Cup 21

Person: Torya Blanchard

Place: Good Girls Go To Paris Crepe, Detroit, Michigan 

Date: December 18, 2010

 You only get one life—make the most of it.

Torya Blanchard was caught shoplifting when she was 15—a few weeks before a trip to Paris for her 16^th birthday. When she got home, her mother’s furious words were simple, “Only good girls go to Paris!”

Her mother doesn’t remember the scolding, but it’s something Torya will never forget. Fifteen years after that trip to Paris, Torya decided to open a creperie in Downtown Detroit and knew exactly what to name it—Good Girls Go to ParisCrepes.

…

A few months ago I was at a conference in Detroit, when I overhead a few snippets of a conversation happening next to me, something about a can’t-miss crepe shop. When I got back to East Lansing I did some research and discovered Good Girls and its owner, Torya Blanchard, the “Francophile, fashionista and fearlesscrepe-maker.”

With a description like that, I knew I needed to talk to her.

So there I was, sitting in the small shop, with its boldly painted red walls lined with French film posters and a large menu of crepe options that made my mouth water. The woman at the counter told me Torya was on her way, and offered me a cup of coffee. I found a table where I could watch the employees making the crepes, which brought back great memories of my two trips to Paris.

When Torya walked in, her big smile and loud “hello” shook me out of my trip down memory lane. I stood up to introduce myself, reaching to shake her hand. She ignored my gesture, instead giving me a big hug—talking continuously as she grabbed herself a cup of coffee and pulled up a chair at my table.

I didn’t know what to expect from the meeting, but I was sure of one thing: it was going to be fun. Torya has personality that fills the room. It wasn’t just her big smile and booming voice, it was also her Ray Ban glasses and hair with a mind of its own. She had a quirky demeanor that mixed a cool composure with contagious enthusiasm, which made swapping stories even more entertaining.

…

Torya had been working on an engineering degree at Michigan Tech when she decided it was too boring for her taste. She’d run into a woman at a Study Abroad Fair, who told her about an opportunity to work in Paris as an au pair. Torya had loved the idea—a two-year adventure in Paris would give her time to figure out a new direction for life. So she’d booked her ticket, packed her bags, and taken off across the ocean. By the time her trip had ended, she’d known what she wanted to do. She had transferred to Wayne State, earned a degree in French and started teaching at a Detroit high school.

Torya had enjoyed teaching French. She’d lined her walls with her French film posters and told stories about the French culture. She’d loved getting to know the students, and although the administrative tasks might have been draining at times, she had had no plans to leave her job.

Until a seemingly insignificant thing happened.

Torya had left work on a Thursday afternoon to catch a spinning class, but when she’d gotten there, the class was empty. She had come on the wrong day. The mix-up had bothered her, and she’d though, “Really, Torya? Your life is so busy and complex; you can’t get to a spinning class on the right day? This is what your life has come to?”

The moment had made her notice something she hadn’t noticed before. She wasn’t as happy with life as she knew she could be. She’d decided to get on a bike anyways and do some thinking—take an inventory of her life.

She had asked herself a basic question: What do I love to do?

She knew she loved people, and loved French culture, but how could she combine the two? A restaurant? The only thing she knew how to cook was crepes.

In fact, she had admitted, she loved making crepes.

That’s when it had clicked—right there on a bike in an empty exercise room, Torya had realized exactly what she needed to do. She would leave her teaching job of five years and open a crepe shop.

A few days later, she had walked past an empty storefront where a hotdog stand had recently shut down. It was just a small 48-square-foot shop, but to Torya it had been perfect. Her friends and family had thought she was crazy, but she hadn’t cared. It’s what she now calls her “Fight Club moment”—the moment she had decided to go all-in, to risk everything to make the dream a reality. She’d called the number on the for-sale sign, cashed in her 401k and gotten to work.

It had taken months of planning, long hours, and a lot of elbow grease before the day she had been anxiously awaiting finally arrived: when she opened the doors for her first customers.

Between the delicious crepes, Torya’s welcoming personality, and the support of a tight-knit group of Detroit entrepreneurs, word about Good Girls spread, and her business took off. Within a few months, Good Girls had outgrown the small store-space and upgraded to a larger location.

