We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Horace Sheffield. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Horace below.

Horace, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My parents raised me with a sense of legacy and with the belief that knowledge and a formal education was the greatest equalizer; even if one was poor and African American. Additionally, they made certain that I read, and that I knew that no one possess more power of me and my fate than me. Towards that end they exposed me to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essay on Self Reliance, Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale, to others whose stories proved that what Thomas Edison said was true, and that is that “success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration”.

When I was in the 4th grade my father led a movement to replace my elementary school principal who was white serving a predominantly black student population with a black principal. He succeeded and unleashed a wrath against him and against my sisters and me. It was so intense that I refused to return to school until my father told me this, “son the only time you experience friction is if you are moving. So don’t others who are against you stop you from doing what you believe is right and just”.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was born into home whose family were leaders in the Labor and Civil Rights Movements. Consequently, all of the greatest leaders of the late 1950’s and 1960’s I knew whether it Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Phillip Randolph, or Walter Reuther I was privileged to be exposed to them by my creator to glean from them the precepts of fighting for others, and what it meant to commit oneself to helping others.

As a result of that exposure I have spent most of my life believing and demonstrating that the true measure of a meaningful life is not how much you have but how much you give.

This ethos is best reflected in my work as the CEO of the Detroit Association of Black Organizations, an organization by father founded, and as pastor of New Destiny Church.

There more to my story and it can be found at www.HoraceSheffield.com, www.dabodetroitinc.com, and www.newdestinyworldwide.com

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

That sometimes the person who has the most influence in an organization may not run it, or be identified on an organization chart.

I learned this from my first pastorate in Brooklyn, NY. I was 21 in Seminary and was convinced after being the new pastor for a few months that if the church was to grow and impactful that there was much that needed to be changed.

I encountered open opposition from many in the church and when I asked why they told me that Lula Mae Badgett, who ran the kitchen in the basement and cooked breakfast and a meal after church every Sunday, and who never came to service and was rarely seen, was against me changing anything.

This prove to me that sometimes you have to find out who the influencers are because sometimes they aren’t seen, heard, and are only discovered by detection because they are often not the named leaders but are the real leaders.

Once I sat down with her, broke bread with her, developed a relationship with her, and answered all her questions she took the lead to bring to fruition the changes I could not have made without her.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

This is an easy question to answer. The most effective strategy is to build personal relationships with those you are seeking to win over, pull in, and motivate to join in and produce immeasurable outcomes.

We cannot move people with memos, enlist them with emails, not get them to buy in from reading a bulletin. Face to face interpersonal interaction is the basis of building an army and gaining commitment from others.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.HoraceSheffield.com
• Instagram: Hsheff3
• Facebook: Horace Sheffield
• Linkedin: Horace Sheffield
• Twitter: @RevSheffield
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@NewDestinyChristianFello-fl1ny