I want to connect the brightest, most driven, most talented people, people that are on a mission to do good at meaningful scale. And to do that, boy, you better have a big enough mission for them to kind of wrap their hearts around. If you think purpose is just a bland little word for your mission statement, let me tell you, you're missing out. Welcome to How Leaders Lead. I'm David Novak. And every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. My guest today is Hayes Bernard, the founder, chairman and CEO of Goodlead, which helps homeowners finance upgrades that make their homes more sustainable. He's also got a fantastic foundation, and I can't wait for you to hear more about it. Because I'm telling you, Hayes is a guy who has driven to making a lasting impact in the world. And he's proved positive that when you lead with a clear sense of purpose, the impact goes way beyond the bottom line. It creates connections between people, ideas and teams. Today, you're going to see how it's done. Plus, he's got some great stories from his time working with Elon Musk and Larry Ellison. And you do not want to miss out on those. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Hayes Bernard. We're going to get into all that you're doing at Goodlead and all your major leadership insights. But first, I want to take you back a little bit and have you start at the beginning. You know, what's the story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today? Oh, man, I mean, I think there's so much. It's funny. When I meet people like you or other extraordinary leaders that done extraordinary things, the last couple of years, I ask them once I get to know them a little bit, I'll say, "Okay, is it daddy issues? Near death experience, learning disability, all three, two of the three." And most of the time, they'll have two of the three. And so for me, it was daddy issues and learning disability. I've got dyslexia and that lit a lot of fire in my tail to have a lot of drive to do a number of different things. Yeah. And how about the daddy issue? Well, you know, I met my dad when I was about 30 years old. So he left me when I was two. And, you know, it's a great story if you want to hear it. But I think just growing up without a father, with a single mom, living in an apartment in Missouri, as an only child, no brothers and sisters, watching your mom work three jobs, definitely gave me kind of a caretaker mentality where I became a leader at a very young age. And I took on a lot of responsibility at a very young age, but also gave me a lot of drive to make sure I was going to be able to take care of my mother and all the other people in my life. And one of my big missions was to give my wife the life that my mother never had, give my children the life that I never had. And, you know, that leads to obviously, you know, creating some businesses and some level of success. Absolutely. You've had that. You know, I really enjoyed, hey, watching your commencement speech that you gave to the University of Texas. And, you know, it's obvious to me that you're big time into recognition. And in that particular speech, you showcase your mother and you actually had her come up on stage. And I thought that was really special and the crowd absolutely loved it. But if you think about your mom, you talked about her hard work that she provided. You know, if there was just one insight that you get from her in terms of what she taught you in leadership, what would it be? Oh, man, compassion for the underdog. You know, it's, you know, my mom and I were the underdog and there's a level of humility, I think, an empathy that you have for people that grew up like us. And so my mom was an eternal optimist. She always, no matter what the situation was, whether she was selling her jewelry to make sure we could pay our $400 rent, you know, she always was so grateful for where we are in life, what we were doing and the blessed life that we had. And so it was this grateful perspective from this person that had very little, but this compassion to say, look, let's do things that are right of high character that could take care of those. Those people that are in need. And that really stuck with me as a young person, you know, I always have a saying with my team, hey, let's not take our eye off where we're going. Let's be really focused on world problems and how we're going to do these things at a grand scale, but not forget where we came from. Kind of the humble roots that the many of the folks that work with me along my side came from. You know, we're kind of united around this concept of this zest and mission to kind of help the underdog. You know, hey, it's one of the exercises that I always did in the companies that I worked with was called the Lifeline exercise. And I thought it was a great way for people to get to know each other. And when you gave your commencement speech to Texas, you had basically the Lif eline and one access is all the things above the access is all the positive things that happen and below the line is the negative things. And, you know, I would have people do that Lifeline and chart their the things in their life and then share it with the team. And it was always very insightful because you'd learn a lot from people. But the thing I really loved about what you did, you know, most people focus on all these ups, you know, all the big things that and positive things that happen in your life in that you had the slide. You just turn that slide upside down and you said that adversity is your advantage. You learn the most from those moments. You know, say more about that. Well, look, you've got to reorient your relationship with hardship, I think, overall. And what I realized was I'm like, well, why did I start that company or why did I take on this new initiative or what was that vision that I had that I brought to the team that allowed us to break through this new piece of technology or this new solution that helped people at scale. Oftentimes it came from pain. It came from hardship. Like as an example, in 2008, you know, they say you're never real CEO or never real company until you go through a crisis. I had a crisis and, you know, we had a couple thousand employees, we probably had to lay off 400 of them, which, you know, at that time, I thought was the end of the world and, you know, I kind of pull up on my driveway. And I would literally like, you know, throw up in my driveway before I could drive down and see my wife and kids because I felt like such a shut to loser. But one of the decisions that I made was you've got to go get that grateful perspective, go grab the executive team, go