Human Up Season 2 Ep 10: What it Takes to End Poverty in the U.S.
This is a transcript of Human Up Podcast Season 2, Episode 10 with Larry Reed which you can watch and listen to here:
Dave Marlon: Welcome to the Human Up Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Marlon and today I'm honored to have Larry Reed on the show with us. Welcome, Larry!
Larry Reed: Thanks, Dave. The honor is mine to be with Human Up.
Dave: Right on. It's totally appropriate that somebody who is using the poverty stoplight to run Thrive Lights, this incubator slash tool that is being leveraged through the United States and really throughout the world to help move people out of poverty. I I love the time we spent talking about the vehicle and and if we should probably start with a couple of things. What one, c could you tell me quickly, you know, who is Larry Reed?
Larry: I've worked all my life in helping other people realize their potential in different way, so it started in working in microfinance. So I worked with a group called Opportunity International, which is a global microfinance group. lived in Zimbabwe for five years setting up banks for people who didn't qualify to be in regular banks so they could get loans and start small businesses. So I I became the CEO of that organization and we established banks in Africa and Europe, Russia and Latin America.
And so then after I left that I went to work with Mohammed Yunus who was a Nobel Peace Prize winner for the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. And we were working on the microcredit summit campaign, which was helping other countries adopt microfinance practices. And then from there, that's where I learned about the poverty stoplight. We were trying to make sure that microfinance stayed focused on working with people in poverty and helping them move out of poverty. So we're looking for tools who measured the poverty levels of their clients and what worked in helping them get out. And that's where I came across Martin Burt in his work with the poverty stoplight. And we had Martin come and speak at all of our global gatherings and then he eventually asked me, he said, I want to bring this to the US, will you help me do that?
Dave:Wow, that's exciting. to bring everybody up to speed, a couple things. I know before this meeting, I used to be the CEO of an insurance company. I had to Google what micro insurance was and micro banking. Could you discuss those parameters?
Larry: Yeah. Right, so I can tell you best by a story of a client we had in Zimbabwe. She was one of our first clients there. She borrowed about two hundred dollars to she had a little stall at the back of her house where she sold little grocery items and soaps and things like that. So people would come by every day and buy stuff from her. So she paid back that loan, got another loan to have a bigger one, she got a bigger place on a major walking path and then she saw that some of the teenagers were getting in trouble. So somehow she got these old Pac-Man machines and she installed them next to her grocery store and so she could watch the teenage girls as they came and played. She taught all the people in her church how to run businesses.
Dave:Yeah.
Larry: She when I left the country five years later, the board was meeting because she had to increase their largest loan size. So she started with two hundred dollars. Now she needed ten thousand dollars because she'd become the Coca-Cola distributor for her community and she needed a truck to deliver all the bottles.
Dave:Mm.
Larry: And so they had to have their largest loan had been five thousand dollars, they increased it to ten thousand dollars for her. Later she came back to the board and said I want you to become a bank because we started as just a credit operation, just giving loans. And she said, I want you to become a bank so I can save my money with you. And they said, Well, but
Dave:Yeah.
Larry: There are other banks in the country. Well, you know, why don't you go to Barclays Bank and save your money there? And she said, when I was a poor woman and I tried to get a loan, Barclays Bank wouldn't even let me in the door. And
Dave:Mm.
Larry: Now that I have money, I want to save it with you so it can go to other women who were poor like me.
Dave:Hm.
Larry: So that's what microfinance is. It's helping people
Dave:That is a that that's a
Larry: The banking system shuts out and helping them realize all the gifts they have within them.
Dave:And I heard micro was two hundred dollars to five thousand, maybe in some cases ten thousand. So be below the normal.
Larry: But you talked about insurance. We we we so one of the things we found then was, you know, not only did people need access to loans, but they needed access to savings. They needed a place where their money was safe. But then we saw that people often had, you know, just like with regular insurance, people had things happen, you know, they could lose something, it could be stolen, a death in the family, things like that that would set them back. And so we had this brilliant guy who'd come out of the reinsurance business working with us, Richard Lefley, and he created the very first micro insurance organization which we spun off into a separate organization eventually, but it was so that poor people would have access to the same sort of protection that you and I are used to.
