And I did that and I never went home. That’s the short story. So in that time I studied I knew I didn’t want to go home. I was working in a church in Maryland.

I met a great friend. Who’s still a great friend. I told him I was going to leave the priesthood. And I said, I need a career and a job. And he offered me a job at lunch. I started selling office products to the federal government. And then that company got acquired by Office Depot. Many years later, I was running their federal government sales.

And we started selling products that were made by these companies that employed people who were blind. And I got to know several of the companies and in particular LCI. And back then LCI was was managed and the president was a guy called Bill Hudson, who was a legend in the industry. Bill recruited me.

And the rest is history. And so that’s the short story. And now on the personal side, which is way more important, I’m married to an amazing lady, Chrissy and I have two incredible kids, Kate, who is 16 and Matthew’s 11.

Donald Thompson: So that is awesome.

Short and sweet, but powerful and listen, we’ve known each other for a couple of years now, and I did not know the Catholic priest part like that is, that is awesome.

What a transformation in terms of. Just the variety of things that you’ve done. That’s your sales person, a business leader, but also somebody that was in the ministry and that purpose right. Is to help people with their walk, right. With their, with their belief system. And so one of the things I’d like to ask, I want to pull on that a little bit as a young person growing up, we all have goals and dreams and business.

How did you develop that path in that calling? For the ministry during that period of time?

Jeffrey Hawting:  Look, I think the simple answer is my entire life I went to Catholic schools. I was very involved in many of the activities. I got to know many of the priests in that  school that I went to the high school. And it’s interesting, when I left high school, I really didn’t have a clear vision for what I wanted to do. I was passionate about Italy, so I, when I was 17, I left Australia, got on a ship, traveled 42 days to Italy and studied Italian in Florence. And just as this crazy eight by then I was 18. And I got to know some of, some more of these priests in Rome and they, they influenced me enough that I said, you know what, I’m going home and I’m going to join the seminary.

And that’s what I did. So that’s the short story, but it was a little more involved than that, but there were a lot of people, a lot of people that influenced me along the way.

Donald Thompson: That is awesome. And that compliment that I’ll share with you is sometimes you learn things from people that I’ve learned, this new thing about your history, but I’m not surprised.

Right. The way that I see you lead is both firm and gracious and that comes across in the things that you do. And so that, that just makes sense that that’s a part of your history, something to where you’re just giving of yourself unselfishly. And so that’s awesome.  So, Jeffrey, as you progressed in your career in sales, right?

I mean, that’s an environment that is a zero sum game, right? You make your number and you don’t make your number. What are some of the lessons that you learned in your early career about sales and selling that has allowed you to become a business leader? How did you parlay one to the other?

Jeffrey Hawting: Make friends. Make friends, build relationships. It’s very—look people would say to me, when I, when I left the priesthood and started selling office products, I had many friends who said to me, how the heck can you sell pens and pencils? And I said, I’m not selling pens and pencils. I’m making friends, I’m finding out what’s what’s going on in their lives.

What’s the,  itch that needs scratching for them. And. I can tell you time and time again, where I’ve had success is simply because I made  a relationship with somebody and I, I got to see what life was like from their perspective. And that has something that’s governed me. I think my whole career is if you can’t see the world from the other person who’s sitting across the table from you, you’ll never really understand them and understand what they need. And so selling to me was all about conversations and building relationships and just really trying to understand what’s the need behind the need. And look, sometimes it was very transactional and cut and dry and it was but most of the time it came down to relationships.

Donald Thompson: That’s powerful. And I think in this digital age, in this 140 character Twitter age in all of the things that we try to do so quickly, sometimes we don’t slow down enough to get to know people enough, to really be able to help them. And when you help enough people in business, right. They’ll sign the purchase order.

Jeffrey Hawting: That’s right.

Donald Thompson: But if you are just transactional all the time, you don’t really know the conversation kind of points. Where that pain is to try to see that in a lot of, kind of up and coming sales professionals, where they think get the order, get the order, get the order means being kind of overly aggressive.

