2002-03 Broadcast Season
Broadcast Program Transcripts
Episode #1815
Stedman Graham on Diversity

Lewis: Mitchell Lewis, moderator
Harris: Francine Tate-Harris, CEO, Judges Professional Staffing Group
Graham: Stedman Graham, CEO, Stedman Graham & Associates

Voiceover: Coming up, CEO and motivational speaker Stedman Graham shares his insight on how minority companies can make their products and personae more attractive to mainstream corporations. We’ll talk about the power of supplier diversity next on Black Issues Forum.

Voiceover: This program was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV from viewers like you. Thank you.

[THEME MUSIC]

Lewis: Good evening and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I’m Mitchell Lewis. Tonight our focus will be on supplier diversity, and the efforts of minority businesses to become more prominent in selling a larger slice of goods and services to larger corporations. We have two very special experts with us this evening who will tell us how minority businesses can plan strategically, as well as mentally—how to succeed in supplier diversity.

First, Francina Tate-Harris is the founder and CEO of Judges Professional Staffing Group, a Raleigh-based corporation and employment service that specializes in minority executive search, contract, and direct-hire staffing in the legal, professional, medical, security, and information technology fields.

And Stedman Graham is chairman and CEO of Stedman Graham and Associates, an educational company that creates customized corporate training and leadership development programs. Stedman is also an accomplished author, and has written motivational books such as You Can Make It Happen, and his latest, Build Your Own Life Brand.

Both of you, welcome to Black Issues Forum.

Graham: Pleasure to be here Thank you for having us.

Harris: Thank you.

Lewis: Francina, we’ll start off with you. First of all, say in layman’s terms—could you give us a definition of supplier diversity as it relates to minority businesses?

Harris: Many corporations here in North Carolina have developed supplier goals based on federal funding that they received from the federal government. Take for an example, a pharmaceutical company will receive grants from the federal government for drug research and that enables them to seek out supplier diversity services and report back to the federal government the number of dollars spent with this diverse supplier, which enables them to retain funding for drug research or get additional funding for other drug research that they may be embarking on. It also allows the diverse supplier to grow their business, in providing services to this company in this regard.

Lewis: Now, you’ve had a very special program take place that involved Stedman Graham, and it talks a little bit about supplier diversity. Tell us a little bit about that.

Harris: We developed a concept here with our first annual Diversity Awards Program to honor and recognize North Carolina corporations for their commitment to diversity in the workforce. We invited Stedman Graham—here with us on this event tonight—to speak to our honorees in our community on his various experiences and knowledge on how diversity relates to us in the workforce and our community, and the importance of diversity throughout our nation.

Lewis: Stedman, you’ve been called in by several major corporations throughout the country to address issues of diversity and leadership. Throughout your travels, what have you noticed as issues facing corporate America when it comes to diversity and accepting the minority workforce?

Graham: Well, I think that it’s very difficult when you’ve been traditionally doing business the same way all the time and you’re not used to new cultures coming in or having women as supervisors or in the workforce, so there’s an adjustment that needs to be made in terms of the way that you deal with folks, in terms of the stereotypes you might have or the way that you see them or feel about them. There’s a thin line between work and your personal feelings. I think diversity and diversity training allows you to be sensitive to those people in your workforce that you might not be accustomed to, based on the culture they’re in. That’s why diversity is such a huge issue, especially in this country, where you have the demographics now changing and more people of color and more women are in the workforce than ever before.

Lewis: What do you see as mental challenges facing minorities, or people in general, in becoming entrepreneurs?

Graham: I think that the challenge for minorities and people of color, and also women, is not to become victims. To be able to create an atmosphere where they are on the offensive, as opposed to being on the defensive, and being able to self-actualize their own potential, and take their own talents, and their own skills, and look at themselves as valuable employees who offer something that’s needed in the workforce. As opposed to focusing on the history, the color of your skin, your gender, being able to be proactive in the approach and be able to solve the problem that’s needed, based on the value that you bring.

Lewis: Do you have an example of how a certain business could apply those types of principles?

Graham: If you’re a good corporate citizen, to be able to really invest in your employees. To go to them and say, “What is it I can do for you? What are some of the issues that you’re having here? How comfortable is it for you to work around here? What’s the environment like? Do you have any issues?” You can also offer an open-door policy, where people can come in and feel like they can talk to somebody to address some of the issues before they become a problem.

