Meet Glen Weinzimer | Founder of The SMART Ride, Restaurant Owner and Travel Director

Risk taking isn’t always a risk in my opinion. I grew up in a family with a father who didn’t take risks, he didn’t buy a home until I had already graduated and moved out after college. My father didn’t take risks in his career, in his personal life, in money. My youth was surrounded by “now is not a good time to FILL IN THE BLANK”. I saw risks as an opportunity and failure as a possibility. When I was in college there was a full page ad in The New York Times, that basically said  “without failure there is no reward”. I still have a frame with that ad, I remember it said Macy’s failed many times, maybe seven or eight before Macy’s became a success story. Babe Ruth struck out more times than he did hitting home runs, and went on to break all baseball records in home runs.

I remember buying my first apartment in Florida at the age of 25 of 26, and I remember being told by my parents that they didn’t want to lend me the  downpayment. They did eventually acquiesce, but not without a warning of “what if you lose your job?”, how will you pay for the mortgage and the loan on my brand new bright red four door 3 series BMW. My immediate answer was “I will NOT lose my job”, but I kept being met with “what if?”. I remember being so angry as I was confident that I was not only NOT going to lose my job, but if in the far reaches of a parallel  universe I did lose my employment,  I knew I would find something to keep me with an income.

As life progressed there were many times I was told disappointing news, being passed up for a directors job. What did I do? I worked even harder and ended up replacing the person who got the job, and hearing an apology from my boss for not initially choosing me. The story repeats many times in life and in 1993 I was hit with the biggest “risk” there was. I was told I would not live 10 days as a result of full blown AIDS. The irony in this case was that I didn’t have risky sexual behavior that put me in that danger, rather I fell for a partner who did not know he was positive. It was seven years before I learned I was infected and at that point was given a death sentence. I took another risk, I returned to work and made it to my sisters wedding. I was taking a risk by saying NO, I will NOT die. It wasn’t an easy task, but I knew that it was more than a risk, I was assured it was an outcome I could not beat this time. That was 30 years ago, I took a risk and kept fighting no matter how bad it got, and it got bad.

In 2003 I was challenged with creating what was to become the SMART Ride, a 2-day, 165 mile bicycle ride that would raise money and awareness for HIV/AIDS. My plan was to give back every penny our participants raised. The risk was great, I had no way of knowing how I would meet the expenses of producing this two day event. I didn’t know if people would believe in me, that I would find sponsors to pay for expenses, but I knew the risk was worth it. I also knew I could not go back on my word and knew I had made a promise of 100% raised, 100% returned. Everyone said it was too risky, so many iterations of this event had failed without giving back 100%, what made me believe my outcome would be any different? I was willing to believe it could be done and failure was not an option, this was too important. That risk I took in 2003 has grown into an event that has raised and given back every penny of over 14.9 Million dollars.

Logically, on paper SMART Ride (Southern Most HIV/AIDS Ride) could not succeed, but in reality it did and has grown to be the second largest AIDS bicycle ride in the country and the only one of its size that has given back every dollar. This risk I took and all the risks before them worked because I believed in my community, my friends, my family and most importantly in myself.

Did I ever take a risk and fail? YES I have, I sold my life insurance policy because I wasn’t going to live, and I took high financial risks with investments and lost every penny of that, but I have gained so much more because I was willing to take a risk, first in the apartment, then the car. I never lost any job I ever took! I am blessed to have been around the world, I have had at least 7 BMW’s to date and not one of them was a mistake.

My father came to me at one point and said, “I’m so glad you never listened to me and took those risks, had you not, you may never have seen so much of the world or achieved so many personal accomplishments. You would not have ridden your bicycle 165 miles for your 50th birthday or helped so many live better lives.”

So YES I did take risks and those risks have paid off so many more times than failure.

I have a philosophy, a belief that we all make a difference, some of us have a larger soapbox to stand on and more “connections” , what ever that means. In the end no one of us has more influence than anyone else. Our lives are interconnected and our degrees of separation are so small. Everything, and I mean everything we do has a reaction that sets off a chain of events. The issue is most of people don’t recognize this strength they have. So often we hear, I don’t make a difference, I am only one voice, one vote, one opinion in a sea of people who may appear smarter, funnier, prettier, richer. This is not true! An example I hope you can uses to visualize the power and the domino effect it has. Most of us have a daily routine, your alarm goes off at the same time everyday, you get up and take a shower everyday, you preselect your clothes every day, you leave the house for the office at the same time everyday, everything appears to be the same with the same outcomes. However everyday, even with its routine and predictabilty is never the same twice. Every detail of every day is influenced by circumstances you could never predict. The weather can change your plans, it could postpone events, create new challenges, it could mean people can’t get to work and with each of those incidents your direction is influenced. Now how do you influence people in the same way? Let us say you are planning for a big day, you get all dressed up, you stop for coffee and purchase enough for the team, you are prepared and ready. As you leave the coffee shop someone in a rush bumps you, YOUR coffee spills all over your perfect shirt/blouse. You arrive in your office and the first person you see asks “how is your day so far?”, you reply “today is NOT a good day… and you go into your meeting and now everyone who works for you picks up on your tone, level of frustration and unhealthy vibe (caused by the person who bumped you and unknowingly created a domino of events that were not planned for) your team then leaves the meeting stressed, they return to their individual departments and share that the “boss”is in a bad mood. The individual who bumped you will never know the impact his brush made and how that bump trickled down. My lesson is, no one of us has more influence than any other, every gesture we make, every smile or grin we make impacts that influence’s those around us. My role as founder of then SMART Ride is too impart on everyone that every donation matters, every voice matters. Last year over  8,000 donations were made because you influenced people that what you are doing matters and what they do matters, people are saying the word HIV or AIDS, that is huge.

If my best friend was visiting I’d take him to a restaurant like Blue Moon Fish Company on the water to see the boats, relax and unwind. I would dine at Casablanca as well across form the ocean. I would possibly see a play at the Broward Center and visit Las Olas Blvd. I might throw a pool party at the house so people could meet him. I’m sure one night we would visit Wilton Manors and go to some of the nightclubs. Or better yet, we would just hang by the pool with a cold drink and block out the rest of the world and it’s corresponding noise.

I definitely would not have accomplished all that I have if it were not for my parents who drove me to be any other than what they feared. I am so grateful to so many individuals that stepped up and helped create and set in motion what is now The SMART Ride. This includes Mark Byrd, Paul Berman, Andrea Weinzimer, John Gauthier, Michael Barron, Requel Lopes, Carol Spicer and Stephen Jerge to mention a few. It was their belief in my vision that helped me a non profit that has gained so much credibility. There are also the participants that number around 750 each year that participate, raise the money and to our first sponsors who believed in everything and with grass roots efforts have made it possible to change lives.