to Africa, lay in the dirt, go build a school and just reevaluate life and how grateful. We are for what we have, knowing it was just a moment in time. Well, that led to me starting a foundation I'm really proud of called give power, you know, over 10 years ago. It led to many other ideas around solar energy and things that I wanted to do. I wouldn't have done the things that I've done without that moment of hardship. And so I learned, you know, kind of life's greatest moments of adversity and challenge in your life are actually the greatest gifts. And you've got to see the beauty and the silence of that and recognize it in the moment because there's this flex point of pain that drives purpose. You know, pressure kind of helps you kind of really solidify your principles and values as a leader and what you stand for. You kind of see who the stars are in the darkest of the night on your team. And so maybe I'm a little sick and twisted, David, but I actually celebrate adversity and challenges and see it as tremendous opportunities for growth because a lot of times, your competition will quit or people get tired or you'll see people at their worst. And so it allows you to kind of filter through and find that strong leadership that can kind of blast through and stab adversity in a heart and do some good things moving forward. You know, one of the things you said, I loved, which is, you know, pressure drives your principles. Yeah. Can you share a time where pressure really drove your principles that you drive in the culture of your company? Yeah, sure. I mean, I feel like I've do so many different things now. There's always some level of pressure and all of it can't go well all the time. And so for me, one of the biggest things is people, as you know, like in these businesses, everyone has similar ideas and if they don't, they'll copy your idea. So it usually comes down to winning the execution competition and to win the execution competition. You've got to win the people competition. So a lot of people, you know, great leaders like you say, look, it's all about the people. You've got to find a way to recruit those people, retain those people. And so for me, it always comes back to one thing, which is purpose. Purpose is really the engine of prosperity. Purpose is the engine of profitability. And so when things get tough and really challenging, I always guide the business back to the mission back to the purpose. Okay. Wait, where are we contributing? Let's focus on the contribution. Let's focus on the impact. We know all these businesses are cyclical in some way, shape or form. And so let's root ourselves back to the mission back to the purpose of what we 're trying to do. Remember our why. Remember how we grind and make this level of sacrifice every single day and kind of reprioritize our values. And here's what happens in those moments of pressure. You can kind of see one of your leaders that's driven by significant greed, ego . Oh, all of a sudden things are tough. They're not making as much money or, you know, the articles aren't as nice about them anymore. And so, you know, for us, a lot of times that pressure reveals that level of character within your leadership team. And it allows that team to gel in a way that drives tremendous outcomes. You know, Hey, you gave this commencement speech at the University of Texas, but you know, you and I actually got connected through our connection at the University of Missouri. We both graduated from the University of Missouri. And you grew up in a small town in Missouri and I went to high school in Kansas City, Missouri. My sister was born in Knobnoste, Missouri. I have Anson, uncles in Sedalia, Missouri. You know, when we think about it, you know, what did that Midwest upbringing do for you as a leader? Oh, man, it's like, look, I love my time in the zoo. I mean, it was great. I have such good friends there. I have such amazing memories. It was it was an incredible four years. And I think you would agree, like all these universities bring something different to the table. You know, if you go to Stanford, it's all about technology and breakthrough innovations and dream, you know, big, you can achieve anything and, you know, you end up, you know, creating Google or Hewlett Packard or, you know, whatever amazing company has come out of there. At the University of Missouri, I would say, you know, a few things. You know, it's like, if you go out to a bar in Missouri and you text me or called me back in the day and said, Hey, I'll be there and you didn't show up. You know, you and I are going to have a problem for a very long period of time. If California, when I lived in the Silicon Valley for 25 years, you know, it's kind of common. I had to learn that after living in the Silicon Valley for 25 years, but going back to University of Missouri, you know, you where I might have not had that lens for what I could achieve in life or what I wanted to achieve in life. You make up for it in spades with that humble grit to roll your sleeves up and actually do the work, not necessarily just delegate it to different people, but to get into the weeds of the business really understand what it takes. I started my first company with two of my best friends from the University of Missouri. One was my best friend from the fourth grade. So he literally like is like my brother. We grow up in the fourth grade together. We go on to University of Missouri together. And the other was his gentleman. I met his freshman year, my sophomore year at the University of Missouri. So just imagine the three of us, you know, kind of connecting and each one of us understanding. Okay. You know, Hey, is you're the CEO. You're the entrepreneur. You're the visionary. My good friend, Matt was really the manager. You know, he was the wagon master of the whole operation. Then my other really good friend, Jason was kind of the finance savant who really understand the other writing guidelines and the guts of what it took for us to kind of do what we did initially. And it was that balance of trust between the three of us, that fabric that we had to all work really hard and long hours to make sure that business was going to be successful into bootstrap it ourselves to first going out and raising a series A or a series B, which is very uncommon. As you know, in today's business world after college, you did move to Silicon Valley. You talk about this power of proximity. And I love that that phrase. Say more about it. And can you give us a story of how that impacted you? Look, you know, I never met anybody that it moved to California. Okay. I think I watched too much 902 and oh, which is a