Sally Duros, Author at Sally Duros

A sample newspaper L3C

I write in the Huffington Postâ€”Chicago February 9 about the potential for newspapers to ~~incorporate~~be set up as a new type of ~~corporation~~ business, an L3C, low-profit limited liability company.~~corporation~~. This would allow them to meet their community purpose, and qualify for foundation money while providing a return for private investors committed to the social good. Here’s a sample of what a newspaper L3C might look like, according to Robert Lang, who developed the structure.

Sample Newspaper
Project Goal
Purchase and restructure the Communityâ€™s Newspaper as a locally based independent newspaper with a focus on community service and news targeted specifically toward the local market. The emphasis includes the recognition that newspapers are the only business specifically recognized in the U.S. Constitution and the information provided is vital to the proper function of a democracy. The newspaper is also an important engine of the economy of the area and is an vital source, through both news and advertising, of information significant to the commerce of the area. Additionally, many of the cultural and nonprofit venues depend on a healthy vibrant newspaper for dissemination of information regarding their services. Lastly, government at all levels needs newspapers for the same dissemination of necessary information.

L3C Advantage –
The operation can be a profitable, self sustaining venture by expanding its role and restoring many services that have been reduced or cut. It will be profitable enough to maintain and purchase equipment as needed and to explore and develop ways to use and integrate new media with the newspaper model. But as an L3C it will not be under pressure to generate unreasonable level of profits or diminish services in order to increase profits or service highly leveraged debt. The L3C structure will permit the paper to direct its effort to providing the kind of community service the subscribers, advertisers and other stakeholders have a right to expect. It can operate as a public service vehicle rather than emphasize the maximization of return on investment model that has become so common in the industry and is ruining newspapers all over America. As an L3C, it will, by law, be charged with placing community service ahead of profit.

Amount of Investment Required -To Be Determined

Possible Members of L3C –

Equity or First risk tranche
Foundations through PRIs and tax deductible donations by individuals to Community Foundations turned into PRI investments by Community Foundations. Community Foundations in particular have a stake in the successful operation of a local community newspaper since in many ways it is vital to the basic spirit and health of the community served by the Community Foundation.

Mezzanine tranches
Employees, local businesses such as auto dealers or restaurants, local merchants and banks, supermarkets and other national chain retailers and theater chains all of whom depend on the viability of the paper for delivery of their message to local customers. Local individuals and investors who see the value in a viable local community even if the return on investment is not spectacular. An example might be a large local employer that needs a strong, prosperous, cohesive, vibrant local community in order to enhance their ability to attract the best employees to come to our community to work there. The community often makes a difference as to the level of compensation a large corporation has to pay since prospective hires may demand higher pay if they perceive the need to leave a community for some of the services they will desire or to compensate for a lower quality of life.

Senior tranche
Foundations through Mission Related Investments of endowment, State and local Pension Funds, insurance companies, foreign sovereign wealth funds and other very large scale institutional investors who are looking for very secure long term income paying investments with a return compatible with the risk.

Members not making cash investments -to be determined

Management Structure
A hired professional staff reporting to a management board which may include members of the present management structure.

Structure of investment
Stability of the project for the long run indicates an all equity transaction. It is obvious that certain groups such as the local members of the Newspaper Guild will have a relatively small financial stake in relation to their role in say over the quality of the product. Other investors such as local businesses will put in more dollars for substantially less day to day control. Others such as pension funds will be far more passive investors.

Projected Sales, Expenses, and Gross Profit -tbd

Projected investment and Return per Tranche-tbd

Unique socially beneficial aspects of this project
The newspaper means many different things to many different stakeholders. The key to the success of the newspaperas an L3C will be the drafting of an operating agreement that assures all the stakeholders that the paper will live up to their expectations and yet permits those in charge to be able to make the needed business decisions on a day to day basis without having to clear each and every decision with the various stakeholders. It is going to require new thinking to some extent on all sides. The advertisers, for example, will have to understand that they are investing to be sure of the success of a tool necessary to the marketing of their products. The management will have to understand that the employees are the most valuable asset, while the employees will have to make tough decisions sometimes that are important to the viability of the paper and think like the owners they will be. But once an operating agreement has been crafted a newspaper as a pillar of the community will finally be a reality.

