{"id":10614,"date":"2016-11-29T12:01:31","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T11:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grupobcc.com\/?p=10614"},"modified":"2017-02-20T13:25:42","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T12:25:42","slug":"from-a-homeless-man-to-a-millionaire-life-lessons-from-the-real-hero-chris-gardner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grupobcc.com\/en\/news\/from-a-homeless-man-to-a-millionaire-life-lessons-from-the-real-hero-chris-gardner\/","title":{"rendered":"From a homeless man to a millionaire \u2013 life lessons from the real hero, Chris Gardner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe world is your oyster. It\u2019s up to you to find the pearls.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who hasn\u2019t cried buckets while watching Gabriele Muccino\u2019s The Pursuit of Happyness<\/em>? We perched on the edge of our seats, our hands on our moist cheeks and praying that Chris Gardner <\/a>would dodge the clutches of sheer bad luck and make it to the finish line. I know I did, and I\u2019m venturing a guess that you did too.<\/p>\n

The Pursuit of Happyness<\/em> traces Chris Gardner\u2019s journey from a homeless man to a multibillionaire. With a pearly smile on his face and the tough lines of age and experience setting base on his face, Gardner is the ultimate personification of a self-made entrepreneur, someone who refused to give up even when life was kicking him to the curb.<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/a><\/p>\n

With no degree or experience, he managed to find himself a low-paying gig of selling medical supplies. A chance meeting with a man in a Red Ferrari changed his life forever. He caught this person\u2019s attention and asked him what he did to afford such a car, to which the latter replied that he was a stockbroker. Gardner often describes this as \u2018the moment he knew\u2019 \u2013 he knew that his future lay in the field of investments, strategic calculations and fat paychecks.<\/p>\n

Lady Luck hadn\u2019t quite been favouring Gardener at this point. His girlfriend had left him and his two-year old son for a \u2018better life\u2019, and the night before he managed to procure an interview for an internship at San Francisco-based brokerage firm Dean Witter, he was pulled up and arrested for a night by the cops for unpaid parking tickets. Undeterred, Chris Gardner showed up for the interview in sweatpants and a wife-beater from the night before. His passion and sincere urgency won him a spot in the programme.<\/p>\n

But his troubles were far from over. Now homeless, Chris Gardner struggled to find shelter. When he got lucky, he was able to find accommodation at the Glide Memorial Church Centre. But this wasn\u2019t always the case. Once, he had to sleep the night in a locked bathroom in Oakland Subway Station with his son. By the end of the internship, he was the sole trainee chosen for a permanent position at Dean Witter. A few years later, he took a position with Bear Stearns & Co., where he managed to bring in the top numbers. In 1987, he founded his own brokerage firm, Gardner Rich & Co. in Chicago, which he has since transformed into Christopher Gardner International Holdings, an institutional brokerage firm that also directs projects overseas, primarily in South Africa.<\/p>\n

In May 2006, his memoir The Pursuit of Happyness<\/em> was published which was soon adapted into an Academy-Award nominee film starring Will Smith as Chris Gardner and Jaden Smith as his son, Chris Jr.<\/p>\n

While he still runs his billion dollar firm successfully, Chris Gardner is currently on the threshold of writing another prospective bestseller and actively involving himself in many social causes dealing with homelessness and domestic abuse. We take out a few life changing lessons from this determined multitasker\u2019s roller-coaster of a journey for all you motivated entrepreneurs out there.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

Having the right drive<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cPassion is everything. In fact, you’ve got to be borderline fanatical about what you do.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Everyone knows that entrepreneurship is nothing without passion. If you don\u2019t feel crazy about your business or your product and you aren\u2019t staying up enthusiastically sleepless nights to go over a ten-policy programme in your head for the meeting next day, then you aren\u2019t doing it right. Gardner often says that he was lucky to find a job he truly loved, one for which he couldn\u2019t wait for the sun to rise so he could get back to. Chris Gardner didn\u2019t have any training in the job, nor did he dream of it his whole life. But he had that one instance with the red Ferrari when he knew with absolute clarity- that this was what he was meant to do.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

Get your timing right<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cWalk that walk and go forward all the time. Don’t just talk that talk, walk it and go forward. Also, the walk didn’t have to be long strides; baby steps counted too. Go forward.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Chris Gardner has held many interactive conferences with aspiring entrepreneurs, and one of his great pearls of advice has been \u201cAlways get your timing right.\u201d He emphasises the importance of being at the right place at the right time, just like he was when he saw the Ferrari, or even beating bad timing, like when he had to attend the interview at Dean Witter in the same clothes he\u2019d spent his night in jail. He advises them to be faster than time and be \u201caggressively early\u201d because \u201cbeing late projects the wrong image and makes people lose faith in your ability to prioritise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trial and error<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cSometimes the only way we can discover our true power is by living through the crisis we feared.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Chris Gardner has had his fair share of downs in life, and as he confesses in the book, he didn\u2019t always know how to go down the right path or make the right decision for his family. But he took the plunge anyway and made the best out of every situation, which got him to where he is now. To him, a better life can only be lived and an individual can only understand his or her true potential when they have survived a crisis they fear the most.<\/p>\n

Today, he may carry the invisible scars of life and experience, but his shoulders lack the weight of the hopelessness they once carried because it has been replaced with something much lighter \u2013 happiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe world is your oyster. It\u2019s up to you to find the pearls.\u201d   Who hasn\u2019t cried buckets while watching Gabriele Muccino\u2019s The Pursuit of Happyness? We perched on the edge of our seats, our hands on our moist cheeks and praying that Chris Gardner would dodge the clutches of sheer bad luck and make… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n