Transcript

Prison Into Profits - Tom Vozzo

From The Proven Podcast · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 37 min · 7,966 words · 79 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Prison Into Profits - Tom Vozzo", an episode of The Proven Podcast published August 15, 2025 (37 min, about 7,966 words). It mentions 23 people, works and ideas, including Homeboy Industries, Los Angeles, Great Recession, Working poor, Parole officer.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Great Recession, Homeboy Industries, Los Angeles, Shareholder value
  2. – 10:00: Homegirl Cafe, Los Angeles, Parole officer, Salvation Army
  3. – 15:00: Farmers Markets, Board of directors, Parole officer, Social enterprise
  4. – 20:00: decentralized command
  5. – 25:00: decentralized command, Hospice, Navy SEAL, Trudy Web
  6. – 30:00: Hospice
  7. – 35:00: Jesuit priest, Mr. President
  8. – 36:40: Homeboy Industries, Los Angeles, Social enterprise, The Homeboy Way

Notable quotes from "Prison Into Profits - Tom Vozzo"

  • You can make. After running $2 billion in businesses for 26 years, Tom pivoted to lead Homeboy Industries and discovered that the people everyone else won't hire become the…
    about Homeboy Industries · at
  • Corporation. And now what I do is I do a nonprofit and I run Homeboy Industries, which we're nonprofit in Los Angeles helping gang members and felons leave gang life behind and…
    about Los Angeles · at
  • Back in 2008 which is now a while back was the great recession of 2008 and our corporation we were a private corporation for a number of years then we went public and then public for 5 years then back to being private.
    about Great Recession · at
  • Something said to me, shoot, in this capitalist society we're in where shareholder value dominates the caring for the employees, that's not so good because well-run companies…
    about Shareholder value · at
  • Your question, so owners, managers, supervisors need to recognize that the working poor of America have these challenges that they're good workers.
    about Working poor · at
  • 25% of our social enterprise businesses and measly amount of government money.
    about Social enterprise · at
  • And being able to do that and balance that and have decentralized command as you go through that. One of the things that, I love implementing because I have a background with the military is so much towards.
    about decentralized command · at
  • Into these and you have these two different worlds, because I, I worked at a hospice for a long time.
    about Hospice · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Tom Voso — Person · 1 mention · first at
    What you can prove. Everyone says ex gang members and felons are unemployable. Today's guest, Tom Voso, proves that's the biggest hiring mistake you can make. After running $2…
  • Trudy Web — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Matter if we make money. And I remember the CEO, she's no longer with us, an individual named Trudy Web. She's that's adorable. We still have to pay the bills. I was that's great.
  • Mr. President — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Didn't when homeboy when I took on the homeboy role, it was different when like father Greg our founder Jesuit priest I mean the mission was strong but the organization was…

Books & papers

  • The Homeboy Way — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Something to learn by and to sort of invest in. So do all that. On the business side I wrote the book the homeboy way where I kind of take the this the things I've learned at…

Companies & orgs

  • Homeboy Industries — Company · 3 mentions · first at
  • Hospice — Company · 2 mentions · first at
  • Salvation Army — Company · 1 mention · first at
    He's my friend. We were on the board of Salvation Army in Los Angeles. we've always thought, give back, be on boards, be on be part of charities, right? So, I'm having lunch at Home Grill Cafe and I'm thinking.

Products & tech

  • Farmers Markets — Product · 2 mentions · first at
    Have rival gangs working among themselves. One of the businesses is we go to farmers markets. We sell bread at the farmers markets and their interaction with customers and all.…
  • Homegirl Cafe — Product · 1 mention · first at
    I left the corporate world. friend of mine invited me to come down to have lunch at the Homegirl Cafe. We're here in Los Angeles.
  • Homeboy Bakery — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

  • Great Recession — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
  • Working poor — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
  • Parole officer — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
    Not that they don't want to do the work, just that they either got to go see the parole officer, they have to sort of go back and sort of do something different to get rent paid. They're dealing with their kids doing all sorts of.
  • Social enterprise — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
  • decentralized command — Concept · 2 mentions · first at
  • Shareholder value — Concept · 1 mention · first at
  • Board of directors — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Showed up every day on time, did her work. Well, we're a homeboy have we're a nonprofit, so we have a board of directors. And so, quarterly, we have board meetings that start…
  • Navy SEAL — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Yeah. I go, he's a Harvard grad and he's a former Navy Seal. You're still not going to hire him? And they're oh, no, that's a that's that's a different that's a I'm okay. So, there's different nuances to this.
  • Jesuit priest — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Didn't when homeboy when I took on the homeboy role, it was different when like father Greg our founder Jesuit priest I mean the mission was strong but the organization was…
  • Generational trauma — Concept · 1 mention
  • Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Maslovian needs) — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

Full transcript with timestamps

Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it does not matter what you think, only what you can prove. Everyone says ex gang members and felons are unemployable. Today's guest, Tom Voso, proves that's the biggest hiring mistake you can make. After running $2 billion in businesses for 26 years, Tom pivoted to lead Homeboy Industries and discovered that the people everyone else won't hire become the most loyal, hardest working employees you'll ever find. The show starts now.

