The color of money.

Maceo K. Sloan admits NCM Capital is a company built on guilt, and business couldn't be better.

In 1987, Maceo K. Sloan and his right-hand man, Justin F. Beckett, went to Louisiana to scare up some business for their new NCM Capital Management Group Inc.

No one said it would be

But Louisiana had just passed a law directing government bodies to do 10% of their business with minorities. So Sloan and Beckett kept visiting pension-fund managers of public agencies and other groups.

Then one night at a public hearing, Sloan recalls, they got a taste of how hard it was going to be. "One of the members of the board stood up and said, 'I know that the law says we have to do 10% of our business with minorities. But we're going to have to find out some kind of way to get some janitorial supplies from them or let them cook us some food. We can't let them mess with our money, because if they mess it up, we're all in trouble.'

"This is the attitude we were up against," Sloan says. "Black folks are OK in their place, and money management is not their place."

But Sloan, who is so confident he's just short of cocky, was prepared for buyer resistance: "We had a lot of people tell us, 'It sounds like a decent idea, but I'm not going to be your first customer.'"

Although eight months passed before NCM Capital got its first two accounts, which turned out to be unions rather than government agencies, NCM Capital now has more than 50 clients, including IBM, K mart, Pacific Gas and Electric and the city of Dallas. Its six portfolio managers -- five blacks and one white -- baby-sit more than $1 billion in assets. Pensions and Investments magazine named NCM Capital the nation's fastest-growing money manager for 1987-91.

But the real stamp of approval came in July, when IDS Advisory Group, an American Express Co. division, acquired a 40% stake after NCM Capital's bought the company from N.C. Mutual.

All this just confirms what Sloan, 42, set out to prove: that gray matter means more than skin hue. "Money is green. The predominant color of America is green," he says. "If you go to someone and show them how you can help them do what they want to do for less money or less hassle, they'll do business with you."