Diversity MBA Magazine – Managing Diversity, Executive Leadership Development, Diversity Jobs & Hiring

Sue Gin, founder/CEO of Flying Food Group (FFG), knows what it’s like to have a dream and make it a reality. Her company, which in 2009 produced revenues exceeding $300 million, is the fourth largest woman-owned business in Chicago. In 2010, FFG was named National Minority Global Supplier Distributor of the Year by the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency.  Not bad for a woman who got her start when she was served a half-frozen sweet roll on a breakfast flight and decided she could do it better.

FFG Airline Catering produces innovative and cost-effective cuisine for over 60 airline customers, primarily long-haul carriers, including Air France, Air India, ANA, Lufthansa, British Airways, China Airlines, JAL and Singapore Airlines. It has 17 branches nationwide and one in Shanghai, China.  Together, they produce over 200,000 meals a day with an emphasis on quality and nutrition.  FFG executive chefs try to please every palate with a wide assortment of cuisines — American, Chinese, French, German, Halal, Italian, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Thai, and Turkish.

In addition to the airline business, FFG launched Fresh Food Solutions in 1996, which provides private-label packaged foods to retail partners in grocery, food service, and specialty markets. Among the expanding list of its current partners are Starbucks, Fasmima!, Aramark, HMS Host, JFC, RaceTrack, Pepito’s Cuban café, and 7-11.  Products include entrees, fresh sandwiches, wraps, salads, side dishes, desserts and parfaits, and all foods are USDA-certified.

Then To Now In A Nutshell

Beginning with a single domestic carrier out of Midway Airport in 1983, other larger carriers showed interest in FFG and Gin expanded to O’Hare International Airport.  At that point, the French catering arm, Servair, became her partner. Today, Servair has joined with FFG in the newly constructed Flying Food Servair JFK, a $30 million state-of-the-art airline catering facility at New York’s JFK Airport.

According to Gin, the biggest challenge is “success building on success and trying to integrate people in a growing organization. Sometimes being successful isn’t the best thing that can happen to you. It takes time for everything to come together.”

FFG employs 3,200 people worldwide and Gin holds each of them in warm regard. “Both the hourly employees who have built their lifestyle around their jobs, and those who have grown into managerial positions [are special],” she says. “The whole progression is extremely rewarding.”

American Success Story

The youngest child of two Chinese immigrants, Gin learned about food and customer service in her parent’s restaurant. When she was 10, her father passed away suddenly and her 19-year-old brother took the helm. Gin worked after school and on weekends.

After graduating from high school, Gin attended Aurora College (now Aurora University, where she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters this May) for a semester before she moved to Chicago to attend DePaul University. Her education was interrupted by an illness and she left DePaul to earn money to pay for medical expenses. Her first success was in real estate, where she founded New Management Ltd., a real estate sales, leasing, management, and development firm. She also invested in restaurants and a wholesale bakery. 

Philanthropic Endeavors

For all of Gin’s business accomplishments, she has a keen sense of giving back and is on numerous boards. These include Excelon, Commonwealth Edison Co., DePaul University, the Field Museum, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago Botanic Gardens, Prostate Cancer Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, Foundation for the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and Servair, where she is, incidentally, the first non-French citizen board member and one of the first women. She also heads the board of the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund, Inc., honoring her late husband, who was the founder of MCI.

Additionally, Gin is president of the Sue Ling Gin Charitable Fund. “It’s a not-for-profit vehicle which I use to fund grants to the community,” she explains. “We recently went into one of the toughest neighborhoods of Chicago, where there was a 50% or greater drop-out rate in a particular charter school. We provided subsidies to the school and scholarships to many of the graduating seniors. As a result, we were able to turn that high drop-out rate around and, this year, 95% of their class will be graduating.”

Diversity Benefits

As to whether the issue of diversity has been a help or a hindrance in achieving her goals, Gin notes,” I don’t remember when it’s been a hindrance. I do remember when it’s been a help. It sets you apart from others. On interviews and sales appointments and the like, I think clients listen a little closer sometimes. It really, truly has worked that way for me.”

As to what advice she can give upcoming minority entrepreneurs, Gin is very clear: “Often I’m told, after I’ve given a speech, ‘I had that idea before you did.’ And I think to myself, it’s not good enough to just have an idea. You have to act on it and take the risks to do those things you feel strongly about. Only those who act reap success.  Do your research, believe in your idea, then go ahead and do it.”

Adhering to her beliefs, and with focus and determination, Gin has made her own ideas a reality.  “Our next step is to continue to grow in Fresh Food Solutions, the newest part of our company,” she says. “And we will strengthen our efforts with in-flight catering and our retail business.”

