How It All Started:

I was raised by two business owners. Each day I would go to the “after school program” and learned work ethic and marketing. My Dad owned a wholesale textiles distribution company and my mom owned a retail interior design shop. Back then I hated going there everyday but now I cherish the early lessons learned. I didn’t realize the experience would prove to be useful down the road.

When I was 8 years old, I wanted to take golf lessons. My mom and dad had a way of making you earn everything (we didn’t get paid to do chores or yard work and if we wanted money we had to “clock in” like everyone else). My dad approached me with an idea. We had a large cherry tree in our backyard and it was filled with tons of cherries. His idea was to pick cherries, put them in 1lb bags and sell them on the side of the street. So we did it. Each Saturday I would pick about 100lbs of cherries, bag them up and take them out on the streets. This wasn’t your neighborhood lemonade stand, we went to the 3-way stop in the center of town that everyone passed by on the way to the water park!

I yelled at every car that passed by, “CHERRIES A DOLLAR, GET YOUR CHERRIES!” Looking back this taught me to fight for what I wanted and have no fear in talking to someone else (a lesson I now use each day). By the end of the summer the word had gotten out – my last Saturday I sold over 120lbs of cherries in less than an hour!