All right, welcome back to the show. Today, we're talking to Tom. We're going to talk about diversity and his history and how you can really change how it works in the workforce. Welcome to the show. Appreciate you being here.

Thanks, Charles. Good to be with you. So, let's get the audience get caught up on who you are and what you've done. You know, off camera, we were talking a little bit about getting your history. You've done some really impressive stuff. Let's get the audience caught up.

Yeah, sure. I I I grew up a middle- class kid. My brothers and I are first generation college graduates. I go right into graduate school from my undergraduate and then I land in a small company up in Boston familyun business and uh you know we at that time it was about a $50 million business in my time there we scaled to $300 million uh run by the family had all the attributes of a family run business a lot of other family members in there but also bring in professional managers they sold her a bigger corporation which then launched me into my corporate career ended over 26 years my last eight years I ran a $2 billion set of of businesses for for the corporation. And uh and now what I do is I do a nonprofit and I I run Homeboy Industries, which we're nonprofit in Los Angeles helping gang members and felons leave gang life behind and life of crime behind and and heal and mainstream back out to society.

There's that's a huge change from first off, Boston, LA is a completely different change. I'm I'm from Florida and I don't know um you might be able to explain this to me. There's this white cold stuff that falls out of the sky in Boston. I'm not really sure what that is,

but it's a huge change when you go from Boston over to to LA. More so going from what you used to do, you know, going to multi-million dollar or billion dollar industries into this nonforprofit that is Homeboy. What was the drive for that? Why did you decide to pivot over into that?

Yeah. You know, I I sort of say it this way. I had my my my epiphany uh moment back and if I can give you a little longer story to this.

Absolutely. um back in 2008 which is now a while back was the great recession of 2008 and our corporation we were a private corporation for a number of years then we went public and then and then public for 5 years then back to being private again so I had the fortunate to be there for those transactions and did well for myself and my family but now this is the first couple years of being a uh private organization private equity owned us and so we had to deliver upon our numbers so the big 2008 recession comes comes along, employment levels drop by 10%, which means the businesses we're in, revenue dropped by 10%. And all of us as executive leaders, our executive officer of the corporation had to do all we can to get our businesses right sized for the the recession. And so, uh, at that time, our my set of businesses, again, $2 billion on the top line, about $150 million of operating profit on the

bottom line. That was the budget. I thought we did a good job. We were kind of come in at $140 million, only missed by $10 million in the middle of the the quoteunquote great recession. And I still remember two days before Christmas being on the phone with the chairman of the corporation. He was essentially berating me and yelling at me. It wasn't good enough. I needed to get that next $10 million. I need to get back on plan. And I'm thinking to myself, we've been at this a long time. I know that get that next $10 million, how many people have to how many more people have to lay off. And I also smart enough to know about the business that once coming out of the recession, I'm going to need all those people back. Yeah. Right. And so it got me thinking, what's the long-term commitment we have to our employees? If we're an employee based organization, how's that all play out? And so something said to me, shoot, in this

capitalist society we're in where shareholder value dominates the caring for the employees, that's not so good because well-run companies have three things. It does well in the marketplace of sharehold value. Customers want to give you money for the products or services and and you have a great place to work for for your employee base. And and I felt like that all of a sudden things were out of whack. Now listen, I'm a committed capitalist. Even today when I do speeches on behalf of Homeboy, which is a nonprofit, I'm in the audience. I say I'm a committed capitalist. A murmur goes across the audience about he's one of them. But again, well conferences are good for for people. But something clicked in me saying there's got to be a better way.

And so listen, I wasn't the final decision maker, you know, so I I did what I needed to do. But I knew that. So thereby a couple years later when my golden handcuffs uncuffed, I wanted to do something different. Something in my mind says, how can we run businesses where where employees are just as important in the long-term value as as shareholders and do that in balance? All right. So that's what was behind me. So I left the corporate world. friend of mine invited me uh to come down to have lunch at the Homegirl Cafe. We're here in Los Angeles.

