People have because they don't stick to it. They don't go through the pain. They don't go through the fear. And then they end up in a cycle that goes over and over and over again, right?
And the ones that are successful. And I don't just again mean financial, but they're successful and fulfilled. They fight through the pain, they stay later, they work through it, they sacrifice, and then they go proud because it works. It will work when you do the right thing and you struggle and you don't give up.
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. Today I am joined by Uber entrepreneur, wildly successful, and the star of Undercover Billionaire. I'm with Glen Stearns. Glen, thank you so much for joining me today.
Hey, nice to be here, Tom. Dude, I'm really excited to talk to you. What you've accomplished is really impressive. It would be really impressive if you've come from a wonderful, a bringing, wealthy family.
But I know that things were a bit of a struggle in the beginning. I'd love for you to walk people through that. But in the context of answering this question, is the American dream alive or is it dead? Absolutely alive.
I look at my life and I look at a lot of people that I know because I'm very interested in helping children of adversity. And so there is still a clear pathway to be able to make it. I grew up in a household that had struggled with addiction and alcoholism. And my father worked the graveyard shift.
My mom cleaned homes and there was a checker at a grocery store. I didn't know any different. I knew there was a great big world out there, but we grew up struggling. What town was this in?
This was in Silver Spring, Maryland. So it was outscirts of DC and we had bars on the windows and brick apartment buildings. And it was just a lifestyle that, again, like I said, I didn't know any different. I failed fourth grade.
By the time I made it to eighth grade, I had a child. That was so great. So that was, again, a normal for me. And then once I got probably about that age, about 14, 15, I started realizing, you know, there was more to life.
I was in a lot of pain, I guess you could call it over. An emotional pain? Yeah. Just having a child and that was a weird adjustment.
And so I was falling in my father's footsteps. I had an intervention in my own high school with my teachers and my mom. Because you were playing with drugs and alcohol? Drinking and crazy.
What age did you start drinking? 14. Whoa. Yeah.
And so I'm just doing what my dad did. I'm doing what my uncle, my aunt, my grandpa, and everybody else did, right? And then ended up deciding to go to college, knowing my family had never gone. And I went not because I'm this brilliant high achievers.
It was because my girlfriend was going. And I found that to be the case a lot of times where it's not how you start a type of finish. And so by being in a place that gave me opportunity, being in college was this wonderful first step of getting out of my neighborhood and out of my old life. And I'd love to say again that I just quickly adapted, but I was still the party kid.
And but anyway, then it just quickly one day, right after college ended, I remember being in a bar in the middle of the night laughing hysterically at something very juvenile. And in the middle of that laugh, I remember thinking I laughed at the same dumb stuff last night and the night before. And I was just boring. What age are you at this point?
I'm probably 22. Just out of college or still in? Just the week right after graduating. Yeah.
What am I going to do? I guess I keep partying and having fun. What did you study? Economics.
Yeah. In business. And then I just that day that night, and I've said this, but it's in the middle of my deepest fog. I had my clearest kind of aha moment of I don't want to do this anymore.
I just want to. Why do you say deepest fog? I was in the middle of the bar at late at night. So literally.
Literally. Literally. Yeah. And that next morning I said to my roommate, I said, hey, why don't we drive across country?
Let's go to California. He said, all right, let's go. You know, so we've gotten the car and drove. Before we get to the bench and the sort of, you know, how do I get this part of the story?
Yeah. Define for me what the American dream is. You know, I think it's really about having the ability to realize that you can do almost anything, right? That you're not constrained by a government or a religion or anything that keeps you in a place that can find you, you know?
And so I mean, happiness to me is not about money, right? It's about the satisfaction that you are doing something larger with your life and feeling very confident in the fact that you are leaving a mark in the world, you know? And we've gone all over the world and I've seen very, very happy people. And yet they don't have a lot, you know?
So I don't think it's defined by my money. I think it'd be important in this to really, for people to understand your story, to tease out two concepts. So one, you've got sort of happiness fulfillment. You've got the sort of eye opening moment that you have with your health battles, which of course we will get into.
But then you've also got what you just defined, which I am personally intoxicated by this idea of, you can build whatever life you want. It can be bigger than your circumstances where you came up. And I think part of why, because I think that right now the prevailing idea is that the American dream is dead or it's non-functioning or something. And so defining it, I think, becomes very important.
