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This episode and the following transcript were originally published by Stand Together Foundation.
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Jeff Proctor
Hey, everybody. Jeff Proctor here. I’m a consultant at Stand Together and one of your hosts for the Stand Together Podcast. Every time you hear my voice on the show, it’ll be alongside my friend, Ski, and we’ll be talking principles with some of the most impactful and inspiring makers of change and hope dealers in the country. In this episode type, Principles, we’ll meet incredible leaders who are applying upending principles as they work to lead and join in healing their communities.
[Short Break]
Jeff Proctor
Jeff and Ski back with you on the Stand Together Podcast. Last week you heard from Evan Feinberg and Dr. Todd Rose about customer-first measurement. We’re going to build on their conversation with an episode on the importance of human dignity, the inherent moral worth of each and every person.
Ski Ahmad
Man, I mean so much to unpack. Man, Jeff, you go dig right in, brother. Dignity, I mean, you think about this deep belief that people have worth in life, and so we’ll unpack more of a definition there, but to me, nearly everything in life comes down to dignity and believing in other people and that their lives matter.
Jeff Proctor
Yeah, I think the timing of this coming after the idea of customer-first measurement. If we exist as an organization to help people transform their lives, then the things that we want to measure need to be about those people and driven by those individuals. When I was thinking about our conversation today, one of the things that popped into my mind is it’s not really that controversial of an idea to suggest that maybe dignity is something that we should care about, and how does it look different, how does it hit different, when dignity really is at the forefront of what people are doing and not just a lip service thing?
Ski Ahmad
I think about an individual who’s turned on. Like…if I think about a music artist on stage at a concert, I mean, it appears when they’re on stage, that kind of nothing else matters, but performing and delivering for their audience and their customer, and you see the passion that goes along with that. So to me, I think about that type of thing happening in everyday life. That when dignity is put at the forefront, meaning people feel like they’re being treated with dignity from everybody that’s around them, they then get turned on and want to ensure that they can go and deliver for whomever they’re interacting with in a way that just brings just a ton of passion, interest, excitement, love. So seeing that replicated, multiplied, from one person to the next, to the next, to the next, that’s what it feels like as I see it. What it’s like when people are treated with dignity.
And I know this sounds easy, but I think it’s pretty hard to do when there’s just a ton of externalities, maybe drawing people in different directions, to treat people as either less than, or that their lives don’t really matter. That’s easy in my opinion. The hard thing is to treat people as if their life matters a ton.
Jeff Proctor
That’s such a good connection. Our next episode, our third and final principles episode, will be on self-actualization. And I’m sure we’ll talk about the connection between dignity there too, but if you ask somebody who’s not doing that, if they think that each person has worth, I think they would say yes, but is the belief that each person has moral dignity convicting me to change my behavior in productive ways?
Ski Ahmad
Right. Right. And you just hit on something that made me think… Who’s the beholder of dignity for other folks? Am I looking at somebody else and kind of thinking like, “Oh, well they have dignity,” or is dignity something that I need to have as I view other people in the world?
Jeff Proctor
This is kind of maybe a wild connection to make, but I’ve been reading a lot and practicing a lot lately, the idea of loving kindness meditation. Are you familiar with this? Where, you wake up each day, you think about the people that you’re going to interact with and you meditate on really wishing them well for the day. And obviously it doesn’t change what happens to them. It doesn’t rearrange the universe in a way that makes them have a better day. But what it does do is affect the way I treat that person, right? I show up differently for them. But it doesn’t change the world in this—in my opinion at least, some of our listeners may disagree—but I don’t think it changes the world in this cosmic mystical realignment of the stars way. It changes the world because I treat you differently. I look at you differently, I believe different things about you, and we can productively collaborate, or even in a societal way, just coexist better with each other because we look at each other through that lens.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah. Yeah. And I think though, too, if you treated me differently because you believe in dignity and the deep belief in my self worth, well then I now get to see a model. You’ve just modeled for me how to treat a person. And so when I have the choice—because I know how it felt when you treated me with dignity, I remember how that felt. So then it’s like, well, if I have a choice as to how to treat someone else, I remember what it was like when you treated me with dignity and how that felt. So I may want to go do that with somebody else in my life. And so then that becomes to me, like the replication that happens by just one person choosing to treat others with dignity. They may very well spawn a whole host of other people to go treat others with dignity. And if we could do that and encourage that, we’ll be in a much, much, much better place. But I know that’s kind of pie in the sky dreaming though.
Jeff Proctor
Yeah. One of the things that comes up a lot, and I’m sure you’ve seen it too, is someone will hear a podcast like this or read a book about one of our principles and they’ll be really legitimately excited about it. And the next question is, what do I do next? And I say, well, I don’t always know what to do next, but I know what not to do next. Which is to say, “Oh, I read a story about someone who got ahead by applying the principal of dignity. So I, as someone who wants to get ahead, I am going to go sort of fake it until you make it or maybe fake it until forever.” So really for me, the only real solution is to allow yourself to be truly and deeply convicted by the principle, which sometimes doesn’t feel quite as action-oriented as, “I’m going to go learn the tools and tricks of how to do dignity better” or any other principle. So I think that insight that people can generally tell the difference.
So my efforts to improve on a principle like dignity probably ought to really just be focused on my relationship with myself and understanding how I look at other people and where is that getting in the way of the way I think and feel about a principle like dignity.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah. No, I completely agree. And if individually we show up differently, practicing a lot of these principles that we’ve been talking about, that’s very, very attractive. People will want to be engaged with you in whatever work it is, whatever community it is, when somebody individually is living their lives through these principles. So I think one person at a time, and to your point, I mean it’s you constantly changing and evolving, myself and our listeners individually, then that collective I think it’ll be unstoppable.
