This article was originally published at Shondaland.com
The Slutty Vegan entrepreneur shares motivational advice in her new book, I Hope You Fail: Ten Hater Statements Holding You Back From Getting Everything You Want.
Like any successful entrepreneur, Pinky Cole, the founder of Slutty Vegan, a hugely successful plant-based burger restaurant chain, learned through experience how failure builds character, determination, and grit.
Aptly, during Shondaland’s interview with her about her new book, I Hope You Fail: Ten Hater Statements Holding You Back From Getting Everything You Want, Cole calls herself “queen of the pivot.” A former TV producer who once worked on the likes of Maury (she still dips into the biz once in a while, having produced an entrepreneurial show in 2022 called Bet on Black), the Clark Atlanta University graduate started her first Slutty Vegan food truck in 2018, inspired by her love of vegan comfort food. She was so into the side hustle that it got her fired from her job as casting director of Iyanla: Fix My Life, an experience she told CNBC was “the best thing that could have happened to me.” And it was: That truck has since rapidly expanded into Slutty Vegan, a successful restaurant chain with 11 locations in Georgia, New York, and Texas worth $100 million, and an Atlanta bar, Bar Vegan.
Restaurateur Danny Meyer wrote Cole’s tribute for this year’s Time magazine 100 Next list to celebrate her expanding influence on American culture, describing Cole as “irrepressible” with a “sassy, sexy attitude.” Meyer wrote, “Pinky is leading a movement and feeding a yearning desire to belong to a tribe that insists that virtue — and good, naughty fun — make very good bedfellows.”
Virtue is indeed important to Cole. “I learned to stand on what I believe in and don’t waver,” she tells Shondaland. After all, she puts her money where her mouth is and walks the talk. She established a charitable foundation, the Pinky Cole Foundation, to empower entrepreneurs of color. She has helped pay the tuition of 30 students from her alma mater, reportedly gifting them all LLCs. She also established full scholarships, plus room and board, for the four children of Rayshard Brooks, a then-27-year-old Black man who was fatally shot in 2020 by an Atlanta police officer.
When we speak, Cole is heavily pregnant with her third child. “I got four and a half weeks left, and I tell you, I am counting like a kid on Christmas,” she jokes. Cole hopped on a call with Shondaland to chat in depth about what inspired I Hope You Fail, some of the trickier personal things she chose to cover in it, and how channeling the feeling of being underestimated fueled her drive toward success.
VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: What inspired you to write this book?
PINKY COLE: Interestingly enough, I was a commencement speaker for Clark Atlanta University, and my theme was “I hope you fail.” In my speech, I spoke about how my father served 22 years in prison, how I graduated from college without a plan, and how I had a restaurant that caught on fire. So much happened in my life, and I was encouraging the college students: “So much in life is going to happen to you, but use that as an opportunity to really learn from it and arrive at a space where you understand what the lesson is.” It was so good that I said, “You know what? I need to put this in a book.” Like, “The world needs to hear this.” That’s really how I Hope You Fail was born. It really isn’t just a practical guide to help people identify how to lay a foundation to overcome when bad things happen, right? Because it’s inevitable; things are going to happen in your life, but it’s about the mindset shift and how you show up for those things when they happen that’ll make all the difference. It’s just reengineering bad news, bad information, and bad everything to come out with a positive. I’m excited about it. People have received it very well.
VMS: Through sharing your own experiences in each chapter, you break down the lessons learned and how they might apply to your reader. How did you land on that format?
PC: So, it’s funny — I actually wanted when you look at somebody reading the book, to look like it was upside down. The vision was there, but we decided not to go that way. I just really decided to hit you with these punchy chapters that are going to require you to spark dialogue, especially when you read it. I’m happy with how it came out. Although I’m saying things that may seem negative, I’m taking the negative and turning it into really good, positive things that’ll allow you to identify how this happened for a reason, because look where I’m at now. I’m happy about how we did it.
VMS: It’s a reframing of disappointments into challenges, right? So, what was your process? How long did it take for you to write the book?