And sometimes that sales person that’s more methodical that seeks to understand is going to be the one that wins every time and go from there. That’s a great story. Yeah. So Jeffrey, now let’s transition to LCI, you know, and I’m, I’m so excited about the relationship and things we’re doing together, but I will tell you just like many in the audience.

They do not know that one of the top employers of low vision and blind professionals in the country is based right here in research triangle park. Tell us a little bit about the LCI’s story, what you do and the people that you’re helping drive employment.

Jeffrey Hawting: Well, I love to talk about LCI. So I always say we’re a company that’s 85 years young.

And why I say we’re 85 years young is we have been around 85 years this month, I think. And we have evolved incredibly over those 85 years started as a manufacturer, still a manufacturing for the first 30 years. All we did was make one product, mattresses. For 30 years and then we diversified and now we make over 2,500 different products and across a whole lot of different categories.

So we keep evolving. In the mid nineties, we got the opportunity to open stores on military bases to support the DOD. And now we have almost 50 stores. And that business, that retail business, where we’re supporting  the army, air force, Navy Marines took us into distribution opportunities and we develop expertise around distribution.

And in every one of those evolutions, we kept finding ways to employ people who are blind or low vision. And then about three or four years ago, we said, hmm, a lot of our stakeholders young, not even young, and many of our employees who are blind and people that we were talking to who are blind and low vision said, we don’t want to be in manufacturing.

We don’t want to be in a retail. We want, we don’t want to work in distribution, but we do want a job. And we recognized that opening jobs in the knowledge economy was where we needed to be. And so we kicked off LCI tech and LCI tech started doing accessibility services. And then we read, well, it was an evolution that even in the last three or four years, we have evolved significantly, but the message DT is simply, LCI is a company that’s continually evolving and we will, I mean, we will continue to change and serve and fulfill that mission in a variety of ways in the years ahead.

Donald Thompson: So one of the things I want to dig into because you talked about 30 years mattresses and then divert buying 2,500 different types of products, low vision and blind professionals. Talk to me about some of the success stories. One of the things I remember is when I toured the facility in Raleigh, and talking about the things that you made for the military and special forces, the Kevlar vests. Tell our audience some of the things that you all manufacture in and who you work with that you can ..

Jeffrey Hawting: Absolutely. Well, So there’s a couple of things here. First of all, we’re so diverse. Everything from mattresses to locks, to chemical lights, to X, to shredders, to file folders, to make, to order medical kits, to double pocket portfolios, document protectors it just goes on and on.

One of the things that I really love to talk about is our kitting business, because kitting for me, is is just something that’s so broad and such an opportunity for us. We do everything from a individual first aid kit that a soldier wears on the waist to a million dollar operating room that the Navy uses where it goes in a 20 foot container.

So we purchase all of the products, our employees who are blind, assemble them, do the sub-assemblies kit at all.  Exactly the way the customer wants. We have very exact specifications. So we spend a lot of time finding ways to make any job accommodating for someone who’s blind or low vision.  And we try, we really have a challenge that no job is unavailable to someone who is blind other than perhaps driving a forklift or something like that. Right. But typically, any job and we’ve got great success stories, who, people who started in what I call very simple manufacturing jobs over the years progressed with training.  And encouragement to take on new opportunities, get into customer service, get into management.

We have very many success stories. I’ll just give you two examples. We had two employees who were blind. Their first jobs out of college came to work for LCI tech. And within two years, both of them left the company, which is great. One is working for Fidelity in their accessibility practice. One’s working for, McDonald’s not flipping burgers, in their accessibility practice.

And these were two folks that no one else would hire, but we took an opportunity. We gave them training. We helped them fulfill their own dreams and live the life that they wanted to live. And that’s what it’s all about.

Donald Thompson: That is powerful. You know, one of the things that has been such a blessing for me is that now that I understand the mission that is LCI, right. And as well as the things that you do, I’m more empathetic. Right? I have more knowledge about what’s possible. Right, right. For people with low vision and blind and other disabilities, obviously. But we’re talking about this, this one focus when a company is thinking about manufacturing and potentially partnering with LCI.