I think your definition is fantastic. Why, though, isn't the truth that it works for you only because you came up before it broke? Yeah. Well, I also believe that old adage, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
You know? And I think there's been a lot of hype or there's been kind of this sway in our culture that leads to people feeling that they are a victim. And I don't really fall for that. Yeah.
Okay. I'm a white male. You know, and so you go, okay, well, I didn't grow up with a silver spoon. You know, again, I had a wooden spoon up slide my head maybe, but that's about it.
And so I don't think that, and yes, it is harder for minorities and yes, it is harder for a lot of different groups. But if you decide you want to make something, I think in this country, there is a pathway to do that. You can look at anybody from Barack Obama to our vice president today, right? That if you are a female or if you're an African American or whatever, that it may be hard.
I'm not putting that out, but there is a path if you really surround yourself with the right people and don't, you know, keeping your head that you're, you can't do it. If you think you can, I believe you can. So let's drill into that. So obviously an undercover billionaire, you do something that's very, very impressive and not just with the cameras, but you're stripped down to $100, you dropped off in a town where you know nobody.
You don't have your phone, you don't have your contacts, and you're given 90 days, which let me tell you, as somebody that's built multiple companies, that's absurd. I have literally no desire to have to try to pull this off in 90 days with cameras on me. What is that path? So when I think about, I'm most interested in the people that have the decks stacked against them, the hardest, and I want them to understand that there is a path out of that.
So I was giving a talk at Google one time, there's an African American guy in the front, and he asked me, do you think it's harder for me? I said, it seems self-evident to me that it's harder for you, but now what? And getting focused on that idea that you're talking about that first is what I call the only belief that matters. So if you think you can, you can, because your behaviors are going to follow that belief.
But if you think you can't, because your behaviors will follow that belief. But now let's assume that they're able to believe how, what is the path? And is there a path? Is there a gazillion paths?
Like, what does that mean? Well, when I look at my career, and I started, I didn't understand where I'd end. I didn't know, I didn't have a lot of mentors. I didn't have this idea that I want to achieve the certain goal.
And as I grew, and I found people that could mentor me and be a part of my success, I began to really formulate a plan that says, I want to get here. How did you find mentors? I grew, again, I came out to California where I just started looking around and seeing names of people and buildings and all this. And I started seeing them in the paper and I would literally go, hey, you want to go to lunch?
Out of the blue. Out of the blue. I'd go to charity events and try to meet them. And just want to just say, hey, I just want to ask you some questions.
A lot of them were in their 70s. And the interesting thing that I have found because I've become the membership chairman for so many charities now, because I've kind of was in this middle ground. I wasn't the old guy and I wasn't the new guy. I wasn't my 20s or 30s and when I was in my 40s, I was membership chair for every charity you could ever imagine.
But it was bridging the gap, right? And what I found that these older, successful people, they want to give back. They want to tell their story. But a lot of people when they're young, they think, oh, they don't want to talk to me.
They're too big. They're too important. They're too busy, right? And it could be farther than the truth.
If you just ask, you never know. And I'd love to just pick your brain. Just love to know your story, how you got there. And what happens?
They say, absolutely. It's good. That seems self-evident to you. Like, I just need to talk to you.
Because I know, so you're on, in fact, now's by the time to tell the bench story. You see the big, beautiful house. I think that'll help people understand that stuff. Well, yeah, I don't know if I think over time, asking became much easier, right?
And an example is when I first drove out to California, I literally found myself on a bench over the Pacific Ocean in Cronedale, Marv, beautiful homes, beautiful cars, people, everything. You could ever imagine. And I thought, I want this life. You know, I grew up pretty hard.
And I'm thinking, wow, how do you get this? And there's a man in the yard. And he's determined his rose bushes. And I want up to him.
I just said, what did it take to get this house? You know, I said, I'd love to have something like this. I think I can do it. What is it?
What did he do? And that's when he politely told me he was the gardener. And he was not the owner. But he said, I thought the man, because I think the man's in real estate.
So I'm going to get into real estate, right? I have no clue. But I just thought if real estate can get you here, I want to get into real estate. And but the point to that story more is just asking, right?
Just going up the people and saying, what do you do? How did you get this? And then is that something I'd be interested in? You know, and I've asked a million questions, by the way, and I've had people turn me down on answers or have people give me answers that I wasn't interested in or whatever, right?
