Exposed: Alexander Berardi -- The Real Deal or just another suspender-wearing little brat?

A Short Biography of Alexander J. Berardi

By Patricia A. Zonsa

A lexander J. Berardi was born in Paterson, New Jersey to Alexander (a house painter) and Virginia (a registered nurse).

At age 2 he used his Handy Andy toolkit to saw the legs off of the kitchen table—only days after breaking 13 windows in the family home with his Wiffle Ball bat—an experiment to test the age-old unstoppable force meets the immovable object theory. Not much has changed; his insatiable curiosity and tradition shattering preoccupation still get him into trouble on a regular basis.

As a young child, Alexander (or “Sandy” as his family and close friends call him) had dreamed of one day becoming a farmer, so he spent his pre-teen years working at a neighborhood dairy farm. The experience “cured” him of his childhood aspirations. “There’s just something about shoveling manure under the hot August sun that makes one rethink one’s goals in life.”

When not shoveling manure, young Berardi was hard at work discovering new and more creative ways to play hooky. As a boy Berardi hated school. He found it unchallenging, restrictive; boring. When he wasn’t setting truancy records, he spent his schooldays meandering his way through elementary school and getting into trouble. The result? He was left back-- twice. Eventually, young Berardi was labeled E.M.R. (Educable Mentally Retarded) by a panel of well-intentioned, but profoundly shortsighted educators, and removed from the mainstream to attend a remedial curriculum.

It wasn’t until sometime around Berardi’s thirteenth birthday that a young, astute educator took special interest in the awkward and painfully shy underachiever. A series of IQ tests revealed young Berardi wasn’t the hopeless dunce he was being made out to be; but a genius—with an IQ estimated to be above 189. The discovery that Berardi was “smarter than his teachers”, prompted educators to allow him to learn at his own pace. Berardi quickly regained his love for learning, his lust for experimentation and his intolerance of the status quo.

He couldn’t have known it at the time, but the series of unfortunate events that defined his childhood, combined with his own unique perspective on life would serve as powerful building blocks for development of Berardi’s trademark counterintuitive business strategy now known as CounterThink™. The way Berardi tells it, “CounterThink™ is all about “discovering Innovation by examining the opposite side of everything.”

Berardi is not just the originator of CounterThink he’s a lifelong practitioner. At the age of 26 Berardi--along with his then fiancée, now wife of 20-plus years, Diane— founded what would become the first in a series of very successful businesses—a medical research firm. Right from the beginning, everyone involved with the new business somehow knew this was going to be no ordinary ride to the top.

The young couple set up shop in the living room of Berardi’s rented house. “We started with five-hundred dollars and a dream,” Berardi recalls. But, by the time the legal fees were paid, some cheap brochures were printed up and the phone was turned on the determined duo was left with only fifty bucks to make the whole thing work.

And work it did. Within eighteen months, the couple’s new venture went from a staff of two to one employing hundreds of doctors, nurses and medical research technicians.

This level of growth is certainly exciting, but it also comes with its share of unique challenges. For instance, raising operating capital to pay salaries was a near impossibility for the young couple. Berardi recalls the experience: “At the time, nobody took a twenty-something entrepreneur seriously. We were laughed out of more banks than I can even remember.” Quickly realizing that help from traditional sources was not forthcoming, Berardi turned his back on tradition and headed in the opposite direction of conventional logic and reason.

CounterThink™ is Born

“We figured, if we can’t make it by go the normal route, let’s just turn around and head in the opposite direction,” said Berardi. “Looking back, I guess you could say it was kind of a real ballsy move,” Berardi remembered.

What Berardi was referring to was his decision to demand his customers bankroll the company’s future. “We just said, look…we can’t carry receivables any longer. If you want to continue doing business with us, you’ll just have to pay us up front,“ Berardi chuckled.

The companies Berardi was dealing with were not kind of organizations who were in the habit of changing their payables policies for the sake of one miniscule vendor; they were among some of the biggest and most venerated healthcare, pharmaceutical and insurance companies in the world.

It was a real gamble. Every one of the clients fueling the explosive growth of Berardi’s fledgling company could have easily turned the tables on his outrageous demands and laughed him right out of business. But, oddly enough, none of the companies balked at the notion and the young renegade walked away with exactly what he needed. And, as best as he can recollect, this is the first time he used his trademark CounterThink™ strategy in business. But it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Leadership Struggles Put CounterThink™ to the Test

In just twenty-four short months, Berardi’s little shop had grown to “corporate” proportions, but the organization’s leader knew nothing at all about leading people.

“It was trial by fire,” Berardi recalled. “I was floundering, and I couldn’t figure out why,” he added. “I read every management and leadership book I could get my hands on, I went to all the seminars, and I did exactly what the experts said to do…but all l got was frustrated”, said Berardi.