Jeff Proctor
So a big part of what we want to do with this particular episode and this particular principle is really go and understand the contrast between this idea of passively applying the principle of dignity and actively doing that. And we’ve heard from folks like Scott Strode on the podcast, and really tried to understand a little bit about how well-meaning folks even, sometimes might not fully bring the principle of dignity. Scott talks a lot about the idea that you can want to help folks in recovery but still not quite escape that idea that I’m helping those people, with that problem. And the same as with employees, you could say, I really care about employee satisfaction, but I care about employee satisfaction as a means to an end. As opposed to, “Those individual employees are ends in themselves, they are dignity-having folks, who their wellbeing and self-actualization matters to us.”
So to unpack that a little bit, we are beyond pleased to be joined by Khali Sweeney from Downtown Boxing Gym. Khali, how are you doing today?
Khali Sweeney
Good. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Ski Ahmad
Good to see you, man.
Khali Sweeney
Good to see you again bro.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah, for sure.
Jeff Proctor
As is becoming our tradition on this new podcast, we generally like to give the guest an opportunity to tell a little bit about where you’ve been and where you are and why you work on what you work on. And just give the listeners the really high overview of why you do what you do. And then we’ll pepper you with some questions about how principles like dignity show up in your work.
Khali Sweeney
Okay. So my name is, like I said, Khali Sweeney. I’m the CEO and founder of the Downtown Boxing Gym in Detroit, Michigan, located on the East Side. I started the program about roughly 15, 16 years ago as a result of me not seeing it in our community, it wasn’t there. It was nothing there for the kids. And I was seeing kids going through the same struggles that I myself went through as a product of Detroit public school. Not to bash them, but I came out of that school not being able to read or write in the 12th grade, I couldn’t read. I noticed in the third grade I would just have these behaviors, and I would just be labeled and people would say, “You’re going to be dead or in jail. You’re not going to even be a garbage man.” But they gave me no other alternative other than being dead or in jail.
And they would tell me, “You can’t be a garbage man.” So now what am I going to do with my life? And I didn’t have the tools to tell them that I couldn’t read. I didn’t have the vocabulary, I didn’t have the words to say that. So I went through life like that, and I noticed a lot of my friends go through that. And so we lost a lot of guys young, lost a lot of guys to prison. And so as an adult, somebody told me, they said, “You know the rest of the world don’t live like this.” And they said, “What do you want to do with your life?” And I was being honest with myself. I said, “I have to take a deep look at myself.” And I said, “I want to learn how to read.” And so I went back to school to learn how to read and I started working hard.
But then I looked in the community—it was still kids doing the same things that I was doing and being told the same things that I was being told my whole life. And I made a choice right then, I said, “Man, let me start something. Get these kids something to do besides go to jail or die young.” And so I came up with the youth program right there. I started working with the kids in the community and it’s been a joyous ride ever since.
Jeff Proctor
You told me something when we were chatting before the show that legitimately struck me, you said even back then and you were fighting, and people look at you and they saw a fighter. And in their mind some folks might have said, “Hey, this kid’s got some potential, he fights so we’re going to turn him into a fighter.” And you said, “But I didn’t see myself as a fighter. I saw myself as a kid who couldn’t read.”
Khali Sweeney
I saw myself as a kid who couldn’t read and I just didn’t have the words to say that. And so when I see some young people and people try to label them, I instantly say, “I don’t see bad kids. I see kids who haven’t been heard yet.” They just don’t have the words to express themselves. So if you just focus and listen, they’ll tell you eventually. You just have to pick up the context clues. That’s what we’ve been doing.
Jeff Proctor
This is a big question, why do you think it’s so easy for folks to look at a kid like you and see a fighter or look at kids now and say those kids are troubled as opposed to those kids have some troubles, but they are also a lot of other things.
Khali Sweeney
And it goes back to what you guys were talking about earlier, dignity. See, just because you’re an adult, that doesn’t mean you know every single thing. That doesn’t mean that you have a blank slate where you can just go around and do whatever you want to do. Sometimes you have to show these children … not sometimes, but every time, you have to show the children the same amount of dignity that you would like. You have to be quiet sometimes and listen. Dignity, for me, starts with listening from a neutral space. Not assuming that you know everything, you don’t know everything. You can think you know something, you can think you saw something, you can even believe that you saw it, you could think that somebody told it to you, but once you dig in, that’s not what you thought. It’s not the case. So you have to listen from a neutral standpoint. And that’s what I do.
Ski Ahmad
You said so much, man, that I’d like to unpack. So talk about that neutral space because that sounds easy to do, but my guess is that, that would be quite difficult to truly, truly steady yourself in trying to create that neutral space. So talk to us about that, because you’re quite passionate about from this neutral space. So talk to us a little bit about that.
Khali Sweeney
From a neutral perspective, you can honestly gather more information about whatever it is, a person, a thing, a subject, whatever the case may be. But you can’t go in with these assumptions. So for me it’s all about information. If I just listen long enough or if I pay close attention, it’ll all come to the surface. And now I can make a clear choice from an educated perspective, not just jumping to conclusions or labeling some person. And then now it goes into, now you have a bias, you’re treating me differently, you’re not being fair to me. No, I want to hear you all the way out. And we can have a discussion and talk and we can have a clear, educated discussion about whatever the subject may be.
Ski Ahmad
Wow.
