The Next Level: Spotlight on Entrepreneurs
editors@ccgmag.com TOUGH BUSINESS LOVE WITH JOSHUA SMITH J
oshua I. Smith is a serial entrepreneur and an optimist. Thirty-something years ago he founded what became one of the nation’s largest black-owned businesses. Now, at 69, he wishes he was in his thirties again. Smith believes that the economic recession is full of opportuni- ties for young people to create businesses that could grow into $20 million companies. For instance, he says, since health care is one of the few sectors adding jobs, entrepre- neurs will profit if they can create technological or medical innovations to control or ameliorate soaring medical costs. “Not everyone has to create a billion dollar company, or be Bill Gates,” he says, “nor should everyone aspire to be.”
This is the practical advice that Smith doles out in his latest incarnation, as radio talk show host on BizTalk with Josh Smith, every Tuesday at 2 P.M. EST on CBS Radio’s WPGC 1580 AM (
http://www.biztalkwithjosh.com/index. html) in Maryland. But the founder and CEO of Maxima Corporation, an information technology firm that for years ranked among the 50 largest black-owned companies in the nation, never rants. He cautions that every business has its challenges. He oversaw Maxima’s rise from a $15,000 investment to a $60 million company, as well as its plunge into bankruptcy during a recession, and a time of legal and familial discord.
Between then and now, Smith has worked in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. President George H.W. Bush appointed him chair of the U.S. Commission on Minority Business Development, where he served from 1989 to 1992. During those years, the commis- sion got feedback on the wants and needs of more than 25,000 women and minority business- people. Smith also continues to men- tor young
entrepreneurs. He is a board member of FedEx, Allstate Insurance, CompCare Corp., and Caterpillar Corp., heads a consulting firm, and is the majority owner of a company that makes non-woven wipes and distributes blankets of the same material that contain anti-malaria qualities. He hopes the blankets will save lives in developing countries, and that their sales will make investors happy in the United States.
All his experience, and his wealth of contacts, provides Smith’s radio show, which can be streamed online, with a breadth of topics and guests. Since 2008, he has been spreading the entrepreneurial gospel. “I have been a peo- ple-driven Republican all my life, and I deliver tough-love speeches. I know business and have a grounding in creating companies, and I want to influence people,” he says.
Interestingly, Smith doesn’t credit his ease on air or with audiences to his time as an executive, or as a CEO. Before going into business, he says he learned to relax in front of an audience by performing as a professional jazz trombonist, master of ceremony, and as a stand-up comic. As host of Biz Talk, Smith creates a primer for entrepre- neurs and owners of small, minority- and women-owned businesses.
On his show, Smith applies the values and principles that were instilled in him by his greatest influence, his father. The elder Smith graduated from Kentucky State University, but his son says, “Dad worked in a factory to care for his children.” His father also taught Smith how to remain cool and pragmatic during segregation, attributes that have enhanced his negotiating skills as a businessman.
In recent remarks to African American employees at Caterpillar Inc., Smith counseled the group that there is more to a career than climbing the corporate ladder. If an employee feels he is not adding value every day to the com- pany, he said, then he’s occupying space and has no value to offer the company or to assist his own growth.
In an atomized society, where job security is uncer- tain, Smith says, (if he was young again) he would enter a people-oriented business with growth potential. “Kids today have education and the contacts that I didn’t. I always had the advantage that when I entered a room that I was different, and people would pay attention to me,” he says. “But today, students and workers must foresee opportuni- ties and seize them.”
Joshua I. Smith 68 USBE&IT I Deans Edition SPRING 2010
Smith is a cum laude graduate of historically black Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. He taught high school, and later served on the faculties of Central State University and the University of Akron. He was also the executive director of the American Society for Information Science and an executive for Herner and Company and Plenum Publishing Corporation.
www.blackengineer.com by Frank McCoy
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