From Fortune 500 to 11,000 Nonprofits: How Purpose and Persistence Redefine Success with Howard Pearl

In this powerful episode of Shine on Success, host Dionne Malush sits down with Howard Pearl, CEO of Charitable Adult Rides and Services (CARS), whose career journey bridges global corporations and purpose-driven impact. From marketing for giants like Johnson & Johnson, Ford, and Revlon to transforming a small nonprofit into a national force that’s redistributed over $600 million to causes worldwide, Howard shares what it truly means to lead with purpose.

With candor and wisdom, he opens up about how a reluctant “temporary” role became the most fulfilling chapter of his life, why Think and Grow Rich still shapes his leadership philosophy, and the timeless lessons his father taught him about respect, integrity, and giving back. This conversation reminds us that success isn’t about climbing higher — it’s about lifting others as you rise.

Website: https://www.careasy.org/

Email: howard.pearl@gmail.com

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

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Transcript

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Meet Howard Pearl And CARS

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Today's guest has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, and now he's fueling the missions of thousands of nonprofits. Howard Pearl is the CEO of Charitable Adult Rides and Services, better known as CARS, a Harvard Business School grad with 35 plus years of C-suite experience at companies like Johnson Johnson, Ford, and Revlon. Since 2015, Howard has transformed cars culture, scaled revenue by 500%, and helped redistribute over 600 million to nonprofits nationwide. He's done it with the same principle Napoleon Hill taught in Think and Grow Rich. A clear purpose backed by persistence can turn any vision into reality. Howard, welcome to Shine on Success.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

I'm very happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

So I just like to start with this one question. What's one thing you want people to know about you that they may not read in your bio?

From Skeptic To Service-Driven Leader

SPEAKER_01 0:52

What a great question. I think that um finding I've reached uh sort of the tail end of my career and how fascinated I was to find how fulfilling it is to be uh of service, if you will, to be working in a nonprofit and to be working with almost 11,000 nonprofits that we have uh you know under contract. I came to this position with a degree of skepticism. Uh I had never worked in a nonprofit, you know, other than to volunteer for the occasional board here and there, and found it to be an incredibly fulfilling experience and a tremendous way to use the experience you'd gathered in the C-suite over the years to apply to a nonprofit environment.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

So was there a turning point that led you from corporate giants to a mission-driven nonprofit?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Oh my god, it was a total accident. And I came uh uh kicking and screaming and dragging my feet uh a hundred percent of the way. I uh was asked to interview for a position that I I didn't want. And uh uh I I did so because the recruiter was uh uh I I I was obliged to do a favor for the recruiter at the time. And uh so I said, well, I'll take the interview. They they said it would help them to buy a couple of weeks with the firm uh if they could uh have time to find

The Accidental CEO Story

SPEAKER_01 2:06

somebody else. And I went in for the interview, and uh I didn't uh I didn't expect to stay long, and the interview turned into something that was incredibly fascinating. I met a gentleman there who ultimately hired me. What was a 20-minute interview turned into about a you know two-hour extraordinary exchange. Well, you don't really want the job, but I'll take it for 45 to 90 days. I'll find you another CEO and I'll exit the the current CEO. And uh, you know, that'll, you know, that'll be that. In my hubris, you know, I said, Well, look, I don't want the job, but here's what I'm gonna do for you, right? And she sort of was taken aback. So anyway, it turned out I I uh uh we we sort of agreed, and um I could tell you that within the first 10 days I knew I was cooked.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

You did intend.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Oh, I I the I found uh I found an incredible staff that was willing and just hungry for some leadership, smart, knowledgeable, innovative. They just were looking for uh a different category of leader to turn them loose, someone that could articulate a vision that they could uh uh engage with. And uh like coming home at night, and my my wife uh would say to me, What's the matter? And I'd say, Nothing. I'm actually enjoying this. Yeah, that's what I mean. But you're not, you know, huffing and jumping

