Join us in learning from the story, values and vision of Devin Hibbard with Street Business School. Growing up in a family deeply committed to social justice and humanitarian causes Devin has become an entrepreneur and community leader with a sense of purpose and a desire to make a difference in the world.

We delve into Devin’s values, including her belief in the power of relationships and the importance of leading with love. This approach has guided her work and inspires us to pursue love as the catalyst of transformation in our own work.

This has all led to her vision for reclaiming the idea of entrepreneurship and making it accessible to people from all backgrounds—seeking to empower women living in extreme poverty to start their own businesses. Devin’s story serves as a powerful reminder of the impact that one person’s story, values, and vision can have on the world.

Show Notes

You can learn more about Devin’s work with Street Business School at streetbusinessschool.org.

This podcast is brought to you by the team at The Cultural North. It’s edited and scored by Ethan Gibbs. Written by Hannah Fordice and Beau Walsh.

You can learn more about our passion for bringing peoples about into action through web, branding, and film by visiting our website at culturalnorth.us.

Transcript

Beau: This is The About Page. 

A podcast by a group of web makers who explore the connection between what we’re about and what we do.

With Aaron Johnson. 

Aaron: I don’t do Reddit, so I don’t know. I’m the old guy. 

Beau: Me, Beau Walsh. 

Beau: You know, my birthday is actually in less than a week, which I keep forgetting. I literally keep…

Brynn: You didn’t tell me that.

Beau: I know. I keep forgetting it.

And welcoming our newest team member, Brynn Wilson.

Brynn: Yeah. You don’t have to be like Nelson Mandela or like One Direction to change the, to change the lives of others. You know?

Beau: And in this episode we talk with Devin Hibbard about her story,

Devin: My parents met in the peace corps. So I, I kind of joke that it’s like in my DNA that my job was to save the world.

Beau: her values,

Devin: We lead with love really is about the fact that we believe in the relationships between people as the most important thing to create transformation.

Beau: and her vision. 

Devin: Let’s reclaim this idea of entrepreneurship. We can have a street business school that’s accessible to women who are living in extreme poverty, who are maybe non literate. That entrepreneurship, that business creation should really be for everyone.

Introduction

Beau: Devin Hibbard is the CEO and co-founder of Street Business School, an NGO (or non-government organization) with the mission of ending generational poverty by training and equipping women to build sustainable businesses in their local communities. 

Although Devon trains internationally on entrepreneurship, her own path to starting street business school was, in her words, curved and bent along the way. 

Devin: I didn’t think of myself as an entrepreneur for years and years and years, so Street Business School actually is, uh, the result of, of an evolution, um, over almost 20 years now. 

My parents met in the peace corps, and my stepfather is an aids doctor and went to Uganda to help roll out the first aids drugs that were coming out across Africa.

Beau: And while her stepfather was in Africa, Devin and her mom went to visit him.

Devin: On that first visit, had a chance encounter with a woman living in desperate poverty who, um, was making jewelry out of recycled paper, but told us she had no markets. 

Beau: So in response to the beautiful jewelry they saw being made on that trip, Devin, her mom, and a family friend, decided to start an organization to help these crafts women gain access to the global market. The organization was called BeadforLife.

Devin: BeadforLife really came about in a very organic way. We started working with a couple women who were making these jewelry products and bringing their products back to the US. Um, but the three founders didn’t have any business experience. We didn’t have any MBAs among us.

And so instead, what we did is we did what we, we, we knew how to do, which was we gathered women together and we told stories and we shared these beautiful products. And what we found is that people loved the jewelry, but they really were inspired by the story of women who were just like us, trying to find a better life for their children. Who really, all they lacked was the opportunity.

Beau: The idea was that by partnering women from North America with women in Africa, BeadforLife could create the opportunity for these craftswoman to raise themselves out of poverty. 

