When most authors complete a book and decide it’s time to hit the road for a book tour, their stops focus on venues such as media outlets, book stores, libraries and malls. For one successful author, however, he’s decided to expand his reach by taking his latest book tour not just to the traditional venues but right to those who are in most need of a positive message this holiday season.
Frank McKinney is a self-described “philanthro-capitalist” who has spent many years playing the role of Robin Hood, a character he says he has loved since early childhood. Though he doesn’t actually steal from the rich to give to the poor, McKinney’s work as an architect designing and building multi-million-dollar oceanfront homes has allowed him to use his talents to bring in a flow of cash from those who have plenty to spare and direct it down a path that ultimately benefits those who have almost nothing.
But it’s not just his ability to create stunning homes that bolsters McKinney’s status as a modern-day Robin Hood. As an author of six best-sellers, McKinney does not line his pockets with the proceeds of his books but takes that money and uses it for a higher purpose. Now onto his seventh title, “Aspire: How to Create Your Own Reality and Alter Your DNA”, McKinney is using his newest book as yet another method of generating funds that can then be funneled into McKinney’s Caring House Project Foundation, which centers on building self-sustaining villages in Haiti.
When discussing the Caring House Project, McKinney noted that he does not believe in “charity” but rather, in giving people the resources to get them into a position to where they can take care of themselves. It’s his take on teaching a man to fish, instead of just giving him a fish, and as he told the Pahrump Valley Times, it’s a model that is clearly working. Since 2003, the Caring House Project has built more than two dozen self-sustaining villages, none of which have had to contact McKinney to ask for additional monetary input once they were complete.
Striking out on his 24-day “Aspire” book tour on Nov. 13 in Florida, McKinney has traveled as far west as Death Valley and is making stops in cities all along his tour route, including one right here in the valley at Pahrump’s own Nevada Outreach Training Organization, perhaps best known for its No to Abuse program.
“The Pahrump facility was amazing. So far, it’s been our only women’s facility stop,” McKinney told the Pahrump Valley Times.
‘We planned this tour around not only TV stations and newspapers and radio stations and book stores, but in every city we stop in at a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen, an abused women’s facility, juvenile detention center, veterans’ facility, food pantry, or even a treatment program to deliver the message found in my new book ‘Aspire’,” McKinney explained. “People who are in a facility like that, when they walk in the door, they have typically lost everything and the last thing I want them to lose is hope. So we are there to deliver this message of hope.”
During his Pahrump visit, McKinney was unable to spend time with the women who have turned to Nevada Outreach for help, as the location of the place in which they are sheltering must be kept secret for safety and security purposes, but he was able to meet with the staff members of Nevada Outreach and he noted that this is just as important as speaking with the people that such organizations serve.
“One of the reasons I addressed the staff there is, I don’t think you and I can relate to how taxing and emotionally draining it is to work at a place like that,” McKinney remarked. “Yes, we talk to the homeless and to the people who are going to the soup kitchens, people like that, but what about the people who work at places like this? In the case of the Pahrump facility, they aren’t making huge salaries… and a lot of those people are one paycheck from being homeless themselves and yet, they are the ones providing hope for the women who are going through their program. They needed to hear this message.”
“Aspire” is a book that highlights the importance not of motivation, which can wear off, not of inspiration, which can fade, but of aspiration. As detailed by a news release regarding his book tour, “Aspire” gives readers an inside look at McKinney’s many interactions with people from all spectrums of life, from the homeless to billionaires. “Ultimately, the book is about reinvention. It’s about never settling for who we are born to be, or even what we think we are capable of, and instead, breaking free of that limited mindset to create a reality on our own terms,” the news release read.
“The last chapter of my book is titled, ‘With aspiration, you can change the world’. And that may sound cliche but let me define that. Most people think they can never change the world because we think the world is perceived through the eyes of 8 billion people,” McKinney said. “But the truth is, the world is perceived through the eyes of one. How you perceive the world, is the world, that’s the only world. And if I change your world, I didn’t change ‘your’ world, I changed ‘the’ world, because your world is the only one that matters.”
For more information on McKinney, his newest book “Aspire” or the Caring House Project visit frank-mckinney.com
Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com