Allow Myself to Introduce... Myself
Hi, I’m Sterling.
I’m pretty sure you already know that. But you might not know the whole #NoMatterWhat story if you’re one of the countless new people that have joined us in recent months. And with my book coming out soon, it seems like now would be a good time to reintroduce myself.
I’ll give you the punchline early. The #NoMatterWhat Movement isn’t about me at all. It’s about the hundreds of thousands I’ve delivered the message to that are now able to face whatever stands in their way. It’s about the people that walk out of keynotes or workshops with 5 practices that unlock their inherent human potential to make a difference for their companies, their communities and their families. It didn’t start that way though…
Here’s where it started…
I’ve been on a journey that has been non-traditional right from the beginning. See, I grew up a 5th generation retailer in Upstate New York. You can see me at my family’s story to your left. From the ripe age of 10 (that’s right 10) I was put to work (perhaps where #NoMatterWhat was instilled in me!). And I learned the ins-and-outs of what it took to run a business with extreme competition, handle high-growth and achieve performance no matter what obstacles.
Things were not just great, but awesome…
My dad and I sold our first company to a group in Silicon Valley that become The Apple Pay, before Apply Pay (biometric payments if you’re a tech person).
We raised hundreds of millions. Had 700+ employees, locations all over the world. I was living the high life in downtown San Francisco in a beautiful penthouse…
Until I crashed…
It all fell apart. A very long story short, when the housing market collapsed our funding dried up and that company went bankrupt.
And me?
Well I ended up crashing with it and living out a sad country song. No job. Out of cash. Moved in with my parents. And to top it off my girlfriend broke up with me. I was crippled with self-doubt, had anxiety about the future and even suffered from outright depression. Cue violin.
We all have things that we are deathly afraid to do. What was it for me? Public speaking. True story! It was terrifying to me.
But something my mom said when I was a kid (it’s also a Robert Frost quote, but to me it will always be my mom) came to mind: The way out is through.
If the way out is through, I thought… I would have to go through my fears to overcome them. First up: public speaking.
Another very long story, very short, I end up applying and being accepted to speak at a conference in Singapore. Trust me, I was just as surprised as you!
I worked through the same 5 steps I now teach to deliver that talk. The best part? The conference director thought it was sooo good, he put me in touch with all of his conference director friends, which along with a lot of hard work, was the beginning of what you see here. (By the way, to this day I don’t know if that conference director was in the same talk I gave!)
And then others started taking part…
My sister, Haviland, worked with me to put the keynote in Singapore together and decided to take on a little discomfort herself. She signed up for a bodybuilding competition. That’s right, one of those events where the people in bikinis are strutting their stuff on stage. Because being on stage in a bikini was the last thing she wanted to do and completely foreign to our family. It took time, hard work, and a whole lot of #NoMatterWhat to become the pro bodybuilder she is today (I’ve heard all the jokes about her beating me up already). 😉
People saw what I did. What she did… and started to ask about what we were doing. We shared the #NoMatterWhat system we were using and saw people hit the weight goals, move to dream cities, start companies, launch new divisions – essentially start knocking off all the big, audacious goals they had. People saw that and they shared and the circle grew.
Today, #NoMatterWhat has become a movement.
A movement of people that are brave enough to declare big goals and take steps towards them as uncomfortable as it may be. It turns out that getting results comes down to pushing past your comfort zone and limiting beliefs. Something I practice regularly with the #NoMatterWhat Community adventures from skydiving, century bike riding, shark diving and even trekking the Sahara. This stuff isn’t easy. But it is do-able, myself and countless others are the proof.
We’ve been seen in fancy magazines like Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, The New York Times and Forbes. And along the way, I’ve invested in a few companies, had numerous keynotes, speaking around the world, and even wrote a book – Hunting Discomfort – that will be out June 21, 2022. My Mom was right, the way out is always through.