Forbes® Best Business Mistakes: How Today's Top Business Leaders Turned Missteps into Success

Chapter 15. GARY GOLDBERG

Host of Money Matters, one of America's longest-running financial radio talk shows

Founder and CEO of Gary Goldberg Financial Services

Co-author of High-Powered Investing: A Financial Planner's Guide to Making Money in Today's Uncertain Markets

Gary Goldberg remembers when he started out as a stockbroker. "My training director said to 'make a list of everybody you know of who is going to do business with you.' I remember filling up my yellow sheet with 28 names. And of those 28 names, only one did business with me and that was my father—and he didn't have any money!"

Gary's ability to tell a story has helped his daily radio show, Money Matters, become one of the longest-running financial advice programs on radio.

Every time I would call my dad he'd say, "Okay, buy me a hundred shares." And the stocks were terrible. They all kept going down. One time I called him and he said, "Gary, how much do you make when I buy these stocks?" I told him about a hundred dollars. So he said, "How about if I send you a hundred bucks and you quit calling me?"

His poor-kid-made-good life story starts in the Bronx, and has led him to suburban Suffern, New York, where he runs a money management company that specializes in what he calls the "mass affluent." These are people with money to invest, but not enough to get the attention of private wealth managers at places like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.

When he meets with prospective clients, there's an air of experience that comes ...