Robert Shumake — Business FAQ

Who is Robert Shumake?

Robert Samuel Shumake Jr., legally Bobby Shumake Japhia, is a Detroit-born businessman, author, and initiated priest. He built a real estate and private equity business that Black Enterprise ranked among the nation's largest Black-owned private equity firms in 2011, has published 140+ titles, and authored Detroit's Proposal E, which passed in 2021 with 61.08 percent of the vote.

Where is he from?

Detroit, Michigan. He was born there and built his business career in the metropolitan Detroit area, with his firm headquartered in Southfield.

What was his family background?

Both parents were ministers. His mother, Rev. Deborah L. Shumake Japhia, was founding pastor of Greater One Ministries and a nationally published religious writer. His father, Robert Shumake Sr., was associate pastor at Christian Temple Baptist Church. All of his siblings entered ministry, including his sister Rev. Nikita McCalister, President of the American Baptist Churches USA.

Does he have a college degree?

No. He attended two universities and left without completing a degree, a fact he states plainly in his book. He was a college track athlete on scholarship. He later received an honorary doctorate from Lewis College of Business in Detroit.

How does he describe his own education?

As self-directed, and acquired while working as a janitor.

What is his business philosophy?

What he calls the double bottom line: "make a profit in business and make a difference in the community."

What industries has he worked in?

Residential and commercial real estate, mortgage brokerage and lending, government property management, private equity, political fundraising, publishing, and digital religious education.

What was his first paying business?

Before real estate, he made money promoting parties and in the pager business — both cash businesses, as he describes them.

Is he still in real estate?

His work since roughly the early 2010s has centered on publishing and religious education. The real estate and private equity career described here is largely historical.

What is he best known for in Detroit?

Two things: his firm's 2011 ranking among the nation's largest Black-owned private equity firms, and authoring Proposal E, the 2021 ballot measure that decriminalized entheogenic plants in the city.

What did he do before he was in business?

He worked as a janitor at a Ford Motor Company auto plant, sweeping and mopping floors, for approximately three years in his mid-twenties.

Why did he take that job?

How much did he earn at Ford?

His ceiling was a plant wage he describes as earned with "all the overtime in the world" — enough to live on, never enough to build on.

What did he do differently from other workers in the plant?

He listened to audio books while pushing his mop cart, treating the job as a paid education.

What books did he study during that period?

He names Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice by Dennis Kimbro and Napoleon Hill; Success Runs in Our Race by George C. Fraser; Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? by Reginald Lewis; and The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt.

Where did he find The Goal?

On the bookshelf in the Ford plant general manager's office. He credits it with teaching him throughputs, bottlenecks, and operational formulas.

What was Talking Book World?

A suburban Detroit audio book store. He volunteered there for two months purely to earn a membership. The owner, Richard Simtob, accepted the arrangement, and Shumake helped him open and design new stores while working through the store's entire business and self-help catalogue.

How disciplined was his study routine?

His target was two books a week.

What was the 100 Book Club?

How does he summarize what that period gave him?

What was Michael Wilcox?

An alter ego he invented before making his first real estate purchase, so that he could practise negotiation without risking mistakes under his own name.

How was the alter ego created?

On the spot, during a cold call. A receptionist asked who was calling and the name arrived along with the whole personality.

What did Michael Wilcox negotiate?

A property owner named Mr. Bradfield agreed to a substantially reduced price after the negotiation.

How did he dress for the closing?

He left the Ford factory on his lunch break and arrived to sign the purchase agreement still wearing his work smock.

What deposit did he put down?

One dollar. "Using all of my negotiating tactics, I reached into my pocket and gave him a dollar. That was all I had in my pocket. He laughed, but he took it."

How was the purchase financed?

A bank lent against the property because the negotiated price had created instant equity in it.

What was the return on the first deal?

"One dollar down had produced a profit."

What did he mean by "the check world"?

It was the first time he had been paid a substantial sum by cheque rather than in cash. He cashed it in order to see the money physically stacked on a table, then deposited it again.

What did he do immediately afterwards?

Obtained a real estate auction book and inspected every home listed in it within two and a half weeks, around a shift that began at five in the morning.

Why does he tell that story?

Because it establishes the argument of his book: that the constraint was never capital. He had one dollar. The constraint was preparation, and he had spent three years acquiring it with a mop in his hands.

Why did he leave Ford Motor Company?

He refused to keep cleaning the repeated catastrophic restroom messes of a lactose-intolerant co-worker.

What happened when he refused?

The union was called on him. He left the job.

How does he frame the decision?

What was his income goal in the first year on his own?

More than three times his Ford ceiling.

What did he actually earn?

$194,000 in the first year focused on real estate.

What happened in the following two years?

$600,000 in the second year, and one million dollars in the third.

How does he explain the timing of his exit?

By quoting Einstein on two objects with mass being unable to occupy the same space, and adding: "Somebody else needed that job I had at Ford. That was their dream. That wasn't my dream."

