A successful business model

When Steve Hightower got into the fuel business in the 1980s, his was a "minority company," a designation that helped it bring in state money set aside to help people like him succeed.

That particular program is no longer in place.

But Hightower is.

As is his Middletown-area company, Hightowers Petroleum Co., which has seen success that transcends any label.

"Many people failed," said the CEO and president of Hightowers Petroleum, reflecting on the fate of the minority companies that went under once the government money ran out. "Companies like myself are now in a more mature state." Hightowers Petroleum actually grew out of the family's large janitorial business that was founded in the 1950s.

To Hightower, a 48-year-old who grew up in Middletown, this is part of what will help the black communities in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky grow and thrive in the coming years: Black business owners have reached a stable point where they can now serve as role models and employers for young black people, beginning a cycle that could run infinitely.

"Because you now have that mature sector of small African-American businesses and then you have a few at the very top," he said, "now you have a basis of bringing other people in. We're at a stage now where we can hire people out of our community, [and] people of color who worked in our company now go out and start their own companies."

So Hightower expects another surge of black business owners to come along, a wave that will inevitably inspire another, and so on.

"Once you know that you also can have a 10-story office building full of people and be African-American, then you've got something to strive for," Hightower said. "The more role models and the more successes in our community, the more opportunity for other people to model our successes."