October 16, 2007

Wisdom from a Food Network Star in the Gulp Zone

This past weekend I gulped down Paula Deen’s It Ain’t All About the Cookin’ tell-all memoir about how she went from being a poor, struggling, stay at home mom to Food Network star and Oprah Show guest.

Food is one of my favorite subjects (I love to eat well!) and I would never pass up another “rise to fame” story and a few soul-nourishing recipes thrown in for good measure. If you dream of sharing what you know with the world, this book is a great reminder that it’s never too late to get started and that anyone willing to listen to their gut and put in some hard work can make a go of it.

Never mind she cooks with a stick of butter in just about every dish.

Ms. Deen shares the highs and incredible lows on her journey to stardom. From suffering debilitating panic attacks that left her house-bound for nearly 20 years, to being married to a man who could never hold down a job for almost 30 years, to having no education besides what she learned in her mother’s kitchen. Yet at the age of 42 she decided to take responsibility for her family and started her food empire by making sandwich lunches and hand delivering them to nearby offices.

One of the things I found interesting about Ms. Deen was at each step of her business growth, from anxiously spending the money to upgrade her sandwich containers in her home-based sandwich business, to eventually expanding to multiple down-town Savannah, GA restaurants, she always bet on herself. Without knowing exactly if it was going to work, her playing big pulled her best self forward at every turn. Each step of the way she put her all into what she was doing. It’s what my coach Kendall SummerHawk calls being in the “gulp” zone.

The gulp zone is when you’re doing the same thing as before but in a much bigger way. “For example, the 'playing small' version of speaking (to attract clients) is to speak to networking groups here and there, hoping someone calls you. Setting the bar higher means having a specific strategy for getting 70% or more of your speaking audience to sign up for your newsletter (adding their names and contact information to your database) then following up with a specific offer, “ writes Kendall in her Marketing Wisdom newsletter. (And I'll also add, also having a strategy for getting booked for speaking engagements months in advance.)

I think Paula Deen is a shining example of walking in the gulp zone. Once she made the decision that she was going to become a “woman of substance” and create a future for her sons by making a success out of herself, she never looked back. Sure, sometimes she freaked out, got scared and almost lost hope, but she always found her way back to her vision and life changing decision of betting on her self.

Here a few other business wisdom tips from Ms. Deen's memoir:

Do what you know best. Whatever comes natural to you is probably the last thing you could imagine making money from. Not true.

Be willing to be yourself. Opportunities may ask you to change your message or be different for you to match their audience. There were food shows that asked Ms. Deen to do a different style of cooking or tone down her personality. What propelled her to stardom was simply being true to her style, her Southern cooking and approach.