Dave:Wow, that's awesome. I also spent fifteen years in the reinsurance business.
Larry: Yeah.
Dave:And and I have the fondest memories of flying to Lloyd's and and going
Larry: Right.
Dave:Around from desk to guest to to get different coverages placed
Larry: Right.
Dave:On the reinsurance side that was amazing. So I'm not surprised that you found a very creative and aggressive person from the reinsurance field to be able to get that done.
Larry: Right. Well it it And the thing he really took it and made it take off as he kept trying to figure out because you know the problem with insurance is people don't want to pay for something that they don't know if it's gonna happen or not. It's only when it happens that you want to pay for it and then the insurance company doesn't want to cover you. So he was trying to think who would be willing to pay for this sort of coverage. Who has a business interest in doing it? And in Africa phone time, phones work differently. You're not, you don't have a monthly subscription on a phone. You pay for your airtime, and when you run out, you buy more airtime. And you can switch carriers back and forth. You don't have to go with one carrier, it's just whoever is selling airtime the cheapest is who you buy it from when you run out of airtime. And so they what he found was phone providers, in order to prevent churn of customers, were willing to pay for the microinsurance as a benefit if someone stayed with them and continued buying
Dave:Mm-hmm.
Larry: their phone cards from them, the phone company would pay the microinsurance. And so what what started with a few thousand clients suddenly became millions of clients that we were serving around the world.
Dave:So that was an allied benefit to try to get some customer loyalty to the phone service because they had this micro insurance with it. that's
Larry: Right. Right. Yeah.
Dave: Fascinating. but I again one more thing on framing. I I found the poverty stoplight was this grid of, I don't know, you tell me, was it 50 or 100?
Larry: Fifty, yeah.
Dave: It was 50 items that you found as we move people through them, they were more likely to self manage out of poverty.
Larry: Right.
Dave:And you found that could you give me an example of two or three of these items?
Larry: So it's things like you know, the things you expect. I have enough income, I have savings, I have access to health care, but also things like I have motivation, I have a network of friends that support me.
I have positive feelings about my life and where I'm going. And the interesting thing is these indicators are not done by a group of experts coming together and saying what's the most important thing for people as they move out of poverty. The person who founded it, Martin Burt, went to his clients, these microenterprise clients, and asked them, What would your life look like if you weren't poor?
And these are all the things they described. Well, if I was not poor, I would have a decent bathroom in my house. I would have a good place to cook food. My children would be in school. I'd have a roof over my head that didn't leak. I'd have running water in the house, but also things like I I I would have goals and and and I would be pursuing them.
Dave:Mm.
Larry: I would have self confidence. So these indicators came from the people themselves so that when people were assessing themselves, they saw themselves in the indicator. Yeah, these are the things that are important to me. And so that's why it took hold. It was it that it became part of how people recognized this is what a better life would look like for me.
Dave:And that you found or Martine found that if I looked at my poverty stop lights or my Thrive light that and I had forty that were red and ten that were green, that if
Larry: Yep.
Dave:Instead of saying, my goodness, this is overwhelming, I'm paralyzed, if instead I picked two or three of those and
Larry: Right.
Dave:I fixed and addressed them and I was able to go to fifteen green and
Larry: Right.
Dave:And then slowly increase that, that was a good path that was productive and useful and successful at delivering outcomes, and outcomes being people getting out of poverty.
Larry: Right. And what it does is it breaks, you know, a whole life down into bite-sized pieces. So I I have
Dave:Yeah.
Larry: These are different and we have red, yellow, and green as you described. So red is suffering, yellow is surviving, green is thriving. And there's a short description for each indicator and then a picture that depicts it. And what it does is someone looking at it can see, I'm here and at the same time they see, but I could be here. And i in
Dave:Yeah.
Larry: Doing that creates a sense of a desire to, you know, be at a better place.
Dave:Motivation and the thing and it looks achievable.
Larry: Right, it's achievable. It has to be achievable. It has to be something they can act on themselves and something that they could do to get there.
