How Slutty Vegan founder Pinky Cole built an empire by confronting her failures head-on

As we heard suggested so many times this graduation season, Pinky Cole followed her passion. In 2014, she abandoned a burgeoning career in TV production and launched a restaurant in Harlem featuring some of her favorite cooking. It was called Pinky’s Jamaican and American Restaurant in Harlem.

It was a total disaster.

“Did I do it right? Absolutely not,” she told me in this week’s #ThisIsWorking. “Because after two years, that restaurant caught on fire. My car got repoed. I got kicked out of my apartment. I damn near almost lost my mind.”

Today, Pinky runs the wildly successful, and much more interestingly named, Slutty Vegan restaurant chain. The fare is vegan fast food: Plant-based replacements for greasy burgers and designed to satisfy as much at lunch as after a late-night show (getting an endorsement from Snoop Dogg helped on that front).

Slutty Vegan now has 13 locations that span the South — Atlanta, Birmingham, Ala., Dallas — and New York City. You can pick up a plant-based bratwurst, the Big Dawg, and pair it with some Slutty Fries at Atlanta Braves games and soon the Atlanta airport. Her famous Slut Dust seasoning and vegan bacon are available at select Targets. And in 2022, investors including Shake Shack founder and famed restauranteur Danny Meyer bought 25% of Pinky’s company, valuing it at a reported $100 million. 

So how do you go from unmitigated bust to success? Here were some takeaways I got from Pinky:

Force yourself to learn from your setbacks

Pinky catalogued for me what she did wrong when her first restaurant failed (one big mistake: not getting fire insurance) and how she built her second business differently. First, she launched it as a food truck, only moving to a storefront when she had built a cult following.

And she was ready for the unbearable days the second time around. “It's hard. You will cry. You will be in pain. Sometimes you'll feel like, ‘I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills.’ Sometimes you'll want to throw in the towel,” she told me. “A lot of times, people aren't going to believe in you. You're going to get a lot of no’s. People are going to think you're crazy. But at the end of the day, if all of those things mean nothing to you, then yes, keep going.”

Talk to yourself

Yes, that’s Pinky’s advice. Talk to yourself. Because you almost always know the big decisions you need to make when the business is growing in your head.

“My spirit talks to me,” she told me. “When I was in TV, my spirit was uneasy because I was ready [to move on]…  And that uncomfortableness is really that timetable like, ‘All right, it's time to go. Are you going to move or are you going to stay?’"

But it’s not just listening to that voice, it’s having a conversation with it. “As I evolve as a business woman, I realized that I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And it's the truth and it's okay. But what I realized is self-reflection is so healthy. It is attached to mental health. Sometimes you got to speak life into yourself. Sometimes you got to check yourself. Sometimes you have to look in the mirror and say, ‘All right, Pinky, what you going to do differently this time?’, or, ‘You know that didn't make no sense. You got to do it this way now.’  And if that's not hitting your spirit. Maybe you should walk away from that. Talking to myself more is really a healthy form of meditation for me, and it gives me the answers that I need.

“I used to outwardly go to people to get the answers. I used to ask friends, and I used to ask family and get mentors and all this stuff. And yes, that's important in many aspects. But at the end of the day, when you lay your head on that pillow at night, it's only you and your thoughts, and you have to be clear with your thoughts. So talking to yourself and getting clear with yourself and a full understanding of who you are and how you show up in the world makes all the difference.”

At the end of the day, when you lay your head on that pillow at night, it's only you and your thoughts, and you have to be clear with your thoughts. So talking to yourself and getting clear with yourself and a full understanding of who you are and how you show up in the world makes all the difference.

Be resilient and sometimes ruthless

There are some tough calls that only a CEO can make — this is something that came up in my recent conversation with Delta CEO Ed Bastian . Pinky realized that recently when she cut all of the staff that had been with her from the early days of Slutty Vegan. She talked about how difficult making that call was. “That was not a quick decision, and it wasn't quick because I lead with my heart, but it was a business decision," she said. "You know, when some people have been in the company for a while, they naturally reach a ceiling and you need fresh energy… But now that I had to do the hardest thing I've ever had to do professionally, you know what I do? I hire slow and I fire fast. If I see a cancer, I cut it. If someone is not in alignment with my vision, my goals, and my dreams, they have to go.”

Are you an entrepreneur who has been through the cycle? Let me know what’s worked for you — that's right, don't just talk to that voice in your head! — in the comments below. Join the conversation and subscribe to the This is Working newsletter. And be sure to tune into the latest This is Working podcast for an extended cut of this conversation. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.

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On LinkedIn’s video series, This is Working, I sit down with top figures from the world of business and beyond to surface what they've learned about solving difficult problems. See more from Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, CVS CEO Karen Lynch, PwC’s Bob Moritz, Merck KGaA CEO Belén Garijo, Athletic Brewing CEO Bill Shufelt, AI leader Fei-Fei Li, former US President Barack Obama, filmmaker Spike Lee, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, cosmetics legend Bobbi Brown, F1’s Toto Wolff, and many more.