Jeff Proctor
Can you walk us through a little bit, someone comes into your program, someone comes into the gym, and if people are like me, what I’m expecting is you’re going to teach me how to fight and I am going to learn some discipline stuff, but really it’s like, I’m going to learn to discipline my mind and body around the idea of boxing. And when you were talking to me about what it is, you gave a little bit different version of the story. So for the kids in the program, how does dignity show up for them each and every day in what y’all do?
Khali Sweeney
So again, I’ll start with by listening to the kid, the child. I don’t necessarily listen to the people who bring them to the program. I listen to the child because we build our programming around the child. We cater to them. And I tell anybody, you are not telling a kid anything. You are actually auditioning for a position in that child’s life. You are auditioning for a position in that child’s life. He’s going to look at you and you have to be authentic. You can’t show up today one way and a different day, somebody different tomorrow, because now you’re going to get the full rejection, the pushback, as we say, “They’re being rebellious.” They’re not being rebellious, there’s something that changed over there. You know what I mean? So you are being interviewed by a child, so you have to be authentic.
And so when a kid comes in our program, we have honest conversation. “How you doing at school? How’s things going? How was your day today? What are you into?” Walk through there and just let them talk, let them get to know the other kids, let them get to know the space. And from that point on, we start saying, “Okay, I noticed that he said that,” or “I noticed that he or she did this,” or “I noticed that.” Okay, let me in a little bit of time they’ll open up. Don’t pressure it, don’t push it. And when it comes to academics, we do the same thing. We find out where a kid is actually at and we work around that. We build an individual program for them. So no program is the same for every kid that walks in the building. We have some guys that are straight A students, they’ll mentor the other students. You’re not just, you are a straight student. Now you have a job, now your job is to mentor the young people around you. And they love it. They love helping their peers. So yeah, that’s how our program looks.
Jeff Proctor
Yeah man, that’s a big positive jolt of dignity to be told, you have a responsibility here to be part of the solution. You’re part of the way we help. You’re not just a recipient of this. Right? We’re bringing you into the whole thing. That’s great.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah. So obviously it struck me, I think about the disposition and the posture that has to take place for your team, your staff, when you share with them, Hey, you’re auditioning for a role in this kid’s life. I mean, you’re auditioning for the kid for them to say, “Yep, I want you, adult, to be a part of my life, part of my journey.” I mean auditioning for a role in that kid’s life man. Say more about that because I think that’s profound.
Khali Sweeney
It actually starts when you’re picking your staff. When you’re picking your staff. I don’t want to bring somebody in who’s just checking boxes. “What is your story? What had happened in your life that brought you to this point?” Because I know you’re going to have to give your testimony to a child and it has to be authentic. You’re not just checking off some boxes. This is real life. These are human beings. These are people who are going to someday walk on other planets. You know what I mean? You know that old saying, “the sky’s the limit,” probably in 1920. Right now, the universe is vast and these guys and young women are going to probably get us to the outer solar system and back. And so we have to start treating them with respect and dignity because they are the future going forward. You know what I mean? And that’s the future that I might not see. You may not see. You know what I mean? But they will see it. And so we have to make sure that we support that dream.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah.
Jeff Proctor
I’m going to resist my temptation to take us off on a huge tangent because this audition thing I think is really big. And what you reminded me of and helped me understand with that is in a way, dignity is the counter to entitlement. Do I believe I’m entitled to Ski? Your mind, your ideas, your time, your effort? Are you entitled to those kids’ time because they walked in the door? Are you entitled to have them listen to you because your name is on the letterhead of Downtown Boxing Gym? No, none of that. And that mentality of, “I have to earn this, I have to audition for this,” is dignity in action.
Khali Sweeney
Yeah, he nailed it. Some people believe that they’re entitled to this person’s time. This young person’s time is valuable. We cannot waste it. We have to seize that moment. Because those kids may have an aha moment any second now and they can go, they can find out,” I want to be an engineer, I want to be a this or that.” But you know what I mean? You have to value their time. I was just listening to him because he nailed it. That’s only where I was at with that.
Ski Ahmad
Good. Man, kudos Jeff.
Jeff Proctor
Well, I guess I’m out of here. You guys want to handle it from here on out? [Laughs]
One place that my mind goes with that is—and we’ve had other conversations with other folks about this as well—but not to take it too negative. But where do we miss on dignity sometimes? And by we, it can be the social impact community, it can be folks who are trying to help but miss the mark. Where does lack of dignity show up in the space that we work in, in ways that maybe we ought to try to improve?
Khali Sweeney
Anytime you come in and believe that you’re like the savior, that is a problem. That you know everything, that is a problem. So for me, I want to gather information, I want to come see where I can be of service to you. Because at the end of the day, we are all on the same team. I don’t care if you’re working in whatever the field may be, our greater goal is for humanity. Humanity is at the end of the day, everybody’s sole purpose. So when we work for the greater community, I want to come in and get as much information as possible so I can support you. I don’t want to come in talking like I know everything. I want to hear from you. And then from there, how can I be of service to the mission, which is humanity.
A community to me is global. It doesn’t just stop at your four blocks, there’s eight blocks and then there’s more blocks and there’s more blocks. And we got to… you know what I mean? So we can change the whole face of the planet. And it all starts with, like you said, with dignity and respect. And we have to listen to our neighbors.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah, yeah. I thought, I heard at one point, Khali, you talk a little bit about people can be well-intended in how they interact with the youth in your program. Say for example, in and around COVID, distance learning. “Hey, let’s give them a break because they’re being impacted. Let’s give them a break.” And they may be well intended, but they actually may not be treating or seeing the kids through this lens of dignity, because there’s learning moments through these tough times. So say a little bit more about your thoughts in that regard.
