Storytelling With A Purpose | Steven Jones
In this interview with Steven Jones, we discuss the importance of storytelling in nonprofits and the local city, and the impact it has on volunteers and the community. Narratives have the power to connect people and promote a way to move forward together.
Steven is the host of the Growing Grapevine Podcast which can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at choosegrapevinetx.com
You can also following him on X @StevenAJ0nes or IG @stevena.jones and also view his short stories and writings at vocal.media/authors/steven-a-jones
Leave us a voicemail online and send us your experience or thoughts to info@notquitethereshow.com
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Why do stories matter so much? Steven Jones believes we’re made by a storytelling God, in His image, so we’re wired for narrative, and that means we need truthful stories that bring people together and remind each person they have inherent value. Steven, a storyteller who works in economic development for the City of Grapevine, joins Mike Mobley and Chris Howard. Mike knew him back in student ministry. Steven shares how he left a radio job he hated, became the storyteller at the nonprofit 6 Stones, and appointed himself commissioner of a soccer league that changed kids’ lives. Along the way, he talks about empathy, isolation and the narratives we tell ourselves. Below: the key takeaways, the Scripture discussed, and the full episode transcript.
A Dream Job That Felt Wrong
Steven graduated with a communication studies degree, came home to DFW and started at the bottom at CBS Radio. He learned to run the board by taking up an offer nobody else would, and eventually landed a Saturday night shift on 103.7 KVIL. It was supposed to be the big inspirational moment, but he hated every second of it. Most of the job was introducing Katy Perry and rewriting celebrity gossip. Over lunch, broadcaster Jeff “Skin” Wade asked what his dream show would be about. When Steven described bringing people together and mobilizing the community, Wade told him, “You’re going to hate this job.” It hurt to hear, and it was exactly what he needed.
Asking for Help and Building Something New
A sister’s suggestion led Steven to google community organizing and find 6 Stones, a Hurst-Euless-Bedford nonprofit. He emailed someone on staff and asked, “Can you teach me what you do?” Then he walked in and pointed out that their weak spots were exactly what he was good at. That part-time gig grew into a full-time storyteller role he and the team made up as they went. His career pattern has been stepping into ill-defined roles, getting his arms around them, and building them from the ground up.
A Rich Theology of Service
At 6 Stones, Steven told the stories of home repairs, food and clothing support, school supplies, Christmas for at-risk kids and a mentoring program. The stories were as much for the staff as for donors. The surprise was that the volunteers and donors were being fed spiritually, too. People who came to the food pantry twice a week had rich relationships with the Lord and wisdom “you don’t attain sitting in a safe bubble.” The people who seemed least needy had a desperate need to be in conversation with the people they were serving.
Made by a Storyteller
Steven believes we were designed by a God who is crafting a grand narrative for His glory, so we connect to narrative too. Everyone processes emotionally first and then sorts things into buckets by comparing them to experience, which is why stories can heal or manipulate. He wants to tell stories that bring people together, promote healing, and lift up what’s good in creation and in our Designer. Only one story captures the whole human experience, he says, “and it took 66 books to unfold.”
Isolation and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
Mike asks whether people came out of COVID with stronger, harsher opinions. Steven says the pandemic didn’t cause it. It accelerated what was already happening. When we isolate with people who all agree with us, and social media feeds us more of the same, we reinforce our own narratives, and that can create a dangerous psychology. He’s also honest about his own high empathy: compassion is a gift, but it needs moderating forces and humility, and stories have to be truthful and well contextualized.
The Commish and Liga HEB
After wearing a soccer jersey to work one day, Steven became the self-appointed commissioner of Liga HEB, an intramural soccer league for junior high students who were struggling in school. He found one ball per campus, rebranded the league and let students name their teams and design their crests. Players can play as long as they’re passing. With coaches and volunteers investing in them, the kids have a 97% attendance rate, grades at or above their peers’ and behavioral issues cut in half. One player who once hid in the locker room before a stadium game was leading his team in the championship two years later. All he needed was a place to shine and to know he’s created in the image of God.
Scriptures From This Episode
Genesis 1:27 (“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”)
1 Corinthians 12:12 (“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ”)
Proverbs 16:9 (“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps”)
Go deeper: Why Community Is More Important Than You Think · Engaging Christ, Community, and Culture · Why Taking Steps Is A Godly Thing · 31 Days Of Serving · Scripture on Compassion · An Undeserved Worth
Full Transcript, Not Quite There, Episode 20: Storytelling With A Purpose | Steven Jones
Steven: Narrative is an essential part of the human experience. It’s very important for us, as we develop, to be telling stories that bring people together.
Mike: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of America, welcome back. Men and women: not just males. We’ve talked about this. Keep that in mind. Welcome back, Chris. How’s your day been going?
Chris: My day is going swell. But let’s not bother the people with regular days. You’re back from vacation. You went to the beach.
Mike: Yes, that’s correct.
Chris: Did you roll around like a powdered donut?
Mike: Rolled around in the powder, like a beached whale on Gulf Shores, Alabama. Lots of people, when we said we were going to Gulf Shores, said, “Oh, you’re going to Pensacola.” It’s not the same place. It’s not even the same state.
Chris: Nothing against Pensacola, right?
Mike: No, but everyone kept going, “Oh, Florida is going to be great.” And I’m like, “It’s Alabama.” So it was great. A great time.
Chris: You needed to feel rested.
Mike: I feel like I got some sun. A little tan.
Chris: You do look a lot more tan than usual.
Mike: Thank you. That’s very nice of you. I feel good. What’s the last vacation you took?
Chris: The last vacation I took, I can’t even remember… Last October, to the mountains. Not to the beach, to the mountains. It was wonderful.
Mike: Where was it? Colorado?
Chris: It was in southern Colorado, and I saw a bear.
Mike: You mean you saw a big bear? Did you have an encounter with a bear?
Chris: I did not have an encounter. I saw the bear off in the distance, about 50 yards away.
Mike: In a picture frame.
Chris: And we just said, “Respect.” I went my own way, and it went its own way. If people could see Mike, he just hit his chest with two fingers, very street.
Mike: That’s what you do when you say respect. And speaking of street, did you realize you said the word “swell” earlier when we started this episode?
Chris: What’s wrong with swell? It’s not from the fifties. I’m trying to bring it back.
Mike: Isn’t it from the fifties?
Chris: The forties?
Mike: Speaking of the 1950s, I think that’s a great segue to a special guest we have today. Would you like to introduce our special mystery guest?
