He Has Arrived: Roosevelt Williams Takes Center Stage In 2023

BY VYNCENT DE’VAUGHN

About the author: Dawna Campbell is a renowned transformationalist coach and author who has dedicated her career to helping people achieve the life they desire and deserve. With over 25 years of experience in the field, she has become known as The Mind Whisperer for her unique Heart-Centered Healing approach that combines her wisdom, knowledge, and experience. Her work has produced instantaneous results, earning her recognition as a #1 international best-selling author of “Financially Fit: Living the Secrets to an Abundant and Prosperous Life.” She is also a sought-after speaker, sharing the stage with prominent figures such as Bill Walsh, Mark Victor Hansen, and Sharon Lechter. Dawna has been featured on various media outlets, including Fox News, NBC, Yahoo Finance, Amazon Fire, and Roku TV. In addition, Dawna writes as a monthly contributor for Best Holistic Life Magazine and partners with The Mentor Studio, a global community of entrepreneurs dedicated to making an impact in the world through mentorship.

In recent years, there has been a growing importance on heart-centered leadership. As a key ingredient for success and prosperity, heart-centered leadership emphasizes the importance of authenticity, honesty, commitment, purpose, service, and solitude. By cultivating these essential elements, leaders can create positive environments, achieve prosperity, and inspire others to do the same.

Authentic and Unapologetic Authenticity is a crucial aspect of heart-centered leadership. Authentic leaders lead from a place of deep selfawareness and have a genuine connection to their values, beliefs, and vision. They are comfortable being vulnerable and are transparent about their strengths and weaknesses. Transparency fosters trust, respect, and loyalty, enabling leaders to build strong and connected relationships.

Being authentic also means heartcentered leaders are unapologetic about who they are and what they believe in. They are confident in their abilities and are not afraid to speak their minds or make difficult decisions that align with values and beliefs. Heart-centered leaders are assertive, decisive, and not influenced by external pressures or outside opinions. By being themselves in front of others, they build trust and respect, feeling valued and supported in their communities.

Honesty and Integrity

Honesty and integrity are crucial aspects of heart-centered leadership.

Honesty fosters trust and accountability and encourages others to feel comfortable in speaking up and taking risks. Leaders who are honest and have integrity are also more likely to attract high-quality people and build strong relationships with them. People are naturally drawn to leaders who have their best interests at heart.

A strong sense of moral and ethical values guides leaders who embody integrity. Leaders who operate with integrity are trustworthy, dependable, and are respected for their strong ethical principles. They act with transparency and are committed to doing the right thing. This helps to create a stable and resilient foundation for growth with a positive reputation and image with you, as well as your brand and position of authority.

Commitment and Dedication

Commitment and dedication are both essential because leaders who are committed and dedicated to their work also inspire others to do so. They are likely to overcome challenges and obstacles while achieving their goals. Dedicated leaders inspire others to do their best and help create an atmosphere of excellence. Thus, being committed attracts highquality people who are also committed to success.

Dedication is a key driver to heartcentered leadership. Heart-centered leaders are relentless in their pursuit of excellence and are willing to put in the time and effort necessary to achieve their goals. Leaders dedicated to their vision, mission, brand, and organization achieve success, resulting in prosperity.

Passion and Purpose

Leaders who have a passion for their work are driven by a deep sense of purpose and are motivated by a desire to make a positive impact in the world. This enhances an environment of creativity, innovation, and collaboration that truly thrives. With passion and purpose, leaders are more resilient, adaptable to change, and driven to succeed.

When leaders walk their talk, others are likely to adopt the same values and principles, creating a virtuous cycle of growth and success. Ultimately, purpose and passion are the driving force and the key to cultivating prosperity. By aligning your actions and decisions with your deepest values and aspirations, you can bring your vision to life, positively impact the world, and create a life of abundance and prosperity for yourself and those around you.

Service and Solitude

Leaders who prioritize service create generosity, empathy, and compassion within. By putting the needs of others first, leaders demonstrate selflessness and kind-heartedness. Being of service also helps leaders reach out to those in need and create a legacy. By prioritizing service to others and putting the needs of others before your own, you can create a true life of abundance and prosperity.

Being of service also should be balanced with solitude. This is a time for leaders to reflect on their values, beliefs, and vision while connecting to their own emotions and thoughts. Solitude gives leaders the space to recharge and reconnect with what is most important to them with clarity and awareness. Leaders who engage with solitude are able to manage their emotions better, essentially cultivating their emotional Intelligence to lead with service.

Heart Centered leadership is a powerful approach that prioritizes a strong and deeply-held value system that guides decisions and actions. This is where the secrets of successfully rich people come into play.

Successfully rich people who have built their wealth and prosperity through a heart-centered value system understand the importance of balancing their professional and personal lives while prioritizing their own well-being and happiness. They understand the value of giving back and positively impacting their communities, leading with compassion and empathy.

The call to action is clear if you want to increase your prosperity: Adopt a heartcentered value system. By doing so, you will experience greater prosperity in your own life while uplifting and inspiring others. Heart-centered leadership isn’t just a way to achieve prosperity but a way to lead a meaningful and impactful life. Embrace your heart center, lead with compassion and authenticity, and watch your prosperity soar.

One of the founders of San Diego, Alonzo Horton, stands tall looking over a map of the downtown city he helped design in the early 1900s. Roosevelt Williams III makes it a daily ritual during his work week to come over to the statue and size himself up with Horton. He deeply admires the man who stands in the Plaza named after himself. But he also understands it is time for someone to fill his shoes within the city he loves. And he’s willing to take up the mantle and make that happen by any means necessary.