Scaling To 11,000 Nonprofits

SPEAKER_01 3:20

up and down about what isn't or what is going right, and you know, no fundraising phone calls in the middle of the night, or what are we acquiring next? Let me what's going on with you? So I said, Well, I'm rather enjoying this. She said, Well, why don't you stay? And and I said, Well, that wasn't the deal I made, and uh, I don't know that they'd want me to stay. And she said, You know, you're you're an idiot. She said, This is why women are smarter than men. She said, She said, I'm sure if you let them know you'd like to stay, they'd be very smart. And anyway, one thing like I've been here a little 10 years, well, just over 10 years. I said weeks over 10 years. And um, of course, my wife was incredibly correct, as she usually is. This has been um a great capso a good career um that's had its, you know, as you point out, ups and downs. And we've been very successful with the company. We've grown it incredibly from, you know, a small regional to uh you know for having about six clients to 11,000.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

11,000.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

I thought you said that before, and I thought, did he really say 11,000?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Oh, yes, yeah. Uh the bottom, the bottom third are uh pretty much automated. They can go on the website and sign up, and we'll do fundraising for them in an automated fashion, whether it's vehicle donations or accepting stock or real estate donations, which is very popular these days, or uh Roundup programs and so on. We've got a myriad of fundraising mechanisms. And yes, we actually have that many, but the bottom third are automated. The real big revenue comes from the top 200. It's uh quite exciting. Uh, but we work with everybody from uh, you know, Red Cross, St. Jude, Shriners,

How CARS Powers Fundraising Behind The Scenes

SPEAKER_01 4:50

uh, Sierra Club Foundation, a lot of the big folks. But at the same time, we have many, many small ones, Catholic charities or or uh St. Vincent de Paul or small two or three-person animal rescue, you know, facilities and so on. We we don't distinguish. If you're a 501c3 and you need help raising capital for your nonprofit, we we've got a mechanism for you. And that's all we care about. We don't care about the politics. We we don't want to know what you do or how you do it. Well, that's not what we do. But what I'm saying is if you're a legitimate 501c3, we don't take a political view on what it is you're doing. You have that right to fundraise and we'll support you.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Can you share a little bit about what exactly that you do?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Uh, sure. Uh we run probably okay. Well, first off, I I think it's really interesting to note that we're a B2B. Uh you you would not have heard of who we are out there, but the companies do. I don't want you donating money to us. You need to donate money to the charity and the nonprofit of your choice. We are a nonprofit, but we earn our revenues by generating revenue for you and your nonprofit. So I want you to go on to the Red Cross site, or I want you to go on to the whatever site you're you're interested in, the Boys and Girls Club. What whatever, depending on, you know, whether you're interested in the environment or the humanities or whatever. And what we do is uh we we run the program uh underneath the surface. So while you interact with a uh a donor reception agent or whether you're working online, you're really working with our staff. So we would accept the donations on behalf of, let's say, we'll just use Red Cross. Um, you would donate a vehicle or real estate or or use one of the Roundup programs a minute to give Roundup programs or uh donate stock. Again, there's several different mechanisms that that are used. You would go to wherever you want to donate, and on their website, it usually would say donate here. And when you hit that, it will take you to a landing page, which we've created, and it gives you the choice

Beyond Vehicles: Real Estate And Stock Gifts

SPEAKER_01 6:46

of what you want to do. So if you want to donate your car, um we process in a good year, we'll process 150,000 vehicles. Yeah, that's a lot of places to park across the country. Um, and and on a you know, slow year, you know, we'll we'll we'll do in the 100,000 range. And so we take the vehicles, we pick them up, we take them to auction, we sell them, deal with the transfer, the title, and all the other issues that go along with that. And then we send the capital to the nonprofit uh that we're engaged with. Uh and we generally process payments every five days because it's not our money. We don't feel we have the right to arbitrage. Uh so we get you your money very quickly, and we manage your donor and your donor base. And so we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 600,000 conversations a year with donors. Uh, lots of we have lots of data on donors. And of course, we have a lot of wonderful stories because, particularly with the car donations, uh, you know, Americans, we live in our cars, we love in our cars, we marry in our cars, we make babies in our cars, we rush get to the hospital and don't quite make it, so we deliver the babies in the cars.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

I mean, I said everywhere all over the world. That's just America.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Well, I think Americans more maybe the Italians, uh, they also have a wonderful connection to their vehicles. But I I I think uh Americans have unique relationships. And so we gather the stories. And I I think one of the days, one of my goals before I leave here is to publish a coffee table book with all of the stories uh that we've collected, but vehicle donations. I mean, some are sad, you know, and some are really exciting. You know, this is the vehicle we, you know, raised our children in that we, you know, went to a thousand hockey games, baseball games, you know, 250 million soccer games, you know, and then and then when the first kid went off to college, you know, he took the minivan and and uh it came back and the third kid got it. Well, you know, we made 20,000 miles on it, it's finally ready to go. And we sadly part with it's it's almost like parting with a you know with with with a pup or a cat, you know, or a dog or you know, one of your your pets.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