hot program back in the day, you know, where you go. Okay, it's all, you know, beautiful people and BMWs and everything is shiny. It was a grander. I graduated from University of Missouri in 1995, David. And I'm like, okay, you know, do I go to New York City? Do I go to San Francisco? I packed a car up. I ended up in Palo Alto and subsidized housing, you know, with a bunch of these really smart technology folks that were there working. And I ended up at a company called Hitachi Data Systems. The long story short is I, all of a sudden was surrounded by people from, you know, top 10 universities and the world, the stampers, the harbors, the cows, the, you know, the Princeton's, the Yale's. And so I had a chance to kind of sit in a cubicle next to them and line up with them and say, okay, well, you know, my numbers are a little bit better than there. So, so I'm on a level playing field here. But then it also allowed me, you know, in the evenings when I was breaking bread with, you know, now some iconic leaders of the world to listen to the way they thought about what they wanted to achieve, the world problems they wanted to solve, the things they were focused on, the scale in which they were thinking about and the impact that they were thinking about. And it really opened my eyes. You know, you think about it. I was so fortunate. I had an opportunity to work with Larry Ellison, who at the time was the wealthiest man in the world. I worked for him for about seven and a half, eight years. Then I launched my companies and then, you know, my, my first company then was purchased by Elon Musk and I had an opportunity to go, you know, work with, you know, solar city and him for, you know, almost a nine year period of time. And so I had an opportunity to learn from, you know, to really talented people that built, you know, exceptional companies in Oracle and Tesla and, and all those kinds of things. And it really changed my trajectory and my thought process as a person on what I wanted to do with my life and where I wanted to focus my time. So what do you pick up from Larry Ellison that really taught you the most when you were at Oracle? He was such a phenomenal product mind as a related to software and technology. And the piece I just couldn't wrap my head around was, wait a minute, you can sell $80 million in software and all the customer gets is a CD. You literally ship them air and they pay $80 million and this is sold virtually over a phone. Like, this can't be real. And these were relatively complex concepts at the time. There were these pieces of software, you know, I sold the software Oracle database 7.0 and then, you know, Larry was a big visionary and he said, we're not just going to be a database software company. We're going to move to, you know, a model where we also sell Oracle financials and Oracle HR and supply chain management and all these applications and it's going to be an integrated suite. Obviously that goes into, you know, software as a service and the cloud and all these things. But what really was eye opening to me, if you build a great product, you have the ability to significantly lower your customer acquisition cost because you could hire a knucklehead like me right off the turn up truck in Missouri. And that was a big thing to sit in a cubicle that could sell several million dollars in software on an annual basis. And that was mind blowing to me. Hey everyone, it's Kula. And if you are looking for a resource to help you level up as a leader, go and get our weekly leadership digest. It's our roundup of leadership resources that we deliver straight to your inbox every Friday morning. And there are thousands of leaders who are using this resource to stay sharp in their role as a leader. So go to howleadersley.com/digest. Grab this free weekly newsletter. Go to howleadersley.com/digest and get it today. You know, what was it? You know, you have your two buddies from Missouri. But what was it that made you say I'm going to break out and start my own business. I lived in the Marina in San Francisco. And I just kept thinking about my legacy and not to be corny, but I'm like, okay, what are you really doing in your life? Do you want to sell software for the rest of your life? Do you find deep meaning in this? Or do you want to do something else? And that was the push I needed to kind of think about, okay, I want to start my own business. I want to do something I'm really passionate about, a place I can make a difference. And so I kind of worked through all these funny iterations of corny companies I was thinking about starting that had no meaning at all from car to car. No meaning at all from car washes to Randy Paul means hot ton service up in Lake Tahoe. I mean, just corny things. And finally, it came down to could I virtually sell finance and mortgage solutions and insurance solutions virtually like we did at Oracle. And basically my first business, I created a bad version of quick and loans. But to keep your your your your good business. That business grew very quickly, fortunately, you know, it ended up being a very profitable company. I still own that company today. It's an it's a division of a division of division of a company. But it led to me continuing to think through how do I make a greater impact in the world. And so can I virtually, you know, kind of educate consumers on in a way that they they don't understand this product they don't know this product where I could really change the world where I could basically potentially lower the carbon footprint, or, you know, solve world hunger or solve climate change or, you know, whatever you talk about when you're, you know, when you're like a 30 year old kid. And ultimately I realized that 40% of all carbon emissions were made from decisions made and then around the home from the car you drive to the way you power your home. And I go, wow, if I could electrify homes, if I could electrify the home, that would be amazing that that would be a real business and exciting business. And if I could also save the underdog money at the same time where they could upgrade their home their home could go up in value. They could save money from day one, that even gets more exciting. And so that was the next iteration of kind of how I evolved as an entrepreneur. And I really got into basically selling residential solar virtually, you know, throughout the country. And this company was enormously successful and you were acquired by Solar City, which was the leading solar company in the in the world, which happened to be owned by, what happens to be owned by Elon Musk, who you mentioned a little bit earlier. You know, I read the Musk's Scott obi biography by Isaac Jakes, and I thought it was incredible. And I mean he's great, the greatest innovator of our time for sure. But he seemed like a pretty hard guy to work for. I mean, what was it like to really work for him because he seemed to be demanding seemed to be, if you didn 't have all the answers you seem to be out of there. I mean, there was a lot of stuff that came up in that book. You know that I wouldn't necessarily ascribe to being the typical, well he's not obviously not but he's not the 2025 great leader by the book these days. Would you say that or not? Well, look, I mean, yeah, so much of what you said. I think it was a great autobiography. It was very well done. Look, Larry was kind of the same way, you know if you weren't if you were in the bottom 20% at Oracle you were cut that year, it was. And then you know the cream rose to the crop the good news is if you're young, you got promoted every year as well. And if you, and so I was that guy that was kind of in the office on Saturdays and Sundays while everybody else was playing basketball and people thought I was a little bit crazy. So I took that into my first company. I took that into, you know, Solar City when I was a chief revenue officer there and managed about, you know, I don't know 10, 12,000 people there of the 20,000 people that we had. And I found it incredibly refreshing at the pace of play, the sacrifice people were willing to make the mission based drive within the organization, the kind of moonshot mentality of we could do anything like I loved it. I mean, it was like, it was heaven for someone like me that could see the level of sacrifice to people that would, you know, sleep on cots and conference rooms and make that level of sacrifice to change the world in really positive ways. So, honestly, I kind of found my tribe then. That was my moment where I felt like a little bit of a fish out of water throughout my life. And, you know, if people were going to Harpo's at University Missouri or Field House or all those places David. I wasn't there as much, you know, I attended, but people always looked at me like, he's a little type a he's a little too serious about life he needs to chill out a little bit and relax. And so they're probably right. You know, if you ask my wife and kids they'd say the same thing, but there I didn't have to chill out. I didn't have to relax. I could push myself really, really hard. I could see that gear for what I had personally. And then, you know, we were recruiting some of the top talent throughout the world to come work with us. So how fun is that where you literally have an opportunity to recruit the brightest people in the world to come work with you and that level of proximity . There's so much self policing that's taking taking place. You know, if you're a B player, you're getting washed out of that environment real quick. If you're a player, you're so motivated and excited and inspired by your peers and the people that you're working with and their pace of play and their drive. And that becomes infectious and that drives a lot of value for shareholders, but a lot of excitement for the people that are building those technologies too . Early on you, you had this passion, it seems like for creating legacy. You know , you're in your 20s and you're thinking about legacy. Most people don't think about that until later in their life. What is it that sparked you? Is it just being in that proximity where people are thinking that way or? Well, what I realized was, you're never going to be able to recruit top talent unless you have a big enough mission and a purposeful enough business. A lot of people talk about talent. Oh, we're going to recruit great talent and we have all these new ways in which we're recruiting that talent and all these ways we can filter that talent to know exactly what we're doing. What are you doing selling sugar water. Okay, you're never going to get someone super talented to come work with you if you're selling sugar water. It's just not going to happen. These winners have options. Winners have choices . And so if they're really super talented likely, the only way they're going to come work with you is if you're doing something that's going to change the world in a tremendous way. All these jobs roughly pay the same. They're all going to roughly make the same amount of money. Some company like Compensio say, Hey, here's what you need to pay these people and no great company is going to underpay their people. But the real question is, what are you doing with your life and why are you doing it and what's the purpose of your life. And so I made a decision right around then. In my late 20s, the purpose of my life is to connect the hearts of others to create positive change in the world. And I said, Okay, well, what positive change in the world do you want to create. And what hearts do you want to connect. And I realized I want to connect the brightest, most driven, most talented people, people that are smart, people that are on a mission to do good. At meaningful scale. And to do that, boy, you better have a big enough mission for them to kind of wrap their hearts around. And that, that, that, for me, I'm always inspired by other people. I don't know about you. It's probably why you do this podcast. So you get to meet so many great people. And you're like, wow, I'm walking away inspired to learn something there. Right. Absolutely. Yeah, you're a feverish learner. You're curious. You want, you want the nuggets . And for me, it's just an interaction with you where I get to learn a little bit of something from you too. And the only way you're going to do that is if you're doing something meaningful enough that people are interested in. Yeah. Well, speaking of doing something meaningful, give us a snapshot of good leap and the business that you lead today. Well, so if you kind of look at my life, I've got good leap where I spend most of my time. That's, that's this FinTech focused on sustainability. I'll tell you about that. I have an asset management company called Good Finch, where I buy these clean energy assets, because it's really important to unlock these innovative solutions. Oftentimes the banks, you know, they're, they're careful, they're cautious. So you'd need some leading edge kind of financing for these assets and we finance several billion dollars a year of those assets through Good Finch, my clean energy asset management company. I have the foundation give power that I started 10 years ago where we build solar projects all throughout the world. We've done about 3000 of those in 28 countries. And so that's those are