Merrill Furman is a freelance journalist and author in the Philadelphia area. She holds a MSEd from the University of Pennsylvania and has taught English at the secondary and college levels.

Image of Sue Gin courtesy of Blue Buddha Boutique

Other image courtesy of Pax International

Cathy Hughes, 63, founder/chairperson of Radio One Inc., is one of the most powerful women in radio. She is the first woman owner of a radio station ranked number one in any major market , and the first African-American woman to head a publicly traded company.

Hughes, lives in Washington, D.C. and spends part of her time tending to her 89-year-old mother, Helen Jones Woods, who played trombone in the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the first integrated all women’s band in the country.  Interestingly, the band was established at Piney Woods, a private boarding school in Mississippi founded by her father, Lawrence Woods).

Life wasn’t easy for Hughes, who became a single mother following a brief marriage. But she climbed the corporate ladder like no other, installed some rungs of her own along the way. Her son, Alfred Liggins III, she says, was her “motivation and inspiration.”

Her honors include an honorary doctorate from Sojourner-Douglass College, a Black Woman on Wall Street Award, Essence magazine’s “100 Who Have Changed the World,” the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Washington Area Broadcasters Association, a Seventh Congressional District Humanitarian Award, the Ron Brown Business of the Year Award from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Baltimore NAACP’s Parren J. Mitchell Award, a National Association of Broadcasters’ Distinguished Service Award, a National Action Network’s Keepers of the Dream award, and a recent induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame.

Pam McElvane, DiversityMBA founder/publisher, recently had the opportunity to talk to Hughes after first interviewing her 10 years ago.

P. McElvane: First of all, I’m happy to interview you again. You once said we were your first cover story. What salient points can you share about your 10-year-journey since then?           

C. Hughes:  Our mission over the last 10 years was to be for the African-American community what Univision is for the Hispanic audience — a one-stop shop, whether it’s print, electronics, cable, Internet, radio, satellite, or terrestrial radio. We wanted to be able to directly communicate with the entire African-American community, and over the last 10 years, our platform has expanded to the point where we now cover 82% of it. One of the most exciting things that has occurred within the last five years was a multi-billion dollar research project called BlackAmericastudy.com. We wanted to really take a look at the Black consumer market. It’s one thing to say to advertisers that African-Americans prefer receiving your message through Black media. It’s another thing to be able to quantify and qualify it. We had 3,400 respondents between ages 8 and 80. It was the first time that type of expansive research project was ever undertaken of the African-American community.

P. McElvane: What do you see yourself doing with this information outside of sharing it with the companies? 

C. Hughes: The most important aspect of it is to share it with the African American community ourselves. We ended up with over 300 pieces of data. Over 80% of the respondents under age 30 had no desire to work in corporate America. Those between the ages of 18 and 24 overwhelmingly expressed an interest in being entrepreneurs. That’s a radical departure from the belief that a good education will get you a good job, because young Black people aren’t interested in working for anyone else other than themselves. We found interesting pieces of data on the Black community being split almost 50-50. For example, 42% preferred being called Black, and 44% preferring African-American. Even more interesting was that the higher the economic status of the respondents, the more prone they were to want to be called Black as opposed to African-American. Besides making this information part of our sales presentation to advertisers, I encourage people to go online and take a look at it. I think it’s important for Black people to know themselves.

P. McElvane: What did it mean for you to be inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame?           

C. Hughes: It’s quite an honor, but not a goal or aspiration. I’m not trying to be disrespectful to the Hall of Fame, but my Hall of Fame is when I do something that really changes, improves, or upgrades the quality of life in a small or large way. My induction came at the same time we decided to celebrate our 30^th Anniversary. Instead of a party or celebration, all 1,800 Radio One employees were paid to report to nonprofit organizations and work for a day instead of coming into the radio station. To me, that was a Hall of Fame moment because when you have that many people being paid to go out into the community, many will continue with their volunteer efforts and bond with those individuals they help. More importantly, those organizations we helped held a direct impact. I have to be very careful because I don’t want any organization, particularly not the Radio Hall of Fame to think that I’m not grateful, but awards don’t excite me. Helping people turns me on and gets me excited.

P. McElvane: Aside from the typical textbook buzz words, how do you personally define leadership? 

C. Hughes: Leadership is being willing to do yourself that which you ask someone else to do or which you require of others. That puts an additional onus on managers because it causes you to consistently and constantly improve your knowledge and skill set.  One of the only areas in radio I’m not skillful in is engineering. I just put it off far too long because I wanted to take some engineering courses to really understand how radio actually works.  Engineers are critical to my profession. If my station goes off the air, I don’t know how to physically enable it to come back on air. But I do know everything else. If I ask someone in my company to do it, it’s not do as I say, but do as I do. If a commanding general in the military isn’t on the front line, I don’t think the troops fight the same way. They need to be out there in the trenches. That’s the style of leadership I’ve always believed in — not asking anyone to do something I wasn’t willing to do.

