To live a life of options and not obligations On this platform, we are soaked to bring you high performers who are not just chasing and attaining success, but redefining it through, providing above and beyond service. And this really quick knowledge nugget really kind of rolls into who my guest is, which I’ll introduce here in a second.

But servant leadership, it isn’t soft, it’s kind of savage in a way. Real servant leadership isn’t about being liked, it’s about being locked in. It’s [00:01:00] showing up with purpose, putting your people first and demanding excellence ’cause you care that much. Like good friends of mine, like Ed Mylet says Max out.

Nick Saban legendary coach says, build dynasties. Brian Kane install systems. Trevor Moad stays neutral in the chaos. Jesus washed his people’s feet before he even wore a crown in myself. I do what I love in the service of people that love what I do. The common thread. We serve their people, team clients by raising standards, not lowering the bar.

Remember what I have said about goals? Goals are nothing more than a byproduct of your standards. So your standards are good, you’ll reach your goals. So serve hard, love, strong, demand better, and that’s how legacies are built. And talk about legacies. My buddy here, Charles Bender the third, CB three is the founding CEO and board member, A place of hope when a Florida’s most impactful.

Faith based nonprofit serving, abused and neglected children for over 25 years. Charles is. A relentless force for good building a movement that’s more than just a shelter. It’s a lifeline from [00:02:00] a single campus to a powerful network of healing Places of place of hope now spans Palm Beach Gardens, Boca Raton Hope Sound, Stewart and West Palm Beach, offering family-style, foster care, outreach, prevention, housing, and restoration services.

Under Charles Leadership, this organization has become Florida’s gold standard for trauma-informed care and blueprint for how communities can step up for the most vulnerable. What does it really take to build a legacy of impact that changes lives for generations? You’re about to find out. So CB three Charles, thanks for coming on Brother Coach.

Thanks for having me. And also thank you to Kirsten Miller. Yes, a good friend and also a client of mine. On the real estate side of my world, she’s, I’m blessed to have her in studio, but let’s kinda get to the roots of stuff. I mean, around here, you’re really well known with stuff, but we wanna put even more shine on you.

So those are the roots, kind of a place of hope.

Charles Bender III: Thank you. That’s what helps place hope, continue to grow. So appreciate being here today, and appreciate you, appreciate your energy too, buddy. I love it. How Bring it here. I love it. I need it. Um, you know, we were started way back in [00:03:00] 94 as a result of a trip that Pastor Tom and Donna Mullins took to Romania.

And basically they saw war torn Romania from Christ Fellowship. Right. From Christ Fellowship. Got it. Got

L. Scott Ferguson: it.

Charles Bender III: And saw really horrific things and traumatic events in kids’ lives over there. Came back to the States and of course this is a summary, came back to the States and really felt. Called by God to do something here in this arena because it was very similar in a lot of ways, and kids were falling through the cracks and really bad stories, and kids that should have been protected by the state weren’t.

And then all of a sudden we were, you know, they got the, the roadmap as to what to do and launched this mission. And, uh, some of us stepped up, got involved, and um, and then we formed the nonprofit. And, uh, we’ve always operated separately from the church, but you know, as a. As a partner in a lot of ways.

Sure. And, uh, this community has just come around us in a big way and we’ve just done nothing but grow for the last 25 years. Yeah. It’s

L. Scott Ferguson: amazing. A quarter century, you guys, where you guys have taken it from too, and great teammates with the Mullins is as well. Oh yeah. They’re the best. They’re the best.

Like I love hearing him and his son, you know, on Sundays. Yep. And, and [00:04:00] hearing it. Over that past 25 years, you know, it’s expanded to multiple campuses and programs from foster care cottages to trafficking intervention, and maternity homes. What’s the thread that ties all of these expansions together?

Charles Bender III: I mean, all good things come from God, the father of heavenly lights above right?

Love that Everything comes from his hand. And I think when you do things. When you’re called to do something and you try your best to do it right and you surround yourself as you know, with great people, people are attracted to gold standard stuff. So, you know, I remember early on when we launched and there was, you know, there were a lot of hurdles.

There were folks honestly who didn’t wanna see us succeed. More institutional type folks, uh, running the systems that were out there. And I know, you know, I watched it change over the years as we started to. Have these kids make it and really do well and then these young people make it and go to college and all these other things.

