Re: Prison Life RPG V1.4.4 Apk
Julia Heaslet
Only a few people know this part of my history. Those who do tell me the following story sounds like a tale from a book or a movie. Long before I began writing, people encouraged me to write a book about this episode of my life.
So about a year and a half ago, I decided to do just that. I began working on a memoir. In addition to the story that follows, the final product will chronicle my finance career, a journey that began in the early eighties in the Deep South and ended decades later on Wall Street.
The following long-form piece is not an excerpt from my manuscript, which is just under 40k words thus far, but rather a glimpse into my entrepreneurial origin story. This piece was selected as one of the best stories of 2023 on the Medium platform.
Before I began my career on Wall Street, I lived in my hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. I was one of the first African Americans to work in the financial services industry in the state, one of the few in the country at the time. After ten years in the business, I started my own company.
While this was an excellent strategy, there was one problem: I had no idea how to run a business. Because of my inexperience, I made many common entrepreneurial mistakes. Some were your garden-variety business errors, and others were due to my navet.
It didn't occur to me that those other minority-owned firms had partnerships with big investment companies like Merrill Lynch, and I was just a random Black guy in Arkansas with a bootstrapped business.
As it turned out, no one rolled out the red carpet for my new company. Most of the people who made promises of future business disappeared once I opened my doors. I had dozens of meetings with people who assured me of business opportunities that never materialized.
One day, I read a story about a large bank in the Midwest that bought a smaller bank in Conway, a small town about 30 miles outside Little Rock. The article mentioned that the bank in Conway had a brokerage subsidiary.
After a few weeks of negotiation, my fledgling company acquired the Conway securities brokerage from the Mercantile Bank of St. Louis. Security Investments of Conway, Arkansas, became Weems & Company, Arkansas's first African-American-owned investment bank.
When my business began to do well, weird things started happening. Someone from my building's cleanup crew told me off-duty cops were entering my offices at night, doing who knows what. At one point, we had to sweep the office for bugs.
Once I entered the picture, it took me about five minutes to figure out that my competition was taking advantage of his lack of experience. So I decided to undercut them all by charging a lot less. What I did is what Walmart does every day of the week. I didn't realize it at the time, but I upset the status quo.
The next day, the investment officer for the state called me. His boss had informed him that he could no longer do business with my company if he wanted to keep his job. After that telephone call, I never spoke to the investment officer again.
I sold them a chunk of my company stock to make the deal work, but I kept a majority interest and, thus, control of my company. But there was a caveat: the guys from Arizona wanted someone working inside the business to protect their interests.
Finally, I could pay myself and my wife a salary. As part of the deal, I got a company car, a brand-new Lincoln Navigator. A few days later, Jack came aboard as an officer of the company. Things were looking up again.
I called the bank and told them I wanted to add a signatory to the mystery bank account. I also asked how the bank opened an account for my company without the required documentation in the first place. The bank officer had no explanation.
My wife and I came to work early the next day. We were ready to confront Jack about the mystery account, but he never showed up. We spent the day trying to figure out our next move. Then the phone rang. It was the bank president.
Within days, it was raining lawsuits. My wife and I sued Merrydale Corporation, the two guys from Arizona, and Jack. At the same time, they sued the two of us back. At one point, we had five different lawsuits going on simultaneously. In the meantime, the money I had left was running out.
All the lawyers representing the two guys from Arizona wanted to resign. Earlier that day, the Justice Department indicted them in a $23 million money-laundering scheme. According to the indictment, my partners from Arizona weren't being big-time investors. They were international con artists.
For the first time in years, I was job hunting. I sent my resume to every investment firm I could think of. Just when we were on the verge of losing everything we owned, I got a phone call from the president of a Black-owned Wall Street investment firm. They wanted to hire me.
By the end of the interview, I was in the clear. The DOJ decided I was a victim, not a target. Not only did I remove myself from suspicion, I helped the government send the two guys from Arizona to federal prison for a very long time.
I\u2019m personally familiar with how easy it is to find oneself in legal jeopardy. A few decades ago, I came dangerously close to being indicted, not because I\u2019d broken the law, but due to a bizarre confluence of circumstances.
At the time, Little Rock was the political center of the universe because of the Clinton presidency. Business people, politicians, and dignitaries visited my home state en mass. I planned to seize upon the state\u2019s notoriety by launching the first Black-owned investment company.
While this was an excellent strategy, there was one problem: I had no idea how to run a business. Because of my inexperience, I made many common entrepreneurial mistakes. Some were your garden-variety business errors, and others were due to my na\u00EFvet\u00E9.
Growing up in Arkansas, I expected a certain degree of racism. For example, to lease the office space I wanted, I got a white friend in real estate to handle my negotiations instead of doing it in person. Still, there was more overt prejudice than I anticipated. When the building management realized they\u2019d leased prime office space to a Black-owned business, they tried to wriggle out of my lease.
But I had other problems. I had no management training, not even a college degree. Unlike today, there were no startup incubators or accelerators to mentor me. Since I was one of the first Black folks in the country to attempt something like this, I didn\u2019t have a blueprint to rely upon.
Since I\u2019d been a reasonably successful bond salesman, I thought the jump to entrepreneurship would be easy. It never occurred to me that working somewhere for a long time is not the same as running a company.
Also, I didn\u2019t have nearly as much startup money as I needed. I mistakenly thought some of Little Rock\u2019s well-to-do African Americans would be interested in backing my startup idea, but I was wrong. When I realized no one would invest in my idea, I decided to go it alone.
I invested my life savings \u2014 about $60,000 \u2014 to get my startup off the ground. I got a loan from the Small Business Administration, heavy on equipment financing but light on working capital.
The SBA didn\u2019t finance brokerage businesses, so to get their money, I pivoted my business model to money management to get around their rules. This was a huge mistake. I knew next to nothing about money management.
Instead of staying lean until I generated revenue, I paid an interior designer friend to help decorate my office. I commissioned an artist in the family to create lots of original paintings. I bought items outright that I should\u2019ve leased.
Ultimately, I had a kickass office space with a spectacular view. I also had a business that didn\u2019t earn a dime for months. As if that wasn\u2019t bad enough, another one of my mistakes almost killed my business before it got started.
Despite knowing I\u2019d face some racism, I underestimated how bad it would be. At the time, other minority-owned startups like mine existed in states like New York and California. Because they did well, I assumed I would too.
As the first Black-owned financial services company in the state\u2019s history, I expected a warm reception from the business community, maybe even some media coverage celebrating my accomplishment.
The state\u2019s goals for doing business with minorities were just that \u2014 goals. They weren\u2019t rules or laws. No one got in trouble for failing to meet the state's minority guidelines. Even worse, the state\u2019s pension funds were exempt from the guidelines anyway.
So the pension funds I expected to do business with had no pressure to send a dime\u2019s worth of business my way. And since I\u2019d pivoted my business model to get my SBA loan, I\u2019d unwittingly made it easy for them to say no to me.
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