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Hey, I'm Jon.
And I'm Becky.
And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
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So welcome to the good community, we're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Becky, what's happening?
I'll tell you what's happening. I'll just say that say this just for a minute as I tone set, before we bring our guest in. We are privileged to get to talk to the most incredible visionaries, and people around the world who are doing the most incredible things to equalize, to bring community together. And sometimes those like geniuses are literally in your backyard. And you know them.
We're bringing on a friend and a mutual friend that's been kind of in our world for decades. But it's just fascinating, you know, when you maybe last saw somebody 20 years ago to catch up and figure out what's been happening right here in your own community. It just speaks to, you know, when you follow your passion, when you really get in a lane that you come alive about magical stuff happens. And this the story today, and we're so excited to introduce you to Jonathan Dodson, we're going to call him Jon on this, but he's the CEO of Pivot. And it's right here in Oklahoma City. For those of you that know, we're based here, here in Oklahoma, and we love this community so much. And that's kind of Jon's story, too. You know, he was a former banker, turned developer, and he just had this value of creating partnerships. And he really wanted to chase something new with pivot to just pour into the community, you know, we're going through a renaissance in a lot of ways and a lot of areas of town. But Jon kind of found these projects that weren't getting the attention of the bankers and the industry that weren't getting the attention of just the overall community support. And he started to piece this together, you know, working and really being an ally, to communities that were overlooked, and right here at home. And he has made these projects come alive, really coming to the table with such humility and such partnership and such ally ship. And you know, when we were catching up, I was like, Oh, my gosh, we have got to bring this conversation to the podcast. Because, you know, we don't love to stay in our lane of nonprofit because we want the walls to be broken. And I hope this conversation today and I know it's gonna grow your heart and mind of like, how can we work across the aisle, which is like my least favorite term ever, but how can we work together? How can we go grab hands for fighting for something better? And today, Jon is going to tell us the story of EastPoint specifically, which is this really magical project that brought the community together. And then you know, just got casually recognized with this ULI global award of excellence international award for a development that just doesn't happen for the small guys. Like this is like a really amazing award to just recognize what's happened. But that story of that the story of Jon is going to just warm everybody's heart. And Jon, I'm just so glad to have you on the podcast. Welcome to our show.
I'm so excited to be here. This is crazy. It's like 20 years in the making, guys. So thanks for letting me be a part of your world.
Yeah, I mean, it's a huge honor. Take us back. You mean, tell us your story. I kind of gave some pieces of that some breadcrumbs. But circle back, take us to Jon growing up, like what informed this empathetic human that wanted to pour into projects like this with your expertise. Take us back and catch us up to where you are today.
Yeah, so you know, it's funny, when you look back at your past and you start trying to connect, I'm now almost 42. And so which feels really young. But yes, but you start looking back at your life, you start piecing things and seeing things that you know why you see the world the way that you do. And you know, one of those things that I think really ended up changing and shaping kind of how I see the world today was just, you know, we moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma, and like 90 or 91 and that move was really just a terrible move. For me personally, like I we were moved from Tucson, Arizona, and moving to Stillwater was hard and didn't have any friends. And there's probably three or four years where I just felt like disconnected from like any community. And so I could, you know, walk into a room as a you know, a little 12 year old dude and know who the bully was who I needed to avoid, you know, how I needed to figure out, you know, who would be friends with or at least keep them you know, from doing something, you know, to the little guy in the room. And so, as that started to shape kind of how I saw things, you fast forward to 30, age 35. And I'm sitting in my office as a banker, and I just made what I thought was like the move of a lifetime to go work for this bank, and my boss walks in to my assistant, and I'm sitting in the other room, and he's like, if you want to keep your job, you need to have sex with me get it on the calendar. And I heard him say it. And so you know, like one is like, who actually says that out loud, is a good place to start. But if you move past that, and you move to like the really the devastation of his like, loving traditional bullying, and toxic masculinity and everything else that put on her, that's what got me out of banking, I put my two week notice and they gave him like a full year severance to figure out what he wanted to do with full benefits. And they gave her like four weeks to go find a new job. And so I couldn't imagine working for a company like that. And so turned two week notice in and started riding my bike and started hanging out, I actually was officing out of a coffee shop, I had my business card had the address of Elemental on it, and had checks delivered there and everything mail. And so it was kind of during that time where I started meeting and I've been in this banking world where I was really removed from probably the reality that most people live in. And I was kind of thrust into what does it look like to be, you know, a different than someone else. And so, to me, it was like, it made me one have compassion on myself as 11, 12, 13-year-old. And like, but also thankful for the mechanisms of coping mechanisms that helped me to see the world differently. But then it had gave me empathy for the people who are actually having to go through some of this. And so, you know, Elemental Coffee was really my home base for two years. And that's where the development, you know, Pivot Project started, or Pivot started. And it's kind of through that, that I met all of these great people, the operators of the Tower Theater, I was having coffee with him at Elemental, and Steven Tyler was like, Hey, I think I can actually do this. And I think about how many great relationships and so that was probably phase one of the development process for me kind of moving from a really secluded, and isolated world to a world that felt a little bit more robust and full of diversity that I had just hadn't experienced before.
