60 Days Down to 60 Minutes Changed How Shelton Thinks About His Own Team

Sean Weisbrot: What's the hardest thing about

Sean Weisbrot: going around talking to governments and leaders and trying to get them to collaborate in a way that's good for society?

Shelton Mercer III: Well, I I say that the saying I use is that, philanthropy is limited and government is broken.

Shelton Mercer III: And I say that actually to policy leaders, and and they all look around usually

Shelton Mercer III: sheepishly at first and maybe a little nervous, but they admit that we have limitations in all of our institutions.

Shelton Mercer III: What we are doing is bringing a new way of thinking and, some new energy into the room with with leaders of all, genres.

Shelton Mercer III: So when I have policy and government leaders, they're in the room with, Fortune one hundred, c suite leaders with,

Shelton Mercer III: some high net families with, leaders in the capital markets, but also leaders throughout, humanitarian efforts and community leaders.

Shelton Mercer III: Bringing them together in one room kinda levels the playing field.

Shelton Mercer III: There's a parody that I like to,

Shelton Mercer III: bring into the rooms that I'm in. There's a power shift.

Shelton Mercer III: Power is not just about authority and position.

Shelton Mercer III: It is about influence

Shelton Mercer III: and the ability to make impact.

Shelton Mercer III: And so,

Shelton Mercer III: that that that mindset and my experience in working with those leaders throughout the years

Shelton Mercer III: allows me to have a real sense of rapport, first of all.

Shelton Mercer III: We're not here to bash them.

Shelton Mercer III: We're not here to tear them down.

Shelton Mercer III: We're just here to tell the truth.

Shelton Mercer III: And then through that truth telling,

Shelton Mercer III: we're able to get to some really great, ideas that turn into opportunities.

Shelton Mercer III: And right now, we've been meeting with leaders in America around the that have host the World Cup, cities where the World Cup is being hosted this summer,

Shelton Mercer III: and the ideas to to have some permanence.

Shelton Mercer III: How do we create some real energy,

Shelton Mercer III: channel the investment that's in those cities, and use that

Shelton Mercer III: to provide some really, long term outcomes for the good for the people who live, work, and play

Shelton Mercer III: in those cities?

Shelton Mercer III: And when I can have top level leaders who are in a city like Philadelphia or New York or Boston or or Seattle or Kansas City even, which are very disparate markets,

Shelton Mercer III: when they're talking about trying to solve problems in their in their cities,

Shelton Mercer III: and they're looking at opportunities like the once in a generational opportunity that a World Cup, hosting or an Olympics

Shelton Mercer III: brings to a city.

Shelton Mercer III: Then we start to mitigate all of those hurdles and those barriers that are usually there, and we can get past the things that, yeah, we know, again, government is fragmented, philanthropy has limitations.

Shelton Mercer III: But with the collective power leaders coming together, it doesn't become an us versus them.

Shelton Mercer III: It becomes a we, and that's the win that I'm looking for all the time.

Sean Weisbrot: I know that American politics is really built on these exact leaders giving money to these exact politicians to put forth their own agendas.

Sean Weisbrot: How do you get them to

Sean Weisbrot: be in a forum where they're actually working towards the benefit of the people rather than just themselves?

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Shelton Mercer III: I'm I'm not a politician.

Shelton Mercer III: I'm not a political fundraiser.

Shelton Mercer III: I don't claim a party affiliation.

Shelton Mercer III: I've been an independent my entire life.

Shelton Mercer III: And so for me, it's not about the that as much as it's about

Shelton Mercer III: there is a base base level of humanity that I am pushing for.

Shelton Mercer III: I talk about the the the virtues that we are trying to push in leadership

Shelton Mercer III: so that we can get to outcomes have nothing to do with who's got the most wealth and who has the highest position in the land.

Shelton Mercer III: It is about that that that parity and equity that we can create because of the unique position.

Shelton Mercer III: There is, of course, a lot of money in politics, but there's a lot of money in every place.

Shelton Mercer III: There's money in sports.

Shelton Mercer III: There's outsized wealth in the capital markets, in the corporate spaces.

Shelton Mercer III: And even when you get to to global philanthropy, I mean, the levels of giving,

Shelton Mercer III: and dollars that are being spent to try to solve issues in our world are are immense.

Shelton Mercer III: And so when we can move past some of those and get to the base level of

Shelton Mercer III: you're a brilliant leader, I'm a brilliant leader, we live, work, and play in the same geographic region, let's do things for this place that we say we we care about that are gonna be meaningful and and have more permanence than,

Shelton Mercer III: the type of, one time one off types of things.

Shelton Mercer III: I mean, you look at the the headlines, if you recall some of the things that have happened in the past with the Olympics or with the World Cup, you've had waste, fraud, and abuse.

Shelton Mercer III: You've had, venues being built that become parking lots and overgrown,

Shelton Mercer III: places of of of waste in five years, you know, worker human rights abuses, all those things.

Shelton Mercer III: We wanna mitigate those

Shelton Mercer III: and get to a place to say, you know, this is a celebration

Shelton Mercer III: for a region to have these major events.

Shelton Mercer III: This is a way for us to do things.

Shelton Mercer III: There's there's there's opportunities.

Shelton Mercer III: I I recall being,

Shelton Mercer III: with the the city of Phoenix and the mayor there, some years ago.