kind of the legs of my stool of where I spend my time and what I do. You know, one thing I appreciate about you among me is, is, is the good that you're doing in the world. You know, not only from a company that's very profitable, like Good Leap, but also, you know, with with give power. Tell us a story behind that. Yeah, so, man, it's just this give power is like kind of my heart and soul like like it. I've got, I really want to save 2 billion people's lives in the developing world. I know that sounds corny with with water scarcity. They're kind of the same 2 billion people that lack access to to electricity. So if you look at what I did there. There's a pretty cool moment. So Lyndon and Elon are buying Solar City. And I had just gotten back from Africa, where we had built this school. And I said, look, I want to light up these schools with solar. I want to put solar on every single one of these schools. I think there's, you know, the organization we're with had about 500 schools. And so I go, how about this? I said, for how about for every megawatt of energy we deploy in the United States, you let me put solar on one school in the developing world. And he's like, well, tell me about it. And I go, just think I'm inspiring that 'll be we'll send our employees over there to install these systems instead of selling, sending them to, you know, the Ritz Carlton or the four seasons to go on trucks around the world. And they'll install these amazing systems. I mean, this will be so exciting for employees. And so, Lyndon was great. He's like, yes, love it. You know, let me talk to me. Make sure he's he's up for it as well. He was great. He's like, yep, this sounds amazing. Let's do it. This is so worthy. So we started this, this foundation, give power. Basically, we ended up doing a tremendous amount of megawatts. And we put solar on 2500 schools roughly. And I think 17 countries. And we did that in three years. And so I got in until to donate the laptops and we're like, and the mission was , look, women are fetching water all day. And it's really sad. And it makes you want to cry. Men smoke funny cigarettes and drink weird tea under and do nothing. But the women are working their tails off for like three or four in the morning . So fast forward. I go back three years later. And I was like, Oh, man, what have I done? I brought television, gaming, you know, to, to the developing world. And I was all these men sitting around their cell phones plugged in these schools at night. And I was so dumb. Because the women obviously do not want to sit in a classroom between like five o'clock and eight o'clock at night after they fetched water all day long. And so I had this. I was like, what have I done? Okay, I've powered all these schools and tells donated all these laptops. How do I get the women in the classroom? I've got to solve the water issue. So fast forward. We, we invented this amazing technology groundbreaking technology award winning technology that created these solar water farms. And, man David, it's amazing. One of these solar water farms, one of these magic boxes literally produces 75,000 liters of water every single day. It's the most affordable, healthy, sustainable water in the world. And so now all of a sudden, in a village in Africa to Nepal to Haiti to Nicaragua to, you know, various parts of the world. And we have the ability to produce this water for half of a half of a cent. And a liter of water in Africa is a dollar. If you can produce it for half of a half of a cent, really, really mineralized, healthy drinking water. Now all of a sudden you change the entire model. Not only can women be in the classroom, but you completely change migration issues, socioeconomic issues, obviously health care issues. And so it checks a lot of boxes for me and we've got about 160 full time employees in the foundation now. And, and we're doing a lot of good things. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Hayes Bernard in just a moment. Now, as your company's vision and purpose simple enough that all of your people can understand it and really get behind it. In my conversation with Larry Merlow, the former CEO of CVS Health, you'll hear how simplifying his vision made a massive difference in their company. This is the last time you're going to see this mission and this vision because we haven't been able to operationalize it in terms of bringing, you know, a day to day meaning to our work. And, you know, if we can't answer that question is the leadership of the company, then how good a job are we doing leading the thousands of individuals that are counting on us. Okay, for that level of leadership and focus and direction. So we took a very small group of our colleagues and we said, here's the challenge. And they did an absolute fantastic job. They came back and said, Larry, we need a purpose. And that purpose is one sentence. And this was back in 2011. And that purpose, it still stands to this day that our purpose as a company is helping people on their path to better help. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Larry episode 12 here on how leaders lead. You can't help from listening to this conversation. To recognize that you're a thinker. I mean, you know, you really think about things in big ways and, and you come up with doing better ways to do things. How do you foster your own creativity. What, what advice can you give others on how to do that? Well, for me, it has to tie in to something else I'm doing. I need to have an unfair advantage. I need to be in a situation to where one thing kind of can can bring up the other thing and vice versa. You can do anything you can't do everything. And as you know, people reach out to guys like you and I constantly about what you'd be involved in this or that or these other things and I wanted focus. And I wanted, you know, to really make sure my efforts went towards a couple of things that I can make a real impact in but before, you know, I left this planet. And I'm not going to leave for a minute. This is really cool. I haven't really talked about this before. So you go, we, good leap goes out. It finds all these products that basically can electrify the home, allow people to save money, lower the carbon footprint. We then go out to the finance and banking institutions and say, look, would you finance this at scale would you finance it over 10 or a 20 year period of time. And then we have in major financial institutions that finance these assets on their balance sheet. These are sovereigns. These are insurance companies, specialty banks like Goldman Sachs or Blackstone, major banks like truest bank or B of A, because