Tabitha Brown is a bonified boss but it took time (and some mistakes) to get there.
In a recent sit down with the Earn Your Leisure podcast, the vegan powerhouse shared how she’d left potential millions on the table during brand negotiations early on in her career rise.
She first caught the world’s attention after her review of a Whole Foods TTLA sandwich went viral, leading to the grocer seeking a partnership with Brown.
She said she was forced to navigate negotiations on her own as she didn’t have an attorney at the time.
“I was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna just go as big as I can and ask for a crazy amount of money and see what they say,’” Brown told the Earn Your Leisure hosts as reported by AfroTech. “And they were like, ‘Hmm, we can’t give it to you at once, but what if we break it up and you do a couple of other things throughout the year for us?’ And I was like, ‘Okay.’ I didn’t know. I didn’t even have an attorney at this time.”
After some time, her friend Stephen Love became her manager to help wade through the score of deals that started pouring in and to filter through what she soon recognized were lowball offers.
“When they said ‘Yes’ too quick, we was like, ‘Oh, we know we was too low,’” Brown said. “So on the next deal, we was like, ‘Go higher and see what they say.’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ Oh, we still too low. That’s how we kinda learned over the years.”
Since then, they’ve closed 56 deal including food, clothing, and cookware lines with Target among many others.
“Now, of course, I have a team,” Brown said. “And then really learned that we was real low. I could have been making more money.”