Lenzy Ruffin’s Post

Less than 100 days to 2025. Blink and we'll be 100 days INTO 2025. What are you willing to do differently to create the life you want for yourself? So often, the excuse is not having time. If you don't MAKE time for different things, you will not get different results. Think about what you want. Write it down. And then think about what you need to get rid of to make room for what you want because 24 hours and 365 days is all you're ever going to get. What you choose to make time for is exactly that...your choice.

Chef Sabina Jules is offering something new for Thanksgiving this year at Motherland Kitchen & Spices. She's bringing you a taste of Africa with her Vegan Thanksgiving Sampler. With more and more people embracing a plant-based diet every day, if you are hosting guests for Thanksgiving, it is almost certain that you will host someone who does not eat meat or is moving their diet in that direction. If you want ALL of your guests to feel welcomed and appreciated, you have to offer the vegans and vegetarians more than just a salad. There are tons of healthy AND delicious plant-based dishes that EVERYBODY can get excited about (not just the vegans) and Sabina is helping you introduce some incredibly flavorful options to your Thanksgiving table with her Vegan Thanksgiving Sampler. What's in it? Stay tuned for the video where she explains all the dishes. What I can tell you is Sabina flavors her dishes with African herbs and spices, NOT salt! If you know like I know and you're in the DC area, you'll contact Sabina at (301) 304-0631 to ask your questions and place your order now because she is just one chef with two hands and cannot prepare an unlimited number of Thanksgiving orders. Sabina won the Voter's Favorite Menu award in the DC Vegan Chef Challenge in 2023 and she was featured in Washingtonian Magazine earlier this year: https://lnkd.in/eX7nkGhM So Sabina WILL sell out of these samplers! Talk to her now if you want to bring some vegan options to your Thanksgiving celebration that EVERYBODY will be fighting over, not just the vegans. I already know what questions are coming...yes, ALL of that went into the doggie bag and, no, I am not looking to hire an assistant.

The business of catering typically involves a lot of single-use plastic. Here are some more environmentally friendly options: https://lnkd.in/e37AEPnk

One year and 100 cooking videos later. We started Chef Lance's cooking show in October 2023 and now he's made 100 videos! Chef Lance had no videos on his YouTube channel when we started and now you can go to YouTube and type Chef Lance in the search box and he's the top result. YouTube is the second most-visited website in the world and it's the number one TV streaming app in U.S. households...and you can go to YouTube and type in Chef Lance and he's the first result! How's that for building a brand as a chef? He's also the go-to chef for his local news station whenever they want to do a food segment. Where could you be by now if you'd started a year ago? Where could you be a year from now if you started today? The life you want is out here, but you have to decide to go get it. Chef Lance is showing you what going out and getting what you want looks like. When you're ready to use your cooking skills to go get what you want out of life, go to StartMyCookingShow.com

YouTube is not a game. Y'all business owners better stop sleeping on the opportunity. https://lnkd.in/eRJwA8pf

Lessons... Don't play yourself small. When someone asks about your skill level, do not default to talking about what you do not have or what you have not done. You close the door on yourself when you minimize yourself because the world is full of extremely busy people and nobody is going to ask follow-up questions to get you to tell them the truth about your skill level. If you tell people you are unskilled, they will take you at your word and go on about their day. So don't play yourself small. Using YouTube to watch other people's YouTube videos will not help you accomplish your goals as a chef. You will accomplish your goals in the culinary industry by MAKING videos, not by watching other people's videos. Tomorrow is not your friend and tomorrow is definitely not promised. You are not going to live forever. You have a limited amount of time on Earth to accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish. And many of us end up with much less time than we were expecting. The longer you wait to start living the life you want, the less time you get to spend enjoying it. Every day you sit around not doing what you are capable of doing because you're scared is a precious day wasted. You will come to regret those wasted days because they add up to wasted years, so stop wasting days and get to work pursuing your dreams. A Plan and Accountability You will often hear me say that the two things most chefs need to get their cooking show going is a plan and / or accountability and that’s exactly what you see in this video. This is what coaching does for you. Coaching is about helping you get out of your own way and helping you maximize your abilities. Anybody whose name you know because of their level of accomplishment has a coach. Coaching is a requirement for achieving high success because you are not going to figure everything out by yourself and be able to get yourself to do it all. The sooner you get coaching, the sooner you'll start seeing results when it comes to accomplishing your goals. Do you see yourself in this video? What part of it most resonated with you?