Okay, a lot to unpack there. Couple things I want to say to you, and to the audience. Our lived experience is so formative, and where it points us and I and I see this theme on the podcast a lot. When we bring in founders. And just people who are heartwired, there always seems to be a moment where the path diverges. And I'm thinking of you think of you, Jon, and I'm visualizing you at your desk at this bank. And all of a sudden you come to the crossroads. And it's like, am I going to be the one that sits here and stays in this sort of environment? Or am I going to follow my gut and take this massive leap of faith and chase something that feels better to me and I just want to thank you deeply for doing the right thing, for doing the thing which equalizes, for doing the thing which tamps down you know, what I would almost call like the evil of this world. And thank you for calling out that story is difficult. It's for us to sit in that we have to sit in that for a second and process it because we need to figure out how can we do better, and the story, your story is so baked in community, and I love that that's where you started, like, you went to the coffee shop, you went to the heart of our city, and I want and I see that connected to EastPoint. And I want to talk about what you've done at EastPoint in this market. And I am so endearing to it because I want more people to seize moments like this important are the things that we have in terms of our skill set and our networks and pour it into something good. So there's my tee up for EastPoint. Tell us the story of what happened when you began that led to this. Absolutely. And I mean, the international award is to me on the side, because what it's done for the community and the people is just like completely epic.
So a couple of things. One is, and I'll refer back to this, but I think it has been a net benefit for the community. I know that it's been a net benefit for me. And so I think that's one of the foundational things that we'll keep pushing back on is like, what we firmly believe is that we're the, it's a selfish endeavor, we're the ones who benefit from being able to be a part of that community. And so we're going to do whatever the hell it takes to be a part of that community. So I'm gonna put that aside, first I'm going to go back to Elemental so one of the things that Elemental taught me and it'll translate into what we're talking about, is that it's easy to have a lot of ideas that we would say are baked in knowledge and therefore wisdom but knowledge that is attached to relationships isn't wisdom, typically, you can know something, but until you actually are around whatever is antithetical to like what you actually hold to, it's really easy to be dogmatic, right. And so for me being at Elemental it was the first time I mean, if I looked at what my world was before, it was really been around 55 to 70 year old white men who had been very successful. And you rolled that juxtaposition into being at Elemental, and all of a sudden, you start meeting people who don't see the world the way that you do, and are really nice and kind and thoughtful. And it starts pushing against stuff. And so it doesn't mean that you can't have convictions in the midst of relationships. But I think if you have convictions without relationships, it's really hard to stand on that. I had read like 15 books on, you know, social justice, criminal justice reform, all this stuff. And my brother and sister in law kept just feeding me stuff as I was kind of in this transition phase. And I don't know if you remember it, OU they got a fraternity guy who was singing on a bus and he was talking about lynching of black man, right? And it got on video. And so they did this reconciliation conference. And this guy stood up in the back and he said, if you want to know what it's like to be in my shoes, when's the last time you had someone like me over for dinner? And that like, that hit me hard, because I felt like I could like, I was this very, like high minded, progressive thinker on race with no relationships. And so I don't ever journal when I go home, like at night. But that night, I went home and journaled, and this is really pathetic, but it's honest, I said, Dear God, let me have a black friend. Like that is like the most like, I didn't have any, right, like, no one in my world was there. And so I became intentionally focused on that. And I had was lucky enough to have some people deal with me, right? Like, it's a burden, when you're already the target of a lot of different things. And then you got to like walk along somebody else, and show them how naive they've been, and how fabricated and isolated their world has been. So like, I actually have friends who are willing to do things that they shouldn't have done for me, and that I would have been put out if I had to do for someone else. And so it's through those relationships that I started seeing kind of the East Side of Oklahoma City as a place that I wanted to spend more time in, you know, there was two properties that opened up that we felt like we could buy. And so you know, I don't know if you want me to get yet into the philosophy of what drove the project. But for me, it was first picked out of relationship and saying, I, you know, if you're around someone who's anemic, and they've never had iron in their body, and they think they're fine, they're really good until they get iron. And then they're like, Oh, my God, my world is so much better, right. And I felt like I had been living in this anemic world, where all of these things that should have been a part of my life were not. And so that's what kind of translated in to EastPoint, 1.0 and 2.0.
