What you’ll hear in this episode

• How a dead plant inspired a nonprofit career
• Providing capital, coaching, and a community to low-income female entrepreneurs
• Building a career and a life based on joy

Steve Wanta is the co-founder and CEO of JUST, a nonprofit which invests in low-income female entrepreneurs in Texas.  The origin story of Wanta’s nonprofit work all began with a dead plant in his office cubical. He shared with listeners that he came to the realization that he “didn’t want to die there” like the plant, so he started taking steps to find out what was next in life. He eventually joined the Peace Corp where he worked with rural farmers in Guatemala; after leaving the Peace Corp in 2005, Wanta joined a foundation Whole Foods had begun supporting microcredit called Whole Planet. Taking the lessons learned from Whole Planet and his desire to create good in the world, JUST was born in 2016.

Due to all the different hoops that must be jumped through to borrow money, one of the most essential aspects of starting a business, those who are low-income usually are unable to meet the criteria for doing so. JUST was created as the solution to this issue, and focuses on assisting underserved female entrepreneurs that are usually excluded from the financial system in the United States.

JUST loans entrepreneurs the funds they need to start and better their businesses on a trust-based system; there’s no credit score or collateral involved. There has been over $4.6 million lent with a 99.3% repayment rate, but it’s about more than just the money. They create a safe place and a community for the entrepreneurs where they can grow and learn. The focus at JUST is on the outcome, not the transaction.

Wanta shared what it is that has made JUST so successful and that is there is a focus on having less stress and more joy at JUST and in Wanta’s personal life. Not all stress is bad, but all joy is good.

Listen to the sixth installment of Great Society to hear more about JUST, their 3-year plan, and all the great work they’re doing to support female entrepreneurs. If you enjoy listening please share the episode with friends or family!

Great Society is a founding_media podcast created in partnership with Constance Dykhuizen.

Host: Constance Dykhuizen

Guest: Steve Wanta

 

 

Transcript:
this is a founding media podcast if hi everyone welcome to great society a podcast about people who are working to elevate the voices of others I’m your host concentrate cues and my guest today is Steve wanted us co founder and CEO of just just invest in female entrepreneurs to create more resilient communities starting in Texas we chatted about entrepreneurship lending and how it dead plant motivated his nonprofit career here’s my conversation with Steve

first welcome thank you very much constant pressure so what I want to kind of go back to the beginning with you can you talk to us about your first kind of nonprofit experience or job that you had or social impact experience sure it would start all with the dead plants okay so I worked like many people out of college with a corporate job and realize very quickly that they did not want to die inside a cubicle okay so it all came to a head when my bosses boss came to my desk and just ask you about some sort of TPS report in honor of office space really she just said Hey you’ve got to do something and I’m mad as a millennial before millennials were cool and so as I was disgruntled I said you know I whatever I said and as she’s walking away she said Steve that plant on your desk it’s dad trying to rid of it in my involuntary sponsor the moment was well actually reminds me every day I walk in here just a little piece of me dies so C. five zero nine eight I thought it was funny she thought I was not very funny it was all in good humor and and the reality was I there was part of the truth so from there I started to take steps to figure out what should be next for me and I ended up joining the Peace Corps and I was sent to Guatemala where ironically I was charged with working with rural farmers to help them improve I know a lot about how to kill plans but I ended up really is most Peace Corps volunteers will tell you I learned far more than I thought and then when I got out of the Peace Corps in two thousand five I was fortunate to be the right place right time whole foods had just started a foundation whole planet foundation by that was supporting micro credit around the world and they hired me so that was the beginning of the rest of my life

what were some of the lessons that you took away from her time at whole planet foundation that’s kind of when I met you and I know that you were traveling a lot meeting entrepreneurs but what did you learn from at times I learned a really foundational for me was the potential of business to create good in the world and I was exposed to the city of conscious capitalism which it really informs everything that I do today whether it’s with the organization just war how I hope society evolves it’s really from the lands that we have to create value that was by the biggest thing it doesn’t matter whether for profit or nonprofit it’s about creating values got to figure out who can pay for that value and so that’s what you know I can think about a lot yeah so I

