Black and White by Richard Williams & Bart Davis

Author:Richard Williams & Bart Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ambitious people drive themselves to lead. They’re motivated. They have goals and self-esteem. It was easy for me to spot people without ambition. They were the ones without stress. They were the ones who give advice. If I had what you have, I would do this. If I were you, I would do that. They’re not risk-takers. They never put themselves on the line. We should ignore these people because their advice never leads anywhere. They are the ones saying, “I know this person and I know that person.”

Only ambitious people place their ideas before a crowd. The others stand in the crowd and look. Ambitious people may fear risk but they take it anyway. Love is a risk. Life is a risk. Ambitious people risk everything to find success, not only for themselves, but for their kids, their families, even their communities. To me, people who fail and file for bankruptcy are still ambitious. They are trying to try again. Failure is only short-term for them. Nonambitious people just walk away and don’t even bother to pay the bills.

In the mid-seventies, I sold the White Glove Maintenance Corporation for a handsome profit and moved on. It was a hard decision but it freed me to pursue the kind of success I felt I had not yet attained. My savings account was larger than ever, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. I was still adamant about not working for anyone else, so with the money from the sale of the company, I bought a cement truck and went into the cement business. I bought extra cement from construction jobs and sold it to companies building homes. I got it at a good price because customers had already paid for the cement. I also bought and sold cement from paving companies and paid their drivers to deliver it to my customers.

My next business was the security business. It was a natural for someone who knew as much about stealing as I did. To qualify for a license to open my own company, I first had to work twenty-four hundred hours as a security guard for someone else. I found a company just a block and a half from where I lived. The entire time I worked there, I only received one paycheck that was any good. The rest bounced.

I quit and went to work for a company located on Rosecrans Avenue and Aviation Boulevard, in Manhattan Beach. I rode my moped from Compton fifteen miles in the rain and fog to and from work, five days a week. The fog was very dangerous. One morning, I stopped at a traffic light and out of nowhere, a man grabbed my handlebars and tried to throw me off my bike. I hit the accelerator while fighting him off. The moped skidded through the intersection and I was almost hit by oncoming traffic. I didn’t fare any better when it rained. On my way home, a car came up behind me and rode me up onto the sidewalk.

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