1. Tell me about your background
In college, I majored in French Literature and always had a keen interest in learning about other languages and cultures. I didn’t care where I worked when I graduated as long as I got to use my French and travel internationally. I was fortunate to start my career in high tech marketing, working for France Telecom. It was an amazing first job – traveling all around the U.S. and Europe working on every facet of marketing and branding. After I graduated from an international MBA program, I worked for a variety of marketing consultancies and brand agencies, which played a role in growing-up entrepreneurial.
2. What was happening in your life that caused you to want to own a business?
I was living in New York City during 9/11. I started to question everything. I always had an itch to use my expertise focusing on my areas of passion: food, fitness and travel. I also really enjoyed creating from scratch, building programs or launching new products. I hired a career coach and through a series of explorations, I discovered my unique ability was making sense out of disparate data and turning it into a strategy or a cohesive storytelling tool for a variety of audiences. I also learned I was a builder and problem solver vs. someone who maintains programs put into place by someone else. After putting the word out about what I wanted to do, I wound up on the senior team of two start-ups in my passion areas. One, in the exciting new Destination Club space, time share homes for high-net worth individuals, and the other a non-profit, a triathlon association and club, that would become the largest in New York City. In both cases, I built the brands and programs from the ground up. Although I still worked crazy hours, greater flexibility and more meaningful work got me hooked on working for myself.
Along the way, I met my serial entrepreneur husband, Rob, and learned of his idea for Doc Popcorn as a better-for-you snack in high-traffic venues. We built the company and our family together, and the rest, as they say, is history. Over a decade later, my personal, work and family life are completely intertwined, something I never could have imagined…and now it’s impossible to imagine life in any other way.
3. Why did you choose franchising to grow your business?
After testing Doc Popcorn in various distribution channels including retail shelves at the likes of Whole Foods, owning our own retail storefronts and enabling entertainment venues to produce our product, we came to a crossroads concerning the most efficient way to build the brand. We concluded that since the “why” of our business was creating a smile experience with our great-tasting freshly popped flavored popcorn, being where our customers are and popping fresh on the spot was the best way to deliver on this promise. This is harder to accomplish sitting on a shelf as a pre-packaged snack product. We also really enjoyed the idea of coaching budding entrepreneurs and helping them get out of their day-to-day jobs to start a business with the Doc Popcorn concept. Coaching fellow entrepreneurs is a real bonus of franchising!
4. What were the biggest struggles you encountered while growing your business?
We went through all the stages a start-up goes through, and then some. When we first started, neither one of us took a paycheck. Even when we were growing quickly and Doc Popcorn was named a hot new franchise, we had some precarious months when we were concerned about making payroll (although we always did!). When we were in our most crazy growth phase, we needed to manage the ebbs and flows of hiring 15 people overnight and then right sizing when growth spurts leveled off. We learned that you need to find or cultivate a different set of skills as the company’s needs and the needs of our franchise owners shifted with growth and maturity. Doc Popcorn is far from a mature company, but we are past that awkward adolescent stage, which makes managing the day-to-day a little smoother.
5. What’s the best thing about owning your own business?
Perhaps not at first, but over time, owning my own business provided me with a level of flexibility that is paramount–particularly as a mom looking to have a higher level of involvement with my family. It’s important to understand that owning a business doesn’t generally provide “balance,” but it does provide choice. I work early in the morning, try to be around from 4pm-8pm a few days a week, and then I work after the kids are in bed well into the midnight hour. And, I rarely miss a workout, which is critical to enable the focus I need to have a productive day! As a couple running a business, Rob and I are also able to arrange our schedules so that most business trips only require one of us to travel. So most of the time, at least one of us is home with our three children.
6. How has life changed since you sold Doc Popcorn to Dippin’ Dots?
As far as Doc Popcorn is concerned, our POPprietors (franchise owners) now have an exciting new opportunity to open co-brand locations with Dippin’ Dots. We have already seen early success with the Dippin’ Dots/Doc Popcorn dual-brand model and plan to continue our co-brand trajectory into 2016 and beyond. Seeing a stronger bottom line for franchise owners with another iconic brand is very exciting. Our POPrietors also get to be part of a brand with over 25 years of experience and have access to a vast set of resources which helps propel the Doc Popcorn brand forward more steadily and swiftly. Personally, I still serve Doc Popcorn as part of the senior leadership team at Dippin’ Dots. Although I’m now part of an over 200 person company as an employee, I still feel I’m able I’m able to nurture my entrepreneurial spirit having spent a lot of my time developing the new co-brand opportunity and working across brands on best practices. Now that I’m on the other side, I enjoy sharing our story of building a brand, one kernel at a time, from one location to over 100 across the U.S. and in several countries. I aspire for others to learn from our journey in the same way that we have learned from the experience of others.
7. What’s next for you?
I will always be a Doc Popcorn founder and care deeply about the brand. I am also on the International Franchise Association’s Women in Franchising Committee, leading the Women in Franchise Network task force. In addition, my husband and I recently launched an idea inspired by our nine-year old “kidpreneur”, a triple bottom line concept called Help2Heal (help2heal.com). Think Tom’s Shoes for First Aid. The initial product line is adhesive bandages with kid friendly designs. For every box of bandages sold, one is donated to families that don’t have access to first aid. We believe that budding entrepreneurs everywhere can learn practical skills to commercialize an idea, regardless of age. So we both enjoy coaching other entrepreneurs, serving on boards as well as sharing our experience of what it takes to build a franchise. We have many more chapters in our story yet to be written—so looking forward to that.