January 24, 2002

BY DAVE LUNDY

Robert Blackwell Jr. is a man of many identities: tech entrepreneur, sports car salesman, real estate developer, trader, and Chicago's most prominent Ping-Pong promoter. While it may seem Blackwell has been bouncing around like a Ping-Pong ball, he understands that success requires "almost fanatical dedication to a goal."

In his latest incarnation, Blackwell has returned to his first love, heading up Chicago-based EKI Consulting, his software applications development firm. EKI recently beat out almost every major player to win the city of Chicago's Web site redevelopment contract. Meanwhile he also put together the Chicago Killer Spin Ping-Pong team, which trounced the U.S. Olympic team for the national team championships in November.

While his goals keep changing, Blackwell seems to have found his own path to success.

Q. Did you envision becoming an entrepreneur when you were a kid?

A. I've been an entrepreneur since I was 8 years old. I used to sell Bub Daddies, those foot-long sticks of bubble gum, from my coat pockets in school. I would buy hundreds of them for a nickel apiece, take them school and sell them for a dime.

I sold so much of it that nobody was buying ice cream from the school anymore. So the principal came and talked to me and I made a deal with him to sell ice cream for the school.

Q. What was your first adult entrepreneurial experience?

A. My dad worked for IBM for many years and he helped me get a job there right out of college. After two years, I decided IBM was too big for me, so I started a small PC consulting company. Despite what IBM said at the time, I was very sure personal computers were going to be a big industry.

I had pretty good vision about business, but I was 21 and I thought I knew more about business than I actually did. I wasn't Bill Gates, but I did well enough to feed me and a couple other people.

Q. Why did you get out of technology after a couple of years in PC consulting?

A. Like most guys, I've always had a passion for cars. I saw a good business opportunity in the "gray market" of importing and retrofitting German sports cars because of the favorable exchange rate between the dollar and deutschmark.

We imported cars from Germany, fixed them up for the American roads, and sold them for a lot less than you could buy them here.

Eventually, the biggest "gray market" company in America called me and asked me to come to California to help them. I was out there for about seven months, but exchange rates started to flip and the whole business kind of went away.

Q. So you were in California with nothing to do. What did you do next?

A. I got involved in commodity trading and started writing programs for a trading fund in L.A. Eventually I decided to come back to Chicago and pursue my interest in trading. I knew somebody at the Merc and asked if I could come in and work for free. I worked for free for four months and then started writing programs to develop trading strategies.

I've always been very mathematical and was able to recognize a few patterns. I made some money myself and some people actually made a lot of money off my predictions. After a while I got tired of trading, so I funded and joined a small technology company in 1989. The company did basic application development, and we worked on a few niche technologies, including some early work with Lotus Notes.

In 1992, my father took early retirement from IBM and we started Blackwell Consulting together.

Q. What was it like working with your dad?

A. I think the most important thing I learned from my father is really empathy; empathy for your customer, and empathy for the employees.

People that work for my father adore him; his customers love him. My father is really somebody special.

But there was always a bit of a culture clash because he wanted to do big systems and I wanted to do these niche things. I have always respected my father growing up and it became stressful to disagree with him. We are both very strong-willed and we butted heads a lot. My relationship with my father is very important to me, and I just couldn't resolve those two issues. So at the end of 1995, I sold my half of the company to him.

Q. But you moved out of technology again. Why?

A. I've been given opportunities by the fact that I have the parents I do. I didn't get into IBM just because I was good at math. My father knew people and I got a chance. Lots of people don't have that opportunity, and I believe if you're successful, you should give somebody else a hand.

A friend and I decided we could help young African-American men succeed with what we called a "housing for tutoring exchange." The plan was to give honor-roll black college students a place to live in exchange for mentoring elementary and high school kids.

I knew people weren't going to just give us housing for social programs, so I created a company called Urban Fishing Development to design and build it. Since the land outside Hyde Park was so cheap, I decided to build houses that looked like they belonged in Lincoln Park.

People actually bought them.

Q. So what happened to the mentorship program?

A. One of my colleagues talked me out of it. He told me not to mix a social thing and a real estate thing. "Go make some money and then you can give money away," he said. So in the end I just did the development. But I decided liked technology a lot better than construction. If I had known more about real estate development, I probably would have taken a pass. It's a very hard business.

Q. What did you have in mind when you founded EKI?

A. I founded EKI with my best friend, Diego, and we decided the culture of the company should be the most important thing. There's no owner worship at EKI. You don't see my picture anywhere. My name's not on the company. I don't have a bigger office than anybody else. There's no ramification for saying I'm wrong. And there's no benefit to being my friend. This is a results-oriented customer-focused company. People shouldn't waste their energy being political.

Q. What's the key to success in consulting?

A. Success requires almost fanatical dedication to a goal. And I think that's a strength of mine. I'm kind of an all-or-nothing person.

In consulting, you need to figure how to deliver real value to your customer. We always try to figure out how to help a customer make money, save money or both. If we can help them, we can have a close relationship. If you think about the world like that, then it forces you to think in different ways and look not at yourself but at your customer first.

For instance, in redeveloping the city of Chicago's Web site, we reached out to Bank One as a subcontractor. We did work for Bank One in the past so we understood how they made money and how they could add value to the city. I don't think anybody else who was bidding thought about bringing in a bank to manage money as part of the online bill payment center.

Q. I've heard rumors about you as a Ping-Pong promoter. What's that all about?

A. I started playing table tennis a couple years ago, and I realized it's an incredible sport. It's actually the world's second-most popular sport behind soccer. Ping-Pong is the only time when I'm not thinking about work. I really put all my energy into it.

In addition to EKI, I run a table tennis company called Killer Spin that produces instructional videos and manufacturing equipment. I was chairman of the city's 2000 Ping-Pong festival. Typically if I like stuff, I start to get a little bit nuts about it.

The National Team Championships were in Baltimore last November, and I thought, "Why can't Chicago have another title?" So we put together a team called Chicago Killer Spin and we actually beat the U.S. Olympic team. It wasn't even close.

We sponsor a big table tennis program over at Kennicott Park for kids, adults and seniors. There's a full-time instructor who's an Olympic silver medalist.

Dave Lundy is president of DL Strategies, a Chicago-based strategic communications firm. He can be reached at dsl@dlstrategies.com