NYT on predatory loan modifications

The New York Times had a story today about the loan sharks that are trolling the ranks of folks seeking relief from resetting mortgage interest rates. Don’t take the bait!

Not if you hear it on the radio, read it in a newspaper ad or see it dancing across a web page.

Instead, call the City of Chicago 311 number and tell them that you are looking for assistance with a mortgage reset, or visit Neighborhood Housing Services, whose Home Ownership Preservation Initiative (HOPI) is a free service.

Contact NHS

Central Office/Neighborhood Lending Services
1279 N. Milwaukee Avenue
5th Floor
Chicago, IL 60622
773-329-4010 phone
773-329-4120 fax

NHS Redevelopment Corporation
11001 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60628
773-568-1020 phone
773-928-0241 fax

Auburn Gresham/Englewood
449 W. 79th Street
Chicago, IL 60620
773-488-2004 phone
773-488-2126 fax

Back of the Yards/Garfield Boulevard
1823 W. 47th Street
2nd Floor
Chicago, IL 60609
773-579-0032 phone
773-579-0848 fax

Chicago Lawn/Gage Park
2609 W. 63rd Street
Chicago, IL 60629
773-434-9632 phone
773-434-9872 fax

NHS of the Fox Valley
300 Douglas Avenue
Elgin, IL 60120

847-695-0399 phone
847-695-7011 fax

NHS of the Fox Valley
163 E. Chicago Street
Elgin, Illinois 60120
847-695-0399 phone
fax

NHS of the Fox Valley

phone
fax

North Lawndale
3555 W. Ogden Avenue
Chicago, IL 60623
773-522-4637 phone
773-522-4890 fax

Roseland
11001 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60628
773-568-1020 phone
773-568-9831 fax

South Chicago
9108 S. Brandon
Chicago, IL 60617
773-734-9181 phone
773-734-9221 fax

West Englewood
449 W. 79th Street
Chicago, IL 60620
773-488-2004 phone
773-488-2126 fax

West Humboldt Park
3601 W. Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60651
773-533-5570 phone
773-533-5571 fax

Chicago’s place in the world of bubbles

Visit this blog if you want to better understand Chicago’s place in this current real estate market, the health of Chicago
neighborhoods and an urban green lifestyle . Those were our specialties at the Sun-Times Real Estate section while I was the editor, and I plan to write a bit about that here.

If you’d like to learn where Chicago stands in the data from mortgage insurance central â€” the PMI Group â€” and hear from Chicago real estate players about where we are heading, download the Sun-Times Jan. 18 cover story here.
no-place-like-home.PDF
1-18-jump.PDF

Continue reading Chicago’s place in the world of bubbles

How the pinch grew Christmas

By Sally Duros
Chicago Sun-Times December 21, 2007

It’s time to celebrate the end of the era of the Grinch, that crabby green fellow who lives in an isolated cave above the warmhearted community of Whoville, aiming to spoil the Who’s festivities.

He bears a resemblance to some real estate speculators. Only a heart two sizes too small could take delight in making money off the land and structures that define a place while sacrificing the intrinsic value of home and community that give that place its identity and form our emotional bond to it.

That’s not to say that change is bad, or development is wrong. But it takes a neighborhood to grow a home — and that’s a fact.

If you don’t believe me, ask me old dad — who will be 87 come the new year and still lives in the century-old house in Rogers Park he has lived in for 50 years of his life.