Shelton Mercer III: And when they were able to get the Super Bowl to host that,

Shelton Mercer III: part of their goals was to get a a light rail line,

Shelton Mercer III: that is train line from the experts, the the outside of the city into downtown,

Shelton Mercer III: and and widen their infrastructure for their highways so that they could ease traffic congestion.

Shelton Mercer III: Those things get caught up in in in politic politics and and and and infighting for years, but something like a pivotal moment like the this city is gonna play host to the world

Shelton Mercer III: has a wonderful way of of of of motivating leaders to get something done.

Shelton Mercer III: We try to take advantage of that, harness it in ways that don't just become vanity sessions,

Shelton Mercer III: and really push forward initiatives that are gonna have meaningful outcomes for the people, for generations to come.

Sean Weisbrot: So when you do these sessions,

Sean Weisbrot: is your goal to get, like, the government and these companies to come together and spend money on these initiatives?

Sean Weisbrot: Or is there something where you have other people that you're working with that that say, hey.

Sean Weisbrot: That's a great initiative.

Sean Weisbrot: I wanna join you, like, some sort of nonprofit or, like, how do you because, like, you need money to get stuff done, and America is notoriously expensive to get anything done.

Sean Weisbrot: So,

Shelton Mercer III: Sure.

Sean Weisbrot: like, how do you get it over the line from idea to execution,

Sean Weisbrot: or is that not part of your actual kind of self stated responsibility with this?

Shelton Mercer III: Well, I've done bunch of these initiatives over my my career, and so I know fully well the entire kind of lifeline

Shelton Mercer III: or life cycle that these things have.

Shelton Mercer III: What we decided to do with Activate

Shelton Mercer III: is not to get into I don't have to be the one to do it.

Shelton Mercer III: Our role in our team is to be the ones to spark these new ideas,

Shelton Mercer III: to convene leaders in some new ways of of curated connectivity

Shelton Mercer III: that are more that are beyond the whole kind of talking head.

Shelton Mercer III: Let's get a committee together,

Shelton Mercer III: and let's waste a lot of time pontificating and bloviating.

Shelton Mercer III: We get one city, one day, 100 leaders, and we lead them through a rapid ideation that we've developed.

Shelton Mercer III: We've had an entire framework

Shelton Mercer III: where we can run eight round tables at one time focusing on different issues like a region's economy strength, the talent, the infrastructure,

Shelton Mercer III: the design, the innovation in a in a region, and have those leaders come together as peers,

Shelton Mercer III: ideate on initiatives that can be enacted in twenty four months that have the ability to propel us to twenty five year plus outcomes.

Shelton Mercer III: That becomes the our remit.

Shelton Mercer III: And so from there, we take and we've built a,

Shelton Mercer III: AI tech enabled platform that creates outcome intelligence.

Shelton Mercer III: And so Activate becomes not just that one day and that 100 leaders, we now have some,

Shelton Mercer III: permanence because we've provided some actual data of the cities that that we've had these ideations in, cross indexing them with things that really work throughout the world.

Shelton Mercer III: And so we're using the power

Shelton Mercer III: of of machine learning and generative AI to produce

Shelton Mercer III: these robust readouts that say, you came up with eight ideas.

Shelton Mercer III: Here's how they rank, and here's the top three or four that we feel like you should go after.

Shelton Mercer III: From there, we hand that to those leaders in that city, and it's beyond politics and policy.

Shelton Mercer III: It's corporate.

Shelton Mercer III: It's philanthropic.

Shelton Mercer III: It's community leaders who are coming together to say, we love this place.

Shelton Mercer III: Are there two or three d's of these that we can take on?

Shelton Mercer III: And then from there, we say, we'll quarterback that with you, but we're gonna hand that to you and allow you to have a really strong playbook and some,

Shelton Mercer III: great initiatives that you can launch.

Shelton Mercer III: And we continue to spread ourselves throughout the world because we believe that I believe that a wider play right now is necessary,

Shelton Mercer III: and and and we don't get bogged down into all the history and the the the the bureaucracy of a various of a region,

Shelton Mercer III: but we give them something that's almost turnkey

Shelton Mercer III: that has really first world thinking tied to it. And it uses my passion about, that that it's more important to get outcomes than to just have outputs and activity.

Sean Weisbrot: What are some of the ideas that this outcome generator

Sean Weisbrot: gave you that you had to present to someone?

Sean Weisbrot: You're like, oh, okay.

Sean Weisbrot: And you presented it to the people and they accepted it.

Shelton Mercer III: Well, you know, right now, there's a there's a couple of several pieces down.

Shelton Mercer III: I mean, we we spent some time in Atlanta last year,

Shelton Mercer III: with our partners Greenberg, Troward, and had leaders from the, transportation sector

Shelton Mercer III: as well as, leaders in the corporate sector.

Shelton Mercer III: Atlanta's home to a lot of corporate entities.

Shelton Mercer III: I I will our report list who who was there, but one of the issues was refurbishing their their their light rail line, their MARTA, high speed line.

Shelton Mercer III: They have a 104 miles of track, and being able to to, enact electric buses.

Shelton Mercer III: That idea came out of our our ideation.

Shelton Mercer III: I understand that they have enacted a bunch of that ready for the World Cup coming to them.

Shelton Mercer III: That is happening in

Shelton Mercer III: in in, in in this summer.

Shelton Mercer III: In San Francisco, as we hosted leaders downtown there with JPMorgan,

Shelton Mercer III: San Francisco has hosted both the the Super Bowl in January or February.

