Kenny Rushing

Kenny Rushing has an unusual story. Some people go to school to learn how to become entrepreneurs; others are just born with the gift. Kenny loves to negotiate, sell, manage, and delegate while watching his businesses grow. It’s second nature to him. It’s what Kenny Rushing was born to do. What makes the thirty-three year old Rushing different from other phenomenally successful real estate moguls, devoted civic leaders and inspirational philanthropists? You won’t see a PHD, an MBA or a university degree on his wall. His education came from the streets of Des Moines, Iowa, where he was a Teenage Drug King Pin and from the halls of the Federal Correction Facilities where he was imprisoned until 2000 for six and a half of his twenty-seven years.
Today, six years removed from incarceration, Rushing is a dynamic visionary with a plan to help a generation. “I am an example of how we are losing too many young, productive Black males to prison,” Rushing says. “We have to reach out to this new generation and show them a viable alternative to selling drugs. Prison is no joke. It’s not where I was headed, but it’s where I ended up. I want parents to know they are heard and to keep talking to their children. If I can turn my life around because my parents had instilled good values in me before I lost my way, then your children can too. And, if I can succeed at House-Hustling, then your children can too. Yes, I’m also talking to all the Street-Hustlers out there. If I can do it; you can do it. You can succeed!!”
It all began June 18, 1973, when Kenny was born in Des Moines, Iowa. A precocious kid from a lower-middle class African American Family, he dreamed of playing basketball and fighting in the golden glove bouts. He sold cookies; you know the kind – the peanut clusters and mints – that all the neighborhood kids sold. He mowed lawns and played ball until dark in the summers and shoveled snow in the winters.
The Rushing family lived in Sherman Hill, a historic area of Des Moines, where homes from the 1870’s to the 1920’s, were being restored. Kenny often watched the craftsmen outside his apartment window painstakingly working on the classic architectural homes from the Victorian to the Italianate. Not until later in life would he look back on this time and consider its influence. He was a kid then and most of his daylight hours in the summers were spent at the Wilkie House Recreational Center playing 5 on 5, the Westside Boxing Club training and Goodes Park and Birdland’s Park public swimming pools on the high dive. Up until his ninth birthday, Kenny had no complaints.
Over the next four years, a series of events changed his life. His father, a former gang banger, whose gift for sales lacked proper guidance, and his mom, who was working in a nursing home and attending junior college, separated. Three years after their divorce, Mrs. Rushing got caught up in an economic crunch and lost her job. She had to drop out of college. Kenny’s sister left for the Job Corp, and Mrs. Rushing and Kenny lost their home. They stayed with family for a while. Finally penniless and homeless, they moved into the projects, “The Homes of Oakridge”. “I don’t even know how it happened,” Kenny said. “We were all right and then we weren’t. I was a kid and suddenly, I didn’t feel so safe.”
Life looks different when you’re poor. Kenny was trying to make sense out of it when his mom took a turn for the worse with depression. At fifteen years old, he made a choice, which would change the course of his life. Over the next five years, he became a teenage Drug King Pin and made more money than he had ever dreamed of. The dream collapsed in 1993, when Kenny was twenty years old. He was arrested, convicted and sentenced to prison and remained in the Federal system for six years nine months. “In the beginning, Mom and I really needed the money. There came a point – I don’t know the exact day, but I know it happened, when I got hooked on the life - the money – the danger. I could have stopped, but I didn’t. It took me three years in prison before I would admit that to myself.”
Inspired by the Biography of Malcolm X as written by Alex Halley, Kenny decided that he was not going to be warehoused in prison rather he would have prison work for him as an institution of higher learning. “I read many books that helped me recapture that attitude I had back when I was a kid before my teens. This quote from Malcolm X had a lot to do with it. ‘Without education, you’re not going anywhere in the world.’ My parents used to repeat this quote to me over and over. Somewhere along the way, I forgot it. When I read it again, I knew I was coming home. Maybe those days in Sherman Hill, looking at the restoration projects, had rubbed off on me. I was drawn to real estate. By the time I left prison, I had accredited learning certificates in everything from Real Estate Investing to Finance.”
Within a year of arriving in Tampa, Kenny was rehabbing houses; two years later, Kenny founded Rehabber’s Superstore; four years down the road and Rehabber’s Superstore was a multi-million dollar business. Kenny turned his life around and understood his newly found calling and responsibility. “In order for the African-American economy to thrive, we must support one another.” And since his company has become a success, Rushing has done just that.
Through the educational services offered by House Hustling Enterprises, through the monthly “Support Black Businesses” ad campaign in the Florida Sentinel newspaper, and through sheer determination and will to develop his community, Rushing has, over the last five years, employed hundreds of local contractors, helped create more than 30 African American owned businesses and has inspired numerous young men to follow in his footsteps and make a difference in their lives and in their community.
Rushing wants to turn “Street-Hustlers” into “House-Hustlers.” It is, as he calls it, a “movement.” The House Hustling Movement, will educate, empower and inspire millions of disenfranchised African Americans. Although Rehabber’s Superstore, Inc., gives back a substantial portion of its income to support local businesses and help individuals launch their own companies, it’s House Hustling Enterprises, Inc. which will solely focus on the HH Movement.House Hustling Enterprises, Inc will provide the tools for everyone from ex-cons to former street hustlers, from college students to grandparents, to develop themselves and their communities through the real estate business. It is a business with a social conscience.
House Hustling Enterprises, Inc. also includes a diverse number of ventures in entertainment (television and movie production); magazine publishing (House Hustling magazine); and Rushing’s unique “self-help memoir” entitled House Hustling Manifesto Volume I that will be published in 2007. Rushing has partnered with Mark McClafferty (Motion Pictures and television producer, Chairman of Spellbound Pictures and former President of Eddie Murphy’s television company at Paramount Pictures) and Pamela Edwards McClafferty (Motion Pictures and television producer, President of On The Mark, Inc. and best selling author). Next on Rushing’s agenda, they are developing a reality TV show—The House Hustling Challenge and negotiating the publishing rights to his memoir and taking his story to the big screen.
These efforts and work are indicative of the passion of Kenny Rushing—a man who personally identifies with the plight of the poor and the disenfranchised. A man whose voice and actions speak volumes against the evils of poverty and in support of economic empowerment.

In order to unroll the creed and read please refer to the main website. www.househustling.com