Just Start: The Three Step Dream Cycle All Dreams Must Pass Through

Aisha “Pinky” Cole is a rising star. At just the young age of 35 years old, Pinky is a successful entrepreneur, author and philanthropist. Her food chain restaurant, Slutty Vegan is approaching “Empire” status. With locations all across the south and with funding to launch 20 more locations in the next few years, Slutty Vegan, the vegan based burger joint in the heart of soul-food south is on a meteoric rise.

Pinky Cole, the former TV Producer, failed restaurant owner, and founder of The Pinky Cole foundation has found herself in the middle of a movement of her own making, changing the way people relate to vegan food and the restaurant business. Her presence in the restaurant industry is felt, with her authentic, loud style and non-traditional approach to entrepreneurship and burger food.

As she sits on the New York Times “100 Next List” recognized as an individual with outsized influence on American culture she serves as a Chief Restaurant Advisor for DoorDash, the company she used to deliver food for as a 1099 contractor long before starting Slutty Vegan in 2018, Pinky Cole also uses her foundation to provide scholarships for students, payoff student loans for young entrepreneurs as well as provide assistance for formerly incarcerated youth.

Pinky Cole is “living the dream” and it has far less to do with wealth and prominence as much as it has to do with living her purpose daily. 

While the rap sheet of successes can sound like a combination of impressive, redundant, linear, and unrelatable, her journey to this position is supremely applicable to any emerging leader navigating life.

When evaluating someone’s “living the dream” journey we must include the entire picture. If serving as the Chief Restaurant Advisor for DoorDash is “living the dream” then serving as a DoorDasher is “living the dream” as well. If giving back to incarcerated youth, helping them get on their feet and pursue a better future is “living the dream” then having your father incarcerated for your entire adolescence is “living the dream” as well. If opening 20 restaurants and embarking on a new empire building venture is “living the dream” then having your first mildly successful restaurant in Harlem, New York burn to the ground due to a grease fire with all your savings and hope with it, is “living the dream” as well.

It’s all living the dream.

That’s the problem with dreams. At the first mention of a dream our brains sprint to the finish line. The outcome, the credits rolling, the miserable lie that the fulfillment of the dream makes all of life’s problems disappear. 

Unfortunately our relationship with dreams is just that they will transform our circumstances. When we relate to dreams only as a circumstance-change agent we fail to fully live into and realize all the benefits of dreams as a vehicle to transform our character. Dreams aren’t just as a circumstance change agent but rather a character change agent and a vehicle in which WE change. 

If we’re going to talk about dreams, we need to talk about the fullness of living the dream. The hardship, the delays, the disappointments, the deadends. All of it.

Pinky Cole’s journey from inner-city Baltimore to the queen of the restaurant industry is full of twists and turns and is far from linear. Her story thus far gives us the perfect framework to explore the dream cycle that you and I are likely in right this second.

A series of small starts, false starts, and re-starts. From the time of the idea’s first inception in our mind to the fulfillment of it in reality. This dream cycle should encourage you to keep going, wherever you are in living the dream. 

Dream Cycle Step 1: The Small Start

In the spring of 2008, Aisha Cole graduated from Clark Atlanta University. An energetic, vibrant, leader of the Clark Atlanta community she was going places. After graduating she moved to Los Angeles, then to New York City. In both stops on the journey she was looking to break into television production. 

As many recent college graduates do she bounced around from a few opportunities and was eventually recruited to work for Teach For America. While in that role she nurtured some small opportunities in the television production industry and eventually jumped in full time as a production assistant. As most high-risers and fast-movers do, Pinky’s presence was quickly felt in the television industry and she was sought after for a producer role for the hit daytime show, Maury.

It was while she was serving in the production role for Maury that she began to get the inkling to pursue the restaurant industry. Cooking was always a passion of hers and slowly she began to take the idea of owning a restaurant from a far-off idea, to something tangible.

No, she didn’t quit her day job. No she didn’t borrow a ton of money for a big grand opening. Little by little she refused to squelch her interest with an all-or-nothing approach and instead maintained excellence in her day job while pursuing a new side hustle. 

The roots of the Slutty Vegan restaurant empire can be fully traced back to a side hustle.

What we see here is the first step in the dream cycle. A step that if we’re not careful our ego will never allow us to take. It’s called the small start.