And I definitely feel some emotional attachments to some of my vehicles, not all of them, but some of them for sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Name most of them.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah, I name mine too. I have names for my cars too. Yeah, I love that. So you you added real estate and stock donations as well. So where did those

Challenges, COVID Shocks, And Fixing Mistakes

SPEAKER_00 9:03

ideas come from? You came in, they were just doing car donations, and now did that happen since you've been there?

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Yeah, when we when I got here, we just serviced NPR and PBS. We serviced about 400 of uh the NPR and PBS stations across the country. We now do pretty close to 600, most of them, certainly all the majors. You know, while I was looking for a way to grow, uh I said, one, we need to grow beyond the public media space. So that's number one. And two is, you know, donating is has become very sophisticated uh in in the last few years. And we need to give people a choice. What are they interested in? You know, what what do they have to give that that makes it easy for them to donate? So we expand from uh beyond the vehicles uh into accepting real estate. And we've created we've created something unique. We've created a method to donate real estate that relieves the nonprofit 100% of any liability in that arena. Mostly nonprofits don't want to take real estate because the long-term liability, and if they have to own the house and insurance and transitions and and so on, and it's there they could be big money, you know, disasters and so on. But we we we've created a process that relieves the nonprofit of any any liability whatsoever. Property never goes in their name. Anyway, then we we get we we get the money, and 80% of the proceeds are returned to the nonprofit. We operate on about 10%, and that the other 10% you know pays for our nonprofit, you know, which uh supports social services here in San Diego, basically housing uh parking lots for uh safe parking lots for people. I think we have eight or nine of them now for people living in their vehicles. Uh they have a safe place to park their car at night, place to shower, get out meal. Um, we also uh advocate uh and so on and so on. It's a full service social service agency, it's one of the largest ones in California. We have a huge pantry program uh for food insecurity, uh both home delivery and come and shop, uh, and so on. And uh uh yeah, that's I think that you know pretty well covers it. We do a lot of training.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

So let me ask you this. I hear all this good, but there had to be some challenges along the way, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Um, well, sure. I mean, there are challenges, you know, in everybody's uh life. Every every business has its uh its good parts and its bad parts, and you know, people make mistakes and things go right and things go wrong, or things like uh, you know, COVID come along and you know, things like uh, you know, governments that do strange things, uh change regulations midstream. Uh you know, you have to you have to deal, you have to deal with them. You you make uh you make mistakes or you know, pe people do things and you, you know, uh uh uh inappropriately, unfairly, accidentally offend a donor. Um, you know, you have to fix those things.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Yeah, it makes sense. And yeah, we all

Think And Grow Rich: Principles In Practice

SPEAKER_00 11:44

go through it. And I had mentioned to you earlier about thinking grow rich in our email back and forth.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

And you Yes, I was fascinated. Why why and how and where do we come to this?

SPEAKER_00 11:54

So I've been studying it from for quite a few years, and I started a Think and Grow Rich mastermind here in Pittsburgh, probably about seven and a half years, and it was amazing. And then COVID came and then it was still there, but it wasn't as amazing. We would have like 30 to 40 people in a room. Every month we would get together, we would study a chapter, we'd come together, we'd share our stories, and I'd see these transformations happen in people that were incredible. And they, you know, they'd come with a dream board or not, but the dream board people would come and all the things on their board would come true and their mindset was good. I've seen people just just so touched by the idea of having these success principles. Then I read your email and I said, What? Like you knew some little thing I didn't even know about Matthew was a nickname. And so tell me about Thinking Ver Rich, your thoughts about that, and then a little bit about your personal story about it.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Well, I don't I don't know how long ago they stopped printing in a green, but the first copy of Take The Lich Evergallers had a green cover. I think I remember it being green and yellow. I haven't actually picked up a copy probably in 30 years, to be honest. Uh, I was first introduced to the book in uh had to be 68 or 69.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

