Brews & BizDev S2E14 - Reinventing Workforce Development with Shelton Banks (Nonprofit Hiring)

they expect me to be like the the kid off of of channel 11 where you donate a dollar a day to help get me water and it's just like oh hell and i'm like that's not me yeah i'm not that like you that's not me i'm not selling candy bars here like what the [ __ ] that's not right so don't come at me don't don't have that type of energy when you come to me and say like hey i want to hire diverse talent like clearly you know when companies come to me they they want talent so the conversation usually starts with like how we we have a diversity problem we want to fix the diversity problem you know how much do your black and brown people cost because you know that that's that's how they come that's how the conversation starts and to me that's like whoa so if you're coming to me and you say you have a diversity problem and you just gonna you wanna pay me apples for oranges well i give you a black person and you give me a dollar like i don't like how that sounds i don't like how that looks like that's not on this episode of bruise and biz dev my illustrious guest is shelton banks from rework training and while shelton and i sip on a couple delicious beers from goose island brewery we talk about how shelton came to found rework based on his roots growing up in the south side of chicago what he and his organization are doing to battle the vicious cycle in workforce development that so many people get caught up in and he dispels the myth that non-profits don't make money and we tackle head on the damage that that myth does for the people involved and of course we talk about a lot more and we do it with some fun and some attitude so thanks for watching and enjoy hey sheldon how's it going bud thanks for being here oh man good to see you glad to be here excited to chitchat yeah yeah likewise glad to have you i think we'll have some fun pissing people off that's what we do here so i appreciate you coming on and joining join in the fun um before we get into the important stuff like drinking and what we're drinking uh why don't we just hit on you real quick introduce yourself to the audience who are you what do you do what are you all about y'all love it man so hey everybody i'm shelton banks from chicago south side of chicago at that like to to mention that just part of my heritage uh but here in chicago i'm the ceo of a non-profit organization called rework training that helps people uh like myself from from non-traditional backgrounds people of color black latinx to get jobs in the tech sales industry and so we all know that tech sales has this diversity problem and uh my mission my lot in life is to change that and not just change it from a you know like oh you get a job i mean i need you to get a job and make some money and do well for your family so you've been doing that for the last three years uh almost 40 years coming up here uh in chicago and you know we're expanding dude so we're expanding we've grown this business relatively fast and we've helped a lot of people with expanding to the bay area so lots of lots of new things not lots of exciting things coming up cool awesome to hear i like to hear about expansion at least when it involves things that i'm actually uh into and believe in right so good but uh this is good expansion so the important stuff what are we drinking and why you go first so we're drinking goose island today so i got the goose island ipa uh and goo salads and chicago thing man it's just it's a 312 thing so the classic 312 beer is usually the the classic go-to but we're doing the we're being fancy man goose island ipa you got the green label it's the nostalgia yeah nice nice i'm gonna go even fancier because this is what we had available out here in buffalo we got the goose island madame rose oh that's fantastic 2016 belgian style wild ale which i can just say type of beer that i've never had before so this is going to be kind of fun i've never opened a beer like this on the show so let's uh pop the [ __ ] up oh dude you've outdone yourself i i have i have luckily you know this is on the company card right so i have no idea how much it cost but uh when you're using the company card sometimes you don't look at the prices i said the the order from the left yeah and when the president watches this later it's gonna go great ratings only if the ratings are bad yeah so an interesting color this smells like wine that's interesting all right here's to it let's do it oh how is it it's good it's good it's um yeah it's not down my normal lane that's for sure it's one of those uh crossover type things you know definitely a lot i mean there's fruit right it's wild ale asian wine barrels there you go with cherries alluring aromas of sour cherry spice and wood cool all right new things is gonna do the job you know i should be drinking a wild beer with a shirt like this i figured i'll mix it in pretty good all right well while we drink here let's talk about rework first right so you talked a little bit about it right there i'm interested in you know what were you seeing what were you dealing with that had you get into it in the first place and what kind of you know impact are you out to make and you know what's been going on so far what kind of impact is seeing yeah so you know while i got into it so like you know from the south side if i add some color to the south side of chicago low-income neighborhoods left and right you know so average income per capita is anywhere between 8 000 to 16 000 annually that a family is making which is like way under the property line especially if you're a family of you know four that that's not any money um and so i grew up there so you can imagine excuse me the amount of resources that you know were available at my disposal or lack of resources and like you know when you think about getting a job like no one taught me how to interview nobody taught me how to do my resume like it was just limited exposure and so i navigated my way up you know the the corporate ladder you know climbed my way up using my teeth and my my two fingers and uh got to a point where i was doing okay in the tech industry like i was making money i was okay and you know when you think about that diversity and inclusion topic folks were happy to have me but they thought i was kind of like the special black person like i was like the golden unicorn of like we got one and whenever whenever i would like refer my my friends