Although my dad’s house is certainly not the fanciest house on the block, my dad is the kind of neighbor you want in your Chicago neighborhood. He relishes clearing the ice and snow from his walk, and he can’t wait to rake. He’s not into fancy landscaping and statuary, but he likes a birdbath or two, and you can bet he plants a mean peony, and looks forward every Thanksgiving to the hardy rust- colored mums that bloom near the fence and the neighbor’s driveway.

It takes a neighborhood to grow a home, and that was proved last autumn when a mean wind blew into town and took down two large dead branches from the tree my dad had planted on the front lawn 45 years ago when my sister was born. Just a week earlier, we called the city to cut down the branches, but my dad’s not the kind of guy to push back against a recalcitrant city worker. The guy from Forestry said he was working overtime. “What do want me to do?” he asked, shrugging.

So when the big wind came, it blew the branches down and they crashed to the ground, tearing a big hole in the old-fashioned Sears chain-link fence, the kind with steel posts anchoring the corners and at regular intervals with long rolls of steel links stretched from post to post.

It took my dad several days to saw the big branches into manageable pieces and clear the timber debris from his fence and make a large but tidy pile of hard wood on his front lawn. He and my brother had done most of the labor by the time the city workers came to lend a hand.

But, still, he had a fence to be mended.

It’s not one of those fancy iron fences, but it supports the shrubs and for years it worked fine to keep the kids from running pell-mell through the yard and trampling the flower beds chasing after 16-inch softballs.

My dad, of course, wouldn’t pay anyone to fix it. He’s one of those fiercely independent homeowners who takes great pride in his ability to repair any problem with his house.

So he bought a new top pole for the wire to set against, and he went to work trying to re-align the crossed-wire with the corner post. Before he was through, two passersby, the block’s friendliest dog walker and two neighbors had lent a hand.

They stood huddled with my dad at the corner post, scratching their heads, puzzling the navigational dimensions of the problem, and then finally took charge of the pliers, holding the wire tight and straight so my dad could use both hands to screw the bolts and rebuild that corner of the fence.

The downing of the tree-branches turned out to be quite the neighborhood event.

And the fence mending in its modest, Chicago neighborhood way took on some of the positive characteristics of an old-fashioned barn-raising.

And that’s how it is in my dad’s neighborhood. People are always pitching in to lend a hand. That’s one of the benefits of settling into a place and getting to know well the people who live there.

That’s a big benefit of letting the neighborhood grow your home.

It’s a fact some of us might have forgotten during the hot speculative market in Chicago real estate of the past few years, when some Grinches among us were buying and selling homes simply to drive up prices.

This is not to say that everyone should live this way. But it is to say, that if you find yourself living in the house you are in for a while longer than you thought it might have unexpected benefits.

The next perennial holiday favorite could very well be “How the Pinch grew Christmas.”

Please pass the roast beast!

Elizabeth Warren: Why talking about credit card debt is taboo

By Sally Duros
Real Estate Editor, Chicago Sun-Times
September 28, 2007

‘People would rather talk about their dysfunctional sex lives than reveal publicly their financial state.”

Ain’t that the truth.

That quote comes from Elizabeth Warren, a law professor at Harvard University and t Continue reading Elizabeth Warren: Why talking about credit card debt is taboo

How we transform what was simply shelter into a home

August 24, 2007 | Chicago Sun-Times (IL)

By Sally Duros

Something has happened to my corner bar and grill in Ravenswood. Three years ago it was a corner sports bar with OK food and too many smokers. Two years ago, they built a comfortable street patio. Nicely decorated with window-boxes and with quiet tree-covered spots near the back of the sitting area, the cafe was the perfect clean well lighted place to sit and write.

That first summer though, it was almost too quiet. I was often the only customer, and I wondered if my neighborhood cafe would survive.

Two years ago, old buildings started to come down brick by brick on the wide commercial avenue where the little bar and grill stood. One by one the small, modest storefronts occupied by junk stores and embellished with safety cages shuttered up.

Then the condo buildings rose in stories of three and four. About 18 months ago, the big new plum for the neighborhood emerged from a long abandoned lot on the northeast corner of our major commercial intersection — a ground floor CVS Pharmacy.

