Business Profiles with Passion and Personality

By Dick Weiss
Oct. 19, 2007

This edition focuses on stories that bring passion and personality to the fore.  Here are three fine portraits of people who have poured their money and their souls into their businesses. In each instance, you’ll find that they’ve run into controversy, trouble or both.  In two stories they come off as smart and slick and in one as incredibly self-absorbed. But their stories are compelling because the authors – Binyamin Appelbaum and Peter St. Onge of The Charlotte Observer, Maya Rao of The Press of Atlantic City and Gadi Dechter of The Sun of Baltimore – not only focused on the paper trail, but on what makes these businessmen so hellbent.

Click here to send me an e-mail with some great business stories you’ve written or seen. You could see your story touted here as one of the best in the nation. That’s what Maya Rao did with her story and now she’s famous – sort of.

3Promises Upfront, Deals On The Side

Binyamin Appelbaum and Peter St. Onge of The Charlotte Observer
The authors would likely have won a great deal of respect for uncovering the machinations of businessmen John Heinemann and Kris Boschele as they lured customers into questionable real estate transactions with inflated promises and hidden transactions. Appelbaum and St. Onge did a nice job of lining up the documents and the numbers to make their case. But they made their story far more compelling by delving into the backgrounds, personalities and motivations of the businessmen, then weaving them into the tale that reads like a movie script.

2Brothers Schiff Say Goodbye To Tacky And Tawdry

Maya Rao of The Press of Atlantic City
Maya Rao’s story is by turns incisive and hilarious. She had great material to work with: multi-millionaire brothers, Robert and Abraham Schiff, who got into business in Atlantic City as teenagers. (Robert was managing a motel at age 13). They made their fortune by selling schlock on the Boardwalk, much to the dismay of civic leaders.  Now they are going posh with a $70-$75 million redevelopment scheme. Rao describes beautifully how they are doing an about face and how they have worked their will on Atlantic City for 40 years.

1 A Modern-Day Ahab

Gadi Dechter of The Sun of Baltimore
Robert Henke wants to make a huge contribution to mankind by building an earthquake probe that can predict the way soils will react in a seismic event. Unfortunately, the effort over 25 years has created a quake of its own. He lives alone in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, having lost his wife and his home, having spent $1 million of his mother's fortune, and having his 17-year-old son face a prison term. This is a long piece, but holds your interest throughout because it raises a provocative question: What drives this man to the edge?

Dechter was nice enough to write me a detailed note on how she got this story. If you’d like to read it, click here: Gadi’s Story.

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism