Vintage Filings, LLC
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Newsletter: August 2007

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From Homeless to Multimillionaire
BusinessWeek
By Carmine Gallo

It's not every day you get the chance to pick the brain of a man whose real-life rags-to-riches story was turned into a Hollywood movie starring one of America's top actors. But the other day I had the opportunity to spend time with Chris Gardner, subject of the 2006 movie The Pursuit of Happyness, in which Gardner was played by Will Smith.

While attending an unpaid internship program at Dean Witter Reynolds in 1981, Gardner spent a year on the streets with his two-year-old son. They took refuge at night in a church shelter or the bathroom of a BART subway station in Oakland, Calif. Nobody at work knew. Gardner eventually won a position as a stockbroker at Dean Witter. Two years later he left for Bear Stearns BSC), where he became a top earner. In 1987, he founded his own brokerage firm, Gardner Rich,in Chicago. Today, Gardner is a multimillionaire, a motivational speaker, a philanthropist, and an international businessman who is about to launch a private equity fund that will invest solely in South Africa. His partner in the fund? Nelson Mandela. Not bad for a guy who, six years before founding his own brokerage firm, was "fighting, scratching, and crawling my way out of the gutter with a baby on my back."

"Passion is Everything"

Gardner is a magnificent speaker and has an engaging personality -- qualities all business professionals would crave. But what's behind his success? What is the one thing -- the one secret -- that helped him change his life? "It's passion," he told me. "Passion is everything. In fact, you've got to be borderline fanatical about what you do." Gardner says he was fortunate to find something he truly loved, something where he couldn't wait for the sun to rise so he could do it again. His advice to entrepreneurs and those seeking a career change? "Be bold enough to find the one thing that you are passionate about. It might not be what you were trained to do. But be bold enough to do the one thing. Nobody needs to dig it but you."

Gardner wanted to be "world-class at something." For him, that something was being a stockbroker. For you, finding something you are passionate about will make the difference in how engaging you become as a communicator and as a leader. If you love what you do, you'll eagerly share the story behind it with boundless enthusiasm.

Passion is not teachable. As a communications coach, I can help clients craft and deliver a powerful story, but I can't create passion. But it's passion that separates the electrifying presenters from the average ones. I'm absolutely convinced of it. As a former television journalist, I've interviewed thousands of spokespeople and personally coached hundreds of others in my current profession. Donald Trump once said: "Without passion, you have no energy -- and without energy, you have nothing." Your listeners want to be in the presence of someone with energy, a person who greets people with a smile and an abundance of enthusiasm. Passion is not something you necessarily verbalize, but it shows. When Gardner walked into Dean Witter after having slept in a subway station the night before, he only wanted to leave one impression on his co-workers. "All they needed to know is that I would light it up day after day. Passion is not something you have to talk about. People feel it. They see it just as clearly as the color of your eyes, baby."

Coffee and Commitment

I have spent the last several years interviewing inspiring leaders, and I can say without hesitation that passion is the No. 1 quality that sets them apart. In many ways, my talk with Gardner reminds me of a conversation I once had with Starbucks (NasdaqGS:SBUX - News) Chairman Howard Schultz. Like Gardner, Schultz used the word "passion" throughout our entire conversation. But remarkably, the word "coffee" was rarely spoken. You see, for Schultz, coffee is not his passion. Instead, Schultz says, he is passionate about creating a workplace that "treats people with dignity and respect;" a workplace environment that his father never had the opportunity to experience. The coffee product offers the means to help Schultz fulfill his passion. In much the same way, stock trading and commissions offered Gardner the means to fulfill his passion, which was to give his son something he never had -- a father.

Passion is the foundation of effective communication. Dig deep to discover your core purpose, your true passion. Once you connect to it, use it as fuel to build a rapport with your audience -- recruiters, managers, employees, etc. Your presentations, pitches, speeches, and all forms of business communication will be more engaging than ever. Nearly everyone has room to increase what I call the "passion quotient" -- the level of passion you exhibit as a speaker. The higher your passion quotient, the more likely you are to connect with people. Chris Gardner's passion fueled his determination in the face of overwhelming odds and obstacles. Take the time to imagine where harnessing your passion can take you.