Lewis: Francina, anything you’d like to add to that? How does your company go about working toward supplier diversity as it relates to corporations or individuals?

Harris: There are many challenges that we’re faced with as a diverse supplier, but for the most part, we work closely with corporations in supplying our services, helping them to define policies and procedures, what “works for us, as a small minority business.” Oftentimes that’s not clear when they’re seeking the services of a minority supplier. And we work with them in that regard. We have had several successes as a diverse supplier throughout North Carolina. One recent success was with one of our large Fortune 500 companies in Charlotte, who have implemented very high diversity goals throughout their corporation, and we have become their first-tier supplier, working closely with management in developing goals and processes, procedures for that to happen. We’re in position to manage subcontractors, which is a major accomplishment in this field. It’s an ongoing learning process for both the corporation and the diverse supplier, but working toward those goals will bring about a major change in that regard.

Lewis: You talk about goals. Is there a specific, general set of goals you try to reach in dealing with certain companies? What approach do you take?

Harris: Our first approach is an entry point. We have an entry point where we’re 50% owner of a company or a service that we’re providing. That’s our entry point that defines us as a minority business. We work toward developing our services that we feel comfortable and strong offering to a company, that we’ve prepared ourselves for that service. And we offer this value-added service to our customers. Whatever their objectives are, we do that for them.

Lewis: Stedman, you came from humble beginnings. How did that impact you as far as your development as a motivational speaker and a businessman?

Graham: Coming up, I didn’t understand the true word of freedom and I didn’t understand who I was as a person, nor did I understand my own potential as a human being. So oftentimes, you’re in an educational system that teaches you how to memorize, take tests, get labeled by a grade, and you come out with a piece of paper and ask yourself, “What do I do now?” You’re not able to really enter the workforce in a way that you can make an impact based on what you do and based on what your potential is as a human being. So the idea of being able to discover yourself and your true potential was what I discovered, and I wrote about it in my book, You Can Make It Happen, and now, Plan For Success. It’s a program for the people. We also have programs for business and we have programs for everything else. We have programs for these television shows, but then we have a program for the people. That program is basically how you build a foundation for development, how you achieve the success that you do based on who you are, and how you begin. Most of us do the same thing over and over every single day, so if you do the same thing that you did yesterday, as you did today, as you’ll do tomorrow, what have you done? Nothing, because you did the same thing. We’re programmed to follow a routine. It doesn’t allow us to stretch out and build and create and evolve.

Lewis: But how do you go about the process of really finding yourself? It has to require some type of change.

Graham: It does. It’s finding out what you do best, what you love, what your passion is. If you’re in television, it’s being able to say, “What can I do in TV? What are all the possibilities for me in television? Can I own the station? Can I be on the air? Can I do programming? Can I produce? What can I do?” When you start to use your brain to think about possibilities, you have to then create, plan, and overcome the obstacles, then you have to put the team together. So it’s a process for development based on that. And that same process can be applied to schoolwork, your job, your passion, your hobbies. The principles are the same, once you understand how the program works.

Lewis: Francina, to you, are women in the United States or in North Carolina, are they really minorities when it comes to, say, owning businesses?

Harris: Women have come a long way, in the workforce as well as in owning businesses. We have—I consider women ran a business as stay-at-home moms. You know, it’s a chore, it’s a job to organize and structure and manage time. And we’ve developed ourselves in a way that we can offer a value-added service to the workforce. And the women-owned business is growing. The enterprise is growing, and it’s only going to increase.

Lewis: Stedman, how do you see the strength of women as it relates to being a part of the workforce?

Graham: Well, I think that women should work more toward being themselves, and not try to act like, “I need to replicate what men do,” or act like men, you know, in the sense of being able to manage or something like that, whatever. You understand what I’m talking about. So the idea of being themselves, and just really, you know, capturing their own voice, and making sure that they are not some robot running around trying to model after some, you know, some position that they saw somebody else do. But to be able to really stand up for themselves and say, “This is who I am. This is how I think. This is what I think we should do.” And be able to self-actualize their own power, based on what they bring to the table, and based on what their talents and skills are. And so, if they can do that, and try to develop their own voice and use their strengths to, in fact, you know, bring that to the workforce, to be themselves, so that they can be real—I think that’s a major challenge, and, you know, they’re entering the workforce. Traditionally, they haven’t been in the workforce very long. So they’re really learning the ins and outs of how that works, and so you should also understand that.