So achievable as well. And so they go through the assessment, 50 different indicators. At the end, they get a dashboard with all, as you said, all the reds, yellows, and greens. And the first thing we do is focus on the greens. You know, these are these are things
Dave:Hmm. Strength is big.
Larry: These are the strengths you have in your life. These are things you can build on. Congratulations. Let's count your blessings here because you have things in your life that are going well. And the most common reaction we get to that is I didn't realize I had so many greens. Because we all
Dave:Hmm. Good.
Larry: of us spend our lives focused more on the things that are going wrong than the things that are going right. And so
Dave:Right.
Larry: To be able to sit down and look, I do have things that are going well in my life. I I'm I'm proud of myself for that.
Dave: Right. As opposed how could I possibly get out of poverty? I have a felony and I don't have a driver's license.
Larry: Right.
Dave:Well, let's talk about what you do have and recognize that while while we we build you.
Larry: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, you have a network, you have people you can depend on, you have goals you're aiming for. and then they're asked to look at the reds and yellows. Pick two or three that you want to work on now, what as you were describing. What are the things you want to work on? So I want to get my driver's license and I want to get a certification so I can get a job. And so then there's a bank of solutions that are linked to it. So here are different providers. You know, here, here's someone who can help you with the driver's license. Here's here's some different courses you could take for the certification.
That would help you do that. And so it helps people get unstuck by being able to look and say, here's one thing I can do now. And then that creates momentum. When they come back and take another assessment and they see, as you said, as you see the things changing and say, I did this now, now these are green. What am I gonna work on next? What's the next one I'm gonna pick up and work on?
Dave:It it it's so cool because you know for decades I've been treating people with substance use disorders. And a lot of people I talk to are like, you know, I don't know where to stop. This isn't, or I don't know where to start. This is impossible. I know me and I'll never be able to change. And for me, I'm very relaxed. I'm like, please have a seat. I'm gonna be able to help take you through this. And I'm very
Larry: Right. Right.
Dave: Confident because I've been doing this for a long time. I know the tools. I know how to do it. It's amazing that I look at poverty as something that's inconceivable. There's no way to be able to help other people through it, but you've now been spending decades on helping people move out of poverty. And
Larry: Right.
Dave: I could tell you're very calm and you're very confident that you actually can do it using your tool.
Larry: Well it's not our tool that does it. It's the people themselves that do it. and that's it's the same thing in microfinance.
Dave: They
Larry: We were providing a resource that helped people engage their own energy and creativity in positive ways. So it's you know it's just Yeah. Right, right, right, right. You don't Yeah. Right.
Dave:hundred percent the same in addiction. I don't get anybody clean and sober. I have tools to be able to help them be successful, but it's totally doable. What are traditional approaches you see at trying to address poverty and how does that contrast to your method?
Larry: So the traditional approach, one one it's based on what people lack, so you have to prove that you qualify for a benefit by what you don't have. And it's siloed. So you go one place to get housing, you go another place for addiction treatment, you go another place if you need job training.
And it becomes I'm I mean it's a full-time job being a poor person just trying to figure out how to get the different benefits that that you might qualify for. And so it doesn't build on the initiative of the person and it doesn't see the person, it's like in medicine, the you know, you see this is a person with cancer, this is a person with kidney disease, and it's they're identified by their disease. It's the same thing in working in poverty often. This homeless person, this is an addict, so on. Instead of seeing them as a whole person with their own life and relationships and their own agency, their own capability of making change. And starting with them seeing themselves and then them choosing. So in most poverty programs, it's someone else who's choosing for the person in poverty, choosing whether or not you get what I have to offer you. And it's and it's not it it takes the agency away from people. It's people providing for them rather than them choosing and and following their own path. So this is you know, it a i the way I see it, if if we want to change the way poverty we address poverty in this country, there's three things we have to do. One, families need to choose for themselves what what is the next best thing for them to work on? What's the path that and then institutions, the whether it's government agencies or nonprofits, need to align behind and support those choices. You know, find ways to organize themselves to support what they're doing. And the third one is businesses.
