Oh man, I completely blew it in Vegas this week… on stage… in front of hundreds of our best customers.

I am so embarrassed.

Fortunately, some good could actually come out of this disaster…

Let me explain what happened, starting with the story I MEANT to tell at our Stansberry Alliance event…

If someone makes you a million dollars, what do you owe them?

In the hedge fund world, it’s pretty simple – you owe them 20% of the profits. But outside of the hedge fund world, what’s right? Is doing nothing the right thing? I know of a friend that gave another friend a car. Is that too much? What’s right?

A guy came up to me yesterday here and said, “I came all the way from Palm Beach Florida to do this… You made me a million dollars in your biotech recommendations. So I had to come here… and give you… a big… a big… handshake.”

A handshake? Boy I got the wrong end of this trade… One guy gets a million dollars, and the other guy gets a handshake. I’m in the wrong business.

So far so good. That’s what I told the crowd. The problem is, I forgot to finish the story…

I refused his handshake. No kidding.

I told him I would NOT shake his hand. It’s true.

The thing is (and this was supposed to be the funny part of the story) I refused to shake his hand because I was sick… because I woke up that morning with a cold. It was NOT because all he was offering was a handshake.

You see, I knew that people would be asking me to shake their hands all day… And I didn’t want to have to tell every single person individually that I didn’t want to shake their hand when they offered it. I didn’t want them to get my germs.

[ad#Google Adsense 336×280-IA]I forgot that part. So I think I came off wrong… like I wanted something. I don’t. Seriously.

Look, I don’t want the credit for your winners, and I don’t want the blame for your losers.

I was just looking for a way to tell a few hundred people at once that they’d be better off not catching my germs.

Some good might come out of this big screw up…

One of our lifetime subscribers came up to me later and said, “Steve, I have an idea… If I make a million dollars from one of your ideas, I’d be happy to make a donation to a charity of your choice. That seems like a good thing to do.”

I pleaded with him about how embarrassed I was for what I’d said. I told him that I was just looking for a unique way to say “don’t shake my hand.” I told him it was a story that went horribly wrong.

He didn’t care. He said, “Think about where you’d want money to go to do some good.”

I did. It didn’t take long. The answer is to the scholarship fund in honor of my late father…

Last weekend, I was in tiny Menomonie, Wisconsin. My dad was being inducted into the inaugural class of the Menomonie High School Sports Hall of Fame. A couple years ago, he was the first ever recipient of the school’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

His life story is quite incredible – a poor kid from a tiny town who went on to accomplish extraordinary things. All the while, my brother and I just knew him as “Dad,” our soccer coach, and such. We didn’t know about NASA, or the national championship game, or any of that.

When he died, I didn’t know what to do. I did two things…

  • I put together the story of his life in a little booklet, and
  • I established a scholarship fund in my dad’s hometown. The criteria for the scholarship are high achievements in academics, athletics, and character.

I urge you to check out the little story of my dad’s life here.

When the lifetime subscriber said, “Where would you want money to go?” I said, “To help give a great kid from nowhere a chance to achieve his dreams… in honor of my dad.” You could donate to that scholarship here.

Hopefully this little story clears up my embarrassing screw up… and might even cause some good in this world…

Good investing,

Steve

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Source: Daily Wealth