I think I was born in 68, just so you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Well, okay. I I don't remember was it like 17 chapters? No, 17 principles. I don't think how many chapters, but I I do remember the ones that affected me the most personally that I can remember most, that I could sort of, you know, quote from would be uh chapter uh four, uh uh auto suggestion, uh uh and so on, and and faith. And I remember that uh the the principles that I learned uh from this book, but particularly in that chapter, really saw me through a very, very, very difficult period in in in my life where I uh wasn't feeling very good about myself. And I was working for a uh a person, a woman who was very, I don't want to say she was unkind, but she was ridiculously demanding. Um and she was doing so, I think, in order to force us all to grow as opposed to being, you know, condescending or pejorative. At one point, I I I started to really wonder about, you know, whether or not I was any good at anything. And so based on, you know, mastering the subconscious, understanding the brain, the things that you come to come out of reading this book with if you read it again and again and again, is at some point you have to give yourself permission to be okay. And so I started writing the initials DTP everywhere, just scribbled it, right? Which was my way of reminding myself um what this was going off on me. Don't take it personally.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Oh, DTP, don't take it.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Don't take it personally. And then in in in the morning, you know, on the mirror, on my mirror, like it says, on the ceiling above my bed back in those days, right? I give myself permission to be okay. I give myself the right to be okay. It's okay to be okay. You are okay. Because if you remember, at the same time as Napoleon Hill's book was was gathering

Vision, Articulation, And Culture

SPEAKER_01 14:44

momentum. Um, I'm okay, you're okay, at least in the late 60s, right? It's sort of all that stuff was merging and emerging again. And so from all of those success-driven books, and I was introduced to the books way back when I joined this multi-level marketing organization as a young guy in my twenties, right? Starting to try to make a little bit of cap capital, a little bit of cash. And they, you know, one of one of their instruments of education was think and grow rich. So I was introduced to it.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Do you remember what was the name of the MLM?

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Oh, yeah, it was in the holiday magic.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Holiday magic. I never heard of that.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Yeah, uh a guy named William Pen Patrick started it. He ran in the gubernatorial race, I think in 64 in California. And it was a big cosmetics thing. And they also had Alexander Taylor, which was clothing and a bunch of other things. But anyway, and I learned a lot, uh, you know, about life uh from from you know their motivational stuff, a lot of which was cookie cutter, but and they weren't very involved with American salesmasters. They used a lot of the lot of those guys, Bob Richards and and uh Nightingale and you know the stuff you remember from him, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

You know, yeah, for sure. There's been a lot of good stuff written since then, too. But I always go back to Thinking Grow Rich and when I feel like I need a refresher. I have a friend that's read it, I think 170 times.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Well, uh the interesting thing about that book, I guess, is if you try and look at the difference, you know, between how we think about motivation, how we think about uh movement towards success today, you know, that they did in the in the 30s, you know, when he wrote this thing, when he was really formulating. And there's another guy by the name of Nelson Davis. If you ever look him up, he won a couple of Emmys. He he he's kind of done the video version of uh, I think which I uh I I forget the name of um oh gosh. Uh uh I'll I'll remember by the time he, but he has a show. I I I don't know if it's still on the air anywhere, but he's still around. Uh Nelson Davis.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Never heard of him before.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Pardon me?

SPEAKER_00 16:31

I never heard of Nelson Davis.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

What the heck does he call Making It? It was the name of the show. And what he did was he interviewed hundreds of minority entrepreneurs and how and why they become successful and the things that they, you know, that they be became successful with. So he's another interesting, uh, interesting fellow. I I know Nelson actually quite uh quite well. I've gotten to know him quite quite well over the years. Uh any anyway. So that's my sort of interaction with Think and Grow Rich. And and today, uh I can tell you I still preach auto-suggestion, occasionally uh, you know, re remind myself of uh the importance of trusting yourself and believing yourself. And uh, you know, I'm having a bad day. I'll scribble these things that I want to remember about being okay and about you know moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

I love that. Yeah. So whenever you're leaving an organization, how

Leadership Lessons From His Father

SPEAKER_00 17:19

important is having a definite chief aim, having that specific goal that you focus on?