When it opened, the CVS joined existing commercial businesses on two other corners: a convenience store, the kind where you have to check the date on the milk; and a bar notorious for bloody brawls and paddy wagon visits.

Today the rummy bar is gone, replaced by a cell phone dealer, and the convenience store is in transition into something else — I am rooting for a vegetable market. It can’t hurt to dream, can it?

And my corner bar and grill cafe? On a recent summer night, I had to wait to get a seat. While I waited, I watched the considerably increased street traffic: groups of men and women in their late 20s and 30s, new condo owners — out for a night in their new neighborhood.

In this case, all the changes were welcome, especially the CVS. Prior to that, my neighborhood really had nothing in the way of actual retail stores. But seemingly overnight it changed. What happened?

“Retail attracts retail, and like attracts like,” says Mari Gallagher, who heads her own research and consulting firm with expertise in a number of policy areas as well as in commercial site assessments and redevelopment. “Retailers and grocers — nobody wants to be the first. Grocers are incredibly risk adverse.

“The people in the industry are out to steal consumer dollars from other successful retailers, so they agglomerate.” Oh, sure, they what? “Agglomerate. Agglomeration is the attraction of retail to more retail.”

And what we have with my new neighborhood CVS is what is called the bell cow that starts the agglomeration. The bell cow is the first business that enters a neighborhood because they’ve found there are customers to woo and cash to be had.

“The bell cow is the cow with the dinging bell that makes the noise that then wakes everybody else up,” Gallagher says. “Some retailers just follow other retailers”

Starbucks is a good example of a bell cow, and that’s why it has become both the despised and beloved image of a neighborhood gentrifying. Lately I’ve been thinking pet grooming shops are following the Starbucks into neighborhoods where the median income is rising.

In my neighborhood, the bell cow CVS is affecting its intersection.

“Now the other corners are more valuable to the extent that a CVS is more valuable on a real estate level,” Gallagher says. “You’ll have more competition on those corners.”

Gallagher has researched extreme states of retail plenty and scarcity. The Clybourne Corridor is an example of where there is too much retail, and it brings a host of problems. The other extreme — and one that has significant repercussions on health — is the Food Desert, which Gallagher defines as a large geographic area with no or distant grocery stores. Location of fast food and grocery stores have diet-related health consequences for the people living in the neighborhood.

Oh — what I wouldn’t give for a place to pick up fresh broccoli on my way home from the train every night. But there isn’t a flowerette to be found for miles around in my solid working- to middle-class neighborhood. But still, technically I do not live in the food desert, because there are many smaller, convenience style grocers around. You know the kind, with onions on the way out.

“Something sets the tone, and everything goes with that tone,” Gallagher says. “In the food desert it’s a kind of fringe tone, and fringe attracts fringe. So you will have a pawn shop. You might see a shuttered building. There’s not enough mass going on.”

Retailers want a no brainer. This cowardice — my word — means that they miss opportunities.

Gallagher tells a joke to explain this: “Two economists are walking down the street, one says to the other: ‘Wasn’t that a $20 bill we just passed?’ The other economist says, ‘No, or someone would have picked it up’.”

Gallagher says: “That’s the oxymoronic dilemma. Retailers won’t go there until others have.”

The highest level of retail use always sets the tone, Gallagher says. And existing retail use sets the first tone.

“So if your tone is this food desert tone — maybe you’ll see a pharmacy there, and paper blowing down the street, and some of the buildings are shuttered,” she says. “It is going to be hard to [get retail]come in. You will need some special subsidy or plan.

“That’s why government really needs to take a fresh look at what it can do,” she says. “Grocers are anchors. There is an hierarchy of land use, a hierarchy of retail, and any kind of use effects the hierarchy of land value.

“The market is not perfect,” Gallagher says. “You’d think if there were a $20 there, somebody would have picked it up.”

The Homeownership Index

It’s past time to update this.

