MIA Magazine June '15 Black Music & Caribbean Heritage Month | Page 6

6BB

AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MIA MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS GROUP TO THE SUN SENTINEL

Pièce De Résistance

By HCIII

Michael Gardner, Founder and CEO Headliner MarketGroup

Jay-Z spends the average Joe’s entire
mortgage for an album release party, while
P. Diddy “tip drills” the crowd with Ben
Franklin’s showcasing such extravagance
in excess going down at “The World’s
Greatest Party” at LIV on Sunday inside
the Fontainebleau on Miami, Beach.
Masterminded by “Global Spin Awards National Promoter of the Year” Michael
Gardner CEO of Headliner Market Group
(HMG).
His empire only begins there, HMG
sponsors undefeated Middleweight
Champion Boxer “Kid Chocolate” Peter
Quillin, DJ Stevie J, DIEM clothing line,
and a restaurant “Prohibition.” In an indepth interview with MIA Magazine, we
are allowed behind the velvet rope for an
intimate look at a young man growing up in
Illinois beating the odds to become the pièce
de résistance King of Miami.
Gardner was raised the youngest of three
to a single-mother in search for the best
life to raise her children that often entailed
moving around to several cities throughout
the Midwest before settling in Virginia.
There he was named “McDonald’s AllAmerican”, his senior year of high school.

FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2015

“I was three years old when someone put
a basketball in my hand and I still have that
picture” according to Gardner. He was
offered scholarships all over before deciding
on the University of Miami (UM).
Basketball was his world, it taught him
discipline and focus, which he would go on
to use as the Headliner Market Group Guru.
But that road wasn’t so smooth when his
career in basketball was suddenly cut short
after a “suspension for violating curfew”
killed his dream of becoming a legend in
basketball like his Idol Michael Jordan. He
returned home, then registered at Depaul
University and majored in Marketing.
Upon graduating, he moved back to
Miami after his cousin, Muhammad, needed
help running his barbershop “Headliner”
(HMG’s namesake) with plans for expansion
to multiple cutteries. “In the process of
waiting for those to develop, we discussed
the idea of putting on an event called ‘The
Player’s Ball’.” Never having produced an
event before, he ambitiously embarked
on a 2-day soirée that he, in retrospect,
admits being unprepared for the scale and
magnitude of the event.
Gardner describes the event as a

disastrous failure because he didn’t make
the money he expected for the sponsors.
Destruction is a form of creation, and in
the aftermath Gardner had to make a quick
buck to reimburse them, which forced him
to promote more parties, and thus a career
was born. “I didn’t have a role model or
guidance,” he explains, but Gardner was
determined to make up the losses with his
next event by calling in some old friends
from the UM days and held a “Miami Heat
& Dolphins Party” which settled his debts
and more importantly began his career. All
of Gardner’s work didn’t go unnoticed, Peter
Thomas of The Housewives Of Atlanta gave
him his first big-break at Barcode an “it” club
in the early 2000’s. “Peter Thomas gave me
the opportunity to do a weekly party.”
Gardner stayed hungry, on the grind,
and took what he learned to revolutionize
Miami’s entertainment industry. Gardner’s
hard knock commandments begin with Rule
#1 “A party isn’t a party, it’s an exercise in
execution that you must see to the end.”
Rule #2, “Preparation...every one respects
hard work and it shows in your final
product.” Lastly, Rule #3, “It’s all about the
people, I need the people, they don’t need
me. This industry eats up the weak so you
have to stay focused in whatever you do.”

Michael Gardner’s determination equipped
him with the prowess to produce “The Best
Party in the World.”
His sights are now set on an expansion
across the nation and then around the
globe. But it isn’t just about him, he is
now heading the “Overtown Arts and
Music Festival” (July 25, 2015) giving back
to the community that gave him so much.
In the coming months, Michael Gardner
is re-opening a historic club The “Harlem
Square” in Overtown that’s part of a bigger
ambitious urban land use project mix of
retail, hospitality, and residential “Miami
Worldcenter”, then on to Headliner Market
Group’s global expansion that is not only
socially conscious but community driven.
You only LIV once.

“Preparation...
every one
respects hard
work and it
shows in your
final product.”

Carol City’ ́1