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Well, I don't know how you get anywhere without it. I think, you know, there are several really important jobs, functions that a chief executive has to perform. And in a nonprofit, I I know this will probably annoy some people when I say this, but I think part of the, you know, part of your job is making sure that your organization is protected, you know, from overzealous uh lay board members uh who, you know, mean well and want to do well, uh, but sometimes don't really understand uh the professional structure or the long-term goals of the organization. Uh, I also think that probably one of the, you know, one of the top three uh is you must you must master the ability to articulate your vision all level, whether you're talking to your board, to the public, or to the simplest donor, or to your staff, whether they're labor or management, you have to have four or five different ways of articulating your vision. Because as we learn, actually, as we learn, even in thinking about rich, that thoughts manifest, right? We though there are folks out here who absolutely believe that. That whether you believe that it's faith, whether you believe it's metaphysical, whether you believe it's just the mind drawing forward or creating the energy that draws things to you, it doesn't matter. I don't care why it works, it works. And and so my job is to say, hey folks, here's the vision. Now, you guys in marketing, you do this, you guys in business development, you do this, you guys in operations, you do this, you guys under here and under you do that. And if you all take your portion of the vision and just paint your pixels, by the time you bring all this together, it harmonizes and the vision manifests. So why is vision and the ability to articulate it so important? Well, because vision is what creates vacuum in human beings, right? This is where I am, that's where I want to be. This is where I am, that's where I want to be. So I get pulled towards the vision of where I want to be versus where I am. In a strange way, I personally, this is how I motivate myself, I I compare it to a piece of a piece of something stuck between two teeth and I don't have any floss. My gonna work on that until I get it out. No matter what. And that's why vision itself is important. But being able to articulate that vision, and as I think, I think in Hill's book, he says, you know, write it down and have it all out there and review it, review it, review it. It doesn't matter whether you write it down or whether you articulate it to uh a chat bot or what it what it is you do, but the concept of being able to articulate that vision to clearly define where you're going and and uh fill in some of the blanks of how you want again, let your team fill in the rest of the blanks so that they're also contributing. That's a big part, I think one of the biggest parts of of of leadership, of course, um is being able to articulate the vision. The second, third, um, you know, is understanding the need for uh respect.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

There are moments when you're in a room and there should be no rank.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Oh, that is so good what you just said. It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. Tell me this who has been your greatest influence as a leader?

SPEAKER_01 20:16

You know, I think when it comes right down to it, my father.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Oh, I love that. Yeah, love that.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

I mean, I've had different mentors along the way and different friends and so on. But when I think back, the real principles um that that guy continue to guide me today really came from my father. Some examples. When I was out there trying to be an entrepreneur, uh, you know, hustling away. My father looked at me one day and said, honestly, you remind me of a guy on one of those exercise bicycles, you know. You're you're you're you're peddling real fast, but you're not moving anywhere, you know. And I said, What are you talking about? He said, Well, I I see you as a guy who wants to have the whole pie. He said, Let me tell you something, kid. There's no such thing as the whole pie. There's no such reality. He said, and if you want to have a whole

Failure, Learning, And Sharing Success

SPEAKER_01 21:02

pie, you know, and at the same time, hedge your bet. He said, Why don't you start out with three pies? You give two-thirds of each pie away. At the end, you've got three slices, which makes up the whole pie, but each pie is being worked on by other people. Two-thirds of the work is being done by somebody else. You'll end up with the same value, but you've got people, you know, that are as passionate about getting it done as you.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Right. And so you're giving back too as well.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

The more you give away, the more you, you know, you end up getting so that was that was it. That was understanding that took a minute or two, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Sure, it did. And it it did wow, that was impactful for sure. Very what did your dad do?

SPEAKER_01 21:35

What did uh my dad uh my my dad emigrated uh to uh North America when he was nine years of age from Poland. Uh and he eventually uh he was a traveling salesman for a while. He was a navy traveling salesman for a while, and eventually he ended up in a commercial, uh commercial laundry, commercial linen business. Uh, you know, they used to rent out, you know, linens to hotels and restaurants and so on, and you know, pick them up, clean them, and reach them, uh and so on. And he ran that business forty two for 42 years, and and uh when he retired, he sold it, and that was that. And and something else that I even learned on them, he sold the business. He he sold the business not to the highest bidder, he sold it to the second highest bidder.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