Chris: Okay. It is the indomitable Steven Jones. But I’m going to let you introduce him, because you actually have some history with this no-longer-young man. Well, kind of. He’s younger than us.
Mike: Young man, 95 years old. Swell and calm. Thank you, Steven, for being here. This is the one and only: the man, the myth, the legend. Respect. Loves the fifties. He also loves the sixties. I would say the seventies up to current times, all decades. Steven Jones in the house. I do have some history. We’ll let him connect the dots there. Welcome.
Steven: I definitely have no bad memories from the fifties, sixties or seventies.
Mike: All good memories for you. That’s very exciting. So, Chris wants to know, can he call you Steven? Is that correct?
Steven: That is allowed. I feel like we should get out ahead of this now, because 10% of your audience just leaned forward, like, “How did they get Stephen Jones?” I do not own any portion of the Dallas Cowboys.
Mike: I don’t know about that. Are you sure?
Steven: I’m pretty sure we are unrelated to those Joneses.
Mike: You’re 99% sure.
Steven: He buries me very effectively in Google search, and it’s not even spelled the same. Mine is with a V.
Mike: Do you search your name often on Google to see where you rank?
Steven: Not in many years. There was a wild period in your twenties when you think you’re a really big deal. Fortunately, the internet is here to humble all of us.
Mike: Yes. Very true. What would be your street name? Steven Jones does sound like you could be confused with the Cowboys. It’s a very legal name, which is fine. But what’s your street name? You’re walking down the streets of, let’s say, Grapevine, just throwing out a city as an example, and you’re like, “Yo…”
Chris: Pretend Mike has just hit his chest with two fingers and he’s calling out to you. What’s he saying?
Steven: Honestly, if someone did that to me, I would be checking over my shoulder, like, “Who are they talking to?” Because there’s no way it would be me. I don’t know. There was a period of time when I actually was on the radio. I had a local radio show at CBS Radio, and I had a DJ name, because our program manager thought Steven was too commonplace, but I was too young to be Steve. So he decided I needed to be Stevie.
Mike: DJ Stevie?
Steven: Not DJ Stevie. Just Stevie, because nobody actually says DJ anymore.
Mike: Oh, yeah. Sorry. It’s like I said “disc jockey.”
Steven: So much of radio now is about, as the kids would say, authenticity. A lot of times they want you to sound as natural as possible, except you can’t have normal people names like Steven.
Mike: You have to be ridiculous. You need to be Stevie. Never Stevie J?
Chris: No. SJ.
Steven: That would have been nice. But it was funny, because even in the training they would tell you, if it’s a big mistake, go back and clean it up. If you make a little mistake, just leave it in, because people want the realness.
Mike: I think people are used to mistakes on this podcast. That is one thing we have really brought to the table. We’ve already made a lot just talking about your name, so we should probably move on.
Steven: If you haven’t made a mistake, you’re not learning.
Mike: That’s what I’m saying. Kids, listen to Steven Jones. Stevie J, DJ Steve J… Oh my goodness. It’s gone.
Steven: This sounds like something they would use as an example of how not to do radio. A guy sort of took me under his wing when I first started, and he would do air checks with me and show me what I was doing wrong, which was most of it. His example was always, “Never do the radio voice.” And I was like, “What radio voice? There’s not a radio voice.” And he’d be like, “Coming at you live!” Nobody talks like that on the radio.
Mike: That’s true. I’m going to not change my voice as we talk. Do I ever do that? Do I become a radio guy?
Chris: I have no place to talk.
Mike: I kind of came in saying, “All right, all right, all right.”
Chris: We’re still fighting off the “Chris has a sexy voice” thing.
Mike: That’s true. That’s actually the nickname he got when we first started the podcast. So, when we’ve had other guests on, we sometimes pepper them with some questions. A little bit of rapid fire at the front and rapid fire at the end, because it’s a twist you would have never seen coming. Like food poisoning.
Steven: Food poisoning?
Mike: Basically, we provide food poisoning for our guests. That’s a new way of saying it.
Chris: I was going to say appetizers.
Mike: Chris is going to throw some appetizers at you. Go.
Chris: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter?
Mike: And you have to pick one.
Steven: I have to pick one? Can’t I like them all? Are we talking movies or books?
Chris: We’re talking rapid.
Steven: I grew up on Star Wars. That was my thing. So that’s probably the franchise I would take.
Chris: What was your first job?
Steven: My first job, I sacked groceries at Market Street in Colleyville.
Mike: Hold on. Mine was at Kroger, so we are both fellow grocery sackers. That’s a great thing.
Steven: It’s a really good way…
Chris: To ever have meat fall down the front of your shirt?
Mike: That was not when I was sacking groceries. Someone was not paying attention. That was stocking, at another store.
Chris: Did you ever have meat down the front of your shirt?
Steven: No, I never had that. But at Market Street, their whole thing is that you walk the cart out and then bring it back. And they liked for you to run the carts back, because hustle was a big deal. I guess the 30 seconds you saved running across the parking lot was really big. What they didn’t think about was that I had this huge curly afro that would fluff up in the wind, with sweat dripping down my face. But the big mistake I made was trying to run a cart back in the middle of a rapid-onset blizzard that came through while we were still open, and I couldn’t see the curb. So I was running, and then I was flying, and then I was on my back.
Mike: The blizzard we’ve had in Texas, like, one time in a millennium.
Steven: I just happened to be working that day. What are the odds?
Chris: Did the afro cushion the fall in any way?
Steven: I like to think it prevented brain damage, and that’s why the Lord blessed me with the curly hair.
Mike: Did you ever have a customer ask you to bag the groceries in plastic, but then put it in paper, or the other way around?
Steven: We did have some really specific ones, and it was actually part of the training. When you had raw meats, you’d ask if they wanted those separated in plastic. A lot of times you would wrap it and put it at the bottom of the bag.
Mike: You still remember this.
Chris: You could walk into a store right now and do that, right?
Steven: I could. In fact, a large portion of store design now depends on us knowing how to do that, because now there’s all the automated checkout.
Mike: Don’t make it ridiculous, Chris. This is a serious situation. Go to your next question.
Chris: This is so silly. Do you speak any other languages, SJ?
Steven: I took Spanish in high school, and I had gotten proficient enough to pass the AP test. I was really proud of that. Then in college I decided I wanted an extra challenge and, stupidly, took Mandarin. So now I speak neither well. What happens is I’ll start a sentence in one and finish it in the other, because my brain’s like, “Out of words. Try this one.”
Mike: That’s impressive. Well, you’re technically speaking both languages. Let me ask you a question in Mandarin.
