275 - Empowering Communities: The Role of Workforce Development in Social Entrepreneurship with Goodwill of Western New York's Tom Ulbrich

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Tom Wolbridge, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the president and CEO of Goodwill of Western New York, based in Buffalo, New York website is goodwillwny.com. No, .org.

.org.

Uh, .org. And, uh, we were just talking, I was just on your website. You guys are doing some really amazing stuff. This is gonna be a fascinating conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I appreciate the opportunity.

You're welcome. So how, let's get backstory. What's your backstory? How do you get into doing something like Goodwill?

Yes, it's— I'll make this as short as possible, but I've got a very eclectic background. It started with my first degree was actually in ornamental horticulture. I went into a family business that we had. We had a garden center, commercial landscaping, and from there I was with the family business for 20 years and I was doing a lot of lobbying for small business with the National Federation of Independent Business and decided I wanna run for public office. And do that as elected official. I ran, I learned what it was to lose. I lost the election, but the University of Buffalo— I had been a graduate of the University of Buffalo. I got my MBA there in my mid-40s. Actually, I went back to school after my kids were grown. And we chatted after my run talking about small business, and they had a Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, asked me to come and lead that. So I spent, kept my businesses as I was a clinical professor and they like you to have some clinical activity and worked at the university for 12 years. And as I progressed through the university, a lot of my work became what I would call the entrepreneurial nonprofit or this intersection of the social sector and the for-profit sector. And the fact that it was like, we can do really good work and you can still do really well financially at the same time. Which long story short led to a recruiter reaching out to me to, for an opportunity at Goodwill that I said no to for 6 weeks. But ultimately they put, laid down the challenge. And as an entrepreneur, I bit and I love, absolutely love being here. And along the way, I've also built and sold another company that was in the e-commerce space that I exited in 2019. So a long way to get here, but I love being at Goodwill.

You hit something I've never heard before. The idea of doing social good and being an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur at the same time. Yeah, so what a fabulous concept that is.

Yeah, social entrepreneurship. So the— and I think there's a lot, um, or there used to be, it's changing quite a bit, a lot of people in the social sector, the nonprofit world, I think there's a bit of you have to suffer to be successful. You don't. And my, my premise as a leader is let's attract the best talent that we can possibly attract. Let's pay well, and not just as well as other nonprofits, but as well as the for-profit world. And we can do more work then. We can actually do more work with less people because we have more talented people, and we can do more good work in the world. So again, the concept— you can do good and you can do well at the same time.

Wow, excellent. What a great idea. How long have you been president, CEO now?

4 years, a little bit over 4 years. I, I came May 1st, 2020. Right. And I signed my letter. I signed my letter to come over in February. There was this little— hardly anybody heard the word COVID. By the time I came, we were entirely shut down. 240 employees were at home. I think there was— HR was working and accounting and all of our stores were shuttered for 6 weeks.

Wow. You obviously survived. We did.

We did. We thrive now.

So that's excellent. So tell us a little bit about the Western New York operation of Goodwill.

Sure. Goodwill of Western New York, like many of the Goodwills, are— we have an independent board here in Western New York and really meet the needs of our community. That's what's nice about Goodwill. We're a federated model. There's 154, I believe, of us in the US and Canada, but we all work to, to serve our own communities and the needs of our community. Our Goodwill, what we're doing right now is we're on— we're building our retail store footprint. In an effort to become 90% self-funded for all of our workforce development work.

Wow.

So that was my big goal coming in, is we have this opportunity, we have these stores, how do we make them more profitable so we can take the money? When somebody donates something, how do we maximize the value of their gift to Goodwill, turn that into dollars that we can then feed to our workforce development team, who most of our work— we have a bunch of different programs, but A lot of our work is focused on a program called Good Skills Career Builder, which is about helping individuals that are traditionally unemployed or underemployed and getting them on a career path in either advanced manufacturing or technology. They don't require a college degree. They just require a high school diploma and a commitment to go to work. So we're trying to get people a career, not just a job.

And, and in the Western and Upstate New York region, there's plenty of work to be had for the qualified people?

Absolutely. In fact, our region, we have a shortage of workers in these, in, in those two fields. And it's really, there's a great need in the community. That's why we're focused in that area.

And how are you able to attract people into the program?

We are, we are, we, we ran, so this program came about after COVID. So really quick, I'll try to do this quickly. We, when I got here, the question was, what are we going to do post COVID-19. So we did— went back to University of Buffalo where I had a relationship. We did some research to look at our community. What is the workforce going to look like post-COVID-19? And we discovered this gap in the ecosystem for those two sectors of manufacturing and tech jobs coming up. We built this program. We went to Empire State Development, which is part of New York State, got some seed funding. We're very successful. The first year. Then we've raised almost a little over $7 million from the federal government, private foundations. And to answer your question, we've graduated over the last 3 years a little over 400 people at this point, I believe, have gone through, through the program. Not all of them are employed yet, but we're on the pathway to getting many of them employed.

