Author Dennis Kimbro on greatness and purpose

What makes the great, great? People who achieve extraordinary success in life dream big, commit themselves to excellence, engage in lifelong learning and refuse to fail, contends best-selling author Dennis P. Kimbro. Kimbro recently spoke to a packed audience of faculty and students at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School about leadership and infused his speech with lessons learned from countless interviews for his book What Makes the Great Great.

“The great dream big dreams,” said Kimbro, who for years has studied the lives of mega-successful African Americans and others to discover the common threads. “They desperately want to accomplish something in life. So what is the greatest gift? The greatest gift is purpose — living your life on purpose.”

Charismatic and colorful, Kimbro kept the audience enthralled as he told about interviewing such notables as Bishop T.D. Jakes, Andrew Young, Robert Johnson, Maynard Jackson, Eddie Robinson, Don King, Dr. Ben Carson, Hazel O’Leary, Maya Angelou and Johnnetta Cole.

“Commit yourself to excellence,” he stressed. “Don’t be average. These individuals were inner-directed versus outer-directed. They weren’t so quick to believe well-meaning friends or family members who said, ‘You can’t do this’ or ‘You can’t do that.’ They walked to the beat of a different drummer. And they flat out refused to fail. I’m not saying they didn’t fail — many of them actually failed their way to success.”

According to Kimbro, many of those interviewed for his book faced major setbacks and some even endured bankruptcy. They achieved greatness by remaining focused on their purpose. Striving to light the same fire under many of the students, Kimbro added, “You are unique. You cannot succeed by being like everybody else. Sooner or later you have to ask, ‘Why did the Lord take time out of His busy schedule to blow life into my lungs?’”

The author of four books, Kimbro recalled asking the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown about leadership.

“His face lit up like a Christmas tree,” Kimbro recalled. “He said, ‘There are only two requirements of leadership. First, the price of leadership is always loneliness. Second, you can never be concerned about what other people say and do.’ ”

Kimbro, who spoke as part of Goizueta’s Leadership Speakers Series, contrasted those success stories with the dispiriting statistics on black youth in the U.S.

“Right now there are 620,000 black males on college campuses, compared to 1.4 million in prison,” he said. “There are 125,000 white males in prison compared to 3.29 million in college. Every 90 seconds of the day, a black child is born to a teen mother who’ll never finish high school. Every 40 minutes of the day, a black male is convicted of a violent crime.”

Said Kimbro, “I don’t know what to tell you … but we’d better do something quick.”—Tom Barry