Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to LaToya Gardner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, LaToya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

I would change the educational system to build programs that help stimulate entrepreneurship. As self-employment becomes increasingly common the first thing we need to do is to find ways to educate students in financial literacy. Lack of financial knowledge in early adulthood may affect negatively on spending attitudes, behaviors, personal financial management and then lead into business financial management. We need to have programs in early adulthood that have emphasis on financial literacy as well as business operations, and business management outside of traditional MBA programs.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Full of heavy hopes and dreams, I quit my corporate job and my husband and I bought an empty former delivery truck. The reason we quit our corporate jobs was to pursue a dream that allows us the flexibility to spend time with our 2 children who are now 5 and 9. We developed Holy Rolly which is Charleston, South Carolina’s ORIGINAL Rolled Ice Cream Food Truck and we specialize in bringing the tasty experience of rolled ice cream to a variety of low country venues. As two self-professed ice cream geeks, our goal is to provide the freshest ultra-premium ice cream experience possible using locally sourced products and donate a percentage of profits back to the communities we serve. I am proud to say we have been finalist for Best Ice Cream, Best Desserts, and Best Food Truck in Charleston, South Carolina and named Best Ice Cream Food Truck in the Southeast USA.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I built my audience on social media myself. The first step is to create a brand page and invite all your family and friends. From there you encourage your friends to invite their friends, make referrals, and leave reviews for your product or service. The third step is to produce quality content to grow your audience and connect with people who may be interested in your brand or product. The last and final step is to engage with followers who are in your niche so that your page remains relevant and active. My best advice is quality content over quantity of posts yields more success.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The best source of new clients is referrals from existing clients. The key to referrals is to ASK!!! We send out follow up emails to say thank you for clients who have booked us. We ask them to leave us reviews and send referrals. We also have a loyalty program to encourage repeat business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.holyrollycharleston.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/holyrollycharleston
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/holyrollycharleston