With Love and Quiches (28 page)

As I freely admitted in the prologue, my business didn’t come with an instruction manual. There was no “how to” book. If there was one, I had no idea how to get my hands on it. Many years later, I learned that the US Small Business Administration had several helpful booklets
about starting a business that had always been readily available. By the time I learned about these, I didn’t need them anymore, but I’m sure they are still out there, no doubt online and updated to the present day. There are also myriad new business management books both online and in bookstores, and of course there are all the networking sources, local economic development organizations, crowdsourcing sites, and other help mentioned throughout this narrative. I suggest you look for and utilize any of them that can be of help; it would put you way ahead of me right out of the gate and save you a lot of grief.

As Love and Quiches’ reputation has grown, I have been invited many times to speak at industry conferences in order to share my experiences and knowledge on various subjects, including sales, marketing, building an organization, product development, and the like. During the question-and-answer period, I have always found that when all the hands shoot up, all anybody
ever
wants to know is
how I got started
! I hope I have demonstrated just that in this book.

It is difficult to know how it feels to walk in somebody else’s shoes, but I’d like to offer some of the advice that I only wish I could have had while starting out. I now know the food business very well, inside out and upside down, but these principles apply to almost any business endeavor. When the job market is difficult, starting your own business may seem an easier path, but it is a dangerous game, and being very careful as you take your first steps is of the utmost importance. To start a business it of course takes a good idea, but after that it takes guts, vision, a sense of humor, a tremendous capacity for work, and an ability to let go of doubts and the fear of failing.

Let me get this out of the way: There is no glass ceiling when you own your own business, and you can’t be fired, either. But when you fall, it is on a sword of your own making. Even during boom times, most new businesses fail. Plan B careers are extremely difficult. There are no guarantees, and undeniably there’s just as much or more stress as there is in corporate jobs. Don’t be afraid of Plan C: to go back to the corporate world or your old job (if you can get it back) if you have
given it a shot and failed. Even today, less than 2 percent of woman-owned firms pass the $1 million mark (although, happily, that number is growing). So most small businesses are
small
. Given that, I guess I have done a pretty good job.

I accepted at the outset that there would be low pay—in
my
case, no pay—long hours, no benefits, and on and on. As you know, I had no expectations, and we were lucky to have just enough money to get by. I didn’t
expect
to have a career at all; but the thing is, I
could
and I
did.

If you want to do the same, first gather your resources, and be careful not to risk more than you can afford to lose in case the enterprise fails. I took those kinds of risks more than once, and I am not ashamed to admit that it wasn’t any fun. So do what I
say
, not what I have sometimes done.

During every one of my speaking engagements, I have found that everybody is also hoping to hear, during the questioning, that building a business involves nice, neat, and orderly growth. It simply doesn’t happen that way. The pressures never end. Building a business is a 24/7 proposition, and it is very painful. People are also hoping to hear how glamorous it all is, but again, it simply doesn’t happen that way. I’m not saying that there is
never
any glory or that there are
never
any victories, because there are plenty of both in a successful business, even in the beginning when you take your first small steps and make your first sales.

What I
am
saying is that it hurts and you have to prepare for the pain. I once heard Richard Melman, founder of the Lettuce Entertain You restaurant group in Chicago, liken building a business to running a marathon: You cannot reach the end without experiencing pain. He called himself the “King of Pain,” and I think it’s fair to call myself the “Queen of Pain.”

Business life is not immutable. Things change with lightning speed, and my organization—both my people and me—had to learn to prepare to change with the tide or be left behind. I had to teach myself to stop wishing that nothing would ever go wrong, because things
inevitably will. There will always be problems: problems between employees, problems with customers, with suppliers, with products, with ingredients, ad infinitum. There will be competition and money worries, and there will be downturns in the economy, and on and on.

As soon as I bought my original partner out in early 1975, I found that my real education was just beginning. I developed ambition overnight. I would see a plan through and
nothing
would stop me, but the resources and management skills needed to see me through the startup years were all in short supply.

I quickly became mindful that the food business is extremely competitive, highly capital intensive, and difficult. Ours is a perishable product with a shelf life that begins ticking the moment we produce it, as well as a thousand other obstacles that I could list and that I’ve talked about throughout this book.

I needed good instincts and good “antennae” to anticipate the challenges and battles ahead of me. I had to learn to overcome the fear of failure and keep moving on, and I had to accept inevitable truths. I had to
will
myself to develop certain invaluable skills, all learned on the job, that I have used throughout my decades-long career.

Some things are in the hands of the economy. Things will always shift beneath you, and you need to develop the skills to adapt and the fortitude to persevere.

I have learned to:

• Recognize an opportunity and go with it
  
• Take measured risks
  
• Learn from my many mistakes
  
• Innovate, try something different
  
• Remain motivated and motivate others
  
• Develop a sixth sense for things that may need correcting
  
• Never take anything for granted, no matter how good we get
  
• Learn early the strategic use of the word “no”
  
• Choose courage over fear, and play outside my comfort zone
  
• Keep calm and deal with the chaos; things happen and we must be ready
  
• Concentrate on the good, not on the bad stuff; build on what is right
  
• Not ignore my weaknesses, but tap into and build on my strengths
  
• Prepare for the inevitable setbacks, many simply beyond my control
  
• Make a decision, and once made, never look back; the best leadership skill of all
  

For me, these were
all
newly learned skills, honed the hard way: one by one. I have learned to cope, not to show my pain, to encourage people to move forward, to keep focused on the end game, and to celebrate the victories. It’s kept me busy for forty years, and I have never been bored.

