My name is Chritopher Gardner. I am rich,a millionaire. In my brokerage firm, I have recently sold a minority share in a multimilion dollars deal. To become what I am now, I had to go through many difficult stages.
Stages Of my life that I have never forgotten and I shall never forget, because they are deeply carved in my memory.
It all began when I attainted manhood and my mother introduced me to a man who,she said, was my father.
How could that man be so, as he had never lived with us?!
All I remember about my childhood was that my mother had always been working and struggling to make a living and preserve my safety and stablity.
She was determined to raise my social status as an American citizen.
Sometimes, I asked her why I did not have a father like all other children; but she never accepted to speak tht thruth.
However,shortly after I had met my father for the first time, she told me eerything.
She said that my father had deserted us because he had been jobless; and when he had reached a state utter despair to provide for us , he had decided to leave us behind.
At that very moment, I decided to obliterate mypast as a desrted child and made up my mond that if I had children, I would givethem a safe and prosperous life. That was the first Part of my life.
The second part began when linda and I got married.
Ayear afterwards, we had our son, Christopher.
We all lived in San Fransisco and our life was rather peaceful. In 1981, I invested our entire lefe saving in buying a new medical device.
That was a portable bone-density scanners, a revolutionary machine which, I had throught, would give us too much money and would make us lead aa better life.
I bought many scanners of which I had to sell at least two per a month for the rent, the living necessities and our son’s day care.
Unfortunately, doctors and hospitals considered that scanner as unnecessary and expensive luxury.
Besides that device gave a slightly denser picture than an x-ray the price; the reason why I could not sell all my scanners easily.
So, I could not pay tje tax-bills, I could not pay the months of rent we owed and I could not even pay off all of those tickets under my windshield wiper.
For my taxes, I had to fike extra extensions; which meant more interests and penalties.
Every evening, when i was back home, Linda and I had bitter quarrels over that.
I usually begged her to relax and trust me.
I even promised her to find a job so as to overcome our hardships.
But she didn’t care, and said that she was no longer happy with me.
One day, as I was walking along the streets with my scanner in my hand, to do my daily sales calls, I came across a friend of mine.
He was well-off and had a brand new Ferrari.
I asked him what he did and how he did to have all that; he said that he was stockbroker.
Tomy delight, he said that one needed to be good with numbers and good with people.
I still remember I couldn’t sleep that night as I couldn’t help thinking of that job, a stockbroker!
Why not me?! I felt that I had the right abilities and the strong will necessary to succeed in that career.
The morning after, while Linda and I were getting ready to go out, i Told her about that promissing job.
She simply laughed at me and ironically asked if I would not bean astronaut.
I didn’t care about her and I filled an application form for an internship.
I went to Dean Witter Reynolds firm to drop my application off personally and to make acquaintance with the Witter Resource head, Jay wistle.
In fact, I wanted to show him thar I was good with numbers and good with people, but at that moment he was bound to take a taxi .
Deliberately I shared the same taxi with him.
While i was telling him about my intersts and abilities, Jay Wistle was handling a puzzle cube which was called the gift sensation of 1981.
He was twisting and turning the cube to get the same color on each side, but unsuccessfully I asked him to let me try, but he said that I would not do it because nobody had done it before.
You can’t imagine how astonished he was when I put the cube right on every side; and in no time at all.
I am sure, I succeeded to convince him of my intelligence.
When I got back home, was disappointed as I found out that my wife had taken all her things and had left home.
What made me more furious was that she had taken Christopher with her.
In in deed, I was at aloss,but i decided to get my son back as soon as possible. While i was thinking about that, the telephone rang. It was Jay wistle from dean witter who asked me to be in the firm as quickly as possible to sit for an interview.
The following day, a series of misfortunes coincided to ovrerturn my life. After I had got christopher back, I wore some shabby clothes and began painting my apartment while I was doing that,the land lord knock at the door to tell me that I did not pay for the four months of rent I owed, he would kick me out. Shortly afterwards, two policemen came and arrested me for failure to pay off the parking tickets. I had to spend the night at the police station because they did not believe me when I gave them a check with the sun of money I owned,they said they had to give a call to linda to take care of christopher. The following morning, just as they had done their verification, I left the police station .
It was exactly quarter to ten, and I had to run all the way to Dean Witter where I had to take an Interview at quarter past ten, of course all in m shabby clothes full of paint.
To convince the interviewers of the reason why I was dressed like that I spoke, nothing but the thruth.
They laugheda bit, but they admired my frankness, earnestness and diligence.
I was accepted as a trainee and they gave me a sheet where all the program was explained.
In fact the program took every six mouths, and only one intern was hired at the end of the program from a pool of twenty.
However, if you weren’t that lucky one, you could not even apply for the six mouths training to another brokerage.
Although they didn’t give salaries to trainees, I was firmly determined to go ahead, as I had developped a strong ambition about that career.
The only resource I had for the six months were my six scanners ,which I still tried to sell.
Meanwhile, my son and I moved to a motel because I could not pay for the rent.
I also had to look after my christopher since the moment his mother had left us and had gone to New york to seek a better life.
At dean Witter, we were twenty interns we were asked to call the maximum of companies and convince them to be potential clients.
We had to use all our abilities to familiarize them with our packages .
We had to match their needs and goals to one of firm’s many financial plans.
In other words as the number of calls increases, the number of dollars in the firm’s pocket also increases.
So, who ever brought in the most money after six mouths was usually hired .
All the interns worked till seven , but I had to leave at four to pck up Christopher .
So, I ha to do in six hours what they had to do in nine.
In order not to waste any time I was not hanging up the phone inn between calls and I realized that by doing that I gained another ten minutes a day.
Besides, I didn’t drink any water so I didn’t waste anytime in the bathroom.
During four months, every thing seemed to go as we wished.
Everyday, I took Christopher to the daycare before I went tomy internship.
At four, I picked him up and we both did our daily sales calls of the scanners till we sold them all.
Sometimes, I took Christopher to play basketball, and all the time I gave him such advices as one should have a strong will and should struggle to achieve one’s goal in life.
Actually, we were happy as father and son.
As I had said before, everything seemed to go fine till one day, that day when a letter brought me back to earth.
It was about taxes I had to pay, and if I didn’t pay them the governement would stick their hands into my bank account and take all my money.
What a disaster! The governement took all the money that I had.
I still remember That day, there was only twenty one dollars and thirty tree cents left in my bank account, Iwas completly broke.
Consequencly, I was unable to pay for the motel, so we had to leave it and we became homless.
Christopher and I were once forced to spend a night in a public bathroom. We tried other places such as Glide Memorial, a church where we had to share a dormitory with hundreds of homless persons.
So,I learned to finish my work quickly if I wanted to find a spot at glide where to spend the night.
I even went to a blood center and sold my blood for twenty six dollars.
I bought a light bulb which was needed to repair the scanner I had once lost and luckily found with tramp who took it for a time machine.
I sold the scanner for two hundred and fifty dollars which meant four weeks of oxygen.
We spent that night at a hotel instead of going back to the church place.
Two days afterwards, while I was working as usual, I was called to the chairman’s office.
There he announced the most exciting news I had ever heard in my life: I was the one they had chosen for the job.
Yes, I was the who had it.
I shall never forget that moment when I burst into tears, tears Of happiness I had been pursuing for a long time.
My life began to change positively since the moment I took that job.
During all the years I was working in Dean Witter, I was devoting my income to the upkeep and improvement of my career.
In 1987, I founded the investment firm Gardner Rich, My own brokeragefirm where my winning are now exceeding millions of dollars.