He's my friend. We were on the board of Salvation Army in Los Angeles. You know, we've always thought, you know, give back, be on boards, be on be part of charities, right? So, I'm having lunch at at Home Grill Cafe and I'm thinking and I'm looking around and I'm looking at the employees and the employees are working hard. They're smiling. and they're engaging with the customers and and and by the way my background my last eight years I bought 40 companies and sold four in my for-profit world and so you get a sense of employee base and so I'm having lunch and I'm looking around and I'm realizing I would have not hired one of those folks in my prior job because the tattoo on their face because the felony because they were gang members and yet here's this workforce that's actually working hard and doing good and so it challenged was my notion that I I'm a hot shot business guy. I think businesses are good for society.

But here at Homeboy in the context of a business, we're helping people and change their life in the most dramatic way. And so when my friend asked me to get involved, I I had time on my hand. I wanted to know, can my business skills be used in a different way? And so I signed on as a volunteer. And I thought I would be there for, you know, five, six months and help them out and move on. Now here I'm 12 years later and still still still helping out and still loving

long six months, right? I think there was this idea that you, you know, you have to serve your shareholders, but you that means you cannot serve your employees. And that that notion is just fundamentally wrong.

It has been wrong for an exceptionally long time. I'm similar to you. Um, you know, you buy businesses, you scale businesses, it's all about systems and, you know, do all that, but you also have to build a core. You have to build a culture. And people will automatically dismiss based on either their history or their mental capabilities or anything else. They dismiss that immediately. It is a bit of a jump for people to say, "Hey, yeah, I'm going to hire this individual based off their criminal background." How do most businesses when they look at that, how do you make peace with that because where it makes logical sense like, "Hey, they still have phenomenal value. These are still amazing human beings. Not everybody had a straight path. Not every even gift and you know there's a lot of people who don't have as you were saying the tattoos on their face where I would like no I'm not letting that person in

my house." So just because you don't have tattoos or you do have tattoos, you know, there is this judgment thing. How do you help business owners get past that? So, hey, you know what? Yeah, you're right. There is value in these individuals at Homeboy. How do you get them through that? How do you walk owners through that?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's a multi-part uh answer to your to your good question. First of all, just sort of set the context. You know, businesses need people, right? They need people who are good. They need people who are loyal. They people are going to work hard.

Absolutely. Right. and the way the the work world is out there, it's hard to find enough good people along the way. And so, uh, there's this sort of untapped amount of folks out there. I uh, so, well, at Homeboy, let me may take a long answer to your question. At Homeboy, folks we work with, they're all victims of complex trauma at a young age. That's why they join a gang. They think, you know, because they didn't have a family. Their parents told them not to go to school. Their parents told them be the be on the corner for the drug lookout.

They're second, third generation gang members. They join a gang thinking that's their their true family. False hope. They do something bad. They go to prison. They come out of prison. They don't want to go back to that situation. They want to be better. Just that society has a lot of these sort of challenges for them that it's hard to get a job. You can't get a job. You can't pay for rent. So you you're back into this cycle of going with the gangs because you can't survive on your own. And so fundamentally to your then to your question, so owners, managers, supervisors need to recognize that the working poor of of America have these challenges that they're good workers.

Not that they don't want to do the work, just that they they either got to go see the parole officer, they have to sort of go back and sort of do something different to get rent paid. They're dealing with their with their kids doing all sorts of things. And so it's about hiring people, leaning in and investing with resources, not a lot of resources, but resources that if if someone needs to go take care of their business, they that they're allowed that day off. And so it's a let me just back up. It's just to summarize, if you're looking for this workforce, it's a good workforce, but you recognize you got to do a little bit differently.

You got to then that they have their challenges. Let me give you this this one quick story. So at Homeboy, we have all sorts of jobs filled with our population that we serve, right? And so there was, you know, I've had a number of executive assistants now over the years here and and teaching them to be executive assistant in the in the for-profit world. So one of them um young woman in and out of youth camp, youth jail here in LA County, uh uh mother at age 17, hardcore gang member, just sort of hated her life and and very mad at the world. But through Homeboy, she's able to find herself and to be a good mother and but she she was my executive assistant with a young child living in a shelter, but she still showed up every day on time, did did her work. Well, we're a homeboy have we're a nonprofit, so we have a board of directors. And so, quarterly, we have board meetings that start at 7:30 in the

morning. And so, she would get here at 6:30 in the morning making sure the tables are set up, papers are in place, the water was out, right? And so I remember this one day the night before one of our board meetings, her parole officer calls her up and says that she needs to report in to his office next day at 8:00 a.m. and she's saying, "Can I come at 10:00 because I need to be here for the homeboy board meeting. I have a job." And essentially says, "No, if you're not here by 8:00 a.m., I'm going to violate your parole, which means you go back into prison." Now knuckleheads, right? But so of course we're home away. say, you know, go take care of your business.

