Putting Yourself Out There: Lori Granito (Transcript)

And after the real talent show finished, they invited everyone to come on stage, anyone that wanted to participate in this competition, including parents. Now, this was the French school.

A Lesson in Courage

But unfortunately, there was no wine available. And as a result, none of the parents were sufficiently sourced to actually consider that option as something serious. Instead, we all sort of stood to the side and we bobbed to the music. We clapped as the little kids got on stage.

We laughed as they roped in a teacher here and there, all the while thinking, “Better you than me.” So then the music changed from bad to Billie Jean. And I don’t know, the emcee found his groove. He really wanted to get some parents up there, so we instinctively all kind of took a step backwards.

And then we laughed because this little five-year-old girl dragged her dad onto the stage. And my girlfriend, who had come to the show with me, she turns around to me and she goes, “Lori, you love Michael Jackson. Girl, you should go up there.” I don’t think so. And she said, “I dare you.”

Now, as a reasonable, responsible adult role model that I am, I had to actually wait until she double-dared me before I decided to get up there. Now, my poor child, she was too young to understand that she really should have been embarrassed. Because she’s clapping and she’s thinking her mom is going to get down on the stage.

Not even realizing that, much like Harry Potter is always known as the boy who lived and has a scar, she is about to forever be known as the girl whose mom moonwalked on stage. So I start making what I think is this long trek down to the stage. And then I start thinking, “Well, my kid just started going here. I don’t really know any of the parents.”

So to psych myself up as I’m walking down to the stage, I start going, “Girl, you don’t know any of these people anyway.” But that is quickly followed by, “Lori, you are such an idiot. Why would you say you’re going to do this?” I finally get down to the side of the stage, and I want to turn around.

But I take a deep breath. I walk out onto the stage. I thank the Lord that I have rhythm. And I do my thing. And I’ve got to say, I was pretty damn good. But alas, I was outdone by the cuteness of a three-year-old. Or as my daughter said later that night, “Mama, you were robbed.” Now, we look back on that day quite a lot, and we laugh.

Reflecting on Courage and Authenticity

We had so much fun, and we look back on it with such fondness. And I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had actually turned around. You see, I understood that I was really entirely completely comfortable with going on stage and making a complete fool of myself because I was prepared to just not care that other people were judging me. I decided that I wasn’t going to worry about what other people thought.

How many of you are missing out on opportunities because you are afraid or embarrassed? What could you do, what could you achieve, if you understood that your real job in this life is not to worry about what the hell other people are thinking about you. Your real job is to be uniquely, awesomely, imperfectly you, taking a chance.

Now, a couple of weeks ago, one of my girlfriends asked me what advice I would give to my 20-year-old self. And I said, “Be open to possibilities, but understand that what you think you want may not be what you actually want, or even what you need.” I wear a lot of hats. Personally, I’m a mom, I’m a wife, and I’m a good friend. Professionally, I’m an entrepreneur, a mentor, a chef, a restaurateur.

But to be honest, I never planned on being in the food business. And when I was in high school or university, if somebody had told me this is what I would be doing, I would never have believed them. Sometimes the thing that you’re supposed to become just finds you. Now, what a lot of people don’t know about me is that I’m not a trained chef.

A Fluke That Changed Everything

I never went to culinary school. I never even worked in a restaurant or a kitchen before I started my own catering company. I worked in retail, and I thought I would just climb the corporate ladder. The reason I got into the food business was really a fluke.

I was meeting with a girlfriend, and she told me about these two ladies that she had read about that started this catering company from home. And I thought, “Well, maybe I can make some extra money doing that. I mean, I’m from New Orleans. I can cook.” I got pots. I got pans. I got fire. Well, what I really had was two burners and a rice cooker and a tiny little apartment in Causeway Bay.

And as I said, I had no experience, and my business plan consisted of pretty much put an ad in the paper, let’s see what happens. And so that’s what I did. And lo and behold, the first call I got was actually not for a job. It was from a reporter from the local newspaper, and they wanted to do a feature on my new catering company.

The Birth of a Business

Now, I was not a company. I was an ad. I mean, I didn’t even have the pots and pans. I had to go out and buy a tiny little oven that sat on top of my fridge with the size of a microwave and that would ding every 60 minutes, and that was what I cooked pies in.

And so I had to do what any self-respecting startup would do. Let’s just say I got a little bit creative with the troops. I mean, my company could have been called Clueless Caterers because I honestly didn’t know what the heck I was doing. But I finally did get a job, and then the second event that we did, unbeknownst to me, was an event for the food editor of the South China Morning Post.

And then a couple of weeks after that, in their annual end-of-year best-of list, we were voted best private dinner party caterer of the year. So that one decision to put an ad in a paper, that fluke, completely changed the course of what I thought my life would be. And set me on a path to where I am today. You see, starting any kind of new project, new venture, is scary.

