Group Prepares Blacks to Mind Their Businesses : Gene Hale founded the Greater Los Angeles African-American Chamber of Commerce to provide a network for business owners and help the community.

Gardena businessman Gene Hale began his first moneymaking venture at the age of 8 by opening a shoeshine stand in a small Alabama barbershop, hoping to earn enough to help support his family.

Soon, Hale was buying shoe polish wholesale and making a profit by selling it to other shoe shops at retail prices. The experience fostered his dream of becoming an entrepreneur, a goal that was realized in 1981 when Hale started G&C; Equipment, a Gardena construction equipment distributor. Last year, the company generated $10 million in sales.

Now, Hale is again doing repair work, this time on the soul of the African-American economy. Hale is chairman of the Greater Los Angeles African-American Chamber of Commerce, a 175-member group he helped found in January. The group provides a network for African-American entrepreneurs to gain assistance in business development, financing and job training.

The chamber is also exploring ways to bring black-owned contractors together to pool their resources to bid for rebuilding jobs in riot-torn areas.

“We all know in this day and age we must take control of our own destiny,” Hale said. “We must empower ourselves. No one else is going to do it.”

Hale, 44, said he learned the value of self-help while at the barbershop, where he had to obtain a business license and pay rent for his space.

“The people in the barbershop weren’t charging me because they needed the money,” Hale said. “What they were trying to instill in me was the fact that I had to be responsible, the concept of work. There was this saying, that the best thing you can do in life is to get pleasure out of what you do. So I did. I took real pride in being a shoeshine boy.”

Hale was the eighth of 11 children and lived in a suburb of Birmingham. In high school, he worked as a busboy and waiter while keeping up his shoeshine business.

After graduating from high school in 1970, he moved to Los Angeles and attended a technical school. He later enrolled at Cal State Dominguez Hills and earned a degree in business administration and finance in 1980.

“In terms of an entrepreneurial role model, Gene has done very well over the last 10 years,” said Skip Cooper, executive director of Black Business Assn., which Hale also served as chairman. “The (association) was to a large degree a major vehicle for his growth and development. When Gene joined the association, he wasn’t in business (yet). Gene was able to identify a niche where there weren’t many African-Americans or minority entrepreneurs. . . . He’s done very well for himself.”

Ollie Hadley, dean of the business division at El Camino College, praised Hale’s management skills.

“Gene has excellent management skills in the area of business planning and management,” Hadley said. “You can’t run a business without having a very effective business plan. He just didn’t go in and work hard. There was a real skill base that he brought to it.”

Such skills, he said, were further honed while working as an analyst for CIT Financial Services Corp., a Los Angeles commercial and industrial financing company.

Hale worked there five years, developing a business plan to launch his own distribution firm. To gain further insight into the construction equipment business, he quit his job as an analyst and worked for two years at a construction equipment distributorship.

“I had to learn how to drive the machines, get dirty,” Hale said. “It’s like the old saying, ‘You can’t be a good salesperson unless you know something about the product.’ ”

In March, 1981, he started G&C; Equipment in a bedroom of his home he had converted into an office. At the time, the economy was in a downturn and inflation ran in double digits.

“You know, a lot of people think you’re crazy when you go into business during a recession,” Hale said. “But there are some benefits, though. You get more liberal credit terms.”

Hale borrowed money against his house for start-up capital. After the venture took off, he got a $200,000 line of credit from Broadway Federal Savings & Loan, an African-American-owned financial institution. G&C; Equipment, which sells and leases construction equipment, now has 10 employees.

Broadway Federal “took a gamble on me that I would succeed,” Hale said. “Sometimes we have to take a chance on ourselves. I still bank with them today.”

It is because of his experience that Hale, as chamber chairman, urges community members to frequent African-American-owned banks.

“If you get the affluent African-Americans to put money into the three black banks in this town, not just depositing, but from an equity standpoint, those banks can then take that money and loan it out to other businesses in the community,” Hale said. “That’s a permanent investment.”

Such efforts could play a vital role in the rebuilding of Los Angeles, he said.

Retailers, factories and other enterprises received the brunt of the April-May riot damage, which some residents and community experts say stemmed from painful economic isolation.

In some sections of Los Angeles, the nearest full-service grocery stores are often at least two bus rides away, and neighborhood mom-and-pop stores sometimes charge as much as 30% more than larger retailers.

And there are so few banks and thrifts that residents routinely stand in lines for hours to make a deposit or cash a check.

Given such circumstances, and a lingering recession, Hale said the chamber has a daunting task ahead of it.

“It’s a real challenge, just like anything else,” Hale said. “But we can do it. But we have to have enterprise zones and access to working capital, not just debt capital, which is money to pay off debts.”

Hale takes his community empowerment message to area schools, where he urges youths to start work early in life.

“Don’t wait until you’re 18 years old to go after your first job,” Hale said. “You’re going to have to work. The sooner you learn how to work and learn to interact with people in that type of environment, the better off you will be.”