In this episode of The Social Leader, Fr. Justin Mathews interviews Steve Gardner, co-owner of SEJ Services, a medical supply company. Steve shares about how he learned the importance of empathy in leadership when he was forced to face the pain and uncertainty of having a son with severe health problems. Leading his family taught him some valuable lessons about leading at work.
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Episode 1 - TRANSCRIPT
Fr. Justin Mathews: Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Father Justin Mathews with Reconciliation Services. Welcome to the inaugural broadcast of The Social Leader. I am here today with a special guest. His name is Steve Gardner. I'm going to bring Steve on right now. Hello, Steve.
Steve Gardner: Well, good morning Fr. Justin.
Fr. Justin: Yeah, thank you. Welcome to the very first episode of The Social Leader. Do you feel special because you're the first?
Steve: I'm honored to be a guinea pig.
Fr. Justin: I'm really glad that you're here. Steve is not only a good friend and a volunteer at Reconciliation Services, but he is also the co-founder of a brand new company called SEJ Services. We're going to get into a little bit about what SEJ Services is in a few minutes. Well today, in this inaugural episode, we're going to be talking on The Social Leader about the best of business, faith, and philanthropy, which I call social venturing. We're going to be talking about social leadership and trying to get into what leadership looks like when social impact and social venturing is in the mix. And, I brought Steve on because he has a depth of experience as an entrepreneur, is just a fantastic friend, and a regular volunteer here at Thelma’s Kitchen and Reconciliation Services. So Steve, let's just begin by giving people a little bit of information about who you are and what you do and where you hail from here in Kansas City.
Steve: Yeah, thank you Fr. Justin. I'm Kansas City born and bred. I’ve been here almost my entire life. It would be 47 of my 50 years. I lived in Phoenix for a few years, but went to KU, Shawnee Mission South High School ... Shout out to the Raiders. I’m married with four kids, you'll hear a couple of things about my kids a little bit later, but I've also got a consulting company that I've been doing for a while. But SEJ Services is something that popped up as a direct result of COVID-19. We pulled together a group of local entrepreneurs to put together a company that is going to be able to deliver PPE [personal protective equipment] in very significant numbers to hospital chains and communities around the country and we're very committed to very low margins, extremely low margins, and also donating 10% of our proceeds to under-served communities that are in desperate need these days.
Fr. Justin: I'm excited to talk to you about that a little bit. Let's jump into why low margins are important to you. I mean, there are a lot of people who are bringing personal protective equipment into the United States right now. And actually, I've heard horror stories even here in Kansas City. I was talking with some folks at the health department and others, that they've been approached by companies that are selling PPE for the hospitals and are trying to compete with others coming in, but when they got the PPE or when they got under contract, things tripled in price all of a sudden and there wasn't a lot of quality. Certainly, I haven't heard of any company that's talking about donating PPE to low income communities. And of course, when we got connected I was particularly interested in that because I have my one mask that I've been using and recycling. But you know, Reconciliation Services and Thelma’s Kitchen .. We're here on the front lines at 31st and Troost. Which, if you're watching from out of town that is the economic and racial dividing line in Kansas City. It's synonymous with that divide. And there are many, many people in Kansas City who really are struggling to survive and succeed. But the reality is also, as you know, Steve, that there are a lot of people in the homeless population in low income populations that don't have the same access to hand sanitizers and even to basic hygiene. So to be frank, this is really important for my 22 staff that are on the front lines. We're still serving as an essential service. So why did you all decide to donate PPE for every sale and why did you get into the PPE business right now?