Right. But they’ve never worked with an organization like yours. What are some of the things that you would say to get them over that kind of that apprehension, right. Can the high quality work be done at this organization? Right. What are some of the limitations? How would you help me as a person looking for a manufacturing partner, make sure I consider LCI.

Jeffrey Hawting: Well, I know that you resonate with what I’m about to say. It’s all about implicit bias because when we started making file folders in the seventies and we bought a high-speed file folder machine, the company, Kempt Smith out of Wisconsin said, you need to send someone up to learn how to operate the machine.

So Bill Hudson, the president of the company sent Cly Dale. Cly Dale went up to Wisconsin, totally blind, the owner of Kempt Smith called Bill and said, are you some sort of fool, you sent me a blind person. So this is a long answer to your question, but people immediately think if you have people who are blind doing the work, it must be substandard, or it must not be the same quality as another company. So the first thing I would say is we want to work with any company that wants high quality jobs done on time and on budget. And that’s the company that we are. And just because we employ people who blind doesn’t mean you’re going to get a substandard product and obviously, we look for companies that resonate with our mission.

We also, again, goes back to what I said about sales, someone who had a need that needs satisfying. They don’t have the right people to do the job. They have something in their production that they really don’t want to do. They want to outsource it. We’ve got story after story of working with companies where we do manufacturing on their behalf. Right now I could think of six or seven companies that we’re working with in Durham Raleigh around our manufacturing plants, where we are doing their work. We do work for a company called Iron Lease, where we make all of their shoe laces from scratch package deliver for them.

We work with many other companies where they don’t want to do it themselves. They outsource it to us. It’s a great, great fit. And all it is a company thinking, do I need to do that? Or could I outsource it to someone who can take that headache away from me? And that’s what we do, is very simple.

Donald Thompson: That is phenomenal. And I appreciate the context because that’s one of the things when we were, you know, doing our work with the diversity movement, right. And people are talking about diversifying their talent pool. And they’re like, but I don’t want to lower quality. Right. Well, how do you know if you’re hiring the best people?

If you don’t interview a broader group of people, how do you even know you’re working with the best manufacturing firm? If you haven’t given LCI an opportunity to bid for your business and do a sample run of your products, or however you do your sales process, you don’t know if you don’t expand that offering to include more people, right?

Jeffrey Hawting: I mean, quite frankly, LCI does not thrive in an environment that’s highly commoditized, right? So if the company that wants to work with us is fully automated, there’s no labor component. It’s probably not a good fit. Where we fit is where the labor and the product all comes together. And that’s in this look, even in this incredible world of automation.

Not everything can be automated, right? People still need people. And thank God. So we look to work with companies that really have that labor need, that we can fit for them.

Donald Thompson:  Last thing on, on LCI. And then we’ll pivot to a couple of other, other topics, but tell me a little bit about the numbers, right?

How many employees, whatever it is you can share, right? Your private organization, but number of facilities, like give me some detail because I want folks to understand the scope of business that you all run.

Jeffrey Hawting: So we have just over 800 employees about 330 are blind. And we have eight manufacturing plants, three in North Carolina, three in Mississippi, one in Louisville, one in Daytona beach.

We have 60 total rooftops. So we have,  we operate these retail stores everywhere from Alaska to Florida, upper New York state all the way to Nevada. So we crossed the country.  We have two very large distribution centers, one in Durham, one in Las Vegas, and we ship, we probably do over a hundred million a year in distribution sales.

Over a hundred million a year in retail sales and depending on what sort of contracts we have, our manufacturing can be anywhere from 40 to 70 million. Just depends on what’s going on.  We do a lot of government contracts, so we typically are very busy when the military is busy.

Donald Thompson: Gotcha. That is a great perspective to just understand. When you’re thinking about partnering with LCI, for manufacturing, you all have scale.

Jeffrey Hawting: Yes we do.

Donald Thompson: Right? Like we’re not talking about something that, you know, people are chipping off a little project, you can handle very large scale opportunities. Awesome.

