A Story of Impact from KW Next Gen
Erick Jones has been working since he was eight years old.
That summer — hot, sweaty Oklahoma summer — he and his two siblings started a lawn care business. It was his first lesson in what it means to build something. It wouldn’t be his last.
He’s twenty-one now, and the list of things he’s building has only gotten longer.
Erick grew up watching his grandmother in the kitchen and his grandfather at the grill. Something about it got into him early — the way food brought people into a room together, the way his grandmother seemed to put love directly into every dish she made. You could taste it. He’s tried to replicate her recipes since. He has the exact ingredient list, the exact measurements — but something was going into those dishes that doesn’t appear on any recipe card.
He took that passion to Metro Tech, a career tech vocational program in Oklahoma City, where he studied culinary arts while finishing high school. He graduated in 2023, and by twenty-one was working as executive sous chef and manager at Eastside Eatery in northeast Oklahoma City. He also runs his own catering business on the side.
“It’s crazy how one dish that you make, big or small, can really bring people together,” he says. “Whether you’re having a good day or a bad day, I’m able to provide something that people will remember.”
He heard about KW Next Gen through his church, which had posted a flyer about an upcoming Quantum Leap class. Some friends had already taken a few of the classes and had good things to say. He showed up.
The class — taught by Colette Naff and her daughter Shamiah at a Keller Williams real estate office — turned out to be something different from what he expected. Not real estate focused. Life focused.
“I came out of that class with a spark to learn more,” he says, “and to really dive deeper into all of my goals and my mission and clarify a couple of things that I had going for myself.”
He had a lot going. A full-time kitchen job. A catering business. Ideas for a book that had been circling in his head. He needed organization more than he needed more goals.
He applied for coaching and was paired with Usha Patel, a KW Next Gen board member. The work they did together centered on something that sounds deceptively simple: prioritization.
“I had so many crazy goals that I wanted to do,” he says. “Just being able to organize all of those things was super, super important.”
What became concrete during coaching was the book — a project he’d been holding onto for a while. Job’s Not Finished is drawn from a phrase that has followed him since childhood. It’s about his life as a young entrepreneur: the lessons, the grind, the things he’s learned about tackling whatever gets thrown at you. To finish it, he had to treat it like any other goal — break it into chapters, into pages, into weekly targets he could actually hit.
Usha also pushed back when he was pushing too hard. She reminded him that pouring himself into work for everyone else, without time to recharge, wasn’t sustainable.
“It is just as important to take care of yourself and rest,” he says. “Prioritizing time that you have set for yourself to recharge is so important as well.”
When Erick found out he’d be attending QL Summit in Austin, he texted Usha to let her know. She wrote back: she’d be there too.
Meeting her in person — after months of virtual coaching — was one of the highlights of the trip. So was hearing Gary Keller teach. Somewhere in the middle of it all, he got an email. He’d been awarded a Fund My Mission Scholarship — his second year as a recipient. The funding is going toward his business management degree at Western Governors University, an online program that works around a chef’s schedule.
“I was literally so ecstatic,” he says. “I had to control myself.”
His mission statement, which he wrote during his first Quantum Leap class, draws a straight line through everything he does:
The mission for my life is to bring people together through food by using my passion for cooking, storytelling, and mentorship to create impactful experiences.
The mentorship piece is what he’s building toward next. He’s developing a program specifically for young men — using culinary skills as the entry point for something bigger: life principles, practical responsibility, the knowledge that often doesn’t get passed down. He started with his thirteen-year-old cousin, bringing him along on catering jobs, letting him learn by doing.
“I found out that he really is on fire with culinary as well,” Erick says. “I’m going to help him.”
He thinks about all the people who poured into him — his coach, the instructors who gave their time, the donors whose contributions made his scholarships possible — and he feels the pull to pass it forward.
“A little bit goes a long way,” he says. “That’s exactly what I want to do.”
Erick Jones is twenty-one years old. He is an executive sous chef, a catering business owner, a business management student, an author-in-progress, and now a mentor. He started working at eight and hasn’t stopped since.
The job, as he’ll tell you, is not finished.
Erick was supported through KW Next Gen’s Quantum Leap program, Quantum Leap Coaching, and multiple donor-funded Fund My Mission Scholarships. To read more stories of impact, visit kwnextgen.org.