How long does it take for a person to go through the program?

So the program is, the program's only 4 weeks long. So we teach really a lot of soft skills. I, I don't even like to use that word anymore. I would call them workforce readiness skills.

There you go.

Much more apropos word today, I think. And then we also give them on-the-job work experience. So they spend part of their days in a manufacturing facility or a tech facility and are able to experience what the job may be like, because I think one of the challenges with workforce development is we don't want to tell a person what job they're going to do. Not everybody wants to do manufacturing. Not everybody wants to do tech. We want them to experience it so that they have the opportunity to pick what they're— what they would like to do, which is going to make them more successful in the long run.

I can tell you that you have a lot of passion for what you do.

I love what we do.

What is it that— what is it that makes you so passionate about what you do?

I think it's back to that work I was doing at the university and seeing the need in that, that intersection of the for-profit and nonprofit worlds and seeing more and more funding dry up for the nonprofit world and recognizing that there is a need for nonprofits to find ways to be more self-sustaining. And I think what really jazzes me, we're trying to show the world that this model can be done. And it's the opportunity to show social innovation in action. That's what gets me excited about work. What really gets me excited is our team is why it's always been something I've enjoyed doing as a leader.

Right.

I'm at the back end of my career now, but is building and watching your team grow and, and take on a challenge. And really it goes back to entrepreneurship a little bit too. Although when I came, we did have revenue. We were relatively small. Operation at around $10 million. In 3 years, the team has doubled our revenue. So incredible growth and doubled the opportunities of work that we can do in the community. And I always get jazzed building things and watching them grow and, and watching other people come with you and having other people experience what I've experienced before gets me super, super excited.

And I, and I would imagine that especially working with young people, And watching them develop and grow into leaders has got to be really exciting.

It sure is. It is.

So you've got, you've got retail stores now. How many do you have in the region?

We have 11 retail stores and preparing to open up another 3 to 5 over the next few years.

You have enough people donating to keep, to be able to do everything.

You know what? You could actually teach a lesson on how to run a Goodwill because you're exactly right. Without donations, we don't have stores, right? So right now we're building our capacity of donations before we expand, um, into the next market that we're already expanding. Because you're right, no donations, no business, right?

And not only you have to get the donations in, but then you have to sort through it all, figure out what's sellable, what's saleable, what's not. And, and then the marginal stuff, how can we repair this stuff to make it saleable, and how do we do that?

And Yeah, it's an interesting business because I made the mistake when I was first here. Oh, it's retail. I've done retail businesses before. The truth is it's really a logistics and a backroom manuf— it's a sort of a manufacturing business at the heart of it. And if you don't get that production piece correct, you've got to constantly be getting good, the quality goods out to the floor for the customer. If you don't, you're going to— you're not going to be successful.

So how does that all work? Is it like the central warehouse that— I'm sure the collection points all over the region.

Yeah.

And then it all goes to a central warehouse where it's sorted and, and that's where the repair work does or the refurbishing or whatever.

Yeah. So we, we have, we do have a central warehouse. We also get donations at our stores. And one of the things, business models that we changed was we instituted a lean methodology to try to keep the donations at the store where they're donated.

Oh, okay.

First of all, in an effort to cut costs and every time we touch something and have to move it around with the truck. It's adding to the carbon footprint. It's adding to our expenses. But we also have donation trailers spotted around the community. Those come back to central warehouse and then those raw goods are redistributed to stores as they have need for them.

Wow. And I would imagine walking in a store and no two stores are going to have exactly the same set of merchandise, right?

No, I— thrifting is— if you've ever thrifted, or any thrifters, it's like a giant Treasure hunt is what it is. People love to go on the treasure hunt and you're looking for that item that might be worth $100 that you find for $5.

And so do you get good traffic into the stores?

We do. We get excellent traffic through the stores, as you can see by our growth. That growth, we've added no new stores, remodeled a lot of stores, but we've been able to double the retail business in 3 years.

Wow. So, Tom, what do you think it is about you? I can tell your passion and excitement about this, but what is it that's unique about you that's made all of this so successful? Wow.

I, I think it's recognizing— that's a hard question. It's always hard to talk about yourself. Always. I think it's recognizing I am— I'm an idea person. I'm an innovator. I'm a vision maker, a vision presenter. What I think the secret is, I know that I'm not an operational expert or good at it, and I have to surround myself. I'm an entrepreneur and I have to surround myself with people that can see the vision and really buy into what we're doing, but operationalize my ideas. And if you talk to my team, there's a lot of moments where Tom, like, we got to slow down a second. How are we really going to do that? And as a leader, I think it's recognizing what I am good at and recognizing that I'm not good at everything. And a lot of times we have trouble doing that, but I learned that quite a while ago and I think I get better at it every day, is recognizing what you do well and what other people should be doing well.