House Votes to Give Small Companies More Time on Sarbanes-Oxley
Bloomberg
By Jesse Westbrook

June 28 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. House of Representatives moved toward giving small companies an additional year to adhere to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's accounting rules, which are being revised by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

House lawmakers voted 267 to 154 to delay a deadline for companies with less than $75 million in publicly available shares to start complying with the law's audit rules. The measure was attached to a $21.4 billion spending measure that funds the White House, the SEC and other agencies.

U.S. Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, proposed the amendment out of concern the audit rules will impose disproportionate expenses on small companies. The vote indicates lawmakers don't think the changes being implemented by the SEC go far enough in reducing compliance burdens.

President George W. Bush signed Sarbanes-Oxley into law in 2002 after accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. eroded investor confidence. Under the law, corporate managers must assess whether they have sufficient safeguards to catch fraud and bookkeeping errors. They must also have those controls certified by an outside auditor.

Small companies are supposed to be in compliance with the management portion of Sarbanes-Oxley this year in financial statements filed with the SEC on or after Dec. 15. The SEC would require the auditor assessments starting in 2009. Today's amendment would delay both deadlines by a year.

The SEC has been under fire from business groups, which blame Sarbanes-Oxley for driving companies to less-regulated markets overseas.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote a letter to House lawmakers dated yesterday urging them to support the extension. The nation's biggest business lobby said it may consider how members of Congress voted on Garrett's amendment in releasing its annual ``How They Voted'' scorecard, the letter said.

The Senate must vote on its own version of the appropriations bill.

U.S. SEC mulls 5 pct ownership for proxy access
Reuters
By Rachelle Younglai

WASHINGTON, July 10 (Reuters) - U.S. market regulators are considering allowing shareholders who own at least 5 percent of a company's stock to nominate directors in proxy statements, one source familiar with an internal agency document said on Tuesday.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is under the gun to propose new proxy access rules in time for 2008 annual shareholder meetings and agency Chairman Christopher Cox has promised to roll out the first draft by the end of July.

But there are crucial variables around any proxy access proposal. They include how many shares must be owned and for how long before a shareholder can nominate a director.

The proposal that the SEC commissioners are considering is best characterized as a "working memo," according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

It would require a shareholder to own 5 percent of a company's stock to amend bylaws that would enable the shareholder to file a change to a company's proxy. The memo also outlined a "no-hold" period, meaning that a shareholder who wanted to put forward a proxy proposal could do so immediately after buying the shares, rather than having to hold shares for any specific length of time.

An SEC spokesman declined to comment.

Proxy statements have historically been tightly controlled by corporate managers. They are mailed annually to shareholders, telling them about nominations for director seats, executive pay levels and resolutions subject to shareholder votes.
"Not only is 5 percent unworkable, it would be a field day for hedge funds or anyone to come in," said Rich Ferlauto, a director with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "It would be taking a good principle to give shareholders long term access and turning it on its head."
Institutional investors would oppose a 5 percent ownership threshold, Ferlauto said, and called it an "irresponsible" move that would pander to hedge funds.

A court decision last year forced the SEC to reconsider its rules. The agency for years routinely allowed companies to exclude certain shareholder proposals from proxy statement ballots, but a federal judge ruled that shareholders should be able to consider proposals to help them put their own candidates on corporate boards.

The SEC has been largely silent since the court ruling, which allowed shareholders this year to put forth proxy access proposals at two companies, Hewlett-Packard Co and UnitedHealth Group Inc.

Both proposals failed to win a majority but garnered applause from AFSCME, which had successfully filed a lawsuit over the SEC's decision to deny the labor group access to U.S. insurer AIG's proxy. Corporate groups oppose giving so-called special interest groups such as labor unions more access to annual proxy statements.

"It's clear that there isn't an easy compromise. I don't see anything we could support that organized labor could also support," said David Hirschmann, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

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