Categories
Business Social Media

Social Madness Challenge

Move Kelapo to the Top!

It’s Day 7 of the Social Media Challenge presented by Spark Business from Capital One!  Guess who’s participating? Kelapo!  Kelapo Coconut is listed under Small Business category for the Tampa Bay region.  There are 144 participants in this category, which is defined has any business with 1-99 employees.  In my opinion, it’s a little unfair that a company with 99 employees can compete against a company with 5!  Isn’t there a micro category!?!

But life isn’t fair and that’s how it goes.  So super competitive me wants to win this challenge and make Goliath fall.  How competitive am I?  I sprint to the finish lines in 5k’s just because I want to beat another competitor by a half second.

Back to the social media challenge, we didn’t realize until the day it started that we were selected as a participant, so we were a little bit behind the 8-ball.  After day 1, we had collected 14 points.  Day 5, 25 points.  Day 7, 100 points!  Currently, we are in 28th place out of the 144 teams.  That’s top 20%.  Not good enough yet!  To advance in this competition, you have to place in the top 8 to be entered into a bracket style tourney challenge.  We need to advance at least 20 more places before the last day, June 19th.

All these stats and I haven’t even said how we amass points!  There is a super secret algorithm that calculates total number of Twitter followers, Facebook likes, LinkedIn Followers, and votes directly on the BizJournals website.  Each day at 7am new totals are announced.  If you haven’t already helped Kelapo, now is your chance to get us into Round 2!  Follow the links below to cast your votes and follows at all our social media outlets.

Please VOTE for KELAPO under Small Companies:

http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/exclusives/socialmadness

And to help us win FOLLOW KELAPO on:

LinkedIn  http://www.linkedin.com/company/957500

Facebook www.facebook.com/kelapococonut

Twitter www.twitter.com/kelapo

Categories
Business Money Start-Up

Sara Blakely- Youngest Female Self Made Billionaire

“In starting a business and growing a business,
every day is learning how to manage obstacles.”
— Sara Blakely: is an entrepreneur and founder of Spanx

Forbes lists Sara Blakely as the youngest female self made billionaire. They say she didn’t get investment money from her dad or a husband, everything came from her own savings of $5,000. With her company Spanx, now valued at a billion dollars, that makes Sara’s estimated worth over a billion. This doesn’t mean that she has a billion in the bank but she could potentially if she were to ever sell her business.

As a female entrepreneur myself I am extremely proud of what she has accomplished. Also, living in Clearwater, Sara’s hometown, for six years myself, it makes it even more personal since she’s a ‘hometown’ girl.

Sara’s journey in a nutshell is that she was selling fax machines, yes fax machines, to businesses here in Florida and then Georgia.  She wore panty hose for work, and as anyone knows in Florida summer humidity, sucks!  Plus, she wanted a flawless panty line but didn’t want her toes to be covered up in her sandals.  She had the idea for footless hosiery and was turned down by several manufacturers before one in North Carolina finally took a leap of faith on her idea.  While still working at her day job, she created her first prototypes and was able to start selling them to certain stores.

One huge, lucky break for Sara came when Oprah listed Spanx as one of her favorite things!  That was probably the tipping point at which more department stores said yes to carrying the line and the product took off.  Not without hard work though!  It’s amazing how many people think that success stories are made overnight and that’s not the case.  It’s been 12 short years since Sara launched Spanx, and that, coupled with her being a young, driven female is probably why this story originally published by Forbes gained so much attention.  As a follow up, Forbes reports that 680,199 views of Sara’s billionaire status were cited on the Forbes.com website.

Just two and a half years into my business, I work everyday to try and replicate those same successes that Sara has accomplished.  I wouldn’t say that I hope to be that successful in another 10 years because hope doesn’t make things happen.  I’m going to learn to manage obstacles, as she says, and stay focused and then hopefully that will create a successful business that  has longevity.

Congratulations to Sara!  You really are an inspiration to young, female entrepreneurs.  Hopefully, I’ll run into you one day on Clearwater Beach and we can have a nice chat about our businesses. 🙂

Categories
Business

Unemployed? Qualified? Where Are You?

Is Anyone Out There?

It’s a down economy and the latest employment numbers show the lowest level of unemployment since Jan 2009, but the Bureau of Labor statistics can be deceiving.  They’ve stopped counting more that 340,000 individuals that have simply stopped looking for work.  Whenever we have a job opening, people naturally assume that because so many people are unemployed, we’ll have a flood of job applicants.  I find it to be the opposite.  First, as a smaller company, it’s hard to get the message out about our openings.  Sites like CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com can run $500 per job posting and only be current for up to 7 days.  One solution we’ve found is Indeed.com, which lets you bid for job postings just like you bid for Google AdWords or Facebook ads.  You determine how much you want to pay per click when someone views your ad.  If you select a higher amount per click, you’re job posting will be seen by more applicants.  Also, you can set a daily spend limit, and when your funds have been exhausted that day, your listing will be ‘turned off’.  I find this to be a much more economical way to post job listings over a longer time frame to keep the posting fresh for job seekers.

