"Part 3: Craig Garber's In Search Of Heroes Interview" by Ralph Zuranski
Ralph Zuranski: You know that’s interesting because the scope of the in search of heroes program is to give those people in the communities that you grew up in hope, that they can compete with the profits in drugs and in crime by marketing the products in their local community on the internet or just come up with products on their own.
Craig Garber: There’s a huge need for that, no doubt about that, if you can reach out and change some lives, you really will be changing the course of the world for these people, because there is a shortage of hope in places like that, I know there was in my neighborhood, in my house, and you know there still is for the rest of my family, I was just fortunate.
Ralph Zuranski: How did you become an optimist? Because, to be able to get out of that situation you had to actually have a positive view of the future and you could change your life.
Craig Garber: I have no idea, I don’t know, I thank God every day to tell you the truth.
I just beat the odds, I really don’t know how I became an optimist, I think how I became an optimist was I had faith in me. I knew I was better than where I was living. Not that I was a better person than the people that were living there, but that I could do better.
I just didn’t know what was out there, I had to know what better looked like, so that was the pain and the growth process for me was how to act in better, how to act when your in better, what does that mean.
The other thing was I realized how little I knew and I always sought out information, I realized the importance of information. I was schooled in everything what “not to do”, which is a valuable lesson, but I had know idea what “to” do.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, obviously it took a lot of courage to pursue new ideas, because most people are trapped in the place where there at for fear of doing anything new, or disrupting their peer group that they hang around with.
Craig Garber: Well, in a way I had it easy that way because I’m a risk taker and I’m at the bottom, so what if I fail at this, where am I gonna’ go? There’s no way that I can be worse off than I am now.
You know, there’s no way that things can be worse than they are now. If I screw up, then just go on to the next thing and maybe that’ll screw up, so you know I think in a way from the fear of failure, you know some people are to lazy to take action, that stuff never bothered me because I had always known that there’s only up. It may not work, but you know I probably couldn’t get further down.
Ralph Zuranski: So you were willing to experience discomfort in pursuit of your dreams?
Craig Garber: Oh yeah, Look you have to, you know everybody sees the end result of people, you know, ‘you’re a success, you’re this, you’re that.’ It’s like a band, these guys came out of nowhere, you don’t know the ten years of sleeping in vans, and laying in vomit in hotel rooms with fifteen other guys.
You have to be willing to sacrifice a little bit, it’s a misnomer and it’s something that people don’t want to believe, but nobody has it easy. Everybody’s had a struggle, some people have to struggle more than others, some have to struggle a lot more than others, but there are very, very few people that are actually given something.