But it's just you slowly start to build your own idea of what you want. You know, and I found what I found interesting a lot of times is I also always young and I'd say, I'm going to be the hard charger. That's I saw it in Wall Street. That's what they did.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm not real good at being a dick. You know, so okay, I'm going to be the soft. You know, and what you got to do is be good at being you, right? You don't have to be somebody else and your transparency or your authenticity, should I say, it will reveal itself.
And then people will come into you if you are who you really are, right? If you're a good person, you have morals, you have integrity, all those things that we really need. If you believe in Carmine, you believe the fact that good things happen to good people, then you will if you are again, if you're out there and open, I think you will attract people. And when you attract the right people, right, then you know, you can go faster.
You can do the things that you're really interested in doing. All right. So step one is believing that you can do it, right? So you thought, I might as well ask because I think I can actually pull this off.
I don't know what this is quite frankly, but I think I can do it. I just need somebody to point it. So can I say step one? Because we're talking to people that maybe haven't gone to step one, right?
You have to believe, if I just convinced myself that I keep thinking this way, it will happen. Because by the way, the first few times you might get thrown back on your butt and go, okay, it didn't work for me. No, you have to be. You have to keep doing it, right?
It's not always going to be okay. I have confidence in myself. I had a lifetime of not having a whole lot of confidence. Yeah, I wanted to ask you that.
So did you ask, because you're dyslexic. Right. So I imagine that that wasn't easy to establish a mental vision of yourself that was positive. So did you ever worry that you weren't smart enough to pull this off?
All the time. Okay. And what happened was whether it was being young and you know, I can just take failing fourth grade. I can look at two things.
Worst thing that ever happened to me, it's embarrassing. I'm at the age where everybody knows I'm a dummy or well, I got whole new friends. You know, I've got this whole new set of friends, which ended up happening to me, which in two weeks, I'm going to have 45 of them come out to my ranch. This is from eighth grade.
So I'm still friends with these people, right? I'd be have a child in 14. Worst thing in the world. It's not great.
Right? Oh my God, my life is over. Or wow, I've got a beautiful young child. You know, and it's about how you think.
How did you know to think of it like that? I didn't think of it like that. In the beginning. That was my point.
When did that change? It just as life went on, I realized what I thought was horrible became wonderful. And why did I spend energy on things I cannot control? I had a failed fourth grade.
Why am I going to be upset about it? Again, I think about this after the fact and realize don't spend energy on things you can't control. So as my life got as I moved along, I started wasting less energy on things like that, and then realizing, find the silver lining. What good came out of this issue?
You know, and I've had a lot of them, right? So okay, so I can't change the things that I could probably cry over. So what lesson did I learn? You know, and then now my life in the last 15 years, 20 years has been really focused on all the learnings, you know, and not the what was me stuff.
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So obviously we've talked about the hardships. This Lexi has an ongoing thing. So how do you think about your weaknesses and address? Because speaking for myself, so my big fear was that I wasn't smart enough to be successful.
Like that was at some point in my life almost crippling. So for me, I had to learn about the brain. I had to learn about brain plasticity. And that gave me the get out of jail free card of not needing to tell myself that I was too dumb anymore.
Because it was like, well, maybe you are too dumb right now. And that's fine because you can get better. Did you have a strategy for dealing with something like dyslexia? I think you look at the whole scarcity and abundance concept, right?
And I found that when I would instead of focusing again on the fact that maybe I'm not the best reader, maybe I don't retain a lot of things well, instead of that, the fact that if I find smart people, and it's very cliche, but it's very true, and I surround myself with them, that I end up looking smarter. And you watch some people and I can give you so many examples of people, but I want that are in fear that if I surround myself with someone smarter than me, it'll make me look dumb, right? And so they surround themselves with people inferior, and then your whole company or division or whatever you're in fails versus people that have enough confidence to say, wow, you can fill in the blind spot. I don't have or my weakness.
And you fill it all in and your whole company rises or whatever you're doing, your whole project rises, because all of you combine to make this uber quick, fast, smart project go, right? And so that became pretty evident to me because I didn't have a lot of the skills that why don't I let those people do it? You know, why don't I bring in more people in the more talent I brought in, the quicker we went, you know, and the less time we wasted and I went, all right, I think I'm on to something here, you know, and then to admit it, hey, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. You know, I'm the chairman of my company.