Then all of a sudden it was like, wow, it’s okay to like these faith-based folks, right? It’s okay for them to be doing the state’s work. And so it just changed because of the excellence that we try to put ourselves [00:05:00] toward.

L. Scott Ferguson: I love that. ’cause you held the standards so high. And again, I talk a lot about reaching goals is Yeah, it’s a byproduct of your standards.

So you put that out there and people started really to kind of buy in because the, IT. I’m Christian brother as well. Mm-hmm. So like sometimes if it’s kind of, you know, quote unquote shoved down their throat. Right. That part of it. So, you know, you described running a place of hope like a business.

Absolutely. Okay. Right. But again, that balance of mission driven faith values with operational vigor required to scale a nonprofit like. Uh, I heard a little bit of pushback before, but like, tell, kind of tell us the story, maybe a story of what you overcame with that.

Charles Bender III: Yeah. I mean, I’m, I’m a social entrepreneur, so I, I grew up with my, both my parents own small businesses.

I watched them work, work, work hard, and I just took that on in my life and I said, whatever I’m gonna do, I’m gonna work like they work. And so. Uh, and then when you get this calling in your life, which of course I didn’t know was gonna happen, you know, we just, I applied it there and then I found great people, you know, my leadership team’s been around me over 20 years.

My, my top ladies on the team and they’re just amazing. And so, [00:06:00] you know, you look at what you know, they all do. And you look at my own family and my wife, you know, she, she is along for this ride in a big way too. Yeah. And my kids, and everybody’s grown up around it. And so, you know, it, it’s, you, you, I just a big believer if you, if you find the right people and you stick.

To it. And you keep business principles. Yeah, there’s a balance because at the end of the day, we’re doing ministry, we’re doing social work, we’re taking care of the least of these. You have to do all that. But if you don’t do that from a business perspective as well, then you’re gonna go outta business.

And we’ve taken over two failed charities since we’ve started. Wow. We now run one in Boca and one in Stewart that went out of business. Did you kind of absorbed

L. Scott Ferguson: them? We, in the police pope,

Charles Bender III: we did. We, uh, we, we actually, um, we went through a, a system where they, they literally had to close their doors and then.

You know, dedicate their assets to us. Wow. And then we reopened.

L. Scott Ferguson: That’s, and that’s amazing that, and it just keeps the growth going. ’cause people believe in the mission. Yeah. The more that you, especially now 25 years, that’s Well, and that’s how it

Charles Bender III: happened actually in these different communities, which, you know, sometimes act as silos, philanthropically.

Right. You know, we had people down there that said, you know what, if you’re, if this is happening to this [00:07:00] organization, you should talk to place of hope up in Stewart. Same thing happened. You should talk to place of Hope. So. Thankfully doing things with excellence and having such a great team. Then people referred and said, let them take it over, and that’s what happened.

That’s amazing.

L. Scott Ferguson: So can you tell us, uh, maybe a little bit of a story without names? Yeah, of course. You know, that kind of still maybe haunts or even inspires you. I believe I read like, like a young man who beat every statistic and came back to serve. There was one. Oh, we’ve got really, you have multiple stories?

Yeah. What keeps you committed day in and day out then?

Charles Bender III: Um, I, you know, I really, it’s both, it’s the success of, you know, the stories of like the young people that have come in. We know their backgrounds ’cause we get the case files. We know what they’ve been through. And by the way, a lot of that’s getting worse.

The things that people do to children. It’s just, and I know it’s happened since the beginning of time, but it’s, it seems like it’s just getting worse in a lot of ways. But then to see them come into what we’ve built, see God start to move in their lives. And see the changes that take place. And so when people say kids are resilient, they really are.

They really can be, [00:08:00] right? They just have to be surrounded by the right things. They have to find hope. And that just doesn’t happen by itself. And so, you know, I could tell you a million stories about that, but I can tell you even recent ones we’re getting ready to do something really cool with one of our young ladies who was with us for a long time.

Her, her background was. Terrible. I mean, there was trafficking involved and so forth. And uh, you know, and she’s moved in with us and she’s just doing great now. And you know, we’re we, what we like to do is we like to reward them as they move forward. Love that. And they attain their goals. And so this community has come around with scholarship funds, with everything that’s needed as a hand up, not a handout.

