The Home Depot billionaire's secrets of success

Bernie Marcus grew up dirt poor. Now he's giving away his fortune.

Bernie Marcus is passionate about giving all his money away.

The Home Depot founder is a signatory of "The Giving Pledge," a group of billionaire philanthropists who have committed to giving the majority of their money away to charity, during their lifetime or posthumously.

Bernie has established a foundation which works tirelessly to support various causes. After he dies, he wants it dissolved and all his money to be given away within 20 years.

The billionaire was born just before the Great Depression, into abject poverty. Here are some of his greatest life lessons.

Miracle Baby

When Marcus's mother was young, with several children at home, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Her hands and feet became crippled and she was confined to her bed in excruciating pain. Their family was destitute and Marcus's father was only able to maintain occasional work.

A Jewish doctor told his mother about a risky solution to her arthritis. He explained that her only chance at ever walking again was if she had another child.

Desperate for a solution, his parents tried and Bernie was born - mere days before the huge stock market crash leading to the Great Depression. They called Bernie a miracle baby because his mother was in fact able to walk again.

"I'm sure that to some degree my siblings resented having another mouth to feed, but I know that they also always believed that my birth helped save our mother's life."

Refuse to pay bribe Harvard

As a child, Bernie hoped to become a doctor. He finished his prerequisite courses for medical school at Rutgers and applied for scholarships at various schools. The Dean of Harvard called young Bernie personally and said, "I secured a scholarship for you. Welcome to Harvard Medical School!"

Bernie was thrilled.

Then the Dean continued, "You can send the $10,000 check to the following address." He explained that Harvard utilized a quota system that allowed only a specific amount of Jews to be admitted each year.

"This was old-fashioned antisemitism at play. I realized I would have to bribe my way in. There was no way I could come up with ten thousand dollars. Not if I worked fifty jobs, started robbing banks, or turned every member of my family upside down to shake money out of their pockets. But it wasn't about the money. I was not going to pay a bribe to get into a school that I was qualified to attend. I was devastated that my dream was over."

Little did Bernie know that his real dream was just beginning.

"I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been had I paid that bribe to Harvard. There would be no Home Depot. There would be no Israel Democracy Institute. There would be no Georgia Aquarium. A lot of cutting-edge research on stem cells, autism, cancer...would remain unfunded. I am not one to look backward and become mired in regret, but I know one thing for sure: 'Do it yourself' was my mantra."

Failure is the price we pay on the road to success

On April 14, 1978 Marcus was fired from his job at Handy Dan Home Improvement.

Just over a year later, at 50 years old, he opened a new store called Home Depot-a huge warehouse that stocked everything one could need for home improvement, at low prices. He planned to have excellent customer service and was confident this would be a homerun business.

The day of the grand opening, June 22, 1979, his children stood outside the store, ready to hand out one-dollar bills to entice passersby to step inside. By the end of the day, they had plenty of dollars left over. Bernie's hopes were crushed. His wife didn't want him shaving that night, fearing what he could do if left alone with a razor.

But Bernie didn't give up. His team was passionate about this model and weren't afraid to try again.

Their motto was honesty above all, even if it meant losing a sale. Years later, during a game of golf, Bernie's friend said to him, "Your company is going to go bankrupt."

"What are you talking about?" Bernie replied.

"It's simple. I came in because my faucet broke. I was ready to purchase a faucet that would cost over two hundred dollars. Your employee told me that all I actually needed was a part that cost two dollars. Then the man showed me how to fix it myself. If you keep following this model, you will lose your pants in no time."

Bernie smiled and leaned towards him. "Maybe. But if you ever have a problem again, where are you going to go next time?"

Do it now

Bernie is a big believer in "Do it and do it now."

Once when negotiating a deal in Japan, his team realized that the Japanese negotiators had someone who understood English, so they had no way of communicating privately amongst themselves.

Looking at each other and realizing that they were three Jews from New Jersey, they started to speak in Yiddish.

The Japanese heard the new language and put everything on hold. They miraculously found a Japanese-Yiddish translator later that afternoon.

Later, after the deal was done, the translator privately admitted, "When we heard you say in Yiddish that if it doesn't happen now we are getting on a plane and heading back to America, we realized we had to sign. It was now or never."

Bernie also feels strongly that it's never too late to start. He shared some examples of hugely successful entrepreneurs who started later in life: Kentucky Fried Chicken had humble beginnings but started to franchise at the age of 60; Duncan Hines put his name on cake mixes at 73; Julia Child debuted on television at the age of 53.

Give back

A childhood memory helped shape Bernie's life.

Even though his family often did not have enough food to eat and his parents worked tirelessly to make ends meet, his mother always set aside a few coins for charity.

Once, rather than giving her children money for a snack, his mother told them that she was giving money to tzedaka, charity. She pulled out a small charity box. It never amounted to much, just a few dollars over the course of the year, but she always found someone who needed it more than them.

At the time Bernie was furious, but the lesson remained etched in his mind forever. Giving tzedaka is an important Jewish value that his mother instilled in him.

Years later, his accountant called to say, "Congratulations! You are now officially a billionaire!"

He turned to his wife and said, "Honey you can have anything you want in the world, or we can do great things. What do you want to do?"

"Let's do great things!" she responded heartily.

"I don't understand some wealthy people. It's almost as if they keep a scorecard-who can get richer? Who can buy a bigger plane or a fancier superyacht? Who can buy a private island? It's a perverse game of one-upmanship. Who has time for that? I have a friend who, I discovered, was making more than five million, and yet he only gave away $750 a year. That was it. The rest he spent on himself and boasted about it. I ended the friendship, and I'm sure he still gives nothing away."

There are angels in everyone's life

When Bernie Marcus was looking to secure a loan to enable Home Depot's launch, he approached Rip Fleming, a banker he knew from his Handy Dan days.

"Rip, my life is on the line," he said. "If we don't get a line of credit from you, we can't get this business off the ground. Everybody has turned us down."

After threatening to sleep at the bank for weeks and not leave without the loan, Rip agreed to try. He made three attempts, and by the fourth round he secured the loan.

Years later, Mr. Marcus learned what really happened.

When Rip retired, Bernie was the Master of Ceremonies at his dinner party, and he was seated next to the CEO of the Bank Rip had secured the loan from.

The CEO said to him, "You know, when Rip came to the loan committee to try to persuade us to give Home Depot a line of credit, we said no three times. On the fourth time, Rip threatened to quit if we didn't secure the loan. He was prepared to sacrifice everything for you. The day we gave you the loan, we wrote it off as bad debt. We gave you the deal to keep Rip at the bank."

Rip never told Bernie any of this.

"You can't just give, sit back and be passive," explains Bernie. "You have to find a way to get involved and contribute your skills. If you aren't helping or volunteering, you are missing the best part of your life. That's what builds the spirit of connectedness. Nothing compares to the feeling you get when you have touched somebody. Just writing a check will never give you that."

Sarah Pachter is a dynamic, motivational speaker who has lectured throughout the US and Israel. For the past 13 years Sarah has passionately taught women of all ages and levels of Jewish observance, drawing in large crowds with her innovative and personal touch. In addition to lecturing for many organizations, schools, and synagogues, she is a Kallah teacher, dating coach, and mentor.