Melissa Reed Explains Why You Can’t Help Everyone

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Performance over potential. Got mad talent raining down. It's torrential together. Um but you're I mean you're

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doing a lot too. I mean, I everybody that sits in that chair, you know, I like I'm like, you know, I feel like uh

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there's a lot of work that needs to get done, but you're doing a lot with that. So,

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tell us about Stronghome. Tell us about your mission, your vision.

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Absolutely. So, Strong Home was actually developed out of I I want to say like our own personal pain, which I think a lot of like great organizations are developed out of.

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But, um, for us, for me personally,

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I wanted to be for other people what I didn't have when I needed it at the time, if that makes sense. But, we're specifically focused on strengthening the family as a unit.

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And we do that by providing resources in the areas of family, faith, fitness, finances, and then personal development.

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So there's a lot of like strengthening relationships and marriages and and touching a lot of the pain points that are in those relationships. You know what I'm saying? To be able to really

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help strengthen them. But when the fires happen, so we've been doing that for six years or whatever, right?

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When the fires happen, the California wild fires um in LA, we had to pivot because a lot of people in our organization, a lot of people in our

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teen talk youth group, we have a teen talk youth group that has about 50 kids or so that were registered and several of them had lost their homes. their

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families were just displaced. There was so much confusion and just uncertainty and so we couldn't just like continue business as usual. We had to pivot in

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some way and we had to figure out how to help them. So we ended up establishing three massive distribution hubs in Los or not in Los Angeles but Pasadena and

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Aladena. And through that, our organization helped to mobilize about 700 or so volunteers and we distributed

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over 10 million actual like inkind essentials to I was shocked too cuz we're it's a small little tiny organization but we

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there is so much power in numbers and teamwork and community and that was when everyone came out like it's sad there was a disaster but I've never seen the power of community like that. So,

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all of us together just, you know,

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pulled together. We helped over 8,000 families. It was incredible. That's how we even got connected, remember? Was through um what was the name of it? The foster care one that we did together,

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I thought. Well, well, when I first met you was at the at the event we did with women in the NFL. That's when we first met met. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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But that day, we ended up going to somewhere in LA and we were all serving together.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We did we did the comfort cases. Yes. Comfort cases. That's what it was.

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That's what it was. So that that type of stuff. And now let me tell you, my heart has always to love people and has always been to serve. But my real actual job

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for I don't even know 15 almost 20 years was music management, managing a bunch of music artists. And the entertainment

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industry, it seems like it's so rewarding, right? You're traveling the world. You're getting thick passports of just seeing everything and, you know,

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experiencing first class treatment of whatever. Never my entire life have I had anything more rewarding than the

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nonprofit where all we're doing is serving people and just watching people's like lives actually change and they they depend on you so much which is

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the next part when you said people sitting in here are always the people that have the so much going on. Yeah.

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Because learning how to set those boundaries how to shut off you know what I'm saying to have office hours like cuz everybody needs you want to solve everything.

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That's Yeah. I'm dealing with that now. Like you talked about the altitude of fires. I'm dealing with that now with Jamaica, right? You know, so Jamaica just,

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you know, that the thing kind of turned left and went right over my family home, my you know,

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my grandparents home, my dad's high school's destroyed.

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Manning's high school, uh, Salamar Hospital where my where my grandparents, you know, both got their care destroyed.

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And you know, to your point, it's sort of like, you know, I'm I'm I'm I'm the CEO of a $3 billion company.

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You know, my heart is telling me, go fix this, go fix this, go fix that. But then to your point, you know, you have

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to have the boundaries to say, okay, and then you kind of look, okay, what is what are other people doing? Okay, all these different artists are getting all

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this stuff there, so you know, maybe this isn't the right time for me to jump in. You know what I mean? So there's but my heart is just like you said to serve and to help.

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I cannot keep money in my wallet. I can't keep money in my wallet cuz every time I pass somebody and I know that they're going to go and get drugs with it,

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but my hand goes in my pocket and I give them the money. So I feel I feel you.

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Okay. What do you do? What do you do with that? Like have you found I'm not saying it's a solution, but some type of way to manage like what's your SOP?