Devin: So BeadforLife founded in 2004. And because we had this idea, we started talking to women and somebody who was a writer did freelance work sometimes for Oprah Winfrey. And so she said it’s a super long shot, but I’m going to write up a little story. 

Beau: In December of 2004, a publication of Oprah Winfrey called O Magazine published a short story about BeadforLife. It resulted in a sudden influx of orders totaling roughly $90,000 worth of jewelry in just six weeks. 

Devin: And we were stunned. We were completely shocked and totally unprepared. We didn’t have a, an office. We didn’t have a staff. We had no like organizational structure and all of a sudden we had this incredible success and we were, you know, we were buying beads as fast as we can. And we were smuggling them back in people’s backpacks to the United States. But what it taught us was is that there was really an appetite for, for people to get involved in transformative work like this. 

Beau: The rapid growth they experienced from O Magazine really pushed Devon and her co-founders at BeadforLife to think about how they wanted to grow and what that would look like for an organization.

To them, the most important thing was the craftswoman they were representing in the marketplace.

So they went to them and asked:

Devin: What is it that you’re you want, what is it that you need? What are your dreams? And that was the best thing that ever happened to us because it, it incorporated from the very first moment, the fact that our program was incorporating the voices and the direction of the people that we were serving, rather than us coming in with some grand idea of what people needed, they were telling us what they needed and we were co-creating. 

Beau: And they set out to make it sustainable beyond just what BeadforLife was doing that if the organization ceased to exist, the women they worked with would be financially stable within the context of their local economy. 

Devin: We looked at ways that we could create a graduation model where women would come in, earn money, but then get training on how to start with their own small business in the local economy. 

Beau: so you could graduate them out and then 

Devin: We could serve more women and they would be really sustainable. And so this idea of business training, we started working on in those very, very early days. 

Beau: So as be for life continued to grow, Devin kept evaluating and refining their business training. She would ask the women who graduated from the program what had worked for them and what hadn’t then go back and she’d tweak the training. This relentless dedication to excellence got beat for life to the place where they were able to consistently produce robust results.

Devin: At that point we said, how can we continue to scale? How can we reach more people? Because we were only serving a couple hundred women. And, um, so we decided to take the business training piece that we had developed and to, to offer that to people who never made a jewelry product for us. So this was a group that we weren’t giving them any startup capital or any financing we were saying, let’s just give them the knowledge of how to start a business. And then the other thing that we do, which is really important is we help people build confidence because for the women that we we serve, living under a dollar ninety a day, they have never had anyone in their lives. Generally. Who’ve said, we believe in you. You can do anything. And so , the lack of belief that they can be a successful entrepreneur, that they can be a successful business owner is really the biggest hurdle. And it’s not until you help women see that they, maybe they can do that that they’re able to take the knowledge and, and change their lives.

Beau: This combination of confidence and business training was the genesis of Devin’s current organization, Street Business School, which is on a mission to reach 1 million people across the world. Women like Roset, a young mother in Uganda.

Rosette’s Story

Devin: Rosette has one son and her husband was a day laborer. And so he would go off every day and he’d try and find work. And sometimes you know, he’d, he’d get work and they have enough money to, meet their needs. And sometimes he wouldn’t and they wouldn’t eat that day or they’d have to skip a meal. 

Beau: Rosette and her family lived in a swampy part of Kampala, which would frequently flood with the seasonal rains. So every couple of months their home would be flooded and their baby would get sick.

Devin: They were living in pretty difficult circumstances. So Rosette heard about street business school and she went off to the first training.

Beau: The third module in the street business school training program is called Finding Capital and starting small. In this section, they teach women how to begin a business with very little startup capital.

Devin: And we teach them how to, you know, you borrow a dollar here and maybe you wash somebody’s clothes and you get another dollar and you piece together $4. And that’s what you start your business with. 

So Rosette was inspired and she pieced together a couple dollars and she started a very small vegetable stand. And when I say vegetable stand, I mean, like she had a shawl on the ground and she had five tomatoes and two eggplant, right. Small. And her neighbors came by and they laughed at her.

