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You talk about it when you raised twenty five I remember that was a few years ago. I think that was the values your company out one hundred million dollars, right, yeah, so talk about that. A lot of people see the headline like slutty Vegan has one hundred million dollar valuation, right, But talk about the process of actually raising that money. When you got the money, what was the first thing
you did with the money? Were you beholden? Did you have to answer to other people to make sure that that you was doing the right thing with the money, Like looking back on in hindsight, how was that experience of actually getting that twenty five million.
The experience of getting twenty five million dollars? So when I first got the money, y'all, I cried. You never know what you're going to do when you get that much money. I cried. I cried because you know, it's one thing to put pressure on myself, because this is my business and I don't owe any like it's my equity. It's mine, me, my my mind. But when you take money from a strategic investor, it's no longer just me my it's hours. So I'm not just answering for myself.
I'm answering for the people who believed in me to invest this level of cap capital to help me grow and scale my company. So that's a different kind of pressure. If anybody's watching this, if you've never raised twenty five million dollars or anything remotely close, it is a different kind of pressure because people are counting on you. So what happens if people can't count on you no more?
That really gets tough. So when I got the money, I was a bit overwhelmed because you could either do great things with the money or you could fumble the ball, and here I am. I'm a black woman, and not many black women get this level of capital. So it ain't just Pinky they just got twenty five million dollars. It's every single black woman entrepreneur, every black entrepreneur, every minority entrepreneur. You understand what I'm saying. So like, it's
not just about me when I go in these rooms. Now, it's not just oh, Pinky is in the room. No, it's that's a black person in the room. And if I fumble the ball, then it affects all of us because the way that the world works, the reality of it is, is sometimes we get grouped together. So I come as one, but I stands ten thousand. And I'm telling you that because ninety percent of what we said we were going to do with the money, we did right. We opened up locations, we paid off that, we did
all of the things. But you never realized how fast twenty five million dollars can go when you're building and you're scaling and your growing businesses. So if I could do anything different, when I change anything, no, however, what I would make sure is I would make sure my advice to anybody who is about to get a level of investment. You need to go and somebody should create this.
You need to go through a program where you sit down with strategic advisors, you sit down with financial advisors, so they could really make the money work for you. Because actually, I take that back. If I could go back, I would alter something. What I would do is I would make sure that all of that money would go into a fund that is occurring interest and we could grow the business off of interest based on that hard money. But again, right, it took for me to have this
level of real time experience to learn. But if you do get a lump sum of money in that kind of way, you can put it in an account where you can live off the interest. You can open up stores off the interest, you can pay your payroll off the interest. You can put it in treasury accounts, which I did, right, and you can utilize that interest to make the money that you need to continue to grow the business so that you don't run through cash so fast.
So when they gave you, when they gave you to twenty five, they just gave you a check for twenty five million dollars and like, do your thing.
Yeah, and we did. We did our think we did I think. But what I'm saying to you is doing your thing means a lot. Doing my thing ain't necessarily doing my investors thing. Understand what I'm saying. So if I had to do this all over again, I would make sure that I'm being super intentional on the who, what, when, where and why. Luckily for me, I've been blessed with the best investors in the world. So Richie lu Dennis from New Voices is my lead investor, and then EHI
and Lightened Hospitality Group. That's Danny Meyer who created shape Shack. So like, it don't get no better than that. Like, God really just blessed me on that opportunity because I can pick up the phone and any relationship that I want to have as a phone call away. So it's also very important to be mindful of who you decide to take money from. But I'm glad that the twenty five million allowed me to propel my business to now being a household name from covers of magazines to being
in Target stores and getting picked up in Walmart. We're going into Walmart week thirty seven, to being able to open up more locations, to be able to have brand partnership deals, so the opportunities are continuing to roll. But it's a result of the level of investment that the investor said, you know what, I'm gonna give you this money so you can grow this brand.
So you said you did ninety percent of the things that you wanted to do, which leaves the door open for the ten percent that still hasn't been done. Talk about that because as you're scaling, you're also diversifying, whether you know on your personal level in real estate. I know Barvegan has had some of the change. We got a lot of events happening there, loved music having in there.
To talk about that balance. As you're growing in scaling, you're also diversifying and accomplishing that ten percent that we still want to get done.
You know, it's interesting because I am diversifying, but right now I'm trying to undiversify. What they don't tell you is that when you start to grow this business, then we want to do all of these things. And I mean we all creatives on the phone. Let's be honest, right, Like, we got this thing that's the bread and butter, and then we want to go off and do this and
movies and television and blah. Blah blah blah, and all these things are great, but the reality of it is is you cannot serve two mansters, right, So it's important to make sure that home is always good because home will always make room for other things. So when I created bar Vegan, that was really just a concept that was like overnight, Oh, this is a multimillion dollar company too.
Who would have thought?
And I came up with this concept and I made what like five million dollars the first year and that one location. So I'm like, oh, this is like, this is a real business and this is separate and a sign from Slutty Began. So I'm like, okay, this is great. So then I just recently I did a soft opening for my next Barbgan. It's opening and next week. But Barbiingan and Slutty Vegan I kind of like my bread and butter right now. Before I wanted to do like a Slutty Vegan record label, and I wanted to do
all these things. But then I had to have a conversation with myself as an entrepreneur that guess what, when I get Sludy Vegan to where I wanted to be, whether I decide to go public. Whether I decide to sell, whatever decision I make on the business, that'll make room for me to do all the other things that I want to do. But I have to make sure that this is sound. I got to make sure that this
continues to make the money. I have to make sure that this brand continues to grow, because this brand is going to set me up for everything else that I want to do in my life.
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