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When Gardner was once asked what advice he would give anyone who was thinking about starting up his or her own business, he replied, “Hunker down, strap in, and hold on. Hold on baby!”
Perhaps more than most other entrepreneurs, Gardner understands what it means to hit rock bottom. Having experienced more than his fair share of hurdles on the road to success, Gardner was able to hold on and make it through. It is only now, in looking back on his life, that Gardner realizes just how fantastic his success is.
The first day of filming the movie that was being made about his life took place at the Bank of America headquarters, where, unbeknownst to the film producers, Gardner used to sleep when he was homeless. “Another day filming, we’re going to film in Golden Gate Park,” Gardner recalls. “We’re filming in a place where I used to take my son to teach him to fly a kite. We had nothing else to do, no other form of entertainment, no money. I told no one that…I now know the definition of surreal.”
The film focuses on one year of Gardner’s life, which he calls his “toughest, darkest, scariest” year ever. “Living with a baby tied on my back, trying to work,” he recalls. “It can be done, but you have to make it happen. And no matter what, you have to cling to it like it’s life itself, if that’s what you really want to do.”
Gardner’s difficulties began as a young boy, where he was not only subject to abuse in his home at the hands of his stepfathers, but also out on the streets. One of his most trying times came when he was raped by a member of a gang of thieves in his neighbourhood. Unable to talk to anyone about the experience, Gardner repressed it until he finally faced his attacker in later years. He struck the man with a cinder block and walked away, “and left the whole incident right there on the street,” he says.
From being raped to eating in a soup kitchen to having to borrow money from hookers, Gardner could not have sunk any lower professionally or personally. “There's a choice: you eat or you stay in a hotel,” says Gardner. “We chose to eat. And we stayed in a subway station. We rode the trains. We slept in bathrooms.” However, Gardner knew throughout every ordeal that he was never powerless. “I was Chris Gardner,” he says, “father of a son who deserved better than what my daddy could do for me, son of Betty Jean Gardner who said that if I wanted to win I could win.”
Armed with that attitude and wearing one of his two business suits, Garner continued to strive for his dreams with full force. As a child, he would always say to himself, “Yeah, you can beat me down, you can beat me and you can beat my mom, you can put us out of here with a gun, but I can read, and I'm going places.” A self-made millionaire with over 200 suits to his name, Gardner definitely went places.
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Reflecting upon his success, Murdoch commented, “I feel proud but it’s been a long and bumpy ride.” It was not a ride that Murdoch took alone. From his early days working on Adelaide’s The News to his current positi...