I hate running the meetings. I don't like being the one that has to tell people what to do. I'm not good at that. I like the vision, right?
I like, I got an idea. I'll let you march up the tail. That's fun to me. But the details, let's let people that like to do that better than I do do it.
It's interesting. I would put you into a certain category of entrepreneur if I didn't know what you did on undercover billionaire, because there are people that have like a really extraordinary ability to galvanize a team, to gather talent, to surround themselves. And then it's basically like, all right, hey, I'm the one that sort of raised the money and put everybody together and now you guys go and actually build this thing. But you have that very striking ability.
But then you also have the ability to create a vision to march forward, to put very strategic steps into place. Take us back to the beginning of undercover billionaire. You're sleeping in your truck. You're not even sure what business to do.
How did you begin to cobble those ideas together so that you can actually get something done? So let me take you back a step on that too for a second of my mind. So here I am doing my business for a long time and become fairly large and successful and all the things I thought were wonderful. And then I get hit with cancer.
And at that point, my focus became a completely different focus. What's the most important thing, right? And that's my family. So I said, I'm going to sell my business and I sold it to a very large private equity group.
And I focused on the family. And by doing that, I was then able to realize that when I got back into business, the problems weren't very large in business, no matter what they are compared to your life. Right? So now it's just problem solving.
Right? So let's get in the room and let's figure it out. And then if you look at it, because I remembered 2007 and eight, which was the worst financial crisis in our lifetimes, and I was dead center of it. And when I got cancer, because I used to say I never in my life want to go back to that.
And when I got the cancer, I went what I would do to go back to that. Because that was fun. I just didn't, I wouldn't have called it fun back then. Very painful.
We're going to lose everything. But it was all about getting in people's faces. Let's figure this out together, going to New York and all the Wall Street guys and all the every lawyer and everybody that was out there. But it was living, right?
It was doing things. So when then you take that and you realize we're not dying, it's just problem solving. Now all of a sudden, the fear, I guess, that business had on me for a while, why lose everything. You know, and I don't know if you've ever had it.
You know, you build something and you're feeling great one day. The next day, you know, these lawyers are kind of comments, you know, and there's always what can cripple us, what can bring us down. Well, once that went away and I started realizing that's just part of the game, then the fear of that went away. So now I can go out and create and do things.
So when it came to undercover billionaire and I went out, what had happened was people kept asking if I want to do a show. My wife and I did a show 15 years ago and by luck, someone called if we wanted to do it. We did it. It was called the Real Gilligan's Island.
I ended up winning it. She came in second place. Long story. But for years after that, people kept calling, hey, we want you to do another show.
You want to do a show and I said, look, I'm a business guy. You know, I did that for fun, but it's okay. So I tell you a show I would do, strip me from everything, take away my name, my money, my contacts. I bet I could rebuild it again because I was getting tired of hearing that, you know, that the American dream was dead and whatnot.
And I also wanted to do it because I wanted my children to see that you, life is not easy. That when you do get into a hole, it's not about laying there and feeling like the victim. It's about getting up and pulling yourself up out of the hole and figuring it out. And so I wanted that and I would say, if you want to do a show with me, strip me of everything and throw me in the middle of nowhere.
And I would do that over and over again to these production houses that would call me and then discovery called back and said, if you really want to do that show, you put your money or your mouth is, I said, sure. And they put some little constraints around, well, how about 90 days? I'm going, well, that's kind of tight. You know, I said, well, how about if we start with like $5,000?
I said, how about $100? And it kept getting tighter and I said, okay, let's see what happens, you know. And so off I went, I did it. I didn't think much, right, which is the story of my life, right?
I didn't plan. I just thought I'll just show up and see what happens. And I like that, you know, I like having my back against the wall and I like that feeling. And we all, I think we all do well at being successful, right?
We walk around, we give our money to charity and, you know, we do things that make us feel like we're good. Who are we when everything is taken away from us? And in 2007 and eight, when everything was taken away, in that moment I was in the darkest hole, you know, and looking around and thinking the whole community and industry is looking at me, who am I now? I kind of like that feeling.
Because that's the real you. Interesting. It's when you are not built up on the fakeness of money and people kissing your ass and all those things, who are you as just a human being? And so that moment when I was at my darkest in 2007 and eight, literally, it's a longer story than we have right now, but I stood up and said, let's go and literally went in front of everybody's face and never hid and said, how are we going to get ourselves out of this?