I think of you more kind of as an entrepreneur but you’re in the nonprofit space what is it why is it that we need nonprofits to stimulate entrepreneurship yeah and I think words have a lot of potential subtext in entrepreneur especially in Austin oftentimes means tax can take risks where reality there’s so many people in the round the world that are forced to figure out how to make ends meet and they’ve gotta go sell things or make stuff so for us what you think in the nonprofit space if we can think about the value we create we create a ton of it and then being creative to figure out how we get people to pay for it search for so long in the nonprofit world we’ve thought about fundraising as this is the way we are able to do our work there is more and more of a interest in figure out new creative solutions to allowing us to have more control over the work that we do in the day we have staff we have to have the resources to do the great work that many nonprofits to do

so tell me about just what what got you what got you to start something like that will get you to start using the machine it will come why are you focused Pacific Lee on like under capitalized under employed women like why is that yes has to focus on well what I saw so hopeful and it down is the basis for everything that I do today it showed really clearly the potential of the world for us to create a new future for themselves when given access the right resources I was also responsible for overseeing the work we find in the United States and I continue to be amazed at the fact that there were not more organizations that were serving those excluded from the financial system in the United States and what is really clear more and more through research and data is that our financial system does not work for low income communities especially entrepreneurs so if you want to borrow money which is one of the essential resources for starting a business or growing a business you have to have a good credit score you have to have collateral you have to have a certain amount of time in business and around the world we really clearly know the poorest aren’t able to guarantee a loan with the assets they do not have so I saw that over and over again as I traveled around United States from Detroit to New Orleans that there is a need for a new system so we are the other two German that I’ve co founded just with we want to see if we can do something about that coming up with a new solution that pulled from all of the great lessons from around the world infused with some technology that was really simple designed around serving the most excluded first hi and then seeing where we go from there so that was the genesis of why we wanted to start test and

so is entrepreneurship and are you looking for existing entrepreneurs arc is that something you’re trying to teach people like to think an entrepreneur is born or or taught I think we all get up in the morning and figure out how to get through the day and to some extent you know entrepreneurship in my mind is creating stuff that didn’t exist so whether you sell stuff that you bought war year making food that stuff didn’t exist that sale didn’t exist until you came into the picture I think there’s something really really special about entrepreneurs so for us it just weeks who simply focus on female entrepreneurs add to create more resilient communities and for us that what that means is that they are making more money they’re saving more alongside more social capital because everything we do isn’t supportive community are so they show up as people wanting to create a new future then we hot organize they organize themselves in groups to say that together we can be stronger and then that allows us to us to invest small amounts of money for Sony make is a maximum of seven fifty dollars that’s a lot no it’s not and it’s really far less about the money it’s more about the trust yeah so we don’t ask for collateral we don’t ask for credit scores we simply say we believe you are capable of a better future which means we don’t look at their past because if you’re poor you know the last thing I want you to do is measure my worst based on where I where I came from right you know who your parents were yeah and then you back out the there’s very clear there’s no racial wealth inequality in the United States that more more research is showing how G. dramatic the difference is in assets and then that that means we have to do something different than measuring people’s wealth to unlock money for them to invest in business

