ARE YOU WHERE you’ve always wanted to be?
I shall never be where I “wanted to be”. That implies there is a destination. For me there is no destination, my life is a continued journey. A continuation of learning, growing and achieving which is endless and limitless.
What is your biggest professional challenge?
I am in the business of making shortbread cookies and I am often frustrated by the high cost of produce. It makes it very difficult for me to keep my prices affordable, especially when baking items such as butter double in price during the month of December. I am in a perpetual cycle of bargain hunting.
What is your biggest life challenge?
The biggest life challenges I have faced to date was going to work one day, working the whole day and then just before home time being told ‘oh, by the way, I can no longer afford to pay you, I have to let you go’. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before and it was shocking beyond words.
However, there is an old saying that “when God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window”, well, that was very true for me because within two months of becoming unemployed I started Sassy Cookies and within six months I started my second business Sassy Consulting, helping small business owners build and grow their Facebook fan pages. Become unemployed was a terrible ordeal that turned into one of the best things that could have happened to me.
When you look to the future what do you see?
I believe we will see more and more entrepreneurs creating more diverse businesses. I think people are now beginning to understand that there is no longer such a thing as a “job for life”. So if like me you unexpectedly find yourself unemployed, a good option is to create your own job.
What is your favourite pastime?
As a chef, I am a very creative person, so I love to spend time creating new varieties of cookies. For me, baking turns hours into minutes. It is a chance to be completely relaxed yet keenly focussed; this is when I am at my most productive. I also love movies and reading but I try to limit the amount of time I spend on these as they are all rather anti-social. So my other favourite pastime would be sharing great food, some good wine and great conversation with my close friends and family.
What is your favourite meal?
That is impossible for me to narrow down to one as I absolutely love good food. Amongst my favourites are my dad’s salt fish and spinach, breadfruit cou-cou (also my dad’s), grilled dover sole, penne pasta with pesto sauces, sweet and sour shrimp and nachos.
On Saturday nights where are you likely to be?
Either in front of the television watching re-runs of Keeping Up Appearances and Are You Being Served, hanging out with friends or at the Drive-In watching a movie.
What upsets you the most?
How poor customer service has become. Growing up, I used to visit Barbados and return to England bragging about how great customer service is. But now it seems we think only certain people deserve good service. I am also upset by the amount of times I am dismissed as being a pauper because of having natural hair.
On one occasion I even overheard a server in a boutique telling a co-worker that she did not intend to serve me because, as she put it, “you can’t see how knotty she head is” She ent got nuh money to spend”.
What is your guiding philosophy?
Nothing changes if nothing changes. Therefore if I want to continue to grow, whether it’s my business or personal life, I have to embrace change.
If you had the chance to manage Barbados for a day, what would you do?
We rely heavily on tourism in Barbados and I believe that our training institutions are not able to fill the demand for training. Therefore, I would like to implement short courses in culinary arts, hospitality studies and tourism to be taught in the many community and resource centres around the island.
Carol King is owner of Sassy Cookies Barbados.