Lots there and we're keep having these like pregnant pauses, because you just want to sit with some of these topics. And I am so thankful that you are taking us there and threaded through your own journey, because there's just so much at play, especially in our work with nonprofit because we have been unpacking centuries of just work around fixing communities and fixing people and providing solutions, whether people are involved or not. And it's just not worked, it's made things a lot worse. And it's hit a head. And I'm really grateful that we get to lift and amplify conversations with people that are just doing it better today. And community has to be centered at the core like it just for anything sustainable for anything meaningful and ethical and all of the things, it just has to be central. And so I know when we were talking, I hear it in your reflection back today in the story too. Like the values kind of not just set the tone, but it it helps you make decisions, it helps you know how to find the right partners. And I wonder if you just kind of walk us through all those values, I want to say there's six or seven because when Jon were talking, I was like taking copious notes that I'd love for you to like, go through those because, you know, you're gonna hear for listening to the podcasts, you hear us talk about values all the time. And to me this story is like why it's so important because it gets stuff, right? This is not something you put cute on the wall that we have like company values. It's like, what's really the DNA of how you show up? And how does that infiltrate, you know, the type of people that attract to your mission? So take us there and let's walk through them.
Yeah, so there was actually a project that went haywire, really close to this project. And so it's like watching a case study of things gone wrong. And it really helped in a way inform me and reinforce some of these ideas that were driving. But the first one was to say that typically people who have access to power or money think they're a blessing to any community that they walk into. And outside of that being really paternalistic, it's just wrong. And so if I hold to this idea that I value, humility and love and strength and community, they're in abundance on the east side. And so what I said was like, I will prostitute access that I have to wealth or power, so that I can go be in your community. And if you'll allow me to, like, leverage that, so I can be in your community, then I'm the one who benefits from this. So the first was to say that was going to be a fundamental driver for how we addressed redevelopment on the East side. The second was to say that the next thing that people are most scared of giving up whenever you get into a relationship is power. And so for me, that meant we had to be like, fundamentally okay with giving up power and control. And so Sandino, who had became a friend of mine, over a five or six year period, I called him and he was the first call, and I said, Hey, would you be, would you co develop this with Pivot, but when I say codevelopment, you get equity, you get development fees, and you speak for us. And you get to veto us, if you don't like the direction you're headed, you'll have the authority to kind of put pause or stop on anything that you don't like. And so, for me, that was also fundamental, because again, it goes against the grain of like, we're the development team, we should know what's best, but honestly we don't, you know, we don't know what's best. And the only way we're going to relevel the playing field, Becky, as you were talking about was actually giving up the thing that we value the most, which was authority and power. The third thing was to say that we were going to basically pay the community to to fill the community. And so we went and we did all this stuff, we asked them what they wanted. And they said, We want access to health care, want access to food, and we want representative retail, retail that represents the kind of color of skin that we have in abundance over here. And so instead of us like actually going in hiring a broker, we said, if you bring us a tenant that signs a lease, we're gonna pay you. Because you know better than we do about what your community needs. And so part of that's kind of outflowing of, you know, us saying, We benefit from being a part of their community that was actually trusting them to help us build this building. The fourth thing we did was we said, we're going to take the money that we get from the city, and instead of