Shelton Mercer III: They have the World Cup. Last year, they had the NBA All Star.

Shelton Mercer III: There there's folks that are saying, why shouldn't San Francisco go after an Olympic bid again,

Shelton Mercer III: as a city that has shown that can host major events?

Shelton Mercer III: And so I think that those things become some of the wins.

Shelton Mercer III: And, of course, again, as I said, there's a lot of those, ideas that are on our in our Activate site.

Shelton Mercer III: Our focus now is how do we get more leaders around the world coming together here?

Shelton Mercer III: And as these those these ideas can get spun up into initiatives,

Shelton Mercer III: that is empowering for them.

Shelton Mercer III: What I wanna do is be able to collect create that collective

Shelton Mercer III: and give the energy of a of a really world class platform that says, this is the feasibility of of this idea,

Shelton Mercer III: and we can turn that into an initiative, but it takes the willpower

Shelton Mercer III: and the resources of the folks in that region.

Shelton Mercer III: And we're at those stages where we we're able to get the folks together, come up with the really great ideas,

Shelton Mercer III: have that energy, and we're moving into that phase where we now can launch initiatives with some of these cities and see the impact.

Shelton Mercer III: I think post World Cup, we're gonna be able to see how many of these get adopted, and, we'll be tracking all the way and reporting out, and hopefully,

Shelton Mercer III: locking arms with leaders there to help them push these ideas into, bona fide initiatives.

Sean Weisbrot: Have you ever had your outcome generator suggest, like,

Sean Weisbrot: moving people out of the city to make the city better?

Sean Weisbrot: You know, like, some of the weirder things that people, are afraid of that AI is gonna

Sean Weisbrot: suggest.

Sean Weisbrot: Like, oh, you don't want homeless people?

Sean Weisbrot: Just dump them in San Francisco.

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: You know?

Shelton Mercer III: Well, the good thing is that I'm a proponent that AI has to be,

Shelton Mercer III: mitigated with HI. Artificial intelligence meets human ingenuity.

Shelton Mercer III: So we don't leave the machines to do all the the the thinking and the learning for us. We actually

Shelton Mercer III: have an amazing team.

Shelton Mercer III: I have several amazing folks.

Shelton Mercer III: My team, Rose Cameron, my chief brand and anthropologist

Shelton Mercer III: is brilliant at this.

Shelton Mercer III: She's worked with corporations all around the world in governments.

Shelton Mercer III: And so we take all the stuff that we get from the machine, and then we filter it through some of the experts that we have,

Shelton Mercer III: on our team, making sure that we're not just going to have that kind of a hallucinations

Shelton Mercer III: that you see in the Gen AI world.

Shelton Mercer III: But here's where the AI stuff is so important.

Shelton Mercer III: It used to take us sixty days to get all of the data.

Shelton Mercer III: We record all of the pitches from our leaders,

Shelton Mercer III: and then we would take them, and and our group would listen to them and pull out all the highlights and try to do some, actual cross referencing

Shelton Mercer III: through things that are working.

Shelton Mercer III: We now take that sixty days that is down to sixty minutes where we can use the power

Shelton Mercer III: of technology to get all of that that coalescing, all of that,

Shelton Mercer III: stare and compare together.

Shelton Mercer III: And now our team can take over and say, how do we rank these?

Shelton Mercer III: Are these accurate?

Shelton Mercer III: And so something like that, dystopian things that don't have humanity involved, we're gonna outright reject that.

Shelton Mercer III: That's not my values at all.

Shelton Mercer III: I am about people.

Shelton Mercer III: The machines and computers and technology are used are should be used to help improve the lives and enhance the lives of folks, not to put misery into the world.

Shelton Mercer III: And so, anti the Terminator dystopian,

Shelton Mercer III: we become the gatekeepers.

Shelton Mercer III: And it's important and incumbent on me and my team that we don't get so wedded to a technology tool, which is great, but that we are, are buffeting that with the human ingenuity, with the empathy,

Shelton Mercer III: to make sure that we're providing equitable solutions, not just things that are gonna increase someone's bottom line or enhance wealth for a certain group of individuals.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: I can't say that I trust Deloitte or, you know, those other big four to follow the same kind of, path

Sean Weisbrot: to be trusted with, like, not implementing things that are clearly bad for humanity.

Sean Weisbrot: So I'm glad that someone is thinking about this.

Sean Weisbrot: And something that I've been really worried about

Sean Weisbrot: like, I use AI every day, and I've been automating a lot of what I do.

Sean Weisbrot: And I absolutely love what automations are are enabling me to do. But I often worry about

Sean Weisbrot: the impact because, for example, I had a designer, and

Sean Weisbrot: the AI is able to produce better work than the designer faster and cheaper.

Sean Weisbrot: Like,

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: you know, it used to cost

Sean Weisbrot: it used to take three days to get a thumbnail back.

Sean Weisbrot: The AI can do it in a minute, and it's better quality.

Sean Weisbrot: And so I had to let the designer go.

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: And, like, now I see people making videos about how to

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: automate your video editing pipeline.

Sean Weisbrot: And I've got a person I'm working with to do my video editing, and I'm like, how much longer that does this guy have an opportunity to work?

Sean Weisbrot: Like, I just feel bad.

Sean Weisbrot: There's like, I don't wanna let people go, but, like,

Shelton Mercer III: Sure.

