Quitting is not in the vocabulary of entrepreneur Pinky Cole Hayes.
Overcoming Challenges
“I’m in a really good season of my life, and it wasn’t always that,” Cole Hayes expressed during Black Magic Reimagined 2023. “I got a nine-page spread in the New Yorker. The very next day, I had a cover of Jet Magazine, which hasn’t been published since 2008. I’m talking about from top bottom. And then the very next day right after the Golden Globes, there’s a lawsuit against Pinky Cole, Slutty Vegan, and three employees are suing her. And I’m on Page Six. I’m on stuff that I ain’t never been on. I said, ‘Well, I’m doing a lot of good stuff, post that.’ So the top of the year has been very trying, but let me tell y’all something about elevation. When you are a disruptor, there is going to be some disruption.”
Never Having To Pitch Slutty Vegan
Despite certain challenges, Cole Hayes has leaned into what she calls “beautiful fear” and confidence only derived from God that she will always succeed.
It’s that faith within herself and her empire that she feels has organically attracted the attention of supporters. In fact, Cole Hayes has never had to pitch the brand.
“I don’t believe that you should have to pitch yourself, because if you market your brand good enough, the brand will pitch itself and you just become the anchor of it and be on the receiving end of all the great things that happen with your business,” Cole Hayes told AFROTECH in an exclusive interview. “I’ve been fortunate enough to create something so stellar that people just want to be so curious to learn more about the brand. So I didn’t have to ever pitch with Slutty Vegan because people just heard by way of word of mouth that the business and the brand was just so legitimate that they wanted to be a part of it.”
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Envisioning Slutty Vegan As A 'Billion-Dollar Brand'
That inclination for the growing interest in Slutty Vegan was built into its foundation, she says. From the very beginning, Cole Hayes treated her business as if it was already a “billion-dollar brand.” Even when it was a shared kitchen that scaled to a food truck before turning into various restaurant establishments, her entrepreneurial muscle was strong.
“I had a restaurant that ‘failed’ before,” she shared. “So I knew if I’m gonna do this again, I’m gonna do it right this time, I’m gonna rewrite all my wrongs. I’m gonna do it differently. I’m gonna make sure that I have my licenses, make sure that I have all the things that I need. And I did that from the beginning. So, I treated it like the business was a billion-dollar brand from the start, and that is the kind of mindset that you have to have. It’s not enough to just build a business. ‘Okay, let me get a LLC and let me get this. And I got like one or two clients.’ Like your mindset has to be like, ‘This is going to be the biggest thing.’ As long as you believe that, it’ll start to manifest itself, and that is what happened for me.”
Speaking her desires into existence is a behavior Cole Hayes exhibited as a young child. She believed one day she would become a millionaire. At the age of 30, it came to fruition. Now, she is exercising the power of the tongue once again with her next desired goal.
“I became a millionaire because I manifested it out of my mouth,” she expressed. “So, although I’m nowhere near the billion yet right, and I still have a long way to go to that, as long as I keep speaking it every single day and visualizing and communicating to people that that is going to happen, it’s gonna happen for me.”
She added, “I say billion-dollar brand because eventually when you identify something that you want, as long as you keep saying it every single day and put that repetition in your mind, you gonna work toward that thing. And it’s really gonna manifest itself. It’s happened with for me before as a kid, and I know it’s going to happen for me as an adult.”
