IAM1206- Founder Helps People Find Worth in Recovery

Stephen Deason is the Founder and CEO of the OPA RASA Group, LCC, a Social Enterprise helping people find worth in Recovery, and Executive Chairman of the OPA RASA Foundation.

Stephen was previously CEO of GRYTT, a Socially Conscious Marketing Technology firm, and held other C-level positions in previous technology companies. Stephen is an active volunteer who sits on four non-profit boards and the advisory board of two start-up technology and telecommunications firms.

Stephen holds both an MBA and MSc in Accounting from Emory University, a BSc in Mathematics from UAB, and an ABD-PhD in Business from Emory University’s Laney Graduate School. Stephen is presently pursuing additional graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University.

• CEO Hack: Focusing on the execution
• CEO Nugget: Find a mentor earlier and listen
• CEO Defined: Being of service to the people around you and the community you're in

Website: https://www.oparasa.com/

Previous IAMCEO episode: https://iamceo.co/2020/05/23/founder-helps-nursing-homes-get-proper-care/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephendeason/

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Transcription

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00:23 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from all CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gretch values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gretch from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a special guest back on the show. I have Steven Deason of Oprahsa Group, LLC. Steven, it's great to have you back on the show.

01:00 – Stephen Deason

It's great to be back on, Gresham.

01:02 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Steven so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Steven is the founder and CEO of the Operasa Group, LLC, a social enterprise helping people find worth and recovery, and executive chairman of the Operasa Foundation. Steven was previously CEO of Grit, a socially conscious marketing technology firm, and held other seed-level positions in previous technology companies. Stephen is an active volunteer who sits on four nonprofit boards and the advisory board of two startups for two startup technology and telecommunication firms.

Stephen holds both an MBA and MSc in accounting from Emory University, a BSc in mathematics from UAB, and An AbD PhD in business from Emory University Lanley Graduate School. Stephen is presently pursuing additional graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, and he was one of the guests on our podcast, specifically podcast number 649. I just got an awesome little tour of all the awesome things that he's doing to grow and expand his team. So, Stephen, super excited to have you back on. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:10 – Stephen Deason

I am delighted to be back here. Hi, everybody.

02:13 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more on how you got started and how you progressed since the last time we spoke.

02:22 – Stephen Deason

So we got started again. We decided to build a holding company and get into staffing because we decided that, you know, we needed, we have an opioid epidemic in the United States. My understanding currently is that those numbers are up about 30% over what they were the last time you and I spoke, which means we are in desperate straits. Last time we spoke, I believe we said we'd lost about as many young people before September of that year as we had lost in the entire Vietnam War. Now, of course, we're even in worse straits, what with COVID and everything being locked down.

We're certainly seeing that in the recovery community. So my business partner, Lisa Wilson, and I sat down with some really intelligent, smart people and said, what can we do to kind of help solve this social problem? The answer, it turns out, is, and this may be a bad word these days, but the answer is capitalism. Capitalism, the ownership of the factors of production and the proportional outputs thereof is a tremendous motivator. It's the greatest wealth creator in history. So what we really offer is young people an opportunity to get back on their feet, learn how the business world operates, and build really compelling lives for themselves.

03:44 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Yeah, I absolutely appreciate you for the work that you do. Even the last time we spoke, the world has completely changed. I imagine that a lot of people have looked towards opioids and different ways to kind of, you know, try to, I guess, alleviate the pain, frustration, hurt, probably so many different words that people are going through. So I appreciate, like, in true entrepreneurial form, you recognize that. I imagine that you've probably been even, you know, busier, you know, with, you know, making the world a better place with you and your team so that you can help people to kind of, you know, see that there's another and alternative way.

04:18 – Stephen Deason

Well,, we see very, you know, aggression. I think it's really important that we as a society start to recognize that, you know, people get motivated by different things. Right? One of the, one of the challenges that we set out to address was if you're somebody who has struggled with, you know, whether it's addiction or poverty or anything, that sort of can scar someone, that you have grit, you have determination, you have the ability to stand up after the world's knocked you off your feet. We thought, why couldn't we leverage that and allow ourselves to build a business that's a for-profit entity that really brings value not only to the people who work in it but also to the people out there in the world who can benefit from the things that that business brings to society. It's turn, it turns out we've, we've been right. So far.