collecting it for us, or for our equity, we're actually going to pass it to our tenants or tenants got about six times the amount of money that they would get on the west side of town, to help build out their space. And then we reduce their rent by about 30%. The fourth or fifth thing that we did, you know, we wrestled with gentrification quite a bit. And so we would say that there is actually healthy gentrification, in some ways, but gentrification in at risk community communities is almost always negative, because it leads to displacement. And displacement, is actually one of the most destructive things that can happen to a community that has a value system, because what it does is it pushes them outside of that network that has had to play the role. Because of, you know, especially within the black community, you have historic redlining, you have, you know, over policing, you have lack of investment from the city of all these things, right. And so we said, well, if we're going to do this, we actually want our tenants to share in the upside, so all of our tenants who signed a lease got 15% ownership in a space that they were in. And so the idea was to say, like you now are our partner, this isn't a landlord tenant relationship. But this is a partnership between the two of us. And so what was fascinating was because equity has been so withheld from that community for so long, some tenants immediately got it. And we're like, no one's ever offered me equity in anything, right? It's great. Other people didn't even know that it was valuable. It's like talking about something that doesn't exist. And so you think about it, well, if we never, you know, let these generations buy a home, you know, their parents or their grandparents buy a home, they can't, they have to do lease to own to get a car because no one will lend them the money to get a car, banks don't lend the money. Like the idea of equity is like this, this thing that doesn't exist. And so for us, it became this, this passion project of us trying to help recraft some language that exists in abundance on the west side, but has been pulled out of the dictionary on the east side.
The next thing we did is we said we're going to leverage. And this is really the final point was, we're going to leverage this project to basically train up folks from the east side, to put us out of a job in the future. And so we, Pivot doesn't want to keep developing over on the east side in perpetuity, we actually want to raise up enough young men and women who are from the east side who can do it themselves, and they don't call us anymore. And so that's been kind of the heartbeat behind that project. And it's you know, it's now really manifesting itself into some really cool stuff. But we can give pause there and just say, you know, that's kind of the the six, six steps to what we did.
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Okay, that right there was a masterclass in cobuild, in empathy, and the complete mind shift of braking power dynamics, if you are someone listening right now, and you have a dream in your head, about building something that that you want to change the world. That right there was just a masterclass in how you step back and build it equitably. When you're looking at building partnerships, how do you take the power dynamic out of it? How do you become generous? How do you bake generosity into your culture, this reminds me so much of a conversation we had a couple seasons ago with Mike Beckham, who built in to Simple Modern, you know, we exist, to give generously. And I mean, this is a drinkware company, but they're setting their flag down and saying, we're here to be generous with people and with our community. And so I just want to thank you for what you've done. And it feels to me like you are very much teaching a man how to fish or a woman, I have to put that in there a woman how to fish because a human, a human out of fish, because the replicability of this is an empowerment mechanism that is going to help train the trainer who will then train more trainers. And this is how your community grows and thrives and gets behind each other. And so Jon, just thank you for all of that. I'm stepping off my soapbox, but I want to hang out a little bit of what allyship looks like in real terms to you. I mean, maybe set the tone for some of the power dynamic systems that were in place that make a project like this incredibly difficult to accomplish. Talk a little bit about how you did that, and any tips that you learned along the way?