from the south side yeah they would always get shot down like uh no we you know like we don't think you're talented like there was always something missing i was like man that's something's wrong here it's either you know like clearly there's a problem and you all are saying like you know my people that i'm referring my friends aren't talented my friends are basically me you know he represents you know and so uh wanted to do something about it and so rework changes that where you know the the the things that a lot of hiring managers recruiters see that they think like oh is it talented you know i help people to really speak to their talents people that look like me speak to their talents in a way that hiring managers understand but then also help hiring managers and recruiters to understand like this is what this is going to sound like this is how this is what this means really the you know the cultural competence pizza man like we have been doing it for five years now and you know over a hundred people hundred plus people placed in chicago alone you know the salaries people going from like sixteen thousand dollars a year to average i got the average salary forty four thousand dollars a year yes uh and for free that's the thing so doing it for free so not like charging companies a staffing fee not charging candidates uh tuition uh doing it for free man and so yeah nice changing lives those numbers man because you're saying before what like whatever you're saying per household right like 18 to 26 000 and the number behind you is higher than like the entire range for per person so like that's the impact a huge impact man people people you know you know that's a whole nother ted talk we'll talk about that's a whole nother oh yeah yeah uh one of the things you know as i've been talking to some some other folks about and we'll get into like sales for the culture in a second because that's how we ended up uh talking in the first place but you know i know that when i was talking with jacob about you know when he was looking at different people to work with right and he said and so we wanted to go with rework because the the free thing right the like the non-profit kind of like free aspect of it which really reduces the barrier to entry but also that you're addressing both sides you know it's not just hey we're gonna train up to people or it's not hey we're wandering around to like attempt to train hiring managers and executives on what to like look for like you're doing both sides and kind of you know bridging that gap with no barrier which seemed like a very cool way he thought to do it i thought the same so we're having this conversation um but yeah i just wanted like you know to remake that point uh of like addressing both sides of the equation without any barrier is a model because i've seen some other companies right who do similar-ish things but there's always something thrown out they're only addressing one piece or there's a someone has to pay something which is what the [ __ ] is someone who's like making 18 grand the whole family like what are they going to pay like what are they going to possibly pay and if you want to teach a company that something is possible you don't have them pay up front right no one's going to like pay pay a fee you got to show them like no let the talent speak for itself and then they actually adopt the behavior so uh 100 that a big part of kind of like when you're going to companies that are a big part of the the pitch so to speak right like there's no barrier to entry like you'll see it in the results oh dude it depends which is why you know this is my my issue with like the non-profit thing so because we're non-profit we work differently in that respect when we go to company they're used to kind of like this one model of you know you're a charity you're a non-profit like you would take whatever we give you it's kind of like the the vibe that they come with like oh you know i tell folks all the time where it's like they expect me to you know they expect me to be like the the kid off of channel 11 where you donate a dollar a day to help get me water and it's just like oh hell and i'm like that's not me yeah i'm not that like you that's not me i'm not selling candy bars here like what the [ __ ] yeah that's not right so don't come at me don't don't have that type of energy when you come to me and say like hey i want to hire diverse talent like clearly you know when companies come to me they they want talent so the conversation usually starts with like how we we we have a diversity problem we want to fix the diversity problem you know how much do your black and brown people cost because you know that that's that's how they come that's how the conversation starts and to me that's like whoa so if you're coming to me and you say you have a diversity problem and you just gonna you want to pay me apples for oranges well i give you a black person and you give me a dollar like i don't like how that sounds i don't like how that looks like that's not i'm not a trainer yeah you see right i'm glad you i'm glad you could not look yeah but that that's how that's how recruiters come they come with that mindset and i'm that's and that helps me understand like well you you have a bigger problem than a pipeline problem this is a you design you you're missing the cultural confidence piece your eq is relatively low and even if i was to help you get a person they wouldn't stay because clearly look what you just said you know yeah um but but no one wants to admit that and so that's the importance of having and teaching both sides because for these companies that come and say those things you know it you need a you need a safe space clearly to be ignorant to get that out like you didn't know something was wrong with that and oftentimes you know when you work for a company you got to kind of keep the button-up suit and tie on and you don't want to say anything you know hr inappropriate and so like creating a safe space so i can be like nah dude that was horrible you suck like that that that's not gonna fly here you shouldn't say that ever again in your life like companies need that safe space to be ignorant man which is why why we gotta teach them yeah exactly there's the mission right so guys show them the new way so um on the other side on the the talent side the people side right you're working with them you're training them up obviously then there's the connection right there to sales for the culture so uh