P. McElvane: Can you recall an example of when you had to do this?       

C. Hughes: Emergencies are probably the best example. Whether it’s a debilitating snowstorm or Hurricane Katrina, those of us who work in radio have to be there. With Hurricane Katrina, I knew they were going to have severe problems with radio transmissions and towers, so I headed to the airport to see if I could secure passage for my engineers.  Shortly after I got there, two of my engineers arrived and were like, ‘What are you doing here?’ I handed them their tickets. They left Washington with a feeling of support and someone having their back. They weren’t asked to, but I knew enough about them that they were going to go on their own to get the radio stations back on the air. Our listeners depend on us not just to tell them what’s going on, but advise them on what to do with what’s going on.

P. McElvane: How do you recommend leading in the current economic crisis?    

C. Hughes: You have to rise to the occasion and do what’s required of the situation. You have to be more compassionate and sensitive to the needs of the troops. I can’t tell you how difficult it is for a company to have to dismiss an employee who fueled his car on a company credit card, not because he was trying to steal, but because he didn’t have enough money to get to work. This was an issue I had to address when gas prices went up to over $4. The employees who drive station vehicles aren’t the highest paid, and there were two incidents where they were caught on camera filling their personal vehicles. One was filling up a whole series of his families’ vehicles.. Another was filling up his car in order to get to work. I had to really do some serious convincing of our human resources department that they weren’t the same thing; one involved a couple hundred dollars, the other $10.

In challenging economic times, you have to be more flexible with regulations. I don’t think that one rule fits all during tight economic times. Under normal circumstances, no one should be charging personal gas on a company card. I told the ‘$10’ employee it would be all right.  He cried. I said, “Stop crying, because they’ll know. Just tell them you didn’t have it on you.’  If gasoline hadn’t been over $4, if it had been better times, I would have been more hardnosed about it.

P. McElvane: With the impact of social media, what is the future of radio in your eyes?

C. Hughes: Television has already has been changed dramatically by cable. But network TV and cable are two different things.  I think that radio is like Black newspapers. There’s a different relationship. I don’t see in my lifetime, or my son or grandson’s, there being a big break between the Black community and Black radio. I see radio having to up its game in terms of technology, because the world of video is a reality. You are not going to be able to deliver your radio message, whether its music or sports, in the same modality as we have been able to in the past. We have what they call paperless videos. Before, we had to generate program logs to dictate what was going out over the air. Now we have touch-screens. In order to survive, we’re going to have to keep up with technology, which is the quality of signal and the ability to deliver.  It’s far more a future of radio than its competitors.

P. McElvane: What advice do you have for maintaining a work-life balance for entrepreneurs?

C. Hughes: I’ve never tried to balance it. My child and my family have always been my top priority. By extension, we call ourselves the Radio One family. I always say take care of your front line first; your bottom line will automatically follow. We make a mistake worrying about the bottom line, worrying so much about our being successful in our corporate lives that we sacrifice personal life, particularly as women. I believe that if you do the things that are dictated to you by God, those other things will fall in line. Never once has my job been more important to me than my family. Consequently, I was fired only once, from a nonprofit. My son was about six months old. He had a fever. When the sitter called and told me, I wanted to leave. The supervisor told me I couldn’t e because something needed to be accomplished. I told her I’d take it home with me and get it accomplished at home. She told me that wasn’t satisfactory. She said if I left, I couldn’t come back. I left. About three days later, her supervisor asked me to return. I said no. As he got older and my job changed, my son went to work with me when I had to work late. I was criticized because he attended social events for work. I even took him to black-tie affairs. It was a blessing, because people understood why I had to leave early to put him to bed. I wasn’t leaving him in the care of someone else because I had job responsibilities. I figured out how to work him into those responsibilities. So,  there is no work-life balance. Family always comes first.

P. McElvane: What is your personal life philosophy?

C. Hughes: You’re determined successful or not on the day you close your eyes, and it’s judged by the number of people you have helped compared to the number you have hurt. If the number you have helped is significantly larger than the number you have hurt on your life’s journeym then you’ve lived a successful life. To me, I’m a work in progress. I’m very uncomfortable with people asking me how I view my success, because to me it’s not to be viewed or evaluated as of yet. I would hope I haven’t experienced my greatest accomplishment yet. I live in awe of some of the things God has blessed me to be a part of.

Image courtesy of AALBC.com

According to Dr. Robert Hisrich, entrepreneurs can help make the world go round – especially if they look at the world beyond their borders.