The Perfection Paradox

But I think a lot of times, people overthink it. They want everything to be perfect and just right. But that’s never going to happen. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t plan. But what I am saying is that sometimes you need to be okay with not knowing what’s going to come next. Sometimes you just have to take the first step.

Now, I read a quote once that said, “Take the leap and the net will appear.” Now, I don’t know who wrote that, but they should have had some fine print with that. Because, let me tell you, a lot of times what they should have said is, “Take the leap, the net may or may not appear, and there may be some rocks involved.”

Now, I work with a lot of people who come to me saying, “I want to take that leap. I want to be an entrepreneur. You know, I want to go for it.”

Embracing Failure on the Road to Success

And so I tell them that, well, I don’t consider myself just an entrepreneur. I consider myself a successful failure. And so I’ll usually ask them, “Well, are you prepared to be a failure?” Now, naturally, some people get offended.

But most people will just shake their heads and say, “No, of course, I don’t want to be a failure.” And so I tell them that if you want to be an entrepreneur, then you need to embrace the possibility that failure may be part of your journey. Now, I haven’t always been this zen about failure. I mean, I have taken a lot of leaps. I have missed a lot of nets, and there have been a lot of rocks involved.

I’ve gotten banged, bruised, and beat up almost to the point where I wanted to give up. Back in 2001, I came to the painful realization that my businesses were failing. I was a new mom, but my first restaurant was my other baby.

From Despair to Determination

And I was devastated the day that it closed. And I just sort of plodded along for a few years after that, just really my spirit broken. And they were very, very dark days. But not only was my spirit broken, my bank account was pretty broke as well.

But it’s interesting that people have such different perceptions because my daughter was the first kid in her playgroup to be completely potty trained, and everybody thought I was super mom. Nobody had any idea it was because I couldn’t afford to buy diapers. In fact, my reality check came the day I went down to the ATM machine to get $100 Hong Kong dollars out to buy diapers. And I had $97 in my account.

So I had to go into the bank, line up, and write a check for $95 because you know you’ve got to leave a little bit of something in there. And I went back home humiliated and really just wanting a good cry. Now, any of you that have brothers or sisters, little kids, you know if you want them to get off your back and have some alone time, all you’ve got to do is put in their favorite movies over and over and over again. Well, my daughter’s favorite movie at the time was Finding Nemo.

Lessons from Finding Nemo

And as I’m sitting on my bed crying my eyes out with this cheap Paul Masson wine on the side, surrounded by this pile of bills, you know, gas, final notice, electricity being cut off the next day, I hear this little voice singing, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming.”

Now, I probably should not tell you guys this, but I do have full-fledged conversations with myself. And right then I was said, “Lori, girl, you can’t continue on like this. You’ve got to get a grip.” And I knew that I could get bitter or I could get better. I had to make a choice to either deal with what was being thrown in front of me, take another leap of faith and let it make me stronger, or let it break me. I had to keep swimming. Now, a lot of different people have talked about taking leaps of faith.

Steve Harvey’s Cliff of Life

My favorite is from a guy named Steve Harvey, and for those of you who don’t know who he is, he’s the one that called out the wrong Miss Universe. But he’s a pretty motivational guy otherwise. He talks about standing on this cliff of life, and the only way to be successful is for you to jump off that cliff. And when you get up there, you’re going to see all of these people soaring past you. They’ve got great lives. They’re going amazing places. They’re doing all of these things.

Maybe they’ve got material wealth that you desire, or maybe they’re just living lives that are meaningful to them. And they’re able to do that because they have jumped and their parachutes have opened. And the only way for you to be able to soar is for you to jump. But there is a catch. The first couple of times you jump, your parachute is not going to open.

The Reality of Taking Leaps

You’re going to fall down on the rocks. You’re going to get banged up, beat up, bruised. But the promise is that if you continue to jump, eventually your parachute will open, and you will be able to soar. Now, I know there’s a couple of people out there thinking, “Well, damn, first I had a net, now there’s no net.”

Now it’s just all the rocks involved. I don’t think so. I think I’m going to stay here where it’s safe. And you could do that. That could be your strategy. But that’s fear talking. And the only thing that’s sure is if you do stay where it’s safe, it is guaranteed that your parachute will never open and you will never soar. Now, that was Steve Harvey with a little bit of me thrown in there.

The Enemy of Greatness

I generally like to say to people that safety is the enemy of greatness. And everything you want lies on the other side of that fear. Because, you see, when you jump, you take that leap of faith. Every time you miss, that’s not failure. That’s merely clearing a path towards your life’s work.

And everything that you’re going through, every time you fall, is preparing you for everything that you’re meant to be. You see, each of us has that thing or things that makes you and only you uniquely awesome. It’s that place where you shine brightest and that gets you closest to reaching the stars.

Embrace that awesomeness. Because at various points in your life, you are going to be given opportunities for those gifts to flourish. And you may not recognize them for what they are. And you may recognize them, and they may not work out the first time you try them. But when those opportunities present themselves, to take a deep breath, step back, and ask yourself, “Are you ready to jump?” Thank you.

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