Yeah, so I think you know, probably the hardest thing, to, to disrupt. It's easy to get mad at individuals, right? Because like, you can point at them and say you're the problem. It's really hard to reframe the system that's baked in, that determines or at least influences why people act the way that they do. So for me, like if, if, if I was a banker, and you guys asked me for money, and it was 1950, and you are a person of color, I would say like, No, you don't get my money. Like you're a person of color. We don't lend money to people like you, right. And I would say that again in the 60s. And I would say to get in the 70s. I say to get in the 80s. But by the time like 2000s rolled around, I don't even have that. That's not even I may not be racist. What I will say though, is hey, no one's lent you money. For 40 years in your community, you obviously there's been disinvestment in your community. It's not kept up. Like why would I risk my job to give you money, right. And so the system has been baked in to a point where the question is no longer or morality. It's like, how do we disrupt the system? And so the first thing I think that people will see, whenever they you know, you get passionate about something that you're trying to make a change. It's like what is the system that is in place that is actually influencing people to actually ask a moral question? And so we done a lot of projects in the urban core. And a lot of them had been way riskier than this. We bought the Tower Theater, we didn't have any tenants. It was an old, you know, porn theater and we didn't have any money. And it was our first project and we got a bank to lend us money, right. And so our first phase of EastPoint was we actually had a healthcare tenant who had been around for 100 years signed a 10 year lease, and they were taking up two thirds of the space, and the building cash flowed. And so I was like, This is gonna be the easiest loan I've ever asked for my life. And I started calling banks. And over 25, banks wouldn't even give us a term sheet. Some of them said, we don't lend money to that side of town. Others just said, like, oh, yeah, no, they will never be able to approve that, we're sorry. And so we finally got one bank, this is after about nine months. And so we call we call a bank, and a bank says, hey, if you'll give up some more ownership, and you'll bring someone in who's wealthier than you, and they'll guarantee the debt along with you, then we'll do the deal. And so this project is small in comparison to development. And so it was, you know, as a $4 million project. And so, this guy that we brought in, he had $5 million of single malt scotch. He's the largest Scotch collector in in the United States. I mean, one, can we talk about having to collect on that? I mean, how great would that be? Now, yeah, you wouldn't find me for like four months. But, but so he's like, dude, I'm in I'll do this. And we went back to the bank. And, you know, the bank said was the bank said, he's not rich enough. And that's whenever it hit me that if all I do is develop, and I'm passionate about this, and I can get loans all over town, and I can't get loans with 100 year old health care clinic, taking up 66% of the space. What do you think it's like for a 20 year old African American kid who's trying to actually do something right and he needs $50,000? It's impossible, right? And so that's when it moved from it being personal. Like me personally, being mad at bankers to me being personally mad at the system that existed, and say, Okay, we got to change the system. And up to that point, I was pretty critical of the people. I was using anger and shame and all of those things that don't work for anyone in our lives, right. But so I was trying to use as motivation. And what I realized is we, you know, we coined this term, joyous disruption, like we had to use joyous disruption to capture somebody's heart to lend us money, because there's this guilt and shame game was not winning. And so we call Jill Castilla, who is CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond. And really, I just was honest with her, I didn't like I didn't pull any punches, I said, we're gonna lose the deal if you don't do this. And she actually said, we'll make it happen, and we'll make it work. And so she took a female owned bank in the suburbs to lend money to an urban project on the east side, where there'd been no developed redevelopment in 35 years. And so we actually just to endcap on the story, I called our healthcare clinic, and said, good news. I know this is taking us forever, but we finally got financing, we're good to go. And they said it took you too long to get financing. We're going to walk from our lease, we'll see you in court, and they hung up the phone. And so we consider like the founding partners of pivot that was probably like the lowest day at Pivot like, we were so bad. So we ended up calling a council person. And John Pettis, who was Councilman at the time and said, We don't know what to do, but we're about to lose everything. And within a 24 hour period, he had the former mayor, the current mayor, head of Alliance, city manager in a meeting with the owners of this healthcare clinic, and they sold them on staying, not us. And it's funny because it's only a 10,000 square foot building. So it's very small and the fabric of like all of the buildings across Oklahoma City. But I think what every one of them knew is that there have been so many efforts to try to do something over there, and they failed each time. And so it was that built up failure that really caused a desire to step out in a way that maybe they hadn't done before. And so it was through that that kick started phase one. And then that led into the retail component. So you talk about relationships and stuff. You know, it's it's how do you disrupt systems? How do you see the system? And then how do you disrupt it in a way not using shame or anger as the as the primary motivation to get people to see what you're doing?
I mean, I love that term. I love this story. But it actually like it gets me here in the story that that happened here in our community. With I hear you that it's like a lot of people are not even activating, knowing why that's the way it is. They're just going through these motions that are so set, and that we've got to just do this a different way. So you're sticking out to me that you're using this term, joyous disrupter. And I think a lot of our listeners, and if you're hanging with us today, and you're in the nonprofit space, and you're looking for connectivity, there's so much here you know, of like how it connects to what our work, but I just am curious of what that looks like in real terms. I mean, you heard at least 25 nos from people that were probably your, quote, friends in town. What's it like to keep going and saying, to find that yes? Like, where was that drive? And how did you really use that joyous disrupter to find the right partner? Because I think there's something there for all of us to learn as fundraisers?