Torya had traded in the security of a comfortable 9-to-5 life as a teacher, for a job that required late nights, early mornings, and all the mental and physical energy she had, but now she wouldn’t trade it for the world. Even after the most hectic and exhausting day at the store, she still wakes up the next day excited to go back and do it all again.

…

I asked Torya how she had dealt with the inevitable stress of the decision to start Good Girls.

She said it had been stressful, but that wasn’t going to stop her—the crepe store was something she’d had to do. “When I get older,” she said candidly, “I want to look back and say I did everything I wanted to do.”

It was such a simple statement, but a profound reminder that we only live once—we have one shot to make life everything we want it to be. That’s an idea that’s often forgotten as we get caught up in the to-do lists of day-to-day life. Torya hasn’t forgotten it. She tries to squeeze the most out of every moment of her life. The result is a girl who’s full of life and a contagious spirit.

When I left Good Girls, my mind was racing with thoughts: What do I love? What do I really want out of life? Am I really happy with where I am?

I couldn’t answer all the questions sparked by the conversation with Torya, but Cup 21 made me realize these are questions I have to keep asking, until I discover a dream that’s worth risking everything to make happen. That moment might be tomorrow; it might be when I’m 30. Whenever it happens, I’ll think about Torya’s ”Fight Club moment” and the courage and determination she had to get the most out of life.

Because if I’ve only got one shot at life, why wouldn’t I do everything possible, so that I too can someday look back at my life and say, “I did everything I wanted to do”?

 …

Email

Sent: December 7, 2010 9:49:42 AM

From: Megan Gebhart

To: Torya Blanchard

Hello Torya,

My name is Megan, I’m a senior at Michigan State. I am currently working on a yearlong blogging project called 52 Cups of Coffee. Each week for a year I am having coffee with someone I don’t know and writing about what I learn and how I change in the process.

I came across Good Girls Go to Paris Crepes when I was in Detroit for the TEDxDetroit conference. I have been two Paris twice, miss eating fresh crepes, and am interested in entrepreneurship-so I was very excited to see what you have accomplished with your restaurant. I was wondering if you would be interested in sitting down with me for coffee.

I will be in Detroit December 18 and 19th and would love to meet at a time that is convenient for you. If you can’t meet, I’ll still be stopping by for a crepe—I looked at the menu, it’ll take me a whole week to decide which one I want. They all sound incredible!

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.

megan

___

Phone Call: December 16, 2010 2:41 PM

From: Megan

To: Torya

Hi Torya, 

This is Megan Gebhart. I sent you an email a few days ago and wanted to follow up..

…

Cup 21: Torya Blanchard

Saturday, December 18th / Good Girls Go to Paris Crepes / 4:00 PM

Cup 20

Person: Sam Rosen

Drink: regular coffee at Lovely, a bake shop

If I handed you a pen and said, “what is this?” you would say “a pen.” If I asked what you do with a pen, you would say, “write.” And you would be correct because that’s what it is, and that’s what it does.

But what if I handed the same pen to a dog? He wouldn’t use it to write, he would use it as a chew toy. Is he wrong? No, from a dog’s perspective, a pen is more useful as a toy than writing tool.

Hand the pen to an absent-minded college student and it could become a bookmark. An engineer might see it as a bunch of parts—a plastic casing that holds a tube of ink with a dispensing mechanism. You get the picture.

A pen doesn’t have to be a pen—it can be whatever you make it.

…

This was a concept Sam Rosen told me after we’d been volleying stories back and forth for 45 minutes inside an adorable café. The snow outside was blowing fiercely, but Sam’s relaxed demeanor and creative perspective made for easy and enjoyable conversation. I told him a little about myself and he chronicled the bohemian steps he had taken—starting from his formidable years spent behind a computer—that led to his current role as a founding part at One Design Company.

At some point in the conversation, he stopped and said there were two ideas he lived by. The first was a quote by former US baseball administrator, Branch Rickey:

Luck is the residue of design.

The second, a Buddhist principle he explained with the pen parable—a lesson in perspective and value—a reminder that there is more than one right way to approach a situation.

Sam has an interesting approach to life, especially school. One of the first things he said to me was that he always knew he was good at computers—not necessarily the best, but certainly good enough to make it into a career. The value of a traditional education wasn’t much to Sam, he had self-taught skills and knew what he wanted to do with his life. Arbitrary learning didn’t seem worth the effort.