For the fans of Honest Tea, it's back...but with a different name. If you don't know the Honest Tea story, it was started years ago by a guy in Maryland out of frustration at not being able to find any beverages at the store that weren't sugar bombs. So he started learning how to brew tea in his kitchen and, over a span of years, built Honest Tea into a major brand that you could find on store shelves everywhere, which is no small feat. What happens in the beverage world is if you get big enough, one of the two major players (Coca Cola or Pepsi) will make you an offer to sell them your company or they'll use their infinite resources to duplicate your product and put you out of business. So you don't have much of a choice. Coca Cola did this to Honest Tea and then eventually lumped it in with about 200 other brands that it decided to discontinue. They could have just left Honest Tea alone from the beginning, but that's not what corporate bullies do. Anyway, fans of Honest Tea now have our "just a tad sweet" tea back. It actually came back in 2022 and I just "discovered" it in my local grocery store. If you want to hear the incredible story of Honest Tea, you can hear it on the How I Built This podcast.

What are you best in the world at? Claim it. Own it. Because playing small does nothing for you or for anyone else. Where would the world be if Whitney Houston played herself small and never went beyond singing in the church choir? As you saw in the video, it was only after Chef Erika embraced her greatness herself that the world was able to see and acknowledge her greatness in the form of her being selected as one of Food & Wine Magazine's Best New Chefs. Now she's getting interviewed on national TV by CBS. More and bigger opportunities are going to come to Chef Erika because that's how it works...when you put yourself in a position for good things to happen, more and bigger good things will happen for you. So what's your bomb ass biscuit? https://lnkd.in/eAY9BAaD

Something that I've learned from working with so many professional chefs is they don't do anything regular. Through recording cooking shows, I've had so many normal dishes that I was familiar with be prepared in some next level way that I never would have imagined. The basic grilled cheese sandwich, for example, is something that we're all familiar with. Well, it was anything but basic when Chef Erinn Roth decided to make one. She basically pulled out a Batman utility belt to make her gourmet grilled cheese sandwich. Grilled cheese will never be the same for me again. The grilled cheese episode is coming soon, so subscribe to her YouTube channel. Or you can just stop by the cafe and have Batman whip one up for you. Be sure to get Chef Erinn to put you on the brunch waiting list so you can enjoy a Fall brunch in her courtyard before the weather turns.

I did a consultation today with a woman business owner who is making the same mistake that so many women business owners make that causes their businesses to struggle and ultimately fail. The mistake she's making is running a business, but using the mission of a non-profit. What does that mean? It means the people who she wants to serve are people who cannot afford to pay for her service. A business is a PROFIT entity, not a charitable entity. For a business to succeed, it must generate profit. The only way to generate profit is to service clients who can afford to pay for the service. That means your ideal client who you build your business around has to be a person WHO HAS THE MONEY TO PAY for your service, no matter what it costs. If your intent is to serve people who cannot afford to pay for the service, then you have to start a non-profit, not a business. With a non-profit, you raise money from people who have money and use that money to pay for the services that you provide to people who cannot afford to pay for it themselves. The bottom line is delivery of any service costs money and that money has to come from somewhere. If you decide to target people who do not have money, then you have to start a non-profit and learn how to raise money. If you don't want to run a non-profit, then you have to get your mind right about having to target PEOPLE WHO HAVE MONEY as your ideal client and stop with this "help the poor / save the world" nonsense because you cannot save the world with a failed business. With a profitable business, you end up with plenty of money that you can then use to subsidize resources and services for people who otherwise could not afford them. You make money AND THEN you become a philanthropist. An unprofitable business helps no one. Not the business owner and not anyone else. So ladies, please stop trying to run a business with a non-profit mission. The people you set out to serve in your business MUST BE PEOPLE WHO CAN AFFORD TO PAY FULL PRICE! Otherwise, you'll just end up overworked, overwhelmed, not having the impact you want to have, and then the business will ultimately fail after it's drained everything you have in you. Starting a business with the intent to serve people who cannot afford to pay you is a well-worn path to failure. It doesn't even make sense when you say it out loud, does it?