because obviously that's an initiative that's all about doing all sorts of things right like from your side of the equation from sales people who have been in there like the linkedin influencer the black linkedin crowd right like showing up and giving people like not only just their role models right they're like listen you can work your way up which is cool like that's an important piece of the puzzle because we could all be just like saying [ __ ] and if you're not someone who's actually worked your way into something there's no one's going to buy it but also you can't just be a role model and be like hey just follow me like you want to like lay out the path behind you which is what sells for the culture is all about all the different paths all the different stuff so obviously jacob you know said some success stories but i'm curious from your side um what is it that drew you into sales for the culture and how has that been going as far as your participation there and what are you seeing the impact between rework and sales for the culture being so far yeah so if i work backwards of the impact you know so what rework does we focus on getting people into the sales profession just in general i was like here's your opportunity and you're going to need a road map and you may need some help along the way but after you get into sales text sales that's a whole nother therapy session you're going to need the support and especially if you want to move up in texas right our goal is to get you past the 44 000 salary and to be able to have a group a large group where you're not just like 10 people show up in in but to have you know 500 plus people that that look like you and understand your struggle and are trying to to to to rise to the top two i mean it's a good feeling it's a good feeling until like the the model has really been has really been working so we've had uh a few candidates actually so we got three different stages not sure if jacob talked about this we have like the not yet in sales folks that in the entry level the uh individual contributor sales folks the leadership sales folks the front line manager sales folks and we've seen kind of the progression in each one of those we've seen folks not yet in sales come through rework get a job in tech sales and then go back to sales for the culture and now be able to get the support at an individual contributor level that they may not get it there may or may not get at their company we've seen kind of the front line manager be able to coach and get the coaching needed of like how do i get to this vp level i want to get into uh i'm gonna be a vc one day or whatever your goal and now you have this access to a group of maybe a couple of vcs that we have in our in our uh network and so i mean it's just been an amazing thing to see just so many people behind one comment like everybody has this one common theme one common goal and working towards it doesn't happen that often no it doesn't happen that often you know and so do it's uh oh dude it's exciting it's exciting cold thanks colby thanks to sako we brought us together got us got us going but man it's exciting times that's cool that's cool yeah no it's a it's an awesome initiative and hearing the stories of what people are getting personally like those anecdotes as well as those numbers you know with the i forget what they said like maybe it was uh was it morgan ingram no someone else um jb maybe who's uh you know the compensation stuff uh and people are just getting these raises once they realize like oh [ __ ] like i'm not getting paid anywhere near these other folks here's the record and then bam and you don't know right you don't know what you don't know and so without that support group and that information you'd never even think to do it uh so that's that's incredible that's right oh yeah but you need you sometimes just need the pep talk the confidence boost you know you need somebody to advocate behind you're like man you can do this you're worth more than seventeen thousand dollars a year you deserve this yes or if you're here like hey you deserve this like let's give you a little pep talk we can practice like i'm in your corner man in the half that especially when you may not feel like you have it at work you know where you you can't say there's certain things you can't politically be politically correct insane and so to have just like this a professional resource group to support you man it's just it's huge man yeah no [ __ ] that's cool so let's debunk some stuff right i like i like to do that and i like to bring people who also like to do that so here here we are um so we you know we talked about before right is like the the main question here is what's something you've heard or been taught in the business and in your case like the non-profit world right like so what's something that you get a lot that people think that you realize is total [ __ ] and what's the truth of the matter oh man myth all right nonprofits don't make money nonprofits don't make money that is just like a charity you know they i don't know what people they just don't make money that's just that's that's where it starts you know like i talked to folks and they're like oh you make money it's like to do yeah i make money and i'm not like they're oh no let's just start there nonprofits don't make let's start there let's let's unpack it from there yeah yeah well so let's unpack that so you're saying that they do so how could something make money and be a non-profit i mean it's right in the name right so tell me what you mean by making money and what's wrong with that statement oh man so let's just start with or with just like the legal entity so most people don't understand that like how being a non-profit is not like technically a legal entity most non-profits you know they they have a legal entity whether they're c corp or s corp or llc but most non-profits are c-corps and just have a non-profit tax tax which means like the the money that they bring in technically is supposed to go back to serving their mission right that's that's let's just start there but most people honestly just think like oh non-profit like i don't know they think of charity and they i don't know it's just right that's the first thing the second thing so especially in workforce development most non-profits uh that teach uh that that teach like the like communities how to get a job or how to be better at doing work you know getting grants and getting getting donations