Steven: I actually don’t know that one.
Mike: Someday someone’s going to get this question right.
Chris: Is that Mandarin?
Mike: If that wasn’t Mandarin, I just did something really unethical on the podcast. Fine. Go to the next question.
Chris: What’s a place you’ve been to that you loved?
Steven: There’s a big long list, but I’ll go ahead and break out the big brag now. My wife, Lauren, and I went to Iceland a couple of summers ago, and that was incredible.
Mike: Wow. Did you see the Northern Lights?
Steven: We did not. We went in the summer. And actually, Iceland is not as good for watching the Northern Lights as Canada or Alaska, because of its positioning. We saw them recorded in an IMAX theater. That was our cheat code. There’s a museum that has all of the attractions in Iceland in one place, so we were like, “All the stuff we couldn’t do, we’re going to do today.”
Mike: You’re going to check all the boxes on your last day.
Chris: Did you clap your hands in unison with a crowd of people?
Mike: Is that what Iceland is known for?
Steven: Every time they’re in a sport… It’s the Viking clap.
Chris: It’s like a world clap thing. Steven, do it with me. Ready?
Steven: It’s a slow build. And you have to do a big “hoo,” like a guttural thing.
Chris: It’s very Viking.
Mike: I was excited to do it until we just did that. That was terrible.
Steven: It works a lot better in a stadium with 20,000-plus.
Mike: If only we had more than three people in here.
Chris: We’ll stick with the two fingers on the chest. Man, Iceland’s great. Respect.
Mike: There we go. Iceland’s great. I’ve heard good things about it. Really green. Luscious green, if you will.
Steven: It’s like the famous original PR move. The Vikings, when they made it to Greenland, were like, “Oh, this is really icy. We should call it Greenland, so people will leave Iceland and come here.” And they’ll be like, “How is it greener than Iceland?”
Mike: Get them to actually leave, and then no one will go to Iceland.
Steven: Once they’re there, they’re stuck.
Chris: Iceland is ours.
Mike: Iceland would be awesome to go to. Let me put that on the bucket list.
Chris: So after you’re done rolling around on the beach like a powdered donut…
Mike: I already did that last week, so now I’m ready to go. Are we going to Iceland together?
Chris: I wasn’t planning on it. But maybe you go, and then I’ll go, and we’ll give you a review. Oh, dear. That is all I have as far as appetizers. Thank you, SJ.
Mike: Finger guns.
Chris: Let’s get into the meat.
Mike: Let’s get into the meat. Kick us off.
Chris: Well, tell us a little bit about the history between you two. While you were in a leadership role…
Mike: Back in the day, many, many moons ago, I was in student leadership. And Steven here… We’ll call him Steven. That’s his name, sitting right in front of us. He was a fellow student. He was not in my small group, because I kind of saw the way he was interacting, and it was like, “Not that group.” Wait, he was a student. I was a leader.
Chris: I’m trying to paint the picture.
Mike: Words are hard sometimes, okay? Relax. So, in student ministry, what do I remember of Steven Jones? A lot of hair. A lot of hair. Glasses, for sure.
Chris: Was the afro a fixture of that time?
Steven: It would vary based on the year. In junior high, it was a lot smaller. In high school, I was on a spirit team where the tradition was to grow out your hair through the football season, and at the end, if we made it to state, they would shave your head in a pep rally. So I had an insane amount of hair. I went to Trinity High School in Euless, and that was the year we were projected to win the mythical national championship. We lost to Allen, and it didn’t happen. We had all grown out our hair, and we lost in the regional semis or something.
Mike: That’s another thing we have in common. We both went to Trinity.
Steven: So you’ve got all this hair, and you don’t want to cut it yourself, because they were supposed to cut it for you later. So we all just had depression fros.
Mike: That’s where you want to be in high school. That’s really how you want to feel.
Steven: It’s great. I was fresh off a breakup.
Mike: Just nice and depressed here with my long hair.
Steven: I was like the inspirational teen movie in reverse. They put the glasses on me and put the hair in my face.
Mike: So: Steven Jones, student ministry, lots of hair. Good things like that.
Chris: What was Mike like?
Mike: He’s probably not going to remember any of this. He’s had a long life since then.
Steven: I feel like Mike had the same energy then that he does now.
Mike: Thank you. I’m growing.
Chris: Did he have the same frosted tips?
Mike: They’re not frosted tips.
Steven: I think Mike is legally mandated to keep that hairstyle for the entirety of his life.
Mike: I think he’s actually right. I haven’t found that contract, but it seems like ever since I was 16…
Steven: It’s like it was shoehorned in. You know how they put a bunch of stuff into every bill they pass in the legislature? It was just one rider.
Mike: There was legislation on my hair. So I haven’t changed at all. I really haven’t matured as a man either, apparently, since I was twenty-something.
Chris: I think we’re the better for it.
Steven: I’d be able to speak to that more if we’d been in the same group. I knew you mostly from a distance, in that weird role you have to play when you’re in a leadership position with young people, where you have to pretend you have the same amount of energy they have. So Mike did a really good job of pretending to be a supernova human, and then probably going home and sleeping.
Mike: Oh, yeah. I was passing out pretty much in the car as soon as student ministry was over. That’s the acting experience. Isn’t all of life a performance?
Chris: I think you would make a great student leader.
Mike: Thank you. In real life, or in acting?
Chris: In both. If there were a movie about a student leader, I could see you playing that role really well.
Mike: Thank you. Do you guys have any history together?
Chris: No. Actually, we were talking about this a little bit beforehand. The first life group I was part of here at 121, my wife and I were in a couples group, and your mother and father were part of that group. So we had some good times with them, but I didn’t really know you well. We talked about running in similar circles, with a lot of people in common. We both have experience in nonprofits, which is what I wanted to talk about here a little bit. You’ve had some experience there, and I wanted to find out more about what that was like and what led you into nonprofit work. We’ll get into the role you’re playing now, because it’s not necessarily nonprofit. But take us back a little bit to what led you into those early roles.
Mike: Starting with the day you were born.
Chris: Fast forward.
Steven: I need you to get your mind into October 1990.
Mike: It’s a glorious day.
Steven: We’ll skip ahead a little bit to save your audience from having to deal with any more of my high school angst. I graduated college with a degree in communication studies, which is such a niche degree with such simple requirements that most people choose it by accident, after they’ve been in school two years and realize they need to get all the credits together to graduate. But I came in with a bunch of credits from Advanced Placement classes, knowing I wanted that degree, so I actually graduated in three and a half years, because they ran out of stuff for me to do. “We didn’t plan on you actually wanting this.”