It’s the step that is available to all of us most of the time. But because of how small the start is, our ego refuses to let us take a ride. Our ego loves to “burn the boats.” It wants the drama, and it wants the flare.

Our ego is not actually interested in living the dream because it is too consumed with all of the vanity components of a dream. 

“Pick up a book from the library and start to research?” Are you kidding me? That’s ridiculous.

“Work on the side-dream business before work at 6:00 am until you leave for work at 8:00am?” 

Why would I do that? I can't, I have a day job!

“Write the manuscript when the kids go to bed at 8:30 p.m. until you go to bed at 11:30 p.m?” It can’t be that simple.

Our ego loves complexity because it gives us a way out. We don’t like the idea of simplicity when it comes to taking the first small step because we are forced to confront the truth that what we needed to start the pursuit is what we’ve had the whole time. 

The first step in the dream cycle forces us into the humble reality that we can take bite size action.

For Pinky that came in the form of her first restaurant business. A Jamaican and American restaurant that she operated in Harlem for two years. 

How did she learn to start a restaurant business with no relevant experience in her day job as a television producer? Google and Youtube. Her passions and interests ultimately formed her curiosity for her side business. Her family roots in cooking allowed the business to thrive. 

We must take the first step. And the first step is always so small that it seems like it can’t be true. It’s often not sexy or exhilarating at all. It may mean opening a google search. It may mean heading to the library for some books. It may mean purchasing an online course for a couple hundred bucks.

Just take the first step. 

Dream Cycle Step 2: The False Start

After Pinky’s first restaurant began to get some traction she advanced to the next step in the cycle. Most entrepreneurs dream of the possibility of leaving their day job for their side passion project. For Pinky to advance to this phase is incredible. Let’s also not overlook that it took 2 years and the majority of it was on top of working a full time job. 

One evening after closing up the restaurant for the night Pinky got a phone call from someone indicating that a fire had broken out at her brick and mortar restaurant a few blocks away. She rushed down there to find that the entire building was in flames and the two year journey of building a business was gone with a grease fire that lasted around two hours.

In studying the stories of hundreds of leaders both in their readings throughout history as well as hundreds of conversations with experienced leaders I am confident that Pinky Cole was walking into the second step of the dream cycle - the false start.

While the small start gets us going and the vast majority of people have a hard time even getting past the first step in the cycle. This second step is what separates the highest altitude leaders from everyone else in large part due to the sheer pain that comes with a false start.

In football the false start is when a player moves from their position before the ball has been snapped. In track & field the false start is when a sprinter crosses the start line before the gun has been shot.

In relation to the dream process the false start is when our momentum or success gets wiped and we are forced to walk back to the starting line and try again.

After the grease fire, Pinky Cole lost everything. Not only did it set in motion a prolonged period of disappointment that turned into depression, but it sent the direction of her professional life reeling as well. With her savings and career geared toward starting the restaurant she had pushed the chips “all-in” and unfortunately she lost the hand.

With the loss of income her car was eventually repossessed. She fell behind on rent payments and was eventually evicted from her home. While “going for broke” sounds sexy to those who have never done it. Pinky Cole was literally broke. 

A false start doesn’t necessarily mean the dream isn’t right, it may just mean the timing isn’t right. Or the process isn’t right. Or the personnel isn’t right.

The danger we make in reaction to a false start is we respond overly emotional and start making drastic decisions.

“I’m done with this thing!”

“This has all been a waste!”

Those may be true, only you know. But often out of an overreaction to what we perceive to be a failure we blow an entire thing up to protect our ego.

Perhaps the reason for the false start was our competency hadn’t yet matched our potential. Dreams are built on potential. They are a glimpse of what COULD be possible. Reality is built on present day competency and capabilities. 

One of the biggest contributors to a false-start is a lack of humility. Over anxious. Overly aggressive. A miscalculation to the new rules of engagement. Assuming what got you here will be enough to get you where you want to go. 

False starts are painful. 

But all dreams must go through this false start process. Just as the grease fire burnt up the kitchen the flames of a false-start can purify our motives.

As the ego impacts us in the first step of the dream cycle, it’s in the second step of the dream cycle that the ego gets tamed and every transformative dream must go through this process.

False starts bake into our lives humility and humility is a prerequisite for authentic transformation of our character and of our purpose.