Businesses need to understand that they have a role and they need to engage in understanding why people fall back into poverty. Right now in the United States, all the anti-poverty work we do, and it's tremendous work being done, helps 11 million people move out of poverty every year. The problem is
Dave:Okay. Great.
Larry: 11 million people fall into poverty every year and the line stays at the same
Dave:Right.
Larry: level. And it's because people get out and they may get entry-level jobs, and then life happens to them, and their car breaks down, child gets sick, they have to care for an elderly parent, and they end up losing their job and going back to where they were.
And if businesses could understand what are the the challenges that their employees face outside the workplace and could organize themselves to do support them, they could actually create more stable exits for people from poverty. We have a company in Texas, Zachary Corporation, that's using this. They have they do road construction, they build hotels, and then they also staff hotels. So they have 2,700 employees. And they started using ThriveLights with their staff. And one of the things they found, they put a indicator in there. I mean, again, it was called from the indicators came from their employees. We we
Dave:Yeah.
Larry: asked them what. So one of them was estate planning, whether or not you had your final affairs organized. And it was red for everybody. I mean it didn't matter if they're working in a corporate office or or in on a road crew. They they none of them had their their wills and trusts and all of that set up. So the company looked at the data and and said, Okay, we we need to find something we can do to support our employees here. So they they actually found with they had an agreement, MetLife was supplying some of their benefits and they there was a benefit in there for that that they didn't realize. And
Dave:Mm.
Larry: so what they did, employee just has to call a number. Aand and th th go through an interview and the company then develops the papers for them and then Zachary has
Dave:to do their advanced directives and their will and and and determine the beneficiaries and
Larry: Yep.
Dave: Get that all in order.
Larry: And so so employees started doing it just, you know, it was sort of something that was always in the back of their head, but it's going to be easy to do, so sort of frictionless, I might as well do it. What they found was it caused people to think about, what sort of legacy do I want to leave for my family? And maybe I should take that budgeting class that that the company offers. They told me about a guy, who was he just been promoted to supervisor of his work crew. So he did what all newly high newly promoted supervisors in Texas do. He went out and bought himself a Ford F-150 truck and rolled up onto the work site with it, and all the other workers were cheering
Dave:Mm-hmm.
Larry: him on his new truck. And then a couple weeks later, he takes his Thrive Lights assessment, and he's green in income.
But he's read in budgeting and estate planning and so in savings. So he he does the estate planning, he turns that one green. Then he takes the budgeting class. And when he takes the budgeting class, he realizes I can't afford this truck. I,
Dave:Hmm.
Larry: you know, I spent down all my savings to get it, and I'm I'm not I'm falling behind every month now because of the payments I'm making. So next week he shows up in a used Nissan Frontier and a Halls of Work crew are laughing at him for his toy truck. And and he says, yeah, I got a toy truck. But I have a college savings plan for my children too.
Dave:yeah, that's a that's a hard one and in general. I prefer to people figure that out on the front end, but but that's
Larry: Yeah.
Dave:a great example of of being able to help people and and that changes his trajectory, you know, and
Larry: Right.
Dave:as opposed to being in this s this state of treading water financially
Larry: Right.
Dave:and then in turn emotionally, you know, he's actually able to turn to to be built.
Larry: Yeah, the stress he was under it. Yeah. Yeah. And he he could have easily, you know, had to take a second job or something, you know, it it could have cascaded
Dave:Right.
Larry: for him, but now he he was able to see and then able to choose.
Dave:You know, it's it's interesting while talking to you. I you know, I work in homelessness and substance use and you know, we've helped over four thousand people get out of homelessness, but
Larry: Yeah.
Dave:more on how you know homelessness has grown in Las Vegas since we've been at it.
Larry: Right. Right. Right.
Dave:And and similarly, people will look at us be like, Dave, what are you doing? I thought you were supposed to be helping.
Larry: Right, right, right.
Dave:Right, but there's there's people coming in, you know, while we're we're we're trying to help people out and it's the same with poverty, it's the same with homelessness.
Larry: Yeah. Well and it's we we find so another example is from Department of Human Services from a county in North Carolina. They were using Thrive Lights. and the the leader there decided to use it to turn their foster care provision unit into a foster care prevention unit.