We'll be here. We we we'll get by, right? But how many other businesses would sort of let her maybe they would let her off that morning if they knew the situation, but would she have so much shame she couldn't tell the situation? Because so my point is the the people we work with, they want to do it the right way. There's just a lot of hurdles in place that us as employers need to recognize that that we got to treat people not the same, but individually and give them the chance to do their job well. and if they give them that chance, they they'll do the job really well.

It's it's interesting because we always talk about if you're going to hire someone, hire the hungriest person you can. So, normally if there's a job between a job opening between one person who is a single mom and has kids versus someone who's married, they have the same skill set, the same character, and even across the board, hire the single mom with the kids because she's going to hunt and be there for work. She needs she wants the job and she's going to run.

This to me kind of takes that to an even higher level. They're trying to break out of what you know now know and you've explained is generational issues. This these are this isn't just breaking out from hey I happen in this one situation. This is generational traumas that they go through. What do employers need to know? Because obviously a lot of people don't have this way of thinking. A lot of people are just like no I want the person with the college degree and so on and so forth. How does someone go in as a business owner and say hey okay I've got two people in front of me. I've got Bob and I've got Mike and one of them is not a homeboy candidate. One of them is a homeboy candidate. What would make you if you were a business owner on the outside because you've been on the other side say, "Okay, I'd been on both sides.

Why would I choose a homeboy candidate versus a non-h homeboy candidate?" Yeah, I understand your question. Let me kind of like little bit flip a little bit. Uh I would say you as a business owner hire the person you think is going to do a great job. So just as in your story, the the single mom who has to hustle,

you have a sense that that person is going to work harder. Yeah. pick the person who's going to work hard for you, but also recognize that that you're going to just like my story, you're going to have to give them time off in different ways. You're going to have to sort of support them in different ways for them to do the job well. And and that's so it's a mindset shift is is what do you got to do to help somebody succeed in their job? And what I'm saying is what you got to do to help somebody who's been the working poor is seeing their job is different from a college educated blah blah blah blah blah person who are more self-sufficient have more of a safety net have more resources resources around

to totally different sit and if I can say a second lesson is that when you hire those folks it's very hard us as humans always judge let me if you have time for another story.

Absolutely. So we at Homeboy were a nonprofit organization mostly funded by twothirds of donations and foundations. 25% of our social enterprise businesses and measly amount of government money. Social enterprise businesses. We have a bakery. We have a cafe. One of our We have a bakery. Artisan made bread. Listen, there's nothing better to break down barriers of two rival gang members standing at the bread table rolling dough shoulder shoulder knowing how much bread they got to get done. raking that raking. You can't demonize somebody in relationship with them. That's why we have we don't deal with gangs. We deal with gang members, right? That's why we have rival gangs working among themselves. One of the businesses is we go to farmers markets. We sell bread at the farmers markets and their interaction with customers and all. So early on my time, I'm I'm, you know, trying to do management by walking

around and getting to know people. And so I walked through the bakery and I heard one of our best um farmers market guys, George, ask for his bakery manager for the for the weekend off. Now, as you can imagine, weekends are busy for farmers markets.

And he's one of our best guys every no matter how much bread he takes out, he always sells it. He's got a good gift for Gab and and interacts with customers right?

And people come to see George and talk about him. So, uh, and so he, so the manager gave him time off and I come up to him, I'm really a newbie at this point. Hey, what's going on? Like in a glib way, hey, what are you going to do this weekend, right? And he says, I'm reporting in. And I said, reporting in? What's that mean? He said, oh, I'm reporting to county jail. And I take a step back. What do you mean reporting at the county jail? Well, he owed money. And so back in LA County at that time when you come well look on a sidebar the nutty thing about society is we release tens of thousands of prisoners a year and they come out with debt not just restitution costs but parole costs court costs fines and fees.

And so how do we think a prisoner in prison is making money and how do we think once they get out of prison they they're going to be able to get enough of a job to live and to pay their debt? Nutty nutty nutty. But George wanted to do it the right way. He didn't want to go ask his homies and his gang for money because then he was going to be indebted to the gang. He didn't go to a lone shark at the time. You can report in for three days of county jail, which is not the safest spot, and earn money off your debt. All right. So, I'm talking to him.