Right. But to actually make it the toolbox for success.

L. Scott Ferguson: That, that’s amazing. So you started kind of. From the ground level and then you kind of branched up with, how did you build your team out to make sure you, you started putting the right people in place and was it a lot of. Maybe say trial and error, like going kind of through people or is like you’ve said a lot, your women have been here 20, 20 plus years.

Yeah, several of ’em have. [00:09:00] Yeah. But like what was, what was the kind of biggest barrier other than, you know, what you talked about, the state

Charles Bender III: kind of stuff. Yeah, no, I, I think, you know, it’s like anything else as you’re scaling you, you come into different challenges now that we’ve done this a few times where we’ve had these sort of capital expansions into new areas.

What’s actually one of the things that keeps us successful is that we’re not going out and replicating all the fixed costs. There’s not a, a me in Boca and a and an ops director in Boca. There’s not one in Stewart. And, you know, so we’re not repeating, we’re running it all from our headquarters. Love that.

And so that allows this to actually be more efficient and more effective. Uh, and then what we’ve learned over time is that you, you obviously have to have more people on the ground level. Absolutely. You know, and so, um, you know, we’ve cha we’ve been challenged with a few things here, core infrastructure wise, but I think we’re getting there now where we’re.

Finally able to, and, and, and I’m pretty conservative too, so, you know, I don’t like spending where I don’t need to. Absolutely. Obviously. Right, right. And so, and ’cause you don’t, you don’t know what’s around the corner and just expanding as you need to. Uh, and again, we’ve, we’ve had some stumbling blocks, but now I think we’re at a place where [00:10:00] we’re ready for the next jump, whatever that might look like.

Love it. So what do you think it looks like? I keep saying like, people are like, when are you gonna get another campus? When are you gonna move into Dade County or Orlando? And I’m like, we don’t have a plan to do that at this point. Okay. We have five campuses, we have some statewide programs. We got a pretty big budget we gotta raise every year.

Um, and so what we’re really focused on is expanding ourselves programmatically and, and being involved in some really good partnerships around the states. You know, specifically looking at the anti-human trafficking education, right. Uh, efforts and so forth. Um. Residentially, we are expanding on. Three of our existing campuses, we have more available land than probably any other charity in town really.

And so we have a lot of about 20 construction projects right now regionally. So we’re a lot of expansion addressing the housing need, but we’re not planning on going outside of our footprint right now. But every time I’ve said that God’s plot something else on us and I’ve been like, oh, I gotta take that back.

So never say never. Is that what, what do they

L. Scott Ferguson: say? Like, how do you make God laugh to your plans? Yeah, [00:11:00] exactly. Exactly

Charles Bender III: right. We’ve seen that happen

L. Scott Ferguson: every day. Seems like. So your Shade Tree Family Outreach Program offers emergency support support to foster families, right? Mm-hmm. So what have you learned about community gaps through that initiative?

Like. Is it really kind of brought the community together with this program or

Charles Bender III: Yeah, it’s, it’s awesome. And, and that’s a piece of what we do. In fact, this week we loaded a 53 foot tractor trailer and sent it full of about 87,000 items to the Texas flood victims from I saw that.

Brian Mudd: Yeah.

Charles Bender III: That was amazing. And so that’s a whole nother part of what we do.

I don’t like anything to go to waste. So when people give to place of hope, it could be clothing, it could be whatever. It’s, and we, you know, we go through it for our own kids, our own young people, our families, and then we have partnerships after that. And honestly, even on down the line, if it, if it doesn’t need to be in the trash and someone can still benefit from it.

We load them up in containers and send them to places in Haiti and Jamaica as well. So the, you know, shade tree’s a pretty big deal. But what what we have found though, is helping these relative and non-relative caregivers. So [00:12:00] non-licensed foster families that take their family members in, which is a huge number.

Yeah. And licensed foster families. If we can help these people with simple things like food and diapers and car seats and strollers and the things they need to take a young person in. It makes it possible. So what we’re finding is a generous community of companies and churches and temples and people who step up that actually want to do a drive for us.