usually isn't the primary way in which they generate money right the primary way in which they usually generate money is based on a service for a product that they are selling to somebody all right and and the the the tech space in the workforce development space most nonprofits they sell the service that they're selling and i mentioned this earlier i alluded to this earlier uh for organizations that can't find that have a tough time finding talent most non-profits are selling the people the talent the the quote-unquote talent that's coming uh in you know in their door and they're charging a really exorbitant price for an exorbitant price and so i give you an example i'm not gonna mention uh well this is this common practice in general uh most non-profits that go out to you know community college somebody that is from an untapped overlooked neighborhood making seventeen thousand dollars a year they said i hate come through my program i'll get you an internship and on the back end of uh you know the deal the the non-profit will go to a company and say like hey you need some internships how much do you want to pay how much are you willing to pay an intern and the companies say like oh we usually pay our interns forty thousand dollars a year is what we pay for in turn for six months and so that non-profit is saying great you pay us 40 000. and instead of giving the the person the whole 40 000. that non-profit said like we're gonna take 20 000 and we're gonna give the person twenty and it's messed up because then you would get these groups where the person never gets out of like the non-profit cycle they'll just go from one non-profit to another non-profit to another non-profit just do the cycle all over and again for you know y'all i've seen people go through this thing for for like five to six years of jumping from non-profit to non-profit and clearly the non-profit is making the profit making the profit like that but man i got i have to i got to throw that out like we did that that ugh i can witness i've i've known the organizations i know like the ones that operate like locally and stuff i've seen the non-profit ones i've seen the blatantly for-profit ones that don't even pretend to be non-profit same model we're going to take that money we're getting this often usually based on grants i've seen that model as well where they're running off the government paying them to then do the training and then they also get a piece of the action when they place the people it's it's not cool dude it is messed up right and so you think about like the the different organizations that support it it's like you know you think if you know better you do better you know you get organizations that you know that say like oh we want to give back to the community we want to do some social philanthropic kind of initiative and it's like what did you do you know you're like you're sure you're working with this this non-profit organization you know but they're clearly it you know folks are getting getting paid to like the the the non-profit executives and non-profit employees we're not you know we don't work for free like we got to keep the lights on too right and and so if you like go dig into the annual report and like you know mine included if anybody wants to do due diligence like all right what is my money going towards most people don't you know most organizations don't they just rather see their name you know on the report saying like i donated or did something i checked the box but but but more more than times than not you know you'll see salaries of like 500 000 like an exec a non-profit executive making 500 000 all right and the constituents of the organization still making 17 like i we get probably a large majority of the people that come to our program from other non-profits which is why i know what the right so i was like man you went through a non-profit you spent five years in a non-profit cycle and you didn't get anywhere you didn't get you're still making seventeen thousand dollars a year and and the the non-profit you know leadership team is making how much it makes how much of you like it's just oh dude it kills me man but but it's just it's it's it's crazy how many people are just ignorant to to that fact of like man no not profits are it's a whole business it's a business yeah it's a business and in the in the shitty model right the uh just like the shitty economic model in general that we've got going the money flows up right so they can't show profit they make money but then the money has to go somewhere and you just explain where it goes by talking about the salaries of the people at the very top who often have a little bit of a demographic difference let's call it from the folks that they're putting through the system a hundred percent do 100 so when you think of the full cycle if you think about like we're talking about like you know the the the tech sales industry or just any industry in general that focuses on changing it and you think about that model that we just talked about and you think about how you know for-profit organizations when you talk about corporate social responsibility and really you know them wanting to do good and tap into the community at large if your organization that taps into that model how can you expect anything to change like you you're just contributing to the same system of uh you know um yeah who you telling man i got uh this is what i deal with every day man that's what i deal with man this this the companies that kind of come and and have this this this kind of 1960s approach of you know non-profits being almost like the while the uh term like affirmative action has slowly like faded to the background i feel like nonprofit work just kind of come into that light of being the like junior affirmative action for most organizations yeah yeah dude yeah well we're getting into the upbeat themes now um and uh and you know i don't want to relate that because in you know in certain circles i run in there's a a a phrase uh solidarity over charity right where there's like there's a mindset difference about what you're doing whether it's like hey with whatever i have left you know i'm gonna be generous and give which is what those charity models are built and listen charity has this place right i just want to be clear like listen we've got some extra [ __ ] like give it to some places but let's not pretend that's going to like fundamentally solve anything let's not pretend that a system that relies