If you can dream—and not make dreams your master…

18 Jun

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I was watching Barry Gordy on Oprah’s Master Class this past weekend and Barry Gordy mentioned a poem that his sister gave him that changed is life. It’s a very important poem that all entrepreneurs must read….

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

How to Start a Gourmet Popsicle Business….

14 Jun

 

 

 

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The most popular question I get from people I meet is: ‘How did you start Feverish?’ My answer is simple, I fell into the business. Actually, it was more like a trip, stumble, and epic fall.
Two years before starting Feverish I was leaving a party and – like clockwork, as soon as I walked out of the gate, an ice cream truck drove by. I heard the music, and I turned into a five-year-old kid again and started chasing after it. I completely forgot that I was wearing heels. I am sure you can guess what happened next. Yep, I fell flat on my face, chasing after an ice cream truck in heels!
I looked left and right to make sure no one was laughing at me, and I saw the ice cream truck driver. Thankfully, he stopped, but he was laughing at me.
Two big ideas came to me while I was on the pavement:
1. I’m way too old to be chasing after an ice cream truck.
And,
2. Why hasn’t anyone come up with a cooler way for adults to enjoy ice cream?
That was my, “Ah-hah!”, Oprah moment. I toyed with the second question for about two years. I had a sketchbook with all these different ideas and drawings and cut out pictures and inspiration from the internet, like the old- school Pinterest. But I really loved what I was doing in experiential marketing at the time, so I let it go.
While I was working for Nintendo, my husband and I both worked on the team that launched the Wii Fit campaign. Unfortunately, the economy started going downhill in 2008, our contracts ended, and we both ended up unemployed.
16

So I thought… “Now is the time to start this thing.” When I say we started on a super-low budget, it’s an understatement. I started by purchasing two ice cream carts from Craigslist. I had no money for a fancy graphic wrap so I spray painted and decorated them completely by myself.
I put up a free profile on a website called MyPartyPlanner.com and on Myspace.com. I literally started showing up at events that I hoped some day would actually pay me to be there. (That’s called Positioning. We will talk more about that later in the book)
For a while, I was just trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. I was still trying to figure out how I was going to make money off this wacky idea. Sometimes I gave away free ice cream because I was afraid to sell it, but after a while, I built up the confidence to show up to places and sell. I figured out a few things really early.
I knew that I didn’t want to drive around neighborhoods and sell to kids, because that market was saturated. Also the last thing I wanted was people I knew laughing at me and saying, “Oh my God, look what happened to Felecia’s life after college. I thought she was such a promising student.” I knew I wanted to create something that was really different and that was tailored towards adults. That’s when we decided to focus on offering unique ice cream and specializing in ice cream catering, and a little bit of street vending.
Fast forward to the present. We make gourmet popsicles with really unique flavors like Pineapple Basil, Raspberry and Sweet Tea Vodka, Chocolate Salted Coconut, Mango Bourbon and Strawberry Balsamic We have a line of vegan-friendly gourmet popsicles and spiked popsicles made with all-natural, organic ingredients and organic evaporated cane juice as a sweetener. We produce everything locally in our Midtown Miami shop.
17

Our claim to fame is our line of spiked popsicles that we launched about two years ago. It’s a cocktail on a stick (pretty cool!). Offering such a unique concept and product has garnered lots of media attention from outlets such as The Today Show, the Cooking Channel, Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com, Black Enterprise, Essence Magazine, the Boston Globe, UrbanDaddy, The Miami Herald, Daily Candy, AllBusiness.com, and The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch.
We were honored at the White House for the Empact 100 Awards, for being one of the Top 100 Entrepreneurs under the age of 30; Top 10 Superstar Entrepreneurs by AllBusiness.com, NBC Grio’s 100- Top 100 African Americans Making History and Mother Nature Networks named us one of the Top 10 Eco-Friendly food businesses.
All of the great media attention and accolades helped us launch our PopPreneurs Entrepreneurship Training Program that teaches young kids how to launch their own pop business and engage in technology development. And now our client roster has grown to include big clients – Google, Cadillac, JCrew, William Sonoma, Adidas, Forever 21, Cirque du Soleil, Tom Cruise, Whole Foods, BB&T Bank, Universal Music, Capital Records, Vitamin Water, The Ritz-Carlton, Reebok, Taj Hotel, and the U.S. Census Bureau. I could go on and on naming all of the cool clients that we’ve been able to work with.
Together, my husband and I packaged and created this really exciting brand, powered by social media, crazy guerrilla marketing, and a great customer experience. That’s how we catapulted our brand from scratch, with just a little over a thousand dollars back in 2008.