What do you mean? It's your problem, let me go. No. You say, oh, you're 30 million, bear sterns.
I said, how are we going to get out of this? Because I don't believe I owe it to you. You know, and we would go over battles over the loans. Let's say I gave them stated income loans.
They said it's my problem because they failed. Out of my supposed to check the income and you told me it was a state. You know, so we would battle over the stuff, but little things like that would happen. And instead of digging my head in the sand, it'll go away.
Let's just fight it out right now. And so we did that on everything and it worked. And so when it came to now we moved forward and it's under cover billionaire, I said, I want to be stripped of everything and I want to be in a hole again. And I want to show my children what it's like to climb out.
And I will tell you in the middle of that hole, I didn't realize that there'd be millions of eyeballs on me. Like I didn't think that part out. And I can see myself when I watched the show staring off and I'm realizing at that time, I know exactly what I was thinking. Like maybe I can throw the show as I'll never be on because I am going to fail.
And the whole world is going to watch me fail, which means what I did in the past was luck. It was all the things you fear in life of going, you know, am I really that good or was it luck, right? And so it was a moment where I said I want to run on a hide. I don't want to face these demons and these things because I'm going to look bad.
And again, that was the moment when I go, this is the time to stand tall, right? And so digging out and it worked really well and everything turned out where I'm very proud of the show, it became probably one of my proudest moments of my life because the fear and having that devil on your give up, give up, you can throw this, you know, they won't ever have to make the show, all those kind of things. We all face that in our lives. It's just not with millions of people watching, right?
It's just we, I don't, this job wasn't what I thought it would be. Maybe that the job over across the streets better. The career over there is better and people hop because they don't stick to it. They don't go through the pain.
They don't go through the fear. And then they end up in a cycle that goes over and over and over again, right? And the ones that are successful. And I don't just again mean financial, but they're successful and fulfilled.
They fight through the pain. They stay later. They work through it. They sacrifice and then they go proud because it works.
It will work when you do the right thing and you struggle and you don't give up, right? And so it all became very meaningful because it my children got to see this. And that's all I cared about. And then when it got bigger than that, and then the whole world have had thousands of people say, wow, so inspiring.
Thank you. It got me to think about what I need to do. I didn't even dream that that would happen. And I'm so thankful to hear other people who have been touched by that.
That's so incredible. It's so easy to look at somebody else and think, well, they could do it, but I wouldn't be able to do it because they don't have the kind of fears of the self-doubt or the limitations that I have. And that's part of what makes your story so incredible is, A, you're honest about, I was actually thinking about taking a dive and just making sure that the show never came out. And then you don't.
And I want to know, is grit something that comes naturally to you or have you developed tenacity over time? I would say that it has developed over time, and I didn't understand it in the beginning. I didn't know what was happening to me. Again, all of the hard things that happened in my life, I'm very grateful for it because it did lead me to a place where now it doesn't seem to be that hard.
And so I happen to have a podcast called Grid Happens, right? But it's about that grit. It's about the determination, not giving up, feeling that you're not alone. And what you touch on, I love that's the best part of why I like to tell my story.
I don't like to lead with success. I like to lead with vulnerability, right? I like people to go, I can do it. I got a 2.1 in college.
I did a little better than he did, right? Or I didn't go to college. Okay, I barely went to college. I learned about paying the bills through college.
I didn't really learn much in terms of economical statistics or whatever. How do you, you've got the mental fortitude that you're building up over time. You're learning really powerful lessons at a time. This is mostly, I'm sure, pre-internet.
So you're cobbling all of this stuff together yourself. How then do you begin to get what is on display in undercover billionaire where you're pivoting, where you're asking things like, who's my buyer instead of just what business do I find interesting? Like when do you begin to learn these business lessons? Yeah, there's been a lot of hardship in my career as well as successes, right?
And so when I look back on everything that happened to me, I always thought this was the end. And then there was, aha, right? And then something would just take me to another level, you know? And I mean, a million things.
I would sit in a meeting with the government with all of these contractors. And I would be one of the contractors and they'd be complaining, we can't do this anymore because they would all be yelling about some little issue. And I give you an example real quick. They would not arise deeds.
So we cannot not arise the government's deeds anymore unless the government comes and signs in front of us. This is illegal. And they were just, you know, and they're all complaining. And I, I agree with that.