Steve: Well, so there’s a couple of reasons for that Fr. Justin. First of all, I started seeing some of the same kinds of stories that you're talking about where communities and hospitals and the people who really need the PPE they're really struggling to source it. And for the most part, it's not been available in warehouses in the US. And so now a lot of these groups, in some cases for the first time, are having to figure out how to source things from China. And while I personally don't have a lot of experience with that, our team has extensive experience with it, including one gentleman who actually ran manufacturing for Hallmark throughout Asia and China for about 10 years. And so, we've got a lot of experience working over there and we know how to get things into the US and do some good things with it. For us, the low margin is not an overly complicated thing. This is not about opportunism. This is about the fact that we have a very real need in our communities and in our nation and people are not getting the PPE that they need. And our health care workers are literally on the front lines of dealing with these kinds of things. They should not be getting gouged and hit hardest over things that are absolutely critically important. So it was really important to us that we maintain very low margins. And at the same time, we also very much recognize and in large part due to some of the volunteering that I've been doing down at Thelma’s and really understanding the work of RS and similar organizations in other parts of the country. The people that are being hit the hardest right now are those that are in economically disadvantaged areas and they really, really need the extra help. And they can't just run down to the store and go pick up the stuff.
Fr. Justin: I'm very excited about the work that you're doing with SEJ. As I understand it, with every order that people make, as PPE is available, you're going to be donating to RS. And through RS, we're actually going to be able to distribute that into low income communities. And, certainly use it here in Kansas City as well. Let's talk a little bit about your volunteering. Even yesterday, Steve, you were in here. I think you're sporting a Thelma’s Kitchen t-shirt right now. Thank you! Why don't you describe in your own words what Thelma’s Kitchen is and then what you've been doing since the whole world kind of went on lock-down and all the restaurants closed in Kansas City.
Steve: Thelma’s Kitchen is the first donate-what-you-can cafe in Kansas City, where guests come in and either donate the suggested price, or more or less, or donate 30 minutes of volunteer time in exchange for lunch. About 70% of the guests are food insecure. Folks can bus some tables, do some dishes, and do some other things that just help the restaurant run. To me, one of the most remarkable things about Thelma’s Kitchen is that there's really only two full-time employees that run and operate the restaurant. The amount of volunteer work is remarkable and seeing the Lunch On Me KC crowd, which if there are any organizations out there -- once things get back up and running -- Lunch On Me KC is a great program where groups can sponsor lunch in Thelma’s and bring in their team to volunteer together in the cafe. You also get a chance to learn a lot more about the economic disinvestment along Troost and how that has impacted the area.
Fr. Justin: And you haven’t spent a lot of time down here on Troost before that, that I'm aware of. So one of the things that I'm interested in talking about on The Social Leader show is what you've learned and how it's affected your leadership. So what have you learned? What have you seen? What have you heard since you've been volunteering at Thelma’s Kitchen on Troost with Reconciliation Services?
Steve: You know, I think a lot of it's really just about humanizing the statistics. Because, I like to think that I'm socially aware and cognizant of a lot of issues that are going on. But when you really see the story of the individuals and learn their stories, that puts a completely different spin on the statistics, you know. We can throw the statistics about, you know, inequality and diversity and equity issues and all kinds of things. But when you see it on a day to day basis, and you really understand who these people are and and really understand the value that they bring and their capabilities. When you see that firsthand, that's a very different understanding. And so to me, just seeing the amazing work that so many volunteers and so many of your staff are doing on a daily basis, and just getting to know some of these folks. It's been a tremendous gift for me just to get to know them, and I've really enjoyed that opportunity.
Fr. Justin: I appreciate you sharing that. For Reconciliation Services, which is the organization that runs Thelma’s Kitchen at 31st and Troost, the world is really, really different now than it was just a month ago. On average during lunch at Thelma’s Kitchen, we would probably serve about 150 meals a day. And now we're well over 300 meals a day. But it's very, very different because instead of volunteering for a meal or taking donations in a donate-what-you-can cafe, now we've got tables at the front and we're just giving away food, but we're trying very hard to keep that Thelma’s Kitchen quality and so it's all fresh cooked every day. We have volunteer chefs as well as our full time chef, Artis, working in Thelma’s Kitchen every day. We're cooking for the community. And that's an interesting thing, because we're never sure each day how many people will come. Sometimes it's 220. Sometimes it's 350. And because we're giving away the food, one of the things that's really different is a very different crowd coming down. Normally, you've got a mix of everybody, from working poor and low income, or even homeless, and CEOs and people working in the community. The whole idea is really to bring people together in a unique way. But now it's not only the homeless that I'm seeing, but I'm actually seeing people who are just now getting laid off. There was a woman I talked to who was a maintenance tech with one of the big law firms in town and she ended up getting let go. There was another person I saw who was a painter and he's out of work. Things are really shifting. While I think there is hope and promise that we might emerge out of this at some point in time in the near future, it's going to be tough for a really long time.