Are we pursuing the dream for ourselves? Or are we pursuing the dream for the on-purpose service of others?

How can we tell we are truly being humbled? By going through humiliating experiences. If you’re hoping to dance around the edges and avoid humiliating losses in preservation of your ego, you will never reach the high altitude of the truly transformative leaders.

Dream cycle step two is a prerequisite for ever truly living the dream. 

Dream Cycle Step 3: The Restart 

For Pinky Cole the dream was dead. Not on life support. Not on the back burner. It was fully dead. 

The reality is all things must die in order to truly live. All dreams must die in order for them to truly live.

After the grease fire and the painful experience that came with it, Pinky was scrambling. She fully gave up the restaurant business idea and re-entered the production industry, heading back out to Los Angeles as a casting director. 

The cost of living in L.A. is high so she made ends meet as a DoorDasher on the side. Yet another side-hustle.

I can’t help but wonder what it was like driving throughout the streets of L.A. with the smell of someone’s food in the passenger seat. With every click of the turning single at a stop-light I’m sure she didn’t think the service of cuisine would come in this form. Yet here she was, on the scramble, making ends meet, trying to figure things out. “Living the dream.”

Eventually Pinky found another opportunity in Atlanta and it was in Atlanta that the dream was brought back to life

It’s in this chapter of the Pinky Cole story that we see the third step in the dream cycle - the re-start.

It takes a lot of talent to start something for the first time. It takes a lot of courage to re-start something. 

From our early days as children we are conditioned to avoid painful things. From touching a hot stove to distancing ourselves from painful social experiences. Once pain enters the equation it requires a different skill set to keep going.

While in Atlanta, Pinky found herself in yet another side-hustle scenario. This time it came through shared kitchen spaces for cooking. 

No, Slutty Vegan was not started with large venture capitalism. It wasn’t as if someone loaned Pinky the money upfront and said “go for it.”

Slutty Vegan began as a side hustle in a shared kitchen space in which Pinky would sell vegan burgers via doordash.

Not long after getting some traction in her community she moved Slutty Vegan into a food truck. And this is where the seam was found and the thread was pulled all the way to what we see today.

If we’re not careful we can miss the critical moment of this story. I’m not suggesting that what you’re working on is going to make it so as long as you don’t quit. I don’t know if it has legs. I don’t know if it’s a transformational dream or just a shadow mission you need to abandon instantly.  But the more I talk with leaders and study the pattern of human experience the more I recognize that the re-start is the part of the process that 99% of us are unwilling to do. Why is this the case? Because our ego will do anything possible for us to avoid pain.

On the heels of the false-start we are sent reeling. And if we’re not careful we won’t ever come back. All kinds of lies will be spoken and repeated to our souls after the false start.

“I’m not good enough.”

“I’m a failure”

“I’m not cut out for this”

The win for Pinky Cole was not that her venture became a large enterprise. The win is that she was able to re-start and hop back into the shared kitchen to keep going.

Not because she was chasing the dream. But because she was living the dream as she was making food in the on-purpose service of others.

The results beyond that are what they are. But her willingness to re-start is what triggered the dominoes to fall in any direction. 

The small start step tames our ego to avoid the big swings and instead focus on the small bit-size action.

The false start step tames our ego by focusing on developing humility and purifying our motives.

The re-start step replenishes our soul by focusing our attention on a hopeful future.

You’re not living the dream unless you are oriented on a hopeful future and the reality is when we go through painful experiences we don’t focus on a hopeful future, we focus on a painful past. We lick our wounds and ruminate on what happened and why it derailed us and why it was so humiliating.

Every dream goes through a re-start process. Reengaging with the dream. The vision. The joy of starting. Renewing our approach and going back to the venture through the lens of playful exploration instead of the thing we need to muscle and force. This is where the joy is and I know of no leader who has been able to purposefully walk into their dream scenario without some form of re-starting, re-engaging, re-orienting the way in which they are going to relate to the pursuit. 

Beware of the dream that is unfolding absent of the false start and the re-start. The difficulties bring the transformation to light. Take the difficulties out and you take the transformation out. 

Change the circumstances without changing the character and we’re teetering on the edge of a burnout or a blowup.

The 3-Step Dream Cycle:

The Small Start - The simplicity of the bite-size action

The False Start - The purification of our motives

The Re-Start - The refocus on a hopeful future