I thought, so when the meeting ended, I got to say, why don't I bring my notary in every day at lunch to just sign the deeds? So we end up signing tens of thousands of deeds a year, making all the money. And I paid her, you know, an extra, you know, whatever to come in on our lunch time, right? And our company thrived off of that.
And it was just there are this little things that other people see as problems and you can go. But it's pretty clear that there's an opportunity right here. That's one of the more interesting things to me about your mentality. So it's like with investing, they say, you know, when there's blood in the streets, that's when you buy.
And when other people are, you know, just like trying to gobble things up, that's when you sell at a time where everybody else was closing down, you were opening up. How do you find the opportunity? I've always ran into the fire. And I literally, when I was a kid, I remember my sister ran into the laundry room in our, because they would like five times they caught the laundry room on fire.
Whoa. And one time my sister had run in there, she was like three. And I was out there and everyone was like, the fire was coming out of the building, right? And no one was doing anything about it.
And I ran in there and crawled on the floor and found her and drenched her out. And it would be like, why didn't anybody else do that? Like, I remember always for some weird reason running against the crowd. I don't know why, right?
But I would just go the opposite way. I can, you know, I my dog ate the little, you know, electric cord and it was flopping around. And everyone ran, they were afraid. And I ran over there and I pulled it out of the wall, right?
Like, well, why doesn't anyone else always run away? And I don't know why. But then I began to like the fact that when people ran away, I'd run the other way. And so then business, that would happen.
And it became very clear to me when everyone dove out the window, I thought, look at all of this opportunity. Look at all this talent. Nobody's gobbling up this talent. I could never get these people in a normal world.
And so I opened five offices of failed companies November, oh seven, open five more with each with like 20 to 50 people in each office. And I did that the next year. And then we shot to the moon, you know, because everyone else had set on the sidelines for two years and I gobbled up all the talent. Yeah, that to me, so it's very interesting that that started out very early for you.
That definitely did not start early for me. But you do begin to realize, okay, in disruption, there is opportunity. And one of the things that given the way you talk on undercover billionaire, I'm guessing that this is true for you as well as what radio calls principles that you do something in life and you realize, okay, that worked, that didn't work. And so you begin to formulate these things.
The next time I encounter this, I will act in this way. And one of the like hard and fast beliefs that I have is in disruption, there is opportunity. So you want to look for that moment where everybody else is either annoyed that a change is coming along. So think of social media.
So one of the key elements to my success was recognizing social media was a business tool when everybody else just thought it was a distraction. And so when people get annoyed or pissed off about something, it's like, that's the very thing I want to go look at. Because there's something that's causing a disruption in their life, which is why they don't like it. Let me tie this to the Horatio Alger award that you're a recipient of.
But you're also part of that committee that looks for people that have overcome extraordinarily difficult situations. People that can see an opportunity and difficulty, to me, that's like the thing, right? Like I said earlier, the only belief that matters is that you can pull it off. So somebody that's in that gnarly, gnarly situation, how, what is it that allows some people to see the opportunity and stops other people from seeing it?
Because I know that you guys have had, I don't know if you call them students, recipients, whatever, that they did well, but their brothers and sisters imploded. Right. And we have studied that, tried to figure out why, why in the same family, you'll have three brothers and sisters that aren't jail or die of drugs and one that just uses education as their way out, right? And they say, I don't want to be anything like this family.
What is the difference? They've gone through the same hardship they've been and endured so much adversity. Why do they stand out? And I don't know if we've ever found this answer yet, you know?
But what I do know is that person, that young person that has said, I'm going to take tools and better myself to get myself out of this situation, I want to invest in that person. And so that's where I put my energy personally. And the Horatio Alger Association does that, right? We get 40,000 applicants a year to help.
And these are all people who have gone through a lot of severe adversity. And we help maybe 35 to 4,000, 3500 to 4,000 students a year by giving them scholarships to college. And then we have a, when we go through our award ceremony, we have about 110 or so scholars that are national scholars that we bring in and we, we meet, we mentor, we spend three or four days with them every year in Washington, D.C. And then my wife and I have gone and done other events with them outside of the association.
But I'm fascinated with that person. I feel like I've led a similar life, but I did it by accident, right? Like I didn't say education was my way out. I fell into the education, barely graduated, but I learned lessons along the way, right?