Sean Weisbrot: capitalism dictates that I need to do the

Sean Weisbrot: thing that saves me the most amount of money and produces, you know, the same quality or better.

Sean Weisbrot: And I know that this is gonna impact everybody, you know, even the wealthiest of us.

Sean Weisbrot: So I know you said that you have this human ingenuity to protect people from the AI's potential dumb ideas.

Sean Weisbrot: But how do you make sure that the implementation

Sean Weisbrot: doesn't hurt humans in the process of being implemented to serve the greater city or region

Sean Weisbrot: because automations are going to hurt humans, and AI is going to hurt humans.

Shelton Mercer III: Sure.

Shelton Mercer III: No. I I think you've raised some really valid points.

Shelton Mercer III: I mean, I'm dealing with a issue like that now as well around my social media.

Shelton Mercer III: Right?

Shelton Mercer III: We having a full time social media manager

Shelton Mercer III: is no longer necessary.

Shelton Mercer III: It's it becomes an expense,

Shelton Mercer III: on your in your burn that you're looking at saying when when we have so many tools that can do this, faster

Shelton Mercer III: and sometimes better, more efficiently, and definitely more affordable,

Shelton Mercer III: I you know, there's a part of this that I think this is where I love being involved in the work that I do now, and frankly, across my entire timeline,

Shelton Mercer III: every one of the companies that I've started,

Shelton Mercer III: we have sought to to meet a issue or to solve a problem or a challenge,

Shelton Mercer III: but to do it in a way that I call virtuous and equitable.

Shelton Mercer III: And I've been at times, I've had both advisors and investors question,

Shelton Mercer III: what why we wouldn't take the path of least resistance or to take the path of more wealth and and and more greed.

Shelton Mercer III: It's a personal,

Shelton Mercer III: value that I have.

Shelton Mercer III: I I believe we can that proverbial do well while doing good,

Shelton Mercer III: it it's beyond that.

Shelton Mercer III: It's about an ethic.

Shelton Mercer III: It's about an ethos that says,

Shelton Mercer III: I don't have to live in a zero sum world.

Shelton Mercer III: My world is definitely something that is, it it is multiplicative.

Shelton Mercer III: I wanna be an additive to every single person I I I touch.

Shelton Mercer III: And what I have the ability to do now in my positions

Shelton Mercer III: is to be infectious with leaders of some of the largest corporations in the world, some of the wealthiest families in the world.

Shelton Mercer III: I just spent, some time with a

Shelton Mercer III: a grandson of a very wealthy family yesterday,

Shelton Mercer III: talking through some things that we're working on on the and and and,

Shelton Mercer III: and getting to hear the zeal and the passion in him about doing something that was beyond trying to make a few more bucks,

Shelton Mercer III: was just so refreshing.

Shelton Mercer III: And so we take that to scale where it is, again,

Shelton Mercer III: yes, there are some realities.

Shelton Mercer III: And efficiency is and technology is something we all wanted.

Shelton Mercer III: Right?

Shelton Mercer III: I mean, there there's no way that we wanna go back to the time when you had to have a pager, a PalmPilot,

Shelton Mercer III: a big old Dell laptop, or one of those brick Toshibas I used to have back in the day,

Shelton Mercer III: plus my home computer.

Shelton Mercer III: I mean, I do everything on a small phone that that that my life becomes better.

Shelton Mercer III: Here's where I think the the the the that we need leaders like you and I. If we are building in this world, the humanity of it all matters.

Shelton Mercer III: And so what what I'm doing with some of my team is saying, we're gonna upskill you or we're going to cross skill you.

Shelton Mercer III: You have amazing talents and and skills in these areas.

Shelton Mercer III: We can automate some functions of your role.

Shelton Mercer III: I mentioned my anthropologist.

Shelton Mercer III: I don't need her spending sixty days trying to get a report done when she can get it done in sixty minutes.

Shelton Mercer III: What I do need, though, is the expertise of her twenty plus years of experience

Shelton Mercer III: being able to take it to new levels, have time to think for she and I and the team to have time to ideate around these things and not spend

Shelton Mercer III: copious amounts of hours trying to generate things

Shelton Mercer III: when we can use the human ingenuity that we need.

Shelton Mercer III: So I think you're right.

Shelton Mercer III: Of course, we see the headlines.

Shelton Mercer III: I mean, we saw Meta's laying off 10% of their workforce yesterday.

Shelton Mercer III: We're gonna see more layoffs.

Shelton Mercer III: Amazon's just been doing some more cuts.

Shelton Mercer III: All of these big firms are gonna continue to try to find ways to cut corners.

Shelton Mercer III: I think there's some of us who can say, well, you know what?

Shelton Mercer III: I don't have a a workforce of 10,000 people.

Shelton Mercer III: I got I got a core team of 10.

Shelton Mercer III: How do I ensure that those 10 folks can take their efforts to the to the next level and that everybody we work with has the type of ethos

Shelton Mercer III: and shares our value.

Shelton Mercer III: So, you know, I don't wanna be pollyannish about it or just kind of like, hey.

Shelton Mercer III: I'm the eternal optimist.

Shelton Mercer III: But I do know that,

Shelton Mercer III: you know, my world, has vestiges of success based on me looking forward to outcomes that I can produce.

Shelton Mercer III: And if I can't do that with a way that's going to be additive to humanity, I'm gonna reject it outright.