He did? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

And my mother said, Don't remember, I remember this conversation. This is another thing I learned really from it. Jerry, she says, why would you take a smaller offer? And I remember looking at my mother, my brother was there too in the room, and uh he said to my mother, is there something uh something in life you really want you don't have? What do you mean? Well, we take a couple of vacations a year. We in the summer we spend it out at our little summer cottage. It's not a grand hotel, but it's a it's a summer cottage and it's on the lake. In the winter, we we get to go, you know, on a holiday and get a new car every three, four years. Like, what is it that you want you don't have economically? We have money to retire. And she said, No, I guess we're okay. And he said, Well, the guy that made me the biggest offer is a guy, I won't use the actual word that he used, but uh one of those jiggly parts. I wouldn't deal with him my entire career. Why, why would I make my last act of business to sell to him for money? Wouldn't I be surrendering, you know, my personal integrity for my sort of personal set of values for a dollar? The amount of money and the difference, and even if it were bigger, just isn't enough for me to want to sacrifice how I've managed my life, which I thought was interesting.

Closing, Resources, And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 23:25

So interesting, which is today so different, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Well, values, right? Values. And so I thought, and that wasn't a specific lesson that was geared to me. It was just how he was, and I thought this stayed with me a long time. And the other thing I think that I I I learned from him again was really by accident, I happened to be hanging out at his at his office one Saturday morning, and and uh he he had a bunch of really wonderful uh people working for him, right? And so he had a lot of uh you know, a lot of women that worked on the press machines, you know, pressing things and running the bid this big flat iron. Many of them were were Jamaican, uh Jamaican women, um, such wonderful people, great sense of humor, sense of community, really rich relationships with each other, I guess, because the community was small back in the years. No, because we're talking now in the 60s, you know, 60s, 70s. And it was Saturday afternoon, and and uh they just sort of closed down for lunch break, and the girls were streaming through the office, and my dad was sitting out front for whatever reason. And what one of them cracked a joke, and my dad started to laugh, and they all stopped and looked at him and said, Oh, sorry, Mr. We didn't know. And he said, Oh, that's okay. I got one I can tell you too. And for about 15 minutes, you know, by the time he they were all done talking, there were like 17 or 18, you know, of these plant workers, all hanging out in that front office joking with my dad and all the rest of it. And I and and I I said to him when they all left and went into the lunchroom, I I didn't realize you sort of hung out with these people so much. And he said, These people, what do you mean? I said, Well, they're your workers. And he said, Well, they're my workers only in that I get to set the policy for how they have to do their job, but I don't see them as any different than you or me in terms of people. Let's start with the fact that everybody who comes to work for you deserves the same respect. And how you manage them should be informed by how you feel about them as individuals. And if you don't think you have the capacity to respect every human being you deal with, then you should never be an employer. It didn't mean anything to me until maybe 20 years later, when one day I heard myself screaming at a couple of guys who'd made a mistake on a marketing program. And and my my father had passed at that point. I heard him, I heard him in the back of my head saying, Is this how you show your respect to the people who have chosen to work with you? And I thought, okay. That day changed the way I looked at the people who worked with me. They stopped, we ceased to be working for me and became people that worked with me. Now that doesn't mean you don't manage them. It doesn't mean you're not, you know, forceful when you need to be. But leadership is about inducing people, enticing people to do things in the correct way, not pushing them into doing it. That goes back to again the vision. What's the vision? Vision also determines culture. Culture for me has become the single most important thread in my management style. I hire unculture. I can train anybody to do anything. But if they don't have the culture that fits, I have a staff here with less than 1% turnover in 10 years. There's a reason for them. They stay because they want to. They're doing 50 times the work today that they did when I got here, with a tenth the stress.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

There's so many nuggets in what you just said. I I'm just sitting here thinking, I would love to spend an entire day with you to learn from you. There's so much good. And with all of that good, let's give some advice to someone who wants to make a difference but doesn't know where to start.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Well, you're gonna make mistakes and you're gonna have failures, some big, some small. Uh I'm kind of motivated by what uh Edison said. I didn't fail. I didn't fail not once. I did, however, discover 2,000 ways not to make a light bulb, which means I don't have to do that in the future, right? I won't even fail, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:14