I'm amazed. I walk away really amazed by him that he's doing it the right way, that all these societal challenges are stopping him, but he's going to still do it the right way. So all week and I'm long I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking should I have given him money? Should I have loaned him money? Should I have done some other thing? I make a beline in the next Tuesday. See how it went. And I go right to George and I see the stress on his face asking how it went. I said, "What happened?" He said, "Well, now George has custody of his 10-year-old and 8-year-old, which is pretty unusual for a male to get custody as soon as they leave the prison system.

And the caregiver who was supposed to show up or wash his kids didn't show up and he still had to report into county jail. Yeah. And so imagine leaving your 10-year-old 8 in the apartment by themselves

three and a half days a year in jail. Now the kids end up being fine. So nothing went wrong with the kids. But imagine the stress as a parent. So you I'm telling the story for a couple reasons. One is we the rest of us in society can't imagine the challenges that the poor in our society face every day. The choices they got to make. Whether it's George trying to choose to go to having to go to jail to pay off debt and leave his kids alone or the home girl who comes in doesn't one of our employees doesn't eat for the breakfast and lunch so she can save money for diapers. Impossible choices.

And so we have to recognize that our folks chase imposs have to make impossible choices. And we have to resist the urge to judge. resist the urge to think what would I have done would I have done something differently so I tell the story in relation to your question is as you hire these folks don't judge just just lean in and help and know that they're working as hard as they can and they're trying to get through it but lean in and help and don't sort of judge them by their actions in their private life in that sense

no I think something you said earlier really resonated with me as well understanding that each one of your employees either if they're coming from homeboy or they're coming from the other side of the tracks in this situation You've got to treat each one individually and this is part of decent leadership. You have to be able to identify what people's basic needs are. There's human needs and there's a different scale on how it goes and there's mal hierarchy of needs. You have all of that. Being able to understand that you're building a culture and how you interact with Susie from accounting is going to be very different than how you interact with like from marketing.

And being able to do that and balance that and have decentralized command as you go through that. One of the things that, you know, I love implementing because I have a background with the military is so much towards decentralized command that you empower the people beneath you. But in order to do that takes an immense amount of trust.

Mhm. You're talking about not judging and you said it's very hard not to judge individuals who have certain backgrounds. You know, we do background checks and we do drug tests and we do that for all the organizations that I underneath my command. How do you get past that? Saying, "Okay, I I know they're not going to pass a background check that we normally do, right? Um, I'm hoping they're going to pass the drug test that we do if we're in a drug-free environment. How do you get a business owner, you know, again, you've been on both sides. How do you get the business owners, okay, I'm going to give this a shot. I'm going to risk the ability to feed because I always tell this to people all the time, whenever you run into a situation where you're firing someone, I'm not firing that person. I'm making sure the employees that still work for me can still feed their kids.

This individual is hurting the process. I'm sorry. I got I have duty to these children. How do you take a business owner be able to walk in and say, "Okay, I'm going to risk these other employees ability to feed their kids and take this risk off all this judgment that I have, which is my problem, not the potential employees problem." How do you get them through that? How do you get them through that hurdle and take that risk?

Yeah. Um, yeah, good question. Let me I want to come come at it at two ways, right? And and I just want to be clear to to folks listening like I've been in the business world 26 years. I've been doing nonprofit 12 years. And I can I know when I tell these stories, people are saying, "Well, that's true in the nonprofit sense, but I'm running a for-profit company." And you know, you guys what you guys do is nice, but I got to still do the bottom line, right? And so I recognize that. And so what I want to say is like even the way you framed it up, like if someone's not doing their job, that's in that's going to impact the whole organization. And we have to feed the whole organization. They have people got to put food on the table, right? And so even at Homeboy, look, ours is about a mission. It's a people oriented business. It's a mission of helping people leave gang life behind.

So if someone's coming in every day, now we have we have 500 people on payroll who we pay to work on themselves. In addition, we have another 150 staff, right? But if someone's coming in and they're still running with the gang, they're not programming. We're say come back when you're ready. So we we we have our limits limits too. But part of the other part I want to say is to your question and it's it's it's funny. It's I've never really said it this way but it's listen there's no exact science to this right now. If you're a good leader and you're running a and you're your company's successful and you're growing all that you have a sense for people you have a sense whether they can do the job or not. And so when you're interviewing just focus on whether you think they can do the job. forget everything in their background. Just forget it. It It's no impact. Now, do you sense where they can

do the job? Sense do they are they, you know, stable enough to show up and get there? And obviously, they're going to have their challenges. You're going to lean in and help, but just it's about can they do the job today and don't worry about what was in the past.

