The power of socks | Matthew Siracusa | TEDxTheCountrySchool
morning everybody I'm very blessed and honored to be given the opportunity to share my story my name is Matt Serra acusa founder of a company called we won't it's a one-for-one grande kind of like TOMS shoes we sell socks so every time somebody buys a pair of our socks we donate a pair so I'm going to talk about how a lot of people know me as the serial dreamer I'm always thinking beyond where I am now and I love where I hand out but I'm always thinking how to make it better and these past couple of years my focus has been on other people so I'm even more passionate about it because I take myself out of the equation and as I fine-tune and sharpen all my ideas I realized a lot of people can be helped because of that so I came up with a couple steps of a serial dreamer okay one is experienced life the second is to recognize a problem so while you're experiencing life you might come across a person or a situation that eats some fixing you dream up a solution you fight the fear of failure so the everyday things are life that you go through the struggles just fighting through that you know figuring out who the people are around you that you're so afraid to disappoint and realizing that the real people that are gonna support you are going to be there no matter what and once you remove that fear from you you can do amazing things you put your dream into yeah put your dream into action and then you fine-tune the plan and then last is repeat so the first the first story I'm going to talk about is a ministry that I started in Hartford Connecticut that serves breakfast to the homeless every Saturday morning so we'll start with step one experience life I found myself sinning and Church on Main Street and downtown Hartford and I was at a funeral service for the homeless that happens once a year I'm looking around I'm like how the heck did I end up here you know I don't even remember who invited here how I how I was there but I was experiencing life experiencing something that I mean there was probably only 20 people in that room that weren't part of the homeless population so a very small amount of people were experiencing what I experienced it basically once a year they honor all those that were lost that didn't get a formal funeral and afterwards I saw this man he was wearing camouflage he was all really looking you know scary scary looking guy that most people wouldn't necessarily go out and talk to you and I just I heard this voice in my head you know go talk to this guy and ask him ask him where he lives so I asked him he lived down by the qolt building right along the river and I just all of a sudden I said I love to cook and I said hey would you like it if I came and cooked you breakfast and whoever whoever else lives lives around where you live in and said yeah that would be great I said okay what time he said 5:00 in the morning I was acknowledged at the time I was playing hockey I was also in the army so I was doing all these things at once and I was I was like you know what I wake up early five days a week I could certainly sacrifice a Saturday one Saturday right but so I experienced life I recognize a problem there's there's people that are hungry right they're not getting you're not getting food on a Saturday morning so I dreamt up the solution to go out grab a Pullman camping grill and just start cracking eggs and bacon egg sandwiches but then the fear the fear Creek tent right you know what if I get attacked what if I fail what if nobody shows up what if it's only one person all these different things started going in my mind five months later I decided I'm gonna do this I'm finally gonna do this so I called the bunny on a Friday night again I Mysterio dreamer not a serial planner so I call them up on a Friday night and I said hey I'm gonna call up a couple more guys which people want to meet me in the morning we're just going to set up on a sidewalk right in Main Street and we're going to cook breakfast I said sure so we bring this little tiny cooler right we have we have maybe 50 eggs in there you have a milk orange juice and one box of joke we're like perfect we're going to we're gonna cook for a few people it's gonna be great so we fought the fear failure we put the dream in action we set up there before we even lift a grill there is a line of over a hundred people on the side back hmm and we were like oh my gosh this is we are not prepared we're not prepared for this so that day we probably spent close to $500 my one buddy kept getting in his car running back and forth to the store and work he kept getting box of Joe's which are very expensive they only serve like 20 cups of coffee or something so we had to fine-tune the planet we sent out a massive massive cry for help here's our logo here it's called Sparrow ministries that it still goes on every Saturday for the past for the past four years so we serve upwards of 500 people on Saturday so do the math over the course of four years every single Saturday of faith and people showing up it's a lot of mouths admin server just from fighting that fear and going through so we fine-tune that plan right and we were like well we need more volunteers and we need more food so Facebook can be a very positive and also a very negative tool so we we used it for its positive side and we put out a cry for help I put out a video saying hey this is what we do this is what we need within seven days the next Saturday we had over 20 volunteers and we served close to 500 people we had food left over so we're able to bring food to the pension next door so we went out there we fought that fear of failure and all these people were helped we just thought we got two or three people and if they were just gonna walk by or we're gonna cook upon order you know just having one sandwich I mean you can't stop cooking and it's really amazing what goes on today and the topic of our discussion here here this morning and we were all supposed to focus on synergy so here's a picture actually of my father and I on that first morning I was cooking I was cooking on one side I was cooking the meat and he was cooking the eggs on the other side and it was it was really really a special moment but it was it was stressful and we realized you know we needed to need to make this thing work better so let's talk about synergy the cooperation of two or more organizations to produce a combined effect that is better than what can be accomplished alone so I realized you know me and my two buddies and my father we were just a tiny little organization right on that first day and we needed so much more than that so since then sparrow has partnered with an organization called urban Alliance churches from all over the state all these other nonprofits just show up and we're able to feed people we're able to help people with resumes were able to purchase people suits just to go on an interview a lot of people s that's the only thing holding them back so where I thought all I was going to do was serve people sandwiches again that repeat that last step we kept repeating and doing this over and over and it just keeps expanding into more and more like I said I since ended it over to two ladies that were with me the very beginning and they're doing a wonderful job so that leads me into my business that I started and run today and you're some more pictures in Severo there's all the people those are just all volunteers so we went from four people over 20 everybody was happy it's it's really a special special place as you can see we're outside here's okay we were on the news a bunch of times again we're just asking for health and people people answered alright we got a little video here so our next problem unless people are cold right we hit the remembers you just see