And when we find people that do those other things, to do them, you gotta let 'em just do it. You can't micromanage.

Exactly. Exactly. You can't be running in over the top of them all the time.

So you gotta hire people that you can trust and then trust them to do their jobs.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. And that's, that sounds like that's worked out pretty well for you.

It has. We've, so our entire management team was new when the, due to COVID, due to CEO leaving, obviously with the CEO switch, the management team switched over. So we were, we've been together since the beginning. Ah, which has been really nice. We've grown together as a team.

Mm-hmm.

And really we were so small in the beginning, it was hard to attract talent. Now that we've grown, we're attracting talent, we're building out the team, we're adding additional layers of management. And it is fun to watch the team grow with you because one of my fears growing a company fast is that you outgrow talent.

Right.

And we have to be very careful to either develop talent or be developing talent all the time and also knowing when it's the right time to bring in talent. And I always use myself with the team as an example. I would trust me to run a $100 million company. I've run a lot of businesses. You wouldn't want me running a publicly traded company because I wouldn't have a clue what to do with it.

What kind of people are attracted to Goodwill to work for the company?

Yeah, so we've been able to attract people that are very socially minded, but also not so socially minded that they don't understand what it is to run a great business. So I'm going to say innovative, innovative, social-minded people And almost all of our leadership has come out of for-profit and they've done a long stint or a period of time in a for-profit company and maybe got tired. Maybe all of them have taken pay cuts to, to come to Goodwill at some level or another, despite the fact, but senior leadership certainly could be making more someplace else, but they love what they do. And I think the team is really into this growing a business together. We've created this vision. We hold that flag high all the time and talk about where we're going together. And I really believe that's what makes people stay as well as we spend a lot of time. So my direct reports all have either coaches, individual development plans. And the way I always looked at that is I want to know where you want to go, whether it's with Goodwill or it's outside Goodwill, so that we're constantly preparing you for your next step. And I found that people stay longer when you're not trying to, to keep them from being promoted, but helping them along their journey as a, developing as a human being and a leader.

That's right. One of the things that I've always told CEOs that I've coached is that you should always be coaching 2 levels down below you. You're always coaching people 2 levels down below you to take over your job.

Yes.

And never be afraid of somebody getting good enough to take over your job because you're not gonna be where you are forever. And if you move up, You're gonna have a whole team moving up with you.

That's exactly right.

And so developing your people is one of the most important things you can do as a leader. This show's called Listening with Leaders. A little bit about my background as a lawyer turned peacemaker. And so I'm just curious, you sound like you're a pretty good listener. Where did you, where do you gain that skill?

So I gained it from, I'm not always a good listener. First of all, I have to focus on listening and I, I think it's one of those things where if you go into listening mode and you're in it, I'm much better at it than catching me walking down a hallway. In fact, we had one of, one of my direct reports said, oh, Tom's really upset with me. And I'm like, what happened? I was just in my head. It was something else and walked by them. And I'm usually very engaging, but where I learned was that, and I have a personal coach who is always holding my feet to the fire. And I did a lot of work with Sylvia Lafair, who does a lot of work on patterns and how we develop patterns as human beings, recognized a lot of my patterns. And I'm, let me just say this. I don't want to say I'm a great listener, but I'm aware. I'm more of, I'm a very self-aware person. Um, and I think that will, if you're going off course, at least helps you identify you're headed off track.

Your, your little story about walking down the hallway is a perfect example of what I teach about task-focused functions in the brain and social function in the brain. When we're task-focused, like you were in the hallway, you're just thinking about solving a problem. When the task-focused system in the brain is on, the social function is off. You can't do both at the same time. So the person comes up to you and wants to talk to you about something, and we all get a little bit annoyed, not because we want to be mean or cruel, but because we're so focused and intent, it takes a second to shift to social mode. It can be a little bit annoying. And, and so you turn, and maybe you got a little grimace on your— this happens to everybody.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, it's how our brains are hardwired.

And no, I'm sorry.

And so it's a really interesting example, perfect example of how you were in task-focused mode, somebody wanted you to be in social mode, it took you a second to be in social mode, and they— that person perceived you as being maybe a little disgruntled that you were being interrupted.