So, my my question is there takes different leadership skills and it all talks starts with empowerment. You know, leadership is about empowering the people with

how do you is there a different way of empowering these people in a for-profit environment versus a non-for-profit environment with the extra spice that comes with it in this one. Is there a because you've done both. You've been able to you've been able to empower and lead under both environments and you know when you had you were talking to this when you first started when you had the individual who said I wanted the extra $10 million uh during an economic collapse uh it hit you. You're like this is this isn't home. this is this doesn't resonate. I'm not this isn't where I'm going to be much longer. So you you have this, you know, core being that aligns with very specific morals. How do you find the balance to empowerly lead in this environment? Is it different for for-profit versus non-for-profit with the extra spice that this this comes in with?

Well, well, you ask good questions. I try. I try. Right. Question you got to think about. um you know um let me see if I can get the words to it.

If you want while you're thinking I'll give you an example. Uh we had an I was I was working with an organization that brought me in to help them scale. And the owner of the business goes I am never going to hire anybody that's a murderer. I refuse to do that. That is absolutely acceptable. That violates my moral code. I'm like cool. This is I'm going to make up a name. This is David. He has killed an immense amount of people. you're never going to hire him. Like, yeah. I go, he's a Harvard grad and he's a former Navy Seal. You're still not going to hire him? And they're like, oh, no, that's a that's that's a different that's a I'm like, okay. So, there's different nuances to this conversation. And people get married to this one idea and they be it becomes this hill they're going to die on. I'm like, you need to look at things differently. You need to look at the individual. You need to have

conversations about can, to your point, can they do the job? And then I get in the face of the senior command and I'm like, can you lead them? Because that's very different conversation. Can you empower these individuals? Because if you're going to come in, you're going to bark orders at individuals, it's not going to work. If you can meet their needs, understand their pains, empower them, and then help them do through decentralized command, you're going to do a lot better. So, when you're coming into these and you have these two different worlds, because I I, you know, I worked at a a hospice for a long time.

They were not for-p profofit. And I remember I'm like, well, it doesn't matter if we make money. And I remember the CEO, she's no longer with us, an individual named Trudy Web. She's like, that's adorable. We still have to pay the bills. I was like, that's great.

I love it. That's very cute little one. And I was like, "Oh, we have to make money." She goes, "Yeah, we're not going out of business." And I was like, "Oh, so the bottom line still matters in a nonforprofit or a nonprofit. You still got to pay the damn bills."

Yeah. Right. And there's completely different leadership styles based on the individual. What I have found based on the individual versus based on the organization. So the again when you come in, you're building a culture and people lead in different ways. There's different type of leaders out there and and some are really good in some cases, some are very good in other cases. Going back to where we were, is there a different way in leadership and empowerment when you run into these two different environments with the special spice that Homeboy comes with?

Yeah. So, boy, another add-on to your good question. Um, I want to actually dive in in the middle there and talk about your example that you used about the murder type of thing, right? Uh and I want to be careful the words I choose. Uh it it come down again not to be judging like we don't know what people have carried in their life. We don't know situations of where they've been at and the trauma they've been under, what causing them to do certain things, right? And so um we're not ever well we don't condone violence. We never accept that, you know? Uh but let me jump a little bit. People leave the prison system. they've they've done the time for the things they did,

right? We serve their time. So, you know, always sort of judge them for the rest of their life,

right? And so, so that at on the intellectual side, no, we're giving people a chance. We're not judging them from their past. Now, to your question of the management style and how that comes about, right? You know, this is where I've I've actually, you know, interesting lately I've been on my own faith journey by being here at home boy and learning about about how faith and God and

God loves us all, how that affects how I think and how I think as a leader, right? And so I've I've kind of through Homeboy and through Greg, our founder, and all that kind of comes to this point of understanding that um I'm finding joy through others. My my being I my moral being is not about these hard firm rules. My moral being is about being in relationship with others and and leaning into to help others. And so like all of us in society, we we have these sort of rules we have in place. I'm honoring this type of No, let that go. Look at the person in front of you as a person.

This may not sit well with everybody else how he says God loves that person too. You know, I learned this homeboy. God loves all of us. No matter what we've done, he's too busy loving us to be judging us, right? And once you sort of, it's the obvious thing, but it's my session. Once you know that God loves that person across from me as much as God loves me,

way easier. It's way easier, but it's on two planes. Like, like I'm saying all that full throttle, but I'm also saying, hey, you're running a business. People have to meet the caliber of the job. They got still got to do their job.