Beau: They said things like, That’s not a business. What are you doing? You should be starting a real business. 

Devin: And Rosette, she didn’t say anything. She was really mad. But she went to her house and she, uh, like kind of a chalkboard outside her house. And on the side of her house, she wrote work, not words, work, not words.

Beau: And so that’s what she did. She got back to work. She sold her tomatoes and grew her business a little bit at a time. 

Devin: By the time I met Rosette she had a proper stand on the side of the road, you know, it was like a little wood structure and people could stop and they could buy her vegetables and she had 10 different kinds of vegetables. You know, she had really built this into a, a going business. And when I met her, she told me the story and she said, and my neighbors are not laughing anymore. And I just love that, that confidence, you know, she, had it inside herself. We didn’t do anything, but help her believe that she could.

Core Value #1: Lead with Love

Beau: Rosette’s story really exemplifies street business school’s core values. Over the last year, Devin and her team have spent a lot of time intentionally articulating not just one, but seven core values that they hold as an organization.

They include leading with love, valuing human dignity and social justice, creating transformational impact, recognizing the innate power of every person, committing to acts of celebration and joy, keeping collaboration as the cornerstone, and finally to never stop learning.

But I think it’s important to focus in for a second on that first core value leading with love, because it’s the first for a reason. 

Devin: We lead with love really is about the fact that we believe in the relationships between people as the most important thing to create transformation. When we speak about building confidence in women, the way we do that is that we really walk the journey with them. We, we do what we call coaching and, um, , we help women to believe in themselves by believing in them. 

 We are very intentional about the language that we use. When I first started working in Uganda and we’d be working with women, they’d say, “oh, mama Devin, you’re here to save us.” You know? And that was not the relationship that we were setting up.

And so we thought a lot about the language and we decided that coach was the right way to characterize the relationship that we’re creating with the women. 

Beau: A coach is someone who will help you, give you advice, come alongside you as you strive for your goals. But a coach won’t win the race for you. And that is a very important distinction for street business School. In order to create sustainable businesses, the women starting them have to know that they can run the business without outside help. That they are capable. 

Devin: On the very first day we meet with the women. We also say, we’re gonna call you coach, you’re coach rose, you’re coach, uh, Phoebe, you’re coach… and the reason for that is because we know that we have as much to learn from you as you have to learn from us. And so we have all these coaches in the room and it is this way to capture the philosophy of how we want to relate to women. 

Beau: To build that confidence. Street Business School meets with each woman in the six month training program, three times in person, either at that woman’s house, her business, or the training site. And according to Devin, 

Devin: The goal of that meeting is really, um, it, it, we, you know, we do some business mentorship, but it’s, it’s really to help a woman see that we care. An example is when you go into a house, if you’re going in to meet a woman for the first time and you come in and you’re dressed all fancy and you have your clipboard and you’re, you know, you come in and you’re like, I don’t wanna sit on your, your, you know, your floor because it’s dirty in that first minute, you’ve lost her, right in that first minute, you’ve lost the opportunity to create that connection. And so that idea of we lead with love

Beau: It’s really about the fact that the relationship is the most important thing. It’s what you lead with 

Devin: All the other stuff, all the, all, all the tools and tips on how to run a business, if she doesn’t believe in herself. And if she doesn’t see that you’re walking that journey with her. Then the likelihood that she’ll be successful is much lower. And so we lead with love is really about creating that from the very beginning, that personal connection.

Beau: The core value of leading with love doesn’t just stop with the women that street Business, School trains. They make it a philosophy, something that they apply to every part of their business.

Devin: When we’re working with donors, when I’m working with fund. We’re creating a relationship that’s based on reciprocity. You know, I’m always thinking, how do I help my funders get what they need and want?

Beau: Devin calls this the currency of generosity.

