Category: United States

Youtube/Kavita Oberoi

(qlmbusinessnews.com via theguardian.com – – Sun, 8th July, 2018) London, Uk – –

Here the businesswoman discusses her journey and how giving back to society should always be part of an entrepreneur’s gameplan

People question whether entrepreneurs are born or made. For me, it was in my DNA. I grew up above my father’s plumbing shop in Bradford. He had moved to the UK from India with the intention of starting his own business and always said I brought him luck because he started to experience success when I came along. I have memories of being locked in the car with a bottle of milk while he went to business meetings. It wouldn’t happen today! Sadly, my father passed away when I was 15.

But my family didn’t want me to have an education and go out to work. They were very traditional and there was a lot of pressure – particularly from my extended family – to get married and stay at home. Some of those cultural expectations can still hold black and minority ethnic women back today. But from a young age, I have always fought against those barriers. I was never going to do what I was supposed to do. My mother is my biggest champion – when I was a child, she used to sneak me out of the house to go to ballet or tap lessons. She has always said: “I will support you, but don’t let me down.”

People question whether entrepreneurs are born or made. For me, it was in my DNA. I grew up above my father’s plumbing shop in Bradford. He had moved to the UK from India with the intention of starting his own business and always said I brought him luck because he started to experience success when I came along. I have memories of being locked in the car with a bottle of milk while he went to business meetings. It wouldn’t happen today! Sadly, my father passed away when I was 15.

But my family didn’t want me to have an education and go out to work. They were very traditional and there was a lot of pressure – particularly from my extended family – to get married and stay at home. Some of those cultural expectations can still hold black and minority ethnic women back today. But from a young age, I have always fought against those barriers. I was never going to do what I was supposed to do. My mother is my biggest champion – when I was a child, she used to sneak me out of the house to go to ballet or tap lessons. She has always said: “I will support you, but don’t let me down.”

It’s about being a driver for change and making the necessary compromises along the way. I did go to university (although I still lived at home and had to travel in every day) and I went on to develop a successful career in pharmaceutical sales with Bayer. By this time, I had probably been introduced to 10 potential husbands, all of whom I had rejected. But I did eventually marry a man my family approved of. His family were also very traditional, but I carried on working.

The turning point for me was when I didn’t get the promotion I wanted at work. I was looking to move into management at Bayer. I’d set a goal, as I always do, and I expected to reach it. When that didn’t happen, I sat there and thought: do I really want to go and work for somebody else for eight years, only to be told I’m not good enough? The answer was no. I set up my own healthcare and IT consultancy business, Oberoi Consulting, in 2001. I would later start the Oberoi Business Hub in 2012 to provide back-office support to small businesses, and received an OBE for services to entrepreneurship and startups in 2014.

One of my biggest challenges was learning to trust other people. It wasn’t a natural thing for me. Entrepreneurs are naturally very controlling individuals and I’d never had any people management experience when I was first starting out. I had to learn the hard way about creating and motivating high-performing teams. While mistakes can be frustrating for a perfectionist like me, it’s important to let staff learn from them, without a fear of failure or consequences. I am still learning every day about great leadership.

Giving something back should always be part of an entrepreneur’s game plan. In 2016, I got involved with an initiative to provide breakfast to primary school children in Derby, and funded it for a year to get it off the ground. We now have 16 schools involved, Kellogg’s is providing the cereal, and local businesses and Derby College are raising money. There’s already been an improvement in the children’s attendance, behaviour and attainment in class.

My biggest ambition is to inspire others, so they can achieve their potential. Self-belief is key for any business owner – you have to communicate the passion you have for your business, stay focused and be dedicated to your cause. Finding a mentor can help, as can spending time surrounded by like-minded, motivated individuals to keep your energy levels up. Above all, be prepared to sacrifice a lot. Failure is not an option.

Interview by Emma Sheppard

Source: Youtube/CBS

(qlmbusinessnews.com via bbc.co.uk – – Fri, 7th July 2018) London, Uk – –

Just a few years ago Justin Woolverton was pleading with US supermarkets to keep his reduced calorie ice cream tubs in their freezer cabinets.

Sales of his low fat, low sugar brand Halo Top were flat-lining, and stores were continually threatening to stop stocking it.

“We were hanging on by the skin of our teeth,” says the 38-year-old, who launched the business in 2012. “We'd tell them ‘leave us up there, things are going to turn around'.”