05:10 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of, you know, studies and, you know, information that's been, you know, said about, like, kind of one of the biggest determinations of somebody becoming successful is that grit. So I love that that sounds like it's been a foundational principle and everything you've been able to kind of build and grow and kind of further emphasize with the people that you're serving as well.

05:28 – Stephen Deason

Absolutely.

05:29 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I know you touched a little bit on how everything works. Could you take us through a little bit more about that? What you feel is, like, your secret sauce, and what you feel kind of makes you unique.

05:40 – Stephen Deason

Yeah. So one of the things that I think makes us very unique is that we don't seek to actually place the people that we serve as our social mission. I think a lot of business owners do this, but don't speak about it very openly. I know a lot of business owners that help with homeless populations, help with people who are developmentally disabled or developmentally challenged or differently enabled. There are groups out there, you know, many, many business owners in the world spend a lot of their time in resources trying to help some group of people who are near and dear to their heart. And, of course, the recovery community is near and dear to mine. I spend a lot of time in that community, and so that's the community we. We seek to help. Now, what we do is we provide them with stable employment and a recovery-informed business. It's not a recovery business. We're not a treatment center.

But what we do look to do is provide those people with a place where we see behaviors that are challenging to those individuals in a negative way in the business world. We look to address those by helping them find outside sources that can help them with therapy, and that can work with them through the challenges that people sometimes bump into with financial resources. Can we train people on how to manage their cash flow better? Can we help them find transportation? All of the things that people trying to reenter the workforce and reenter the world from difficult situations often run into challenges that sometimes seem overwhelming to them. Our gamble was that if we did that, we would find a group of people who would be loyal, who would buy into what we were doing, who would be very interested in serving our clients. Much like the Warby Parker model, I don't know if you're familiar with Warby Parker, but they give away glasses to children in third-world countries for every pair that is bought.

I don't know what the proportions are but the important thing was that I was listening to Warby Parker and some of their podcasts and their stories. One of the guys said, you know, we thought when we were doing this that people would buy our glasses because of our social mission. What we found out was that most of the people who buy our glasses don't care at all about our social mission. But those who do care a lot about our social mission are our internal employees. They care a great deal about it. It means a lot to them to be able to come to work and to also be able to give back simultaneously. So we thought we could do the same thing, but we might do it in a slightly different market. It turns out, at least so far, we seem to have been correct. Our office environment is very authentic. We're very transparent. We have a lot of trust in each other that really seems to reflect well on how we behave.

One of the best compliments I've ever received was from someone who was actually very upset with us. She said, she came to our office, and she said, I came here to raise some hell too. We ended up in a fairly lengthy conversation. At the end of our conversation, she expressed her desire to continue working with your company, praising the consistently friendly and helpful nature of everyone she interacts with. You can hear in their voice that they're happy doing what they're doing, and they never get mad at me. I said, well, we're really glad to have you. Right. So I do think that that's starting to permeate our DNA and our culture in a way of, we want to be here, we want to be of service, we want to help people, and we want to help get through some difficult spots, and we're going to do that together.

09:13 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I appreciate you so much for sharing that and then even talking about that same kind of parallel, I guess, model that you saw and wanted to implement and take it a step further because I think so many times we skip over who we serve. We talk so much about being able to serve our clients and give them our products or services or whatever it might be. We sometimes forget about the people who serve the clients, and who work with the clients as well, too. I love that you've been able to kind of build a strong foundation. It sounds like a foundation where people are really tied into purpose, their why, and what it is that they're doing. So it gets them, you know, really excited and serving on an even better level because it starts to permeate, like you said, through the DNA and the culture that you have.

09:56 – Stephen Deason

We've been really. We've been really blessed in a lot of ways. You know, we are very much a purpose-driven organization. We feel like we're here to serve a greater purpose. We, you know, we do place licensed medical professionals into frontline positions with, you know, into oftentimes very difficult situations that involve Covid or the prison system or mental and behavioral health facilities, nursing homes, you know, songs, etcetera, skilled nursing facilities. And. What we've discovered is that when we're interacting with these people, oftentimes they're interacting with folks that are in memory care units or very difficult situations or stroke victims. Those people are. Those people can be very scared and have really difficult days. The nursing home facility folks are often having difficult days. Our social mission really helps us kind of stay centered in the middle of it, of all of that. Just saying, we have a purpose. We're here to serve. We're not here to take advantage of anybody. We're trying to get folks out to work in tough situations, and we constantly see kind of progression in positive directions when we, you know, when we take that approach with our clients.