Well, I think if you're like in the nonprofit world, or you're in any world, you're typically like, you're not. I mean, he's point we weren't doing that to like, get rich, right? It was very much like our world is better. You know, there's a, there's an old saying, you know, the rising tide lifts all boats. And we kept saying, like a rising tide floats all the boats that have holes in it. And we have all these communities around downtown that have holes in it. And they're, they're the, they're actually the, the spread between the haves and the have nots, quote, unquote, in regard to infrastructure, and economic redevelopment is growing in this manner. And so all of these boats are flooding. And so, you know, as we, as we look at like, people saying, no and joyous disruption, I think for me, it became like, I actually have to start like, I have to change my tone, I have to change my posture. But I also like, have to actually start introducing these folks that I get to be with. I was just in Atlanta yesterday with, I guess, five or six folks from EastPoint. And we were meeting with all these different folks who are like, we're trying to learn how to do what they're doing. They're trying to learn how what we're doing. And it's like, I got to travel with all of them. And them walking in a room and sharing what it's like to grow up where they did it, you know, if they said this, if you are a, if you grow up in poverty, and you are African American, you have a 4% chance to get to a 30% I think it's a 30% wage earning position, which would be $70,000 a year, so 4% of the kids. And there's only 1% of white kids who grew up in communities that are in poverty, there's like 1% of white kids who grew up in areas of poverty. And so you look at the disparity between African American kids having to grow up in poverty, and then there's only a 4% chance that they'll just make it to $70,000 a year, and I'm in a room with them. These people have overcome so much. And they've done you know, so much more than I've had to do. And that kind of passion that they have makes me kind of pale in comparison from what I've had to overcome. You know, so one, it's like a perspective check, like a reality check. And I think the second, it's, it's, I guess, joyous disruption is also tied to persistence. And I say that in this way, is it everyone, you have to be told no, a lot, right. And that will either turn you away from what you're doing, or it will make you double down. And for me, it was the moment of the bank saying, you know, this $5 million Scotch guy is not rich enough to say that the passion for what I'm doing actually far outweighs any judgment, I could issue on anyone else. And so I'm gonna focus on the passion and not the judgment. And we're gonna go figure it out, I drove a guy around, he was the general manager that 76ers, and he came into town through Chris Doyle, at Simple Modern. And he spent two hours in the car with me, and he asked me questions nonstop. He was one of the smartest men I've ever been around. And he said, You know what I think about you. And he said about Pivot. And I was like, No, I don't really want to know he think about me is terrifying. And he's like, You guys don't give up. He's like, that would be the one thing he's like. And it's funny, we can sometimes downplay persistence. But if you are in the nonprofit world, like having persistence, and having joy, if those are the two kinds of like bedrocks, you're gonna be able to figure it out.
There's just so many hallmarks here that I think are missing when we build businesses. And when we build relationships, like I want to lift it out of business, and just talk about how we interact with each other. I mean, I want to commend you that a part of what you're doing in this business is constantly listening, learning, reading, asking tough questions. I would say for anyone that's trying to go in and understand someone who's different than you have, allowing them to share their story. I mean, we do that literally is the first thing every time we turn on the podcast, because the story informs everything. And we can't know what it feels like to fit in someone else's shoes. I can damn well assure you, I don't as a white woman living in Oklahoma, understand what it feels like to live in poverty. But I'm passionate about it. I want it to go away. I want it to equalize. And so you have to go and travel you have to bake in what is it like into part of your meetings, I'm using air quotes. These meetings are much more than meetings, they're experiences. I love that you're building and sharing frameworks with each other because it takes the competition out out of it. And it lets you scale faster. That is a great entrepreneurial hack. And I want to talk to you about EastPoint because this little community you've built, it warms my heart on so many levels, I want you to describe who's in EastPoint. And if you have a story of how EastPoint has specifically changed someone, or maybe changed you, I would love for you to share it, as well.
