The Exchanges

Q me when I was a kid about discipline, and the connection between discipline and rewards, and my mom always used to say, the busier you are, the more time you have, because you have to be efficient. All right, so you are being disciplined, and how does this, this idea of a, a vegan fast food, like comfort food kind of, you know, fast casual restaurant comes to your mind?

A Okay, so, when I was, uh, the casting director, because I had gotten promoted within that time, they asked me to move to Atlanta temporarily to do the show. So, while I was living in Atlanta, I was in my two-bedroom apartment, and God, I can only be transparent, so I'm gonna tell you the honest truth. I don't smoke, right? I'm not a, I'm not a weed smoker, but on this night, I smoked. And after I smoked, Slutty Vegan literally, like, hit me like a light bulb. And I gotta be transparent about that story, because literally, I don't know if I was super relaxed, if my conscience was open, I'm still trying to figure it out. But when I, when I came up with Slutty Vegan, it was literally like the universe just put it in my hand, like, okay, run, fly, and be free.

AI assessment note: “after I smoked, Slutty Vegan literally, like, hit me like a light bulb.”

Q Yeah. Tell me about how your mom supported four kids when your dad was, you know, incarcerated. What'd she do?

A So all I recognize my mother for, mostly for, is hard work and being consistent with hard work. Like, I have never seen my mother be lazy. Like, she works hard when she's at home. She works hard in the world. She's a lead singer of a reggae band and has always been since I was a kid. So she would do like all the weddings, all the local events. So my mom became like a, uh, a local celebrity. Right. And I watch her do all of these things with so much grace. So one time she worked at McDonald's, then she worked at the bank and then she worked at another bank. And currently she's been at the same company for about 40 years. So I've watched my mom commit to causes that she cares about.

AI assessment note: “She's a lead singer of a reggae band... worked at McDonald's, then she worked at the bank”

Q Yeah. I read that, um, like, as a little kid, like, you started, started basically businesses. I mean, you started, you know, you would sell sandwiches at school, and then started to organize parties, like, local parties and charge admission, um, when you were like, 1415. Tell me about that. What would you do?

A So, um, so my mother was a musician, right? So she would always play throughout the city. So she had a lot of friends, and she would rehearse in the basement, so, like, we always had, like, people over. Like, we were just the house that had everybody coming over. Like, it was a through house, for the right reasons, obviously. Um, so I had a couple parties as a kid, and I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna have a recreation party, and I'm gonna charge people to get in, and I'm gonna sell bottled waters for a dollar, and- Was that your house that you, or you did it at, like, a rec center? I did it at a rec center, my first one, but let me tell you, what I did was, I would call the local recreation centers, and I would pretend I was an adult. So I would say, hi, this is, uh, Miss Pinky Cole. Like, I'm 14 years old, calling myself Miss Pinky Cole. So like, when I tell you, like, the hustle was in me since my early teenage years, and I would have these parties, and the whole entire city would come out to my parties. I was the youngest party promoter, And I, um.

AI assessment note: “I'm gonna have a recreation party, and I'm gonna charge people to get in”

Q me when I was a kid about discipline, and the connection between discipline and rewards, and my mom always used to say, the busier you are, the more time you have, because you have to be efficient. All right, so you are being disciplined, and how does this, this idea of a, a vegan fast food, like comfort food kind of, you know, fast casual restaurant comes to your mind?

A Okay, so, when I was, uh, the casting director, because I had gotten promoted within that time, they asked me to move to Atlanta temporarily to do the show. So, while I was living in Atlanta, I was in my two-bedroom apartment, and God, I can only be transparent, so I'm gonna tell you the honest truth. I don't smoke, right? I'm not a, I'm not a weed smoker, but on this night, I smoked. And after I smoked, Slutty Vegan literally, like, hit me like a light bulb. And I gotta be transparent about that story, because literally, I don't know if I was super relaxed, if my conscience was open, I'm still trying to figure it out. But when I, when I came up with Slutty Vegan, it was literally like the universe just put it in my hand, like, okay, run, fly, and be free.

AI assessment note: “after I smoked, Slutty Vegan literally, like, hit me like a light bulb.”

Q your revenue and like it was profitable really quickly. I have to imagine that like already in 2019, you had all kinds of people who were coming up to you saying, um, you know, you gotta do this or you gotta do that or you're doing this wrong or, you know, you gotta focus on this. Like, were you getting all this endless input from people that sometimes wasn't helpful?

A So much, um, you know, growing slutty vegan, you know, everybody has an opinion, right? So like people who know you, colleagues, everybody's like, well, you need to do it this way, do it this way. But I decided to do it my own way because I was clear. And there were a lot of people like, well, you know, there are people talking about your vegan burgers and, you know, there's other vegan burgers, this, that, but, but I'm like, I wasn't listening to the noise because I've never seen anybody do it in this capacity, bootstrapping a business and And turning it into a multimillion dollar business before any injection of anybody's capital. So to be able to do this before, you know, all of those things, I'm like, ok, I gotta figure this out in trial and error.

AI assessment note: “So much, um, you know, growing slutty vegan, you know, everybody has an opinion”

Q guess, basically start a period of several years where you worked in TV as a producer, and, and eventually, uh, TV brought you out to, to New York, and I guess while you were there, you, you were working on a show called The Jeremy Kyle Show, um, and, and what, you decided to, like, like, sock away almost all the money that you were earning at, at the time?

A Yeah. So, um, when I was working at Jeremy Kyle, I used to always do these things. I've, I've always been like this super conscious thinker, right? So I said that I was going to, to do a savings challenge. Don't ask me why. Now that I think about it, it sounded a little bit crazy, but what I used to do is I used to live off five dollars a day. Like I was that like disciplined, but now that I think about it, I'm like, oh, that was a little extreme, but I was learning discipline. It wasn't just about saving money. I was like, discipline was the name of the exercise. It's almost like somebody that goes to work out, right? Like you go to work out, And that, that muscle memory got to come back. Like you got to keep that. So you got to work out. You got to do the same thing over and over again, even in the moments when it don't feel good.

AI assessment note: “I used to live off five dollars a day.”