“People who think globally tend to be more open-minded and creative, that is the heartbeat of entrepreneurs,” says Hisrich, Garvin Chair for Global Entrepreneurship at the Thunderbird School of Global Management graduate school.  “Not only do we have these global thinkers here at Thunderbird, but we have people who really aspire to be their own boss and create companies in both the profit and non-profit sectors. It’s just a wonderful environment … to create a center and programs here.”

The newest program is the Thunderbird School of Global Management Center for Global Entrepreneurship (CGE). Hisrich is the director of the center and architect of the programming.

Thunderbird is regarded as the world’s leading institution in the education of global managers. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona and with operations in the United States, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Mexico, Central and South America and China, Thunderbird is unique in its commitment to producing global leaders who contribute to sustainable prosperity.

Ranked No. 1 in international business by The Wall Street Journal’s poll of corporate recruiters, U.S. News and World Report, and the Financial Times, Thunderbird’s unique curriculum is based on the principle that to do business on a global scale, executives must know not only the intricacies of business, but also understand the customs of other countries and be able to communicate in different cultures.

The center began operations in 2005, funded by a $60 million gift from businessman and Thunderbird alumnus Samuel Garvin. The goal was to build an entrepreneurship component throughout the curriculum and to establish a world-class center for global entrepreneurship. “The president recognized that a large portion of our alumni were entrepreneurs and that our students wanted a strong entrepreneurship program,” says Hisrich, who also sits on the faculty of the University of Ljubljiana (Slovenia), The Technical University of Vienna and Queensland University of technology in Australia, and has authored numerous books on business and entrepreneurship. “The latest survey of our alumni, done a couple of months ago, shows that 37% of our alumni are entrepreneurs, which is probably higher than any university I know of in the world.”

The program has four areas of focus, organized into centers for excellence — the Global Family Enterprise Center, the Global Center for Innovation and Creativity and Corporate Venturing, the Global Social Enterprise Center and the Global Venture Center.  Each center has a three-pronged thrust of an academic component, a theoretical/research component and a supply and implementation component.

“Every student has to take the Global Enterprise course,” says Hisrich. “Basically this is an introduction to entrepreneurship. They learn all about what an entrepreneur is and what a global enterprise is and how to do these things on an ethically- and socially-conscious basis.”

In addition to Global Enterprise, the entrepreneurship curriculum includes the Global Business Plan course, which covers everything from coming up with the opportunity to developing the business plan to launching the business. Managing the Global Family Business addresses the concerns of family-owned businesses, which constitute 82% of all businesses in the world. Other courses cover financing the business, valuing the business, and growing the business. All of these courses have a global perspective.

The center also sponsors various non-credit courses, including seminars and workshops like the Global Family Enterprise Program held in the early spring. “Family businesses from all over the world, this year including Europe, India, China, Mexico and the United States, come and have this three-day experience,” Hisrich explains.  “They get to know each other and, hopefully, there’s some business done between them. We present seminars and it is led by Ernesto Poza, who has the leading selling book in family-business and is on our staff. We also do the Global Family Business conference in China. We do a two-day version of the four-day program.”

Other seminars include “Global Entrepreneurship: Starting Your New Venture.” It’s a one-day intensive course designed for business people leaving the corporate world and starting their own firms. “We also have a two-day seminar on corporate innovation and intra-preneurship,” says Hisrich. “We have companies from all over the country come to participate. They learn how to actually create new businesses within businesses and create new products.”

Also under Innovation and Creativity, he adds, “We have the Innovation Challenge in the fall, where teams come from all over the world to compete for a first prize of $20,000. The first round of competition is online and we have an international group of judges to judge the contest. Out of the second round, ten teams are selected and paid to come here to Arizona for the final round. We should call it the sustainable Innovation Challenge because the questions are ones the corporate sponsors pose. Last year’s sponsors were very pleased with the responses they got to questions of importance to them.”

The Social Entrepreneurship Center focuses on creating socially responsible organizations. “People who tend to think globally are unusual in that they really have a sense of social enterprise and social fairness. In general, according to studies I’ve done, entrepreneurs are more ethical than managers. Obviously because it’s their company and a lot of times their name is on the company,” Hisrich remarks. “We have quite an interest in social entrepreneurship, we will be offering a credit course in social entrepreneurship this year. We also have projects looking at sustainable innovation. Incoming students are put into teams and look at ways we can become a carbon-neutral campus. The winning idea is funded and the winning team gets a prize. I think last year it was $2,000.”

The center seeks to advance entrepreneurship worldwide and help create and support prosperity. “We have a program on Afghan women,” Hisrich says. The program is part of the Global Venture Center‘s global women entrepreneurs initiative. “We bring over women entrepreneurs from Afghanistan for about three weeks. We give them training on various aspects of doing business and entrepreneurship, and help them create and grow their businesses in a country where it is most difficult not only to just be an entrepreneur, but to be a female entrepreneur.”