Sean Weisbrot: Have you ever considered starting an initiative to upscale people?

Sean Weisbrot: Because I've thought about this for the last five years,

Sean Weisbrot: and I've known that all of this stuff is coming.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm sure you have as well.

Sean Weisbrot: And I know that most people don't understand.

Sean Weisbrot: Like, I have conversations

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: every day with people.

Sean Weisbrot: You know, some of my friends work for other people.

Sean Weisbrot: Some of my friends own companies.

Sean Weisbrot: Some of my friends invest in companies.

Sean Weisbrot: And everybody has a different view.

Sean Weisbrot: The problem I see is my friends that work for other people aren't really using AI. They're not really talking about it, and they're not really thinking about it. So when I bring it up and I ask them, are you using AI?

Sean Weisbrot: And they say no. I get worried for them.

Sean Weisbrot: And I I legitimately think they're all gonna lose their jobs in the next few years.

Sean Weisbrot: And so I feel like

Sean Weisbrot: there needs to be something.

Sean Weisbrot: I don't know how to do it, but I feel like someone who has a lot more

Sean Weisbrot: a lot more of an ability or a network or, means,

Sean Weisbrot: I I think, like, I think that's where philanthropy should be right now.

Sean Weisbrot: It's like, how do we prevent people from losing their jobs, or how do we find a way to help them learn the skills that they need so that they don't need those jobs?

Shelton Mercer III: No. I I you you nailed it. I part of

Shelton Mercer III: I spent a lot of time in that direct hands on,

Shelton Mercer III: human type of work.

Shelton Mercer III: You know, when I was in working in community organizations and faith organizations

Shelton Mercer III: and my hometown Philly and other places in The US, Spent a lot of time directly with people, running programs, ideating programs,

Shelton Mercer III: funding programs that would help people directly with whether it was upskilling or, quality of life.

Shelton Mercer III: What I find what is effective for me now is that while I do have some some causes in places where I am serving on boards and helping with that, here's where the superpower happens.

Shelton Mercer III: I launched my first innovation hub with the University of Pennsylvania in 2036,

Shelton Mercer III: and that place is a thriving hub, 23 acres.

Shelton Mercer III: It's robotics and life sciences

Shelton Mercer III: and biotech startups that are now going into scale up mode,

Shelton Mercer III: and it's a launchpad for a lot of really great, ideas that turn into, companies and enterprises.

Shelton Mercer III: What I do is I build in that type of equity, if you will, into the things I do. So when I take on a project like that, I'm gonna tell an Ivy League, institution,

Shelton Mercer III: I will lead this, and I have a turnkey system.

Shelton Mercer III: The Mercer Innovation Outcomes System is a playbook.

Shelton Mercer III: It does everything from design to of the space

Shelton Mercer III: to design of the ecosystem to financial solvency and profitability, in a few years.

Shelton Mercer III: I'm gonna,

Shelton Mercer III: license that to you, and our team will run it, but you've gotta agree to some things.

Shelton Mercer III: So that that,

Shelton Mercer III: center itself is adjacent to a neighborhood that is called the Forgotten Bottom.

Shelton Mercer III: And I didn't name the neighborhood.

Shelton Mercer III: I hate that on the on the Google map, it's called that.

Shelton Mercer III: And what we did is say, we're gonna make sure that we can not that that that neighborhood should not be forgotten.

Shelton Mercer III: It should be not just discovered.

Shelton Mercer III: It should be uplifted.

Shelton Mercer III: And so young kids who are in who have interest in STEM,

Shelton Mercer III: kids in in that are, whether they're high school, college, or even early grade school, are given access to that center to learn about robotics, to learn about AI, to learn coding.

Shelton Mercer III: We host,

Shelton Mercer III: adult coding classes in that same space where some of the big companies that are launching with money from Qualcomm and from, Johnson and Johnson

Shelton Mercer III: that someone who maybe used to be a,

Shelton Mercer III: a machine operator is now learning the code and is now learning the vibe code because we know that even now,

Shelton Mercer III: the coding world has started to shrink where AI has taken over that.

Shelton Mercer III: So there's a there's an ability to do this in a way that I think is scalable rather than the kind of,

Shelton Mercer III: the the hands on model.

Shelton Mercer III: There are a lot of hands on operators.

Shelton Mercer III: We're funding and, coaching and and and, accelerating organizations that are helping

Shelton Mercer III: folks that live and work in communities learn how to use the Gen AI tools, folks that are in middle management.

Shelton Mercer III: And there's an wonderful initiative that,

Shelton Mercer III: I've been a part of that, I'll be meeting that leader later today.

Shelton Mercer III: They're working with corporate leaders,

Shelton Mercer III: those in a c suite to say, you have an entire, level of management

Shelton Mercer III: that don't you have college degrees.

Shelton Mercer III: I mean, if you're in a place like

Shelton Mercer III: a a a a company and, you know, a major company in the world, there are a lot of these trade companies like the UPSs of the world and the FedExs and some of the airlines where folks have skills,

Shelton Mercer III: but they didn't have college degrees and so or an advanced degree, and so they're locked out of the management track.

Shelton Mercer III: What if we have some, programs that are gonna help those folks that don't have the credentialing, but certainly have the skill set, certainly have the expertise,

Shelton Mercer III: get in a place where they can learn management skills, and be considered,

Shelton Mercer III: by the leadership to be on the track to go to the next rung rung of power, despite not having those credentials.

