Headed to the Windy City pursuing a lifelong dream

October 09, 2010 This week in my ongoing effort to expand my knowledge of best practices in Fast Casual restaurant management and marketing, I am attending the Fast Casual Executive Summit. Why am I attending? Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to work with restaurant clients and learned how competitive the category really is. Expanding my marketing knowledge for those clients is important. And I have a deep down interest in one day owning a restaurant or a chain of restaurants. Food was a central character in my life growing up in New Orleans. At the Jellystone campground my family owned, we regularly prepared meals for 150+ people. Campground management also instilled in me a strong sense of hospitality and customer service at a young age. My father taught me from a young age how to handle people of all personalities and how to turn challenges into great business opportunities. Now, I find myself as a marketing consultant and seeking new clients in this vertical. I want to use and continue to grow my knowledge in this area so one day in the not so distant future, I will be ready to create a menu and hire my good friend Michael Taylor to design and project manage my restaurant into reality. Goals keep us on track in life. What is your dream? Do you have a new product in you? A family recipe that should be on retail shelves? A solution to the obesity wave in America? Moving forward towards achieving our dreams is important. Sometimes it is not easy to make the leap but remember, it is only brave if it is scary when you make the decision to do it.