Lewis: Francina, now there are some companies that think if they use only women-owned businesses that they’ve succeeded, say, in creating supply or diversity with minorities. Is that really true?

Harris: There needs to be a common ground there. We had some issues over that in a recent case here in North Carolina, defining the woman, the minority, the white female, and the black female. And there are corporations and organizations that determine once they have secured the services of a white female, then they have met their diversity goals. So we are working hard on that challenge in the workplace, but we believe that there’s room for all of us, whether we’re white, black, or whatever race, to supply our goods and services to the North Carolina workforce.

Lewis: Now Stedman, what challenges did you face as you traveled the road to success, and how did you go about solving some of those challenges?

Graham: Well, I had to change the way I thought and felt about myself. You know, I realized that I was my own worst enemy, and that I was a victim of, sometimes, perception. And I allowed that to get into the way, because a lot of times, you have these obstacles, so you have to have the strength—and I think the most important asset a person can have in corporate America, and also in America—is to really believe in yourself. You know, believe that you can do whatever you need to do if you understand how to do that, you get the right information, you’re willing to work for it. But to believe in yourself every single day, and forget about how you’re defined, forget about how people try to put you into a box, forget about your limitations. And being able to maximize your potential as a human being, based on what you believe, so that you don’t—again, I go back to “don’t lose your voice” and “don’t try to be somebody else,” because when you try to be somebody else, then you’re not yourself. When you’re not yourself, you can’t operate at the highest level.

Lewis: Now, you also have a nine-step plan for successful businesses, as well as individuals. What do those steps involve?

Graham: Well, I’ll give you a few of the steps. Number one, the first step is: you have to understand who you are. Check your I.D. If you don’t know who you are, then you can’t communicate that to anybody else. Second step is to create a vision for yourself. That’s the image that you create for yourself. Where are you going to be in the future? Where are you going to be in five years? How do you see yourself? What do you believe about your potential? You know—vision. They say, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” So you have to have a place to go. The third step is: develop a travel plan. So now that you understand who you are, you create a vision for yourself, you have an image of who you want to become, and now you have to develop a plan. That’s an action step of how you’re going to get there. You know, what are the steps? What are the goals? The fourth step is: master the rules of the road. You know, there’s a value system you have to create in your own life, based on how you operate. What is your value system? What works for you? Fifth step is: step into the outer limits. What fears do you have to overcome? You know, what challenges to you have to overcome? I can go on and on, but that’s pretty much, you know, I think, a program that people that follow. And if you follow that program, start with the building block of understanding what your passion is, what you love, and then take the information and make it relevant to your own personal life. Then you can begin to process a program that will work for you.

Lewis: Now, in your latest book, Build your own Life Brand, you talk about branding when it comes to marketing one’s business. What do you mean by “branding?”

Graham: Well, you know, companies spend millions and millions of dollars. I think Nike spends one billion dollars on branding, so that you recognize that check mark. So the ability to be able to, you know, brand yourself, you see, inside of an organization, inside of a corporation. We don’t want you to be average. Nobody cares about average people. So we want you to aspire toward leadership, which, you know, takes some extra effort. You want to be able to get out of the nine-to-five mindset—“can’t wait to get home.” But to be able to position yourself in such a way that you can build your life around a program that you can follow that you’re happy with. So that every day you’re improving, based on the 24 hours that you have. What makes us all equal is we have 24 hours. The question becomes, “What are you going to do with your 24 hours?” And so, we’re asking you to brand yourself, recreate yourself every single day, based on the 24 hours that you have, and there’s a process for that. That’s what I talk about in the book.

Lewis: Francina, what preparations do you think that a business should undergo in order to be part of supplier diversity?

Harris: Well, I agree with much of what Stedman has just shared with you here, is we have to, first, identify who we are, check your I.D., know what we want, and where it is we would like to go, develop our skills. And determine what we’re good at, what we love to do, what our passion is in life. Then formulate the structure behind that—paperwork, business license, the standard process that you have to go through to get on the books, to become a registered small business here in North Carolina.

Lewis: And specifically, what is the process for business in order to become, or else gain, minority status?