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So you want to start a popsicle business…

14 Jun

Image

The most popular question I get from people I meet is: ‘How did you start Feverish?’ My answer is simple, I fell into the business. Actually, it was more like a trip, stumble, and epic fall.
Two years before starting Feverish I was leaving a party and – like clockwork, as soon as I walked out of the gate, an ice cream truck drove by. I heard the music, and I turned into a five-year-old kid again and started chasing after it. I completely forgot that I was wearing heels. I am sure you can guess what happened next. Yep, I fell flat on my face, chasing after an ice cream truck in heels!
I looked left and right to make sure no one was laughing at me, and I saw the ice cream truck driver. Thankfully, he stopped, but he was laughing at me.
Two big ideas came to me while I was on the pavement:
1. I’m way too old to be chasing after an ice cream truck.
And,
2. Why hasn’t anyone come up with a cooler way for adults to enjoy ice cream?
That was my, “Ah-hah!”, Oprah moment. I toyed with the second question for about two years. I had a sketchbook with all these different ideas and drawings and cut out pictures and inspiration from the internet, like the old- school Pinterest. But I really loved what I was doing in experiential marketing at the time, so I let it go.
While I was working for Nintendo, my husband and I both worked on the team that launched the Wii Fit campaign. Unfortunately, the economy started going downhill in 2008, our contracts ended, and we both ended up unemployed.
16

So I thought… “Now is the time to start this thing.” When I say we started on a super-low budget, it’s an understatement. I started by purchasing two ice cream carts from Craigslist. I had no money for a fancy graphic wrap so I spray painted and decorated them completely by myself.
I put up a free profile on a website called MyPartyPlanner.com and on Myspace.com. I literally started showing up at events that I hoped some day would actually pay me to be there. (That’s called Positioning. We will talk more about that later in the book)
For a while, I was just trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. I was still trying to figure out how I was going to make money off this wacky idea. Sometimes I gave away free ice cream because I was afraid to sell it, but after a while, I built up the confidence to show up to places and sell. I figured out a few things really early.
I knew that I didn’t want to drive around neighborhoods and sell to kids, because that market was saturated. Also the last thing I wanted was people I knew laughing at me and saying, “Oh my God, look what happened to Felecia’s life after college. I thought she was such a promising student.” I knew I wanted to create something that was really different and that was tailored towards adults. That’s when we decided to focus on offering unique ice cream and specializing in ice cream catering, and a little bit of street vending.
Fast forward to the present. We make gourmet popsicles with really unique flavors like Pineapple Basil, Raspberry and Sweet Tea Vodka, Chocolate Salted Coconut, Mango Bourbon and Strawberry Balsamic We have a line of vegan-friendly gourmet popsicles and spiked popsicles made with all-natural, organic ingredients and organic evaporated cane juice as a sweetener. We produce everything locally in our Midtown Miami shop.
17

Our claim to fame is our line of spiked popsicles that we launched about two years ago. It’s a cocktail on a stick (pretty cool!). Offering such a unique concept and product has garnered lots of media attention from outlets such as The Today Show, the Cooking Channel, Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com, Black Enterprise, Essence Magazine, the Boston Globe, UrbanDaddy, The Miami Herald, Daily Candy, AllBusiness.com, and The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch.
We were honored at the White House for the Empact 100 Awards, for being one of the Top 100 Entrepreneurs under the age of 30; Top 10 Superstar Entrepreneurs by AllBusiness.com, NBC Grio’s 100- Top 100 African Americans Making History and Mother Nature Networks named us one of the Top 10 Eco-Friendly food businesses.
All of the great media attention and accolades helped us launch our PopPreneurs Entrepreneurship Training Program that teaches young kids how to launch their own pop business and engage in technology development. And now our client roster has grown to include big clients – Google, Cadillac, JCrew, William Sonoma, Adidas, Forever 21, Cirque du Soleil, Tom Cruise, Whole Foods, BB&T Bank, Universal Music, Capital Records, Vitamin Water, The Ritz-Carlton, Reebok, Taj Hotel, and the U.S. Census Bureau. I could go on and on naming all of the cool clients that we’ve been able to work with.
Together, my husband and I packaged and created this really exciting brand, powered by social media, crazy guerrilla marketing, and a great customer experience. That’s how we catapulted our brand from scratch, with just a little over a thousand dollars back in 2008.