Mike: The first person in the history of people who came to college to find themselves.
Steven: “And we’re done extracting money from you.” As a kid, I always wanted to write. I thought, novelist. And then I found out that was really hard. So I thought, journalist, which is a super stable career that is definitely still profitable. Today we have a very healthy media ecosystem. So I went to college thinking I wanted to do that, and somewhere between high school and college I really fell in love with the concept of radio, which is another medium that is not at all dying or challenged by the advancement of technology. I was a child with big dreams.
Mike: Picking the right stuff.
Steven: Really crushing it. So I graduated and did what all millennials did: came home to crash on my parents’ couch until I could afford rent. That just so happened to be here in DFW, which is a top five radio market, one of the biggest metro areas in the US, because Dallas and Fort Worth cluster so effectively. I got an entry-level job at CBS Radio in downtown Dallas, which is a really great place to start. But everyone in radio starts at the bottom of the ladder, on the promotions team, handing out koozies and waking up at 3 a.m. to go set up for the 5 a.m. broadcast. It’s a lot. But one of the gentlemen who ran one of the stations offered at an all-hands meeting that if anybody wanted to learn how to run the board or do on-air stuff, they could come talk to him. I guess I was the only person insane enough to take him up on the offer. He showed me around the board, and they liked me enough to let me start messing around super late at night, like midnight to 2 a.m., when no one is listening, so you can make as many mistakes as you want. That was the most empowering thing he said to me. He sat me down at the board and said, “You’ve been through everything. You know how to do everything. You’re going to mess up. We expect you to mess up. So just get it out there.” And I was like, “Cool. Sounds fun.” So I did that for a while and turned in air checks until they were convinced I knew what I was doing enough to have a weekend shift. I ended up with a 7-to-midnight slot on Saturdays at 103.7 KVIL, a legacy station here that used to carry the Cowboys, which my family doesn’t own. I was running that show for a while, which is awesome, because if this is a movie, this is the big inspirational moment where the nerd has gotten the hair out of his face and the glasses off, and he’s found himself, and he’s doing his dream job. I hated every second of it.
Mike: Oh, man.
Chris: I was going to ask what theme music was playing during that time.
Steven: Sad trumpets. Exactly. Every day when you walk into the studio. I was getting this crushing anxiety when I started show prepping, and I was like, “I don’t feel like your dream job should make you feel like this.”
Mike: It seems like it should be the opposite.
Steven: And again, because of our super healthy media ecosystem, the way an on-air personality creates value for a company now is that you supplement their social media presence and create content for their website. Most of the content we created for the website was basically, “What did TMZ write, and how can we rewrite it in a way that can’t get sued?” So much fun. Your on-air shift was like: you’d talk for a total of three minutes, introduce Katy Perry four times in the span of six hours, and churn out an article an hour, usually about Kim Kardashian. And I was like, “This doesn’t feel like it’s really helping anyone.” It felt pretty unhelpful and unimportant. Like many people in my generation, I have that archetype where what the work accomplishes is more important to me than any other element of the work. I want it to make an impact and contribute to society in some way, and I was getting the sense I was doing the opposite of that, churning out useless pop culture content. I was talking about that with my family, and one of my sisters said, “It sounds like what you want to do is community organizing.” So I googled “what is community organizing” and stumbled across 6 Stones, a nonprofit that was founded in 2009, the same year I graduated high school.
Mike: And they launched in a building across the street.
Steven: That’s right. It’s a weird, small world scenario. I emailed one of the gentlemen on staff there and basically said, “Hey, can you teach me what you do?” Because this worked at the radio job: I just asked a nice old man to teach me things. So I thought maybe if I asked a nice, not-old man, the same thing would happen. He ended up being my supervisor for a few years, and he was wonderful. For a while I was kind of doing both jobs, working part time at 6 Stones and part time at the radio station, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And one of the guys at CBS was a gentleman by the name of Jeff “Skin” Wade. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Jeff “Skin” Wade.
Mike: That sounds like a superhero name. Or a villain name.
Chris: I said superhero or serial killer.
Mike: Three names. Jeff “Skin” Wade. It sounds like a bad guy.
Steven: Of The Ben and Skin Show. I was at the phase where I was networking, because I was hoping to get a more relevant air gig. A lot of times in radio, you drop to a lower market for a better air time, where you can build up your resume. So I was still exploring that path, and a lot of the people I talked to said, “Just ask people if you can buy them coffee or lunch. Most of them will say yes, and most of them are nice enough that they’ll pay for it. But if they don’t, you have to be prepared to.” Shockingly, this guy, an incredible professional broadcaster with decades of experience, who hosts Mavs games, whose Ben and Skin is probably one of the more decorated shows in this market and has successfully spun off a podcast, agreed to have lunch with me. And he cut me off in the middle of my “here’s what I’m hoping for” pitch and said, “If you had a radio show, what would you want it to be?”
Mike: Good question.
Steven: I described it to him, and it was about bringing people together and mobilizing the community. And he was like, “Yeah, get out. You’re going to hate this job.” It hurt to hear, but it was one of the most important things anyone could have said. Props to him for getting right to the point. So I transitioned from the radio job to the nonprofit job. At the time it was a small part-time gig. I had essentially walked into their office after meeting them once and said, “Here’s what I’m good at. I’ve reviewed all of your communications channels, and here’s what you’re not good at. They’re the same things. So can I do them for you?” And they were like, “Sure.” They started me part time, and I eventually generated enough to justify a full-time position, and grew into what was then called the storyteller position, which sounds made up, because we made it up to describe what I was doing.
Mike: So why the passion for community and bringing people together? You could have stayed in radio, though obviously you hated it. But what is it about bringing people together? You talked about that for your radio show. Why does that move the needle for you?
Steven: I think there are a couple of things. One is my personality archetype. There are so many personality quizzes now that you can take to figure out who you are. I’m very highly driven by a sense of community, a sense of connection, and the idea that all things are connected in some way. I would argue it’s because they’re designed to be connected. Some people might disagree, and that’s fine. But in a lot of ways, what we as people need is connection to each other, and what we need as a society, whether you’re talking about our national culture or global culture, is a level of connection that mobilizes everyone to the point that we can accomplish more. The individual is not nearly as capable as the collective. So for me, it’s a matter of bringing people together and advancing all of us in a way that benefits all of us. To some degree, I think that is the calling of the church. It’s something Christ calls us to. In a word, that is the kingdom, right? You’re trying to bring people together and move a little closer to the way we’re supposed to be. I’ve gotten so used at this point to explaining Christological things in a secular way, because not everyone has my worldview, and it’s important that we find common ground. So I think we can’t succeed, and we can’t be truly healthy and truly flourishing, unless everyone is capable of contributing something and we’re all advancing together.
