Cracking the Wealth Code: How a Simple Mindset Shift Can Catapult You from Broke to Millionaire!

Introduction

Evan Carmichael: Hi, I’m Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Melina Masters. I believe that the fastest and most effective way to grow a business is to model the strategies of people who have already done what you’re trying to do. So today, we’re gonna look at how a high school dropout became homeless, was bathing in public washrooms, and he went from that to turn his life around and became a multi-millionaire and built one of the most successful stock brokerage firms in America. This is a story of Chris Gardner and the top three lessons you can learn from his success.

Chris Gardner’s Early Life

Chris Gardner was the only son of twelve children that was being raised by a single mother. The single mother was trained as a schoolteacher but wound up taking on numerous part-time jobs in order to provide for her family. Gardner and his siblings were transferred back and forth between relatives and foster homes. His mother had been in prison twice, once for allegedly receiving welfare while working and a second time for attempting to burn down the house of Gardner’s abusive stepfather. Gardner’s prospects were narrow coming from an environment such as this.

Chris Gardner’s Inspiration

While on a sales call, Gardner met a man who was impeccably dressed and drove a red Ferrari. As fate would have it, the driver of the Ferrari was a stockbroker. Gardner heard the man was earning over $80,000 a month. He decided that his future lied in investments. He had no education, no experience, and no connections, but that was not about to stop Gardner from achieving his new dream.

Gardner’s Determination

Once he decided to become a stockbroker, Gardner immediately set out to find an investment firm that would give him a chance. In one brokerage firm, Gardner finally found the manager of a training program who was willing to give him a shot. However, when Gardner showed up for his first day of work, the manager who had hired him had been fired, and no one else had ever heard of Gardner or his new position. He left with his hopes disappointed. Nevertheless, Gardner didn’t give up on his dreams. He continued to seek out investment firms, taking odd jobs to pay the bills in the meantime.

Gardner’s Breakthrough

Dean Witter, a San Francisco-based brokerage firm, was interested in Gardner but refused to bring him on board before putting him through ten months of interviews. It would be a grueling 10 months. Gardner showed up for his first interview in a t-shirt and dirty jeans. He could have fabricated some story to explain his appearance. Instead, Gardner decided to tell the truth in plain terms. Gardner told the interviewer that his mother had run off with his child, that he was broke, and that he’d just gotten out of jail the day before. As luck would have it, the interviewer had recently been through a nasty divorce and could sympathize with Gardner. He was immediately given a position in the company’s training program.

Gardner’s Success

In 1987, Gardner launched his own brokerage firm in Chicago. Gardner quickly began to land major clients for his new company, including the pension fund of the Chicago Teachers Union. Since then, his business has continued to take off, and Gardner hasn’t looked back. By not letting his past hold him back and by sticking to his vision, Chris Gardner was able to go from being a homeless man to being a multi-millionaire.

Lessons from Chris Gardner’s Success

To help you transform your business, here are three action items you can learn from Chris Gardner:

Action Item 1: Get Excited About Something

Rule number one of entrepreneurship is you have to love what you do. You have to have such a strong passion for it that you’ll break through any barrier, jump over any hurdle to see your vision through. It’s gonna be hard, and you’ll think of giving up multiple times. Only your passion for the business and knowing that you’re helping people will keep you going.

Action Item 2: Be the Best You Can Be

As an entrepreneur, you don’t want to have regrets for not trying hard enough. If your company doesn’t make it and you give it your absolute very best, then it’ll hurt, but you’ll be able to live with it. But if you didn’t give it everything you had, you’ll always wonder what could have been if you just tried.

Gardner’s Mother’s Influence

Hard work never let an excuse hold you back, and being able to say that you did your best. Gardner attributes his rise to the top to his mother and her spiritual genetics, which encouraged Gardner to dream big dreams for himself and strive to become the best. Gardner’s mother was a natural-born teacher; she loved doing it, and she did it well. But after being abandoned by her husband, she found herself in a position of having to care for 12 children all on her own. She sacrificed her dream of teaching to take numerous part-time jobs that could better support the family. However, she pushed Gardner to be the best at everything he did. This commitment to be the best was something he never forgot, and he continues to be the best at everything he can be.

According to Gardner, “You get your eyes from your dad, your mom’s nose. There’s nothing you can do about that, but your spiritual genetics, you can choose, pick, embrace, and commit to. That’s what I did. Though my mom had too many of her own dreams denied, deferred, destroyed, she instilled in me that I could have dreams, son. If you want to, one day you could make a million dollars. We go after the big deals because it takes just as much effort to line a $500 account as it does to line a $5 million one.”

Action Item 3: Remember Your Roots

Action Item number three: Remember your roots. Giving back to your community is one of the most rewarding things you can do as an entrepreneur. Not only are you helping customers through your business, but you’re also able to help people around you through your contribution. It’s never too early to start. If you don’t have money, give your time. Doing something to help others once per month will help rejuvenate you and give you additional motivation to succeed with your business so you can help even more down the line. As far as Gardner has come and as much money as he’s made, what is perhaps most distinguished him professionally has been his contributions he’s made back into his communities.

Gardner has kept his promise and has striven hard to remain available and accessible. Early on, he got involved in a Chicago-based program designed to help young people obtain internships with financial services companies and learn the basics of exchanges, insurance, banking, money management, and brokering. Gardner’s road to success was a long and difficult one, which made it all the more easy for him to understand what it takes to get there. That’s why he will always remember his roots and where he came from. Everyone deserves a chance to succeed; they just may need a little help to do it.

According to Gardner, “As busy as I am, wherever I am, I try to get out and walk the streets to remember how far I’ve come and appreciate every baby step of the way. The coolest thing in the world is walking up the street in Chicago, in New York, or San Francisco, and having someone say, ‘Hey, you may not remember me, but thank you for helping me get into the business.’ I can’t think of a better way to honor my mom and lift her up than helping educators. The biggest part of her soul was to teach.”

Conclusion

So remember, get excited about something, be the best you can be, and remember your roots. To finish up this video, I wanted to share one of my favorite true stories about Chris Gardner and some of his best quotes. Most people know that Chris Gardner’s life was chronicled in the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness,” but most people don’t know that Gardner had it actually a lot tougher than the movie portrayed. Many times he and his son had to sleep in the subway and bathrooms because they needed the money to eat.

Even during his training to become a broker, Gardner was not being paid enough to find a permanent place to live for him and his son. However, after his training, he became a full-time retail broker but was still lacking funds to find a permanent home. It was not until Gary Shimano of Bear Sterns offered him a position that his life changed. Part of the package was funds to purchase new suits so he would look more professional. But Gardner took that money and found an apartment for his son and himself.

Thank you for joining me for another edition of Modeling the Masters. If you liked the video and you want to see more, please give it a thumbs up below. And if you have a question for your business or a comment you want to leave, please feel free to leave it below in the comment section. I always read those and try to respond as quickly as I can. So thank you, and we’ll see you on the next episode.