The Journey From Wealth Seeker To Wealth Creator

Nowadays it seems that people who read a column want to know as much or more about the writer than about the column's subject. Nothing wrong with that in one way I guess because I can agree that a great deal of the credibility of what one writes comes from who one is.

It is true of the best writing that somehow through the author's voice or use of language, the reader gets a sense of the author's life journey or what I call path to transformation and enlightenment about himself and the world he/she inhabits.

When I began writing this column, I wanted to share the knowledge I'd gained from at that time 20 years of experience pursuing the entrepreneurial dream. My struggles, failures and triumphs certainly informed the 250 plus columns I wrote over 7 years, but the focus was the information I had to share. The feedback I was receiving from readers told me I'd been fairly successful in delivering some useful info in an easy-to-digest style; I received letters from perhaps 2000 people who found the column and the information I shared useful to them in their own self-employment/entrepreneurship activities, and for people who desired financial independence, the column was there to validate the idea of creating your own job and business enterprise as an alternative to decades for someone else.

My target audience was low-income people who wanted a piece of the American dream; I wanted to demonstrate that by following some organizational, management and marketing principles they could successfully create their own job and establish their own business enterprise even with limited income and no business experience.

In the 1980s and 1990s entrepreneurship was more of a novelty, I think, just as the idea of owning your own personal computer seemed like a Star Trek fantasy. Just as PCs and cell phones emerged in the 1990's, so did hundreds of magazines that touted entrepreneurship as the pathway to financial freedom. Income Opportunities, Home Based Business, Entrepreneur, Business 2.0, Business Startups, even Fortune and Black Enterprise, whose articles in the past focused on existing businesses, now touted the entrepreneurial imperative. Near the end of the decade, Fast Company Magazine and Business 2.0 both championed the concept of YOU, Inc. - that is, YOU the individual as both small business and defining brand differentiating the person you are and seem to be to others.

You know how some kids grow up wanting to be an astronaut, fireman, or policeman? From as far back as I can remember (at least since I was 12 years old), I wanted to own something, to run the show, to be the one in charge. My first job was shelf stocker in a grocery store on Chicago's 47th Street; CJ (Charles Jones), the guy who owned the store also ran what we called a "bookie joint", a place where people placed bets on the horse races at Sportsman's Park, Arlington Race Track and Hawthorne. CJ was a brown-skinned man who always wore a suit and tie and a snap brim hat. CJ cut an intimidating figure but he always had money and paid me every week. Five of us worked in the store and we got paid every week without fail. But CJ wasn't the first entrepreneur I ever observed up close. My father ran a barber shop from one of the bedrooms of our apartment; it took me years to realize that when I started darkrooms and computer labs in my own bedroom I was essentially copying what my father had done - create a job for himself and start his own business.

Part Two Of This Story Tomorrow.