We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tara Horton a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tara, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

My husband and I both worked in healthcare. I was an Executive Director of skilled nursing facilities. We both saw our community growing and wanted to be a part of the growth. My husband had previously started a business in college and truly has an entrepreneur mindset. When you work multiple hours a week for someone else why not take the risk and work for yourself! We began looking into different business concepts that would fit in our community and our life. We came across a gentlemen that had been in business for 30 years of gourmet popcorn. He also had a consulting business to help others start their own gourmet popcorn. We researched franchises but did not want to have to pay someone else for our work. This then began What’s Poppin. I took a BIG leap and quit my career to begin our business.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We wanted to provide the highest quality product and that means we do it all. We wanted people to have a great and fun experience in our store. We are involved in our community as well as give back to our community.

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

Once we decided this is the business we are going to build and grow, the full process started. Getting the initial business set up started easily. However we had our first hurdle when our own bank that we have banked with for 20 years would not allow for a large small business loan without us putting a lot of our own money down. We had to get creative and reach out to different banks. We ended up with a credit union so then it was time for me to turn my notice in. After I turned my notice in we signed a lease with a small group who was outside the city limits. About 3-4 weeks into the lease everything at the building began to be a problem with the county which untimely ended our lease. We are now back to square one trying to find space. In this we did not have architecture plans or a builder because the previous lease did not require it and was going to do it all for us. This now was more money to spend that we were not anticipating. Through it all we were able to get a builder as well as a new lease. We had to lean heavily on our faith and each other.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Referring to the above, we would do much more research on locations, the city codes and requirements and other things in order to have mishaps.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.whatspoppinforney.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076422458226&mibextid=LQQJ4d