The structure and thrust of the program reflects Hisrich’s views on the future of global economic development. “I think that part of the building of [Afghanistan], along with other countries that are moving through economic development, it’s going to be the women. These women are just unbelievable,” he says. “We’re in the process of expanding that program, we’re in negotiation with a major US corporation for funding. Eventually we’re going to expand it to [take it to] women in other countries, we’re looking at a couple of places in Africa.”

Not only does the center train global entrepreneurs, it puts its money where its mouth is and helps new companies get started through its global business incubator, part of the Global Venture Center. The incubator structure and the relationship with the school represent a new direction in university financing. According to Hisrich, it is an idea whose time has come. “We have a different concept than most incubators. If you look at the future of universities, we really ought to have a different model. I think the model of funding education as it exists today is just not sustainable into the future,” he says. “Universities today depend upon endowments, in other words giving from alumni, student tuitions and any research dollars they get from corporate or government resources. We believe we should take a proactive position in forming companies and also a risk as well. Instead of charging rent, we take an equity position in the companies in our incubator.”

Because the Center has a vested interest in the success of the incubator enterprises, it gives the fledgling companies a wealth of support and guidance. Incubator companies are assigned a faculty mentor, an alumni entrepreneur mentor and an Enterprise Scholar, who assists them while learning to run a business from the inside. They also have access to a wealth of business services support from the program.

Throughout its 60-year history, Thunderbird has remained a leader in international business education by offering a cutting-edge curriculum taught by faculty who are recognized as global thought leaders. The new Center for Global Entrepreneurship is handily following in that tradition. “My goal is to be the number one program in global entrepreneurship in the world,” says Hisrich.

Faith Pennick was so impressed with the documentary Hoop Dreams she decided to become a filmmaker herself.  At the time, she didn’t know anything about the art of filmmaking; had no connections, and not nearly enough money.

“I had to do it,” she says. “I literally had an epiphany walking out of the theatre. Hoop Dreams was the most amazing cinematic experience I’ve ever had. The way the story unfolded, the way the stories were told. I just fell in love with that movie. If I could be a part of a film that has a fraction of the brilliance of Hoop Dreams, then that’s what I wanted to do.”

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It takes more than a quality product and a strong management team to make a business really take off. Niraj Kataria, chairman/CEO of Diversity Business Solutions, knows there’s something far more important that an entrepreneur needs: funding. It’s the key to fueling the growth of a business, he says.

Kataria knows the ins and outs of businesses funding. In the early 1990s, he worked on initial public offerings for Gartner Group, a technology research and consulting firm in Stamford, CT., and Moldflow, a plastics solutions company headquartered in Lexington, MA. Seeing and understanding how capital gets raised gave him a solid foundation for everything else he has done since.

The experience at Gartner and Moldflow prepared Kataria well for his next step up the ladder, when he accepted the position of company president for the New Orleans-based publisher of Black Collegian and Black MBA magazines. That move, he says, was one of his most personally satisfying because he was able to leverage a Black-owned company that had been around for years and lift it to the next level.

With a bachelor’s degree in accounting and an MBA from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, Kataria had the experience and skills required to run a company, but his time on the tennis court also helped. During his stint in Lexington, a town without much ethnic diversity, he played tennis with a Black friend. That friend had a friend, Preston Edwards in New Orleans, who needed help raising funds to take his print-based publication, Black Collegian, online.

Kataria, 45, a native of India, knew well the struggles Black entrepreneurs face when it comes to securing bank or private funding to expand or leverage their businesses.  He thought he could help Edwards, and so did Edwards after the two met and talked at length. Eventually, Kataria moved to New Orleans, becoming president of Edwards’ company, which was renamed IMDiversity.com.

Kataria developed a business plan for the company and raised $3 million from two venture funds. “One of the funds was started by the [former] CEO of Gartner Group, which gave $1.5 million,” he says. “Another $1.5 million came from Stonehenge Capital in Louisiana.”

With that infusion, hiring took off, and IMDiversity’s staff grew from about a dozen to more than 60. The company’s sales skyrocketed 500%. For Kataria, it was, “A dream come true; me running a Black-owned company.” He held the job of president from April 1999 to December 2001. “It’s one of the best things I ever done in my life.”

To this day, Edwards still marvels at Kataria’s expertise in raising seed money. “He put together a prospectus for investors and introduced us to the venture capital community,” he says. “We grew tremendously over a year and a half period. …He fit in very well here.”