PC: It took about four months to write everything completely, and obviously, there were a lot of changes along the way. Once the manuscript was finished, I, along with the publisher and a few other key people, decided on what the book cover would be. I literally went through hundreds of ideas of covers and colors because I wanted, when you saw the colors, that you feel and see me. I intentionally put myself on the back of the book instead of the front because I didn’t want people to focus on me being the “celebrity” — I wanted the book to be the emphasis. It’s black, white, and red, colors I handpicked. You see a picture of me on the back because it’s about me, but it’s not so much about me. This [book] is about the person reading it, and I didn’t want to be a distraction.
VMS: The “fail” looks like it was written in your red lipstick.
PC: Absolutely. “Fail” means finding the aspiration in the losses. I don’t want you to fail. I just want you to find aspiration in the things that you feel you’ve lost so life could feel lighter for you. Every time I went through a bad situation, all I did was channel my inner fail, right? That was me finding the aspiration in the losses. It doesn’t happen overnight, but the minute that I began to sit and meditate on all that I’ve been through and how to get past it, [I realized] it’s only as hard as you make it, and that was a lot easier for me. This book has also helped to reinforce how I feel as an entrepreneur. I’m not perfect, right? In the book, I talk about not being perfect. I didn’t want this to be one of those things where I’m like beating a dead horse and telling you what you need to do. I’m a work in progress as well.
Pinky Cole
VMS: Hope is so important too, right? It’s always helpful to see how somebody else deals with adversity when you’re going through a rough time. It’s nice to have a perspective that if somebody else has overcome something, then you too can overcome it. How did your career in TV play in to your experience with entrepreneurship, and vice versa?
PC: Meeting people where they are, I got the opportunity to connect with people from all different socioeconomic backgrounds and realized there’s a range in problems, there’s a range in lifestyle, there’s a range in the things that people like and don’t want to see. I wasn’t privy to that kind of range, to be honest, until I started working in TV. So, I’ve been able to transfer the skill set of learning how to talk to people, learning what it is they need, and applying it to my books especially.
There is a certain conversation that you can have with a person who may not look like you, who may not act like you, but you can meet them where they are. I think that’s what this book does when you read it. You can be the mom, the daughter; you could be halfway homeless. You can be the girlfriend. You can be the guy who’s trying to figure out life and next steps, but there’s something in there for everyone. It makes me feel great knowing that I’ve been able to take who I became as a television producer and transfer all of those skill sets to really write this book based on all the people that I’ve encountered in my life.
VMS: You have to think on your feet and pivot — you talk about pivoting in your book a lot too.
PC: Yep. I’m the queen of the pivot. If I realize something is no longer serving me, then I am going to move to the next dimension of where my spirit wants to be.
VMS: Your second chapter, “I Hope You Come From a Broken Home,” covers how being born into one shaped you as a person, and discusses how systemic racism affects communities. How did you land on that as a chapter?
PC: I have been through stuff in my life, and I wanted people to know that this is authentic, that it’s real. There is no gap. I am who I say I am. I’ve been through stuff. I knew that leading the book that way was necessary to get people locked in so that they would want to keep turning the pages, to be honest.
VMS: In the process of writing the book, which chapter or which lesson were you like, “Oh, that was rough,” to the point that it was challenging to write about?
PC: “I Hope He Cheats on You” was one of the hardest ones. It’s not easy being vulnerable when you’ve already moved on, you’re married, and you’ve started your life over with someone — to keep digging it up. That trauma in the past, you’ve got to be mindful of how your partner feels about it. Every time you open up those cans of worms, you open up a world for people to pass judgment on you. So, that was pretty hard; I’ve got to be honest. When I talk about my past relationship, I’ve got to deal with it, right? This is not just like putting it down on paper — I’ve gone through a depression by way of a relationship. I felt like I lost my worth, my confidence, and my self-value, and I had to regain them over again. That was really tough to do. I had to be honest, and there’s no point in doing this book if I’m not willing to be honest with myself — forget everybody else. So many emotions came up — anger, sadness, disappointment — and then you have to process them all over again, which is hard. And I’m pregnant. So, that’s a different level of hormones and processing.