Khali Sweeney
For us, and for me, we don’t want to stop the momentum. When COVID hit, we never lost a day of programming. Even though they shut everything down in the state. We didn’t lose a day of programming. What we did was we took all the seats out of our vans, and we started delivering PPE to the homes. We feed our kids in our program, but we knew that there were other family members at home. So we started feeding the other family members. We made sure everybody in the household ate. We took technology, because we knew that some people had just cell phones, and the kids had to keep working, and it’s only one cell phone in the house. So we made sure everybody had connectivity and technology. So we sent that home to all the kids and to everybody in our program.
And then we reached out to other organizations, because we know the great work that they do in their community. So we started asking the other organizations, what can we do to make sure that you guys don’t lose programming? And so we partnered with different organizations to help them serve their people that they work with. So for me it’s like, okay, this kid who was two grades behind, he’s now at grade level, during summertime kids get what’s called, summer slippage. And they lose that traction. So I’m like, no, we’re doubling down. No, we’re going virtual and we’re doing everything because I don’t want that kid to come this far to only lose it. So we doubled down.
And a lot of people were like, “Oh, let’s give them a break.” No. No, let’s hold them to the high standard. There’s no lower expectations in our program. We’re talking about doctors, lawyers, engineers, and those are hard professions. So you’re going to have to study hard to get those jobs. You want to be an architect or engineer, let’s partner you with the right people, right? We’re going to partner you with the right people. We’re going to make sure that… you want be the US attorney? We’re going to introduce you to law. You know what I mean? It’s not easy.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah. Yeah. It’s not easy. No let up.
Jeff Proctor
We’ve got a partner at an organization called Cafe Momentum in Dallas, Chad Houser. And one thing that Chad tells everybody, and he told me the first time we met and talked about his program is, these kids will rise to whatever level of expectation you set for them. And when you said that, it rung out of my head. Tell me about how expectations show up at the gym?
Khali Sweeney
So first, I don’t have an expectation, per se, of a specific topic or career path. Once you show interest in that career path, now, do you want to be the best at it? Because if you want to be the best at it, we got to get you here. We got to get you there. And where do you see yourself? Where do you see yourself right now with your grade point average? Or where do you see yourself right now with your day to day routine that can get you to that point? So now we’re going to start coming up with a strategy to get you there. And so now we have some kids in our program who are attending some of the best colleges in the country that are producing some of the best CEO type people and all that type of stuff in those fields. So the expectation is high. Once you point it out, I’m going to push you to get there.
Ski Ahmad
It’s almost as if the student is setting the expectation. So when they say that they want to go into this profession, and they say, I want to be the best, then actually in a lot of ways they’re setting their own expectation. And all you all are doing at DBG is just being the facilitator.
Khali Sweeney
Being the facilitator and making those connecting points where they maybe cannot do it themselves. They don’t have a car yet. They don’t have a network yet. They don’t have this yet. Okay, well we have a network. We have a young lady who just graduated with a degree in architecture, but she just came back from Poland. We introduced her to some people in Poland, some architects. She went over there and studied architecture and now she’s back working in architecture right now. She was our last year graduate.
Ski Ahmad
Really?
Khali Sweeney
Yeah. So we can make those connections.
Ski Ahmad
Right.
Jeff Proctor
One thing I’ve heard from dozens of our catalyst partners, and you’re articulating this so well, is the mainstream sometimes can be, again, probably well-intentioned. But look at a group, let’s say, of kids and say, “Hey, because you started out with not a lot of resources, because you started out with the deck stacked against you, as long as we can get you to average, that’s good.” And so it’s not that the expectations become obligations, it’s that I expect… maybe you say, “I suspect that if you wanted to be the best architect you could be, and we’re going to come alongside you and do what we can to do that.” That’s the kind of expectation that you’re talking about here. And I think that’s fantastic.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah. Yeah. So Khali, real quick. So talk to me a little bit about how do you see dignity show up when the kid may detour, so have been in your program for a little bit, but might run upon a detour in their lives, whether it be the neighborhood that they’re in, maybe their family, or just some situation that is maybe out of their control, but it’s a detour and maybe they just make a bad decision that kind of knocks them off track, off path. I mean, how do you all handle that at DBG and how does dignity play into that?
Khali Sweeney
So my personal belief, and I try to lead by example. This is not a condemnable act. Making a mistake is not a condemnable act. This is not the end of the world. You know what I mean? You learn from it. These are teachable moments. So you have to be willing to teach in those moments.
And so for me, these are opportunities where we can come give our testimony, our life testimonies, or we can teach them, right from wrong in these choices. But we don’t condemn them. We don’t beat them down. We don’t beat them over the head with it. You have to understand, you’re not blind, you can see their environment, you see what’s going on. So you have to have a little leeway when it comes to that. And you got to be able to work with this person. And if it’s not in you, you need to look at yourself in the mirror and say, wow, what’s going on with me that I can’t see?
Ski Ahmad
Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Proctor
That idea of a mistake is not a condemnable act, reminds me of the idea that when we make mistakes, we judge ourselves on intent, but we judge others on the results of the mistake. Where I say, “Oh yeah, I didn’t mean to make a mistake.” Well, the other person probably didn’t either. But we have a little bit of a double standard with ourselves.
Well, we’re going to take a quick break before coming back with Khali from Downtown Boxing Gym to talk a little bit more about how dignity shows up there and in the community.