You know, Steve, one of the things I want to transition to talking about is this idea of leadership and social leadership, because your experiences at Thelma’s Kitchen, as well as other places where you volunteered and been involved with have really shaped the kind of perspective that you bring to your leadership, that kind of emotional intelligence maturation that we're all seeking in our leadership. I know that you had a story early on in your life where you really had a paradigm shift in your understanding of leadership and empathy. I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing kind of what formed your leadership now and share some of those stories?
Steve: Yeah, you bet. I've got four kids, two of them have a rare immune system disease which has caused a lot of issues. One specifically, Josh, when he was 12 months old, he started throwing up 10 or 12 times a day, horrible diarrhea 10 or 12 times a day. And from the time he was 12 months to the time he's about 26 months, he was just crashing hard falling off the growth charts, would fall over on the floor and didn't have the energy to get up. We were taking him to multiple hospitals and doctors and trying to figure out what was going on. We literally had a doctor tell us that he didn't know what was happening and he was gonna die and we needed to figure it out. And so it was a very, very stressful time for us. At 26 months, we finally got him diagnosed with a disease called eosinophilic gastrointestinal disease, where essentially his body rejected all food as if it was an allergen. And that's an oversimplification, but basically he was allergic to all food. And so fast forward, shortly after he turned three, we got him on his first feeding tube, which was a nasogastric tube, just right up the nose. And that was a process. We went into the hospital, stayed overnight, not overly complicated, but it's already been a long medical odyssey for us and we were pretty exhausted. My wife and I get him home and we are now at the point where literally, he cannot eat any food. It's only ice. And so when he says he wants to eat, ice is what we would give to him. So we're at home that night, my wife and I are emotionally spent. It's been a long couple of days, a long couple of years. And Josh is on the couch. And he's kind of moping because he wants to eat something and we're telling him he can't. And so as my wife and I are preparing dinner, Josh is sitting on the couch and unbeknownst to us, our two older kids, Hope and Brendan, who at the time were 10 and 8, went over to the refrigerator and got their own cups of ice, and then went and sat down next to their brother, and just ate ice with him. My wife and I turned around, and we saw this and we lost it. I'm talking snot bubbles, bawling, just absolutely losing control. And it was in that moment that two very interesting things happened: The first thing is that it was a very strong point that our lives had now changed and that we were going to have to redefine what normal was. We were going to have to find that new normal and we didn't know what it was. We didn't know what it was going to look like. We didn't know how hard it was going to be. We didn't know if he was gonna live. We had a lot of uncertainty around that. But at the same time, the second point was that his brother and sister found in themselves an opportunity to provide incredible compassion in a moment of tremendous vulnerability and tremendous weakness for Josh and for certainly for his parents as well. It was a beautiful encapsulation of the pain and the challenge that goes along with all of this and at the same time, the beauty that can be a part of the uncertainty and the fear and the chaos. That moment has really shaped me in a lot of ways over the years, because every time something would happen, that would be difficult, that would be challenging in some way, I would routinely look back on that and recognize that, you know what, we're going to get through it. We don't know how, we don't know when, and we don't know why. But we're going to get through all of this, and there's going to be some beauty along the way. When you now fast forward, I'm extremely excited to say that Josh actually just got his feeding tube removed last month, and so he had that tube for 11 years. And it was a pretty profound experience. I won't get into details there, but that's an amazing thing that we are still so excited about.