That perspective likely explains the 2.1 GPA on his high school diploma. In fact, during his last week of high school, he had to beg one of his teachers to give him a passing grade so he could graduate. 

It’s not that he wasn’t capable of getting good grades. Sam decided he wanted to go to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena—a leader in art and design education. He had visited the school a few times before he applied and he fully understood getting in was a stretch. The school rarely admitted anyone under the age of 20; the average age of an incoming freshman was 28. Sam applied anyways. He didn’t get accepted, but he did receive a handwritten rejection letter saying they liked him, but with a 2.1 GPA, they weren’t sure he could handle the rigorous academics of the school.

They said if he went to another college and proved he could get good grades, they would let him in. The value of school had changed for Sam; it became his passport to Pasadena. He spent a semester at Colombia College in Chicago, finished with a strong GPA, and transferred to the Art Center.

He left after a year. From his perspective, college was just a place where you spent a lot of money so someone could force you to do work and then criticize it when you finished. Sam had been starting projects his whole life; he didn’t need to pay someone to for that, so he dropped out.

At that point in time, he found work with a web-design firm. The owner, who made $150 dollars an hour for each project, would contract work to Sam, who worked for $50 dollars an hour. Sam looked at the situation and realized something—if this guy could make $150 dollars an hour and Sam was doing most of the work, there was no way Sam couldn’t do the same—or better. So he decided to start his own web design firm.

He figured if his idea failed, he would just go back to working for someone else.

That was six years ago, and from the looks of it, he won’t need to apply for jobs anytime soon. One Design has seen double-digit growth for the last five years, has about a dozen employees and a client list that includes Groupon, Xerox, and New York Magazine.

Sam’s approach doesn’t work for everyone—in fact, it doesn’t work for a lot of people. But Sam was successful because he was passionate about what he was doing and willing to spend hours developing his skills. Whether knowingly or not, Sam took an honest assessment of himself—his likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses—and decided what path worked best for him. With a supportive family and the courage to take calculated risk—he made his approach work. 

Which leads back to the first idea he told me about: luck is the residue of design.

Translate that with a thesaurus and you get: good fortune is the remnant of ambition.

Essentially, when you put yourself out there for something you’re passionate about and you pursue it with tireless effort, opportunities emerge, unexpected doors start to open. The lucky people in the world are those that go out and create their own luck. Sam’s ambition created opportunities that helped One Design prosper. 

…

Now, I’m not advocating a lax approach to school, or dropping out of college. I’m simply pointing out the value of finding what works best for you. I told Sam about my approach to school, which was the opposite of his. I had the perspective that if I didn’t do well in school, get into a good college, and earn a college degree, I would let myself and my parents down. As a result, I was a devoted student and left school with a great GPA. My approach served me well; my academic record helped me get a scholarship to Michigan State, which was exactly where I wanted to go.

Just like there is more than one right way to look at a pen. There is more than one way to approach life, school, careers, etc—pick one and put in the effort to make it work.

That’s a reoccurring lesson I’ve been learning over the past 20 cups. But what was different about Cup 20 is that instead of helping me find my own approach, Sam reminded me to respect the choices others make. Everybody’s approach is different. and just because they don’t do things your way, doesn’t mean they are doing things the wrong way.

I don’t want people judging my life ambitions, I shouldn’t judge theirs. Because it’s easy to discount the kid that barely survived high school and left college early.

But one day, that kid could be your boss.

Email

Received: December 8, 2010 12:39:54 PM

From: Brett Kopf

To: Sam Rosen, Megan Gebhart

Sam-congrats on the full launch. Say hi to Meg, a friend & blogger.

She’s still a student at MSU, started 52cups and is on quite the roll. She’ll be in Chi & thought you’d be a great person to interview…she’ll be here tomorrow-Sunday, hope you guy’s find time to connect!

-Brett

___

Received: December 9, 2010 6:09:50 PM

From: Sam Rosen

To: Megan Gebhart

Hey Megan,

I’d love to chat! Tomorrow before 12 is open or after 2. Also I am open on Sunday. Looking forward to it!

Cheers,
Sam

…

Cup 20: Sam Rosen

Sunday, December 12th / Lovely, a bake shop / 2:00 PM