Dave:Hmm.
Larry: So so one day a woman one one of her prevention staff is interviewing a woman who she has the child endangerment report. The police had found the woman woman sleeping in her car with her five children.
Dave:Mm.
Larry: And so, you know, it's their job to decide should the children be placed in protective custody or not. So they have the woman instead take the Thrive Lights assessment and she's green for the children in school and she's yellow in employment. and the so the the interviewer asked her what you know what what's going on here. and she said, Well, I I you know every day I drive to a gas station where they have a restroom and I get my children cleaned up and then I drive them to school. And then I go to work and I work through my lunch ho hours so I can leave early to pick up my children from school when they're done. And and the lay said, So so why are you living in your car? And the woman pointed to the the red on addictions. And she said, My husband had surgery a year ago, came out addicted to the painkillers, and when he can't get his drugs, he gets violent. So I had to leave the house to keep the children safe.
Dave:Mm.
Larry: And so I I told you the second step is institutions need to align around people's choices. Well, this mother chose what she wanted to work on: safe housing, mental health care for herself, and then addiction treatment for her husband. And what they had done. This the leader there had created a dream center where all these nonprofits worked together. So all they had to do was take the mother and have her meet the different providers in the dream center. By that
Dave:In the Dream Center. Hmm.
Larry: night, she was in her own a new apartment with beds for the kids, with food in the pantry. And then
Dave:Mm.
Larry: she took, you know, another assessment months later, and her husband was in treatment and and the the family was was doing better. But it was because the woman could make her own, you know, could could tell her whole story through through
Dave:Right.
Larry: ThriveLights, make her choices of what she wanted, and then the county had organized a way for for different providers to get around and help help her implement her plan.
Dave:That's amazing. I love the tool conceptually. when when we first talked, you know, I told you as a as a conservative, I I was really wary of anybody trying to make their goal lifting everybody out of poverty.
Larry: Yeah.
Dave:and and I and I loved the judo or the jujitsu you use with me, and and I was hoping you could help our listeners, you know, understand that this isn't a democratic solution or a liberal solution. It's not a conservative or republican solution. It's a tool to help people help themselves.
Larry: Right. I mean no one wants to live in poverty and it's what Right.
Dave:And nobody wants people to live in poverty, but there there is a question is it my job?
Larry: Right. No, it's not your job to to to do it. It it's your job to let people choose to to encourage and empower them. It's you know when it when it's someone we know and love, we we don't try and do everything for them. We try to support them to do things for themselves, to take to grow in their capacity to manage their own life. But somehow in our way of caring for the poor, we enfeeble people in the way we do it now. And and instead we need to take that same love. I mean, it's what Martina always says, it's it's you know the Thrive Lights or the poverty stop light, it it's love in a assessment form. It's it's human care. It's what's important to you? What are the strengths you have that we can build on? And what's most important next? How can we help you get there.
Dave:I I loved what you said and and I was thinking I have an employee, single mom with three kids, who I'd saw an a a notice on our s from our city that you could get your power bill covered. And the the employee had come into me and she was like, I just barely made rent, but now I got my power bill and I was like, why don't you check out this resource? And, you know, she said, Dave, they they need me to come and spend a day there.
Larry: Yeah. Right. Right.
Dave:And and fill out these forms to to be able to get mynpower covered for a month. And
Larry: Right.
Dave:and and to me, when you talked about that our s current systems, I think you use the word enfeeble, like it it it hinders them and that's it's actually going the wrong direction because as opposed to working on making things better, she'd have to she'd have to disengage for a day to go
Larry: Right. Right.
Dave: Comply with the city municipal grant requirements and and forms.
Larry: Right, and and we're so afraid of giving
Dave:Yeah.
Larry: a benefit to the wrong person that we we put all the these requirements in that and not only does she have to spend a day, but then the worker that she's working with has to spend all that time reviewing them. it was Hilary Cottum in the UK who who analyzed this, and she said sometimes up to three-quarters of a provider's time is spent in the paperwork and the bureaucracy rather than actually caring for people.