Mike: I would agree with that.
Chris: We talked about this recently, and you said something that reminded me of it: you asked for help. You got some guidance and counsel, and it was offered in a way that actually helped you have your own show, in a way, as a storyteller. So here you are at a nonprofit as a storyteller. What kinds of stories were you telling in that role?
Steven: That was a fun one, because I think they had a sense that it was something they should be doing, but they didn’t really know where to start. My career, even up till now, has really been stepping into roles that are ill-defined, that no one’s ever done before, and figuring out, “What does this even look like?” Getting your arms around it, finding the shape of it and building it from the ground up. Anyone who’s ever worked in nonprofit will tell you the story side of things is the most important part, because if people don’t understand what you’re doing and what it’s accomplishing, the organization crumbles. One, you can’t get funding. But two, you can’t mobilize volunteers. It’s really hard, even with the staff, to get a picture of what we’re trying to do. Everybody wants that sense of accomplishment. You need to feel like you’re contributing to a goal, like what you’re doing matters. So in some ways, the stories we started telling were as much for the staff as they were for our volunteers and our general audience, because they needed to be encouraged that what they were doing mattered and made a difference. The beautiful thing about 6 Stones is that it’s a volunteer and community platform. It was designed in conversation with leaders from all over the Hurst, Euless and Bedford community it serves: the school district, city management, stakeholders in high positions. What needs have they identified, and how do we build a program to match those needs? We did so many things that it was hard not to find a story somewhere. We did home renovations for people who were physically and financially unable to keep their houses up to code. We did emergency food and clothing support. We did school supplies and Christmas for at-risk kids in the local school district. There was counseling available for folks who came in to the food pantry. While I was there, we launched a mentoring program to help with that next step out of poverty. And we also had an intramural soccer league. So you had a seasonal rotation of stories. Whatever event was coming up, those were the stories you’d go out and find and tell. I was interviewing homeowners, and students or teachers who had received school supplies or Christmas. A lot of what I loved about that job was that these are such small things that make such big impacts.
Chris: You’d come a long way at that point, from rehashing TMZ content to stories that matter. It sounds like it had the makings for a storyteller to tell a lot of different stories. Content for days. So what surprised you in that role, as you were telling these stories, keeping the staff encouraged and letting the community know more about 6 Stones?
Steven: When I started, we were figuring out what my role was, but we were still figuring out what 6 Stones was, because it hadn’t even turned 10 years old yet. We were in the middle of figuring out, “What are we good at? What should we be doing? What do we need to say no to?” One of the really beautiful things, as we got into it, was discovering this rich theology of service. Yes, we were meeting the physical needs of people you would consider at risk or low income. But the equally important side of the ministry, which was never discussed until we started digging into it, was that the people who volunteered or donated with us were also being fed spiritually. They had a need as well. It’s really easy, especially in this area, to get into an affluent bubble, to be separated from a whole other reality of existence, and to go through life completely self-sufficient, at least financially, with all your basic needs met, not realizing how much you’re missing on a community level and a spiritual level. The people we would interview would come to us twice a week to get food. They would go out into the community garden and grow their own produce, because otherwise they couldn’t get any. And they had these incredibly rich relationships with the Lord, and some beautiful wisdom you don’t attain sitting in a safe bubble. The people we’d think of as not being needy had a desperate need to be in conversation with the people we were serving. Ideally, you’d want them to actually be in a room together and share communion. But I think a video or a blog is a good first step to opening up people’s minds and hearts and letting them see.
Chris: That it’s possible. So how many years were you at 6 Stones in that role, and what helped you transition to your next one?
Steven: I started at 6 Stones in 2015 and transitioned out in 2019, moving into 2020, for a couple of reasons. The chief one is that I got married. When your life is not just you anymore, you have to do a lot of calculations about, A, what paycheck you need to sustain life, and B, what your work hours look like. In my job, I would go out and collect interviews, and then I’d be up editing. We’d do events like Night of Hope at Christmas, and those parties don’t end until 9 or 10 p.m. Then I’d be home editing video and photos, go to bed at midnight, wake up at 10 and keep cutting. So my hours would vary wildly. I’m also a perfectionist and a procrastinator, which is a dangerous combination, so every now and again my hours would vary because I was bad at managing time. I could not effectively share a life with somebody on those hours. Around the same time, I was starting to think about a career transition, and the City of Grapevine came on board as a community-powered revitalization partner with 6 Stones. We started doing volunteer events here in the city, keeping some of the older houses up to code. To announce that we were expanding the program to include Grapevine, we did a driving interview with the mayor pro tem. We hopped in the car with her, and she drove us around the city and showed us all the places this work was needed. Again, when you’re in that bubble, you don’t think the need exists. Grapevine is a prosperous city. You wouldn’t think there was a pocket where those kinds of services were needed, but there was. We did a really great feature with her, and she was so excited about it that she immediately started looking for job openings where she could plug me in. So I got connected to the economic development team, of all people, which is not at all what I was doing on the nonprofit side. At the time, the department was three guys who were all introverted, data-heavy guys: not narrative, not sociable, not high empathy. And I have problematically high empathy. We’d do staff surveys at 6 Stones: “If you’re highly logical, go over here. If you’re in the middle, go over here.” And I’d always be by myself on the other side of the room: exceptionally empathetic. I process everything emotionally first, and then I have to remind myself that logic is a thing and I should apply it. But it’s an important mindset for the kind of work I do. So as I came into the department, we were looking for a way to marry the incredible resources and data the city has with the more narrative framework my brain likes to follow, and to tell data-driven stories that communicate a broader truth than the numbers alone.
Mike: Is that what you’re still doing?
Steven: Yeah. I’m doing a lot of things. It’s funny, moving from a nonprofit team of, I think, either 16 or 12 by the time I rolled off (the staff changed a couple of times) into a department of three people, but much more heavily resourced, because it’s part of a really big entity in the city, a top 10 employer within the boundaries of Grapevine. So there are a whole lot of people, but our department is small. I have more resources than ever, but fewer people around me than ever, and I’ve had to find my footing. You have to figure a lot of things out as you go. I was really hired with the understanding that “we only have a vague idea of what this job looks like, and we’re going to piece it together as we go.” The gentleman who hired me ended up stepping away about two weeks after he hired me, so we had some fun stitching the job together. The next director was hired, and then he got a job offer in LA. It’s a dream job to run the economic development department in Los Angeles, so we’re not mad at all that he took that opportunity. Then they promoted somebody from within the department, and he’s doing a fantastic job now. So in the span of three years, I had three different bosses, and they all had a different vision of what the job would look like. But the core of it has always been, how do we tell the story of Grapevine? It’s such a unique city that the numbers alone don’t do it justice. It has such a rich history that you have to put all the facts in context, because otherwise you can’t appreciate them for the power they have.