In his wildest dreams Mr Woolverton couldn't have predicted just how dramatic the turnaround would be. Just six years after starting, his ice cream is now the best-selling brand in the US.

With very little money for marketing, the LA-based start-up had been trying to inch up sales by working hard to promote itself on social media.

Then in 2016 a journalist for GQ magazine wrote a very witty article about how he ate only Halo Top ice cream for 10 straight days.

The story went viral, and Halo Top's sales went through the roof.

In 2016 it was reported to have sold 28.8 million tubs, generating $132.4m (£101m) in revenues becoming the best-selling pint of ice cream in the US, beating iconic industry leaders such as Ben & Jerry's and Häagen-Dazs.

Not bad for a small independent business that has no outside investors, other than the family and friends of Mr Woolverton and his co-founder Doug Bouton.

Yet despite the brand's success, some critics have questioned the claimed health credentials of the “guilt free” ice cream. While others wonder if it should be allowed to call itself ice cream at all.

Before founding Halo Top, Mr Woolverton was working in Los Angeles as a corporate lawyer, a job with which he'd become disenchanted.

The idea for the ice cream came about because of restrictions he made to his diet to manage his blood sugar levels.

At home, instead of sugary treats, he'd have a bowl of Greek yogurt with fruit, to which he would add the sweetener stevia.

After buying a $20 ice cream maker he put the mixture through it to see what it would taste like. “It was delicious. So from there, it was like: ‘Holy cow, if I like this why wouldn't other people like it?'.”

Mr Woolverton then started experimenting with ingredients, including replacing the yogurt with milk, to make the concoction behave more like ice cream when frozen and enable it to be produced on a mass scale.

“It honestly took a year of complete failure at the beginning,” he says.

With friend Doug Bouton, another former lawyer on board, they launched the business with money borrowed from family and friends, student loans and £150,000 of credit card debt.

Mr Woolverton says that not having any private equity investors has given him and Mr Bouton more freedom. “We don't have suits telling us what to do,” he says.

To promote the brand on social media in its early days, Mr Woolverton came up with a novel idea. He hired local college students to send Halo Top coupons to people with large followings on YouTube and Instagram who were posting about health and fitness.

“That was a really big marketing strategy,” he explains. “We thought if they can buy it that's great; if they can't, we're on their radar anyway.”

Alex Beckett, global food and drink associate director at research group Mintel, says that Halo Top's continuing strong use of social media has been a key component behind its success.

“It enhanced its appeal as a cool, plucky alternative to global ice cream brands with larger advertising budgets,” Mr Beckett says.

And then there was the GQ article.

“That [Halo Top diet] is not something we recommend, to be clear, but it was a really fun article,” says Mr Woolverton. “It made the brand catch fire.”

After the story went viral, Halo Top enjoyed a rise in sales so meteoric that the business struggled to keep up with demand.

“[Supermarkets] didn't know how to deal with it either,” says Mr Woolverton. “For the first time people were buying three, four or five pints at a time. It had become the first lifestyle ice cream that people could eat daily.”

But should people really be eating Halo Top on a daily basis?

The ice cream contains two sweeteners – erythritol and stevia – in place of much of the sugar. While these are widely used across the food industry, and given a clean bill of health by food authorities, they do have their sceptics who say they may cause side-effects, such as exacerbating irritable bowel syndrome.

Other critics claim that Halo Top and its rival reduced-calorie ice creams could actually contribute to people putting on weight. And some question whether Halo Top should be allowed to call itself an ice cream, because it contains so little milk fat.

Mr Woolverton says the brand's success “is a recognition of how much smarter consumers are than a lot of companies think”.

Halo Top's success has also led to the launch of numerous other reduced-calorie ice cream brands. These include Unilever's Breyers Delight, Ben & Jerry's “Moo-phoria” range, and UK start-up Oppo.

Mr Woolverton has also been inundated with takeover proposals, including a reported $2bn offer from Unilever. He has rejected all of them, and instead has his eyes on global domination.

The company launched in the UK last year, and exports to countries including Australia and Singapore. Halo Top ice cream parlours, called Scoop Shops, have also opened in the US.

Mr Woolverton is confident that within five years Halo Top will be one of the biggest ice creams brands globally. “We'll be as well known as Ben & Jerry's,” he says.

By Anne Cassidy