Devin: Like we have this currency that we can share more than just dollars. We can share our, our life energy and our knowledge and our connections. And I really believe that that comes around. And so we think about this core concept we lead with love as something that is, uh, a 360 value. It’s not just us to the women. It’s really everything we do. 

Discussion 1

Brynn: Okay. Off the record, leave with love? 

Aaron: Lead.

Brynn: ‘Cause my notes say leave for some reason.

Aaron: Oh. That is not it. 

Brynn: I was like, I’m not putting two and two together. Okay. 

Beau: be loving, but also get outta here. 

Brynn: On the record, take two

Aaron: What about the difference between leading with love and saving with love?

Because there’s, there’s real possibility to have a savior complex of, especially in a, in a, in a program like the street business school where we are coming in to save these women.

Brynn: Right.

Aaron: So as opposed to leading with love is we’re gonna coach these women.

Brynn: I think if you’re saving, I think oftentimes people like it for maybe the fame that comes along with it or the pats on the back and whatnot. And while that’s good, you know, every now and then you like to be recognized for your work, if that’s your sole purpose of doing it, you might not be in the right field.

Beau: So saving should be reserved for like the lifeguard jumping into the water and stopping some sort of urgent calamity versus leading should be used for long term change, I think is, is maybe how I see it. You know, saving is what a doctor does.

Saving is what? Um, Um, firefighters, save. But then, uh, you know, people who help create a long-term future, uh, and set you on the trajectory, you know, that’s, that’s a storyteller, that’s a counselor. Those are the types of, of relationships that I see leading with love rather than saving.

Aaron: Sure. So like the, the giving a man a fish mm-hmm. that feeds him for a day.

That’s saving. Yes. It’s the immediate need. You are gonna die of hunger. I’m just gonna give you a fish because quite honestly, you don’t have time to learn how to fish.

But once that immediacy is taken care of, now I change gears and I lead with love and I teach you how to fish.

Lead with Love in Web Design

Beau: Well, so I have a question. Um, as web designers, um, and, and, uh, web makers, is that what we call ourselves? As web makers, uh, how do we lead with love in web design? You know, I, I think immediately what I, what comes to my mind is, is when we’re, uh, you know, we’re creating a website and writing a website in order to help somebody with the need that they have. And I think it helps to identify the, are we leading or are we saving in that, in that need? Um, and so, and who are we leading and who are we saving and where are we leading or saving them

Aaron: mm-hmm.

Beau: Um, I think answering those questions gives us a better way of immediately speaking to the needs of the visitor of the website.

Aaron: Yeah. Is the goal to build a long term relationship with the, the visitor to the website, or is the goal to facilitate a transaction? Because those are two very different communication styles of, if I’m building a long term relationship with the visitor and I want them to come back again and again and again and again, I need to give them reasons to come back again and again and again, which typically means new content, new.

Uh, new elements that are gonna consistently engage them and, and drive them to want to come back. Whereas if it’s just facilitating a transaction, it’s very quick. It’s very to the point, it’s very direct and it serves that need immediately.

Beau: And in our processes, are we taking that step back or that moment to pause and think about the end user and care for them? You know, we, um, we get the benefit of not just caring for our clients, but caring for their customers, um, or clients. And so we have a, we have a lot of people that we get to care for ,uh, and, uh, such a wide variety.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way because I love to just get to sit and, and wonder how a, um, uh, I’m trying to think of examples of, uh, how a snowboarder is going to interact with our, our website or how a beer drinker is going to interact with our website and, how can I care about them and their needs.

Um, and, and I know this is, it’s starting to kind of trivialize the work that we do compared to, uh, Devon’s because she’s loving people who really need it. And I’m talking about snowboarders and beer drinkers, but, uh, but everybody needs love. , 

I guess is what we could take

Aaron: how about, how about home buyers or how about, how about, um, individuals who need to use a food

Beau: Mm-hmm. 

Brynn: right. 

Once again, just meeting people where they’re at. Mm-hmm. , 

whether they’re just looking for lift tickets or the food for the table

Aaron: mm-hmm.

