How One Woman Went from Homeless to Millionaire In Less Than Two Years

How One Woman Went from Homeless to Millionaire In Less Than Two Years

It was Christmas Eve, 1990. 

“I was stoned out of my mind for two months – sleeping with eight different guys. I got to eat only by dating all these people. I realized that I had become worse than the family I grew up in and that was devastating. My mom and dad were drug addicts and I had never seen my parents sober. My childhood was filled with threats and getting beaten daily; week in, week out. My whole life was filled with horror and terror and lies and I vowed that I would never be like my family. And there I was doing cocaine...”

She hated cocaine ‘with a passion’ and recalls that when coke was introduced into the home by her parents when she was a teenager, the violence had intensified and the emotional instability was ‘horrifying’. “They would say one thing and then another thing after 15 minutes.”

That Christmas Eve, she joined other waitresses at the beach on a drink and drug binge.

“I was sweating as I was constantly dancing. I see the coke and I leaned down and I did a line. I remember waking up at 10 the next morning on my beach mat and I am asking everyone for coke. I was walking around saying, ‘Where do I get more of that stuff?’

That day, I would have given my body – I would have become a prostitute for coke and that’s how low I became. I hated everything about myself. I knew my future would never be good. I was suicidal from the age of six. My life was not worth living. There was no chance to turn it into anything better. I was disgusting. I hated how my parents raised us. My life was filled with broken promises and lies and people stealing and people beating me and people hating me and me hating myself even more...”

Fueled by the after-effects of the drug, in an almost catatonic state that morning, Dani decided she was going to end it all. “I started walking towards the ocean and dived underneath the wave.”

A few more moments under, and her life would have ended there – not an unsurprising demise given her circumstances, the coroner and police chief would have quietly concluded.

But as it happened, in that instant, her life changed forever.

'Almost a Miracle'

“I heard a voice say, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’’

It felt almost like a miracle to her.

“The feeling of coke left instantly - I wasn’t wanting it anymore. I rolled up my beach mat, turned around and hiked a mile that I needed to in order to get back to my car. I drove 45 minutes to the beach where I was living. And the whole time I was driving, it was as if the left side of my mind was saying, ‘This is not what is intended for your life, you shouldn’t be drinking. There is more to life,’ and the right side was saying, ‘You’re a failure, you’re a loser, you’re filthy; worse than your parents. Drive this car into the ocean.’ This was like a war inside my mind with these voices and I was literally in a trance.

And I have no idea why I chose to listen to that first voice.”

So Dani began to ask herself: What can I do? What do I need to do to get myself out this situation?

“As a cocktail waitress, I was not making enough, so I had to figure out my options.”

She needed $4,500 to be able to afford an apartment but with a small income derived mostly from tips coupled with the island’s high rents, it would take her four months to save enough money.

“I didn’t want to be homeless for another four months. Rent in Hawaii was outrageously expensive and I couldn’t afford plane tickets back to California. I knew no one. I was terrified I would be raped or beaten or kidnapped because there wasn’t any shelter. I was a kid who, between the ages of three to 16, was abused and molested. The emotions were still there. You try to push this back but when you’re homeless, it is at the forefront of your mind all the time and it was terrifying to me.”

That night she fell asleep in her car without any answers but the following day, the proverbial light bulb went off.

“I get this idea. Everything I ever owned was in the backseat of my car. And there was this weight loss program I had purchased long before I was homeless, lying in the back seat. I had used it for a week. I never paid attention to it before. And it just caught the corner of my eye in the sun. It was warped from the humidity. But it was as if this device was talking to me. I picked it up and it was as if this thing was saying, ‘I’m your answer.’ And my first thought was, ‘No, I’m not going to peddle a weight loss program! No way I’m going to do this!’

As if it was beneath me. As if it was sinking to a new depth. And you know, sometimes you have that feeling that you need to do something you don’t want to do?

I turned the box around, saw the manufacturer’s details and called them from the payphone.

I started asking them the question: What is it going to take to carry the product in Hawaii? As it turned out, it would require me to have licensing - and money, that I didn’t have.”

And this is when Dani - given her very scant means – decided to get resourceful.

“I handwrote a flyer [for the weight loss program] but I needed a phone number to advertise so people could contact me – and I didn’t have one. So I picked up the Yellow Pages in the phone booth. You know cocktail waitresses always have coins! So I looked through the Yellow Pages and called a small telecommunications company. And I chatted with this guy for some time, trying to build a relationship. I asked him what the cost of their voice mail service was.

He said to me, ‘Don’t drive all the way to pay for this. Send me a check for $15. 