Another place that we post is on local college websites.  Most colleges have job boards that you can place listings for free.  We’ve had good luck with this angle, however, it means that you applicant will be a young, often inexperienced college grad.  Depending on your situation, this is either good or bad.  Luckily, again, for us, we’re a small brand growing rapidly, so we can afford to bring in younger, more inexperienced help and work them into the position we need. My other advice is to skip the college job fairs that take hours of your day and cost money and often result in low turnouts or few hot leads.

Those are two ways that we seek out potential job applicants.  Our most successful of all though has been through word-of-mouth.  Everyone currently employed with us has been found through an existing contact.  Mainly because someone else has vouched for the person and we were able to work them in slowly into our company.

It’s not that we won’t hire from an unknown applicant pool, but in the past these pools of people have seemed unqualified, not motivated, and unresponsive.

How about if I send you a request for a job interview, you return it!  This happens more than you think.  People that I want to interview just don’t come in for interviews.  I am not alone either in the quality and quantity of job applicants.  CNN Money shares twelve other employers and their struggles to find help in this online piece.  My advice to job seekers, don’t forget about the small businesses out there!  We are hiring and we need great people!

Categories
Food Public Speaking

Professional Pie Judge

American Pie Council Festival

For the second year in a row, I’ve been an official Pie Judge for the American Pie Council.  The APC holds the largest pie festival in the States each April in Celebration, FL.  Last year I judged amateur pumpkin pies and open cream pies.  We tasted so many pies, that we had to stop for lunch, and then go back to pie tasting!!  I was sick of pumpkin at that point.  This year I moved up to the professional category and was ‘stuck’ with peanut butter pies.  I readied myself for the onslaught of peanut cups and the possible pb variations like pb and jelly pie.  My gut was ready for the calorie overload.  The first pie brought out looked very nice, a chocolate top, creamy peanut butter fluff, and a more yellowish secondary layer.  I was shocked when my first bite revealed that it was peanut butter and banana!  Totally not expecting banana to infiltrate the pb pie category.  When I’m eating pie I don’t want those healthy, natural foods to be mixed in with it!  Our second pie was called an “Elvis Pie”… I think you can see where this is going, another peanut butter and banana pie.  Enough with the banana, I want Reese’s cups! The third pie, called, Fine Fudgy Fluffy Nutter Butter Pie , came out and it was layers of gooey goodness.  The top a peanut butter fluff, then a thin layer of chocolate, followed by another layer of thicker peanut butter, with a chocolate graham cracker crust.  It was the most decadent pie ever!  The pb fluff, chocolate, and the thicker layer was actually real peanut butter fudge.  Just like the kind I used to get as a kid in Ocean City, MD at Candy Kitchen.  Plus, the chocolate crust balanced the fluffy pie for just the right texture and feeling in your mouth.  It’s no surprise that this pie was the number 1 winner in this year’s pb category for professionals.  They listed the recipe here if you want to try and make it yourself.  And with a little internet search, I believe the master of this wonderful pie is Lisa Sparks at Lisa’s Pie Shop.  I have a party to attend tomorrow so I think this will be my contribution, but of course I’m going to replace all the butter in the recipe for coconut oil. 🙂

Categories
PR Public Speaking Travel

Mile High Club Blogging

Southwest Realtime Flight Tracker

At an altitude of 39,001ft, this blog post is part of the mile-high club! Flying back to Tampa from Denver, I get to enjoy the luxury of wifi in the sky, thanks to Southwest for just $5. It’s not bad except it won’t allow my emails to come through my mac so instead of working I’m just surfing the internet. Catching up on Twitter, Pinterest, and online shopping.. well not really shopping, just adding items to the shopping cart and never making the full purchase. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve added these black leather pumps to my shopping cart on Mango.com and never actually bought them! They would be perfect for work, a thick heel for more support and they’ll go with almost everything but I just haven’t bought them. Maybe it’s a good practice in self-control.

Excited to get home tonight. I’ve spent that last two days in Denver and had lots of good meetings! Every time I go to Denver and see the snow-capped mountains, I just want to go ski, hike, or bike. Unfortunately, there was no playing on this trip but I’ve been promised another trip back this summer to catch a Rockies game. 🙂 I did enjoy the local cuisine of bison burgers for lunch and rainbow trout for dinner.  Delicious!