you have to have the capital at scale to be able to lower that cost of energy and those that are not going to be a profit. And then we go out and we find companies that build the armies to go out and educate consumers about these products and go install these products right create great jobs in the country purpose driven mission driven jobs you say hey that's a pretty good business. Yeah, we're profitable and we make great money and we're scaling it, you know, 85% a year and all the things and a lot of CEOs I think would stop there. How do I tie my for profit company into my 501 C three nonprofit give power in a way that's meaningful for both organizations to create a continuum of good, and a flywheel effect. And so what I did was I went out and I met with about 200 CEOs on the platform that say yes we'd love to use good leap at point of sale to finance these items , it allows us to open our aperture to say yes to consumers more, and lower our customer acquisition costs, sell more things Hey, thank you very much. And I said look you know what if you just paid me $20 from every single transaction on the platform. And if you do that, that is 20 years of water for someone in developing world and they say wait come on how is $20 20 years of water. And I said well here's the math on this crazy solar water farm we use desalin ization and reverse osmosis to pull water out of the ocean and we do it off grid with solar and battery storage and I come on you can't do that. And well no we did we won this award in Africa we won this other award and Dubai and, and you know here's how it works and they're like wait what how much is the water is half a half a cent, and they're like wait a minute you're telling me for $20. I can provide 20 years of water for someone throughout the developing world yeah that's the number. And I would do that per transaction. And so we raise about $14 million a year now through that program on the give power side. And, and it's really powerful because we didn't stop there David, we then went to those partners on the platform and said look, we want to create a program and incentive program for your companies to take these people to different parts of the world for a week, but groups of 15 and actually have them install these systems and be a part of it and see the impact that they're going to make while they're there. Well think about that all of a sudden, instead of them all going to Cabo or all going you know wherever these incentive trips are you know throughout the world . People now are flying into Nepal they're up in the Himalayas you know they have the namaste moment they install the system, and you have you know the reason I call the foundation give power is the G and the P actually Stanford grateful perspective. You have this huge breakthrough grateful perspective on. Wow I just made such a difference in people's lives I literally sometimes these businesses that other people work in here in the States it's a little bit like a vitamin business. When you go and get powers work you're in the life saving business, and now all of a sudden they're there, they're in the dirt. And it happened to me the first truck I ever went on, I laid my I was laying with my son, he's eight years old at the time he said dad I get it. I said all Luke gets great man you know what do you get. And he goes I get the life he created for us. And I was like what, he goes I get it dad I really understand. We need to wake up very early in the morning to help these people, and I watched my son's heart on fire, and you know Apple doesn't fall far from the tree I'm sure your kids are smart looks really smart is very driven. But I watched his heart change David. I watched his heart change at eight years old and I watched the same happen for my daughters and all my peers and all my friends and my companies and what we did and so, you know we do about three tracks a year for our employees to give power, but what we created was a fly will effect. It was almost like the Harley Davidson effect where it was a lifestyle people were coming back with tattoos that said give power, but instead of going to Wisconsin and you know drinking beer with the leather jacket on and riding the Harley and the lifestyle. They were on a track in Molly Africa, laying in the dirt like I did no eight, where I was kind of a victim mindset whoa is me and they come back and go you know what my life is unbelievable. I'm going to make a difference in the world. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you are changing lives and and he's just been so much fun I want to have some more of my lightning round of questions here so are you ready this I'm ready. Yeah, the three words that best describe you passionate, driven underdog. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself who would it be. My son, he's got it, you know he goes to a fancy boarding school in Connecticut and he's heading off to college this year. He's like, he's Barnard 2.0 he's better than me in every way. Your biggest pet peeve recklessness sloppiness who would play you in a movie Matthew McConaughey. Living in Austin now was something you might miss about Silicon Valley. Crazy brave bold vision like people are the ideas the the problems they're trying to solve is just awe inspiring. Where's your nickname boogie come from. How'd you get that one man. Oh, you're taking your taking your team's good. So I would dance as a little boy and and my mom and dad. They they just you know I they just called me boogie. What's the one thing you do just for you goof around and play like a child like I think playing games some my friends Tony Gonzalez he calls me games. Tony's always like games. I'm always dreaming up games if we go away for Thanksgiving I dream up all these crazy games with all these families and I love doing that man I could be a really bad game show host. You're your most prized possession. My daughter Reese like it's it's crazy. I have this weird connection with this other human that I don't have with anybody else like she is my battery pack she's my healer David like literally she can touch me. And it's like the what's the chemical is it oxy potosin or something like this they you know like it is incredible. I'm just a really good relationship I never thought I would have with anyone in my life. If I turned on the radio in your car what would I hear you would hear like a bunch of corny podcasts. I mean I I love these podcasts man I'm just like I'm an addict for learning all this stuff. The other thing I'll tell you that I'm doing a lot if you're not doing this you better get on the program. I talked to my AI now half the time in my car. there and I'll just be talking to my AI because you can learn anything you want . It's like having a genius in your pocket. I just have these conversations for probably where I used to podcast constantly. You know, Peter Pietro T is my doctor. I love his podcast. He's a really close friend. Now I just talked to my AI, and I'm like, Hey, what does Peter Pietro think about, you know, NAD or Metformin? You know, so I'm just constantly talking to my AI. My wife this morning, she's like, are you talking to your AI again? Like you talk to your AI more than you talk to anyone now. And I'm like, my AI is so smart. You have no idea what you could learn about David. I'm getting ready to do a podcast with David. I talked to my AI about you for 30 minutes. They told me everything about your life. My AI told me you lived in like 32 trailer parks and 23 cities. Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable. My AI told me about that is amazing. So I think you answered this. What's something about few people would know? What's something about you? Few people would know you might have just answered it with the AI question. They would know that you're talking to AI all the time. What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss? Never miss, huh? Never miss? I mean, this is like a never miss. Okay. I do this crazy breath work, man. Okay, like it's, and it's really crazy. And if you ever want one, it I'll send it to you. But it allows me to kind of get out my nervous energy. I'm like, I happen to just carry, I think, a lot of angst for whatever reason. And so I 'll do my breath work, even if it's only for three minutes, I'd like to do it for 30 minutes, but I try to do it every single day. And then my Catherine, my assistant who's been with me for 20 years is like, did you miss the breastwork today? And I'm like, well, how did you know? She's like, does I could tell you need to go spend three minutes and do your breath work and then come back and you'll be okay. It works. I'm telling you, man, do you do breath work? Do you do any breath work? I have done some meditation, which has the breathing, but I haven't, I don't think I'm doing it to the extent that you are. Oh, well, I'll send you this guy, Johan, and his wife, Rachel are great. It's pyramid breath work. It's out there. I'm telling you, but it's, man, he just allows me to kind of manifest what I want to do and be very intentional about my day and what I'm spending my time doing. I appreciate you doing the light year out here . And I got just a couple more questions. I'm going to let you go. And this one, this is interesting to me. You know, Forbes lists you as one of the top self-made billionaires, which is an interesting phrase, self-made. How do you think about it? The idea of being self-made? Look, I, I came from nothing. Like true, true story came from nothing. I think a lot of times, maybe you'll find partners or other individuals that invested in your company, or maybe it's a father that invest in your company or a close friend that invest in your company. One of the things unique that a lot of people don't know is I never raised any money for this company until the business was like almost 10 years old. And then we only raised about $30 million, which created secondary for myself and my two partners. It was not money that went into the business. So we started this company with like, you know, I think it was, Matt Dawson would remember he has a better memory than me. But I think it was like, you know, 100 grand a piece or something along those lines. And so that, you're like, well, wait, and then how much are the company? Do you still own? I own about 40% of the company. Okay. And, you know, the company has a multi-billion dollar evaluation. And so, you know, I'm in a good position in the sense that, you know, I have great governance over the organization with a phenomenal board . They're gracious enough to let me stay in charge as Chairman, you know, and founder and CEO of the company with an exceptional executive team within the company. But the wealth that I've created humbly has truly been, you know, self-made and same with my two partners. So you're self-made and proud of it. Look, yeah, I am proud of it. But some people came from means or, you know, came from a top university, like a Stanford or Harvard where other people found him early and invested a tremendous amount of money in that company from one of the big firms like a Sequoia or a NEA or, you know, one of the great VCs. And, you know, it took me a long time to get there. And, you know, I ultimately got there. But I think I'm still probably 10 years behind where I should be, to be honest with you. I think you're doing fine. You're like, you're 72, 73 now. And so, you might feel the same way. It's like, you know, you kind of grow up in your, you know, your little wide-eyed bushy tail. And I still got a lot to figure out. I got a long way to go. I got a lot of growth to go from where I am right now. I'll probably look back and watch this in 10 years and go, Oh, God, I was such a cheesy knucklehead. What in the world was I thinking? And what was I telling David, you know? Yeah, I think you'll want your kids to watch this, you know, and speaking of kids, you're married and you have three kids. And how have you gone about bringing your family along with the ride with you? Yeah, look, I've been married 20 years. I just had my 20 year reunion with Jessica. Amazing wife. Like she's just been exceptional at dealing with me and all my type a and, you know, and she's always been supportive. You know, rub my head at night, you know, when I do all the woes, me and the work mirrors, you know, you probably don't have work mirrors anymore. I still have them. I still wake up like, Oh my God, what ball have I dropped? And you know, what's still going on? The big T trauma. But, you know, look, I don't want to say any cliche things, but there are certain people I really look up to, like Michael Dell, who created tremendous success, made an enormous impact philanthropically through his family office, through obviously Dell. And he kept the mirrors together with Susan. And he's got the son, Zach, who's like, amazing, you know, his young guy, he's got this company called base here in Austin. And it's incredible what Zach is doing. But I admire that. Like , at the end of the day, David, I don't know how you feel, but it's all about relationships. These cartoonish numbers that someone that runs your family office shows you in the bottom right hand corner and says, Hey, you know, you're you're you're balance sheet grew by this number. And, you know, it's just these