Building Value and Hope Through Coffee
[Music]
[Music]
i am a cynic
and a skeptic and i’m here to tell you
about hope i don’t mean the kind of
commercialized type of hope that lacks
any substance
i mean the type of hope that is real and
true and is messy
and filled with pain i discovered the
formula about hope and i want to share
that with you and then i’m going to tell
you about how i brought that formula to
life
so this type of hope has been the
driving force
behind every beneficial movement
throughout history
both major and minor that has ever
brought about positive change
and that was a very bold statement and i
intend to back it up so if you’re
feeling skeptical or cynical about that
as i am
and join me and i’ll walk you through it
one of my biggest fears as a child
beyond being embarrassed or the dark was
losing one of my parents
and i feel that’s probably a common fear
but it was very intense for me as a
child
that began to change when i was around
nine and i went to summer camp for the
first time for a week
a week away from home at that age was uh
it was a long time so it was a little
bit difficult
and my biggest fear transitioned not to
losing a parent but to looking like a
or embarrassing myself in front of
all the other cool camp kids
which spoiler alert it did happen a
couple times and i’ve got some good
stories to tell about it
but what happened there was my worth and
my value i began to identify that with
things external to myself
but life has a way of reminding you what
is truly worth fearing sometimes
on my way back from my third summer at
camp an off-duty paramedic fell asleep
at the wheel
after a 24-hour shift and came careening
across the median towards us
my mom was a health nut especially with
sweets
and i couldn’t have cereal with over
seven grams of sugar which was
essentially bran flakes
and nothing so it was a big deal
when she relented to my begging to get
ice cream on our way home
and that was the second to last memory i
have of my mom
uh she did her best to avoid the car
coming towards us but in doing so
took the brunt of the head-on collision
and was killed almost instantly
my biggest fear not only became a
reality
but it happened in front of my face so i
know a thing or two about fear
and i know something deep about pain but
i also know something about hope
i know what it is and what it isn’t and
i know that real hope is more powerful
than fear or
pain or anything else that would stand
against it
fear robs you of life and hope restores
it
if you don’t believe in your worth and
your value you cannot truly hope
you do not believe that you have a life
worth a better future
hearing me say that only goes so far
though so i’m going to share the formula
with you
and then i’ll tell you about how i
brought it to life
as you can see it says value plus
purpose
equals hope on the surface it’s very
simple
and it is but is it anything that is
truly elegant its beauty lies in its
simplicity
as two things added together that equal
a third
though there are only two components to
the hope formula there are layers of
complexity to them both
if anyone could figure out how to help
people understand their true worth
and discover their purpose in a matter
of days or weeks you truly change the
world
both take time but is time well spent so
i’m going to use worth
and value and interchangeably here when
i describe this
but worth and value are intrinsic to who
we are it is internal
not an external thing and the ironic
component of this
is that other people often have to help
us figure it out they see it before we
do
people outside of us see what is inside
of us before we do
and help us draw that out and understand
it again
hope begins with understanding your
innate value and worth
this is not derived from comparison
accomplishments
or possessions it is the unshakable
truth of how much worth and value you
have simply from being born and created
the way you were
when we don’t understand that we seek
our value and worth and destructive
things
that too often involve tearing down our
neighbor and finding our worth
at the cost of theirs and that’s not
worth that is oppression
and oppression feeds the enemy of hope
fear
i’m going to ask you to follow me here
with what i’m about to say because on
the surface it may seem contrary to
everything i have already said
but i assure you that it’s not i don’t
believe all of us are good
i don’t believe humanity at its core is
good
i’m going to let that sink in for a
second
if you disagree with me i encourage you
to open a history book to see the
atrocities that we have committed
because of greed fear pain
loss suffering or just confusion
or better yet look around you right now
or in the middle of a global pandemic
with a severe economic downturn that has
affected millions of people here
and globally as well the facade we use
to cover racism has been ripped down
and revealed that too many people are
still seeking their own worth and
validation at the cost of someone else’s
i don’t believe humanity is good but i
believe we can be
i believe we have the capacity to be
good that we all have innate worth and
value
there’s a stark difference between the
two of those ideas
one says that we are and one says that
we can be
one embraces our pa our painful messy
reality
while the other whitewashes truth with a
lie real
changing hope has to be anchored in
reality
which brings me to the next point so
this graph
graphic i borrowed from peter singe and
added and changed some things as you can