Here’s your new number...!’

Dani, of course, was elated – down to her last quarter for that week, she got the break she needed.

“I put up the flyer at the Post Office where everyone in this town went to, and three hours later, not thinking I would get any messages - it was filled with 25 messages. I didn’t know what to do with them!

Long story short, I ended up with 40 checks, totaling $4,000 dollars from people I didn’t even know – that first month!

I called up the manufacturer with an order but they wanted a physical address to send the product and I didn’t have one. So I talked the local liquor store into letting me use their address.”

Dani made a quarter of a million dollars that first year just by selling the weight loss program, was a millionaire by the second year and went on to open up 18 weight loss centers around the country. She sold the business in 1996 - a multi-millionaire.

Homeless Man Turned Millionaire Offers The Best Advice I Ever Got

I spend 60 hours a week on my business but I don’t work for a minute. Work is hard. But what I do—writing, speaking, researching, learning, and sharing information— is pure joy. It’s what I was called to do. But often what we’re called to do and what we choose to do are different. As an undergraduate student at UCLA, I chose to study for the law school entrance exam because it was the accepted path for a political science major. I could have gone to a top law school, but I didn’t love the law. I loved reading inspiring speeches in a publication called Vital Speeches of the Day. I loved watching great broadcast journalists like Peter Jennings. I would analyze how he spoke—the inflections, volume, and pacing. I chose to pursue my calling and enrolled in journalism school. I spent the next twelve years as a broadcast journalist before leaving the industry to leverage my skills in other ways.

“What’s the best advice you ever got?” At the end of a recent podcast interview, the host asked me, “What’s the best advice you ever got?” Before I tell you what I said allow me to rewind to 2007 when I had another career decision to make: hold on to a large, steady paycheck as the vice president of a global PR firm or commit full-time to my growing writing and public speaking business. At the time I was doing some freelance writing and I interviewed the real-life Chris Gardner, the man who actor Will Smith portrayed in the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness (‘happyness’ is purposely misspelled in the title. You’ll have to read the book or watch the movie to find out why). Gardner told me the true story of how he spent nights in the bathroom of a subway station along with his 2-year-old son. In the daytime Gardner would put on his one suit, drop off his kid at daycare and take unpaid classes to become a stockbroker. You can guess how the story ends. Gardner rose to the top of his firm and became a multi-millionaire.

The secret to happiness, in life and in business. I knew the Oakland, California subway station Gardner had slept in because I passed it each day on my train trip into San Francisco. I had plenty of time to contemplate the advice he gave, words that changed the course of my career. “How did you find the strength, the spirit, to keep going?” I asked Gardner. “Carmine, here’s the secret to success: find something you love to do so much, you can’t wait for the sun to rise to do it all over again.”

Each day when I rode past the station I would think about those words. It forced me to question my choices and the daily trips into the city, which I dreaded. I wasn’t waiting for the sun to shine; I was waiting for it to go down so I could head home. I quit the PR firm, trading the stability of a salary for the instability of a start-up. Last week I was invited to BookExpo America, a prestigious book industry conference in New York, to sign copies of my sixth book. Gardner’s advice had changed my life and my business.

The most inspiring leaders are those who don’t work at a job but pursue a calling. In doing so they inspire the rest of us to be our best selves and to match our skills with our passions. They give us the confidence to pursue our dreams. Sometimes those dreams might lead an employee to find another job position in the same company or, in some cases, to leave the company altogether. And that’s okay. If an employee leaves your company and can say that your leadership inspired them to find their true calling, you will be rewarded in far more ways than you can imagine. If anything, you’re more likely to attract the people who really want to be on the bus instead of those who are daydreaming about finding another ride. I’ve also noticed that people who choose to remain with inspiring leaders admire those leaders for caring about their staff personally and professionally. Employees are more likely to stay with inspiring leaders (provided they are in the right roles) and more likely to speak highly of them. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” True leaders satisfy our ‘chief want.’

Chris Gardner inspired me to think differently about my own career choices. When I started my business there were many nights when I couldn’t sleep because I didn’t know how we were going to pay the bills. Today I can’t sleep for a different reason—I keep looking out the window and waiting for the sun to rise to do it all over again.

Carmine Gallo is the communications coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is a popular keynote speaker and author of several books, including the international bestsellers The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs and The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs. His new book, The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty is the first book to reveal the secrets behind the stunning success of the Apple AAPL -0.53% Retail Store. Carmine has recently launched an eLearning course titled, The New Rules Of Persuasive Presentations.