[Short Break]
Ski Ahmad
All right. Welcome back to the podcast. And we’re here talking more about dignity, this principle of human progress around dignity. And we’re with Khali Sweeney with Downtown Boxing Gym. And we talked a little bit about the prevailing kind of problem that we see in society where, when dignity’s lacking, most people will see others as a problem to be solved. But Khali, I mean, I think with what you’re doing at Downtown Boxing Gym, I mean it’s more than a gym. It’s more than a youth program, youth after-school program. So tell us a little bit more about your programming and the age groups of youth that you serve.
Khali Sweeney
So our program is from 8 to 18, but we also have a component that goes until they’re like 25. So at about the time you’re getting out of college. So a whole portion of our program is set up to following those guys through college, those young men and women through college. The program is set up where we pick you up from school or home. No fees for that. We don’t charge at all at our program, it’s totally free. We pick you up from home or school because we want to remove that barrier. Even though Detroit is considered the motor city, transportation is not so good in the city to be totally honest. And it is a barrier. We want to remove that barrier of transportation. So we pick them up from home or school, we bring them to the program. Like I said before, we have computer coding, well we haven’t said it yet, but we have computer coding classes.
Our elementary kids are in financial literacy classes. We set up between elementary, middle school and high school. And so financial literacy starts right there in elementary, middle school, high school. They’re learning about the stock market very young. They’re making some life… their 401ks, I hear these guys talk about that type of stuff already. And so of course we have the math and the reading. We have a STEM lab, math, art and science, whatever it’s called, STEAM lab, whatever. We have that thing going and it’s optional. And the kids all opt into the STEAM lab because they love the robotics and building robots and coding and doing the animation and stuff like that. So they love that type of stuff. So that’s real fun.
The mentorship, the sports sampling. So we know everybody’s not going to be a boxer. That’s just not everybody’s thing. So kids show interest in chess, so we play chess. They show interest in Batman, we have a ton of Batman kids who love it. And soccer, that’s real big in our program. So we have a soccer field, I mean excellent, soccer field. We play soccer. We are right now, currently installing an ice skating rink because kids show interest in hockey and stuff like that. So we just go with the kid. Whatever way that they want to go, we follow them. Make it possible for them. So that’s the program basically.
And a lot of mentorship. And so a lot of our staff and a lot of our people, coming in the door, we let you know that you probably will have to give your testimony to a child. You know what I mean? You have to be authentic. You have to be real. Because I’ll find a kid, they watch and they listen to everything you say. I’ve had kids put me to say, Khali, “You said this.” I said, “You know what? I did. But after doing my research, I found out that things have changed since that time. That was old information that I had at that time. I have to get more up to date.” They’re like, “Yeah, because you said… I said, “Okay, wait, let me bring everybody back in the room and I’ll bring every kid in, and I’ll even reach out to some of the kids who are gone further in life and I’ll talk to them too.” Like, “Hey man, you remember back when I said that, it’s been some revelations.”
Ski Ahmad
Back to kind of modeling. You’re modeling growth. Oh, that’s great.
Jeff Proctor
I want to pick out just one of the pieces of the program. And you struck a chord with me because of several conversations I’ve had with other catalyst groups where financial literacy is something that can often and is often done from a posture of low dignity. And the argument as I understand it is, Ski, if I come to you and I say, “I’m going to help you with financial literacy,” the assumption is, well you don’t have money because you must have mismanaged it. It must be a deficiency on your part. And so if I fix that about you, if you’re a problem and I fix the problem, then you’ll be fine. And of course the response is, it doesn’t take a lot of financial literacy to manage zero, right? If I got nothing, then I don’t need a lot of your fancy math to figure out how to manage nothing. And so that’s low dignity or no dignity financial literacy. What does high dignity financial literacy look like? How does that work?
Khali Sweeney
Well for us, nobody brought it to us. We sought it out, we sought that out. We saw just from observing for years and years and years of watching certain things and just wanted to make everybody more knowledgeable about everything. Even myself included, there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t know about finances, and how can I be a good example to the kids in our program if I don’t at least take the effort to learn. And so I went out and started asking questions and I put that into our meetings. So, hey, who do you know that’s in the financial world? Can you guys start coming down here and helping us out? Because in actuality, I had nobody in my household who could teach me about that. I’ve seen us, we were struggling from paycheck to paycheck. Sometimes I ate the sugar sandwiches. I had to serve sandwiches with the syrup running down your wrist.
Ski Ahmad
Oh, I know it well.
Khali Sweeney
So it’s about managing what little money you have. Even when we started the gym, when we started the gym out, one of the things the guy said was, you guys got to get an audit first. And I’m like, I know we don’t have anything. He said, “Get an audit. You still need an audit.” And I remember us getting an audit and I thought that was the worst thing in the world. Why would I spend money on an audit? But it came into play later on in life that that audit helped us out down the line because we had an audit early on and we invested into that audit early on. And other people were like, “Man, I can’t do that. Why would I do that? Why would you do that? Don’t do it.”
Man, just having that little bit right there, knowing what you really have and where you’re going. And we invested into a five year business plan. Investing into a five year business plan early on. And then after that the guy said, now you need a 10 year business plan. I was like, what is this guy talking about? But all of that stuff ended up helping us out in life. So teach a kid about making some plans for five years from now, then 10 years down the road, it’s going to come in handy.