After leaving IMDiversity, Kataria took over the chairmanship of Diversity Inc., a leading publication on diversity and business. There, he positioned the company to meet the needs of emerging markets and developed new products and services, including extending the Diversity Inc. brand from a Web-based product into a glossy magazine that launched in November 2002. He was involved in packaging Diversity Inc, the magazine, from concept to print.

Kataria stayed at Diversity Inc. four years. Then Hurricane Katrina hit. And that changed a lot, especially his commitment to using good business practices to do good works. He decided the people of New Orleans, so devastated by the hurricanes, needed help. And one form of assistance he could deliver was jobs. Bringing business back to New Orleans was crucial if the city were to fully recover.

So Kataria set about trying to raise monies to help Black business owners hard hit by the hurricane and floods. His goal was to start a fund with $5 million to $10 million that would help small business such as restaurants and barbershops. But raising the funds proved difficult in a city so many citizens had fled. Even a prominent businessman like Edwards found it hard to get enough ney to rebuild his home.

Still determined to bring jobs back to New Orleans, Kataria and his friend and business partner Terrence Rice started Diversity Business Solutions in 2007. This time, though, no funds came from private equity or venture capitalists. Kataria and Rice self-funded DBS with their own money and contributions from friends. DBS, while still a small company, he says, has its sights on growth. The company is “growing organically” while Kataria and Rice prospect for outside funding.

“Yesterday, I was talking to one of the venture funds. To this day, it’s tough to get funded if you’re a minority- or Black-owned business,” he says.

DBS puts together Web sites based on job channels and uses sophisticated technology to up-sell listings that draw diversity candidates. Its main clients are newspapers, which DBS attracts by showing them the advantages of selling through its network of diversity sites for a better price point and fewer transactions. Network sites target African-American, Asian and Hispanic job candidates, Kataria explains. With DBS’s package, employers can reach people from different ethnic backgrounds and from multiple locations as opposed to only those in just one city. That business model works well, he says.

In addition to having a nationwide job network, DBS’s goal “is also to created white-collar jobs in New Orleans,” says Kataria, a single father who keeps a home in Southington, CT, where his three children live.

Still, the success of the company relies on getting funding, which Kataria steadfastly believes is made more difficult for him and Rice, who is Black, because funders have typically been reluctant to back minority-owned businesses. “If this was two White boys…they’ve have funding coming out the wazoo,” he says. “Oh, God, yeah.”

Kataria believes that doing great work will pay off. One thing he and Rice don’t want to do, he says, is promote diversity while not being the best at it because that would be “another thing to slap [them] in the face.”

What is working in his and Rice’s favor, though, is their knowledge of the media industry, an understanding of how financing works and having connections. “That’s the advantage of being in the industry for that long,” he says. “We are on our way to succeeding. New Orleans is not going to attract Fortune 500. They just can’t because of the schools and education issues. But they can attract smaller companies. …If you can show them a pilot of how white-collar jobs can be created and run, then the country can see what can happen with half a million-dollar funding.

“Everybody has a chance to do well. Funding helps. If you put 10 people around a table, five with funding, five without, the five with funding have a better chance. And if the five with funding are White people, then only White people are going to succeed. So we have to find channels to fund the people at minority companies.”

Every business dreams of leaving a legacy. These days, making it past your first year is tough enough. Many forward thinkers have ideas they hope will change the world, but hardly any will ever see their dreams come true. Hard work and focus is the vehicle that might get you there, but innovation is the gas necessary to keep your engine running.

Boston Consulting Group recently surveyed 1,060 executives and found some convincing facts about what are driving big businesses today. Innovation remains a top strategic precedence for many companies, with 72% of executives ranking it a top-three strategic priority. More than half of the executives were dissatisfied with returns on investments in innovation. Although blue-chip CEOs may be spending huge budgets on innovation, this shouldn’t mean small businesses cannot compete with them. Small businesses can adapt and react quickly, and often don’t get toppled in the deadly process of killing innovation with “no change” attitudes from risk-averse shareholders.

Donald Sheelen, an innovation consultant, has created and managed over $1 billion worth of innovative products. “Innovation is the lifeblood of any organization.” he emphasizes “Without it, not only is there no growth, but inevitably a slow death.”

Only two-thirds of new small businesses survive at least two years, and just 44% survive at least four years, according to a study by the U.S. Small Business Association. Here are some innovation principles that every entrepreneur should consider if they don’t want to be another startup casualty.

Jump the next curve. Great innovators don’t try to do things 10% better; they try to do it 10 times better. Innovation is the act of introducing something new. The power of the web means startups no longer have to build global infrastructure to reach a worldwide market. This allows for companies like Google, eBay, Facebook, and YouTube to scale their businesses unconventionally quickly. They have jumped the next curve and invented new curves to jump on. They are reorganizing how society operates in brilliant and novel ways. It is their awareness of what’s upcoming that are allowing these young entrepreneurs to be worth billions.

