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Fast Company
September
2002
Make Room for What Matters
Monique Greenwood left the publishing fast track
to run an inn and open a restaurant. But
how did someone eager to balance her life manage
to get so busy? And how does someone so busy
manage to have so much fun? By Chuck Salter
Photograph by Greg Miller
At a certain point, it became hard for Monique
Greenwood not to question the life she was leading. She
ended many of her days at 1AM, only to begin the
next one five hours later. Her "dream job" was
robbing her of virtually any time with her husband
and daughter. Meanwhile, she was writing
a self-help book called Having What Matters-so
how could she not ask, "What matters to me?"
That was a couple of years ago, when Greenwood
was the high-profile editor in chief of Essence,
the health-and-beauty bible for Black women. She
was also running a bed-and-breakfast in Brooklyn
with her husband, Glenn Pogue; raising their young
daughter; and serving on several community boards.
But a funny thing happened on the way to publishing
the hot-selling book (now in its sixth printing),
subtitled The Black Woman's Guide to Creating
the Life you Really Want. Greenwood took
her own advice. What mattered, she decided,
was building a family business, not having the
clout that comes with running a magazine that sells
more than 1 million copies per issue. So
she quit Essence and opened her second B&B
in the seaside resort of Cape May, New Jersey. "I
wanted to have more of a life," says Greenwood,
43. "Something had to be sacrificed."
Friends and colleagues couldn't believe it. How
could she turn her back on a 20-year career in
New York media? How could she choose making
beds for strangers over putting a national magazine
to bed? Greenwood's response: It was
easy. Her professional passions hadn't changed;
she just redesigned how she spent her time. She's
now an entrepreneur with multiple businesses and "the
editor of my own life."
This isn't the story of a corporate burnout case
who fled the rat race to run a quaint inn, never
to be heard from again. This is the story
of a relentless woman who left the business establishment
and found a way to make her impact more focused
than it was before. Instead of agonizing
over covers or pitching to advertisers, she is
improving the quality of life in Bedford-Stuyvesant
by opening and attracting businesses. A fine
restaurant. A bookstore. A coffee shop. An
upscale antiques store. Creating a better
life for herself, Greenwood has discovered, doesn't
mean leading a life that is less important.
"Monique is leading the redevelopment of the area," says
Kenneth Adams, president of the Brooklyn Chamber
of Commerce. "She sees the neighborhood can
go and knows how to make it happen."
New Life on Lewis Avenue
Before she helped spearhead the revitalization
of Bed-Stuy, and before she decided to expand her
business to Cape May (becoming the first African-American
innkeeper there), Greenwood had a crush on a lovely
but neglected mansion near her home. Built
in 1860, it was one of the few detached structures
in the Stuyvesant Heights historic district, where
brownstones are the norm. Greenwood would
pass it on her way to work in Manhattan and imagine
converting it into a luxurious B&B-the first
in Bed-Stuy. "I saw it as a way of combining
my passions," she says. "I love entertaining,
I love meeting people, I love decorating, and I
love architecture."
When the mansion finally did go on the market,
the couple bought it for just $225,000-they spent
almost that much upgrading and furnishing it. Pogue,
an actor and television-broadcast engineer, trusted
his wife's vision: "I'm usually the one with
more questions, but Monique usually has the answers. She
can do it all."
There was no shortage of naysayers who said the
idea would never work-if for no other reason than
that the Bed-Stuy area is hardly a big tourist
destination. They had a point. The
area is perhaps best known as the run-down, volatile,
and racially divided setting for Spike Lee's Do
the Right Thing. But that wasn't the
Bed-Stuy that Greenwood, who grew up in Washington,
DC, fell for. In Stuyvesant Heights, she
saw an unappreciated area: tree-lined streets,
historic buildings, and gorgeous architecture,
just minutes from downtown Brooklyn-but without
any major hotels or nice B&Bs. "When
family and friends came to visit, there was nowhere
to stay in Brooklyn", she says. Between relatives
visiting for weddings, funerals, and holidays,
and out-of-town clergy visiting for countless churches,
she figured she wouldn't have a problem "putting
heads in the beds."
Greenwood was right, but for the wrong reasons. When
she and Pogue opened Akwaaba Mansion Bed & Breakfast
in 1995, they discovered that many of their guests
lived in the tristate area. They were looking
for a convenient getaway. What they found
was an elegant 18-room mansion outfitted with whirlpool
baths, Victorian antiques upholstered in African
prints, and chocolates from Ghana. (Akwaaba
means "Welcome" in Ghana).