Chris: Grapevine certainly has been growing in popularity from outside of Texas, too. What is in store for Grapevine over the next five to 10 years? What do you foresee happening here?
Steven: We’re at a really interesting point in the history of Grapevine. Generally, when you think of economic development, and I’m going to speak about this as though I’m an expert, even though really…
Mike: Once you say “economic development,” you already sound like an expert.
Steven: Those are two really big words. So many syllables.
Mike: If you just keep working that into your sentences, everyone’s going to believe you know what you’re saying.
Steven: I’m really the communications and marketing arm of the department. For all the actual economic development stuff, I trust the experts, and then I go tell people how smart the experts are. That’s my job, essentially. The general approach to economic development, at least as you’ll hear it in the news, is cities courting companies with money to come build their headquarters. That’s not really the case in Grapevine, and it’s especially not going to be the case moving forward, because we’re almost out of land to develop, excluding land controlled by DFW Airport. The City of Grapevine is about 97% built. So we’re shifting from a phase of attraction, which we’re still working on, and we have some really cool projects in the pipeline that I’m not allowed to talk about…
Mike: Ooh, classified information.
Steven: We’re shifting from that to more of a redevelopment, sustainment and expansion model, where we support the companies that are here and find ways to elevate the workforce and the existing businesses so they can continue to thrive. There’s more than one way to grow an economy. You can bring money and businesses in. You can also help the businesses that are here grow and expand. So we have some redevelopment opportunities and a couple of key corridors we’re working on now. There’s a parcel of land on the northeast corner of the city that the city owns and controls and that hasn’t been developed, and we’re working on getting a couple of really cool users installed up there. We have some redevelopment going on along Dallas Road, right in the middle of the city, next to the shiny new train station. And there’s a restaurant cluster where all the highways come together, called Crossroads, which was the place to be in the nineties. A lot of the brands that were thriving then are not thriving now, so that area has started to decline a little, and we’re looking at ways to revitalize it. Those are the big projects immediately. And sometime in the distant future, there are a thousand acres that haven’t been developed that belong to DFW International Airport. We have to come to an agreement on what we want to build on that shared land, which is a little more complex, because there are a lot of decision makers.
Mike: Especially with the airport. I was thinking about this while you were sharing about communication in your economic development, strategic execution, achievement roles…
Steven: For a brief moment, it was like you were holding a diploma.
Mike: I had the diploma, and then it just whittled away. I’m sorry. I lost it. Why do you think storytelling is so compelling and powerful for people? Regardless of someone’s belief system, when we say community, not isolating yourself, we need each other, I think a lot of people can get on board with that. They may not know exactly why. You do a lot of storytelling personally. You’re involved in many different things, and you have a creative mind. You’re writing a book, maybe multiple books?
Steven: Working on a novel.
Mike: So what is your opinion? Why do you think storytelling is so effective?
Steven: There are a couple of things, and we’ll start with the theological foundation first. People who aren’t Christians are welcome to disagree. But I think we were designed by a God who built us in His image, and He’s a storyteller. He’s crafting a grand narrative for His glory. So being built in His image, at least partially, means we process the same way: we connect to narrative. But even if you back away from the theological side and look at what we know about the function of the human mind, all people are wired for narrative. It’s funny, because I talked about being an emotional processor versus a logical processor. Everyone is an emotional processor. The question is really how quickly you get to logic and how much logic weighs in, because your first reaction to anything is always going to be emotional. In some ways, that’s why we have the problems we have. People get angry about something, and even if they don’t have the logic to explain why, they know they’re angry, so they have to do something about it. It’s really easy to manipulate and hack that in some bad ways, and unfortunately, that’s profitable. But the way the human brain is structured, you process everything emotionally first and then sort it into buckets. And we sort it into buckets by comparing it to experience. We’re narrative creatures. We want to build a sense of understanding and a coherent worldview from the things we’ve seen and experienced, the data we’ve collected. That’s why sometimes, even if the numbers say one thing, it’s hard to convince someone who’s experienced something different that it’s true, because it flies in the face of what they’ve been through. So narrative is an essential part of the human experience. It’s very important for us, as we develop, to be telling stories that bring people together, stories that promote healing, stories that identify and elevate the positive aspects of humanity and creation and, more importantly, our Designer, and that problematize the things that are broken. It’s interesting that we’ve gotten to a point where people are kind of on a knife’s edge following COVID. We had all this time when everybody was separated, and we were processing the world narratively from our own individual bubbles, without a whole lot of outside context. Then we came out of that primed and ready to go, and now it’s really hard to figure out which narratives are actually accurate and which ones we’ve told ourselves. And we have all this media that only seeks to elevate the things that produce a strong reaction, not necessarily the things that generate good and healthy growth in us. That’s why I think it’s important for us to tell stories with that goal in mind.
Mike: Do you think we’ve come out of COVID stronger in our opinions? Chris, this question is for you as well. We were off in our bubbles, and now we’ve come out, like you said, primed and ready to go, but so affected by it that any narrative that challenges our experience… Coming out of the beloved 2020. Congratulations on getting married, by the way. A lot of other things happened that year. I actually had a pretty good 2020. It was pretty weird, but it was pretty great for me.
Chris: You’ve got a story to tell.
Mike: I could be wrong on this, but I do feel like people’s opinions seem stronger coming out of that. A lot of polarization. It seems a little harsher. I wonder if that’s also because of pent-up energy, and then you come out like, “Rah!” Much more fierce in your stance-taking.
Steven: I’m going to be the annoying guy here, because in economics you’re dealing with complex systems that have a whole lot of inputs. It’s never one solution. It’s never one thing. I do think a lot of forces came together and coalesced around the pandemic, because we were sheltered in place and a little bit cut off. I don’t think that caused the issues. I think it accelerated issues we were already creating for ourselves. If you look demographically at the way our country has been shifting, a lot of people have been voluntarily self-isolating within same-people groups. And psychologically, we know that if you’re in a group of people who all agree with you, you will all become more radical in your stance, because all you’re hearing is feedback that you’re correct and you should feel what you’re feeling, and gosh darn it, someone has to do something about it. That’s why it’s so easy for groups of people to be whipped up into a frenzy they would never see themselves in, until they get isolated and all those things happen. So we’ve had the compounding effects of a culture that was already cocooning and isolating, even before we had to for health and safety reasons, and then a social media ecosystem that only feeds you things that agree with you. You have to really go out of your way to find an alternative point of view, and even when you do, it’s uncomfortable, and maybe you don’t want to stay there very long. So we get to a point where we’re reinforcing our own narratives, and that can create a dangerous psychology for us.