Shelton Mercer III: There's a lot of programs like that around the world,

Shelton Mercer III: and certainly right now, we need more leaders.

Shelton Mercer III: I think for me,

Shelton Mercer III: it's about I wanna be able to to operate at that level of decision makers,

Shelton Mercer III: as I found that having an alternate voice in the room of power

Shelton Mercer III: is a way to help us ensure that power is not abused and that we're not locked out of the future,

Shelton Mercer III: because there's a small group of elite folks who are making all the decisions

Shelton Mercer III: and have no connection to what real folks are going to, and,

Shelton Mercer III: people get left out.

Shelton Mercer III: I can't change everyone.

Shelton Mercer III: I can't solve every problem.

Shelton Mercer III: But I can do one thing

Shelton Mercer III: about some of the issues that are in front of me, and that's what we try to do every day, man.

Sean Weisbrot: I certainly appreciate that.

Sean Weisbrot: I didn't know that about you, and I I like that a lot that you've got that initiative going.

Sean Weisbrot: And

Sean Weisbrot: I wish more people would be involved in that.

Sean Weisbrot: I would love to be a part of something like that if I found something.

Sean Weisbrot: You know, I've been an educator my whole life.

Sean Weisbrot: I was actually a teacher in China

Sean Weisbrot: for a number of years teaching kids.

Sean Weisbrot: And

Sean Weisbrot: it was a very beautiful experience even though it was extremely underappreciated

Sean Weisbrot: and extremely underpaid.

Sean Weisbrot: But the point is I had that experience, and I would never change that for the world.

Sean Weisbrot: And even now today, I'm

Sean Weisbrot: changing what I do to be more of an education style business because I just

Sean Weisbrot: I feel like I suffer if I'm not educating.

Sean Weisbrot: I feel like if I if I'm not using my knowledge and experience to help people, then, like, what the hell am I doing and why am I doing it?

Sean Weisbrot: Because I've done consulting, and I've made a lot of money doing it. But

Sean Weisbrot: so many times, I just feel like they don't appreciate it, and they they don't intend to implement it. They just wanna be seen as if they're trying to make change.

Sean Weisbrot: And I feel like when you educate, you're actually making change for people.

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Shelton Mercer III: I think I mean, listen.

Shelton Mercer III: I I love your your your you have the type of mindset I wish more leaders had.

Shelton Mercer III: You know, it goes back to

Shelton Mercer III: I spent so much of my life, and I still do. I mean, I'm to me, having the type of duality

Shelton Mercer III: or sometimes triality, if that's a word, where we're focusing not just on profits, but people matter.

Shelton Mercer III: I spent a lot of my early years traveling the world helping to solve problems.

Shelton Mercer III: I mean, we we were we did so much stuff for Haiti earthquake.

Shelton Mercer III: I went to Haiti

Shelton Mercer III: a dozen times before you couldn't go there anymore after the Haiti earthquake,

Sean Weisbrot: Right.

Shelton Mercer III: taking people there, helping with clean water and and reconstruction and and hunger and all those things.

Shelton Mercer III: And so there's a passion around that.

Shelton Mercer III: Like, for me, it's more than just can you write a check.

Shelton Mercer III: Are you willing to get on a flight and go? And are you willing to be in a place where it's hot and the water's un un potable,

Shelton Mercer III: and you've gotta figure out how to get, you know, the dust out of your throat at the end of the day?

Shelton Mercer III: That type of experience, the visceral nature of that, it makes it it takes it from that kind of mythical

Shelton Mercer III: or mystical place for me, and it's real.

Shelton Mercer III: And so I bring that into every boardroom and every c suite that I go into.

Shelton Mercer III: It is a competence for sure

Shelton Mercer III: about being a a a high level leader who has run and built companies that are on par with anyone,

Shelton Mercer III: but also someone who has rallied thousands of people in a city, millions of people worldwide

Shelton Mercer III: to do something about a major issue, whether it was the Haiti earthquake or the tsunami in Japan or hurricane Katrina

Shelton Mercer III: or just the fact that we've got this real issue where American cities are hovering with high rates of poverty,

Shelton Mercer III: that kids are not gonna have a a future a chance at a future.

Shelton Mercer III: I can bring that into in an authentic way,

Shelton Mercer III: while we look at the the the bottom line that corporations wanna solve

Shelton Mercer III: or even that, some of the large philanthropic groups that have major, major overhead.

Shelton Mercer III: How do you channel those resources into something that's better?

Shelton Mercer III: I'm I'm really about that, and I think, you know, the the the balance between how much we wanna

Shelton Mercer III: make change and how realistic we have to be about the way it happens

Shelton Mercer III: is something that I'm fascinated and obsessed with, and I'm still always experimenting with ways.

Shelton Mercer III: How can I compel a group of leaders

Shelton Mercer III: to see the value in going a little bit farther beyond their, bottom line and considering

Shelton Mercer III: humanity and equity in ways that are gonna be beneficial to all of us? Because the fact of the matter is when we talk about equity in business, you and I, if I were gonna invest in your company, you're gonna write me a a a a a a, shares, and you're gonna say, I'm going to give you a certain portion, grant you shares in my company because you are investing in me. We never talk about human equity that way.

Shelton Mercer III: We talk about it as a taking that people who are at a different strata of society,

Shelton Mercer III: if they are being invested in, we don't think about how much they can invest in our society if they have viable lifestyles,

Shelton Mercer III: if they have a future that they can envision.

