We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chef Ju’von a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Chef, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? We’d love to hear the backstory the illustrates how you grew your brand.

I believe but can’t speak for everyone, the challenge with starting a business is based on overcoming your fear of not being successful. When I started this business it was only supposed to be a side hustle. But after pursuing it and actually doing it more and more I just knew there was more for me. But then the obstacle of fear kicked in once again of course when the pandemic happened. And this is what forced me to go full-time, even though it was my prayer. Police official book.

One of the things that I teach to mentees do my mentorship program is that when starting a business there are three mindsets;
1 there is a hustle mentality
2 there is a business mentality
3 lastly, there is a company mentality. Once you achieve from moving from one mentality to the next, your business will automatically scale up.

Of course not knowing about these mentalities will stump you into only staying in one stage of your business. But when you expand your mindset to learning how businesses are successful, there’s only one place to go from there.

With me, I understood that the administrative side of any business have to be intact in order to be successful.

Chef, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

To this day 17 years of a successful kidney transplant and going on 7 years medicine free while being on dialysis of 5 years, I went into the medical field at a young age. Being in the medical field, show me that I would love to help and serve others as well. Once after that, I got a job in the emergency room of the very hospital of where I received my transplant, in New York City, Mount Sinai Hospital.

You’re probably asking yourself how did I go for the medical field to hospitality. But it’s easy when you think about it with both still serving and helping others. I have to realizing from being in the medical field for so long, to be exact 6 years I wanted and pray for something else. After moving to florida, and working for the medical field here I prayed harder. The door opened up for a kitchen position at a four-star hotel called the Grand Bohemian Hotel which is downtown Orlando. Surprisingly getting hired there acknowledging that I have no formal or culinary teaching, I was a sponge and ready to learn more and more. It was there where I defined that I wanted to be a fine dining chef. I always had a passion for cooking especially after listening and hearing the onions caramelized and bacon which was music to my ears. As a young lad in the kitchen with my mother and grandmother I knew cooking was something I wanted to master but didn’t think I was going to go into business with it.

Something else that I had to overcome was how can I separate myself from other chefs. There was a struggle as a young lad working in different restaurants as a server and a cook here and there, and that was being myself. I just knew once I started my own business I can truly be myself and be accepted by my clients. The problems I had was it was either I was too loud, I was singing too much, trying to entertain the guests too much, so of course with our business that we have now I’m able to be myself and make great money. We do not sell food, we create eggcperiences.

At Chef Devon’s personal services we make sure our clients get a luxurious experience. This would include singing dancing entertaining fire shows fog presentations and more. We even gift our birthday clients with customized complimentary birthday gifts. I think what majorly Separates Me from other chefs and Caterers is my personality, which comes with a whole lot. LOL

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

So this was definitely not an easy task especially with moving from your hometown, New York City to unfamiliar territories, Orlando florida. So, moving to a location to start all over with not knowing anyone was a definitely a challenge. However, I have already started a following in New York but moving to Florida was just difficult because no one knew me. I tried to give away my services for free just to get the word out and Floridians were not having it. It took me building and scaling the business behind the scenes to get it to a certain level to have us recognized by certain in clientele’s. I knew I wasn’t just going to give it away just to give it away to make money for gas or go to the movies. My goal was to attract High clientele. So after being hired by a lawyer named Conti family which led to the Profit family, it was over. This is when business blew up at the same time as the pandemic happened. So the main thing that really helped build my reputation within the market was me being myself. Sticking to my own personality and not trying to change for No One else. Being loud, entertaining, harmonetical, and also using this business as a Pulpit to witness to others.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I believe growing any business within today’s market is a bit tough because coming out of the pandemic to be honest nobody really want to work. Lol but time and time again God always shows me how to get through tough times with challenges such as staffing. There has been times when no one has showed up and I have to do the job myself. And I often say ” I know God I knew I could do it myself”. But I love hiring people to give other people the opportunity to work with me and also help them reach another level in life.

Of course there are other challenges like not seeing your calendar full of events but relying on God because he is the provider. Time and a time again He always shows up and shows out where I get major events that allows me to push through another month. I said all that to say, lean not to your own understanding. I’ve been doing this now for years and has made over six figures.

And now look what God has taken me. Going from working out of my garage and my small kitchen and apartment to now running a professional commercial commissary Kitchen downtown Sanford at Park Place Cottage & Inn.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.ChefJuvon.com
• Instagram: Chefjuvon
• Facebook: Chef Juvon
• Youtube: Chef Juvon
• Yelp: Chef Ju’von’s Personal Chef Services
• Other: Fb Personal page is Www.facebook.com/cheffjuvon