First published in July 2007. Read my other writings for the Chicago Sun-Times

Home ownership post WWII
Home ownership rate in 1945: 45%
Home ownership rate in 1955: 65%
Standard down payment: 20%
Standard mortgage term: 30 years

Home ownership 1994-2005
Home ownership rate in 1994: 64%
Home ownership rate in 2005: 69%
Possible down payment: $0
Standard mortgage term: none, variable

Who gained home ownership 1994-2005
Home ownership rate for blacks 1994: 42%
Home ownership rate for blacks 2005: 49%
Number of new black homeowners 1994-2005: 1.5 million
Home ownership rate for Hispanics 1994: 42%
Home ownership rate for Hispanics 2005: 50%
Number of new Hispanic homeowners 1994-2005: 2.0 million
Home ownership rate for households indicating more than one race 1994: 52%
Home ownership rate for households indicating more than one race 2005: 60%
Number of new homeowners indicating more than one race 1994-2005: 2.0 million

Growth of the subprime mortgage market 1994-2005
Aggregate dollars in subprime mortgages 1994: $35 billion
Aggregate dollars in subprime mortgages in 2005: $625 billion
Percentage of total mortgages that were subprime 1994: less than 5%
Percentage of total mortgages that were subprime 2005: 20%
Annual rate of increase in subprime mortgages 1994-2005: 26%
Subprime loans made by less supervised subsidiaries of banks and thrifts: 30%
Subprime loans made by independent mortgage firms without federal supervision: 50%

Foreclosure and personal economics
Rate of foreclosures in prime mortgage market: below 1%
Rate of foreclosures in subprime mortgage market: 7% (10 times as high as prime)
Predicted increase in foreclosure rates for new subprime loans 2006: up to 20%
Confounding factors leading to foreclosure: Job loss and illness
Number of Americans now without health insurance: 45 million
Percentage of first-time, low-income home buyers who return to renting: 40%
Percent of homeowners spending more than half of disposable income on housing: 45%
Percent renters spending more than half of disposable income on housing: 57%
Adapted from data in Subprime Mortgages: America’s latest boom and bust by Edward M. Gramlich

Woody Guthrie lives here; This land was made for you and me

Inspired by Bill Moyers piece in January 2012, I resurrect this article from 2007, during my time as Chicago Sun-Times Real Estate Editor. Six years later, what I sensed then has been proven to be true.

Lessons on Democracy from Woody Guthrie | BillMoyers.comBILL MOYERS: I’m Bill Moyers. And welcome to BillMoyers.com. Join us over the next few weeks, because on the air and on this website, we’ll be talking a lot about “winner-take-all” politics and how economic inequality – that vast gap between the top and everyone else – is not the result of market forces.

via Billmoyers

By Sally Duros, Real Estate Editor, Chicago Sun-Times

Published Chicago Sun-Times, August 2007

Woody Guthrie is the patron saint of this real estate section.

That means this land was made for you and me. All readers are
welcome here. Everyone –not just home buyers or home sellers, not
just Realtors or builders, not just public relations execs or
marketers, not just homeowners.

We ask all of you — especially renters and newcomers — to pull up
a chair and make this section home. That’s because, like Woody
Guthrie, we intend to bring tales of truth, fairness and justice to
these pages, while having some fun and elevating your spirit, too,
We like singing a pleasant tune.

Real estate is a market. It’s an investment. It’s a house, town
house, condo or rental apartment. It’s the biggest purchase and the
largest sale most of us will ever engage in.

But it is so very much more than that.

Real estate is the rich ground that roots us all to Chicago.
Whether we rent or own — we can’t make a go at life unless we have
a proper place to live.

Real estate is a deep subject that goes to the very core of what it
means to be an American and a Chicagoan. It thrives on legend, myth
and illusion as well as commerce, dealmaking and common sense. As
proud Chicagoans, we measure our quality of life not by whether we
own, but by where we live and our connection to the neighborhood
around us.