so you mention trust I feel like one of the ways that you do that has got to be your meetings I was fortunate enough to be able to go to one and it was really really great can you tell us a little bit about what how you run the meetings and why he chose to run in that way right so for ten years and travel the world and got to see some of the best around the globe making small loans in groups to some extent there’s a peer pressure component there and I felt like man going to be so awesome if we could re imagined this group setting for support so many of the things that you saw came out of pulling pieces from other organizations so I went to weight watchers for a month to see how people showed up to support one another in creating new habits and in this case I happen to be around food that’s awesome SLI I learned man people want to feel less alone if they want to learn from other people sold for us that was has been a central part of these group meetings in the thing that we do is try and create a safe space so people can feel less stress and more joy so one of the things that we do at the start of every meeting as we stand up and we breathed together three times how’s my favorite part nationalism before that started searching on okay silence I know it’s you can’t have silence on a radio program but so the second piece is we want to have a the consistent grounding moments so we pass around a little tiny ball and share one word with our feelings and then that leads into a conversation so what we’ve done is been able to from art to sort of practical experience we removed the transaction of repaying a loan in those meetings which historically that’s where the the reason for meeting oftentimes was about repayment of money so we thought if we pull the money out of those groups that we would be able to make it more about support which we’re really excited to see the fact be coming true yeah and

it seems like that’s working because you guys have went over a million dollars only two and a half a day I signed but you do need help through all things social media all things communication okay so you’re looking for that yes totally and with over two million dollars went do you still have a ninety nine percent repayment rate yes we need fifteen hundred loans in central Texas two women without a credit score and we’ve been we’ve paid ninety nine point plus percent of the time in total will have flowers like ten women that have not repaid us and there’s sorry ninety twenty those ten yeah that’s amazing like how do you what do you to reach out to the reading the meetings like why that seems much better than industry standard shockingly money matters so what we know is that if someone is investing in a small business whether it’s cleaning houses or making food capital is important they can buy things in bulk they can reduce their costs they can sell stuff that before they might not have been able to das making more money now for us what we know is if we can create a little bit of structure a little bit organization around their business and their money they may also be able to spend Lasser spent in a way that makes more sense for them thus saving more money so if we were really focused on the outcome not the transaction we see great really exciting results from our clients

can you introduce me to some of your clients or their businesses like what are they into what are they yeah there’s some really inspiring stories on our website was part of communication piece we really want to be telling great stories as part of the bigger vision of being a part of changing the narrative around the potential of low income communities to change our own change agents when given access the right resources to one of those stories share that Lexi hi she cleans houses when she came to Joss she was cleaning round sixty eight houses a week entered our program she was invited by one of our leaders that we call jazz just watch for your trust agents so she started to feel supported she borrowed money seven hundred fifty dollars to buy better vacuum cleaner she started to see the intention around growing her business through goal setting that we do monthly as important part of direction so flash forward eighteen months later he decided to be your own leader show she entered our eight week leadership training program where we have some additional experiences that help people see their their money in their life a little differently and then from there through that process along the way she continued to borrow money invests in new parts of our business today eighteen months later she has four employees she could be clean forty houses a week council meeting but what’s most important at the beginning before entering just her internal narrative was I do not know how to see if she’s grandmother she’s now looking after a grandchild the month of November last year she say four thousand dollars how it that’s amazing and what what other savings allowing people to do is just the fact that they have them now and that they’re more or a day using working towards any specific goals in the programmer it all there and that’s what I think is so important to realize is that there’s some universal aspects to the work we do and is also important to see people as individuals so we don’t tell them what their goal should be we don’t shame them into saving for this or for that we definitely don’t think we should prescribe what their life looks like so we see people saving for vacation we see people saving for emergency savings bonds are one of the things that we fundamentally try to do is get people inspire people to see themselves in the future and if they can do that then they can start to make decisions on now that are better for that feature that they wanna wanna invasion and that the vision

so part of the I would imagine the part of what you’re doing is kind of trying to prove the concept that people are do you know anybody deserves to be left to right like if I have this desire for have the support what can be done or is it something that just is trying to do to kind of prove to institutions and to kind of like the wider financial system that these are people worth investing in absolutely so part of proving that low income communities are capable is showing this work at scale so we’re actually in the process of expanding our work in central Texas to North Texas to Dallas because we believe it’s imperative to prove that thousands and thousands of deserving people are capable of borrowing money you’re paying that but more importantly growing businesses saving money creating a better future for themselves in the family what advice would you have if you like your we were really really good when you speak to entrepreneurs about people who want to get involved or people who want to help build capacity in other people on

