio to the power of G H is his heart.
The denominator is pocket to the exponential power of God equals unstoppable momentum back. The streak that I live on here is heart over pocket. And that's how we treat people. We're after your heart. We want you to love what we do here. I don't need your money would love to leverage your resources, but only if that's your desire.
But I love your heart. And if you love the work that we do, and that meets you, you may go look, man, I'm me and my family, where we're stray dogs, puppy dogs, and kitty cat people. That's important work to like an elevate my work over that work or whatever. Let me ask
Chris Suarez: [00:32:10] you this.
And it's something that I started thinking about the first time I came across community first as a, as I look at it as a concept and solution I can't see why this has not been reproduced in cities across the country. Is there a reason why, like what prevents that, do you believe?
Alan Graham: [00:32:30] Well, there's a phenomenal book that was written published back in the 1960s called reclaiming the American dream by Richard Cornell and They talk about the three sectors that exist our world here government business and what they call the independent sector, the non-profit world and in this book he quotes Oh, I can't think of the name of the the altar now, but it was published in the mid 18 hundreds, mid to mid late 18.
Alex did taco bell and the taco bell was British, I believe. And and. He he spent some time over here and he could not believe that we built this country without government funding. We built the roads. We built the railroads. We built the sea ports. We built the schools. We built the towns.
There was no taxation. So the 1920s, and and so Cornell kind of moves us through this period of time up through the depression and and then the advent of the government coming in and performing all of these tasks for us. To the point where we have almost completely abdicated everything to the government.
So if you look at the issue of homelessness , we're mostly yelling at the mayor and the city council. So if I come to Portland and I Google and study that it's gonna be, it's a political warfare, right? It's people yelling at the mayor and the city council,
It's that city council, that mayor and that city council. And it's the same thing going on in Austin, Texas. Right now when in reality we ought to be standing in front of that mirror, yelling, at ourselves. And Cornell in the 1960s was lamenting, how do we bring back this powerful, innovative, creative third sector, the independent sector, the nonprofit world.
And and so that's what we've lost it. And he poses in there that government has now become a competitor. To that independent sector, we can solve these things. [00:35:00] So now , I'm competing metaphorically with the government to go and solve homelessness. So,
Chris Suarez: [00:35:07] does that answer, is that quite brilliant?
I mean, truly, I just wrote down mirror versus Mayer. Yeah. It begins to answer that problem in that question.
Alan Graham: [00:35:16] Yeah. And I think I think it's the mirror. There's not that many homeless people. We see a lot of it, but I will tell you an amount to in the hundreds of 1% of our entire population, it's in Austin, it's about six, one hundreds of 1% nationally it's somewhere near that.
Number we're assaulted with it because you live in a place like Portland or Austin, and, there's a concentration in places and you see it and you see the panhandling on the street corners, which is a whole nother conversation of why that even exists. And it's to me, it's government interference.
Hmm,
Chris Suarez: [00:35:57] I want to I want to wrap up our conversation, Alan, if you'll allow me to read just a couple of sentences from your book you write these couple sentences strung together, and I would just love for you to comment on them. After I read them you wrote together human lives are woven into a fabric, made stronger and more useful than its individual parts.
But isolated. Each individual strand is more easily frayed and unless other threads come together to be braided into a cord, the single strand will break on its own. When the threads of each individual life come together, they become a thing that derives the strength and resilience from the structured collection of its parts.
The last 20 plus years of your life have been braiding that cord What can each of us do to bring that cord
Alan Graham: [00:36:48] well to allow ourselves to be braided into the court, say I'm here, man. Write me into the court. And I want to be, I want to be part of a stronger collective because senior early not much but collectively it's everything.
, and it really becomes unbreakable when it becomes everything. And it's people have to be willing to throw themselves into that braided cord and the willingness to be to be twisted and turned and and nodded, and that the whole thing in order to be a a part of that court,
Chris Suarez: [00:37:21] , I love that.
Which strikes me is In an effort to create experiences for those around you, in your city that you saw needed a different experience, right? A different experience in life. You've created an experiential life for yourself, for your family's involved heavily as well, obviously in, in your work.
And it's how we move that mission of living experientially forward. By involving other people and creating experiences for those around us.