Sure. We’re building warehouses right now, all four donated goods that go right back out the door. So we’re in a generous community and I love it.

L. Scott Ferguson: I love it. And quite, if you hear a little bit about what my good friend Charles is talking about, he’s, he’s grown, he is open to growth, but he’s strategically growing and he is like, I like to say, even with my clients, so inch by inch, it’s a inch right by the yard.

It’s hard. You praise on it, but the biggest thing is they take action. Yeah.

Charles Bender III: Right. Action is really the most important part. I have the best board of directors and even people on our councils that are always, it’s always a yes if it makes sense. I love it. Right.

L. Scott Ferguson: And squad, we are going to take a little bit of a break right now and send you over to my good [00:13:00] friend and sponsors Steve Austin with, uh, the Dynamic Mortgage Team.

He is gonna tell us a little bit about the market and we come back, we’re gonna kind of talk a little. Bit with Charles about kind of the public policy in Florida and also get to know Charles on a little bit more of a personal level. So stay tuned and we’ll be right back.

Steve Austin: Thanks Scott. Steve Austin here with the Revolution Mortgage Dynamic team with your mortgage market recap for the week of July 28th, and welcome to August.

As expected, the Fed held steady and once again, didn’t make a cut to the Fed rate. Despite the pressure from Trump and in his press conference, fed Chair Powell didn’t sound like they were thinking about making cuts anytime soon in September, we did however, see unemployment move back up to the 4.2%, which was expected in a huge decline in payroll numbers, which was the big one that no one was really expecting and is one of the indicators that we need to see making these moves.

To help continue, uh, helping our mortgage rates. This could mean the data is finally catching up to help give the relief in the rates that we’ve all been looking for. Still a lot to unfold with the tariffs officially going [00:14:00] into effect this month, so we’ll be paying attention. That’s it for this week.

Have a great weekend, everyone. This is Steve Austin, your branch production sales manager, NMLS 7 6 2 3 2 8 with the Revolution Mortgage Dynamic Team NMLS one six. 8, 6 0 4 6. An equal housing lender.

Brian Mudd: Maybe you are looking to finance your dream home, perhaps a vacation getaway or an investment property.

Steve Austin’s dynamic team and Revolution Mortgage Tequesta is here to help his expert loan advisors combine local knowledge with cutting edge technology to make your financing process efficient and. Seamless. So whether it’s your first home or your next investment trust. Revolution Mortgage to guide you every step of the way.

Visit them today and experience the perfect blend of technology and personal touch. Call today at (561) 200-1330. That’s 5 6 1 213 30. [00:15:00] The Revolution Mortgage Dynamic Team, your local edge. Experts in residential financing. Steve Austin, branch production sales manager, NMLS 7 6 2 3 2 8. Revolution mortgage, NMLS 1 6 8 6 0 4 6 is an equal housing lender.

L. Scott Ferguson: Hey. Hey Steve. Thank you so much. The market I see is still a little slow out there, but it’s getting a little bit better. But again, thank you so much for the update, Steve. So. Charles. So when you look at kind of the current policy in Florida around foster care and human trafficking, like what are the biggest both sides, successes and failures that you’re seeing in the government response?

Charles Bender III: I mean, I would tell you, you know, as you know, we live in the greatest state in the nation. Florida leads the way in so many ways, and so we do have a lot of. Conservative leadership that actually cares. And I, I’ve just witnessed that over the years now. Is it perfect? No. Is, I mean, policy regarding child welfare is just, it’s messy.

You know, it comes outta the federal government drips down to the states and then they tweak it from there. But I’d say, you know, [00:16:00] we have leadership in this, from the governor to the legislators that, that actually really do try to look at the best interests of children. It’s always gonna be an underfunded system.

It is what it. And that’s why I personally believe in the model they move to an under Jeb Bush when they privatize the system. So the idea is like, you know, the government doesn’t build roads, they, they contract out to the best road builders in town. Right? Right. Well they did that with child welfare years ago.

And what it said to those of us on the nonprofit side is, Hey, we’re not gonna be the only people with skin in the game. You gotta have a good program and you need to raise a dollar for the dollar we give you. So I actually like that because it puts the private sector. The leadership of let’s really run a good system here.

