The Secret to Success

Case in point, when I found out I was being reinstated, I knew I couldn’t afford the tuition. So, I prayed and asked God to bless me and he came through in a major way. I am not sure how it all happened. One minute I was meeting with a financial-aid counselor, and the next minute someone sends me to Trevor Frazier’s office, the master of Pastorial Studies at Oakwood, and he gave me a full scholarship. At that time, I had a 1.7 G.P.A. Talk about a miracle! Later, I heard through the grapevine that he was leaving the University at the end of the school year to pursue his PhD. That could only mean one thing: no Frazier, no scholarship. I thought to myself, “…here we go again.” This made me question whether I wasted an entire year sitting in class instead of developing myself as a speaker. What about graduation? What about my career? How am I supposed to take care of my family? I loved the community work I was doing but it didn’t generate income and although the speaking engagements were picking up, it wasn’t steady income either. It was a blessing that De had started her career but we were so swamped with old bills the money was spent before her checks even came in. It felt like someone knocked the wind out of me. Once again I was at a point in my life where I needed to make a decision. Was I going to let the bad news get the best of me and destroy the momentum I built or was I going to take the lemons life was throwing at me and make lemonade? I would be lying if I said it didn’t hurt because it did. So I acknowledged the hurt, went through the whole gamut of emotions, and then moved on.

A Setback is a Setup for a Comeback

After the disappointment of my scholarship not being continued, I got a major break. Kenny Anderson called me and asked if I could present the work I was doing with high school dropouts at the Southeast Center for Human Relations’ National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE) in Atlanta. The invitation was huge because NCORE didn’t invite me. In fact, they didn’t even know my program existed. Kenny was the one they invited and he was willing to give me ten minutes of his time. He invited me because he wanted those in attendance to see that there were young black men doing positive things in the community and that the media should spend just as much time highlighting stories like mine as they do the negative stories. I thought the best way to utilize the opportunity was to let two or three of the G.E.D. students speak directly to how the program impacted their lives. One of the girls was a teenage mom who had received her G.E.D., got a job and was in college. Another was a young man who was previously in and out of jail and in gangs and had now turned his life around. After I spoke, the place went bananas and my career as a public speaker took off. At least three high profile engagements came out of that one invitation and created the momentum that I am still riding to this day. The first invitation was from Dr. Eric Abercrombie who invited me to speak at University of Cincinnati’s Black Man Think Tank. The second invitation was from the director of Diversity magazine. He invited me to be a guest on their annual teleconference. The third invitation came from Mrs. Juanita Smith. She invited me to speak at Florida A & M’s Black Student Retention Conference. After that, the calls started pouring in. There were two engagements specifically that meant the world to me. The first was an invitation by Dr. Joseph McMillan, founder of the Black Family Conference at the University of Louisville. Dr. Mac invited me back every year and he and the Black Family Conference staff adopted me as one of their own. The second invitation would change my life forever. It was from Rodney Patterson and Murray Edwards of Michigan State University.

I broke into the speaking circuit and was finally able to make a living doing what I loved but I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied. This wasn’t the entire vision, just part of it.

University of Cincinnati