The young entrepreneur recalled feeling helpless, like the place was running amuck, and all he could do was stand by and watch it happen. Then finally, and maybe because he had finally run out of management how-to reading material, he came up with what he called “the perfect solution.” Berardi’s perfect solution? To stop following the advice of the so-called experts, and instead, do the exact opposite of what they said to do.

“It was like that episode of Seinfeld— where George rationalizes that every decision he’s ever made has been wrong, and every hunch he’s ever had has led him to failure. So, he decides to go completely against his gut and do the exact opposite of what he would normally do. All of a sudden his luck turns, and everything he touches turns to gold,” Berardi joked.

The result? Ten years later, the painful problems one normally associates with leadership where nowhere to be found in Berardi’s organization. Over that ten-year period the company had grown to employ over eighteen hundred professionals, and had branched out into many other fields. But doing the opposite, once again, turned out to be a winning strategy for Berardi. There was a pattern building here.

It wasn’t long before others started noticing Berardi’s success, and began seeking him out for advice. One day Berardi got a call from the CEO of a hospital management corporation, asking him to please come and present his leadership strategies at a meeting of his executives. Berardi, being naturally shy and somewhat self-conscious, turned him down flat.

“Me, get up in front of a group of total strangers and give a speech…I’d rather sit in a hot tub and open a vein,” Berardi recalled saying. But the executive proved far more tenacious than Berardi had anticipated. “The guy called me every day, for two years, begging me to come and speak. I finally caved to the pressure and told him I’d come tell them what I was doing—although I thought it was more common sense than anything else,” said Berardi.

What advice did he give the executives that day? “Truthfully, I really can’t remember what I said. Like I told the fellow on the phone, I really didn’t think anything I had to say was particularly worthwhile. And then there was the fact that I was scared out of my skin. Frankly, I just wanted to be done with it,” said Berardi. But Berardi must have said something worthwhile that day, because he was soon flooded with additional requests to deliver the same message to other eager audiences.

Berardi’s counterintuitive message—a leader’s primary role is to serve the needs of those he leads—soon became popular among leaders in the healthcare and pharmaceutical fields. As time passed, and success stories poured in, his offbeat strategies became more and more mainstream. Berardi went on to deliver his counterintuitive teachings, hundreds of times, to executives and entrepreneurs in many other industries including retail, hotel and hospitality, banking, insurance and finance, biometrics, and direct sales.

Then in 2001, Berardi was approached by the a major publisher to outline his controversial leadership strategies —a concept that has since become known as Servant Leadership—in a book targeted at business executives.

The book, Never Offer Your Comb to a Bald Man which was published in several languages and eventually became an international best seller, rocketed this self-proclaimed “painful introvert,” and his quirky, counterintuitive philosophies into the international business spotlight.

The demand for his teachings became greater and greater, and his plate was already full. So, in early 2002, Berardi turned the helm of the company they both founded over to his wife, Diane, and went off in full-time pursuit of his new career—that of best-selling author and CounterThink™ expert.

Berardi’s take on this unlikely turn of events? “Twenty years ago, if you would have told me I’d be doing what I am today, I would have told you to lay down and wait for the drugs to wear off.” But as counterintuitive as it may seem for an introvert to make his living in front of an audience, it all seems to be working out just fine. It also seems that this “shy, awkward, underachiever” might have found his niche. Anyone watching can tell Berardi loves what he is doing.

In a recent article about Berardi, the journalist wrote: “Berardi’s not at all what you’d expect, given his renegade reputation. From the moment you meet him, his unassuming nature, and shy, boyish manner are disarming. He’s totally at ease on stage, too—dialoging with the crowd like they were a group of close friends over for dinner. Only when you engage him one-on-one do you begin to see his trademark bashfulness come into play.”

“Berardi is a master motivator,” she went on to say. “ He has a seemingly uncanny ability to translate complex ideas and insights into a language the rest of us can understand. He then weaves his wisdom nuggets together with a patchwork of intoxicating stories and colorful real-life examples that leave even the most jilted seminar goers overflowing with enthusiasm. Watching him at work—whether on stage, consulting with a client over the telephone, or interacting with his staff, even a casual observer can tell he deeply cares about people.”

Unlike many who seek the spotlight, Berardi simply tolerates it. For him it’s all about his passion for entrepreneurs and for the message—“There is no safety in numbers,” he’s fond of saying. “Only crowds of lazy thinkers hopelessly trying to discover new ideas by looking the same old places.” Dare to be different, he tells us. His CounterThink™ success strategy in a nutshell: “Just watch what everybody else is doing, and then do the opposite.”

His growing, worldwide legion of followers seems to venerate him. Membership in his recently formed, “CounterThink Tank™” (a member’s only inner circle of followers who, by design of the organization, are granted closer, more personal access to their guru, as well as more timely, higher caliber insights into his offbeat business building strategies) already has a waiting list. During the recent launch of his new, weekly video blog CounterThink.TV, so many viewers logged onto watch, the servers were crushed by the overload. What the future holds is anybody’s guess. But one thing’s for sure, with Berardi at the helm, it’s bound to be different.

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