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Sometimes you MUST Disrupt your goals

5 May

 

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Sometimes goals have to cancel themselves out in order to catapult you into success. Look at Apple, when they came out with the iPod they completely revolutionized the digital music market. But they practically crushed the sales of the iPod when they came out with the iPod Nano and then practically wiped out the ipod sales when they came out with the iPhone. Crushing one aspect of their business led the way to not only a profitable platform for selling music, leader in mobile phones,  but also selling apps and creating and leading a whole new digital space that their competitors are still trying to emulate.

On the flip side let’s look at Kodak, who was once a leader in the film and photography products industry. They did not want to disrupt their film sales when consumers started leaning towards digital. They thought it was a fad… Kodak went from being the top photography company to bankruptcy because they didn’t want to disrupt their business model by switching to digital as the world rapidly changed around them.

The goal and vision that I had for Feverish 6 years ago is completely different then how the business operates today. I had to be willing to disrupt some of my goals and keep my ear to the ground as my customers wants and needs changed, as technology and the world changed. Don’t despair when you have to disrupt or pivot a certain goal, take the time to reflect on it instead, learn the lesson, improve and move on. The key is to Fail Fast, Fail forward and keep pushing!

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Average Genius…

3 May

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a  tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

-Albert Einstein

That’s right. Everyone is a genius. Or at least, the potential to be a genius. The trick is, you have to find and cultivate the genius within you. Many of us go down the wrong road at first, much like the poor fish that tried to climb a tree in Einstein’s example. And when we don’t succeed, we feel, well, stupid. Inadequate. Unfulfilled. The truth is, many of the most successful people of our time started out going down very different career paths. A few examples:

1. Andrea Bocelli, lawyer (that voice, limited to arguing in court?)

2. Martha Stewart, stockbroker (clearly, not the right career for her talents)

3. Julia Child, government spy (she didn’t actually start cooking school until age 36)

4. Demi Moore, debt collector (this might have worked out, since who could say no to Demi?)

5. Stephen King, janitor (his job cleaning a girls’ locker room is what inspired him to write Carrie)

The key to success is knowing yourself. We all have unique gifts and talents. If you recognize your talents and work incredibly hard, there is no limit to what you can achieve or how good you can feel about yourself in the process. Take Einstein’s advice and push yourself to build a career around your personal brand of genius. If you succeed, you’ll end up proving Einstein’s genius label as well as your own.

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Video

Tell your Failure Story!

1 May

I challenge you to share your failure story! Over the past year, I have traveled to London, Jamaica and across the US telling people about my failure story and challenging others to tell me about theirs. Why? Because I believe that darkness motivates us just as much and if not more then light.

In our community it is almost taboo to talk about failure especially in business. Many business owners give up because they think they are so alone when they fail. Mostly due to the fact that the true stories of what it takes to grow a business are often never shared in the media. Everyone and everything is painted as an overnight success, or self made man or dare I say it “Luck”

What about the day your cash cow client leaves and you can’t make payroll, or the day your personal bank account hits negative $2000 and you have to face the fact that following your dreams with kill you financially. How did the Oprah’s, Richard Branson, Sarah Blakely’s and the Bob Johnsons of the world really overcome those dark days? Where is that article on Inc.com? Here is a video where I talk about one of my dark days. We all need to have a very candid talk about our past failure stories in order to empower other fellow entrepreneurs that failure is a part of the process and if you trust the process you can and will bounce back.

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Follow your Passion…blah blah blah

23 Apr

You hear it all the time Follow Your Passion and you will never feel like you are working a day inf your life…Right!!!? Um news flash it does and will feel like work and as an entrepreneur you can’t take “passion” to the bank and try to cash it ( I’m pretty sure I unsuccessfully tried that a few years ago)

You will work harder then you have ever in your life but, it will be the most rewarding work of your life when you truly live out your passion. But I’ve found that passion really comes into play in those tough dark moments when obstacles are in your way and it feels so big that it will swallow you. When you feel like nothing is left Passion is that little voice deep down in the pit of your stomach that tells you to click into overdrive and it continues to whispers…follow me :)

But to take it a little further check out this article, should we just focus on following our passion like we all have been told or should we actually be cultivating it. Cal Newport author of  So Good They Can’t Ignore YouWhat are the key differences?

“Follow” implies that the you discover the passion in advance then go match it to a job. At which point, you’re done.

“Cultivate” implies that you work toward building passion for your job. This is a longer process but it’s way more likely to pay dividends. It requires you to approach your work like a craftsman. Honing your ability, and then leveraging your value, once good, to shape your working life toward the type of lifestyle that resonates with you.Here is the link to the rest of the article http://www.theminimalists.com/cal/

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