But as we sit here today, as we look at COVID, and everything that that's doing, it's creating enormous uncertainty and fear and concern about what is the future going to look like? And none of us have the answer. We don't know. And we, unfortunately, have to sit in the “I don’t know” moment for a little while longer. And that's very, very challenging. But at the same time, it does create the opportunity for us to seek and seek out those compassionate beautiful things that are all around us. Which, you know, in a simple way, it's our family. It's the people that we're all locked up with that, you know, sometimes gets a little frustrating and sometimes a little bit angry. And there's a lot of other emotions attached to it. But the reality is, these are the people that we are closest to and that we have the opportunity to connect with in deeper and more meaningful ways. And so on a personal level, that is a really significant lesson out of all of this. And then on a professional level for me, that's why we started SEJ Services because we saw there is real uncertainty. There are absolutely a lot of bad actors out there who are doing some things that they shouldn't be doing, price gouging, all that sort of thing. And it is hurting our society. Because we are making it harder, or more difficult, or in some ways, making it impossible for people to get the equipment that they so desperately need. And so we wanted to be a part of that, not so we can make a ton of money, but so we could use that as a way to create opportunity and most importantly, to give back to this community that is not getting the opportunities that they normally would. We're in the midst of a complicated time. and it's scary and it's challenging, but there's a lot of beauty in it if we're willing to look for it.
Fr. Justin: Yeah, you’ve unpacked so much in that one story, I want to dive in just a little bit, and ask you to talk about how that experience, where you saw your son who was in great pain and really suffering, when you saw your other kids sit down on the couch with him and begin to eat ice chips and not eat dinner because he couldn't eat dinner and he was suffering so much. That kind of mercy and empathy that we see oftentimes in our children, sometimes even before we bring it out, I think drives home the kind of vulnerability and empathetic leadership that we're talking about now in workshops and in the corporate world. I'd love to know how that impacts you now as a leader. A lot of us in leadership are doing the best we can, but then we get to a certain point where we want to grow in our leadership, and we want to get underneath the basics, lean startup, and those kinds of things that entrepreneurs and leaders talk about, we've all read those books. But what's really lacking is that personal transformation very often. When people have gone through that and are able to bring that transformation into their leadership, I call those people social leaders because oftentimes, their worldview is so much bigger in the work that they're doing. They understand the impact that they're able to have. How did that experience of seeing your children there next to your son on the couch change your leadership style in such a way that you've become really a social leader in Kansas City?
Steve: It's a complicated question with a complicated answer, but I'll try to boil it down in a real simple way. I think there's two primary pieces to that. One of them is getting control of your emotional state and recognizing that your emotions can take you down a really negative path and can also spin up and have a negative impact on the people around you. I think the first part of it is really understanding that. For me, that really manifested in the sense that from the time that Josh was diagnosed, the next three years were brutal. We kept a blog and I've gone back and I've tried to reread it at times and I can't get through it. We had a boatload of challenges, tons of hospital visits, and all kinds of things that were going wrong. And it was really, really hard. That had me in a place where emotionally I was so spun up in my emotions all the time, it was very difficult to function in the real world. And unfortunately, you have to. We all have challenges that we're dealing with and we have to be able to actually just function and do what we need to do. For me, after three years of really just being in a difficult place emotionally, I had to make a decision that I was going to stop living in my emotions all the time. Certainly acknowledge them, be aware of them, but I can't let those rule me as I'm moving forward. I think we're all getting caught up in a lot of negative emotions right now about a lot of stuff and those can have a cascading effect that can be really, really negative on us. So I think that's kind of the first part of it, is recognizing your emotional state, being able to identify when you're in a negative emotional state, trying to pull yourself out of it, and recognize that maybe that's not where I need to be. I think that's a part of it.