Jeffrey Hawting: Well, and I’ll give you a quick example. Two years ago in our medical kitting business, the government asked us to ramp up from virtually nothing to over $30 million in kits in one year. And we, we literally, in that one year opened a brand new facility in Fayetteville, hired 25 people there. We had people working all over the place during the Afghan Iraq war. We had people manufacturing and packaging, plastic cutlery in plants of all of our manufacturing plants work in three shifts to keep up. So we have scale and capacity.

Donald Thompson: That is awesome. So Jeffrey, let’s now take a step back and from Australia, you’ve got a global footprint in your experience. When you look at America today, and you look at some of the racial unrest, you look at some of the divide right, within our country. What are some of the things that it makes you feel? What are some of the perspectives that you have right, looking at this country, that’s, that’s been good to you as well.

Jeffrey Hawting: You know, this is such a, I call a deep issue, you know, I think when I see what we, as a country have experienced in the last 15 months, right? To me, it’s very clear. It’s the logical outcome of inequities that have never been addressed. And, you know, as a privileged white male, it’s just too simple to say, oh, look at all the progress we’ve made things. Aren’t what they used to be. You know,  we’ve changed.  We’ve come so far. It’s easy to say that until, you look at the facts, whether it’s the wealth gap, the opportunity gap, the life expectancy gap, the incarceration gap, and in the case of people with disabilities, the ability to get a job and be fully empowered gap.

And when you suddenly come face to face with those gaps it’s very clear as a country, we have not addressed the systemic causes of all of those gaps. We just haven’t done it and it’s come to a head. I think it’s a healthy thing it’s painful, but it’s absolutely necessary.

Donald Thompson: One of the things that, and I appreciate that very much. And one of the things that you know, I talked to a lot of business leaders and CEOs. And, and when you think about that phrase, business leaders, CEOs, that’s predominantly, middle-aged white men that are running our country and our enterprises, and many of them, like you have a perspective that they’re willing to share. What would you say to those business leaders that are afraid to speak out? They’re afraid that they don’t know how to address these issues because it’s not been their life experience. They’re afraid of that hit to the, to the stock price or that blow back. There’s a lot of folks sitting on the sidelines, but have a perspective and have value to add.

Jeffrey Hawting: Well, it’s very, I can say this with great conviction because it’s , it applies to me. Don’t wait until you have all the answers.   If you wait until you have all the answers and you feel like you have to have it perfect. You then you’ll never do anything. You’ll never say anything. You’ll never act.

And as a business leader, you know, I’ve tried to act, I’ve tried to be intentional in ways and sometimes it’s resonated well, and it’s worked well, but people are people and everyone’s gonna react differently. And so to think that you’re gonna come out with the right statement or the right action and have it perfect every time isn’t going to happen.

You have to be really, I have to be willing to take risks. I have to be willing to take risks so I can see that there’s a lot at stake. I can, especially if you’re a publicly traded company, there’s a lot on the line, but I value people who are willing to say, I don’t have it all together, but I want to make a difference.

I want to change. And I have to, it turns, it becomes, I use this word a lot with my team it’s intentionality and you have to be intentional and being intentional doesn’t mean you have it perfect. But it means look at my intent and look to see what’s there, the intent and assume that I am working from good intentions, that I have the right intention.

And I think it’s a matter of how you talk and act.

Donald Thompson:  That is powerful. And I think, you know, when I look at leaders and people, to your point, they’re waiting until they have it perfect. When really people want to know that you care to try it, right? Like it’s no, one’s actually no one that I know. Right.

People of color that I talk to that I’ve, we’re, we’re not, we’re not looking for someone that’s perfect. We’re looking for someone that understands. When someone that looks like me is murdered on TV, that affects me at a level that even if you can’t understand, but you can empathize with me, then that’s a start.

Yeah.

Jeffrey Hawting: Yeah. I remember too, a couple of years ago I read what’s the author’s name?  Isabel Wilkerson’s book, the Warmth of Other Sons. And it’s the story of three people. One grew up in Mississippi, one, I think in Florida, one in Louisiana. And it talks about the great migration from the South to the North and the Midwest.