Harris: The paper process—you register—first or all, you have to submit proof of your status as a minority, whether you’re Asian or Native American or Latino or African-American, and that you are 100% or at least 51% owner of a business entity. You submit that paperwork in to the North Carolina Secretary of State to receive your initial business license. There is another organization here in the state, the Carolina Minority Supplier Development Council, which is a council that certifies a minority business enterprise on the minority status. And there’s a paper process for that, and—submitting your business plan, your goals, your objectives, your structure is all a part of that process.

Lewis: Now, when you started off in your business, what were some of the challenges that you faced, and how did you go about dealing with them?

Harris: Well, there were many challenges. Again, going back to some of the discussions Stedman and I had earlier today, it’s just knowing yourself and going within yourself, and developing what you love to do, your passion, and starting there first. And once you determine what that passion is, and then you start taking action to make it happen, follow the processes, the procedures to at least get the semantics done, and then you go out and you market your services and your business operations to your target market. The challenges that face us is when you’re a small business that I’ve encountered—we are in the staffing business, temporary staffing business. We are constantly—companies are merging. They’re merging large corporations throughout North Carolina. As a result, where one corporation that had a huge local presence may have used a number of small businesses, suppliers, and services as a part of their supplier diversity program—however, once a merger takes place, which benefits the corporation at large, to take a larger market share, small businesses are often subjected to a second-tier supplier, working with companies that are usually hiring and identifying those vendors who can service them globally and internationally. And for us local suppliers, we are subject to a second-tier program. That has been a challenge. We have worked successfully through some of those challenges with our corporations here in North Carolina, identifying what it takes to make a small business work successfully in a second-tier program that has not been identified. They have the goals, they want us there, their supplier-diversity goals are there. The primary supplier’s also there, to service them on a global basis. So we’ve had to sit down at the table, and these are the two services that we need, so how can we form a model that is going to ensure that a small business is successful? So we’ve been able to meet some of those challenges successfully.

Graham: I think also, in addition to that, what we have to realize, first of all, we need to get rid of the word “minority,” number one. And then secondly, what we need to do is realize the process is the same for everybody. And business is business is business is business. So, you run a television station that’s here in North Carolina the same way as you run one in New York or Texas or anywhere else. Maybe different programming, but the mechanics are the same. So the idea is being able to understand that there’s a process for development, regardless of how you’ve been labeled or how you’ve been defined. The key is to define yourself, so you don’t get pigeonholed into taking a smaller piece of the pie, as opposed to looking at how you compete in the global market, because you want to be able to compete in the global market and look at the world as, you know, not just the United States, but look at the world in terms of how big it is. You know, what’s your marketplace? What’s your demographics? What’s your cyclographics? What’s the product are you selling? What services are you offering? How many people can you reach? What kind of media, marketing tools do you have to use? So all those things are necessary to determine how unique is your product, to determine your success, which is the success of everybody who wants to try to achieve. You know, the bottom line is how much money can you make based on what you do and what you offer?

Lewis: Quickly, if there is one piece of advice that you could give people who want to succeed individually or in business, what would that be?

Graham: I would say—I teach a course at Kellogg, at Kellogg School of Business, and also at the University of Illinois, and I talk to business students about trying to find out first what you would love to do before you go into business, because you’re going to spend 14, 16 hours a day, sometimes 18 hours a day, okay, to make that business work. Sometimes seven days a week. Make sure you love what you do. Otherwise, it is going to be called “work,” as opposed to “fun.”

Lewis: Francina, your thoughts on that?

Harris: I concur with Stedman about finding out what you love to do. And—it’s just a personal thing for me that I found that helps me in staying on track, and that’s your spiritual connection to a higher power, and just having faith in your higher power, and moving according to your passion and what you love to do, and developing yourself accordingly. And understanding the demographics of where you are and what you can do within those demographics.

Lewis: Well, folks, I thank you so very much. Thank you, Stedman Graham and Francina Tate Harris, for being with us. And thank you for watching Black Issues Forum this evening. If you’d like more information on tonight’s program and guests or a transcript, please log on to the Black Issues Forum website at www.unctv.org/bif. And when you visit, be sure to send us your comments and program suggestions. You can call us on the BIF line at 919-549-7167. Join us each and every Friday night at 9:30 for another edition of Black Issues Forum. I’m Mitchell Lewis. Good night.

[THEME MUSIC]

Voiceover: This program was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV from viewers like you. Thank you.