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

Peewee, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Taking risks can be daunting as an owner, and it may cause many to resist starting in the first place. It didn’t stop me, but it did make me wonder. What is risk? When I think about risk, I think of gambling and casinos. I must confess, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Risk in business is risky, but it will make all the difference when you succeed. Risks also holds failure, and you have to be open to this possibility. Risks cause discomfort, and the first thing you must do is to mitigate discomfort. Really try and feel it, this will build up your tolerance. You need to develop this skill in order to assess good risks from bad ones. If you shy away from necessary confrontation, you will teach yourself that all risk is bad, and then you will refrain from opportunities that cause discomfort before actually seeing what it is. You are well served to examine opportunities to assess risks without becoming emotional. This will cause you to make rash decisions, and this can derail an otherwise good idea.
I took many risks starting my businesses. My first risk was singing reggae music, and I was nominated for 2 grammy awards in 2016. I started a hot sauce company, Rasta Tease, and it has been growing since 2017 unofficially. I want to speak about a time i took a risk that didn’t turn out how I wanted.
Over 10 years ago, I wanted to start a free store / art gallery in Minneapolis. I was wide eyed and bushy tailed. I wanted to create the best store for anyone who needed what I had to offer. It cost me $1400 /month, and I was ready for the task. I held events, gave away food, but I never achieved the goal of having the store become a reality. Once I realized I was over my skis, I began to worry about what I was going to do to create revenue. I made the tragic mistake of going in deeper. I was certain I wouldn’t lose, but I lost my total effort.
What I learned from my experience was not to sweat the small stuff, did my grieving, and I gathered the lessons that I would need to take with me on this journey.
See, the thing about risks is you have to be a calculator. In some cases, you will be able to determine risks to avoid, and those to accept. There is generally a direct correlation between the amount of risk to the amount of reward. This means assessing risks can limit failure, but too much caution can stop you from making big gains.
Never regret taking a chance or risk, but me mindful that you may need to keep going. What i mean is, you must keep trying, and never give in. Bad risks can be great teachers, but the key is to learn from those mistakes., and I embrace the lessons from taking risks.
There is always some discomfort from trying new things, but you have to be strong and patient enough to see it through. The worst way to handle discomfort is avoidance, but here is the catch. Everything has risks, it is our job to identify, assess, and adjust to the risks in our given profession or hobby. You will learn some risks are necessary or required for participation.
You have to learn your tolerance for risk, and don’t be afraid to take chances, because it is how we learn. If you gleaned anything, I hope that it is the fact that everything has risks associated with it. It cannot be avoided. All risks aren’t created equal, and get to know if you are a penny slot player or a high roller?

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.

Rasta Tease was started to solve a food flavor problem, bland food. Growing up in New Orleans, I immersed myself in food culture. New orleans taught me how to live to eat, and not eat to live. Food was always key to any situation. I created my company vision around helping other, and I use my hot sauce and other products to achieve that goal – Ultimately, we are all about hot and BBQ sauce. I love flavor and love to share. It is a perfect fit for me, my dream scenario, I have always given back, but Rasta Tease gives me a way to pay it forward. My customers buy my products, and I help my community get meals in return. We dedicate part pf our revenue to feeding the community. It is not fair to enjoy my sauce on a meal, and not share the experience with someone who may not be able to on their own. I love win-win situations. When everybody shares, nobody goes without!!

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Funding your business is one of the most important things you do in starting and maintaining your business. I did what most people did, I asked friends and family to help. Some gave money, others advice. I also started looking at different ways to secure funding by liquidating items that were no longer serving me. I reduced my bills, my children grew up, which gave me more room to make economic choices more fearlessly. I learned how to utilize a network of credit and secured loans to achieve a level of funding that enabled to me to create the business. I also used my second job to help support my business. I am a musician, so I have access to people who were the first to buy my products. One level of funding came from sales and presales that were made at events that I performed.
I worked with finance literacy coaches, took training on how to secure funding, and got enough to start my beta phase.
Credit unions, community banks, Community Develpment Financial institutions (CDFI) are great places for start-up businesses. I used a CDFI in the early going, and the help was invaluable. I was given the tools to create a blueprint for funding and a business plan.
Now, I help others get the support and gnosis for achieving their star-tup funding goals.

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

I have been using social media for a very long time. I started back in the heyday of Myspace and other social media networks. I even ran my own social media platform some years ago. What I learned about building an audience has changed but retains the elements of the past. You have to have content.
The number one product needed is content. If you are able to build consistent contact through content, you will have a foundation to build from. Secondly, you will need to have a presence in the “real” world. This is important. Most people will not discover you. It will be more about you making a name and people looking for you on social media.
the third item is consistently posting and interacting. Don’t fall into a post alone pattern, I playfully call POST MALONE. If you post malone, it will make it harder for you to influence the algorithm. It will make you lazy, or even worse, you will compromise yourself. You have to interact with people on social media in a way that allows you to be seen and heard. What you say is as important as how you say it. People cannot feel inflection in a post. Video posts are good, just be sure to produce it well enough to be taken seriously. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE!!
Try to be skillful in posting, attaching relevant articles and the like to your posts.
If you are computer illiterate, get yourself a tutorial or computers for dummies. It will take some of the fear out of computers and give you guidelines. Study to show thyself approved. You need to inoculate yourself with basic marketing skills, then apply them in your marketing plan. Always attach any social media logos you are associated with to all your marketing. Many people have favorite social media channels, so diversify platform presence.
This is a basic recipe that I used to bring people to my social media. It has been fun, difficult, embarrassing, and more. This is just part of the learning process. If you are good with learning and then winning, you will have a better chance at long term success. marketing is a cumulative process, layering campaigns, making them relatable, is how I created my presence online.

Contact Info:

• Website: rastatease.com
• Instagram: rastaease0826
• Facebook: [email protected]
• Linkedin: rasta tease
• Twitter: rastatease
• Youtube: Rasta Tease
• Other: dredidread.com

Image Credits
Image 3 -with hat John Botkin