In this section, we explore all the controversial facets of Chicago
real estate — from affordability to lending to taxes to fraud —
and the context that informs those facets.

That means we won’t back down from exploring hot-button issues like
the regulatory environment surrounding our home purchases and the
laws that affect the quality of our home lives. Our modest goal is
to cover these issues in a non-politicized, applied way, and in a
manner useful to you. We will have succeeded if we make your life a
bit easier.

What’s so special about the number 50?

By Sally Duros, Real Estate Editor
Chicago Sun-Times

Why do we have so many aldermen? New York City has one City Council member for every 159,000 residents and Los Angeles has 1 for every 226,000. But here in Chicago, we have one City Council member for every 56,000 residents. That’s a lot of politics per square inch of neighborhood.

So why is that?

“It’s a legacy from when Chicago was an aspiring immigrant city,” said Paul Green, director of the Institute for Politics at Roosevelt University. “It’s from when people couldn’t speak English, and neighborhoods had their own ethnic everything — from grocery stores to restaurants to political leaders.”
Green says the immigrant population at the turn of the 20th century put an indelible stamp on our form of government and the way we get things done.

“In 1890, almost 80 percent of the people living in Chicago were foreign born,” Green said. Up until the 1920s, Chicago had 35 wards with two alderman per ward, each alderman serving a two-year term.
The way things were organized, Chicago politics ran around the clock, with an election continually on the horizon.

Neighborhoods were ethnic enclaves that wanted their own alderman, police, firemen and community leadership, Green said.

In this city of little villages, we were full of diversity, but also ethnic segregation, Green said. The advantage of having so many wards was that everyone was ensured some representation, some jobs and their own piece of the action of a growing, vibrant city.

Chicago’s alderman are famous for their antics — legal and otherwise, according to Green.

It could be a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth or, viewed from another perspective, many players making a more flavorful stew.

In some ways, having all these alderman might help us fulfill our municipal self-talk of being “The City that Works.”

Green said that it’s important to remember that by law, Chicago City Council has tremendous power.

Left to their own devices, all of these alderman could run the city into the ground, Green said.

So “what you wind up with, what you need is a politically strong mayor to keep the alderman in line.”
So if we had fewer alderman would we have less corruption?

“If you reduce the City Council by half, would that reduce the chance for corruption?” Green asks. It’s more likely we would “give alderman a chance to double their fun,” Green said.

Stedman Graham on creating a personal brand

I interviewed Stedman Graham when he was the keynote for ChicWIT’s celebration of International Women’s Day, March 2, 2004. In this interview, Graham discusses his methods and his passions and how they helped him develop a personal brand platform. He also discussed how his famous life partner, Oprah Winfrey, inspired his own personal development.

Q: What is your nine-step process about?

Stedman Graham: Most of us don’t focus on personal development because we are so programmed to buy into labels and titles in our daily lives. Then we do the same thing every single day. We become so busy doing stuff that really has nothing to do with who we are

Real freedom is about being able to take information and make it relevant to the 24 hours you have every day.

I have developed a process to use the world’s resources to build your own life. It is a nine-step process of understanding and discovering who you are. And second, developing who you are. My process has been well received in the United States, Canada, South Africa. Corporations like it, and I have spoken at Harvard and Wharton about it.

Even at Harvard and Wharton, students wind up, when they are done, simply sitting in a room somewhere. They might get paid more but still they’ve learned little about how to leverage their own intellectual worth.

Most of us are never engaged in the world because we wind up doing the same thing every day. We can work at a job and after 30 years look back and see that we have no more than we had in the beginning. That’s Ok if that’s what you want.

This process (of building a personal brand platform) is for people who want a better life.

Q: Do you see a trend in time of life or gender related to when individuals become earnest about connecting with their authentic cores?