what advice would you have for them so you know professor dumpsters no Jeff Wilson we on our previous podcast that I used to have that is defunct yeah because I don’t pay five dollars a month it is he asked the question what’s your advice in he said I don’t take anyone’s advice so I think I’m really careful to give advice what I do believe is sharing experiences so from my experience with just what we start with is believing everyone is fundamentally capable and it’s a journey to pass them to learn to experiment one of our clients Yvonne she started a part time job buying and selling jewelry and selling perfume flash forward to two thousand nineteen we that first on seven or fifty dollars she’d just borrow ten thousand dollars and her business went from informal to formal now she has a enterprise that whole sales product and she is selling at not farmers markets but really sort of festivals around such attacks no one would have seen her as credit worthy two years ago and I could never have died and her taught her how to create that business you’re just kind of being a bridge for people into like more formal financial systems possibly hacking away we’re if we see ourselves far more as a community organizer family than we do is a lender and we also continue to come back to this truth that money matters so we’ve accepted the responsibility to be good lenders we have one rule we have to get repaid so hold people when when clients stumble it’s really awesome to see community show up and do Raffles or two of selling food for for their friends who may be in a tough spot

what’s next for just when you have world domination run how many Asian taking on the banks no no no no no not taking over the banks thanks very much Terry online for us we are we have a clear through your plan involves expanding to Dallas making some strategic investments telling the story more here locally in Austin so you came out to our first just fasten the inaugural so many tamales right on the right there is a smaller competition founding Austin I believe it’s gonna be a sponsor of tamales competition two thousand nineteen along with Richards rainwater at long center who else is gonna sponsor so Hey it was awesome it was it was great to see a marriage of communities and that’s gonna be a big part of us demonstrating that regardless where you come from we’re far more alike than we are different in the best way to do that is through experience in the best way to do experiences through tamales of course

so my last question is one that I ask everybody but for you I want to take you back to that time like you’re sitting in your cubicle you have a dead plant you kind of skew you sought out to go and kind of take on the world in a different way my question to everybody is always how do you define success for yourself and so do you how do you define success for yourself and then how do you how do you think about that kid in the cubicle working with a dead planet you feel like you’ve set out you’ve accomplished what you set out to three during so good friend of mine is a much more he and I were having lunch and he did some really cool thing happens and the I congratulated him and he’s kinda looked at me Sir or machine this leanings you know do you feel this when something good happens you don’t feel that excited because that means more work and see success to me will be a daily practice I. D. once you you know this you’ve traveled to some of the hardest you doing some hard work in a world with trafficking in Thailand I mean there’s some really tough things so unfortunately are those of us that have taken the red pill or blue pill or whatever you call it you know that have disappointed deciding because society he don’t you there’s not like an end I think that is why our higher purpose of justice helping people in the last stress and more joy because we all feel stress not sh all stress is not bad all joy is good so if we can find more moments of joy in the midst of doing work that we love and be smart about the right stress that to me is like a really exciting day in mind for me success will be helping other people reach their potential and that’s going to allow that I love the idea of seeking the joy are just like identifying the joy in your time and and not the stress that’s great and I mean who would have thought that a like a you know a loan program would be it would you know that that we are so essential to what the work you’re doing into your high repayment rates into successful entrepreneurs so thank you for the work you do thank you for the support National Forest peace love and happiness yeah it’s been really great I think John Paul really connects is an entrepreneur to your community so thanks very much thank you thank you to the long center thank you for hosting us today of this beautiful view and things for Richard rainwater

thanks so much to my guest Steve wants her to follow Stephen is work with just to go to hello just dot com we’ll put a link in the show notes the great society team includes me constant steak use and producer Maria Gossett audio engineer Jake Wallace thank you to everyone it founding media for your support don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode or maybe leave us a review on iTunes to help other folks on the show thanks for listening