on that to take care of the people who don't have anything is any sort of a good system but we're not talking about charity right we're talking about like building something that takes care of people like they're equals and yeah making sure that they have a place and they have work and that everyone's making something so that we can all have the lives we want right solidarity over charity but everyone thinks that non-profits are charity and the the only people that have solidarity are those folks those certain colors folks uh up in the up in the board rooms and up in the executive suites uh which is the exact opposite of what they're saying that they're doing right so man man man say it again for the people in the back right until again like it's so [ __ ] for sales for the coaching for rework you know it's really about like how do you change that how do you change that culture how do you change that that that you know check a box the the it almost becomes the checkup box plus the intellectual exercise like our excuse me our goal of like what makes us different is is it's more than an intellectual exercise like we create this ecosystem where again like people can actually do some work you know do some work and make some change yeah no that and that's uh and that's yeah the difference right is like hey create an environment that actually supports people from a place of like listen we're in this together and like let's go and uh that's a lot different than people pretending to hand [ __ ] down i mean handing [ __ ] down isn't going to solve it and pretending the hand [ __ ] down while you're like handing it down and then taking half of it for yourself and then uh running away definitely not going to solve [ __ ] definitely not definitely not going to solve it cool i think we made the point right i think does that drive at home oh yeah i think so i hope so i hope i know we could cure it like belabor we could be like that horse we could find some different points we could keep drinking and get louder with it but yeah i think i think we made the point so now and it might be related to this or not but like how we kind of you know wrap this uh show is i let the guests figure out what we're gonna say last right so like you get to decide like what is the ending message the big takeaway what do you want to leave people with and let me and i'll give you you know the audience right tends to be like this mix for us of i mean there's marketers there's sales people there's customer success people there's some people who just like people that rant and say stupid like you know ranty things online but mainly marketers and sales people so and of a very diverse persuasion whether it's color or some other things or like whatever it is right um so like knowing that that's who we're talking to what do you want to leave everybody with out of this conversation oh do i say this left something blue in the face i'll tell you that you you can't be diverse and inclusive professionally and not be diverse and inclusive personally right it's impossible to be to to tout this diversity and inclusion thing for 40 hours a week and think that the rest of your personal life isn't going to seep in some way somehow into your personal life you have to start person and so you know reason i love this show of like man you made this this lacks like we're grabbing a beer together dude it's like a virtual beer together just talking like this needs to happen on a regular basis off the camera this needs to happen of like man i know you know i know about paul paul knows about shelter just just in general at companies to to really move the needle forward if you're if you're an organization like sure charity has this place giving back because you want to do something you want that feel good moment like sure we all want that but for this topic this ain't about a feel-good moment this is about like like like actually making the change making the adjustment and growing as a human being and so why you can't be diverse and inclusive professionally if you're not diverse and inclusive personally if you if you can't think of one person that is outside your social demographic that you can kick back and have a beer with and not at work then something like you you you you uh you got work to do you gotta work you gotta work that's my night yeah yeah yeah hypocrite um but yeah there's where i go too far and ruin the message because people can't receive it because they feel attacked but um we got it uh yeah no that's a i believe true true message um and and yeah that's how some of us live and some of us have to like learn to live that way a little more and that's fine right don't like don't take it as an attack after i cough out hypocrite i'll say um but um yeah like that's that's something and frankly we all can actually grow in that way somehow even those of us who are already in that space like there's something that we don't we're not normally exposed to and find something new and get yourself out there dude man i'm i'm glad that you said hypocrite though paul my my grandfather once said he said sheldon if hi if you threw a rock into a uh a group of dogs how do you know which dog got hit he's like the one that yells the one that like yelps the one that cries is usually the one that got hit and so if like you say a hypocrite and somebody's like oh i've got this like oh that gotta you that may be exactly exactly yeah well luckily i don't know how much of those folks are going to even be like hearing this message right we might be pushing the choir a little bit but um but [ __ ] it it still doesn't mean you don't give the message across right so all right well i think that's a great way to uh to wrap so it's been a pleasure having you on bud and uh and spreading the message and we found you know i found a new beer to uh to sample so so nice and yeah i'll finish this i have no idea how to reseal this so apparently i have an entire bottle of beer i got it you gotta kill it yeah you gotta kill it you gotta knock it out i'm gonna try to cap it and drive home so i don't need to finish this [ __ ] before i drive home that's for sure um but yeah i appreciate the time appreciate the message appreciate what you do and thanks for coming on bud appreciate it man talk soon all right bruise and biz dev is hosted by paul griner and produced by renown creative check us out at renowncreative.com are you [ __ ] kidding me

2021-08-08 00:33

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