The Entrepreneurial (Flossin’) Spirit
This is the story of a corporate take-over, which exudes with humility while ultimately mirroring the chess game or life. Leon Jordan is the president and part owner of an international corporation by the name of Struans Inc., located in Beverly Hills, California and London, England. Struans owns an Entertainment Company, Merchant Bank and Real Estate Company. The story began when Leon received his undergraduate degree from Oregon State University in Finance and Accounting, while on a basketball scholarship. Leon received his law decree from University of Oregon and after graduating he worked for Coopers and Lybrand (now Price Waterhouse Coopers) as an account. He was a sports agent (representing among others, AC Green and Mychal Thompson, now retired, who formally were with the Los Angeles Lakers), and also acted as an Investment Banker since 1991.
The story continues with a Company called Vital Entertainment, located in Beverly Hills, California. Historically, Vital Entertainment functioned as a talent management business for seven years. Members of Vital Entertainment collectively wanted to expand their specialization by creating a record company, television and motion picture company and a publishing company. However, in order to effectuate this transition, Vital sought out to hire professional counsel with the required skills and knowledge to transform their concept into reality and ensure the success of their company. Hence, Vital hired Mr. Jordan to handle this task. Mr. Jordan’s performance prompted the owners of Vital to make him a part owner within months.
When asked to describe his approach to successfully formulating this task, he simply stated, “the life of a successful business person is about performance, your actions are your voice and it must speak louder than words.” Throughout the interview, Mr. Jordan explained that in Los Angeles everyone claims to be or know someone important, but only about five percent of the people are actually telling the truth and only about one percent of the people are genuinely willing to help others out. Fortunately, Mr. Jordan is part of the one percent of real professionals, which forms an oasis of trust and performance in the midst of a cutthroat business environment of Southern California. Being humble can take you further than being all puffed up and full of useless pride, which has no positive value, whatsoever.
The cliché that African American males can not be successful in this society unless they play sports or are in the music industry is just that, a cliché! “When you are honest and work hard, you are acknowledged for it. It does not matter if you are female, black, white, yellow or blue.”
Being in a business where your competing against CEO’s from Sony, Fox, Disney or other people with experience can be rather intimidating, Mr. Jordan, who stands at 6’6” tall, does not strike you as one who would be. “One can’t substitute education for experience or substitute experience for education, fortunately I have plenty of both!”
We were not saying that Mr. Jordan has not had his fair share of discrimination or racist remarks thrown at him, “My humility should not be perceived by my peers as my acceptance as to how my peers treat me. This is the worst mistake one could make because then I seek subtle restitution in my own way.” Leon has overcome the ignorance of others by his success. “The best revenge is success.” It is one thing for others to look at you in disgust for your race and for your accomplishments when they have none.
Previously, for thirteen years Mr. Jordan owned his own investment banking company in Century City. At that time he drafted a plan to some day form an Entertainment Company, Merchant Bank, and Real Estate Company. Being able to have a large outlook on life is one thing, but preparation is the key. Similar to the game of chess, in business, one must carefully plan out each move if you want to make your vision a reality. On his journey in doing so, Leon ran through hardships, which he calls “Regulatory Scrutiny”. This gave him time to focus on what he really wanted to do and re-build his career, while making his dreams come true.
Now at the right hand side of Vital Entertainment, Leon has taken the company to new heights within a year. Not only has Leon negotiated for Vital Entertainment a strong future capital base, he has merged Vital with Struans, Inc. by spearheading a very complicated Section 368 reorganization/merger. Through his diligence and work ethic Mr. Jordan impressed the owners of Struans so much that he was made the president and substantial owner of Struans, Inc., which now owns Vital Entertainment. Checkmate!
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This article was originally published in Flossin Magazine. This article is edited by Edna Waters. This article is optimized for web by Steven Christian (Artist | Author | Podcaster).