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What's your standard operating procedure for how to say no? I haven't I haven't stopped. I haven't managed it. I just and you know you know this about us in

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in our relationship professionally and everything that I will try to do everything and I just you know when it falls down

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it falls down. But I mean I think that there's um even with this event and bring you bringing April and um and you

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know all the things and going up on stage at the last minute. I mean for me it's sort of like okay what is the ultimate goal you know? Yes, there's

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turns and things and there's things you didn't anticipate, but what I want to get out of it. And so, I haven't solved it. Yeah.

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Every problem I see, I want to fix. I mean, I'm on the airplane and there's a I'm late for my flight and

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there's a dude rolling in the wheelchair himself, you know, and I'm like, I'm going to go help him.

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Yes.

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And you got to be somewhere and you're took him somewhere. And then now he's taking advantage. like, "Hey man, can I get some chips?" You know, and I'm rolling them around and then I start,

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you know, I'm like, I'm late for my flight. So, I find somebody who works there say, "Listen, you got to help this dude." And I'm running. I almost missed my flight.

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So, you just gave me the standard operating procedure. And as a CEO, you should. You delegated. Yeah. You have to delegate to a degree. Yeah. That's good. And a lot of people don't.

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I'm still learning how to do that because the problem with delegation is the person that you're handing it over to has to know how to handle it.

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I'm going to help you with that. When you delegate, you lose creative control and you have to be comfortable with

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that. You cannot expect that creatively what you had in your mind when you give it to somebody else. I'll give you an example. Our this studio, right, Jordan?

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Jordan, he doesn't have a mic. Normally,

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he has a mic, but Jordan built this studio. Really?

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Did Jordan, did you send me one text on what to put in here? Not one. So, when I walk in, I don't Did I say anything about it?

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What' I say?

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I love it cuz I can't say anything. Yeah.

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Cuz I gave him creative control and if because I don't have the bandwidth. I got on a plane yesterday. I got this morning at 5. Yeah.

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So if I don't give him creative control and then walk in and say I love it.

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Yeah. Maybe this pillow should have been blue. But it's his deal. So that's the thing you got to be able to do is is especially when you're trying to expand that foundation,

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trying to help more people. You know, we have we have 40 clinics right now nationally uh like the one we did uh in

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LA and I don't know there's one going on today and I don't know anything about it. That's scale. That's scale. Now, is it look exactly how I want it to look?

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Not at all. But is it achieving what I want it to achieve? And that's the part.

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You know what I'm going to try? Um I keep saying this. I don't put the time and energy to do that. but to create a life just a personal one not like me and

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my husband or a family but a personal life mission and mission statement so I can start saying no to anything that doesn't align with that statement.

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Yeah, that's a great in a way that you see. So then I can set that boundary for myself and not feel guilty and then the solution would be find other people that can delegate.

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That's what I've learned with the nonprofit. I can't take on everything.

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At the beginning we were like, "Oh, you need a mattress. We'll find you a mattress. you need. Okay, you lost everything. We're going to go get And then it was like, wait a minute. No,

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there's actually a mattress company. Yeah. That is giving this away. But don't lose that. Which part?

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Don't lose the part where you want to solve every problem cuz that's the part that made you create the foundation.

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That's the part that makes you have the impact. So, yes, you do have to delegate. You Yes, you do have to be able to have other people help you. But

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if you lose the part where you want to solve every problem, then you've lost like your passion for it. Yeah, I could see that. There's so our passion for a

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long my passion I'm gonna say for a very long time has been youth since I was little since I was younger than the youth like I always wanted to work with

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teenagers and kids I even got my actual degree is in English education so I taught high school English for a while

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and then got into entertainment did that for a while got right back into serving youth through our teen talk and that's

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why honestly I'm so thankful for you guys cuz even though our connection relationship within the you know our

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organizations crossing path is really just this year you guys have made such a dent in that area like you're not even over there you know what I'm saying or

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Miami here in Dallas like to to be able to do what you guys have done and your extended reach so we did the we did an Ignite program

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Which was our project breaking barriers ignite program over the summer um and you guys were amazing at helping with that because we took a bunch of kids over the summer to

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be able to just have this immers ursive experience of like career exploration.