Beau: and, and are we building a culture? Is is our website Here we go? Is our website facilitating the culture around anybody who interacts with it to feel more loved, to then have more capacity for going out and loving others? Yeah. 

And does something as simple as a website or a product or a video, does any of that have an effect on the world around it?

Aaron: It’s, how are we. How are we personally, our team leading with love of our clients and helping them to achieve the, the outcomes that that they desire for their marketing efforts, for their branding, for their website, like whatever we’re working on with them, how do we help them? How do we lead them with love?

And then in turn, by extension, how do we help them lead their clients with love? And so really, we’re two, we’re two degrees deep in this, in this exchange. And so we have to be incredibly intentional with what we’re doing. And if we aren’t, if we’re not intentional, if we’re not clear, if we don’t acknowledge the humanity that’s around this, we’re gonna fall short.

We’re gonna fall woefully short

Beau: Mm-hmm. Websites are such a beautiful juxtaposition of this because there’s so much humanity and technology that comes together. 

Mm-hmm. . And 

I think that’s what’s interesting and, and really design in general, uh, is these, these highly technical things like shapes or code coming together to create something for humans that are going to interact with it.

And so it’s this, this organically made, technologically geometrically made thing. It’s like this, this fascinating juxtaposition

Aaron: that Inc. Insights the emotions of the humans that are working with it, that are viewing it.

Brynn: I think with website building too, whether it’s for the client that we’re working with or for their audience, I think to be understood is to be loved. 

Beau: Yeah,

Brynn: yeah. Sure. 

Whether it’s being understood in the way a logo represents their brand or being understood in a way of getting really easy lift tickets. It’s, it’s, yeah. Synonymous with each other.

Core Value #2

Beau: Leading with love and walking shoulder to shoulder in a mutual coaching relationship with the women they train is just the tip of the iceberg for street business school. After all, they still have six other core values and each of them is central to the way that Street business school approaches the issue of global poverty. Of particular importance to Devon is the core value of creating transformational impact.

Beau: Devon is almost obsessive in the best way possible in measuring the impact that street business school is creating.

Devin: I really believe there’s so many organizations that are out there who are doing their thing, and they have nice stories and they don’t make any difference at all in the life of the people that they’re serving. And yet they’re, they’re, you know, getting big salaries and recognition. And I, I hate that. I feel like there’s so many problems in the world that organizations that are not truly moving the needle should disappear. And so we believe that we have to measure our impact. We have to be accountable to the people that we serve and that we have to use data to drive our decision making. And so we are, we are really strong on evaluation. 

Beau: Women in the street business school program start out at just a dollar 35 per day.

Devin: After the six month program, they increase their income by 54% on average. But then we actually go back two years later, because again, we care about sustainability. And so two years later, we know that women are now earning an average of $4 and 19 cents a day. 

Beau: Although that may not sound like much, that $4 and 19 cents a day means that these women have been lifted out of extreme poverty as defined by the world bank.

Devin: We also track business ownership and we know that 89% of women, two years later have at least one. business Open. And we know, I think it’s 46% who have two or more businesses. So you also start to see this beautiful diversification in business streams. That’s the kind of impact that we care about. We wanna see measurable effect on the life and, the wellbeing of their family. 

Beau: And one of the ways that they can make that measurable effect seen not just in the boardroom, but also in the local community, is through their core value of acts of celebration and joy. Because most of the women who attend street business school have never graduated from anything before, sometimes not even from primary school.

Devin: When women graduate from street business school, after the six months, we throw a huge graduation party in their community. We hire a marching band. All the women get graduation caps. We rent a hall, there’s a cake.

Beau: This graduation party does two things. One:

Devin: It changes their sense of who they are. This is a huge deal for them. When I was in Uganda in December, I, I attended a graduation and one woman had brought her entire family from like five hours away. She had brought them in for her graduation, from street business school. So that’s really important.