They figured it out.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Yeah. And things like uh remember things like uh, you know, when you get angry at a guy who makes a mistake? I I'm reminded of the story, uh Tom, I'll tell and tell a quick story um about uh Conrad Lton, the the you know, the the guy who built chain. You you if you're hanging out with guys who read Napoleon Hill, you've probably heard this story, but the young man uh in a St. Louis office that made a million dollar error, it's like fifth or sixth month for the place. And uh in the day, you know, uh the Hilton hotels were were known for the fleet of aircraft. They they used to send them all over the place. Yeah. So this guy, anyway, he he made a mistake. It cost the company a million dollars. And of course, obviously was out, obviously he was going to be fired. Anyway, uh a few days after he was uh summoned to Chicago to meet Mr. Hilton. Nervous and anxious, and said to his colleagues or to the guy that he was working for, well, I I I guess and imagine what a million dollars is like in the 60s. So he's he said, uh, well, I I I I got caught cost a guy a million dollars. I guess he's got the right to fire me face to face.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Some such thing. Anyway, then he goes off and and he's uh you know, calls into he's called into the office and he's sitting there and Mr. Hilton is having a conversation with him. Tell me about your family, tell me about yourself, tell me about this or that. And and finally the young man speaks up and he said, Look, I I've got a lot of anxiety over uh over this. I I I understand considering what I've cost you, you have the right to terminate me in person, but I look, I just can't, can we just get this all over with? And and and and and I need to go home. I wasn't there and I I'm reading this, right? So I'm having my own images of what's going on. I imagine it went something like this. I'm paraphrasing, but you will get the idea. Young man, I I fear you're missing the point. I've just paid a million dollars for your education. Why would I fire you? Are you planning to do this again? If you're not planning to do it again, we're okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Yes, I was thinking that while you were telling the story. It has to be that has to be the angle because you already spent that money, right? That is so good.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Yeah, and and certainly uh I I I don't know what became of the young man. I don't remember sort of what happened there, but the but the for people starting out, I think you need to remember three things. Nothing comes easily. Some parts of what you're going to will come easily, some parts will not use the parts that come easily to motivate you and to remind yourself of why you're doing what you're doing when you're in the difficult parts. Two, there is a solution to everything. The second you find yourself saying this isn't going to work, it's not going to happen. Even if it's to say this particular method or this particular process won't work, but what have I learned from this that can help me find the next thing that will make it work? Three. Don't be afraid to share your success. The funny thing about success is the more you give away, the more you get. And that doesn't mean start writing big checks. Share your knowledge, share your success, share your experience. Don't be afraid to teach while you learn. This is what I've learned today. This is what I've learned yesterday. Build bridges, don't build ditches. And remember that you have no enemies. You have only friends you have yet to meet. And what I mean by that is not just your competitors, not just people you meet along the way, but issues that are preventing you from getting where you want to go, you see as an enemy. It's not an enemy. It forces you to find a creative solution. And when you do, all of a sudden this enemy becomes a friend. Why? Because it taught you yet once again that nothing is insurmountable. And so there are no enemies. There are only friends I have yet to meet. Every problem becomes my best friend. When I either become educated enough to say, well, I don't need that. I don't need to climb that mountain. Or I've climbed that mountain. Oh my God, here I am back saying I've given myself the right to be okay. Because in fact, at the end of the day, I can do the things I need to do to succeed.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Just today, I was writing something and I said that I learned so that I can teach. What I've learned from you today, it's so many teaching moments for me. And I want to thank you for that because your journey to me proves that when purpose and persistence meet, the results can change the world. Just like Napoleon Hill wrote about decades ago. Leadership isn't just about growth, it's about impact that lasts. So if this conversation inspired our audience, please like, subscribe, and share because you never know who might be encouraged to take action after hearing Howard's story. Thank you for all you do, Howard. You're an incredible human being. I am honorable to have you here today. And like I said, I wish I could spend hours with you. And I might just end up doing that someday when I come to San Diego. But thank you so much. It has been my pleasure. And how can people find you and connect with cars or get involved?

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Uh well, my my uh personal email, howard.pearl at gmail.com. Happy to take uh emails from people and cars. Our our uh website is C-A-R-E-A-S Y dot or G, car easy.org. And if you're a nonprofit and you uh are not allergic to free money, you should uh you'd be surprised. You you should you should look us up. We have some amazing fundraising mechanisms that are working incredibly successful for people, and we have an incredible team to uh help you achieve all that, a huge marketing team that does everything for you, Turkey. And we'd love to the more the the merrier. And very flattering words. I uh am humbled uh by some of what you've had to say. It's just a life, and uh I've been fortunate to live it well.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

You sure have, and we're fortunate to have gotten to know you, even this small part. Thank you, Howard.