Shelton Mercer III: Their contributions can be so much more outsized

Shelton Mercer III: when we look at and flip that mindset.

Shelton Mercer III: We're not just taking and giving.

Shelton Mercer III: I hate these things where people talk about, well, we don't wanna do welfare for these folks and

Shelton Mercer III: and all these set aside programs.

Shelton Mercer III: You know, you and I both know that corporations are the biggest recipients of welfare,

Shelton Mercer III: And, all my corporate leaders know that, and they might try to you know, we may argue with it, but we know it's true.

Shelton Mercer III: I just wanna treat humans the way that we treat corporations.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, corporations are are are people after all.

Shelton Mercer III: Well, yeah.

Shelton Mercer III: A poorly.

Shelton Mercer III: Right?

Sean Weisbrot: I I've been getting more involved with a nonprofit

Sean Weisbrot: called Pencils of Promise.

Sean Weisbrot: They build schools in a number of countries, and

Shelton Mercer III: Mhmm.

Shelton Mercer III: Very familiar.

Sean Weisbrot: I've I've been making it more of my mission to donate to them, and it costs about 50,000

Sean Weisbrot: to build a school.

Sean Weisbrot: It takes about eight or nine months to build a school.

Sean Weisbrot: And

Sean Weisbrot: I've been talking to them about how I can build a larger campaign and and donate some of the profit from my business as well as, hopefully,

Sean Weisbrot: get the people in my network to support that and to make schools happen as well.

Sean Weisbrot: And,

Sean Weisbrot: when I was talking to them a few days ago, they're like, so,

Sean Weisbrot: there's an option to, like, go on the ground and see the school.

Sean Weisbrot: Like, you may not see your school, but, like, maybe you'll see another school.

Sean Weisbrot: But, like, is that something you'd be interested in? I'm like, hell, yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: Why do you think I'm doing this?

Sean Weisbrot: I wanna go there.

Sean Weisbrot: I wanna see the kids.

Sean Weisbrot: I wanna see the community because something that's so special about Pencils of Promise that people obviously wouldn't know because probably most people haven't heard about them is that

Shelton Mercer III: Alright.

Sean Weisbrot: they have this really unique system

Sean Weisbrot: where they require the government to the government of that region, that country, whatever,

Sean Weisbrot: to supply the teachers and the books and and the curriculum and all of that.

Sean Weisbrot: And then they require the parents of the community that the school is gonna be built in

Sean Weisbrot: to build the school with their bare hands.

Sean Weisbrot: And then Pencils of Promise brings in the money and some of the architectural knowledge.

Sean Weisbrot: And and so, essentially,

Shelton Mercer III: Mhmm.

Sean Weisbrot: they're trying to only invest in a community that's willing to invest in their future and commit to that school being successful

Sean Weisbrot: and only in an area where the government is also willing to support the school's success as well.

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: And

Sean Weisbrot: I I think it's a really beautiful thing because I think a lot of people don't have that sense, and they're just like, oh, here's money.

Sean Weisbrot: Build a school.

Sean Weisbrot: Or, you know, I built a school.

Sean Weisbrot: Don't let me disappear.

Shelton Mercer III: Yeah.

Shelton Mercer III: I mean, they're

Shelton Mercer III: they're a great organization.

Shelton Mercer III: I've I spent time.

Shelton Mercer III: I know I know them very well.

Shelton Mercer III: And then I and some years ago, I was,

Shelton Mercer III: advisory board chair and actually was interim COO of a of a organization called Rise Against Hunger.

Shelton Mercer III: Very similarly, we work with

Shelton Mercer III: literally tens of thousands of organizations on the ground in countries all over the world.

Shelton Mercer III: And to that point, if and so it's all about hunger.

Shelton Mercer III: Volunteer labor in Western,

Shelton Mercer III: you know, societies, US and Europe, where people have a lot of resources, volunteer your time to package meals.

Shelton Mercer III: We control the entire supply chain from sourcing all the way to the delivery to the last mile.

Shelton Mercer III: And a strategy that was used that in some societies, girls do not go to school.

Shelton Mercer III: The boys go to school and girls go and do chores.

Shelton Mercer III: Well, if we we realize that in local communities all over the world and and third in, developing nations,

Shelton Mercer III: if we said to parents, your daughters are gonna eat today, something as very similar simple as that,

Shelton Mercer III: they would send their daughters to school with the boys

Shelton Mercer III: just so they could get a meal, and then you see that very simple, solving that very simple issue of hunger allowed us to create literacy

Shelton Mercer III: and opportunity to so many of these young girls.

Shelton Mercer III: And so, you know, I just I think there's a lot of ways you can do that.

Shelton Mercer III: I've taken,

Shelton Mercer III: celebrities on excursions to other nations.

Shelton Mercer III: I have had,

Shelton Mercer III: where I've had events in in a town, and I've shown people a package.

Shelton Mercer III: I go to the actual warehouse on in the country,

Shelton Mercer III: show them the boxes in the pallets with their dates and their signatures, and then show them those meals being prepared and served to children,

Shelton Mercer III: in those nations.

Shelton Mercer III: And so I think there is something special about touching it, seeing it, and frankly, leading by example.