11:11 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:22 – Stephen Deason

Well, what's something that makes me more effective or efficient? Those two things are a little bit different. So I just bought a giant thing, and it should be here in the next week, and it says to-do list, get shit done. Cursing aside, I do think it's really important that one of the things, I think it's very easy for us, and Gary Vee has some whiteboard things on this. One of them is you got to have the vision and you got to paint that thing, but then you got to. You got to be willing to do what I think of when I think of Brene Brown saying, let's get in the arena and get bloody. Let's get down in there and get it done. I think there are a lot of people who want to stay focused on the big-picture stuff all the time, and there are other people who get so focused on the tiny things. I think it's important to move between what's the vision and then what can I do in the next hour and the next day to get me closer to it. Just staying focused on that execution over and over and over again is really what matters.

12:27 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely love that. I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. You might have already touched on this, but this is more of a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you would tell your younger business self, find.

12:41 – Stephen Deason

A mentor earlier and listen.

12:46 – Gresham Harkless

Yes. Was it easy for you to be able to find one, or did you, what was, I guess, how were you able to kind of do that in your life?

12:58 – Stephen Deason

God was gracious enough to put a lot of mentors in my path over the years. I had a lot of cotton stuffed in both ears. I kind of did what I wanted instead of what was suggested to me. Over the last decade, I'd like to think I've learned to listen a little bit more and execute a little bit more on what I'm, what is suggested to me by good people.

13:21 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. You always want to make sure that you have smarter people around you and in the room and those mentors, a lot of times, people that we have to make sure we don't have that cotton so that we can actually listen and execute on the expertise and knowledge that they have.

13:35 – Stephen Deason

Correct.

13:36 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're open to having different, quote-unquote, CEO's on this show. So, Steven, what does being a CEO mean?

[00:13:45.71] – Stephen Deason

You are of service every day to the people around you and the community that you're in.

13:54 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that. So many times when we forget about, like, how we're serving and the ways in which we're serving. So I love, you know, to hear your growth and how you sound like you've been able to kind of serve the people within the organization, but also the, obviously your clients and your customers as well, too, and how, in a multifaceted way, you've been able to kind of make that impact.

14:13 – Stephen Deason

Yeah. People pay us to fix problems. Right. But they don't pay us to fix our problems. They pay us to fix their problems. You can't fix somebody else's problem if you don't have a service mindset and you're not thinking, how can I help this person with this issue that they're struggling with this issue, this challenge, this problem, those are all opportunities. If I'm paying attention and I don't have cotton in my ears and I'm listening for those things, then I really am being of service to others instead of myself. To me, that's the secret.

14:46 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I always say, I think I heard somebody say that we're all listening to the same station, Wiifm. What's in it for me? I think if you start to be able to tune into that, get that cotton out of your ears, and listen to what everybody's doing, how can you serve them? How can you solve that problem? Then that allows you that opportunity to really serve and make that tremendous impact, right?

15:05 – Stephen Deason

No, that makes. That's great. I'm going to steal that from you.

15:08 – Gresham Harkless

There you go. I stole it from somebody else, so it's perfectly fine. Well, Steve, I truly appreciate you again for hopping back in on the podcast. Of course, appreciate your time. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they could get a hold of you, find out about all the awesome things you and team are working on.

15:28 – Stephen Deason

Well, you can certainly get a hold of us. Look us up at www.oparasa.com and I get in touch with us that way. We're on most of the social media platforms. Thank you so much for having me on today, Gresham.

15:45 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely appreciate you for all the work that you do and all the inspiration that you gave to us as well. We're definitely going to have the links and information in the show notes, too, so that everybody can follow up with you. But looking forward to the next time to hear about even more growth and more of the dings that you're making in the universe and in people's lives. So appreciate you again. Stephen.

16:01 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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