When Glenn Stearns, 59, appears in a Zoom call for an interview, he looks like your average guy. He sports a blue plaid button-up shirt and a beige jacket. In the background, his office looks like any office anywhere else.
But the difference is that Stearns has been a billionaire.
Is he now?
When asked, he says he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care.
Because no matter how much money he has or doesn’t have, what’s most important to him are the many good relationships in his life — with his wife, Mindy, his six kids, his friends, his employees and his colleagues.
To see how Stearns ended up where he is, we need to first go back to his humble beginnings.
Photos By John Chapple
Overcoming Adversity
Stearns wasn’t born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. In fact, in his case, it was quite the opposite.
Born in a low-income community of Silver Spring, Md., Stearns’ parents were both alcoholics, and his father also did drugs. Many people in his extended family died from drug or alcohol-related deaths.
In his book, “InteGRITy: My Slow and Painful Journey to Success,” which came out in May, Stearns is frank about it all. “Growing up, I was labeled ‘the biggest loser’ and ‘most likely to fail.’ The odds were clearly stacked against me,” he says.
Back then, they were. Stearns failed fourth grade because he had difficulty learning. He had dyslexia, but wouldn’t know this until a professor pointed it out to him in college. He fathered his first child when he was just 14 years old, and although he never tried drugs, he began to drink heavily, to the point of blacking out.
With his background, it sounds like Stearns should have ended up a statistic — in trouble, in jail or dead.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, he became a success.
Why? Stearns says that certain people in his life believed in him and he became determined to make it big and prove them right.
Banking On Him
As a teen he had been skating daily at a local roller rink. He recalls the manager saying to him, “I believe in you. You’re going to do good things.” Stearns admits that he brushed off the compliment but adds, “In the back of my mind, I wanted to prove him right.”
During his first three years of high school, Stearns earned abysmal grades, but he aced his senior year because he wanted to go to college. “I was chasing a girl. I didn’t go because I’m studious and smart,” he admits.
While attending what is now Towson University in Maryland, Stearns helped found a fraternity chapter with some friends. A 60-year-old fraternity brother came to help them get it going. Stearns recalls participating in ice breakers together. During one, the man said, “Why don’t we go around the room and talk about people we admire. It could be the president of the United States, someone who is dead or an athlete. But why do we admire them?”
The elder fraternity brother began by saying, “I admire Glenn, and let me tell you why,” then shared a list of reasons he looked up to Stearns.
“I didn’t have this great support group. I didn’t have parents who gave me the boundaries I needed. But I didn’t want to let these two guys down. It was weird,” he says. “You could call it planting a seed. It meant a lot to me.”
Changing His Ways
He graduated college with a degree in economics but continued struggling with heavy drinking.
He remembers — and recalls in his book — sitting in a bar with friends, laughing out loud, but says, “In my deepest fog, I had my clearest thought, and that was, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’”
The next day, he talked a friend into jumping in a car and driving to California — with no job prospects and no place to live.
Once there, he remembers sitting on a bench overlooking the Pacific Ocean. “It was just beautiful — people, cars and homes. This is what I wanted,” he recalls.
While walking around one day, he saw a guy trimming bushes in front of a beautiful home. When Stearns asked him what he did for a living to afford such a nice place, he informed him that he was just the gardener, but that the homeowner was in real estate.
Stearns decided that with the economics degree, he could become a loan officer. It was a decision that would change the trajectory of his life.
Learning And Growing
Stearns secured a job at a small lending company, and although he had no experience as a loan officer, he was willing to learn.
He stayed late. He read loan files. He worked hard.
“I knew I was doing what other people didn’t want to do or weren’t willing to do.”
After he left the company, Stearns founded what would become Stearns Lending as well as many other businesses.
In 2019, he starred in the Discovery show “Undercover Billionaire” after telling the show’s creators, “If you want to put me anywhere in this country with no money, no contacts, I’ll bet I could rebuild a business again. Because people think building a business is lucky. It’s hard work.”
He had just $100 in his pocket, a cell phone and an old pickup truck. With that, he was given only 90 days to establish a million-dollar company in Erie, Pa.
“I really enjoyed building a team and going for it,” says Stearns. The business they built, Underdog BBQ, is still operating today. Stearns returned to Erie with Discovery in 2021, starring in “Undercover Billionaire: Comeback City.” In this show, he helped revive small businesses about to fail.
In all of Stearns’ business experiences, he knew that treating people well was the key.
“As an example, my receptionist has been with me 26 years. My assistant has been with me for 27,” says Stearns. And other underwriters and closers have worked with him for 15 or 20 years. “When you look at companies that have a revolving door, there’s a reason. But building a team where we all know each other — we can become the best.”
Being Kind
In 2020, Stearns founded his most recent company, Kind Lending.
What made this business “edgy” is that the crux of it is in the name — to be kind to everyone involved: the customers as well as the employees. When he thought about establishing Kind Lending, he says he did it because “I love the problem-solving aspect. I love homeownership for people. But I wanted to do it my way,” he says.
He hired Mindy as the Chief Kindness Officer. What’s her job? With every new hire, she lets them know how happy the company is that they’re a part of it. She — and sometimes even Glenn — calls each person before they begin working. “We give them a warm welcome. I’ve never had that — owners have never called me before,” says Stearns. “It gets people to stay.”
In addition, Mindy calls employees on their birthdays and sends them a gift. Having worked in television, including as a red-carpet reporter for “Entertainment Tonight” on KTLA 5 News, she runs Kind TV, an in-house weekly new program.
Other companies initially said, “You don’t act like a mortgage company.” Stearns says they were right. “Now what’s happened? Other people have Chief Kindness Officers,” he says with a smile. “I’m flattered. Let them do it. The whole idea is I hope we change the industry back to being a friendly one. That’s what I want.”
Throughout his career, Stearns has believed that everyone in a company is equal. He’s often learned more about businesses and received help from their receptionists than from their CEOs. And he cherishes that his friends — regardless of their social and financial status — feel like they can be themselves with him and Mindy.
“I really like deep relationships. That means you can be yourself. I’ve always led with being vulnerable — letting people know that I’ve been really lucky to do some pretty cool stuff, but I’m also a screwup as well,” says Stearns. “If happiness is the scale that you go by, I’m one of the richest men in the world.”