Stedman Graham: Women are in special need of the process because they are defined so much by the external world. They live in such a small box, and it is so programmed. They have such an expectation of what they should do. Their programming is very difficult to break out of without any help. It is very difficult for anyone to break out of if you don’t have the network, if you don’t have the information, if you don’t have the good old boys club, if you don’t have the ability to exchange information with other people who really know how to do it.

Unless there is an alignment of your talent, your skills and your passion with a process for developing them, you are not going anywhere. It doesn’t matter what you want to become, how determined you are, how smart you are. It is impossible to do it unless you come from a core competency that will allow you to grow.

It is a problem of self-empowerment and how to take responsibility for your own actions – which is really centered around personal excellence, results and performance.

You can’t possibly brand yourself unless you have a personal understanding of who you are.

I know that there is nothing that you can’t do. It doesn’t make any difference what your background is, whether your parents had money, etc, you can become equal to anybody following my process. Q: What was it like for you growing up?

This belief system that I could do it is different from how I grew up. I grew up in a small town, part black and part Native American in New Jersey. I grew up believing that it was all about white America, race and government control. I did not understand my own potential as a human being.

It took me 30-something years to understand that my potential was
predicated on my skills and talent. I did not know how to self-actualize. My parents told me to go to school and go to work, that was it.

This (blindness) is about not knowing how to process or how to think. It is not centered around other people.
This is about taking responsibility and being able to transcend bias. It is about all those things that will allow you to look at yourself and learn what you need to know about yourself to become more of a leader.
You have to align yourself with the resources of the world.

You have to create a platform that will create some opportunities in the market that you are residing in.
It is a process that blows me away every single day. It closes the achievement gap.

Q: Was there a specific aha! moment for you?

Stedman Graham: It was a combination of things.

I was in a relationship with a very powerful woman, Oprah, so I had pressure every single day to prove myself.
Most people don’t have that kind of pressure so they become comfortable where they are.

Because of the pressure I had to define myself under an umbrella that was bigger than life. That was one influence, and so was understanding business, and how business worked. Having a lot of different mentors was an influence too. I also am a person who is organized and I like that. It helped me come up with a program that I think all successful people have.

I did a comparative analysis of where I came from and where these people were going. And I saw a huge difference. I put that difference into my nine-step program.

It was like this… You’re a man in a relationship with a very powerful woman who reaches 20 million people every single day. You don’t get any respect for that. So the idea of having to find that was part of the catalyst. Being in that circumstance allowed me to look within to survive in that setting. From there I discovered that it is all internal. .

Q: What is your favorite part of your work?

Working with companies and working with business is something I do very well. I really enjoy being able to work with people who are smart. People who are a-plus folks and who are trying to maximize their potential in all spheres. That is what I enjoy most.

Q: What will you be talking about at ChicWIT’s International Women’s Day?

Stedman Graham: I will be talking about the nine steps, and internal and external branding.
I do this work with Merrill Lynch working with small businesses and high worth individuals. We change the trajectory of people’s lives.

We go into the idea of success circles. We teach them how to organize their lives based on three areas: education, career development and community development. As a core base of organizing their lives, we want them to be branded as an expert; we want them to make as much money as possible; we want them to be able to give back.
We organize their lives around their passion – what we call their life theme.

It really does change the entire financial landscape when you are able to understand what legacy they want to leave and what kind of brand they want in the marketplace.

Lots of people have financial tools. But a lot do not have alignment. That’s what I bring to the table. We give them the process for owning their world.

Q: Many people talk about this kind of personal development. One of the most interesting aspects of your work must be seeing the switch go off when people finally get it… Can you give me a good example of having seen that?

Stedman Graham: There are a number of switches and everybody’s different. Some women may have been held back by their lack of understanding that they can be anything they want. That’s the first switch. Once that switch gets turned on then there is another switch that needs to be turned on and that is “how do you do it”?

Then there are the switches of discovery, planning, being able to integrate that with financial tools, and further alignment.

The idea of being able to change the way you think about your possibilities and about yourself, that is the big switch.