I learned how to get a Pell Grant, how to, you know, these kind of things. These kids are determined. These kids are focused on knowing that, you know, if I, you know, can get myself a good education, I will be able to get a great job and I'll be able to live a different life. And so I absolutely am fascinated by those people and they'll be tomorrow's leaders, because they also, you got to think, right?
When I've had many friends, but one, especially that I can tell you, he never touched adversity. His family, you know, had really helped make sure he had a very easy life. And at the age of 40, leading his business, it had a very big turn and he couldn't get out of bed for two weeks, right? And thought the world was over.
And yet, once he got through all that, he really got some thicker skin and he learned that, you know, he had lived a pretty extraordinary life, never to face any real adversity. Here, these kids have faced so much adversity early on that when they hit a business issue or something, it's gonna be like, yeah, this is nothing. You're asking what he was most concerned about? Like when the world is ending quote-unquote, like what that really means?
Yeah, in this case, he ran his family's business and he thought he'd let his whole family down because the family business got attacked with a lot of lawsuits because of a situation and he thought it was over, you know. And I took him to an event where we had a young girl who had Frederick's attack, she had attacked the nervous system and we were doing a fundraiser and I put my arm around him. I said, that girl, she got real problems. Like, you got a few lawsuits.
Like what do you think? He says, don't have a big deal. I go, no, I think you're gonna get by. It'd be okay.
And he crushed it in his business. You know, he got nervous. He opened another business worrying about that. Now he's got two great businesses.
You know, I mean, you just, he led to some wonderful things for him. So when you're, you have time with these Horatio Alger scholars, what are like a few key ideas that you try to impart on them? Well, what I do is I, again, I lead with my vulnerability. I explain situations that happened to me when I was young that I think they can relate to my dad fall asleep, drunk at the wheel and I'm driving and wrecking the truck, right?
You know, things like that, right? And so I'm driving the truck while he's asleep. I wreck it. But you know, like things and they go, I can relate to that.
You know, I remember talking to the girl, so you got stuck in your eyes, you know, my mom's boyfriend stuck a hyperdermic needle in my eye, you know, and you're like, Oh, I shouldn't ask that question. You know, and, and, you hear these things, but so I will lead with, you know, having a child at 14 failing fourth grade, things like this. And then I think they break down a little and go, wow, he's kind of like me. And then they go, maybe I can keep going, you know, and they, they already know they're on the right path, by the way, you know, they, they've got, you know, scholarships to amazing colleges.
And now they're here, you know, just as Clarence Thomas is there to greet them at the Supreme Court. You know, he's a member of the racial Alger. And there's a lot of very successful racial Alger, I mean, Ronald Reagan to Condoleesa Rice to Colin Powell, you name it, you know, have been members of the association and our members. And so they're pinching themselves, you know, and so yeah, we get together and just try to get them to realize they are extraordinary people, you know, and, and because that's what the world is again, is we find people that don't want to give up when it gets hard, it'll get hard for everybody, you know.
Yeah, that to me is one of the most interesting things in terms of what's the idea that you want to get across to somebody is if you don't give up, you've got a chance to figure it out, right? I tell my business students, it's not about how often you're wrong. It's about the duration that you're wrong. Because if you make a lot of little mistakes, but you quickly adjust and get on the right track, then fair enough.
But if you stay wrong out of willful ignorance, because you don't want to look stupid or whatever, so you tell people not to bring it up and then you're gonna go out of business. And so yeah, one of the key things for me for entrepreneurs anyway, I mean, I'll say this benefits everybody, but don't value yourself for being right, value yourself for identifying the right answer faster than anybody else. And certainly in undercover billionaire, that was something you were really good at. How do you think about that pivot?
Like, how do you not let emotions get in the way? How do you, like, at one point you guys were gonna be microbrewery, and then you end up being a barbecue joint. And like, I mean, with so much writing on it, so little time, how do you go, I was wrong, and then just immediately focus on something else. Well, it's funny because I was nervous about how that could look the people, because I don't want the answer to you when it gets hard, you give up, right?
Because that is not the right answer. But in my case, what the people around me didn't realize is I had 90 days. I couldn't get away from that. No, interesting.
No, no, no, no, why I was driving and pushing so hard, right? And so, but I knew I just could not do that. So if there is, if you're in a dead end, and there is no way, then, you know, when you need to pivot, what I learned through that is I thought I still love the idea of beer. But why don't I take the best beers?