I think one of them moved to LA. That story cause I didn’t grow up the U S so I, I didn’t live through many of the things that you live through and others who grew up here lived through in terms of, of all of the turmoil and the inequities back then, and  reading that book just blew me away. Giving me insight again, it goes back to understanding someone’s history.  And until you understand someone’s history, you’ll, you’ll never get it. And it was, it was powerful book.

Donald Thompson: You know, the one thing that I try to share with folks is your personal education. Your personal behavior speaks more loudly than a press release or a marketing campaign about how woke you are with diversity equity inclusion. So when I talk with leaders and I smile, as I say this, I’m like, well, what kind of training should I get for my team? Right. What can the diversity movement do for my organization? And I’ll start to smile and they’ll say like, well, why are you smiling?

I was like, well, let’s talk about your personal development. Let’s talk about your walk. Let’s talk about your level of understanding, because if you feel like you’re walking on eggshells that will cascade through the organization. But if you let people know that you’re on a learning journey too, that you don’t have it all right. But you have the right heart about it, that you’re trying to be out there and try at the level that you can, people respect that and appreciate that. And I can, and I can tell that very powerfully as you speak, I have the opportunity of knowing you and working with you and working through things that are amazing working through things that we’ve got to work out together.

That’s how, you know someone, right. When you have to work something out a little around the edges, right. But for those that are hearing your voice, they can tell that empathy in that, in that power that you come through with. One of the things I’d like to transition to is we’re working on a new project together  and I’m really, I’m excited about the project.

I’m excited to get to partner with you. Like, there’s just a lot of good things, but share with our audience, you know, what, what is Ablr 360 right. And why is LCI industry backing , a startup.

Jeffrey Hawting: Well, let’s go back to the inequities that we just talked about in the country. Right? Ablr grew out of that really.

I mean, when you think about it, 70% of people who are blind are either unemployed or in chronically underemployed and to me, that’s an unacceptable statistic. It just belies the inequity that exists in our workforce and so Ablr to grew out of the need to help companies take that journey who wanted to take the journey, but didn’t know how to get there.

Right. So there’s a lot of companies out there that have the greatest of intentions. But they don’t have the knowledge or the path to get there. They don’t have the systems that are accessible. They don’t know how to recruit, interview, hire onboard, train, someone who’s differently abled. Right. But they want to do it.

And that’s where Ablr 360 steps in, we help companies make their systems accessible. We help consult with them to say, look, it’s not that difficult. If you have the right intentions and you lead from the top and you give the right message and say, look, we’re going to do this. We’ve got a great partner here in Ablr 360 They’re going to help us navigate this path. And that’s what Ablr 360 does we help level the playing field so that people who are differently abled can take that incredibly life-giving sustaining step of having a job. And so that’s what it’s all about. It’s simple. Yeah. And for us to frame it in the context of DEI, is everything right?

Because you can’t talk about diversity, equity and inclusivity without bringing in people who are differently abled. It’s easy to talk about race and gender, sexual orientation. Absolutely. Right. But people often don’t think about people who are differently abled that they’re part of that conversation.

Donald Thompson: That’s exactly right. That’s one of the things that I just it was so simple for me to align right, with what Abler wanted to do, because when we think about the kaleidoscope of DEI, we don’t want to leave anyone behind. We want to build partnerships to where we all can support each other, right? That’s whether it’s generational diversity, social economic, neurodiversity, or in the case of what we’re doing together, right, disability and inclusion. And so abler three sixty.com. You can get more information on, on what abler is doing, but at a high level, Right. Think about digital equity. Think about creating websites and mobile applications that are accessible to all. Think about being able to go in and make sure companies are ADA compliant with their systems and all the while by clients picking Abler, they’re also creating jobs and opportunities, right?

For people that are differently abled, it was just a natural extension, right of what we’re doing with diversity equity inclusion, to partner up and see how we can continue to grow jobs, grow economies, but help people along the way.

Jeffrey Hawting: Yeah. And to me, , you know, how you feel sometimes a shift going on in society.