I have never really allowed gender to affect how I have conducted myself during my career as a business owner, but in many ways I suppose my gender has helped the growth of my business. I have won quite a few awards that I may not have won otherwise, all of which has brought attention to Love and Quiches. So that has always been a good thing.

I have been honored by
Long Island Business News
as one of the Top 50 Most Influential Women in Business on Long Island so many times that I was finally inducted into their Hall of Fame, along with some other woman business owners in the region, in 2009. There have been many other awards throughout the years, many of these because of my gender.

Year after year, in conjunction with Women’s History Month each March, I am kept busy with all sorts of events, and I am happy to tell my story in the hope of encouraging others to take the leap.

One of my best stories came rather early in the game, in the early eighties. I was invited to Chicago to conduct an all-day seminar preceding the monthly meeting of the Purchasing Managers Association, as well as to be the speaker at the meeting itself. It still remains a powerful association, and I was probably invited because of our excellent relationship with one of our major distributors—and
also
because I was a woman who started a business from scratch against the odds. Throughout the years, my motivation for seeking this kind of recognition has
always
been to promote my company, not my ego. I have always been much too busy for ego.

One more important advantage that has served us well is our certification as a Minority Woman Business Enterprise. Because larger corporations and public companies, airlines, chain restaurants, buying groups, the military, and so on are required to do a certain percentage of their business with minority companies, our status is a tremendous boon.

As I’ve said, in spite of all this, we operate in a rather color- and gender-blind way, and I am hopeful that my employees respect me for my ideas and leadership rather than for unimportant distinctions.

Only
once
was I subjected to truly blatant discrimination. Early on there was a powerful buying group called North American. For those unfamiliar, “buying groups” are organizations of otherwise unaffiliated companies that pool their buying power to gain an advantage in terms of price and marketing dollars. The vendors favored by these buying groups then have a “hunting” license and an advantage over their competitors with similar products.

Eventually, a distributor invited Love and Quiches to present our line, and we were able to secure a showing. We flew out to Chicago at the crack of dawn because we were told that we had a 9 a.m. slot. In practice, we sat there all day, and we were not invited in until 5 p.m. We could not get anybody to taste even one thing, nor were we asked any questions.
We were invisible
.

We left quite dejected, but the next day dejection turned to outrage when the distributor who had invited us to present our line contacted us. He told us that the minute we had left the room he had been asked by
everybody
present if I was his girlfriend.
He
was angrier than I was.

By standing back, not leaning in, I was able not to let my anger distract me—and this was not the worst thing that happened to me
by far
. Besides, most of the companies involved were sold and absorbed into even larger companies, and North American no longer exists as a buying group. We have established programs with several other buying groups as the years have passed, and we have had the last laugh after all.

Fifty years ago the culture of the day was such that women who worked were thought to be killing time while searching for a husband, and a wife who pursued a career was considered to be maladjusted, someone who would damage both her marriage and her children. It was in this context that Betty Friedan predicted in her book
The Feminine Mystique
that if American women would embark on lifelong careers, they would be happier, their marriages would be happier, and their children would be better off. Friedan was not a well-known journalist when she proposed the book to her publisher, W. W. Norton, as a treatise on the plight of the American housewife, and it took four years for the book finally to go to press in 1963. Friedan blasted what she considered the suffocating vision and mythology of the “happy housewife,” and the book was an instant hit. In many ways, it inaugurated the “mommy wars” of that period and after, in which working women
and stay-at-home moms resented one another. Through the years the book has been praised, denigrated, dismissed, you name it.

Of course a lot has changed since 1963, especially the notion that a woman’s sole reason for being is to be married or to have children. In many ways, though, I think Ms. Friedan has been proved right, although it has taken decades.

The Feminine Mystique
was considered to have started “
second-wave feminism,
” according to Lisa M. Fine, who just published an annotated scholarly edition of the book through Norton. (Don’t forget the suffragettes here in America who preceded Betty Friedan.) From today’s vantage point, the book may seem more like a symbolic totem. Not everybody was a housewife or lived in suburbia. In the 1950s there
was
a small but growing number of women with notable careers. Consider Margaret Thatcher, for instance, who started her career as a food scientist specializing in cake icings, and we all know how far she took working outside the home.

Still, the book galvanized women. Friedan
started
the conversation.

Then, roughly ten years later, the first issue of
Ms.
magazine was published, founded by Gloria Steinem, a feminist, journalist, and social activist; and a whole new initiative and push for feminist equality was born. Betty Friedan and Ms. Steinem never got along, and Ms. Friedan once famously refused to shake Gloria’s hand.
Ms.
has just celebrated its fortieth anniversary and has been owned and published since 2001 by the Feminist Majority Foundation. Ms. Steinem has gone on to co-found the Women’s Media Center in 2005, and continues her involvement in politics, media affairs, lecturing, and publishing books.