Lesson #3: Everybody Deserves The Opportunity To Succeed

“I just wanted to make a million dollars,” says Gardner. “But I couldn't sing and I couldn't play ball, so I said to my mother, ‘How am I going to make a million dollars?’ And she said to me, ‘Son, if you believe you can do it, you will.’” He couldn’t sing, he couldn’t play ball; he was also homeless and he was black – Gardner definitely had the odds stacked against him. However, he took his mother’s lesson to heart and was determined to succeed regardless.

During Gardner’s rise to the top, African-American brokers were a rare occurrence in the industry. Gardner recalls one particular phone conversation with a client who had assumed that he was white. “This one guy, he would tell me every Jew joke, every nigger joke, every spick joke in the world, and then he would turn around and say, ‘Well, buy me 50,000 shares of whaver you called me about,’” says Gardner.



One day, the client decided to finally meet the broker who had been making him a fortune. “I knew there were only two things that could happen,” says Gardner. “He was either going to close his account with me or he was going to close all the other accounts that he had and I was going to get all his business.” After meeting, the client closed all of his other accounts and only did business with Gardner, right up until his death. “That's when I learned in this business, it's not a black thing, it's not a white thing, it's a green thing,” says Gardner. “If you can make me money, I don't care what color you are. So that's how I deal with that to this day.”

Gardner claims that the homeless often experience the same sort of discrimination as African-Americans do. In preparing to film “The Pursuit of Happiness,” the movie based on his life, Gardner took actor Will Smith on a number of walks. “As opposed to sitting and talking, I said to him, ‘Let me take you and show you places where my son and I had to sleep,’” says Gardner. The pair began to visit subway stations, train stations, hotel lobbies, and public restrooms, when Smith pointed out that many of the homeless people looked like they were dressed up to go somewhere. Indeed, they were, says Gardner.

“We were homeless, we were not hopeless,” says Gardner. “There’s a world of difference. A lot of folks don’t realize it, but it’s estimated that 12 percent of all of the homeless people in this country have jobs and go to work every day.” In fact, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homeless estimates that in some communities, the number of working homeless reaches almost 30 percent.

Gardner is evidence of the success that can be achieved when everyone, no matter what his or her background or status is given a chance. No matter who you are, says Gardner, “Baby steps count, as long as you are going forward. You add them all up, and one day you look back and you’ll be surprised at where you might get to.”



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