VMS: That’s next-level emotional. How did you first become vegan?
PC: I haven’t eaten meat since 2007. My mom was a Rastafarian or still is a Rastafarian, so I grew up in a household without meat, really, in the house. My mother only ate fish. I was marinated in the womb of a vegetarian, so I was pretty health conscious since I was a kid because I modeled my mother’s behavior. In 2007, I stopped eating meat except for fish, and then about 12 years ago, I completely ditched fish and everything else that was an animal by-product. Let me tell you, making that decision has allowed me to get a different level of spiritual truth. To be able to have a business that is in alignment with who I am tells me I’m on the right track.
People said that I was crazy for going vegan, that I needed to eat meat, and that I was going to die because I didn’t have enough nutrients. Now people are like, “How did you do it? Can you help me?” I like that because I’ve been able to shift the paradigm and the conversation on what people think about food. My vegan journey has been one of evolution. It’s exciting. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I feel amazing. I mean, I had two kids back-to-back — this will be the third one. I bounce right back. My head is clear. I’m an empath as a result of being vegan. I don’t know what the true correlation is, but I don’t have the flesh of a dead animal in my body. I can focus. My focus has always been at the forefront because I have to be focused or I won’t be able to achieve my dream. There are so many benefits.
I Hope You Fail: Ten Hater Statements Holding You Back from Getting Everything You Want
VMS: Can we talk about how to turn other people underestimating you into motivation toward success? Like in the chapter called “I Hope the People You Love Don’t Believe in You.”
PC: In 2009, going on 2010, I graduated from college. I took a job at Teach for America, but I didn’t want to be a teacher — after five days, I decided I was going to leave. I didn’t have any money, but I was at a time in my life where I was jumping from thing to thing. I woke up one day and said that I wanted to move to L.A. I planned this whole going-away party in Baltimore for my close friends, and one of my family members looked at me and said, “Pinky, you don’t know what you want to do. You’re all over the place.” I was in such a very delicate space in my life, and that moment really broke me because I’m like, “Is this how people see me? Am I not good enough? Am I not worthy, or I’m not worth it?” But I needed that moment to happen because it took that for me to say, “You know what? I’m going all in [with] grizzly bear energy. I’m not going to give up. I’m going to follow my dreams.” It was hard, especially to have somebody who genuinely loves you project their own fears on you, because you don’t identify it as that in the beginning. But I tell you, it put a battery in my back to never want to give up, which is why I work so hard. I believe I’ve amassed a lot of success because there was somebody who doubted me. So, I’m glad it happened the way that it did. I’m going to run circles around everything that you said, and I’m going to make you come back and ask me how I did it.
VMS: Let’s talk about that “Pinky Cole hates the police” thing, because you took what you felt was a stand on behalf of Rayshard Brooks, who was killed by an Atlanta police officer in 2020, and posted on Facebook that police would no longer get to eat for free. What have you learned, and what would you like readers to know, about how that experience shaped you, and what you learned with respect to social media and its impact?
PC: I learned that you don’t f--k with the police! [Laughs.] That’s the first thing I learned. Secondly, what I learned is if you build your village, your village will always protect you. I went from getting tons of one-star reviews to getting over 500 five-star reviews. That was just a testament to the level of support and community love I received. It told me what I’m doing is the right thing to do. I never said that I hated the police — I just said that they couldn’t eat free — but obviously people read what they want to read and interpret how they want to interpret. For the first 24 hours, I was sick. Oh, my gosh, I couldn’t even eat. I couldn’t sleep! But then I realized that there were more people that loved me than … hated me for my decision-making. People knew that it wasn’t just about not feeding the police; they knew … it was about the fact there was so much disarray in the world when it came to George Floyd and him being murdered. Businesses and socially responsible entrepreneurs were taking a stand, and it was my responsibility to do that same thing. It’s not enough to just sell products. I learned to stand on what I believe in and don’t waver. That really helped to propel my business to the next level. So, if I could go back, I would not change a thing.