We were lucky to catch up with Soulaire Allerai recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Soulaire thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

It takes sharing your story to be successful. People are always interested in who you are; they want to know things about you. They want to know what makes you tick, and what makes you move forward. They’re looking for a commonality or something they can relate to. When people get to know your story, then they get invested.

I also believe consistency and repetition are important to success. People expect that when they buy a product from our business, that it will have the same great taste and presentation every time. For example, we work with high-quality, high-end products. I believe in farm-to-table, and that’s where the other business owner for Bad Rooster comes in, Terry McCabe. It was the perfect connection for us to create this food truck together because that was his vision too. Those high-quality, high-end products, as well as following recipes and processes to a T, help us create that consistent product every time.

With the food truck, I work very closely with my crew, creating a trusting environment so that they have a place to come to if there are problems. I believe that you need to be authentic and transparent when it comes to your life and working with motivated young people has been a great gift for our business. They’re family but they are still employees, so it is important to treat them right and not take advantage of them. I see their potential as a very important part of why we are successful because happy employees means a happy business, and a happy business means a successful business. It’s also teaching the next generation the full operation behind the business. It’s important they learn all avenues and angles to be able to run it and be successful in it.

Soulaire, 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?

My name is Soulaire Allerai and I have had more jobs and careers than I could list here. I drove school bus for special needs kids, dispatched technicians for an airline, managed a call center, and was a trainer for several companies. I started a fish store with my best friend and have even had a housekeeping business. I am a public speaker and motivator and manage a commercial real estate rental business. When I say I’m an entrepreneur, I feel like that means I don’t give up.

I went to college late, got degrees in communication and studio art, while raising my two boys and a slew of other kids that had nowhere else to go. My sons would bring them home. I don’t believe that kids are throw away. I believe they are worth fighting for. To live in my house, you had to have respect for everyone, be truthful, and finish high school. Every single one of them graduated. I didn’t push college. That choice was theirs. I just wanted them to at least have high school under their belt because I came from a rough background in my own life and knew that graduating high school in itself was a great accomplishment.

I learned to not use my past as a tool to keep me down. I used it to lift me up, to prove to myself that bad things do not define me. What they are, are opportunities to change my mind and do something different from what I’ve experienced. I learned strategies to be successful, a successful human being. Somebody once asked me what makes me an expert and my answer to that is life. It can be your greatest tool, or your greatest heartbreak. It really is all in how you view the experience.

Learning how to overcome hardship is learning to communicate. To share your voice, to share your opinion. Not everyone will agree with you but that’s okay because that is what makes our life by our design. I’ve learned that I cannot blame anyone for the choices I make in my life, because blame removes my accountability to the choices I make as an adult.

I also learned not to focus on the negatives in my life because all the negatives do is make me feel less than. Feeling less than takes the wind out of your sails and you end up being on a still lake with no paddle and no oar. I had to learn how to navigate by being authentic and real. No one can look at me, or look at someone else, and say that’s them. We each are our own unique self, by our design. A blank canvas. When I don’t like something, I don’t tear the canvas up. I don’t blame the world. I have to look at the artist, and that artist is me, and start over, do it differently, without tearing down anyone else.

Thank God we have a world full of many flavors and colors because I think we’d get pretty bored if we were all the same. I’ve had to learn to just be who I am no matter what someone else is saying to me, good or bad. I have learned to greet my day and my life with kindness, a smile, and just be a good person. And I had to love myself enough to know I’m not perfect, no one is, and that I’ll make mistakes. I just have to forgive myself, make a new plan and move forward. Because that is really the evidence of my success.

I started my company Soulful Journey, because I began to realize that people were getting stuck and were being afraid to be their own unique self. I knew I had a lot of sadness in my life, but I also knew I didn’t have to stay there. I wanted to teach people how to get out of their sad story, to look for their potential, to use their failures as a platform to start over from. I wanted people to know that if they slowed down, looked at all angles of their life, that maybe they would be able to find a better path for themselves, and design a better path for themselves. The hardest thing anyone will ever do, is take accountability the choices that you’ve made, without blaming someone else for them.

And that’s why I call myself a life strategist, instead of a coach, because I’m not telling you the way to do it. I’m just helping you figure out how to find what you want to do. Someone once said I was their coach. I said, “No. You are your own coach. You are the only one that can cheer yourself on and keep yourself going.” All I do is look at all the variables you are emotionally attached to, and because I’m not emotionally attached to them, I can get you to look at it differently without that emotion. Think about being emotionally upset about something. Okay what is that emotion getting you? Nothing. So remove that emotion and see it as a tool and clue to move forward.

How I ended up on the Bad Rooster Food Truck is when Terry came to talk to me about strategizing a food truck. He knew I had a lot of restaurant experience due to my father being an executive chef who had taught me everything he knew. So, we started talking. I was already busy with two other businesses, but Terry was very inexperienced when it came to the food industry, yet passionate about farm-to-table. As we discussed it, he became more and more convinced I needed to be involved, so I reluctantly agreed to it and took a leap. Here we are today with a very successful food truck having won over 40 awards. Who knew that would happen? We just leapt. I work closely with Terry MCabe’s daughters to run this food truck, teaching them what I know and they’re teaching me what they know and it’s just all hands-on deck. We started as friends, and it’s just become one very big family, the Bad Rooster family.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I’ve lived through a social media attack. It’s easy for armchair warriors to get out there and spew negative things about you before verifying if it’s true. We went through hell and almost lost the business. But we ended up rising above it and now we are thriving. The only reason we made it through the horrific attack was because I kept showing up being authentic and doing my job. People started seeing through the lies and that’s why I always say to be authentic and genuine, be your truth. I could have quit and stopped. But I didn’t. I overcame some of the most painful, hurtful stuff out there and I realized that I couldn’t change that narrative and I didn’t try too. I just had to show up and be there and be kind. I didn’t want that experience to define me as a person. I’ve overcome bad stuff in the past from my childhood on up, but it really does come down to whether you will get up or stay down. I continue to get up.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

In the food truck world, I’m known as Chief Mother Clucker. I’ve built positive relationships with other food trucks because of that persona. The other food truck owners call me the mother of all trucks and they come to me for tools, butter, change, and I’ve even handed out a few Band-Aids in my day. I treat everyone as if they are family.

You know you’ve made your mark on this industry when everyone wants to be parked by you, and not away from you, when you hear others telling you they’ve heard things about you and that it’s always how friendly and helpful I am. It reminded me of high school, when I was popular with the jocks, the stoners, the nerds. I never was part of a club or niche group. I was friends with everyone and made everyone feel heard. Because that’s what I do.

Contact Info:

• Website: Soulfuljourney.com and badrooster.com
• Instagram: @soulfuljourney @badroostertruck
• Facebook: Soulful Journey, Bad Rooster Truck

Image Credits

Angela Divine Photography