Beau: and second.

Devin: these women march through the community and have other people see them and witness them and say, wow, this is a big deal. And it creates the desire to live up to those expectations. So there’s some accountability in there as well. 

Beau: In other words, taking the time to celebrate and acknowledge the personal accomplishment of graduating from the school is a way of marking the impact the education and training are able to have on the individuals in that community.

Devin: Uh, countless global studies have shown that women are an important, um, uh, leverage for transformational change. So our organizational plan is to reach 1 million women by partnering with other NGOs who are the experts in their own community. And that is how we will reach a million women collectively. Um, and we know that those million women, uh, on average support five children. So we’re talking about 6 million people, uh, who will rise outta poverty through street business school. 

Discussion 2

Beau: I think it’s the book Good to Great talks about level five leadership and how level four leadership is, leading well , uh, while you’re there. But then level five leadership is leading them in a way now that when you do leave, they will be able to continue to go on.

And what does that more than culture? Cause I mean, it passes down, it passes around. Um, it, it builds into our habits, you know, thinking of, you know, these women now, uh, becoming successful and being able to inspire others based off of their habits, 

You know, culture is so much more of a,modifier to these, to these ideas. 

Aaron: Well, and you also are the sum total of the people that you hang out with. So if, if you start hanging out with a group of people who are driven and entrepreneurial and spirit and um, are, are achieving these things, you’re naturally gonna be pulled along with them.

And by osmosis you’re just gonna catch some of this stuff. And so they’re transforming the culture that they’re in just by being the women that they

Brynn: Mm-hmm. 

Aaron: And I loved how you said, you know, you tied it to culture being passed down because that’s absolutely true.

Beau: Mm-hmm. 

Aaron: Culture is passed down through song, culture is passed down through story, culture is passed down through attitude.

Culture is passed down through, you know, generational

Brynn: Dialogue.

Aaron: dialogue. Mm-hmm.

Where is culture passed? In our world specifically, where is culture passed between people?

Beau: I see, I see a lot in music. Um, and in the, the scenes that are around town, whether it’s the, the coffee shops or the bars, um, I think there’s a lot of culture that has passed through that. Um, I think it’s through the workplace actually. A lot of it, uh, if we, if we come in every day with a really negative attitude, um, that’ll affect the people on our team, which will then go out and affect the, you know, the family members who then go off to go to their jobs, who then get affected and it just kind of ripples out from there.

And so I think home and work, it’s the first, second and third places. I think it’s the places, uh, you know, first place is your home, second places your work, and then third place is the coffee shop or the bar.

And those, those, I think are, are where so much of our, of our relationships and our culture is formed.

Training Wheels

Brynn: Yeah is basically just like the training wheels for people

Aaron: Talk more about that.

Brynn: Oh, okay. So training wheels, right?

Aaron: You add them on,

Brynn: Right. There’s something, you buy extra,

Aaron: supplementary to a bicycle. A bicycle by definition is two wheels. Bi

Brynn: cycle.

Aaron: Yes. Um, and so you put training wheels on it, now you’ve got four wheels. four, quad,

Brynn: Ale had to, I never took Latin.

Aaron: Um, but what do, what do training wheels do and how is it analogous to leading with love

Brynn: So the bike is already whole in and of itself. It’s not broken. It’s not, there’s nothing wrong with it. And that’s what these people with entrepreneurial spirits that Devon is working with are like. They’re completely whole within themselves, but they need that extra addition or supplement to get moving.

So in this case, Devon is the training wheels and she’s just an add-on, not just an add-on. She’s a big part in their life, but the add-on needed to go forward. Yeah.

Beau: Cause the propulsion is them pedaling.

Brynn: Right, exactly.

They just need that extra balance to get there. Yeah, and the natural thing to do with those is that once you’re off biking on your own and you’re comfortable and you have your balance, then you take ‘ em off,

Aaron: Yeah. And when you take them off, you actually increase the performance of the bike. You can do less with a bike that has training wheels on it. You’re safer. You, you’re supported and you have an opportunity to learn.