So how can you start thinking like a great innovator? First, you must be versed on what are the latest innovations. The success elite are lifelong learners. Talk to your customers or potential markets and ask what they want. Consumer-centric innovation may be the most powerful way to raise a company’s innovation success rate because you’re producing exactly what your customer wants.

Get fresh eyes. Most entrepreneurs never think outside the box because they’re trapped under their own self-created glass ceiling. The busy daily grind with its built-in stress pollutes their natural creativity. Take the time to re-evaluate your goals with some fresh perspectives.

Start by switching roles. This is a good way to learn and understand what’s out there or in there. If you’re a manager, become an employee. If you’re the product manager, become the product. Change your perspective. This bit of role-playing can allow you to find new innovative ways to look at the same problem, and find a solution you never thought existed before.

Stuck with a creative block? Try beginning your day with Starbucks in one hand and a pen in the other. Build a daily routine brainstorming new ideas first thing each morning to get your creative mojo going. Before the hectic day starts is when you’re most creative and your mind is less cluttered and strained.

Swim in the blue ocean. In the groundbreaking book Blue Ocean Strategy, authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne say that a major focus should be on creating competitor-free market space. Unlike “red oceans,” which are well explored and crowded, “blue oceans” represent opportunity for highly profitable growth.

Take Cirque du Soleil, for example. It took an old circus model, which catered toward middle-class families, and created a phenomena focused entirely on an upper class Broadway-type audience. Cirque du Soleil eliminated the cotton candy and expensive circus animals. Instead, it rented high-class venues and crafted a themed storyline underlining its astounding acrobats and performers. It was able to reconstruct the market boundaries for an aged circus industry and has since entertained over 70 million people.

Start looking across time, alternative industries, or complementary products or services. Your goal is to find the customer values of today, then re-evaluate traditional outdated models and their old values. Are you after a market that is small enough that larger competitors aren’t already going after it, and big enough so that if you’re successful, you can reach critical mass and profitability? Once you’re on to something, you can start paddling in the open waters.

Think big, start small. If you’re going to change the world, you cannot do it with boring products or services. In the Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki suggests, “Your goal is to catalyze passion…the only result that should offend (and scare) you is lack of interest.” He also recommends you not doing it alone. Most successful companies are started and become successful with at least two “soul-mates.”

Your positioning and messaging should be simple, elegant, and deep. It must be easy enough that your grandmother would understand it, and intuitive enough for a fifth grader to figure out. If your business model cannot be described in less than 10 words, start over until it can.

Move swiftly. Busyness doesn’t create business. Don’t spend all your time trying to find the perfect business model and the perfect big idea. Marketing guru Seth Godin, discusses this in his book, The Big Moo: Stop trying to be perfect, and start being remarkable. Your initial goal isn’t for perfection. It just needs to be attractive to a large group of people.

Most businesspeople would suggest that you must understand your market and product very well, then go as fast as you can. Make as many mistakes early on and react quickly. This will be your best way to be able to compete with the business giants.

The revolution of forward-thinking innovators has just started. The race to build creative, innovative companies will be decided by who will choose to start and who will finish strong. Perhaps one day, more companies will be leaving a legacy after all.

“I’m of the opinion,” says entrepreneur Michael V. Roberts, Sr., “that we have to be the ones to turn the Dr. Martin Luther Kings of America, those streets that are more shameful than positive images for our great leader. That we, as black people, should take the responsibility of changing that image and redeveloping the community ourselves.”

Roberts, a self-made millionaire, is chairman/CEO of The Roberts Companies, a diversified group of businesses that include commercial real estate, construction, communications, and aviation.

The entrepreneurial spirit has been with him since childhood. “When I was a boy old enough to cut grass, my dad told me it was time to cut the yard. He paid me the equivalent of a dollar,” he recalls. “When the neighbors saw that I did a pretty good job, they in turn asked me to cut their grass. They paid me five dollars. I said, ‘Aha! This working for yourself thing is not too bad.’”

Roberts still had enterprise on his mind as a high school student.  “Even when I was in school, I was doing things like selling dashikis,” he says. “I would sell to book stores back when it was still sort of cool to do that.”

After receiving his law degree from St. Louis University in 1974, Roberts and his brother Steven founded Roberts-Roberts & Associates (RR&A), a business consulting and construction-management firm offering management of all phases of construction projects, including ensuring the participation of minority- and woman-owned and local small businesses. RR&A has managed MBE/WBE participation as construction contractors, vendors, and suppliers in projects nationwide exceeding $30 billion.