The other thing that, for me, was a really critical thing, which any of my friends have heard me say a million times, not just with the health situations with the kids, I also lost a business in the great recession, we had a lot of other really significant challenges that we went through over the course of many, many, many, many years. And, if you asked me today, what I got out of all of that, at the end of the day, is that I have a perverse appreciation for pain and suffering. What I mean by that is, pain and suffering is a part of life. Even at this point, I don't even look at it as something that we should be running away from or trying to avoid. We need to really learn to lean into the pain and suffering. I will tell you that I am, I think, a better person when I am suffering, because my priorities get straight. I get much better about figuring out how things are. When things are going really well for me, I tend to think it's because I'm brilliant and amazing and that's not always the best space to be in. When it comes to relationships and friendships, I can go to bad places when I'm convinced that it's because I'm so smart and capable. So for me, pain and suffering plays a really, really important role. It is a part of all of our lives, like right now we are having a collective experience of pain and suffering, but I think it's really important for us to recognize. This is a part of the human condition right now, this social isolation. It’s something that we gotta deal with, but we're all experiencing this together. So this is a form of pain and it is a form of suffering. And for some people, this is really, really brutal. For some of us, it's not fun, it's not ideal, but we're going to be okay, and everything in between. But this pain and suffering, this is the good stuff. When things are great, that's awesome, but at the end of the day, pain and suffering is coming into all of our lives in different ways. And my pain is different from your pain from anyone else, we all have our own different pain. And it's not about his is worse or hers is easier. It's not about anything like that. Pain and suffering, though, is a real and important part of life. And I think that the more we can lean into that creates vulnerability. If you're going to lead people and you're not vulnerable, you're going to have a very difficult time leading them effectively. If you cannot connect to people where they are at, like, really where they're at, not just “oh, well you were late today, come on, do better,” if you're only connecting on those very surface levels, that's not real human connection. And at the end of the day, like I said, we're having a very human experience right now, a collective human experience. We are all able now to hopefully provide a little bit of vulnerability into “hey, this is who I really am and these are the struggles that I'm having, and now let me help you,” let us all help each other. There's a ton of stories. I know people love to talk about the negative stuff. There are so many cool things where people are dropping their guard and they're opening up their hearts and they're connecting with people that they otherwise wouldn't have. It's happening everywhere, all over the place. I think there's gonna be some amazing positives out of this whole experience. One very big picture thing, I'm actually kind of excited where things are going to go environmentally. We're seeing amazing impacts globally where communities that were just completely pollution-filled are now clean. We are actually seeing the environmental impact that we are having in our areas in our cities and in our countries and that is a powerful tool that gives us an opportunity to really make meaningful changes and recognize the impact that we have. That doesn't happen without this pain and suffering. A lot of families are broken and sometimes it's really, really hard and there's no easy way out of that sometimes, but this is giving us an opportunity to maybe heal and vulnerability is a great place to start. So I think it is pain and suffering, it's about understanding our emotions, but it's also about diving in and really leaning into the pain and suffering that we're dealing with.
Fr. Justin: Yeah, I think you've brought up something really important in terms of developing and maturing as social leaders and as leaders. Whether you're in a nonprofit context, you're an entrepreneur, or you're in the corporate world, even if you're a hiring manager, each of us has an opportunity to allow that vulnerability into our work. When we do that, people see us in a way where we really change. Instead of just being a leader who's managing a process, we become somebody who really is interfacing with the people that we live and work with every day in a genuine way. I love what you brought up about suffering. There's a saying that I love, that joy comes into the world actually only through suffering. I think this human experience, this global experience that we're going through with COVID-19 has in it a hidden gift. That is that since we're all sharing a common suffering to one degree or another, we can all point back like when we can say “do you remember 9-11?,” “do you remember the assassination of MLK?,” each generation has had something like that. But it's been a long time since the world has been through something like this. As minor as this may be as compared to a world war, it is something that intimates that kind of experience and in a world that is so divided, where our leadership is so scattered and fragmented, and our inner life is so underdeveloped, this quarantining of our person, of our family, of our companies, has a gift within it that can make us better leaders. When we come to cultivate that inner life within us, we take time for silence, and we make room for suffering and the experience or viewing authentically of the suffering of others. It's only through that that we really can make progress. I think that this kind of experience is going to create better retention in companies and nonprofits. It's going to separate the wheat from the chaff in many ways. I know from hiring a number of people that millennials in particular, but really all of us, are looking for companies that are authentic, not just giving charity, not just having diversity, equity, inclusion seminars and checking check-boxes. They're looking for those companies where this kind of vulnerability and emotional intelligence and the co-suffering love kind of understanding is innate within the culture. Those people, who I call social leaders, are people who live that, breed that, and are advocating for that in their companies, in their families, and in this world.
