COVER STORYcradled in his father’s arms as he
bunkered down to sleep in subway
stations, flop-houses, public toilets
or shelters.
The circumstances were dire, but
perversely triggered by Chris himself,
and a man stepping out of a shiny red
Ferrari. Chris encountered the man in
1981 while pounding the pavements
of San Francisco selling medical
equipment. He was so impressed and in
awe of the car, he couldn’t help but stop
and ask him two questions:
“What do you do? And how do you do
it?” The stockbroker’s answer was simple.
All Chris had to do to get that Ferrari
was to be “good with numbers and with
people”. It was a pivotal moment and the
day Chris launched his second Plan A.Chris had determined his first Plan A
by age five. His short years were scarred
by poverty, domestic violence and
alcoholism, but long enough for him to
commit to providing his children with
the father he never had. “I was going to
make sure my children knew who theirfather was,’’ he remembers. “I was going
to break the cycle of men who were not
there for their children.”In 1970 at the age of 16, Chris
discovered his spiritual genetics and
the drive to put his plans into action.
While watching a college basketball
game on television and marvelling
aloud that one day some of those young
players would make a million dollars,
his mother Bettye Jean Triplett,
declared: “Son, you could also make a
million dollars, if you wanted to”.