this lady she's literally she's crying she's just telling me how cold she is and that didn't sit well with me so again we fine-tune the plan in the ministry and we said we got to talk to the church that we're outside but let's see if we can bring this inside they have a state-of-the-art kitchen let's see what we can do here so I think we can go to the next one here so we put signs up all over we got approved and we were able to come inside and now we run it inside every single Saturday morning so people are able to for a couple hours take off all their layers let things dry off and and we're able to sit down and really have a discussion and just eat breakfast with someone who maybe doesn't talk to anybody in a couple of weeks so I'm going to talk about we wolf for a moment here and how that developed from my process of being that serial dreamer so I'm one of those snowy mornings where the governor shut down the highway we still showed up a Saturday and a friend of mine once told me how they kept socks and underwear in a bag in their car they were just anytime somebody needed them there and I said well it's really cool to this point I never I never ran into the opportunity but I have the bag and I was coming home it was an absolute blizzard and there are certain people that can't make it into the warming centers and shelters there's just not enough room and I started to drive around and all these streets and I would just roll down my window and I'd say hey bro you want a pair of socks give the first the very first guy give a pair of socks to start bawling his eyes out I'm a young 20 year old college kid that has a sock full of drawers I could literally wear the same pair of new pair of socks for a month without doing my laundry and I'd still have a fresh pair in the morning this guy started crying and I was like okay again I'm experiencing life right we talked about going to a homeless room we talked about we were not allowed to be on the roads and I'm not saying great laws and this and now I was just saying experience like break away from your Facebook feed right and all these articles that you have to determine whether they're true or not go out there put your feet on the ground talk to people experience something so then you can say no this is my story this isn't something I read about this is something that I I know needs to be done right so I started going to Walmart and spending all my money I'm going broke like I mentioned before I was in college and I said this is this is not this is not going to work I need to figure out a problem so we experienced life right I gave a man a pair of socks he cried it absolutely showed me to the fork right recognize the problem people eat socks I soon found out that they're the least donated item because they have to be brand new so you can't take your you socks and put them in those you see in the grocery store parking lot you have to be brand new so it's difficult so I dreamt up the solution while people are buying socks why not buy them from a company that's going to go out there and turn that purchase into a donation fight the fear of failure again this is probably the hardest thing to possibly do so my wife and I we got married and I'm all Italian so we basically have this bag that people just give you money to add an Italian wedding great so we were like we're we're both very modest people and we had a pretty sizable chunk of money all of a sudden the next day and we didn't know what to do with it so I started dreaming up this business and I know met with investors here met with investors there and one guy said go it was on a Friday they call me Sunday I'll have a check ready for you on Monday said great I called him on Sunday said never mind so hard meeting was like as if it's my dream is day that's if this guy was so successful it doesn't want to be a part of it and it must not be writing and I said you know what we have we have the money or I don't need to take out a loan I don't need to have an investor we have the money we need so I bought seven thousand plus pairs of socks never sold a pair of socks in my life know nothing about the industry and it was terrifying in that very instant within a couple days my wife had a miscarriage and we all we want to do with your parents right and that just destroyed us I wanted to curl up in a ball I just purchased seven thousand pairs of socks dry a kitchen that are being made and now my wife and I our life is over right we're just like it's so devastating well we got out of it our love our love carried us out of it I made it through that kernel okay now I get my email the socks are ready they're on their way great my father calls me my best friend so I called this kid every day on the way home from work every single day just a devastating loss and now I'm thinking oh my gosh I have calyx full of socks coming to my home office what am I am - I'm going to call the guy he's gonna sell them back to him for for less than what I bought for that sale give it up no I thought I fought through that fear because other people were relying on I want you all to hopefully walk away from today's you may have a dream but it might not be you who's going to benefit in that group there might be someone out there that really needs you to fight through those moments because they they need your dream is for them your dream is to is to help other people if you have a dream or a business it could be your future employees that are dying for a job to work for you so I just encourage you to fight through those those life moments that feel like are just going to drag you down because from experience it's been it's been amazing to say you know what I can go through anything and make this happen and if it if it failed I knew there's people around me that we're going to support me so I talked about all these points the synergy part of our business right so now we have our customers there are mainly group there are heroes of our business where do we donate the socks to so we partnered with World Vision who is one of the biggest nonprofits in the entire planet and they have a footprint under countries and now we're able to tell our customers all of our donations go to them and they they they put them out to the communities in the US and all over the world so if you're thinking you're dreaming about something and you're thinking it's not possible in my case I was right it wasn't possible but I left out a certain work it's not possible it wasn't possible to do a loan right but it was possible to do with my friends that were amazing photographers and took pictures of my products for free my other friend took videos of me right world vision teaming up with us and being able to say oh we're really doing this right so it wasn't it wasn't possible for me to do on my own but it was it was possible to do and again our topic is synergy here and it was it was so amazing for me to think my whole life story up to this point lies on synergy right I grew up playing sports and if you had a bad game there isn't there is a team to pick you up right all you have to do is come back I play hockey come back out the next shift and do better at that time right it's no different in business it's no different in a marriage it's no different in a friendship right you need to you need to work together to do really big and amazing things and even the small things too so just the next time you think I can't do this maybe you want a calm now that other words say I can't do this alone right because I bet you there's a lot of dreams that die every single day because people stop without adding that work so I want to thank you all today for listening to my story I know we have a lot of amazing people that are gonna follow me here and again just thank you so much for allowing me to do this [Applause]