By Ron Stodghill

Last spring, Damian Johnson, the streetwise co-owner of No Grease, a local chain of barber shops, got a call from a representative of the Charlotte Chamber. Johnson boasts lots of high-up clients, but this official wasn't looking for a haircut.

Instead, as Johnson recalls, something of an inquisition occurred. The subtext went something like this: How did a Jay Z-quoting, minstrel-promoting, 37-year-old barber-shop owner from Buffalo lure 200 black business owners, many quite prominent, to an awards banquet at the Westin the previous night?

Or, in the parlance of the community where No Grease carries cachet: "Tell me, brother, what's your angle?"

"I'm like, I'm doing the thing that y'all can't do," says Johnson, whose Urban Business Network, with 75 members, is arguably the city's most ambitious small business alliance.

"I can be a voice of the people," Johnson says, recounting his Chamber exchange. "My mission is the same as yours, but beyond that because I'm willing to deal with the people you won't deal with.... If you're talking to people who are making $50 million a year, you're definitely not talking to me."

Dapper in signature bow-tie and closely cropped hair, Johnson is sitting at No Grease's newest location, at Time Warner arena. Opened last year with financing from then Bobcats-owner Bob Johnson's bank (no relation), the spot is more bourgeois boys' club than barbershop, with a billiard table, spa services, wet bar and original art.

Johnson, who owns No Grease with his twin, Jermaine, chuckles. "I'm like, most of us doing business in this city aren't millionaires - we're more like, well, thousand-aires. And there's a whole lot of us and we're not invited to the table."

The Johnsons were raised in Buffalo by their mother, a hairdresser who was on and off public assistance. The pair went to college - Damian graduated from Johnson C. Smith and Jermaine attended Alfred University in upstate New York - before launching No Grease in 1997.

The brothers, turned down for small-business bank loans, refinanced the house they had bought on Charlotte's east side. As transplants, they also discovered that civic involvement was the key to success. "We had cookouts, gave out free haircuts, sponsored hair shows and fashion shows, everything," Damian says.

"This is not an easy city to do business," echoes Jermaine. "There's a kind of code here that you have to learn."

No Grease has cracked at least some of it. The company has expanded into three barbershops, a barber certification school and the fledgling Urban Business Network, which embodies the promise and hurdles that face African-American business owners.

It's hard not to find irony in Damian Johnson's ascent as a powerful voice within the black business community. Our city is teeming with black business people who have spent years name-dropping and networking into what they hope will be greater opportunity. Yet in many cases, time has proven their efforts to be largely fruitless.

Johnson, whose humble work places him at the intersection of commerce and community, has emerged as a considerable force in helping that group break through.

He credits relationships with leaders such as JCSU's Ronald Carter, real estate mogul Chauncey Mayfield and BET founder Johnson to one question, which he poses every chance he gets: "Where do you get your hair cut?"

Asked this at a 2004 event, Bob Johnson shot back, jokingly: "What makes you think you can cut my hair?" Damian's Johnson's retort: "I have been watchin' your head for 25 years. I'm sure I know how to cut your hair."

A couple of years ago, Ronald Carter, a newcomer looking for a good barber, was referred to No Grease by his then-chief of staff. As many are, Carter was thrown off by No Grease's edgy logo, which features a minstrel black face, and he inquired about it.

The brothers defend the logo as an aggressive marketing strategy intended to turn the stereotype on its ear, as a "no nonsense, no prejudgment, no playing, no joking around, no shucking and jiving black-owned business."

"I knew immediately there is something different here," says Carter. "And what I've learned about Damian is that he's very passionate about business development opportunities for African-Americans."

About a year ago, Damian Johnson made a successful play to snag Mayfield as a customer.

In chatting with the big shots in his barber's chair, Johnson says he started realizing that while they obviously had heard of each other, most had never met. "Our so-called leaders don't connect," he says. "I started thinking that if the big boys aren't even connecting, the rest of us are really in trouble."

He began asking another question to patrons: "Who are the so-called African-American godfathers in town, the people that I need to go through to get something done. Who are the community's McColl, Levine, Belk? And nobody could really answer that."

Urban Business Network was created to bring cohesion to Charlotte's fragmented black business community. "Urban businesses have got to come together and create our own power structure to even be respected by the existing power structures in Charlotte," he says.

The group's inaugural dinner, held in March at the Westin, will long be remembered as Bob Johnson Unplugged, or the night the former Bobcats owner offered his less-than-flattering critique of Charlotte's business culture.

Since then, the Urban Business Network has been meeting at JCSU, where under the tutelage of Carter it is refining its vision.

A couple of weeks ago, a team from the university's business faculty held focus groups with the network's members as a critical first step to determine the strengths and weaknesses of Charlotte's black business community.

The group's findings, currently under review by JCSU business faculty, will become the basis of an action plan to be presented in a few weeks to Charlotte Chamber's membership.

"It's important for the city to embrace this group," says Carter. "By 2050, business people from minority groups will emerge as the new aristocracy. This is our future."

That may be true, even if Damian's twin isn't always so sure that it's No Grease's role to become a leader, or lightning rod, in building that future.

"Damian is the politician and the diplomat," Jermaine says. "I'm the realist, and I sometimes I feel like, 'Man, you've really jumped out there. You are putting that bulls-eye on your chest.' I know what happens to rising leaders. I'm a little worried, but I'm proud of him."

Damian Johnson isn't looking to be the beacon for the movement. He's the broker. If he pulls it off, that won't be a bad legacy for a guy armed with clippers and a dream.

Says Damian: "You hear all that stuff about small businesses being the backbone of America, but we're not treated like that. I don't have a problem saying something about it. As long as people need a haircut, I'll be fine."

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