Dave:Yeah, agreed. I'm I fight to keep my you know, I have a hundred clinicians here and we do services and it costs me about fifteen percent of every dollar I get just to to bill and get the authorization and check that.
Larry: Right. Right.
Dave:And and I you know, I've been in the insurance business for forty years and and w we have a bunch of efficient systems, so we're probably more efficient than most, but it's still
Larry: Yeah. Fifteen percent is pretty good.
Dave:That well, and but it's still you know, a cost I would way prefer to be using to deliver care.
Larry: Right, exactly. And we're finding that we've got a group of addiction recovery centers in North Carolina that are using Thrive Lights. There's probably fifteen of them now. and what they find is that it's very useful for the the sort of discussions that your care providers have with the people in the program because it it centers the discussion around the person's own plans that you know I I want to improve on this, I want to improve. So they they do, you know, frequent check-ins, th frequent reassessments, like every couple of months they'll they'll do it again and and but they've seen people come in with one who came in with 40. reds when he came in and he even went through some surgeries while he was i in care and by the time he left he had four yellows and the rest were green.
Dave:Great, great improvement, and it's a it's a perfect tool to help measure that because
Larry: Right.
Dave:w what I used to run the largest commercial treatment center in Nevada, and that was mostly just psychiatry and counseling, helping people think differently and change. Running a homeless center.
I need almost more case management than I do clinical and psychiatric care because people need IDs and clothes and Medicaid
Larry: Yeah, yeah.
Dave:and food and transportation and and helping them actually helping them through probably the fifty elements of your tool. that's
Larry: Right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah.
Dave: what our unhoused clients need. Hmm.
Larry: Right, right. And it's yeah, i they unhoused clients have learned a a way of managing life that you and I would find very difficult, but they it's worked for them, but to to to a degree it's worked. I mean they've survived in a a tough situation, but to change from that pattern to a different one, that that's the work that you do that helps people sort of begin to see life differently. It's sort of and not escaping
Dave:Yeah, or
Larry: from it every day, but being present with it.
Dave:Right, but we're just one or maybe two of the indicators of your stoplight. You know, there there's there's a lot
Larry: Right, right. Right. Yeah.
Dave:more. let me ask you about the element of personal agency. could you discuss personal agency and how you leverage that to help people move out of poverty?
Larry: so yeah, it's for any of us, it's a lot different when when we've come up with an idea and we're implementing it, we're a lot more invested in making sure it works than if someone else is telling us what to do.
Dave:Right.
Larry: And a lot of our care for people in poverty is is people telling other people what to do. And and we need to, you know, if we can
If people can make their own plans, if they can set their own goals, their targets, and then find support behind them, get some wind behind their sails, saying, Look, I can help you with this. I can, you know, I I I have a friend who does that. So, you know, make the connections, then then it's this this momentum, this sense of not only did I choose, but I'm accomplishing what I what I set out to do. And so it's building on a person's own energy and their own choices, but also giving them a sense of accomplishment that they are capable, which which then leads to more motivation and and and bigger
Dave:Right.
Larry: challenges that they can take on.
Dave:I I see so many parallels to just to my again, I just call myself one indicator on on your on your tool. you know, I have a lot of people who come in, my mom says I have to, my dad, I'm doing this for my kids, or the judge says I have to do this, and and
Larry: Right. Right.
Dave: You know, to me we're like, throw all of them out.
Larry: Right, right, right, right.
Dave: No, let's talk about you and you know, how is this helping your job? How's it helping your relationships? How's it helping
Larry: Yeah.
Dave:your health? You know, going through and and trying to have the motivation come from within them. that that's that's where the real change occurs.
Larry: And and part of it is doing this whole life assessment. You know, you you go through the 50 indicators and you know most of us don't have that many chances to step back and look and say, How's my life going? And and what what where where am I really happy with where I am? And and
Dave:Right.