No, that's a perfect That's a, that's actually very good coaching too. Thank you. I'm getting some free coaching. There you go. At the same time. But I think too, we were talking before a little bit about your book and I haven't finished it yet, but reading it, we, that person that was involved, that was recipient of my not being in social mode, they're an emotional being. And to your point in your book, they're shutting down because they feel Hurt or feeling hurt, right? That this person that always chats me up and talks to me suddenly isn't talking to me. So he must be upset with me. Yeah, no, it's a great—

and as, as you get through the book, your, the conversation that you wanna have with him is say, hey, we, we were walking down the hallway and you wanted to talk with me and I might have been a little short with you. Tell me from your per— tell me about that. And then you'll say you were, you felt hurt. And a little disrespected and a little ignored, and you didn't feel appreciated and supported, and that was really upsetting to you, and it made you anxious and concerned, and you felt like at that moment that I didn't value you, and you didn't feel valued, and it made you really sad and upset and unhappy. And they're gonna say, yeah, exactly. Now you validated them. Things are cool. Now you can say, now you can say, how do, how should we deal with this in the future if I happen to be this way? Because I'm in task-focused mode and you're in social mode, right? And there's— that's how you deal. That's how you deal with the problem. And when you do that kind of listing that I just demonstrated, you can stop all fights and arguments forever. They'll never start because you're validating how people are feeling in the moment. And that's the secret to life, I think, is listening to people's feelings and emotional experiences rather than listening to their words.

That really stuck out, the parts of the book they've read. So I'm excited to be able to finish that.

Yeah. Another part, you know, before we started recording, you started, you talked about the fact that you jumped right to the chapter on How to Be Civil in an Uncivil World. Why did that particular chapter catch your attention?

I think it caught my attention. It's one of the reasons I ran for public office because I thought mistakenly, maybe in my head, that We needed people that could listen to both sides of something and take it in. And what really— the reason that resonated with me a lot was I'd heard Chris Singleton speak, who's— he was a professional baseball player for a period of time, but his mom was a victim in one of the church tragedies in South Carolina. And his presentation, it is stuck with me so much. He talks about if we would only start when we have a conversation, if we would only tell our story before we tell our stance. And that's exactly what your chapter— it didn't use those words, right? But that is exactly what you talk about.

Exactly.

When you talk about— you call them peace circles, I believe, right?

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Is— I felt like that was that message being even described at a deeper level. If we would only start to understand who we are, what makes us up, what experiences we've had as a human being. Again, forget the words. Then we may not agree, and we don't need to agree, but we can respect somebody else's opinion. That's what attracted me.

Okay, great. Because that led in, I think in, in that chapter I talk about the four, how to have a calm conversation with a polarized. And what the first question is, tell me what happened in your life that that led you to the beliefs and values that you have today. And all I want you to do is tell me your story. And what we find when we go through the 4 questions that I talk about and I teach is that we find out that we have far more in common than we have in difference. And we may not all, we will not agree on a lot of things. My view on any issue is going to be different than yours on any given issue, but that doesn't mean that I can't love you and respect you.

And no, exactly.

And, and today is my sense. I'll soapbox a little bit. It's my sense that our political leaders for the most part feel like they've gotta protect their power position and privilege by creating fear and anger and separation rather than allowing people to come and find common ground to find solutions to problems. And it's that kind of attitude that I think is really destroying us. So I do everything.

Yeah, they, they, they go to those emotions, right? That, um, another part that I, I was— another area that I had a, a lot of resonance with, it reminded me of something else, was how groups of people get together and believing and belonging. And another thing that really had struck me that sticks with me in, in leadership is a lot of organizations, they want people to believe and then belong and, and then join. They do it backwards, right? And versus when people belong, they move. You, you create a movement when people belong. And back to your point about, yes, we— you and I might talk and have differences, but we belong to something bigger, the human race together. That together, I think, is a much bigger belonging than what I choose to believe politically over here or over there. And if more people— I truly believe this— if more people would engage in what you're talking about and what Chris talked about, we would have a much better world. That doesn't mean we can't have disagreement. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't have disagreement. It's how we disagree.

Tom, you're channeling me because one of the things that I keep talking about is if we just use these listening tools and we started to take the time to listen to each other, I'm just going to parrot exactly what you said. Imagine what our society would be like if we could just listen to each other. It'd be completely different. And that's why I'm making it my mission in life as a lawyer turned peacemaker to teach these skills to people. That change can happen. It's really cool.

It's powerful. It's very powerful.

One more question, Tom, and I'll let you go. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Oh my goodness. Um, I'm going to keep this simple. So I play the Native American flute, really, and really enjoy learning it and playing it just out of— I like the instrument. I think I'd heard it on a trip or something and find it very meditative and really enjoy playing. Most people chuckle like you do. What?

Oh, no, it's—

but Haunting. Yeah. Yeah. That's my, that's my, I guess my little thing that most people would never ever figure out.

You'd never know that I'm a jazz violinist.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah.

Maybe we can get together and—

There you go. Do a little jam.

Do something in pentatonic scale.

We're good to go. I can do pentatonic. All day long. Okay.

Awesome.

Tom, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time today.

You are welcome. And thank you for having us. Thank you for your book. And I look forward to reading it and then applying more of your principles at our business.

Absolutely. Take care.

Take care.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes. Go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.