Because this is there, they had the local breweries, all that's the hub was eerie. There were so many of them, I thought, why don't I just go out and I can highlight all the local breweries? And it seems like barbecue is the answer because I've seen people lined up down the road at this one barbecue house. So if they like barbecue in Erie, let's make a barbecue rest.
And then there's a 50,000 person barbecue event coming up in a month. So let's get into that event if we can, let's open up a restaurant and let's take the beers from everywhere and bring them all into one location. And then the light pop came on and let's run up that hill, everybody. Wow, that's incredible.
In that, the 90 days to get your business off, there is this idea of being unreasonable. I don't know if you've heard the quote, I love this quote so much, I'm going to paraphrase it, I can't remember the exact quote. But basically, the reasonable man conforms to the world, the unreasonable man forces the world to conform to him, therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. And that strikes me as you.
You seem like a person that's able to make those unreasonable demands. But in a way that where you've got your team excited, they believe in what they're doing, how do you pull that off and how do you think about being unreasonable? So I learned a few things from a good friend of mine that Richard Branson, who happens to have been in the news lately. And I've heard of him.
Yes. And a couple of things, I was giving two real quick stories. One is we're having dinner at my house and it got to be really late. And he says, all right, looks like it's time to go.
We had a bunch of wine and he's ready to go. And so we walked out to the car and the driver gets out very nervously and says, sir, I must have left the lights on because I just tried to start the car and the battery's dead. And so as I see Richard, who is Mr. Cool under all normal circumstances, when nobody's watching, he has a little buzz.
Now let's see what Mr. Cool does. So I'm like, in the matrix, I'm like, going to go around him. Is this, you know, cheek moving?
Is he going to do a big size? He's going to rip this poor kid a new one. What does he do? And Richard immediately gets the news.
You're screwed. Your car doesn't go anywhere. And he turns to me, he goes, looks like we need another bottle of wine. And I'm like, wow, like that's the way you handle people, right?
That poor kid already feels bad enough. Right. And then another thing that I learned is he and I bought an island together is called Mosquito Island. And I had one point and he had the other point.
And I went there to look at how he was building his house. And he said, I'm going to be in there by Christmas. And he must have a hundred workers in there. And I went there, we couldn't get in piles of boxes and trash and everything.
And it was just a zoo. And I began to doubt his ability as an entrepreneur. And every day I thought he's insane. There's no, because down the road, not the road, but another island over at oil nut bay, they were pristine, not a nail on the floor as they built.
They were proud of their here. He had boxes and, you know, I mean, and people. And I thought this is insane, what he's doing. And, you know, it just didn't understand it.
Well, five months later, Christmas, he was in his house. And three months after that, all the other little details were done in his house is beautiful, right? And what I learned is that those homes take four, five years to build on an island because you island all the political stuff that goes on and getting things on and off islands. And he understood that you make it unreasonable, demand, and you press people and you hold people that he will get things done.
And you know what? Even if it got done, I bet you by spring, he would have been a lot happier than three or four more years, right? And he's lived on that island. He's lived on Nectar forever.
And he understands the pace and understands things that I didn't know until later. But what it got me to realize is that when you, two things that I realized, one that's even more valuable than placing unreasonable demands and pushing people is telling people you believe in them. There's so many people out there that don't realize their own ability. And to say, I know you can do this.
And when you first give them that power, that they will, that you believe in them, the power of confidence for them, they will do so much more than they ever dreamed they could do. When you do, when you plant that seed, people will shine and they will, they will prove to themselves, wow, he was right. He believed in me. And I'm going to do my best.
And so those are, I think that's the important part is making sure you allow people to understand your belief in them. And then you can move mountains that you never thought were possible. I love that. Glenn, where can people follow along with you, join you as you build more incredible things?
Everything is pretty much Glenn Stern's, Glenn Stern's, GLENN, STERNS, Instagram, Facebook, whatever the other ones are out there. We're all Glenn Stern. Guys, trust me when I say that this is somebody that you're going to want to follow, learn from, it is absolutely extraordinary what he's built multiple times in front of cameras even. So there is so much to be learned with the attitude that you can do it.
It really is pretty extraordinary. And his example proves that if you're able to get people around you and not worry about being wrong, there really is no limit to what you can achieve. And speaking of things you can achieve, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe because we will help you move forward. And until next time, my friends, be legendary.
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