But once those training wheels come off, now you can use the bike to its full potential,

Brynn: Well, and on top of that metaphor is another metaphor. 

Well, maybe not, but I, I grew up with siblings and things would get passed down to us. So once I was done with the training wheels that my brother would take ’em on and then he would learn with the training wheels until he was able to ride on his own.

And that’s kind of what these women that are getting on their own feet are doing, is they’re igniting the fuse and all of these other entrepreneurial people that just need those training wheels to start to get going.

Vision

Beau: Devin’s all in mentality is changing the landscape of small businesses across the globe using the power of entrepreneurship to end global poverty.

Devin: I really hate that in many parts of the world, now we only think of entrepreneurs as you know, people who have MBAs from Harvard and are running billion dollar companies. I feel like this idea of entrepreneurship has gotten hijacked by wall street. When it always started on main street.

 I think we lose something when we take entrepreneurship away from all of us. And so I think the power of entrepreneurship is really to steer one’s destiny, to be in charge of, of you know, of your future. For the women that we serve running successful businesses is not only the way they feed their kids and send them to school and, and, you know, get them at medical care. It is also a transformation in how they feel about themselves.

We really think about what we do is providing opportunity, not charity that people have within themselves already what they need. And what they lack is just the, the chance that they need. And once you open that door, they charge through and are able to claim their own power forever. 

Beau: and that personal transformation, the opportunity to claim their innate power both personally and professionally, it actually helps end the cycle of generational poverty.

Devin: If you’re a child in a household that’s in extreme poverty. And you’re not going to school and you’re not getting, you know, regular nutrition. And then your mother goes through this program and she starts a business. And now you have all those material things, but you also have now seen your mom as somebody who is capable and bold, and that transforms who you think of as, as yourself and what the options are and opportunities are for yourself as a young person.

So for those boys and girls who are in the households of, of these, you know, mamas with businesses, what they think is possible has also transformed. Um, and I think that’s the power of entrepre.

Beau: For Devin, everything, all of our core values, they point to this:

Devin: seeing women transforming their lives. That’s like candy to me. You know, when I get to actually go out into the field and talk to women like Rosette, it’s not just that their kids have food on the table. It’s that the like spark in her eye, that dignity that shines through is so palpable. And I think when you connect with someone who’s truly alive, it, it feeds you back. 

Conclusion

Beau: Our stories are one of the things that make us who we are. They inform what we do and where we’re going. And sometimes that trajectory can be cyclical where it feels like our efforts just get us to the same place where we were before. 

And I think that’s the case for most of us, that find ourselves in that survival situation, that our eyes start to glaze over and hopelessness sets in. 

I know I’ve felt it before. But when someone steps, in leading with love, opening my eyes to a, a future of possibilities and reminds me that I’m capable of reaching it myself, that has the power to set a fire inside. One that doesn’t just run on a flash in the pan, like greed or manipulation, but one that runs on the very same values that were imparted from that moment of inspiration.

And Devon’s example shows us how one person’s story and faithfulness to values can lead others towards a vision and change an entire community, and ultimately the world.

You can find out more about Devon and their work@streetbusinessschool.org. 

Outro

Beau: This show is brought to you by the team at The Cultural North.

It’s a design and marketing agency in Duluth, Minnesota. 

It’s edited and scored by Ethan Gibbs, and it’s written by Hannah Fordice and Beau Walsh. 

You can learn more about our passion for bringing peoples about into action through web branding and film by visiting our website at culturalnorth.us. 

Thank you for listening. I know we sound like seasoned podcasters, but we are still very much just getting going. 

We wanna get these episodes out to as many people as possible, so any amount of sharing or reviewing or rating our show, wherever it’s convenient, is a huge help for us. 

And you can also find show notes and learn more at our website, the about page.