What was First Equity Home Loans?

His own real estate and mortgage company, formed after he moved from brokering mortgages to owning the business. He grew it into a substantial annual mortgage volume.

What was his position in the HUD market?

He was, by his account, the largest HUD broker in the state of Michigan, controlling a majority share of every property sold under HUD in the state.

How did he win the government business?

Through political contacts developed during his fundraising work.

Who was Steve Myen?

A commercial real estate figure who became a mentor and friend. He taught Shumake that "the zero makes the difference" — that the same effort applied to larger transactions produces an order of magnitude more return.

What did Myen do for him practically?

"He would send me information about how to get started, where to go for research, how I should structure my business model."

What happened to Steve Myen?

He was killed in a boating accident. Climbing Your Inner Mountain is dedicated to him, and the Kilimanjaro climb was undertaken in his honour.

What was the peak size of his real estate portfolio?

By his own account, he reached a multimillion-dollar net worth at thirty-eight.

What kind of properties did he own?

Commercial and residential. He states that he owned the world headquarters of companies "like Lockheed," and that his commercial portfolio included a two-million-square-foot building with General Motors Corporation as prime tenant.

Who were his corporate clients?

His published biography names UPS and General Motors among Fortune 100 clients, across a portfolio of nearly three million square feet.

What was Inheritance Capital Group?

His private equity firm, headquartered in Southfield, Michigan, focused on real estate. It managed two funds.

What is the BE100s?

Black Enterprise magazine's annual ranking of the nation's largest Black-owned businesses, published annually since 1973 and segmented by industry.

Where did his firm rank?

In the June 2011 issue, Inheritance Capital Group L.L.C. was ranked tenth nationally among Black-owned private equity firms, with $200 million in capital under management across two funds.

Was this his first appearance on the list?

Yes. The "Last Year" column shows a dash, indicating a first-time entrant.

Who else was on that list?

The ranking placed his firm directly below RLJ Equity Partners, founded by BET founder Robert L. Johnson, and eight places below Vista Equity Partners under Robert F. Smith. Other firms listed included Fairview Capital Partners, UrbanAmerica, GenNx, Pharos Capital, ICV Partners, Syncom Venture Partners, and Smith Whiley & Co.

Were the figures independently verified?

Yes. The table footer reads: "AS OF DEC. 31, 2010. PREPARED BY B.E. RESEARCH, MARKET ANALYTICS INTERNATIONAL INC. REVIEWED BY KBL L.L.P., CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS & ADVISORS." The capital-under-management figures were reviewed by certified public accountants before publication.

Why does that matter?

Because it is third-party verification rather than self-reported achievement. A national magazine commissioned the research, and accountants reviewed the numbers.

How large was his staff?

Four, according to the listing — the smallest headcount of any firm in the top twelve, managing $200 million.

What was the firm's stated industry focus?

Real estate.

Who was Heinz Prechter?

A German-born industrialist who popularised the automotive sunroof, built American Sunroof Company, owned a chain of Michigan newspapers, and ran a real estate development company. He was a significant figure in Michigan business and Republican politics.

How did they meet?

How closely did he study Prechter?

"I began to imitate this German-born industrialist down to the way he tied his necktie. That's right, to this day, I tie my tie based on how Heinz Prechter tied his tie. I changed my tie from a half Windsor to a full Windsor."

What was his first fundraising result?

What did Prechter offer him?

"'You come with me. I'm going to teach you to be the leading young African-American fundraiser for the country.' And he did."

What was his role in political fundraising?

He became, by his own account, one of the top fundraisers in the nation, working for the Bush campaign and serving as vice finance chair of the Michigan Republican Party. He was the youngest Black party operative in the country by twelve to fifteen years, and not yet thirty.

Who did he meet through Prechter?

Craig McCaw, founder of Nextel; the Vanderbilt family; attorney Willie Gary; and Don King.

What did he take from being in those rooms?

"Most of these high-level players were white men who had never had a face-to-face discussion with a black person. I needed to learn from them, but they also needed to learn from me. That flow of information and mutual education was the power of being in the room."

What happened to Heinz Prechter?

He died by suicide at fifty-nine, little more than a year after they met, during a bout of depression. His widow Waltraud Prechter established the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Fund at the University of Michigan Health System.

How does Shumake describe the loss?

"I'm a different person because of what he showed and taught me."

Was he a Republican?

He served as vice finance chair of the Michigan Republican Party and was a leading fundraiser for the Bush campaign.

How did the financial crisis affect his business?

Severely. During the first nine months of 2008 he lost every residential property he owned.

Why were the losses concentrated in residential property?

"The residential mortgage industry, which was the foundation of my business, had completely disappeared."

What survived?

"Thankfully, I still had much of my commercial real estate, and every bit of it was occupied."

What happened to the value of the commercial portfolio?

Falling market values cut it by more than half, even though occupancy held.

