About Gary Fong
Gary Fong is a world-renowned photographer, inventor and entrepreneur who has made multiple fortunes in business and real estate. From his inauspicious beginnings in a tiny, hairspray-saturated apartment that doubled as his parents’ wig studio, he went on to become, at a very young age, one of the world’s most successful wedding photographers. After making millions by revolutionizing an industry traditionally reserved for small businessmen, he “stumbled” upon serial successes in photo printing, software, real estate and camera accessories by making unconventional decisions based on his own quirky impulses. Gary has photographed celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone, Paul McCartney and Ronald Reagan, invented and marketed the Lightsphere, and co-founded Pictage, which became the largest dedicated online digital/web solution in the United States and sold for $29 million.
His latest book is The Accidental Millionaire: How to Succeed in Life Without Really Trying.
You can visit his website at www.garyfongaccidentalmillionaire.com.
The Interview
One would think from the title that this book is a fantasy slackers guide to paradise, but what it really is is a humor memoir that shows how different the two different phases of my life were. Phase 1 is where I’m a person constantly driven by goals and expectations, and failing at all of them, until one day completely immersed in my own misery of having all of my expectations dashed, I nearly rear-ended a car that has a bumper sticker that says, “Since I Gave Up Hope, I Feel Much Better”
That bumper sticker changed my life. From that moment I gave up hope (because having hope really wasn’t getting me anywhere) and miraculously one unlikely thing happens after another on my way to building a fortune.
The basic message of the book is that the minute I stopped living to fulfill one goal after another, I became much more successful and a lot less disappointed. Here’s an amazing fact, it’s impossible to be disappointed if you expect nothing. That’s my favorite message of the book.
I was reading the book, “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls, and her colorful description of her poverty growing up brought back a lot of colorful memories for myself as well. So just as a exercise of not wanting to forget what it was like being poor (as a person who created a lot of self-made wealth) I wanted to journal is much color as possible what it was like to have nearly nothing.
As I started to get into this habit of reconnecting my memories onto words, I started to jot down how hilarious moments from my colorful career starting as the cheapest photographer in town to becoming one of the most famous. The weddings that I saw in the early days had a fabric to them that I’ll not likely see again ever. Many were hilarious. So then the book became a humor memoir.
And then as I started to branch out into the happenstance occurrences that I stumbled into from wedding photography to software development, to inventing, to creating a large photo lab, and now is the owner of a plastics manufacturing company and a distribution warehouse, the whole thing is so unlikely that I realized that I had a story there. And the story that emerged was one of the power that comes from stopping this silly thing of setting artificial goals for yourself to jump over.
In the last year, after quite a bit of studying I finally got to the point where my French language skills became effortless. Although I’m Chinese, I speak Spanish and now French.
And I’ve also taken up the violin. I bought a carbon fiber violin and using YouTube videos, I’ve learned to play pretty well without having to take any lessons. What did this is for in the future I have absolutely no idea. But what I know from my past is this: nothing I’ve done ever got wasted. I now have meetings in France with my business associates, in French, and really I just wanted to learn it to learn it.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on a book called “huff and bluff, a story of greed and failure”. My editor and publishers are pretty excited about this one. It’s also a memoir (a follow-up to what’s happened to me after his book was written) but this was more of a black comedy. It’s the story of a predatory lawyer and my ex-wife who blew over $1 million in legal fees trying to claim that she was entitled to millions of dollars for her share of my company that I started from scratch. In the end, the judge gave her under $3000.
I think it’s a social commentary that hasn’t yet been written. Never do you hear from the rich guy who has to fend off a greedy attorney and ex-wife and chooses not to be bullied. And then to turn it into a comedy or humor memoir, that’s the big challenge and so far a lot of the book is done and it really is working.
Do you have any advice for writers or readers?
If you are an author, I learned a lot about how to get published. The first thing that a publisher does is try to figure out what category your book will belong under. Is it a how-to? Is it a biography? What we had to do was figure out what I had, and then in the editing process clarify what category this book belongs in.