Jeff Proctor
Sounds like you met a guy who sells business plans, I think. That’s a good marketing strategy. [Laughs]
The next topic that I wanted to hit with you is, and you started to tell us about this earlier, is how dignity and inherent worth of each person shows up. Not as much in terms of how you design the program and the experience for the youth, but just as a value of the workplace. A value that you clearly have to hire for and you have to mentor staff and you have to probably ask some people to move on if they aren’t operating from a place of high dignity. What does that look like for you?
Khali Sweeney
It starts when you first meet a person, it starts right there. Like I said before, we want to listen to everybody and hear where they are and ask them where do they see themselves? Is this a good fit? We really need to know. I’m not interviewing you, we’re interviewing each other. This is a partnership. Just because you work here, there’s a partnership. You have something at stake in this building. You know what I mean?
And I tell the guys and the women that work in our program, “At any given moment, I can go from the CEO to your assistant. I can be your assistant in a heartbeat.” And sometimes I’m the CEO, sometimes I’m the janitor. I’m the guy who’s working behind the scene. I’m the plumber. I’m all of that. There’s no ego. You know what I mean? It’s whoever’s in that position, in that moment, that’s the lead. So you have to really respect and trust the people in your workplace.
And so we refer to each other as coach. In our facility, everybody is coach. You could be working in finance, you’re coach, whatever your name is. You could be working as a teacher, you’re coach, whatever your name is. Because nobody’s looking down at anybody. We’re all equal. I want to set that tone that we’re all equal. At any moment. And if I come in your classroom and you say, “Khali, I’m going to need you to step back out,” I’m going to step out because you are in control of that moment right there. You’re the CEO in that moment. You know what I mean? So I look for leadership, I look for leadership quality in people and I believe it’s in everybody. And a lot of people, if they do so happen to go on, they go on to better positions. We’re like a launching platform, not just for kids, but for other people that’s in our program to go on. I don’t want to hide anything from you. If you want any information from me and you work in our workplace, come pick my brain because I want you to go further than I’ve ever been.
Jeff Proctor
You got me with this, everybody has leadership potential, because I don’t think most people believe that. And oftentimes we certainly don’t act as if we believe that. Again, just such a high dignity point that if we have the right definition of leadership and we understand what we mean when we say someone can inspire and lead people, it really opens the door up to the diversity of people who can ultimately do that. And there’s not one way. Usually we think there’s one way and it’s my way. And that’s a low dignity angle to take on the question, for sure.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah. Right. I mean because even to that point though, it sounds like Khali, when you talk about listening to the kids, they can take their individualized program and really just the broader sentiment of the gym, kind of where they would want to take it. Because for them, I mean you’re listening to them. And then you all as staff can begin to evolve. So talk a little bit about your staff and how they show up every day, because I think that that becomes where the magic happens at Downtown Boxing Gym.
Khali Sweeney
Yeah. It starts with the individual. I tell people all the time that when I go to bed at night, I’m like the last person I see in the mirror and I’m happy with what I see, because I live by codes and principles, morals, and I have just this high expectation of what I should do as a human being for humanity. And so I hold true to that and I don’t compromise it for anything or anybody. And so my staff see me lead like that, and they feel comfortable to be their authentic selves too. And so when I wake up in the morning, I don’t regret going to work. I love going to work, I love going to work, I love it. You know what I’m saying? I love it. And I notice with my staff, I got people who they’re on vacation, maternity leave, these people are still clocking in.
They’re like, “Okay, we’re working on this, we got to get this done, we got to get that done.” I’m like, “You are on maternity leave, please, please stop. Please stop. Enjoy this time. Be with your family.” Later, okay, six o’clock in the morning, I’m getting an email. Young lady, stop. Be with your family right now. And it’s the same with a lot of people in the program. They’ll show up on days and I get there, they’re already there working and with a smile, happy to get to work. And I love it, man. So that’s how my staff shows up. And that’s almost like every single person shows up like that every day. And I’m proud of it.
Jeff Proctor
Somebody’s trying to get themselves invited back to our final episode on self-actualization.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Proctor
Right. This is a big part of what we talk about and Ski, we mentioned a little bit earlier on, the connection between dignity and self-actualization, right? Why would you have that expectation for your team? Why would you deeply want your team to show up to work and be as on fire and as lit up by what they do if you looked at them as means to your end, right? And it can come from a really good place sometimes. Everything we do is about the kids. Well, it’s true. Everything we do in the program. But do we do our best when our light’s off or when our light’s on? Do we do our best when we are in that unique spot that allows us to thrive as individuals and deliver the most to the mission as possible? And it sounds like that idea is really woven into your entire culture and that’s awesome.
Ski Ahmad
You know what, Khali, man, listening to your story and how you started the gym, it makes me think a bit about motivation for an individual. And sometimes an individual can be motivated because of a lack of dignity shown towards them. And what you’re doing with your team there at Downtown Boxing Gym is saying, “Hey, we prefer to show up every day living out this principle of dignity and showing it, modeling it every day, because we think that outcome is better doing that.” However, there are situations where people may get motivated by a lack of dignity expressed their way and kind of say, “Oh, well hey, you got to learn it the hard way. You got to kind of go through it the hard way because that’s me.” So talk to us a little bit about that because I think it’s a pretty interesting dichotomy there.
Khali Sweeney
So for me it was like, I know people didn’t believe in me, but I always believed in myself. I believed in myself. But at some point in time it was like, okay, I don’t have the outlet, I don’t have the people, the resources. And so I fell into that, I slipped into it, I slipped into it to that bad space. And so now it’s like, where’s that support mechanism for the kids in our community? I don’t care if it’s our program or it’s another program, we got to have that support network because you could be a strong individual, but at some point in time, we all have our breaking point. And when that kid gets to that breaking point, it could be detrimental to his whole life, way of life. He can end up in some bad places or some bad situations.