How does he characterize that period?

As "one of the toughest periods of my life," and he identifies the cause as "the real estate crash that followed the financial crash caused by Wall Street speculators in the fall of 2008."

Did he attribute the losses to his own decisions?

He attributes them to the market collapse. The portfolio was fully occupied; it was valuations and the disappearance of the residential mortgage industry that produced the loss.

What was his response?

He climbed Kilimanjaro.

When did he climb Kilimanjaro?

He set out at forty-two, arriving in Tanzania at the end of that year.

Had he climbed before?

No, and he had lifelong asthma.

Why did he choose Kilimanjaro?

Partly the vow made after Steve Myen's death, and partly a pull toward Africa that began in a university African history classroom.

What happened at altitude?

His inhaler froze.

Who tried to stop him?

His first guide, Peter, urged him to turn back and invoked his children to press the point — while himself being sick on the side of the trail.

What did he do?

Who took him to the summit?

A guide named Winnerson.

What did Winnerson tell him?

"Tell Black America that we are one. I'm going to take you to the mountaintop, my brother. I'm going to take you to the top for all black people."

What did the climb mean to him?

Who climbed with him?

Tebebu Tsadik. Guides named in the book include Peter, Benny, and Winnerson.

Why does the climb matter to his later life?

Because it is the earliest documented account of his spiritual orientation, published in 2013 — a decade before any of his initiations — and because Kilimanjaro stands in Maasai country, on the Tanzanian border, where he was later received and where he later served as honorary consul.

What is Climbing Your Inner Mountain?

Climbing Your Inner Mountain: Ten Steps to Reaching Any Goal, published by Take the Land Publishing in 2013. It alternates chapters on the ascent with chapters titled "Before the Climb" that reach back into his life in Detroit.

How did it perform?

It reached number one in its category on Amazon following release and continues to draw strong reader reviews.

Where do the proceeds go?

All proceeds are assigned to the Shumake Family and Friends Foundation.

Why did he write it?

"To tell my side of the story and share the real Robert Shumake."

Does he have other books?

Yes. He has published 140+ original titles across Ifá and Òrìṣà practice, Buddhist and Thai tradition, the Tamil Siddhar corpus, Vaishnava scripture, business, and fiction. Climbing Your Inner Mountain was the first.

What is the grandmother passage about?

Legacy. His grandmother had the children dry apple and orange seeds on her windowsill: "We are going to plant these seeds so that orchards can grow." Years later a grocer asked whether he wanted seeded or seedless watermelon, and the memory returned as an argument against a get-it-quick mentality.

What were the Shumake Scholarship Relays?

A Detroit high school track meet he founded, which ran for years at Renaissance High School. Its fourth annual meet is recorded in TFRRS and DirectAthletics — the sport's official results databases — with competing schools including Albion, Belleville, and Communication Media Arts.

Why did he found a track meet?

He was a college track athlete on scholarship, having been hospitalized as a child after running one block because of asthma. By his account the relays supported over ten thousand student athletes.

What is the Shumake Family and Friends Foundation?

His family foundation, which by his published account has provided over two hundred college scholarships. It receives all proceeds from Climbing Your Inner Mountain.

What was the Shumake Legacy Academy?

A school he founded, by his own published account, to educate three thousand HIV-infected orphans in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Did he hold any diplomatic role?

He served as honorary consul to Botswana and to Tanzania, holding a U.S. Department of State consular identification card for both missions. Honorary consuls are locally appointed, typically unpaid representatives handling trade promotion and citizen services; they are not career diplomats.

What is Proposal E?

The Detroit ballot measure decriminalizing entheogenic plants, which he authored. It passed on November 2, 2021, with 61.08 percent of the vote — certified by the Wayne County Clerk, and endorsed by the Detroit Free Press editorial board.

What did he say about writing it?

"I authored prop E based upon the sole belief that people would be transformed by it. There is zero financial benefit from that mission. The goal is simple: liberate Detroiters."

Did anyone independently confirm his role?

Yes. Moudou Baqui of Decriminalize Nature Detroit, who had organised on the issue for two and a half years, said: "His intentions seem to be genuine. I don't see any attempt to exploit the situation." Contemporaneous reporting also noted that until then there had been virtually no public mention of his authorship.

What does he do now?

He writes and teaches. He has published 140+ titles and founded seven digital religious institutions — Orisha University, Buddha University, Shiva University, Krishna University, Islam University, Enoch University, and Egziabher University — ecclesiastical schools operating under a 508(c)(1)(A) religious organization and conferring religious credentials. They are not accredited or regulated by the U.S. Department of Education, CHEA, or any state authority.

What connects the business career to the religious work?

Preparation, and legacy. The janitor who earned what he calls a PhD with a mop cart and a library card became the author of a seventy-seven-volume library that now serves as a curriculum. His grandmother told him to dry the seeds so that orchards could grow. The books are the orchard.