I feel the shift. I’m not the only one who feels it whether it’s in that DEI conversation, it’s not just a conversation. Right. I feel, I feel movement. Right.  And that to me is exciting, for many people, it’s unsettling perhaps, but that’s okay. It’s okay to be unsettled. I like being unsettled because if I’m always settled, the status quo just sets in and that’s not good enough.

I’ll give you an example. For 80 years, LCI was all about employing people who are blind and we still are, but a dawned on me three years ago. I don’t need to employ them. We don’t need to employ them. We just need to create the opportunity. So if I can help companies take that candidate who we have helped become job ready, and then take them into a new career path.

Then I’ve done, I’ve succeeded. We’ve done it where we’ve got it. Right. So it’s not about how many people I can employ or LCI can employ. That’s not it. The goal is how do we transform the broader employment opportunity out there and working with companies. And there are so many companies that are feeling that shift and want to have a diverse workforce.

Donald Thompson: That is powerful. And what a great segue. Jeffrey, I can talk to you all day like literally had, and we’re both vaccinated and we’re going to get back together and spend time because I just enjoy learning from you. I remember when we had the first time we met it’s a couple of years ago now. So the restaurant over by the airport.

Yes, Capitol grill. And we were sitting there and waiting. And you’re the CEO of big dog you float in right about 10 minutes in and kind of just listened. And I saw you pause. And I think that I don’t remember exactly what you said. It’s like, you know what? I think we should do another meeting like this. I think we, I think we could get aligned. I’ve got some questions, right. But I think we can be aligned. And one of the things that you told me after is before the business made sense, you wanted to make sure that we all made sense to be able to work collectively together. That was the most important thing to you.

And that’s one of the reasons we get along so well. Is I agree with that. Let me give you some space. To talk about anything. I may have missed anything with Abler or anything with LCI. What haven’t I asked you that you’d like to share with our audience?

Jeffrey Hawting:  Oh gosh, that’s a great question.  Look, I think when it comes to a blur on the work we’re doing there  it’s one of the most exciting things that I’ve been involved in and what I love about it, Don is that we have the opportunity to truly change people’s lives and through opportunity.

And that, to me, is the most important thing. And so perhaps what I haven’t said is a part of Abler that we’re really focused on, not just the accessibility, not just the disability consulting piece, but it is training, providing internships, really working to identify people who have never been given an opportunity in the workforce before help them become work ready, and really take that next step.

So Abler is really a full service company that can really truly help companies achieve their goals in terms of LCI.  You know, that the pandemic really hit us hard on the manufacturing side. And so if there’s anything that haven’t said is if you are a company listening to this podcast and you, you have a need, please call me, reach out to DT, reach out to me because the pandemic was tough on us. Cause we, as I said, we make 2,500 plus items. But suddenly the, a lot of people were not coming into the office or soldiers were not training, et cetera, et cetera. So that really hit us.  And we don’t leave people who are blind.

We never lay people off who are blind. It’s just, we don’t do it. It’s not in our DNA. So we have, really become resilient and I think this whole pandemic has been an experience of learning how to become resilient in a way we never thought we would have to, and it’s made us stronger. And I think it’s made a lot of companies stronger.

Right.  You know, when times are good, it’s easy to, you know, rest on your laurels and just be comfortable. And what I’ve learned from the pandemic is, in the good times. That’s when you evaluate your team, what changes do I need to make to my team in the good times? Do I let’s evaluate our C and D players in the good times so that when the bad times come or the downtimes come were ready, were resilient. We didn’t innovate enough in the good times. And now we’ve learned as a result to really, I think be more innovative, more growth focused. In the good times so that when the downtime has come again, we’ll be ready. We’ll be more resilient.

Donald Thompson: Jeffrey, this has been great. Time is too short, but I am so excited about many of the things that you said.

The one thing I will say to sum up is that you’re helping people become job ready and creating jobs in the knowledge economy. Yes. And that is both worthy and economically viable, right? For the communities that, that you’re involved in. Jeffrey, thanks for being on the show. And I know we’ll talk again and again, but thanks so well

Jeffrey Hawting:  and I am so grateful for this opportunity.

Thanks, Don.