Yeah. And just to build off what you said a second ago, I would say to that, it's giving up authority. So like, yeah, the close friends that I have that are over there, they call me out on stuff all the time, because it's personal. And there will be things that I didn't even realize I said or did, right? And they'll be like, do you you really know what you just said, right? Or do you know asking it this way infers this and so I'm genuinely distrusted. Because for 60 years, people have distrust, that like people have lied, like people that look like me have come in and lied to the community, right? And so people are like, what's hard, you know, you always distrusted. And for me, it's like, it's super refreshing. It's like, you know how great it is to not to not be trusted when you go into a community? Because if they did, trust me, I would feel like they're naive. Because it'd be like, if my kid came and said, Hey, Dad, this kid's been lying to me for the last 16 months. But this month, he said, he's going to do this for me, I'd be like, don't believe it. Don't believe like, he's not going to do it. Right. Like he said this for 16 months, like, we're not going to believe it this time. So for them to not trust me is actually one of the reasons why I love the community. It's like, yes, you should have doubt, yes, you should not trust that I'm going to deliver on what I said, I'm going to deliver. And that's okay. Whenever I get there, and I do it, and we do it together, like it will be more meaningful for all of us. So to your point, put yourself in places that don't feel comfortable, because it's actually really great. And so there's this great story, JB, but he's a rapper, and he's been super involved in really bringing to light some of the discrimination that's happened with police force and other things. But he called me one day and he said, Hey, I need you to meet me at EastPoint. And so we walked over to EastPoint. And or I drove EastPoint, both got out of the car started walking, like we're going to walk to this place. So he gives me no context, we walk up to this place, and it just says barbershop on it right above the door. And so we, we open the door, I walk in, and there's there's three guys they're playing NBA 2k, we've got a guy getting his hair cut. And then we've got this man who's like six foot four, no body fat, strongest dude I've ever seen. And he's got one photo on the wall. And it's a photo of JB. And so like JB and him start talking, they catch up. And then he turns to me, he starts asking me questions about EastPoint, why am I doing it? What's going on? What's my heart behind it? And we get all the way done. And he goes, Hey, you're good, man, I just want you to know, you're good. I appreciate you coming over. And so we walk out and I'm like, JB, what the hell just happened? And he's like, well, I need you to meet the mailman, he's made. He is a former gang member, who is now here and respected by everyone. And I needed him to meet you so that he could trust you, and then bless your projects. And it hit me there that JB had just risked all of his political and cultural capital on me to introduce me to a guy that had the ability to really make sure that our project thrived. And we do that in our community all the time, right? Like, if, you know, Jon was going to go build an office building be like, hey, you need to go meet Mark Baffert, or any brunette or whoever, because you want them to, like, know what you're doing and you know, get to meet that right. And so, are you going to build this, I want you to go, and we have this like more business, like, you know, we fit, it feels more natural to us, right? Way to bless other people's work. JB gave me the most, the biggest blessing I could have asked for, in a way that I never would have ever been able to accomplish, had he not been a friend who trusted me. And so those are the moments that really shake you to your core and go I can't believe that he did that for me. In regard to tenants, we have a bookstore, we've got a fitness, he taught orange theory. And he opened up a gym on the east side, we've got a breakfast spot that's going to open up in about four months called Scrambled. We've got a two sisters who are homebuilders that are awesome. And they do general contracting work called Monarch Properties. They're there we've got a screen print and event space. We've got actually at one, we've got one nonprofit, it's actually our goal whenever we did this was we wanted it to be at least 75%. minority, and it's 90% African American owned businesses and over 50% of those are women. And so we've got an optometrist, I think I said a pizza joint JB just opened up Eastside pizza. Plug, it's incredible. And then we've got a bar called Kindred that opened up. And so we're now building off of that we've got a project it really in the next, you know, couple months we're going to talk about and announce and we're really looking at how do we continue to build this model of really bringing back if you think about it, if you grow up on the East Side, historically, you've had to leave the community to become successful. Because the economics have been so devastated by disinvestment for so long, that you can't actually have a sustainable business with any of the community that made you who you are. And so by bringing these back these opportunities back, what we're doing is we're not just actually allowing for people to like have options within the community, but people who are forced to leave, they get to come back to the community that they love and open up something. And then we'll continue to roll in all of these principles that we have that I shared at the beginning in terms of how we're going to help them not just do extractive development, but development that builds wealth for them.