At a time when upwardly mobile blacks were moving to the suburbs, Roberts moved “two blocks from the projects where I lived for ten years. And in the course of doing that gave me a great feel for, and comfort level with our people.” That “feel and comfort level” influenced Roberts to run for office.  He was elected and served on the St. Louis Board of Aldermen from 1977-85. His leadership in the creation of innovative strategies for financing propelled St. Louis into a major redevelopment phase that lasted throughout the 1980s.

Roberts himself participated directly in that boom through his development company, now called Roberts Brothers Properties (RBP). He recognized that there was a great deal of under- or undeveloped land in the community. ”I started buying all types of inner-city property when nobody was touching it,” he says.

In 1982, Roberts acquired a vacant Sears, Roebuck building, the city’s largest (200,000 square feet) commercial office building outside the downtown business district. By 1985, the renamed Victor Roberts Building had become a thriving commercial center, delivering goods and services to over 3,000 people a day. In 1991, RBP opened an Aldi supermarket on the corner of the building’s parking lot. In 1999, it developed a parcel adjacent to the building, attracting Blockbuster Video into the minority community for the first time.

Roberts Plaza, LLC was formed in 1999 when Roberts purchased a strip shopping center and freestanding store in St. Louis’ fashionable central west end. Anchored by the city’s largest grocery store and located at one of its busiest intersections, The Shops at Roberts Village was completed in early 2003 and brought a new shopping plaza and jobs to the area adjacent to the Victor Roberts Building.

RBP’s extensive portfolio includes several other high-profile projects. He purchased the former St. Louis School Board building in downtown St. Louis in 2003, and renovated the site into Roberts Lofts, 47 loft apartments and first-floor commercial space.

Also in 2003, RBP bought the Orpheum Theater, a former vaudeville house in lavishly ornamented beaux-arts style, from the original owner’s family. With seating for 1,500, the Roberts Orpheum is a venue for mid-sized theatrical shows, concerts, weddings, and corporate and special events.

In 2006, RBP broke ground on the renovation of the historic Enright School into Roberts Place, a gated community with 70 apartments and 24 3,000 square-foot single-family homes designed to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy Efficient Design) standards for environmentally sustainable, responsible development.

Roberts is also among a handful of African-American hotel developers. He began with the18-story, 182-room Roberts Mayfair Hotel, the first and only African-American-owned hotel in downtown St. Louis and the first affiliation of one with Wyndham Hotels Inc. Originally opened in 1926 Roberts acquired the hotel in 2003. One of the city’s best-known boutique hotels, it sits in the center of the convention district and consists primarily of luxury suites.

Roberts Tower, a 24-story glass tower adjacent to the Mayfair, has 58 luxury condos, a four-star restaurant, a spa and exercise room, and meeting rooms. It’s designed to achieve LEED Gold certification.

Roberts owns 11 hotels, including Roberts Crowne Plaza Hotel, Marietta –Atlanta; Roberts Comfort Inn-Busch Gardens; Roberts Clarion Hotel-Johnson Space Center; Robert and Roberts Isle and Resort, the largest African-American owned resort in the Bahamas. He also owns Roberts Centre of Denver (CO), a downtown office building.

Roberts’ other business ventures include Roberts Broadcasting Co. (1989), the licensee for WRBU-TV in St. Louis, as well as TV stations in Jackson, MS and Columbia, SC. Roberts Wireless Communications, opened in 1998, provides Sprint PCS service to more than 2.5 million residents of Missouri, Illinois and Kansas.

Roberts’ success in financing and building a wireless telephone network led to a merger of Roberts Wireless with Alamosa PCS, Washington-Oregon Wireless, and Southwest PCS in 2001, creating Roberts Tower Co., Sprint PCS’s largest affiliate, covering over 15 million people in 13 states. Roberts Aviation owns two aircraft, a Gulfstream III 12-passenger luxury jet and a Hawker 8eight-passenger mid-sized jet.

Formerly an RBP division, Roberts Custom Cabinetry & Woodworking became an independent firm in 2005 as a result of commercial client interest in the craftsmanship produced for other projects.

Roberts is also the author of Action Has No Season; Secrets and Strategies to Gaining Wealth and Authority (AuthorHouse, 2005), and has spoken at numerous universities and business conferences. Both his book and his speaking engagements focus on a central theme.

“I want people to know not to continue to make the mistake of saying, ‘Oh look, I had that idea two years ago.’ Now, someone has taken the idea that you had and they’ve made millions of dollars. I want people to lose their fear of failure. It’s nothing more than a mental construct. It’s not of nature –– it’s not like lightning or thunder. And it should be eliminated from your mindset.

“I want people to be “actionaires,” he says. “I want people to realize that all they have is a second. That in the 86,400 seconds given to us every day in 24 hours, use every moment to its fullest extent. Use it, or you will lose it.”