COVER STORY
From that day, a thought that had
previously never entered his head,
never left his head. Bettye Jean had
given him permission to dream, to
become world-class at whatever he did
with his life, professionally and as a
parent. There has never been any Plan
B: a surprising insight into a man whose
life has been littered with
disappointments and challenges.“Plan A is the only plan to have,” he
insists. “When you’re talking about
doing something, my position is there is
no Plan B. You’ll hear people make this
claim, ‘well you have to have something
to fall back on’. We already have that
— it’s called a ‘butt’. There’s only one
plan, and that is the plan you have in
your heart. That’s your Plan A. Plan B is
a compromise.”Sticking to his professional Plan A,
Chris turned his fortunes around
dramatically in 1983 when he accepted
a job at brokerage Bear Stearns & Co,
and quickly became a top earner. His
parenting Plan A took a dramatic
turn however when two years later,
after a brief reconciliation withChristopher Jr’s mother, he became a
single father of two with the birth of
his daughter Jacintha.Still stubbornly refusing to compromise
on his master plans and with just $10,000
and a single stick of furniture, Chris
founded brokerage firm Gardner Rich &
Co in Chicago. And just like his mother
told him he could, 12 months later in
1988, Chris earned his first million.He’s had scores of Plan As since, and
while a Plan B was never an option,
failure certainly was. “Failure, let me tell
you, is probably one of the most
important things that we can all do, as
long as you learn from it. We’re all going
to fail at something at some point, but
you learn something and you take that
with you. I failed so many times, but
from all of those failures, I was able to
use them, and learn something. Failure
is ok; quitting is not. Quitting can
become a habit.”Chris never stopped dreaming, even
when those dreams took a slightly
different path, or were sometimes
shattered by circumstances. “I think alot of times, people are afraid to try.
They are afraid,” he says. “Having a
mother who told me every day that you
can do, or be, anything is why I’m sitting
in this chair right now. It’s why I’m
doing everything I’ve done in my life.”Humility aside, there’s no doubt Chris is
a very savvy operator with finely tuned
antennae picking the best brains in the
business, including those of friend and
financier Sandy Weill.“He told me to never be afraid of
hiring people smarter than you. But
remember, just because they are
smarter, doesn’t mean they get to make
more money,’’ he laughs. “Ok? And
never forget that!”It’s been four years since Chris lost the
love of his life and partner of 20 years,
Holly Ann Norwick, to brain cancer. Her
death at 55 forced him to re-evaluate
his life and channel his grief into
creating his next chapter. He left
Gardner Rich and now spends most of
the year travelling the world as a
motivational speaker. He’s also
passionately committed to raising
awareness of global homelessness.“I know what it means to grab your
child, with everything you have on your
back, and your dream and run to a
place where there’s peace,” he says.
“The first thing I think we can all do is
we can be more humane in our view of
who these people are. The truth of the
matter is 1 per cent of the entire“I want to help create the next
Chris Gardners, and they’re all
around the world. The universal
dream, this whole idea you can
do, or be, anything.”- Chris Gardner