It’s actually been a busy week, spending my weekend in St. Augustine seeing our friend Chef Jessica Bright and working, now Denver, and tomorrow morning I go to Orlando to speak at the American Pie Council. Funny enough, if you’re flying Southwest, like me, you can see a blurb on the American Pie Council in your Spirit magazine! In addition to the travel, we’ve been busy with radio shows and media. Check out my talk this morning on BlogTalkRadio with Apple Capital, and Kelapo’s mention in the Tampa Bay Times and Oxygen Magazine in this month’s edition on national news stands!

Categories
Business Quotes

Mad Men is Finally Back!

Morning Playlist
We’re already three weeks into the new season of Mad Men. Can you believe it? Everyone is probably still talking about Megan’s sexy birthday dance for Don, signing Zou Bisou Bisou. It’s crazy how one show can effect popular media so much. On my way to work the other day, I heard Jessica Pare’s version of Zou Bisou Bisou on Sirius Satellite! She must be thrilled that she was virtually unheard of a month ago and has been thrust into the spotlight so quickly.

I enjoyed the whole first episode but there was one thing that did stick in my mind. Pete Campbell is highly successful, being a partner, married with a new baby, and living in the suburbs. However, he is shown as unhappy and no matter what he achieves, left unsatisfied. His wife Trudy understands his longing and as she puts it “Dissatisfaction is a product of Ambition.” Ding, ding, ding. Same here. It’s wonderful having ambition enough to start a business, go to school, and achieve more and more. I do find myself always wanting more though. Last year, it was if we can only get into Whole Foods. Now we’re in several regions of Whole Foods and I’m saying, if we can only get into Publix. That desire pushes me everyday to do more, to be better. At some point though, I do need to stop and enjoy myself, look around and appreciate how far we’ve come and accomplished. It has just been over 2 years since the company started and we are already nationwide, in Canada, and Puerto Rico.

There may never be a ‘cure’ for that dissatisfaction. But I’m going to work on it. And one things for sure, I’m glad that I was blessed with loads of ambition because there are so many people that have skills, talents, and potential, and don’t fulfill their destiny because of the lack of ambition. Maybe that is a greater tragedy than being dissatisfied. Anyways, can’t wait for the next episode to see what these crazy advertising execs do next!

Categories
Public Speaking Travel

Atlantic Baking Expo

Touring the Baking Expo Circuit

Travel, travel, travel.  That’s about all I seem to be doing these days.  This weekend it was an up and back trip to Atlantic City, apparently called “The City That’s Always On.”  Hmm.. that could be wrong on so many levels.  AC really is the slummier version of Vegas.  And talk about slummier, I don’t want to be too negative but Spirit Airlines was an eye opening experience for me as well.  Coined as the “Ultra Low Fare Airline”, they really lived up to the name.  The airplanes are old and dirty.  The flight attendants are as old as my grandmother or 8 months pregnant, bless their hearts!  I actually didn’t know you could fly when you’re that prego.  Even the passengers were a unique breed of first time flyers, snow birds, and budget travelers.  At least they were on time, didn’t lose my luggage, and got me up and back safely without incident.  I will never complain about Southwest again.  Or at least for a really long time.

 

Show Floor Demonstrations

This trip to Atlantic City was for the Altantic Baking Expo, held every two years at the convention center.  On Sunday, I gave a tasting demonstration to about 100 bakers on the showroom floor.  We talked about selecting the best coconut oil, Kelapo obviously, but also about the characteristics, like bright white in color, flavorful coconut aroma, and mild sweet taste.  Then the next morning, I gave an educational lecture on coconut oil that went more into the health and wellness about using a plant-based saturated fat such as coconut oil.  In my spare time, I walked around the showroom floor and tasted cakes, cookies, and brownies!  I cut myself off very quickly and am so glad that our regular tradeshows are in the natural foods industry, otherwise, I’d probably gain 200 lbs.  There was also a cake judging contest and I took a picture of one of the culinary student’s entries, “Alice In Wonderland”.  Very cleverly done.

 
 

Cake Competition, Student Entry "Alice in Wonderland"

The whole weekend went great, just a small coughing spell after the second presentation because I was suffering from a head cold.  I must not have taken enough coconut oil beforehand!  Then it was back to the airport to catch up on my reading and also the history of Atlantic City, which includes several of the real life Atlantic City leaders now fictionalized in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.  I saw the real Nucky Johnson (not Thompson as in the show) and the Commodore, both respected and not completely crooked politicians as portrayed in the show.  By the way, when does that come back on the air and is everyone still upset over Jimmy’s death at the end of season 2?  What a finale!