Steve, I want to just give you a chance before we wrap up here to let you share anything else that you'd like to. Again, I really appreciate you coming on as the co-founder of SEJ Services, as a volunteer with Thelma’s Kitchen every single week. and as somebody who has been a dear friend to me. Are there any final thoughts that you'd like to leave us with, particularly with regard to becoming a social leader
Steve: I think that one of the things that oftentimes we get hung up on is “but I'm supposed to do this,” or “I'm supposed to do that,” or “well, my job requires this or that” and all of that kind of thing. I think to be a social leader, it's not necessarily going out and launching a new company that's going to have a social venture component to it or even the really big things. It's the little stuff that we can do on a day-to-day basis that makes us a social leader. It's interacting in our community, which is something that used to happen at a higher level than it does these days in some senses. It's going to the grocery store and picking up some food for your neighbor, you're being a social leader. It's these little tiny things that we can do that impact those that we are not directly responsible for or responsible to that really creates a very powerful society and one that is a community that we all want to be a part of. I think we all kind of lose sight of it because we all have our phones in front of our face all the time and we're living this online life which is only sort of a little bit real at times, but a lot of aspects of that are not real. It also means that we are losing track of and losing sight of the people that are all around us. Each one of us. We live where we live, and we work where we work. We have communities of people all around us, all of whom have times when they're going through difficulties. They're all suffering at times, they all hurt sometimes, and if we can just do a little bit of a better job of just connecting with them in their pain, and just saying, “Hey, I'm really sorry, that sucks, what you're going through is not a lot of fun, but I'm here for you.” Just start connecting with people in those little ways and that is being a social leader. We need to take this as an opportunity to just kind of take a breath, kind of the great exhale, and now come up with: Who do we want to be? How do we want to impact the people around us? I know for me, I've actually connected with our neighbors a lot more than I have in the last five years. That's not good on my part that it took this to make that happen, but I've actually had some conversations with some people lately, which is just different. So just recognize wherever we're planted, we all have people around us that we can reach out to that we can impact in a small way. Start by smiling at them, start by using a kind word, and then just let it build. If you've got a bigger vision for how you want to impact your community and especially engage and involve the people that maybe don't have the same kind of opportunities that a lot of us have, great, awesome, go do it! There's tons of resources for it. Father Justin is an amazing social venture guy. Even though he's got that collar around his neck, he is a true entrepreneur. I've always been extremely impressed with everything that he does, but there are ways to get out there for us to go and impact our communities right now.
Fr. Justin: Well, I want to highlight, again, your company SEJ Services. You guys are trying to get personal protective equipment right now into the hands of those who need it the most. You're doing that without price gouging. You're doing that in a way with low low margins and trying to get it here as fast as possible, which is a part of your leadership, but then going even above and beyond that. As a for profit company, you're doing more than charity, you're actually saying with every order that's made, you're going to give away some to Reconciliation Services and to low income communities. I’m really grateful to have you on today and thank you for being the first on the first episode of The Social Leader. There’s more to come for everybody. Thank you so much for being with us and I hope to see you again down here at Thelma’s Kitchen really soon.
The Social Leader Podcast is brought to you by Reconciliation Services. You can find out more about Reconciliation Services at rs3101.org. You can also check out our first social venture, Thelma’s Kitchen, which is right now giving away hundreds and hundreds of meals every day to people who need it the most. Thanks for joining us.