“He’s the reason why downtown doesn’t have any alleys. He’s also why the corner buildings downtown are so large. He had them be like that so he could sell that prime real estate for more profit,” Roosevelt says. His main goal in this new year is to position himself as a new architect of the people, for the people.

A former sole cobbler by trade, Roosevelt’s style of service has always been accompanied by a certain level of decorum and positive swagger. As the CEO of YB&NB, his role as super-connector continues to build bridges that serve the needs and desires of YB&NB’s swelling membership. YB&NB, as a business organization, dedicates its resources to providing instruction and inspiration to business people through the organization’s events, programs, and digital magazines. It also works with the NAACP San Diego Chapter and the Urban League of San Diego County to spread the word about its offerings.

Roosevelt and I continued to stroll the blocks of downtown, admiring Horton’s work as we made our way to The US Grant Hotel’s Grant Grill, one of Roosevelt’s regular meeting spots with clients and potential business collaborators. During our lunch, we spoke about his various plans for his business venture YB&NB as well as how he’s branching out of California and taking center stage at speaking engagements throughout the year.

Vyncent: Roosevelt, it’s been a while since our last interview. What’s planned on your end for yourself and YB&NB in the First half of 2023?

Roosevelt: Before our main event BIZCON, we’ll develop our latest YB&NB manuscript for Black History Month to honor Black Educators. It will be compelling, highlighting men and women from our San Diego Unified School district who have devoted their lives to teaching our future scholars how to thrive and providing them with life lessons and principles to excel inside & outside of the classroom.

This will be a part of our upcoming BIZCON focus, April 5th - April 6th, at Sycuan Casino in San Diego. We’ll have a Mastermind on the Mezzanine, a wonderful experience with two of their ballrooms for two days.

One is designated specifically for the trade show, the other for the seminars which will take place, classroom style. We’ve already begun to receive sponsors for the event, and I will have the local construction industry there for the event, as well as some special guests I’ve met networking thus far this fiscal year.

African American Heritage week, with the Padres, is also on the horizon. We met on January 17th to solidify this year’s assets, including doing the first pitch that week during the game series and ringing the bell during the match-off. We are also preparing swag giveaways with our partners to benefit our local youth who will be attending the game for the first time, or potentially the only time this year. We’re incredibly excited about the decisions made thus far, mainly the decision to honor a local baseball icon from San Diego. More information about this will be delivered soon to our YB&NB members and collaborators.

Since the dates are so close to BIZCON, I will reach out to the Padres and see about having a section of our programming named Business & Baseball. The intention is to invite the studentathletes from Lincoln, Morris, San Diego High, Crawford, Hoover, and Kearny high schools to attend BIZCON and interact with MLB players, whether retired or active with the Padres, to speak directly about the business within baseball to the student-athletes.

The construction industry will be attending as well, about blue-collar opportunities, as well as white-collar professionals. The interest to involve uniformed individuals is also vital, and setting this all up, as we’re discussing, can be another homerun for the hometown I love and cherish.

Vyncent: Earlier in the day, we spoke about you branching out to do speaking engagements. Please speak to me about your intent to do so in more detail.

Roosevelt: I will be speaking on the same stage as Les Brown this year in February at the Global Awakening Summit in Florida. I’ll be talking there early this year. This March, I’ll also attend a Rotary International Leadership conference in Alabama.

I will be traveling more in 2023, but this will occur organically. The other day, one of my buddies, a newscaster in Vegas, caught up with me, and we had a conversation. I wanted to let him know that we needed to do an interview when I got to town this year. He told me that I was already taking over San Diego, and that humbled me to a large degree.

Another gentleman said similar things at the tail end of 2022, so it’s time to take my brand and its message on the road this year. The value I’m aware I can receive by entering new spaces outside my current reach can lead to new investors and partners that benefit the YB&NB community. It’s already a blessing to hobnob, rub shoulders and interact with the leadership of San Diego, whether with the various grassroots leaders or the established majors within our city.

Being the “elephant hunter” for my growing tribe of 100 members, I always focus on where the prize is to take what’s been built to the next level in San Diego and beyond. We’ve grown exponentially from an initial Facebook group centered around an intentional local movement to align a collective spirit in economic collaboration.

As a business this year, we’re already set to do six figures, but we’re in a position to supersede that in a few years. It’s inspiring and valuable to see how far we have come thus far, yet there is much more to accomplish.

Vyncent: What is something that most people who see you now are aware of that has led you down the path you are now on?

Roosevelt: One of the things that most are unaware of about me is that I’m a part owner in a kiosk here on Broadway downtown called Joey’s shoe shine repair. I’ve been a part owner for years because I was a former shoe cobbler by trade.

We used to be competitors at one point, as I was the only black cobbler in San Diego. Once I retired, I became a patron of his business, sending my old customers and former employees to help him scale his business. Joey has been in the industry for almost 30 years, with plans to expand his operational reach into the new courthouse. Our YB&NB manuscripts containing our 100-year plan can be found on his shoe shine stand locations and are getting placed in the hands of the influential people that are his customer base daily. Businessmen and women, judges, politicians, and lawyers.

Most prominent individuals visiting his stand are checking out the YB&NB manuscript. They are watching the local news and witnessing the growth of our movement and initiatives. The blueprint is being seen and felt by those who make things move downtown. And it feels good to know it’s getting into the right hands.

About the author: Vyncent D. Eiffel is a syndicated journalist for the Los Angeles Tribune and founder of Paradice Creative Agency. As a journalist, his career started with the San Diego Monitor in 2018, the oldest Blackowned business journal on the West Coast. His professional experiences in journalism, public relations, and brand concept development within various creative industries span over a decade.