This is something I did not know before. And honestly, it really does help to have the editor and publisher actively involved during the formation of your finished book. That way, they can give you their advice on how to categorize your book which I realized is one of the most important things that you can do.
This is the first book I’ve ever written, and the fact that it’s doing so well in the bookstores and on reviews is completely thrilling to me. It’s also tremendously fun to go to any bookstore wherever I am, and see my book in the biography section between Jane Fonda and Michael J. Fox.
What are some of your long term goals?
This is a great question because my book is anti-goals. We joke that this is a anti-motivational motivational book. What I’m really trying to say is that goals blind you from all of the other amazing opportunities that occur in the detours of life. When you set your sights on a narrow target, the best outcome you have is to reach that target which was defined by your limited imagination. As soon as I stopped trying to match my expectations, my life went into a fantasy world that I couldn’t even imagine.
So, obviously, I have no goals. And I suggest trying this for yourself. Here’s proof that it works: it is impossible to be disappointed if you expect nothing. And once you live a life free of disappointment, you enter this wonderland of peace and harmony with the universe that tends to throw you obstacles whenever you try to control things too much.
What do you feel has been your greatest achievement as an author?
The fact that I didn’t really think much about the possibility of being a published author and what a cool thing that is. I just started jotting down my ideas, and it became a book. So the fact that the first thing I ever wrote became a published book available in bookstores everywhere is pretty amazing to me.
And I’m all about the reviews. The reviews are coming in for this book have been amazing. And it gives me a huge sense of a accomplishment.
Is there anything you regret doing/not doing?
I regret being consumed so much by my goalsetting habit. Here’s a good example. I met, in person, a famous inventor. And I was so thrilled to meet him, and I had 1 million questions for him. So I asked him, “how is it that you do what you do… how do you just invent things out of nowhere?”
And he said it’s much easier than you think. Anything that you see around you can be improved upon. For example that suitcase that you just walked in with (and I had one of those old-fashioned Samsonite suitcases) the powder blue kind that just had a handle on it. He said, “what would you do to improve that suitcase?” And I said, “well the first thing I would do is put wheels on it. I think it’s really silly that you have to pick this thing up and carry it around when you could easily roll it around.” Andy asked me what else I would do? And I said, “well, I would put a telescoping handle on it so that when I’m rolling this around I wouldn’t have to stoop over”. And he said well that’s also great idea what else would you do? And I said, “I would probably have a scuff proof back knee be made out of plastic so that I could drag up a flight of stairs without worrying about messing up the fabric.” And he said well there you go. There you have your million dollar idea. That is my gift to you, go take your idea, get a design patent, and live the rest of your life free of financial worry.
You know what I did? I did absolutely nothing. The reason why I did absolutely nothing was because I was so focused on my goal as a wedding photographer to book 7 weddings in July, and I only had four booked. So, I ditched this amazing idea (which would then have the design patent granted years later to some lucky inventor) so that I could accomplish my teeny tiny goal of booking three more weddings for the month of July. And I swore to myself, if I ever get an idea again, I’m not cannot let that one go. And so I invented something that went out to make me a commend this amount of money.
About The Accidental Millionaire: How to Succeed in Life Without Even Trying
The Accidental Millionaire is the memoir of Gary Fong, would-be slacker who revolutionized wedding photography, inventor of popular photography aids, entrepreneur, contrarian, bon vivant and a man who really, really didn’t want to become a doctor. A first-generation Chinese-American, Gary was raised in one of Los Angeles’ least-desirable neighborhoods and was forced to deal—in his own quirky and often very funny way—with the burdens of poverty, crime and his parents’ relentless aspirations. These issues almost overwhelmed him until he had a dramatic epiphany. Spotting a bumper sticker that read “Since I gave up hope, I feel much better,” Gary promptly did just that.
He stopped trying and started succeeding. At turns hilarious, insightful and instructive, The Accidental Millionaire is Horatio Alger-meets-David Sedaris. Turning the traditional self-help principles upside down, The Accidental Millionaire disdains the goal-oriented approaches of traditional self-help philosophies. Sometimes not knowing where you are going is the best possible way to get there.
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