see at one end
fear is at the anchor and it represents
your worthlessness
and a feeling of hopelessness at the
other end is hope
and it propels you to your envisioned
future so there’s tension with both of
these
and you have to leverage the one that
pulls you in the right direction rather
than letting fear pull you backward and
believing the lies about it
so as i said i don’t believe we are all
good but i believe we can be
and once we discover our purpose which
is the collection of our ambitions
and move forward to that we see hope
come to life
when we look for our purpose we often
believe it will be a single thing that
catapults us over our struggles and our
difficulties and slingshots us to a new
reality
this is a fanciful delusion that brings
you backward
toward despair and hopelessness and
rather than slingshotting you forward
you have to use the attention from hope
to move you in the right direction
rather than backward
so as i said purpose is a collection of
your ambitions what you bring to life
and what moves you forward
you cannot find your worth in your
purpose but it can enhance it
and it can bring more life to your
purpose but it is dangerous to seek your
worth and your value
and your purpose in your ambitions and
this isn’t discovered overnight
it takes time it takes searching
refining
trial and error failure and the courage
to get back up again
and other people around you who will
help you move through all that
it may be your family it may be people
who act as your family and are not
it may be people that you don’t know are
that way in your life and you just have
to give them the chance to be
but i promise you that there are people
in this world who want to be that for
you
to help you move forward and discover
your purpose for your life
i discovered the base of this formula
around seven years ago
to get to the point of being able to
talk with you on the stage i’ve had to
endure seven years of getting
to be getting others to believe that it
was real sitting in meetings convincing
people
why i was there in the first place seven
years
of that was filled with ups and downs
and failures
joy and peace confusion and pain and
both fear and hope
i have wept on my knees begging god to
show me if i was just a fool for
pursuing this
and if it was all foolish to throw away
my career pursuits to bring this to life
about three years ago i started a coffee
shop built on these principles
the very essence of this formula is
fused into what it is
our mission statement is simple building
value and hope through coffee
the action we’re building is what we try
to do every day my management team knows
that their number one priority
is to encourage and instill value in all
of our employees
we have a mentoring model built into the
structure of our business
and what’s funny about that is that the
younger employees who are often in high
school
end up teaching us the owner and the
management team
more than we would hope to teach them
it’s a beautiful and incredible thing
what happens when you listen to people
and just let them be their selves so i
mentioned earlier about the importance
of having people around you
who care enough about you to help you
work through this to discover your own
worth and value
and to understand your purpose the
collection of your ambitions
i was working through whether or not i
should tell you more about the business
model
but then i asked the employees for some
quotes on how they have learned about
their own worth
and if they have discovered any hope
through working at bridge city and they
gave me some
some quotes so i’ll share those with you
instead
the bridge city fam has helped me see my
value which has pushed me to build and
encourage the value in everyone around
me
bridge city has continued to remind me
that family exists beyond the walls of
my own home
bridge city has helped me grow in skills
i never thought i would grow into
and realize co-workers and bosses really
can’t care for each other
what i like most about bridge city is
that no matter what mistakes you make
or whatever you do no one there will
shame or discriminate you
they want to see you grow and become the
best version of yourself through the art
of coffee
they are loving and kind and i love that
we’re all a family
and i do want to point out that we are a
very diverse staff both racially and
from our personalities
we call ourselves a lovable bunch of
weirdos so it’s not like we’re all the
same people saying these
these things about each other hope is
real
and it is powerful and it is beautiful
it reaches down into our fear and pain
and meets us in our brokenness hope
shows us that things can be better
though they may not be now they can be
soon
to build on marx mark twain’s quote on
courage hope is not the absence of fear
or pain
it is the resistance to those things
mastery over them
hope does not change your current
reality it helps you move through your
current reality to a better envisioned
future
it does not eliminate what holds you
back but it gives you the strength to
move through it
we are not all good but we can be when
you understand your intrinsic value
and worth and that it does not come at
the cost of someone else’s
and when you begin moving forward to
achieve your collective ambitions
to fulfill your purpose you begin to
move outside of yourself
and realize how much you want other
people to experience the same thing
you give hope to other people and that
is worth every minute of it
[Applause]
[Music]
you