Larry: and where are the things that I'm not where I want to be? And and and what what do I want to work on? So just having having the space to step back and look is an important part of the tool. And the and then then the choice and then the support to to accomplish the the choices. I think they all work together because I I think you know, it it's helpful to reflect and in your case as as much as anybody, it's it's you know, people have sort of stepped back from life and and not wanted to deal with it and and now are facing the consequences of that and trying to figure out where did I go wrong
Dave: and it
Larry: and what what do I do to set things right.
Dave:And it happened incrementally, so they often didn't notice it occurring in their
Larry: Right. Right. Right.
Dave: Life. Now you're you're you know, you did grad school at Harvard, you're you're a smart guy. You know about poverty. If if you could change the way our country looks at poverty and homelessness, what what would you what would you change?
Larry: yeah, the the first thing I would do is you know believe in people,
Dave: Hmm.
Larry: help them assess themselves, make their own choices, and then let's reward people for making progress. R right now our our our system penalized people when they start doing better. There's this benefits cliff that that people so
Dave:Right.
Larry: when you get a job and all of a sudden you lose your insurance and you you lose your housing
Dave:Right.
Larry: because you're doing the right thing. So let's let's arrange a system that re that first helps people to see themselves, make their own choices, and then rewards them when they are contributing back to society rather than penalizing them.
Dave: Boy, are you right on there? How d how do we do that?
Larry: I yeah, it what this woman I talked about, Hilary Cottom does is in the UK is she when someone's receiving government benefits, she lets them create their own board of directors of people from the different services that that they need.
Dave:Yeah.
Larry: And then they meet every month or so and and these people serve as the the advanced guard helping them get through the system to get what they need and and help and assisting them to make a smooth exit as well. And and I think if we if we followed her model more, you know, use tools like Thrive Lights and then put put people in charge of their development, we we could get a lot farther with this. And then the other thing I I think is having some sort of reward for companies that that take real care of their employees that look beyond the paycheck and and look at what are the other challenges, some way of of recognizing that instead of having, you know, the government subsidize Walmart's employees by by paying for their health care. We should have the government encouraging companies like Zachary who who really look out for their employees and make sure that you know that that they're not paying such small wages that people rotate in and out and fall in and out, but we're
Dave:Right.
Larry: actually building stable jobs.
Dave:It's interesting, we're actually going the other way where twenty years ago we mostly had an employment based healthcare system.
Larry: Right.
Dave:And over the last twenty years we've migrated away from that where more people are getting their insurance, their health insurance, from a government agency versus from an employer. and
Larry: Yeah.
Dave: Also making people less less attached. To their employer and hopefully the growth that comes there. we still got a lot of work to do, Larry.
Larry: Yeah, yeah. There's yeah. I had friend that said he had a deal with the Lord that he was gonna stay alive until poverty ended and I thought boy I'm not sure I want to be that old. But but I I do think just people if you spend time like you do with people who are struggling, you see the
Dave:Eight to five every day.
Larry: You see the energy that's there. You see the, you know, it's
Dave:Yeah.
Larry: and you can see what a difference it makes when people care for them and and allow
Dave:Really?
Larry: them to, you know, there's some things that they need to get on the path, but when they do, everyone benefits. It's not just
Dave:Yep, a hundred percent.
Larry: I mean, they're working, they're caring for children, they're serving their community.
Dave:Right.
Larry: It's and if we saw that as a nation.
Dave:Breaking generational cycles.
Larry: Right, exactly.
Dave:I I I call this podcast human up.
Larry: Yeah.
Dave:and the way I close it each time is I ask, Larry, what does human up mean to you?
Larry: It means treat everyone like a human being. You know, it's you know, the people that are struggling in our country, in our world are people like you and me.
And they deserve love and support, just like you and I do, but they are also capable and and energetic and people who can make good choices when they have you know the right support behind them. and so let's not treat it these as problems to be solved. These are human beings who have the chance to move up, who who can who might care who will be caring for another human in the future.
Dave:Right. Amen. Well, I thank you for spending the last forty two minutes with me. I I I I learned some more.
Larry: Yeah. Yeah. You'll have to edit this time.
Dave:This was great. Thanks for being a guest on Human Up. My name's Dave Marlon and I'm honored to have had Larry Reed on today. Thank you.
Larry: Thanks to you!