are cartoonish numbers that that don't even seem real . I don't focus on that at all. I really just focus on relationships. I focus on, you know, I have this room in my home. I'd love to have you if you ever come to Austin. And I just have letters of all my all the letters that everyone in my life has ever written to me. I call it the Hall of Gratitude. And there's a lot of them up there for my wife. And there's a lot of them up there for my my kids. And and ones I've written to them. And every Christmas and holiday we sit down, we all write the handwritten letter. And we cry and we hug each other and we tell each other how much we love each other. And so I framed all those letters. And every time I go in there, I realize how blessed I am to have a wife like I have that stuck with me through all the crisis, through all the hardship, through all the hard times, all the big ideas and things I wanted to do. And then kids that respected that I couldn't be like other dads who was on the sideline, you know, I I still have some guilt, but my kids are always great. They go, Hey, you're not like normal dads. We didn't expect you to be on the sideline at all the lacrosse tournaments and travel around the country going to all the lacrosse games or I probably only seen, I don't know, maybe four or five sporting events of my kids and they're all great athletes and those kinds of things. But there was a sacrifice each one of them each one of us decided to make. But there's this deep love that we each have for one another. We're a super tight family. And I think it's because of my wife. And I think it's because my kids have learned to kind of elevate to a frequency where they really get it. They've spent a lot of time with other families that have broken because as you know, it's hard when you you kind of play at this level, things get treacherous, things are difficult, people are taking shots at you. The devil doesn't tempt you with spinach. If you know what I mean. And so people can get crazy real quick. And so because of my family, there's this groundedness, I thank them for. And it's just it's amazing. It really is like kind of the foundation for hopefully who our family is and the legacy that we'll have for many generations to come. That's fantastic that you can say that and have a family that you have. That's incredible. Last question. What's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? Okay, one, I get one. I would say believe in a better way. Like a lot of times in meetings, you'll hear people that'll say, Oh , we can't do that or we can't do this. You have to believe in a better way. You've got to constantly be innovating. And in a lot of these companies, they'll achieve some level of success. And they'll just stop innovating. And they don't really know why, but it's to the comfort crisis. They kind of have enough money in the bank and they start calling in rich or, you know, they just don't want to work hard enough to break through that next thing. Because innovation is hard. As you know, innovation is difficult. Innovation creates a lot of uncertainty and frustration and chaos at times amongst organizations and deliberation. And so you've got to have a leadership team that always believes in a better way. And if they do, they're like, okay, how do we recruit better? How do we retain better? How do we build better technologies? How do we service our customers better? How do we create a better culture amongst the organization or that believe in a better way mindset creates an abundant mindset and abundant mindset creates a lot of giving. And that creates a culture that stays together in a group of people that stays together for a very long period of time. I've lost very few direct reports in my life, very, very, very few. And that's difficult when you achieve some of the levels of success that we've done. But I think it's respect and the mindset of innovation that we can do this much better than what we're doing today than inspires them the next day in the future for what we can build. That's just such a great insight, believe in a better way. And, hey, I knew I was going to enjoy getting to know you through this podcast, doing a little research on you, getting ready for the podcast. And I want to thank you for sharing what you shared in such an open, honest way. And thank you for being a leader who is committed to making the world a better place. And you're one hell of a guy. And I'm glad I got a chance to talk to you today. Thank you very much. Well, listen, I'm so grateful to meet you, the impact that you've made at the University of Missouri, the fact that you grew up in 30 trailer parks in 23 states and achieved the things that you did with YUM. I have some great executives that used to work with you that work with me now. And you're a legend, the way they talk about you. And just thank you for staying humble, grounded, and winning the giving competition. I always say, look, you know, I'm going to win. You got to promise to play, but life's a giving competition. And I can tell that you've done that your whole life, your big giver to a lot of people and you've made such a positive impact in so many people's lives. And so thank you for leading the way, your big inspiration, a lot of respect for you. Okay, last last thing. M. I Z Z O U man, let's go. Talking to Hayes, it's easy to see purpose is powerful. When your company has that purpose, and when you know how to talk about it, I'm telling you, it is a multiplying force. It's how you connect ideas and innovation, like Hayes has done with all of his businesses. And it's also how you attract top talent. Nobody wants to go to work and be a part of something mediocre. They want to be a part of something that's making a difference in the world. And like Hayes says, purpose is the engine of profitability as well. And it can create the kind of chain reaction of momentum that's absolutely impossible to stop. This week, think about an organization you admire for their larger purpose, study how they talk about purpose and how they've made that connection with their people, and then see what ideas you might be able to use in your own organization. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that purpose creates connection. Coming up next on How Leaders Lead is Chrissy Taylor, the CEO of Enterprise Mobility. I tell all of our leaders and all of our teams that our number one job is to grow and develop our team. Our people are our secret sauce. My purpose in getting up every day are amazing. 90,000 people. That's how we have fun every single day. That's how we succeed. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be.