Got to do the job, right? You're clear. You got to be clear about expectations and all those things, but just let all that other stuff that may cloud your vision about a person go. Just treat them for the person they are today and they're doing the job, how they're doing the job.

You you're talking about, you know, finding faith. And I think one of the great gifts of this because I haven't I'm not blessed with the gifts of the gift of faith at this point. Um, and it might happen one day, it might not. I'm I've made peace with that. It's one way or the other. So, as you go into these environments, I remember sitting with ironically a rabbi and we were talking about this and he's like, "You don't question enough of your things." I'm like, "I'm sorry, what?" Because again, when you're working in a hospice, you're around multiple religious leaders and you're having these conversations like why do these things happens? Why why does why does a child get born with inoperable cancer and I've only six explain this to me?

And he goes, you know, you're you're pushing so hard on questioning all of these things, but you don't question yourself. And I was like, okay. He goes, and to use the example, use an extreme example that we used earlier. He goes, would you kill someone? And I was like, absolutely not. He's like, okay, would you kill to save a life? And I was like,

right. I know. He was like I was like, "All right." And I did the avoidance, which we all do. I'm like, "What do you mean that's avoidance?" And he says, "Okay, if some who is the person you love the most in the world, if I was going to shoot them in the face, would you kill me?" I'm like, "Yeah." He goes, "Would you kill 10 of me?" I was like, "Yes." He goes, "Okay, now we're just arguing about the number."

So, he made you challenge your belief system. And I think a lot of what Homeboy does is it allows people to get away from the judgment and allow them to go and say, "Hey, can the person do the job? Stop judging them. Don't judge them on what they did. Can they do the job? Are they effective to do that? Are you giving that person a chance to really get into this?" You know, Tom, as someone who has scaled multiple businesses and done some numbers that most people will never see. Most people will never get become in the billionaire environment ever as far as working in organizations or being part of a billionaire organization. They just won't. You know, most of my clients are at the seven figures. They're trying to get to the eight figures. Getting beyond that, they're like, "God." So, when you get to somebody people, we call them hard bees.

Hard bees are a very different planet than someone who's an M. It just it's just the nature of the beast.

What are the biggest lessons you learn in those kind of those huge environments where again, it's this hard shift when you go from, hey, this is a multi-billion dollar company all the way into, hey, we not for how are we going to keep the lights on? So having that hard pivot where as a leader because you've done this and you've been on both sides you've been on both sides of this battlefield where do you see the commonalities and where do you see the challenges that you could you know the audience who are listening right now going crap not only do I need to look at people differently I need to hire differently but where else can they take lessons from you and learn differently.

Yeah, I've been very fortunate to be part of a lot different type of size organizations, right? And without a doubt, the big corporations have a lot of resources and bandwidth and and look, the businesses we were in, it was, you know, uniform businesses, food businesses, facility cleaning. So, no special, you know, technologies or patents. It was just how well you led your team is what how you got future business, right? And so I was sort of taught very early on about a lot of management managerial skills, leadership skills, you know, had executive coaches really really the overemphasis on the making me a better leader because if I was a better leader, my teams were going to do better. Corporation does better, right? And so um what I've tried to do is bring that aspect to Homeboy. And I view Homeboy as a small business, as a small familyun business. It's it has that dynamic. It's a sort of

grassrootsbased founder. I took over for the founder. That that type of thing. And so, um, you know, and then at different levels as you go from as we went from $10 million to $20 million and $30 million, you got to bring more skill sets in and you got to grow the team. Very proud of the fact that so summary of how to do this. The key lesson is not any great insight is hiring the people, getting the right people in place and developing the people. Twothirds of our management team now are former clients. Think about that. They were in our program coming in out of prison, no clothes, no food, no anything.

Mhm. And we've helped them heal. Helped them come resilient and then they just blossom in terms of their ability to be the next generation of mentors, to be the next generation of business leaders. you know the you know people who run our cafe and our bakery they're all former former gang members right and they they were all they all lived in that lifestyle so they had this natural leadership skills but they didn't have the managerial skills so then it's bringing a lot of trainings to teach them the the managerial side of this and so to me it's always been about to scale an organization you need two things you need funding and you need people will people scale with you and you and a lot of times when I see other organizations that don't succeed is because they didn't put enough time on the people's side that the entrepreneur the leader did almost everything themselves didn't spend the time to teach the next

generation to move the gen next generation along and not really and then thereby not not having a shared vision so it's really about developing people and bringing in outside trainers to make that happen as well

I think that speaks to your leadership skills about you know you built a culture if twothirds of your or is people that used to be clients and you add in there that's a culture you built you build something where they're dived into it and they have a vested interest.

