Meet Sterling Carter
“What you think you are capable of is not even close to what you can do”
Having a twin brother and being raised by a single mother, Dr. Carter’s family knew that paying for college would be a tough challenge. To alleviate the financial burden of tuition, Dr. Carter and his brother signed up to join the army as juniors in High school. They signed up using something called the buddy system. Young kids often feel scared or nervous signing up for the military, so the buddy system is a way to connect to your home and allow you to serve your country without the fear of isolation comfortably. They were allowed to finish High School and went through boot camp at Ft. Sill in Oklahoma.
One of the great things he learned about the military is that it pushes you to our limits. It allows you to know that you can go through those barriers and accomplish anything you want. A large part of being in the military is the mental toughness that you develop. The discipline that you acquire from being in the military carries over into your everyday life. You accomplish more before 10 AM than most people accomplish throughout the course of the day.
All of his time in the military was as a combat medic. His entire life has been based on saving others, and in the military, he was trained in the servant-leader model. A prime example given was when he would go in the mess hall, the leaders would wait at the end of the line to ensure that all of their soldiers would eat before they did. The same type of leadership and management style is what he uses in business. It builds loyalty because your employees understand that the priority is to ensure that their needs are met before the owner reaps any rewards. This type of loyalty is a lesson that He and his brother wrote about in their book “Double Your Success,” which talked about servant leadership and how it translates into the business world.
Based on his military experiences, he is fearless, compassionate, disciplined, God-Fearing, and humble. Over the course of his experiences, he noticed that when some people succeed in life, they believe it was because of their own doing. However, he believes that many people in his life, such as God, family, friends, and military leaders, have helped him be the person he is today.
As a mentor, the best advice that he can give to confused high school students who would want to pattern themselves after him is that everything in life starts with a plan.If you don’t have a plan, then it will not be easy to achieve what you want in life.Often in life, everyone says that they have a dream, and the vision ends there.Even Martin Luther King, Jr had a dream, but a dream will only get you so far if you don’t have a plan.Dr. King had planned on ways to move toward his dream of equality, and in life, each of us must have a plan on ways to reach the next level.One of his favorite books is titled “The One Thing” by Gary Keller.When you move up the food chain in management, you get inundated with things to do.Mr. Keller states that if you focus on one main thing to get through at the end of the day, you will be working on the right thing.Prioritizing tasks is the most important thing to do to propel you so much farther in your life.
