After his parents died when he was 19, Andy Andrews spent all of his money, lost everything and was sleeping under the Gulf State Park Pier.

Today, at 53, he makes a living from writing best-selling inspirational books and speaking engagements all over the country.

Andrews’ journey from homeless to helping the masses began when an old man gave him some biographies to read.

 “I always hated reading them in school because they made us read them,” Andrews said. “So when he handed them to me, I said, ‘Biographies?’ and he said, ‘No, adventure stories. Romances. Thrillers.’”

And that’s exactly what they became for Andrews. He ended up reading more than 200 biographies, and his life began to change.

“When you read the lives of these great people, you see the screw-ups that they had, and you see the craziness they chose at some points,” Andrews said. “Biographies give our lives a lot of perspective. Perspective will allow you calm. Calm leads to clear thinking. Thinking yields ideas, and ideas are where we get our answers.”

For Andrews, the answers he needed came to him as seven qualities shared by all of the people in the biographies he had read.

“I kind of figured out seven things all these people did,” Andrews said. “You could see all seven of them threaded through their lives. Those are the seven things I started throwing in my life at that point, and I started yanking myself out of that situation.”

Andrews began speaking at restaurants and bars in Orange Beach during the musicians’ breaks.

“I was actually being a comedian,” Andrews said. I was born with this urge to communicate, and the only way I could figure out to do it was to go into these places. It was a time that I learned how to talk in front of people. I learned how to keep people’s attention, and I learned how to make them laugh. I got pretty good at it.”

He got so good at it that he was invited to tour with Joan Rivers and Kenny Rogers.

After a few years of comedy, Andrews started inserting some serious material into his routines. Then, he wrote “The Traveler’s Gift,” the story of a troubled man who has a car accident and is rendered unconscious. During his coma, the man is transported to different times in history, where he meets such influential figures as Abraham Lincoln, King Solomon and Anne Frank. During the man’s time travels, he learns about the same seven principles that changed Andrews’ life.

“The Traveler’s Gift” became a New York Times best seller, and Andrews began to be requested as a speaker at the White House and corporate conferences. He has advised athletes, businessmen and politicians.

“I tell my wife, it’s not because I’m necessarily any good; it’s just because nobody does what I do,” he said. “Very few people deliver serious topics with humor, and that’s what I do.”

At the end of the day, however, Andrews considers himself an Orange Beach guy.

“I always said that if I was able to live anywhere I wanted to live in the world, it would be here,” he said. “What I do for a living doesn’t really require that I live in any particular place, so this is exactly where I am.”

Andrews enjoys Gulf Coast beaches, Alabama football and spending time with his wife, Polly, and their two sons, Austin, 12, and Adam, 10. He said he couldn’t think of a better place to raise children.

“I think we have advantages down here that other people don’t have in other areas, and part of that is the genteel nature of how we interact with each other,” Andrews said.

He also said he is grateful for the kindness people in Orange Beach showed him during the hard times in his life. When he was homeless, he caught fish, cleaned boats and sold bait.

“At Sea-N-Suds, I’d bring fish in, and for a dollar, they’d fry my fish and give me hush puppies and all the crackers I could eat,” he said. “They kind of took care of me for a long time.”

Andrews included Sea-N-Suds Restaurant in one of his books, attempting to pay them back for their kindness. “The Noticer” is set in Orange Beach, and Andrews hopes it has helped bring people to the area.

“People around here in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores are very accepting of people who are starting over,” he said.