Category: Public Speaking

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Food Public Speaking

Professional Pie Judge

American Pie Council Festival

For the second year in a row, I’ve been an official Pie Judge for the American Pie Council.  The APC holds the largest pie festival in the States each April in Celebration, FL.  Last year I judged amateur pumpkin pies and open cream pies.  We tasted so many pies, that we had to stop for lunch, and then go back to pie tasting!!  I was sick of pumpkin at that point.  This year I moved up to the professional category and was ‘stuck’ with peanut butter pies.  I readied myself for the onslaught of peanut cups and the possible pb variations like pb and jelly pie.  My gut was ready for the calorie overload.  The first pie brought out looked very nice, a chocolate top, creamy peanut butter fluff, and a more yellowish secondary layer.  I was shocked when my first bite revealed that it was peanut butter and banana!  Totally not expecting banana to infiltrate the pb pie category.  When I’m eating pie I don’t want those healthy, natural foods to be mixed in with it!  Our second pie was called an “Elvis Pie”… I think you can see where this is going, another peanut butter and banana pie.  Enough with the banana, I want Reese’s cups! The third pie, called, Fine Fudgy Fluffy Nutter Butter Pie , came out and it was layers of gooey goodness.  The top a peanut butter fluff, then a thin layer of chocolate, followed by another layer of thicker peanut butter, with a chocolate graham cracker crust.  It was the most decadent pie ever!  The pb fluff, chocolate, and the thicker layer was actually real peanut butter fudge.  Just like the kind I used to get as a kid in Ocean City, MD at Candy Kitchen.  Plus, the chocolate crust balanced the fluffy pie for just the right texture and feeling in your mouth.  It’s no surprise that this pie was the number 1 winner in this year’s pb category for professionals.  They listed the recipe here if you want to try and make it yourself.  And with a little internet search, I believe the master of this wonderful pie is Lisa Sparks at Lisa’s Pie Shop.  I have a party to attend tomorrow so I think this will be my contribution, but of course I’m going to replace all the butter in the recipe for coconut oil. 🙂

Categories
PR Public Speaking Travel

Mile High Club Blogging

Southwest Realtime Flight Tracker

At an altitude of 39,001ft, this blog post is part of the mile-high club! Flying back to Tampa from Denver, I get to enjoy the luxury of wifi in the sky, thanks to Southwest for just $5. It’s not bad except it won’t allow my emails to come through my mac so instead of working I’m just surfing the internet. Catching up on Twitter, Pinterest, and online shopping.. well not really shopping, just adding items to the shopping cart and never making the full purchase. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve added these black leather pumps to my shopping cart on Mango.com and never actually bought them! They would be perfect for work, a thick heel for more support and they’ll go with almost everything but I just haven’t bought them. Maybe it’s a good practice in self-control.

Excited to get home tonight. I’ve spent that last two days in Denver and had lots of good meetings! Every time I go to Denver and see the snow-capped mountains, I just want to go ski, hike, or bike. Unfortunately, there was no playing on this trip but I’ve been promised another trip back this summer to catch a Rockies game. 🙂 I did enjoy the local cuisine of bison burgers for lunch and rainbow trout for dinner.  Delicious!

It’s actually been a busy week, spending my weekend in St. Augustine seeing our friend Chef Jessica Bright and working, now Denver, and tomorrow morning I go to Orlando to speak at the American Pie Council. Funny enough, if you’re flying Southwest, like me, you can see a blurb on the American Pie Council in your Spirit magazine! In addition to the travel, we’ve been busy with radio shows and media. Check out my talk this morning on BlogTalkRadio with Apple Capital, and Kelapo’s mention in the Tampa Bay Times and Oxygen Magazine in this month’s edition on national news stands!

Categories
Public Speaking Travel

Atlantic Baking Expo

Touring the Baking Expo Circuit

Travel, travel, travel.  That’s about all I seem to be doing these days.  This weekend it was an up and back trip to Atlantic City, apparently called “The City That’s Always On.”  Hmm.. that could be wrong on so many levels.  AC really is the slummier version of Vegas.  And talk about slummier, I don’t want to be too negative but Spirit Airlines was an eye opening experience for me as well.  Coined as the “Ultra Low Fare Airline”, they really lived up to the name.  The airplanes are old and dirty.  The flight attendants are as old as my grandmother or 8 months pregnant, bless their hearts!  I actually didn’t know you could fly when you’re that prego.  Even the passengers were a unique breed of first time flyers, snow birds, and budget travelers.  At least they were on time, didn’t lose my luggage, and got me up and back safely without incident.  I will never complain about Southwest again.  Or at least for a really long time.

 

Show Floor Demonstrations

This trip to Atlantic City was for the Altantic Baking Expo, held every two years at the convention center.  On Sunday, I gave a tasting demonstration to about 100 bakers on the showroom floor.  We talked about selecting the best coconut oil, Kelapo obviously, but also about the characteristics, like bright white in color, flavorful coconut aroma, and mild sweet taste.  Then the next morning, I gave an educational lecture on coconut oil that went more into the health and wellness about using a plant-based saturated fat such as coconut oil.  In my spare time, I walked around the showroom floor and tasted cakes, cookies, and brownies!  I cut myself off very quickly and am so glad that our regular tradeshows are in the natural foods industry, otherwise, I’d probably gain 200 lbs.  There was also a cake judging contest and I took a picture of one of the culinary student’s entries, “Alice In Wonderland”.  Very cleverly done.

 
 

Cake Competition, Student Entry "Alice in Wonderland"

The whole weekend went great, just a small coughing spell after the second presentation because I was suffering from a head cold.  I must not have taken enough coconut oil beforehand!  Then it was back to the airport to catch up on my reading and also the history of Atlantic City, which includes several of the real life Atlantic City leaders now fictionalized in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.  I saw the real Nucky Johnson (not Thompson as in the show) and the Commodore, both respected and not completely crooked politicians as portrayed in the show.  By the way, when does that come back on the air and is everyone still upset over Jimmy’s death at the end of season 2?  What a finale!

Categories
Entrepreneurship Public Speaking

Building a Consumer Brand

Last week I was interviewed by Josh Turner.  Not the country singer Josh Turner, who’s song “Would You Go With Me” that I love, but Josh Turner of Gateway CFO.  Josh of Gateway is extremely nice and very patient.  After a Skype debacle that left him waiting for 15 minutes, I was finally able to connect with him and start the interview.

In this episode of Gateway to Profits (player below), Josh sits down with Erin Meagher from Kelapo Extra Virgin Coconut Oil. In just two years, Erin has grown Kelapo into a national brand with a strong distribution network, a unique manufacturing process, a tremendous reputation in the marketplace, and a product with tons of health benefits.  Click here to listen to this episode of Gateway to Profits.

Categories
Business Education Entrepreneurship Public Speaking

Go USF Bulls!

Z, Kelly, and I routing for the Bulls!

My alma mater is NC State so what am I doing routing for the Bulls?!?  I was at USF tonight speaking to the student members of the International Business Board.  That’s the president, Z, vice pres, Kelly and myself.  They had to teach me the USF sign, which is coincidentally very similar to the Wolfpack sign!

I haven’t spoken to a group of students since I left teaching.  It turned out to be more nerve racking than I thought.  But I LOVE sharing about my experiences in business and entrepreneurship.  If I can inspire one person to pursue their dream through my enthusiasm and dedication to business, then I feel successful.  That’s probably my motivation for starting this blog!