Chris: I think that’s a great summation. What did I say? “Summization”?
Mike: I say a lot of words wrong. Did you hear him say “problematize” earlier? I loved that word. Just keep talking.
Chris: Anyway, great summary of the COVID years. As somebody who’s high in empathy, who’s seen different walks of life coming together in a community environment, it has to bother you a little when people aren’t embracing and trying to understand more of their fellow man, who’s living and breathing and walking and doing life right next to them. And in this position, I imagine you have carte blanche in a lot of ways to tell stories. What’s the one story you want to tell that you think would be very helpful? It could be Grapevine related, or it could be something else related to life. What’s the story that’s eating at you, that you want to tell?
Steven: The challenge of the job, being high empathy, is that I cry at my desk a lot. More so at 6 Stones than at City Hall. Fortunately, our economy in Grapevine is in pretty good shape, so there’s not a lot of tragedy. But it was not uncommon to find me weeping over my laptop in my office at 6 Stones, because the interview itself is so highly emotional. You’re really connecting with someone, trying to live their experience and asking good questions to draw it out, so you can capture it for other people. You end up going down an emotional rabbit hole. And my personality already is that I’m a sponge. I’ll pick up whatever you’re throwing at me and give it back to you. I’m going to match wherever you are. If you’re in a great mood, I’m in a great mood. If you’re down, I’m down. So that’s already a challenge. And then packaging that in a way that’s healthy and building for the people around me is a challenge too. That’s something I find myself grappling with, especially recently: the way I do things naturally is not necessarily the best way. So it’s important for me to have a level of humility and acknowledge that just because I feel compassion for people doesn’t mean people who don’t feel it in the same way are bad. In some ways, compassion can be dangerous, because it can lead me to rationalize really unhealthy behavior. So it’s important to have moderating forces. I think that’s something to keep in mind when you’re storytelling. The other challenge is that there are very few singular stories that capture the holistic human experience and address it from enough perspectives to have the kind of impact you’d want. I can think of maybe one, and it took 66 books to unfold. So when you’re looking for one story to sum it all up, you’re going to run into a challenge. For me, the important thing is to have an arsenal, an archive of stories that address specific points. What is the story relevant to this scenario that can help this person where they are, or help explain this factor? And again, I want to make sure it’s truthful, that the data backs it up, and that it’s well contextualized. If we can get really communications nerdy for a second, there’s a hot debate about whether rhetoric creates a situation or is a response to it. Are you causing something to be by speaking about it in a way that makes people feel things about it? Or is it your duty to look at a situation and respond to it in a way that will mobilize people? I generally fall on the latter side. I generally think we’re responding to events as they are. So you want to build a series of narratives that help you address whatever the issue is, and from there, you can communicate to each individual person what they need to hear. And every now and again, there’s something large enough that it’s important to go out and hunt for the story that addresses it. One of the things we’re working on now at the city is that Crossroads area where all the highways come together. The generally accepted public narrative is that they rerouted the highways in that area, and that’s what killed the businesses. We’re starting to assemble data and perform analysis to ask whether that’s really what happened, or whether it’s more complicated than that. And again, the answer is always that it’s never just one thing.
Mike: Yeah, 100%.
Chris: One of the really neat stories, from my side as a soccer fan, about actually meeting the need in the area is the Liga you were very instrumental in bringing to fruition. I know that’s a labor of love for you. Please describe, for those who aren’t familiar with that program, what led to it and what you’ve seen as the fruit of it.
Steven: I am the self-appointed commissioner of an intramural soccer program called Liga HEB, another 6 Stones program that they said yes to in its early, formative phases. In 2010, the school district came to 6 Stones and said, “We have all these kids who are underperforming. They don’t care enough to show up to class. Their grades aren’t where they should be. We think they’re fully capable kids. They just don’t have a reason to care. A lot of them are ESL.” So they thought, “Maybe if we give them soccer,” which is not a UIL sport at the junior high level in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District or most districts around here, “and tell them they can play as long as they’re passing, it’ll help.” So 6 Stones launched a program that, for a long time, was basically writing a check to a junior high, and the people at the junior high figured out how to do it. Then I made the mistake of wearing a soccer jersey into the office one day, and suddenly I’m appointed.
Mike: You’re immediately commissioned.
Steven: To run this program. The first thing I did was call all of the coaches, volunteers and key administrators together and ask, “What is this program? What have I inherited? Describe to me a day in the intramural soccer program.” And one of the coaches said, “Well, we usually start practice when the kid shows up with the ball.” Singular. If you’re not familiar with soccer, the rule of thumb is one ball for every two players. At that point, we had probably 80 to 100 kids in the program, with one ball per campus. Maybe a couple, or a bag of half-deflated ones. So step one was getting the equipment in order. In that meeting, I got the sense that everyone was in their own bubble doing their own thing. And I was like, “Does anyone mind if I appoint myself commissioner and just start running the show? I basically need to call myself that so I can send fundraising emails.” And they said, “Sounds good. Please do that.” So I took it over and rebranded it. At the time it was “intramural soccer,” and I decided it needed a cooler name: Liga HEB. The team names were like “Hurst Red” and “Central Blue,” and I was like, “That is lame.” So we modeled all the team names after professional teams. The students voted on the names they wanted and submitted their own designs for their team crests, because we wanted them to have buy-in. The most important part of the program is that they’re connecting with someone who cares about them, who’s going to check in with them, a good mentor figure, and they have a reason to feel like they’re part of the school. Those two things together have done incredible things for these kids. And I take zero credit. It’s the volunteers and the coaches out there in the trenches with the kids every day, really investing in them. We’ve seen a student population that is primarily at-risk kids, some of whom barely speak English, but they speak soccer. They have a 97% attendance rate at school. Their grades are at or above the average of their peers. And their behavioral issues are cut in half when the season starts. These are kids who have no sense that they belong, and all they need is a group of people with a shared interest, that level of community we talked about. It’s incredible to watch. Last year, one kid was named MVP of the league. When he started, he was so shy that when we scheduled him a game in the stadium, he skipped the whole thing because he was scared to play in front of a crowd. They found him hiding in the locker room.