That's right. If there are certain things when it comes to leadership, if someone comes up and says, "Hey, listen. I I I don't have the experience. I'm not I'm not in this flavor, but I have these other things." Are there certain things that you've learned over your career for leadership skills that you're like, "Hey, go do this. These are the leadership skills that you need to do in order to not only hire individuals who you have to look past your own judgment, but also lead individuals from all walks of life." Because again, you were in Boston where that cold white stuff fell out of the sky. very different individuals in that environment because been to Boston many many times. Go socks. And you come over here into LA which is a different group of individuals. How do the leadership what are the leadership skills that you're like hey this works in both environments and maybe these are some of

the tools or books or things that you've come across. You're like hey if I could go back and I'm trying to make myself a better leader and I'm trying to scale my organization and I'm trying to level it up. This is what I would either read or these are the lessons I would start working on immediately. Yeah, I would um two um one I'll do quickly and the other I'll spend more time on. I had a a mentor early on in my like in my business career and he said Tom show the organization you know how to make money right and you just so my point is understand the finances you take a finance course you don't have to be a financial expert you don't have to be an accountant just understand the numbers of a business I mean that's sort of that's to me that's the entry fee all right and then the other to be a great leader uh is listen just Listen,

you don't you don't always have to have the answer. You don't always have to rule the room. You don't always have to sort of do all if you want to build a culture and have people kind of take the responsibility and and run with it. Listen. And it's and it's I'm older now. It's easy for me to say, but but also the dynamic like Homeboy is a very diverse population, right? It's it's a gang population, right? And so for me, I didn't when when homeboy when I took on the homeboy role, it was different when like father Greg our founder Jesuit priest I mean the mission was strong but the organization was failing because people management didn't know the strategy didn't know people right positions all that stuff. So I come in and listen I'm not coming in to improve the how to get gang members out of gangs. I'm coming in to actually see how the organization goes along with. So it's a part about listening and piecing

it all together. Same thing in the for-profit world. All the great leaders I've I've worked under, they've listened. They they they don't come in and start telling. It's sort of listening and thinking, listening and thinking and and probing.

If people want to get involved and they want to help out Homeboy either by hiring people that work for you or donating or or being a part of this and helping the calls along to give these people a second or as you were saying earlier, even just a first chance that somebody's never had because they're generational into this. How do people find you? How do they track you down? What is the best way to help out and be a part of this?

Yeah, thank you for giving me that pitch. So, Homeboy Industries, we have a Facebook page, we have a website, homeboy industries.org. We have a lot of content on there. It what's amazing is how our folks have changed their life, the transformation, and they tell their story in the first person. And and look, we are blessed with donors. We need more donors. So, please donate. But we don't people donate to us because they see because every one of us and I think in our in our world have some type of brokenness in us. And and if our folks who have massive amount of brokenness can kind of get through that and not transmit that pain but transform that pain

move that forward it is sort of something to learn by and to sort of invest in. So do all that. On the business side I wrote the book the homeboy way where I kind of take the this the things I've learned at homeboy and apply that to back to the business world. So so please buy the book along the way. But uh and then we have social enterprise businesses, you know, buy some cake and and if you're in Los Angeles, come for a visit. We have 8,000 people visit us each each and every year.

Love it. Thank you so much for being on and sharing this in a completely different perspective. You know, going from one to the other. I really appreciate it, Tom.

Great. All right. Thank you. Success isn't about perfect conditions or perfect people. It's about recognizing potential where others see problems. The best leaders don't wait for ideal candidates. They develop the talent in front of

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Prison Into Profits - Tom Vozzo"?

In order: 0:00 Great Recession, Homeboy Industries, Los Angeles, Shareholder value; 5:00 Homegirl Cafe, Los Angeles, Parole officer, Salvation Army; 10:00 Farmers Markets, Board of directors, Parole officer, Social enterprise; 15:00 decentralized command; 20:00 decentralized command, Hospice, Navy SEAL, Trudy Web; 25:00 Hospice; 30:00 Jesuit priest, Mr. President; 35:00 Homeboy Industries, Los Angeles, Social enterprise, The Homeboy Way.

What is mentioned in this The Proven Podcast episode?

23 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Homeboy Industries, Los Angeles, Great Recession, Working poor, Parole officer, Social enterprise. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Prison Into Profits - Tom Vozzo"?

The episode runs 37 min; the transcript is about 7,966 words in 79 timestamped sections.

More from The Proven Podcast

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated November 19, 2025.