Right. And so that’s a big part of why I think we have a lot of successes. I really don’t know if it’s ever gonna get systemically better for kids in this system. And I think there’s an idea out there that kids should never be in the system. Right? Absolutely. And that’s great if you have a, an intact family that’s working, but when it comes in, yeah, I think they could still make a lot of improvements.

Um, but it’s hard. It’s, it’s really hard to get great people to step up. [00:17:00] To take kids into their own home. Right. There’s, there’s always a need, you know, I love it. And when you’re dealing with that trafficking issues, I mean, we’re in a transient state. We’re in a state where a lot of this stuff goes on third in the nation with the calls and so forth.

And so, you know, we’re always, we’ve seen trafficking victims since we started Place of Hope. Right. But now we get them with actual codifications in their file. They know that these, they’ve been run by gangs here and there, and it’s, you know, it’s more and more of that all the time. It’s a, it’s a tough deal.

L. Scott Ferguson: Yeah. And the people that you’re kind of putting in place have gotta. Have a, I guess, kind of a really open mind mentality when it comes to working with Oh yeah. The, the women that, that, that, you know, unfortunately are going through what they’re going through, the foster children, uh, also the human trafficking Yeah.

As well. And, and squad. What I love about Charles, and I’m really kind of getting to know now, is he, he’s planting trees. He’s never gonna sit in the shade of, I mean, this is like, he, it’s gonna go and grow and he is gonna make sure it’s in the right hands. And so, like talking about that kind of the endowment.

Charles, you’re playing a place of hope’s, long-term legacy. Mm-hmm. Right? We are. So how do [00:18:00] you ensure that impact to the future generations, like this generational legacy, not just a, okay, it’s hot right now, but like generational. What are you doing to make sure that it stays intact? Even after we go meet our maker.

Charles Bender III: Yeah, I mean, we’re, we’re in, you know, we’ve been in a process of when we, when we formed this campaign and who’s around for it and, you know, build it, you know, helping us with it. Who’s helping us build the endowment, uh, who’s responsible for its investments and how, and the investment policy statements and how well it does.

For that part of the legacy. You know, we’re really trying to get place hope to this point where one day when we all decide it is time for retirement, we hand off a very healthy organization that, I don’t wanna say it’d be easy to run, but from a lot of perspectives it’s well-oiled. Uh, and some of that’s financial and some of that’s.

Internal policy. You know, we’re not an organization that runs around just trying to find board members to find board members. Right. Like, we’re very selective in terms of why are you really wanting to be on this board of directors and, ’cause we need you to look at it a certain way because we want this thing to live on [00:19:00] forever.

And by the way, it works. So we can’t be told it doesn’t. Right. You know, and so we we’re always very, um, careful about how we expand our board, replace board members when they leave and so forth. But I will tell you, it’s all of them. Making this legacy and everybody wants to see it persist, you know, into the, in the long game.

So love it. And

L. Scott Ferguson: so who do you have as an advisor that you respect, that you go to? Because everyone’s coming to you, right? So who is that person in your life other than probably your wife? Yeah. You know, you know advisor, but like

Charles Bender III: who do you have? I actually, that’s one of the things I love about my board of directors.

I’ve got folks on there that I can genuinely confide in and go to. And you know, one’s my board chairman, who’s been my board chairman for 20 years, Mickey and Sarah. Wow. Very successful business guy. Very successful husband and father. And so I can take anything to Mickey, you know, and, and the next is Tom Lane, another board member.

Exact same thing. Very successful in all those same exact ways. I was on the phone with him just yesterday, so it’s, you know, and Mickey and I [00:20:00] talk pretty much every day, so it’s nice when you can bounce ideas and things and, and you got guys like that who, uh, and you know, Leanne Rinker is another one, a very well known name in town, very successful family.

Leanne is great for me to call and, and bounce things off of. Um, and, and you know, it’s not always a yes. That’s not the point. It’s it, but they can give insight from years of love, that serious, great experience in business and other, so,

L. Scott Ferguson: right. It’s nice to have those giants. We can. Down the shoulders of Right, absolutely.

And kind of see ahead. They, a lot of ’em have been where the path I’m blessed from like Sam Za, rocket Gear, Shapiro, my, my guys as well, that I look back and, and see that. So, you know, leadership in Within Place of Hope seems to be centered on building trust and team effectiveness. So how do you cultivate that culture when so many of your organizations.