It didn't take long for word to get out about
the black-owned inn, which remains a rarity among
the 17,000 inns across the country. At first,
the couple, who lived with their daughter, Glynn,
in the apartment on the top floor, opened the inn
only on weekends, since they were both still working. But
as the business grew, they began squeezing in mid-week
guests. "Here in Bed-Stuy was a B&B you'd
expect to see in Charleston," Greenwood says. "It
was like a tree growing in Brooklyn."
The next opportunity was obvious: a restaurant
for Akwaaba guests and Bed-Stuy residents. Greenwood
and Pogue bought a short block of buildings around
the corner, on Lewis Avenue, and three years after
launching the inn, they opened Akwaaba Café. Two
years later, in 2000, they introduced Mirrors,
a cozy coffee shop-another first for Bed-Stuy. "All
of my businesses are things that I felt we deserved
to have in our neighborhood-somewhere nice to stay,
to eat, to run into friends," Greenwood says. "I
never had a business plan. If I had researched
it a lot, I would probably have been too afraid
to try it."
As it turns out, the neighborhood was on the rebound. Between
1993 and 2001, overall crime dropped about 60%
in the three precincts that include Bed-Stuy. Meanwhile,
between 1989 and last year, the number of households
earning over $100,000 nearly tripled. But
because it lacked businesses meeting the most basic
needs, Bedford-Stuyvesant remained a "dormitory
community", says Adams, the Brooklyn Chamber president. Residents
earned their money elsewhere and spent it elsewhere.
Because of Greenwood, that has begun to change. In
addition to creating her own businesses, she encourages
other entrepreneurs. Crystal and Walston
Bobb-Semple were living in San Francisco and feeling
homesick for Bed-Stuy when Greenwood called a few
years ago. Before long, Walston quit his
job at Charles Schwab and the couple was back,
opening a bookstore and an antiques shop. "Monique
is a doer," says Crystal. "She doesn't let
an opportunity pass."
These days, Lewis Avenue is starting to look more
like Park Slope, Brooklyn's hottest neighborhood. There
are book signings, a children's story hour, and
book-club meetings at Brownstone Books. There
are jazz jam sessions at Akwaaba Café on
Wednesday nights along with a $15 seafood buffet
($5 if you perform). And every morning at
Mirrors, there are fresh pastries and copies of
the New York Times, which wasn't previously available. "You
now have the sort of stores we didn't have before," says
Jacqui Williams-Foy, a longtime resident and the
former director of economic development for the
Brooklyn Chamber. "It creates more pride
in the community."
Under New Management
This year, for the first time, Greenwood and her
husband are operating two B&Bs through the
summer. In two different towns. Three hours
apart. The pace is definitely hectic. But
more often than not, Greenwood finds that it's
a good sort of hectic: "I love my life now,
even when it gets crazy."
In some ways, Greenwood hasn't slowed down that
much, despite trying to delegate more and micromanage
less. True, she did bring in one of her energetic
and entrepreneurial tenants, Monroe Shannon, to
operate the restaurant. But Greenwood continues
to juggle speaking engagements, book signings,
and her multiple businesses.
Greenwood still relies on the hand-written to-do
list she composes each night. It easily fills
the page, not to mention the entire day. Today's
list: family breakfast at 7AM. Breakfast
for the inn's guests at 8:30AM. The calls
about everything from flood insurance to a catering
business that she might buy. Of course, her
list doesn't include the unexpected items that
pop up. A leaky bathroom faucet. A
broken light fixture. On it goes.
But as busy as she is, Greenwood continues to
follow her own advice and reflect. Tonight,
on a breezy summer evening at Akwaaba by the Sea,
here's what matters to her: spending July
with her daughter in Cape May. Knowing that
her husband has time to sneak in a golf game before
check-in tomorrow. Getting to know today's
guests, honeymooners who regaled her with the story
(and video) of their wedding. And identifying
her next project. She's considering a line
of Akwaaba home décor and a day spa. There's
also a new book. The working title is Life
Under New Management: How to Fire Your Job
and Become Your Own Boss.
If it all sounds a bit overwhelming, Greenwood
insists that it's not-at least not to her. "I
probably still do more than the average person,
but it's not nearly as much as I used to," she
says. "I'm getting better."
Chuck Salter is a Fast Company senior writer. Learn
more about Akwaaba on the Web (www.akwaaba.com)
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