So at our program, and I know a lot of other programs across the country do the same thing. And so we need to find that… you got to be able to be there for the kids when they need you. Nobody was there for me and a lot of my friends when we really needed them. You know what I mean? I spent 20 years digging myself out of a hole. You know what I mean? I wish I had a mentor, I wish I had a place to go. I wish I had a club or somewhere that I could go and to ask somebody for help. So I’m just trying to be there. And our program, we just want to be there and we want to be there where, we’re not just here today, gone tomorrow, and we don’t want to lower expectations. So when one of my partners, when she goes and I hear her say, “This is what it costs to run this program,” I kind of cringe.
I’ll be like, nobody’s going to fund that. Nobody’s going to do that. Because I hear so much from people like, well, couldn’t you just do this? Couldn’t you just do that? Couldn’t you just do this? And she’ll always say, “We would not just do that under any other circumstances. If you want their best, you have to do what it takes to get their best.” You know what I mean? And I was like, wow. You know what I mean? So now there’s no lower expectations, just whatever the number is, that’s what it is. That’s what it costs to do that. Because our kids deserve that. Our kids deserve that, whatever that is, whatever that looks like, they deserve it.
Ski Ahmad
Because you’re trying to be that outlet, that resource, and be available for any of these kids that might need it. You want to be there as an alternative. And if, let’s say you’re full, you want to be able to get them connected throughout the community. But ultimately so that they can have that alternative.
Khali Sweeney
Correct. Because I mean, we can edit this out, but here’s what I’m going to say. There’s a segment of the population who prey on those who don’t get that support. And I had a guy come up to me—and I’ll never forget it—a while back, he came to me, he said, “Khali, I love what you’re doing over there with those kids, and I love what you’re doing for the community, but I’m going to be honest with you, every one of them that you don’t get, I will get. And I’m going to put them out there and have them doing this, this, and this.”
And it was everything negative you can think of. And he was dead serious when he said it. And I looked at that guy when he walked off. I said, man, I’ll never sleep. I’ll work all day long tirelessly to make sure you don’t get one of these kids. You know what I mean? And that was that sobering moment when he said that to me. And he was serious. And I saw it. And I bet you it’s more guys, he not just the only one.
You know what I mean?
Ski Ahmad
Yeah.
Jeff Proctor
Sometimes in our world, our sector of society, we talk about nonprofits and organizations not having competition in the same way that if we made cell phones or whatever, we’d have competition. Competition is the alternatives that the kids face every single day when they’re not with you. And that person in that story was offering some pretty ugly competition. And I think that’s a tough example, but it’s out there. And I think if our principles are in the driver’s seat, if things like respect, dignity, looking at each person as an individual, which is clearly a big part of your program, each student gets to figure out themselves and then partner with you to get there. That’s what we offer as competition to this, “I’m going to get everyone that you don’t get.” That is a tough story, man. But that’s powerful.
Ski Ahmad
Oh yeah. Hey Khali, real quick. I was struck by your comment that you made where you said when you dropped out, at that point, literacy was an issue for you. So talk to us a little bit about what life was like. How were you feeling in that moment, knowing and have known for a long time that you had a struggle with reading?
Khali Sweeney
I felt like the system had let me down. I felt like the system had failed me. I felt like something was wrong with me. I just felt I didn’t feel good about myself. At that moment, you could have told me to do anything, I would’ve did it. You know what I mean? Because I didn’t care about my life at that point. I was hopeless at that point. And when I saw that report card, and he gave it to me, the guy, I got my report card and I said, “Man, this thing is filled full of good grades.” I’m like, “I don’t even know this guy’s name.” I was so embarrassed. I was skipping these classes. And I asked him, I said, “How do I have a B in your class? And I don’t even know you and you don’t even know me?” He’s like, “Well, if I’m wrong, then everybody else is wrong. Have a nice day son.”
So I go to the next class, I’m about to ask the teacher, “How did you give me a good grade and I haven’t even been in your class?” And I was standing outside the lady’s door and I looked in the classroom, I was like, “Man, this is a joke. They set me up for failure. They set me up for disaster. They’ve given me these grades. They’re about to push me out into life and I’m about to just fail.”
And I took that report card, walked out the back door and never walked back into that school again. You know what I mean? And it was just heartbreaking for me. And I said, “Well, since I’m going to be dead or in jail before I’m 21, anyway,” I said, “Live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse.” You know what I’m saying?
So I say, “I’m going to go crazy then.” And I went crazy out in the streets and I ended up joining a gang. I ended up just losing my mind. I’ve been shot, I’ve been cut, I’ve been in all types of situations. And so I just lived my life like I didn’t care. I didn’t have a purpose. And like I said, once I learned how to read, it’s like, wow. You know what I mean? The world opened up to me and I never forget when I learned how to read, people started saying, “Why don’t you read this gangster book? Why don’t you read this book about so and so, the guy that…” I said, “Man, I just lived that life with gangsters. Man, I don’t want to read about gangsters, man. I want to hear about Shakespeare. I want to read Macbeth. I want to know about Plato’s Republic. I want to read all these type of things.” You know what I mean? I want read history. And so I went on this history spree, reading history. You know what I mean?
Ski Ahmad
Yeah. Oh, that’s magical, man. That’s magical.
Jeff Proctor
So at the break, I told you we had a new question for you and I wanted to give you the question and let you prepare, and you wouldn’t let me do it. You said you wanted to be surprised.