It's just an incredible story. And I have one last question that's just hanging over me. And I want to know how this experience has changed you, as a human being. And as a dad, and as a husband and as a friend. How has this changed you, Jon?
I think it still is, I mean, there's, there's things that you can point to, right, like all of the microaggressions that we never experience. Becky it's like, one of one day I brought in a general contractor in my office in Candace Baitz, who's a Partner with us and runs all of our acquisitions and development. I was getting ready to introduce him to her and he goes, oh, I've got a girl just like that in my office. And he just assumed that she was an assistant, right? And Candace had to sit in that. And I was like, Well, no, you don't. And we walked down down the road. And so like, you experience things that I don't ever experienced, like those, those comments, and the, you know, the the lack of respect, it's just instantaneous. So I've seen that with them. You know, I've got hundreds of stories of watching them politely and with care handle things, that would just drive me nuts. And so one, just the compassion, you know, your heart grows in terms of saying, not in a paternalistic way, but just realizing that there's a lot that has to change in this world, right. The second thing is probably taught me as you start realizing that there is not a silver bullet that actually fixes any you can't have, we can talk about how many hundreds of years of just brokenness, just because of the way that someone looks and assume that one project is going to fix that or two projects is going to fix that. There has to be a holistic, like infrastructure that comes in and helps. And so I think that's taught me something. The third thing and, and I think this is maybe the most important thing is that I think that the gravitational pull of wealth is to comfort. And so I mean, that in saying that, if you just do your job day to day and build wealth, and you don't fight anything, it's gonna pull you to this place of wanting to have comfort. And so the problem with comfort is, it's like, if you just keep building walls up around the city to prevent any bad things from happening, what ends up happening as you miss out on joy. And so I've often said that, like, joy and suffering are bedfellows to one another, and so and so much that we're willing to walk and put our places where suffering could exist or discomfort could exist, you'll often find joy there. But in so far, that we try to protect ourselves from any discomfort. Therefore, we use wealth to build walls, we become opioid addicts who actually can't feel anything anymore. And so for me, you know, for our company, our mission is to say we are going to be we're going to be intentional on developing in communities at risk so that we can experience discomfort, so that we can actually experience joy.
Okay, if you didn't take like parenting lessons, life lessons, marriage lessons, and how we just show up as people, you know, and serve these organizations, gosh, on Thank you, thank you for taking us there. Thanks for your work. And, you know, we kind of round out all of our conversations asking for you to give us a one good thing, what's something you could leave with our audience? Can be a mantra can be a secret to success or just a tip.
I mean, I think it was just what I shared is that trying to find ways you can experience discomfort so you can find joy, you know, the easiest thing in the world is to find someone doing something wrong. It's really hard to catch someone doing something right. And so as we experience discomfort, we're able to kind of it's like your eyes get opened up, it's like a kaleidoscope that opens up the world. And so to those who are listening and and really doing the work, you're already entering this suffering and so I hope that you find joy around every other rock.
So this is just such a beautiful story of community, right, revitalization and I in the vibrancy that is baked into it in the equity is so aspirational. I just want to take the story and put it everywhere we find a broken community who needs not just wealth, but in a complete upswing from power dynamics, but one that is really ready to just equalize in a way. And I just can think that that has to be in every community around the world. And man, if we could just replicate the Jon Dodsons. And you know, the JDs and get them together, get them talking and getting them building cool stuff. Guys, any of you can do this, it just takes a 1% shift to go in and do something differently. Thank you so much, Jon, for this incredible story. How can people find you? How can they read more about EastPoint and about Pivot? Give us all the details where they can find you online.
Yeah, so pivotproject.com is our website. So you guys can always check us out there.
Well, this has been a huge honor. Obviously, like we're just kind of speechless and some of the things you've you know, brought to us today. Thank you, Jon. What an honor and just feel really grateful for this conversation.
So proud to know you keep going. I feel like you're at the beginning of this journey. I can't wait to see what happens in the next couple decades. Keep going.
Well, thank you guys for being mouthpieces for good. I appreciate it. And I'm the one who feels super excited that I got to hang out with Jon and Becky today. So thank you guys.
Let's go be joy disruptors everybody a call to action. Thanks, Jon.
Thanks, man.
Thanks.
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