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

Verlon, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

Instilled family-oriented values within me. Prioritize the ones you love above all else. To be resilient and resourceful.

Verlon, 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?

I am a healthcare executive. My entire career has been in hospital administration. Currently, I’m the Vice President of Community Health Equity at my organization. I attempt to partner with community-based organization to ensure we improved the health literacy of marginalized communities and provide them with resources to improve their health outcomes. During the height of the pandemic things slowed down enough for me to create an LLC for a product that I had been making for a while, just never thought to commercialize it until I had the extra time that the pandemic provided. In my family there is a pecking order to work the grill during family gatherings. I was nowhere near the top five on that list. The next best thing to do was to create a sauce that all of my family’s pit bosses would have to use. Hence, this sauce. It has all the influences of my upbringing. A sauce that can go on any meat and in any meal.

Have you ever had to pivot?

As far as the business, the biggest pivot was renaming the sauce. The original name was “Uncle Carl’s AP Sauce”. I wanted to name it after my uncle who help me develop its taste. When I went to trademark the label Carl’s Jr (fast food restaurant chain) issue me a challenged and said I was infringing upon their name to sell sauce. Which was the furthest from the truth. Changing the name and image of the sauce to Big Sal’s (my nickname) was unexpected, because I like to fly under the radar. A good friend and fraternity brother created a label that was simply irresistible.

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

I’m honestly not big into social media. Though I do have a following on IG – @salleysauces. What I love doing is featuring pics of my customers use of my products in posts to music.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.salleysacues.com
• Instagram: @salleysauces
• Linkedin: VerlonSalley

Image Credits
2 friends – Lewis Brewer & Julian Collins