On this episode of Our American Stories, long before leading ten publicly traded companies, Jerre Stead was waking up at 3 a.m. to deliver newspapers in rural Iowa. In this story, Stead explains how running a paper route at age nine—through snowstorms, strict deadlines, difficult customers, and personal loss—taught him the fundamentals of leadership, ethics, and responsibility. Those early mornings shaped how he later led companies, treated people, and built cultures rooted in trust and performance.

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