Don’t intersect, you know what I’m saying? It’s like you have, you know, the child, you know, uh, foster care, but then human trafficking. So there’s that. So how do you like keep the leadership in place to keep everyone on board moving that direction?

Charles Bender III: Yeah, it’s tough. I used to actually launch programs and then go back and tell my team about it.

[00:21:00] Otherwise, after the fact, ask forgiveness later, they asked me to stop doing that, so I stopped doing it. Um, but no, they just, I, I think everybody’s. All in, they, I mean, they trust the decision making. They know that I am bouncing things off of board members. They know that we do pray, we know, we’ve been approached by groups to say, would you do this?

Would you get into this for us? Or, you know, for the state or whatever. And I, we always go back and say, you know, we’ll pray about it. We will consult and we’ll get back to you. So it’s never off the cuff, it’s never just a knee jerk reaction, you know, we’ll do this, that, or the other. Love that. Um, you know, so that, that is definitely a big, big part of it for us.

Right. Um, and I think that our team just knows, look, it, it is more difficult because we’re also living in a time right now at. It’s hard to find high quality people who really want to go the extra mile, right? And understand the vision. You know, I joke around all the time that people coming in that are new, they may say, well, why does Charles take time to care about their fingerprints on the front door of the of the office?

Well, let me tell you why. It’s a much deeper conversation about people’s investments and us being responsible for what they gave [00:22:00] and us showing gratitude for their gift. And I don’t care if it was 10 years ago that they put that door on this building that shows that we are caring for what people have invested in.

So keeping that on the forefront and those kinds of things. Uh, but I will tell you real quick, people come for tours, whatever, they meet me and then they. Somebody else high up in the organization and then they meet people all the way down the line, they will literally come back to me and say, every single person I met on the team is just as jazzed up and excited.

And that’s amazing, professional. And I love to hear that. Right. ’cause it is a great team. Yeah. And

L. Scott Ferguson: that’s, that’s one thing with, with my employees that I’m blessed to have working for me. Like I have eight of ’em and like they went out and said things about being on the team that, you know. That I never thought that they would say.

Yeah. Right. You’re just kind of feeling, feeling really blessed about that. ’cause you’re thinking, ’cause they hear, they see Fergie in times where it’s like, yeah, they don’t really wanna be around it too much. But I will

Charles Bender III: tell you it is, it’s still tough because when, as you know, when you hold a standard, yeah.

Not everybody’s always in a line for that. Right. Because sometimes it’s stings, sometimes they don’t like what, you [00:23:00] know, the interpretation of that standard. Right. And so holding the standard, that’s leadership period. It’s huge. That’s part of leadership and we’re gonna hold that standard because that’s what God’s called us to do.

Right.

L. Scott Ferguson: Absolutely. So looking forward, like how does Place of Hope plan to innovate? Kind of its prevention programming, especially like around the kind of child welfare kind of post COVID kind of thing. Yeah. But you know, I’m sure that, you know, there’s some politics, that word that’s kind of going out there.

And also the, you know, as human trafficking threats evolved.

Charles Bender III: Yeah. We we’re doing it. We do it just a few years ago, we completely shifted gears, got out of a certain level of foster care in the community, right. We licensed hundreds of beds. We literally got out. The reason we got out is we saw the need in another area that we wanted to use limited resources, and so we’ve ramped up that Shade Tree program that you mentioned, and then overnight we’re serving thousands a year.

Thousands and a lot of ’em are just local families. And we just knew we had the ability to go to our donor base and say, would you also do this? Right? Would you also do a drive? Would you do a month worth of diapers and formula and this, that and the other? And they’re all stepping up to do it. And so we’re having a [00:24:00] huge impact’s.

You have to stay nimble. I don’t care what business it is. Right. You know, social work is still a business, charity’s a business. And so you have to stay nimble. And I love the fact that we do, we’ve, we’ve shut down programs to start programs. We’ve shut down programs that they just weren’t having the impact that they used to have.