Shelton Mercer III: I'm not afraid, as I mentioned, to get my hands dirty and to roll up my sleeves and,

Shelton Mercer III: to to to try to help get more malaria shots and and and,

Shelton Mercer III: make sure I don't brush my teeth with the water so I I I I end up with dysentery.

Shelton Mercer III: You know, all those things that you you don't realize if you just stroke that check.

Shelton Mercer III: There's a there's a doing that I love about it, and it keeps me grounded to the world.

Sean Weisbrot: What's the most important thing you've learned in your life so far?

Shelton Mercer III: Wow. Most important thing.

Shelton Mercer III: I I, you know, I I I those questions are always fun, right, because you're thinking through your head through okay.

Shelton Mercer III: You know?

Shelton Mercer III: So so I'll give you this.

Shelton Mercer III: There there are, I'm gonna give you two quick things.

Shelton Mercer III: One is, I had a mentor.

Shelton Mercer III: I do have a mentor.

Shelton Mercer III: He's an amazing gentleman.

Shelton Mercer III: Wayne Walker, lives in The UK now.

Shelton Mercer III: And I have admired this man for many years, And, he's a he's a board whisperer.

Shelton Mercer III: The man is on so many boards, public and private,

Shelton Mercer III: and, he has been preparing me for years.

Shelton Mercer III: And I remember right around 2014 or '15. This is before AutoJent launched and before, and I had just, signed actually, it was about 2036 rather.

Shelton Mercer III: We had just launched the Pennovation

Shelton Mercer III: Center with UPenn, and now I was launching this this startup.

Shelton Mercer III: And he said to me, he's like, Shelton, you are brilliant.

Shelton Mercer III: You are charismatic.

Shelton Mercer III: Everybody,

Shelton Mercer III: you gravitates towards you.

Shelton Mercer III: You've done so many amazing things.

Shelton Mercer III: You've traveled the world.

Shelton Mercer III: You do all that.

Shelton Mercer III: And and he said,

Shelton Mercer III: I can I wanna put you in positions where your your leadership rises, your influence rises?

Shelton Mercer III: He says, you are you are doing so many things,

Shelton Mercer III: and you've done so many things.

Shelton Mercer III: You've done them with other causes and other organizations.

Shelton Mercer III: And he said to me and I'll I'll use the PG version.

Shelton Mercer III: He said, I need you to finish some ish.

Shelton Mercer III: And and what he meant by that is not just get ish done.

Shelton Mercer III: You know, people use that term.

Shelton Mercer III: He said, I need you to finish something.

Shelton Mercer III: And and he said it emphatically,

Shelton Mercer III: because his words was, you can found it, you can create it, you can produce it, but if you can't get it to the finish line,

Shelton Mercer III: it shows a, it can show a potential, lack of focus or maybe, the inability to get something fully done.

Shelton Mercer III: And so I had decided, well, you know what?

Shelton Mercer III: I'm gonna finish some ish.

Shelton Mercer III: We launched

Shelton Mercer III: multi acres of innovation centers around the world and then take a company from zero seed stage to all the way through

Shelton Mercer III: to, a a fantastic exit.

Shelton Mercer III: And so I remember that when we I'm 24 when we finished the deal for, we sold, Otogen to Experian, a wonderful deal for everyone involved.

Shelton Mercer III: And, and the press release came out probably about a half an hour after we finished our closing documents.

Shelton Mercer III: I sent the press release to Wayne, and I said to him in that text message,

Shelton Mercer III: here you go. How's this for finishing some ish?

Shelton Mercer III: And so that becomes some of the the things that stick out to me, because it is about finishing.

Shelton Mercer III: The other side is is something I share that, that I learned even from my dad,

Shelton Mercer III: growing up is that there's a way that we've gotta be in the world, and so I give leaders three things.

Shelton Mercer III: They say, look, you you gotta be curious.

Shelton Mercer III: If you're not curious

Shelton Mercer III: about the world I mean, our conversation now, because we're two curious people who have not just traveled and and you now live abroad,

Shelton Mercer III: but have experienced it and got into it, not just because we wanted to make more money,

Shelton Mercer III: but because we wanted to experience humanity.

Shelton Mercer III: And so being curious, reading, exploring, experiencing is huge.

Shelton Mercer III: But curiosity is not the only thing because if you're just curious, you have to become competent.

Shelton Mercer III: You have to be competent in what you do. You have to become an expert at something,

Shelton Mercer III: because if you're not you you I'm a generalist, but I'm an expert at being a generalist.

Shelton Mercer III: I'm a I feel like I'm an expert at being a visionary

Shelton Mercer III: and and and being not just a visionary, but someone that takes vision into fruition and to and to to completion.

Shelton Mercer III: And the last part is you've got to be absolutely courageous.

Shelton Mercer III: There's the it says favor force favor what is it? Fortune favors the bold rather.

Shelton Mercer III: I believe that I am take but it's not just taking risk.

Shelton Mercer III: It's really about the courage to stand up against the tide, the courage to go against,

Shelton Mercer III: the status quo, the courage to take those types of of risk and to make those investments that are gonna pay off.

Shelton Mercer III: For me, those have become things that have been guiding lines for me, man.

Shelton Mercer III: And, you know, we haven't always you sometimes you'd be courageous and you jump off that bridge and you've like, woah my goodness.

Shelton Mercer III: Is my chute gonna open?

Shelton Mercer III: But it's always about the journey, and I'm still enjoying it. And I live by a lot of those mantras every day.