The Wealth Choice by Dennis Kimbro

Author:Dennis Kimbro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

The difference between the haves and have nots does not rest with possessions or lack thereof. No! Their disparity can be found in their individual talents and abilities as well as their goals and what each group is willing to do to attain them. How can you apply this fundamental truth? By understanding that you are different and then by capitalizing on your differences.

The It Factor

You can sense a special something in the skilled self-confidence of corporate rainmakers such as Ken Chenault of American Express, Ursula Burns of Xerox, or Rita Mack, a Black woman who at the height of her corporate career left a cushy job to seek her destiny under McDonald’s Golden Arches. Three franchises later, Mack’s nimble fingers rest on the switch of the most powerful economic engine within the Black community: the National Black McDonald’s Operators Association (NBMOA). As chief executive officer and chair, Mack oversees the mission of the 37-year-old organization while ensuring the success of McDonald’s 1,400 African American franchises and supporting the communities that they serve. This is no small task. The revenue from the NBMOA franchises exceeds $3.2 billion. Mack’s very presence exudes self-assurance. “The main business of life,” she mentioned during an Atlanta, Georgia–based focus group, “is not to do but to become.”

We saw it in the early 1990s in R. Donahue Peebles, at that time a powerful player in real estate development in Washington, DC. As told by a writer at Inc. magazine, while on a family vacation in Miami, Peebles decided to purchase and renovate the majestic but aging Royal Palms, a 417-room resort at the end of South Beach’s tony Ocean Drive, an undertaking that would require six years to finish. This project allowed Peebles to break new ground—the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza became the first Black-owned resort in the United States. And just as important, the project cemented Peebles’s reputation as an aggressive and politically savvy businessman and one of the most powerful real estate brokers in South Florida.2 Today, Peebles’s Atlantic Development Corporation portfolio includes hotels, apartments, and office space in Miami Beach and Washington, DC, in addition to 13 acres of prime Las Vegas land adjacent to the famed Encore casino. As a result, Peebles’s corporation is the largest African American–owned development firm in the nation, with real estate holdings valued at approximately $500 million. But for those of you who hope one day to replicate Peebles’s success or at least to conduct business with this real estate mogul, I offer the following advice: His strategy and personal philosophy are even more aggressive than the facts suggest. Peebles’s strength of character as much as his smarts has made him successful. It’s a combination of hard work and good judgment and having the disposition to go with your call regardless of whether it’s popular. “I take being a minority businessperson as a responsibility,” he shared with me during an interview. “My grandfather was a doorman for 40 years at a Marriott hotel in DC. I’m the

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