Sure. You know, a lot of charities don’t do that. They sit on their hands, they sit on it. And, and, and, and that’s why it, it becomes a failure over time. They’ll accept

L. Scott Ferguson: subsidies, accept all that stuff exactly. Money, but would not really take action on it. Right?

Charles Bender III: I’m being told right now by several people that there are a lot of charities right now hurting because they were so heavily dependent on government money and government money.

Money’s getting cut all over local, federal, state, and you can, you have to have a balanced approach and everything, right?

L. Scott Ferguson: So how does Charles one is Dash. Remember that little line in between your incarnation date and your expiration date, your life date, and death date. Hopefully it’s way down the line.

But how does Charles, I hope so. Wanna mustache

Charles Bender III: remember? Uh, well done. Good and faithful serve and I love it. Guess Yeah.

L. Scott Ferguson: Yeah. Maybe slide across home blade bumped and bruise. But normally you, you serve the right way. Not quite

Charles Bender III: looking the way

L. Scott Ferguson: I used to and all. I love. Another thing I love is that we’re in Palm Beach, [00:25:00] right?

Yeah. And. You are doing things for the intention, not the attention. And around here is so much about the attention, right? Yeah. But you’re bringing it on through people like your PR rep over here, Kirsten, right? And, and, and things like this. But I love, I have to give you props, man, like you’re doing things for the intention.

And thank you for doing that. ’cause I have a huge vendetta against especially human trafficking and being a part of the foster. Life myself personally. Thank you for what you’re doing, brother.

Charles Bender III: Well, it certainly is not just me, it’s a team of people that operate the exact same way and, and they’re part of it as well.

Yes. So, you know, thank you. And you’re part of it. ’cause you’re helping get the word out. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s not for the attention, but I, but we do know that organizationally attention matters. You do have to in the forefront because you know, what’s the next new shiny object in town. Right. Right. And then, and you know, our, our donor base stays with us, thank goodness.

L. Scott Ferguson: Yes. Yeah. But you’re not, it’s just like. You’re not leaning out there leaning against Lambos and like doing stuff like that. You know, you’re actually showing proof of like if you go to their Instagram squad, which will be [00:26:00] in the show notes. You’ll see stories of people that are legit, we’ll call ’em graduates of your program in a sense, right?

Yep. So yeah. Last couple minutes. Here is all about you. The stage is yours. Can you tell us how to find you and any events that you might have it coming up?

Charles Bender III: Oh yeah. We have our light in the shadows event coming up. It’s at Mar-a-Lago. It is phenomenal. It’s year three. Jill Gallagher and, uh, Jordan Brown are our co-chairs.

They are just doing a great job and we’re gonna sell out. I’m, and, and, and it’s, it’s one of the, it’s the only event that we do fundraising wise that is specifically for our efforts in anti-human trafficking. That might be what we’re doing residentially. It might be what we’re doing statewide on the prevention side, but it just really helps us.

Bring a focus. You know, there’s so many people that wanna do something as you know about the issue, right? Well, some people, you know, they’re not gonna all do what Tim Tebow’s doing and your friends that they go off and find these kids. But, you know, they can be a part of place of hope where we’re taking care of them in house love, uh, and they can also learn how to, you know, what to be looking for, you know, talking to their, their sisters kids about what they’re [00:27:00] looking at online and, and knowing these things.

And so it, it funds that. It’s a big part of that. And then we’ve got this Artisan wine festival that’s going on at the Boca Rat Raton. Yeah. At the, at the resort down there, which they, it’s their event, but they chose us, thankfully. I think it’s in January, um, for this event. And it’s gonna be their national attention and we are gonna benefit from that financially and, and in every other way.

That’s beautiful. Uh, so we, we got things that go year round, uh, but those are a couple that are coming up real soon. That’s, that’s

L. Scott Ferguson: fantastic. One. As we wrap up, thank you for coming on. Thank you. This is amazing. I’m blessed and thank you to Kirsten for, for introducing me to you as well. And the number is 5 6 1 7 7 5 7 1 9 5.Right. And again, squad. That’s 5 6 1 7 7 5, 7 1 9 5 5 6 1, 7, 7, 5, 7, 1 9 5. Or go to place of hope.com again, place of hope.com. Thank you. A huge shout out to my producer Brian Mud, WJ o to my friend Kirsten Miller. Thank you so much for coming on Charles. Everybody level [00:28:00] up.