Mike: Wow.
Steven: Two years later, he’s leading a team in the championship game. This was a kid who was completely disconnected, and all he needed was for someone to give him a place to shine, invest in him, and teach him a truth we all believe: that he’s created in the image of a beautiful and perfect God, and he has inherent value. To watch the impact that relationship has on these kids is huge. I cry.
Mike: That’s amazing.
Chris: That is amazing. It ties together all the things you talked about early on, wanting to help and make an impact. You never know how something like that is going to impact him for years on end, and you get to be a part of it. Again, it’s just meeting a community need, taking a step out and raising your hand to say, “Make me commissioner. Let’s get some things behind it.” That’s a great story.
Mike: And we talked about how we’re all wired with different skills and abilities, right? The human body needs all its different parts working together. It’s another reason we can’t be isolated. We just thank you for your time. I personally think of your passion, which has always been there in so many different ways, and your willingness to take a step and see how the Lord is going to establish your steps along the way. A lot of people are afraid to take that first step. Sacking groceries and knocking yourself over with a cart, or, much more importantly, the radio and communications, knocking on doors, having lunch, walking into 6 Stones and saying, “Hey, I see a solution. Let me help you.” So many people never do that. And look at all these roles and the way the Lord’s been using you, because you took those steps. I’m really encouraged by that. I think it says a lot about you. And I’m encouraged that you’re out there taking steps in economic development, in areas I’m never going to be in. Maybe Chris will be someday. No, Chris isn’t going to be in there either. But it’s encouraging, because I think that’s all we can do. We take one step at a time, we see what the Lord continues to do, and He gets to write the story. He’s ultimately narrating it. So thank you for sharing. And with the commissioner thing, we should have just called you “the Commish.” Why didn’t we start with the Commish?
Steven: I picked a bad street name. That should have been it. Actually, the superintendent of Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD refers to me as the Commish.
Mike: Speaking of the Commish, let’s move the Commish to… Wow, that was louder in my ears than I thought it was going to be. I’m sorry, everyone. The lightning round. Here’s how it goes: we alternate questions back and forth, rapid fire. You cannot think, okay? You cannot think at all.
Steven: I don’t know if you know what you’re asking me to do.
Mike: We want emotional responses only.
Chris: Why don’t you just run through the questions?
Mike: You want me to run through all of them? Okay, I’m going to go fast. Here we go, Commish. Ready? If you could see any music artist in concert, who would you pick?
Steven: I’ve already seen him like a billion times, but Andrew McMahon.
Mike: Andrew McMahon. Okay. East Coast or West Coast?
Steven: My whole family’s on the East Coast. It’s got to be there.
Mike: Mountains or beach?
Steven: I’m a beach person, and my wife is a mountain person, so we split time when we vacation.
Mike: You’ve got to pick one, though.
Steven: I believe it’s my job to sacrifice for my wife.
Chris: Wow. Good answer.
Mike: Great answer, Commish. Okay. Greatest sports team ever assembled?
Steven: Greatest sports team ever assembled? It’s going to be a soccer team. Oh, man, there have been some pretty dominant ones.
Mike: Clock is ticking.
Steven: I think the US women’s team had a heck of a run. When they started, relative to the sport, they dominated everybody. They defined that sport for decades.
Mike: And we have an audience of women here on the podcast who will appreciate that answer. Thank you so much. Best pizza in DFW?
Steven: Oh, I have to pick a Grapevine business, because otherwise I’ll get in so much trouble.
Mike: They are listening.
Steven: There’s a wonderful pizza place on Main Street that opened last year, called Mister O1. It’s called that because the founder got an O-1 visa, for extraordinary ability, in pizza making.
Chris: Oh, my word.
Mike: How can you not go there? I’ve never been. Okay. Coffee or tea?
Steven: I used to be a tea person. I’m a coffee person now, because I went on a mission trip to Costa Rica.
Mike: That’s all you needed right there. Dallas Stars or Dallas Cowboys?
Steven: You know what, I’m a fan of the underdogs, the underrepresented sports teams. So, Stars, all over.
Mike: Thank you. Almost done. Dogs or cats?
Steven: I’m a dog person.
Mike: As you should be. Running or lifting?
Steven: Oh, I run. Lifting ends badly for me.
Mike: Favorite comedian?
Steven: That varies by emotion.
Mike: Every five minutes?
Steven: I really like Mike Birbiglia. He has an incredible narrative format where he’s just telling you a story, and you forget he’s even a comedian for 10 minutes, and then he’ll just punch you in the kidney with joy.
Mike: I thought you were going to say Mike Wazowski.
Chris: Wazowski is funny, though.
Mike: Last two. If you were a superhero, who would you be?
Steven: I would still be me. I’d just be a superhero.
Chris: Wow. Empathy Man.
Mike: Empathy Man. The Commish.
Steven: It’s funny, because when I got the chance to make up my own superpower, that’s what I picked: the ability to absorb and transfer emotions.
Chris: My superpower is mind reading, so I just knew.
Mike: Empathy Man. Last question. Drum roll, Chris. Give us the drum roll.
Chris: Then a bonus question.
Mike: Oh, wow. You’re going to keep going? If someone were to narrate your life story, speaking of narration, who would it be?
Steven: One narrator?
Mike: One. Can’t have a hodgepodge.
Steven: Isn’t it bad that my first instinct is Snoop Dogg? Have you seen him do the animal videos? They’re incredible.
Mike: It is not at all bad that it’s your first instinct. I think that is the instinct. We go with Snoop Dogg. The Commish, Stevie J, narrated by Snoop Dogg. That’s it. You are relieved, except Chris said a bonus question.
Chris: Favorite Premier League team?
Steven: Major League Soccer was founded when I was six, so I grew up on MLS. I don’t have a Premier League team I follow.
Chris: Favorite MLS team?
Steven: Dallas, obviously.
Mike: Dallas till he’s dead. Well, Steven Jones, thank you. You’re off the hot seat. Thank you for joining us today and for your time. Any last words as we go out, Commish?
Chris: Economic development.
Steven: Wow, he got so much smarter.
Mike: I think if we just say that on the way out: economic development really is key for the execution of today’s strategies in America.
Steven: I can feel the economy developing as we speak. Thank you for your service, gentlemen.
Outro: Thanks so much for joining us. Please consider rating and reviewing our podcast and hitting subscribe on whichever platform you prefer. Remember to keep moving forward, because we’re not quite there.