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Um it was cool. We got to do like we took them to Kevin Hart's studio and we they got to be able to tour both of his

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studios and they learned about um mass media production and journalism and writing and things like that. Um we did Fly Compton where they got to like

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experience aviation and simulation and then you guys helped out with um Glendale Adventist and so we were able to connect with you guys. They did CPR

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over there. That was when I realized because I had just mentioned it to you like on the side and you were like here's a person go talk to that person we about to help you like like your

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heart right I guess that was you solving that's more problems like you do but but I'll tell you I mean as you know when you do things that was 800

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conversations with 622 people saying no well yeah I mean because people don't have the bandwidth or they're working

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shifts or they're you know whatever um you know for me I'm constantly pushing constantly

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pushing to say, "Hey, let's get this done." And I think at the end of the day, you need to have somebody that grounds you. But but I don't want you to

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lose that spark. I want you to tell people where where can they find Strong Home?

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Where can they go?

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I mean, if they want to donate, but not just donate money, but time, resources, prayers, support,

where do they where can they go?

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Absolutely. So, you could find us on the internet. It's www.stronghomeetwork.com. Our Instagram is also strongetwork. Um,

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you can come actually to Los Angeles if you want to find us in an actual physical location. There is a place that's called the EFC for anyone that

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did lose their home in fires if there's anything that you guys need. It's called the Eat and Fire Collaborative and we're at 540 West Woodbury. So, you could do that as well in Altadena. Um, and yeah,

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I just the prayers are super accepted or how do you say that? Appreciated. Um,

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especially to thank you guys for the H.B.CU tour that you helped us with. So just all of those connections that that

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we've been able to make together and I think you know you know the thing that um maybe last thing I'll say about it, you know, as far as the partnership

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is that you know at the end of the day if we collaborated I mean I'm not going to get into politics and all this stuff but a lot of the things that we create

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on the political side is because we're not collaborating in our own communities. And I think you know if we collaborate in our you know it's sort of like know it's like

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back in the day when everybody used to go to the church. and get the support. I think that there's we're going to move back to that time where everybody in the

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community is going to rally around people that need them.

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Can I ask you one half of a question real quick? Okay. Less than 1%. Can you help me understand if the less than 1% is actually a good thing or a bad thing?

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Like do you if you feel less than it sounds bad, but less than 1% is exclusive at the same time.

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Uh so a little bit of both. A little bit of both. Right. So if you think somebody like I think you heard the story I had a coach that said I had less than 1%

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chance of being the CEO. So that's twofold. One is I'm less than I'm less

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than 1%. I'm I'm the bottom and uh that's how I'm perceived. But the the

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lesson al less than 1% is also empowering because I I did end up being the CEO.

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You know what I mean? So you you it's it's both. And I think and I think you need to feel both. I think you need to feel that slight because if you don't feel that slight,

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you might not move. If I didn't feel that slight, I would have never even tried to become the CEO. Wow.

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So, in some ways, he actually kind of helped me. He wasn't trying to or maybe I don't know. But him saying I couldn't made me know that I could. And so, to

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me, that's that's where it's still alive. Oh, yeah. He's still my coach. Can we send him a thank you note? He's still my coach. You're out there.

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You know who you are. He's still my coach. Wow.

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I keep him close and we talk all the time and so he knows this is this is he knows the book is there. He's frustrated. He said that you didn't you didn't paint the picture the right way,

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but I totally painted the picture exactly how it happened. Um and how you saw it and that's all that matters cuz that drove you to where you are right now.

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Exactly. Right. And so, and it's, you know, I think it's um,

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you know, especially with kids when when I give give them the book because I talk about Stephen Curry, I talk about Seria Bonnelly, who you saw on the screen, but

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I also talk about Nanny. Um, and Nanny's a Jamaican revolutionist, right? She was the first person to fight against the British. She led the Maroon Army. So

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much so that the army gave her her own plot of land for her and the Maroon Army because they didn't want to fight him anymore. So, it was the first treaty. It

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was in the 1700s. the first treaty um in Jamaica. So, you know, to and and sort of stem the tide to get rid of slavery.

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But there's a lot of stories in there of people who are underestimated and then after the race is run, they're they're they're the winners and nobody expected them to be. So,

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that's amazing. I'm so proud of you. No,

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really, for real. That's amazing. That's a huge accomplishment and it's so inspirational. Like people always say like especially as a black man in the

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but just as a a person who got this and somebody said that to them and you flipped that around that's a blessing.

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Yeah. And that whole grudges. But anyway,

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yeah, we got to work on that. We got to work on that.

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Well, I appreciate you. Thank you for spending the time for sure.

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And uh go check out Strong Home and uh we'll be back on Less than 1%. Um thank you.

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