So you have a couple times said things that really turned a light bulb on for me, talking about this idea that community is global. And when you were talking about DBG, you mentioned we’re not the only ones in this business. These concepts, these principles, these ways of treating each other have got to scale. They’ve got to win in society as a whole. And we’re not going to transform the experiences of human beings just by having a program here and a program there. I feel a massive amount of gratitude to have met so many social entrepreneurs who’ve built things like the gym, like a restaurant where there are these little special places where these values get implemented deeply every single day without question.
How do we go from that, to this place where maybe someday going to the grocery store is a high dignity experience, being out walking down the street is a high dignity experience? How do we take the good that is built inside these programs like yours and make that just the way that people get to live?
Khali Sweeney
I think it starts by connecting. I don’t know a lot of these guys that are out here, but I know they’re out here. I know they’re there. I know these organizations are out there, but I don’t know them personally. We have to build a network where we can start talking to one another and it spreads from community to community to community. Some of our families move. If you move to Houston, I can call a guy down in Houston now. Hey, now that I know, because we’re connected and you can start, like you said, Ski, the way you felt when somebody treated you like this and now you treat other people like that and it spreads and it starts to grow. You know what I mean? But we have to be in contact with one another so we know.
When I came down to the retreat and I came down there, I came down there quiet to listen and to learn and to recharge my battery. I wanted to see the rest of my team. Even though you may be working with substance abuse, or you may be working with people coming home from being incarcerated, and you may be working with whatever. But we all working on a joint project, which is for humanity. And we’re all working globally together. And so for me it was like, I want to recharge my battery because I don’t want to let my team down. So I want to look these guys in the eyes, look these women in the eyes and say, “Okay, when I go back home, I’m ready to go back to work.” You know what I mean?
So we just got to keep that connection going. It keeps people fired up. It gets you to want to go talk. I talked about that for a long time. You know what I mean? So once we get people to talk and it starts to spread and it starts to spread and before you know it, there’s no denying we’d be living in a better place.
Jeff Proctor
There’s something about this idea of… and this is something Ski and I have talked about offline quite a bit, but what really is community and what does it mean to participate in community? Every single day, I interact with different communities that I’m a part of, right? I contribute—hopefully positively, I’m sure sometimes not as positively—to that community. And I get from that community. So if I consistently get dignity, I’m treated with dignity, that makes my life better and I have an opportunity to hopefully make other people’s life better by doing that back into the community. And we can call something a community, we can say this community, that community, but community happens, community emerges, community becomes a thing based on exactly what you’re talking about, the way people show up and treat each other on a day in and day out basis. And you kind of can’t hack it. You can’t work around it.
And certainly I think a goal of the Catalyst community that we are trying to nurture is to be that. And it’s also to help our partners be that for the communities that they’re part of in their home. So that’s a great testament. Thank you for that.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah. So Khali, real quick, man. So what’s next for DBG? What’s on the horizon for DBG and the things that you all are doing there?
Khali Sweeney
We continue to grow in place right now. We’re expanding our footprint right where we are. We just purchased some property adjacent to ours. We’re building out the whole campus field right there. We’re also opening up another location with a different school district, which is basically our pilot. It’s our pilot program. We’re opening that up. And I’ve been also afforded the opportunity to go out and mentor some other leaders in other communities. So I fly out there and I talk to these young men and women and try to mentor these guys and tell them some of the stuff that I learned over the time. And I try to pick up some information from those guys too.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. Awesome. Wow. So we got growth happening both on the ground from a footprint perspective, as well as going into other communities. But then also it sounds like you yourself, individually are growing. You’re kind of like that lifelong learner.
Khali Sweeney
I mean, to go to a different state and really see some young guys starting out from where I started out at and see these guys working hard in their community, and then to be able to give them some life lessons that I learned along the way, but then pick up some new skills from these guys—man, that’s a win-win. That’s just a win-win just to do that. So to try to have some sort of positive influence on the work that we do. So I love it.
Ski Ahmad
Yeah. Good.
Khali Sweeney
I love it.
Ski Ahmad
Well, I think it’s along with what you said, Jeff, around the individual nature of how they see the kids and the outcomes for the kids. But I think the other part of the secret sauce is how the staff show up. I mean, Khali said multiple times that you’ve got to be authentic because you could imagine a similar program without authentic staff, without authentic coaches, and it not get the same results that Khali—because I think you all are, I mean, graduation rate for you all—
Khali Sweeney
A hundred percent.
Ski Ahmad
A hundred percent.
Khali Sweeney
A hundred percent.
Ski Ahmad
Over how long?
Khali Sweeney
A long time. 16 years.
Ski Ahmad
16 years.
Khali Sweeney
15, 16, something. 15.
Ski Ahmad
15 years.
Khali Sweeney
Yeah.
Ski Ahmad
Right. So I think that’s a testament to that demand that the coaches, the staff of DBG, show up in a very authentic, genuine way as they’re seeing the kids and helping them understand their individual kind of plan and program towards life success.
Khali Sweeney
Yeah.
Jeff Proctor
Well Khali, I have to tell you, this coach mental model that you gave us is something that I’m pretty excited about. So I’m going to send us off today by saying, thanks Coach Khali for joining us, on behalf of Coach Ski-
Ski Ahmad
Yeah.
Jeff Proctor
And Coach Jeff. And we’ve been just beyond thrilled really, to talk with you about DBG today.
Tune in next time for Ty Spells and JJ Velazquez from the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice. And we’ll join you in a few episodes for self-actualization. We’ll talk with you soon.
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