That’s the key to owning your world.

For my own personal life, I wasn’t a great student in school because I never turned it on. Once I did, I realized that I could do as well as everyone. There was unlimited opportunity for me.

Q: Has your relationship with Oprah changed since your switch went off?

Stedman Graham: It doesn’t make any difference about anyone else. It just makes a difference about what you want to do in your own personal life to develop your own potential. The thing that you bring to any relationship is the fact that you are able to be your own man, to be your own person. That is the greatest gift.

You don’t ever have to rely on anyone else because you know how to make things happen, end of story. You can share, and you can talk and you can advise and you can help each other. But you stand alone. That is the greatest gift. Wherever you go you stand alone. And you can hold your own.

You never have to apologize anywhere, anytime for who you are. And you understand how to build and to grow and every day you become better than yesterday. If you get that, that’s freedom.

Regardless of how the world might define you or how other people might see you that’s not the real world you. That’s an illusion.

Q: What do you say to nay-sayers, to those who focus on circumstance?

I say it is harder at the top than at the bottom. It is harder when you have to think. It is more difficult when your life is in the limelight.

Leaders do not have it easy. People at the top know that. Success is not an easy thing to deal with. It is difficult to deal with from the family aspect of it. People change. It is much easier when you are playing softball at the lake.
The naysayers don’t understand what it’s like to be in the limelight. How the media can destroy you.

So it’s not what happens to you. It’scan you handle it. Do you have the capacity to deal with it every single day?

Q: How do you deal with questions of perceived scarcity vs. abundance? How do you counsel or help a kid in the projects recognize the resources around him when he sees pain and disappointment?

Stedman Graham: It’s a process that takes a long time.

You have to have the capacity – what it has taken me to get to this point. Serving in the US army, playing ball all over Europe. It’s taken me graduate school. It’s taken me four years in undergraduate school. It’s taken me working five years in the prison system. It’s taken me working in public relations. It’staken traveling around the world, traveling to South Africa. It’s taken me seeing Winnie Mandela’shouse being burnt down and being right there. It’s taken me almost losing my life in a couple of situations.

You are not here (at this level of awareness) because you have just arrived. You are here because you deserve to be here, not because someone gave you anything. For example, I can tell that your life as a journalist is based on countless hours of writing and developing and reading and working on your craft —- otherwise you couldn’t do it.

You are where you are because you deserve to be there. People might look at you and say, “Oh yeah, you have it easy because you work for this newspaper or that newspaper.” They don’t realize what it took to get there. And you can lose that in one second. Or in one week or two weeks, your life could change.

Q: Many women attending ChicWIT’s International Women’s Day have experienced the tiny little box you described at the beginning, and they have also been through repeated loss related to their careers. How would you counsel them to handle those ups and downs?

Stedman Graham: You have to have gone through that to be the success that you are. You had to have had failures. If you don’t know what it’s like to worry about missing payroll then you can’t appreciate when the money comes.
You are not at the top because you are given anything. You are at the top because you have processed your way through. Most people don’t see the process. They see “A to Z” and think that you have gotten there because of such and such.

What they don’t know is that it is impossible to do (get to the top by maneuvering or circumstance). You can’t maintain the posture. You won’t last. People who are experienced, and people who have gone through the process, and people who have earned the right to be where they are understand that.

Because the determination, the work and the perseverance that it takes to make it – you’ve got to have that. Otherwise you won’t make it.

It’s the never quit and never give-up syndrome. If you don’t have that, no matter what you get involved in, you will never make it.

Q: Many of us fare well at the small victories, but these days sometimes it feels as though you have to be heroic – any advice for that?

Stedman Graham: You have to keep going. You have to have the determination and keep going and not have your spirit broken or give in because it’s hard.

—Sally Duros
Consultant, Editor, Writer and Member of WorldWIT Steering Committee

An interview with
Steadman Graham

WorldWIT
International Women’s Day
June 25, 2004
BY SALLY DUROS