One summer night in 2003, I hit DC’s (not-so-big) nightlife scene with some friends. I threw on ripped jeans, heels, and my “forty lashes” T-shirt. An older, mature gentleman in his midforties named Eric was among my group of friends, and his calm composure in the sea of wild college kids dancing and pounding drinks caught my attention. Little did I know, he was an industrial guru turned entrepreneur with a passion for investing in young start-ups. He complimented my shirt.
“Thank you,” I replied, flattered. “I made it myself.”
“Are you a designer?” Eric asked.
“I’m trying to become one.”
He looked at me, puzzled, and asked, “Why are you merely trying?”
“It’s a very expensive industry,” I heard myself answer smoothly. “I need capital in order to take my company to production and market it.”
We chatted for about ten minutes, and Eric seemed captivated. A bit of advice: the universe doesn’t play favorites, but when I spoke about my dream, my powerful passion came through, and he could feel all my energy simply by listening to me. Opportunities in life come from putting light, energy, and emotion into a specific action or reaction, and that creates possibilities.
“Do you have a business plan?”
I replied confidently, “Yes.”
I did not hesitate. I saw a chance, and I jumped (even though said business plan was completely nonexistent). I had created a shining possibility out of a rough situation, but now I needed to follow through on it. It was no longer about faking it, it was about making it. My next hurdle was to learn how to create a business plan—and fast. I didn’t want Eric to lose interest in my business. This was my chance to snatch an opportunity, and I had to take it seriously.
A part of me believed that I was being stupid. I thought, This is never going to happen! I was afraid I would embarrass myself by even trying. The other part of me urged myself not to listen to the mind chatter of self-doubt and forced myself to take a chance and thrive. The worst that can happen, I told myself, is that you will learn something from it. As Richard Branson so eloquently put it, “If someone offers you an amazing opportunity and you’re not sure you can do it, say yes—then learn how to do it later.”
Over the next few weeks, I spent every day at Barnes & Noble. I read all the how-to books on starting a business and writing a professional business plan. I became an expert camper in the business section of the bookstore. All that was missing was my tent.
Three weeks and twenty-six pages later, I was ready to present my amateur business plan. I emailed it to Eric and asked whether we could set up a meeting to go through it. Even if he threw it in the trash, at least I had learned how to write the worst business plan of all time. I have so much respect for those who do this for a living. I would much rather hike Mount Everest in heels.
Weeks passed without a response, and eventually I accepted my fate. Then, finally, an email notification popped up on my phone. It was from Eric. The word ecstatic couldn’t even begin to describe how I felt. He wrote: “Tala, I will be in DC this week for some business meetings, and I would love to hear about your business plan.”
I invited him to Paolo’s, a charming Italian restaurant in Georgetown, for dinner. I paired my sharpest black skirt suit with a white ruffled shirt underneath and black pumps. I overaccessorized my ensemble to offset the business look and pumped up my hair to complete my fierce look. To say I was overcompensating for my nervousness would be an understatement.
I packed samples of my T-shirts in a large shopping bag and printed two copies of my not-so-sophisticated business plan. I had memorized my pitch to perfection. How would Baba act in this situation? Serious and confident. Even when he answered questions on a topic he knew nothing about, he made you believe it was his specialty. That was exactly what I sought to emulate.
I saw Eric before he saw me. He was always well-dressed—neat and refined in a charcoal suit with a much lighter-colored casual shirt underneath and leather loafers. He held a briefcase in one hand and greeted me with a firm handshake. When we were seated at the table, he cut straight to the chase.
“Let’s get started. Tell me why you brought me here today.”
Okay, he wasn’t interested in small talk.
I looked at this meeting as a sales meeting. I needed to sell my business, and because my business was just an illusion at the time, I had to sell myself. When you’re a start-up, people need to like you to like your vision. Building relationships will always be a key part of building your success. So when Eric brushed away the small talk I got very apprehensive, and my confidence wavered.
I anxiously handed him a copy of the business plan, and we started to go through it page by page. I sounded awful. I heard myself talking faster, breathing faster, and muttering “um” every other sentence. Maybe I had practiced too much. Would I have been better off winging it? After the fourth page, he held up his hand and firmly said, “Stop.”
My heart was beating like a drum. Shit. Eric hates it, I thought. Then he said, “Tala, you clearly can’t write a business plan. No offense, but this is dreadful. I tried reading it last night and didn’t make it past the second page.” Well, thanks for the blunt letdown! I had only spent hundreds of hours and three weeks camping out at Barnes & Noble creating it, and it still sucked!
After a long silence, he finally said, “Forget about the logistics. Why don’t you tell me about your plan—your personal plan? What do you envision for your company?”
Forget about the logistics? That was all that I had researched. My entire business plan consisted of market research, fashion history, and all that factual yet one-dimensional stuff you can find in books and articles. I guess learning about the history of polka dots wasn’t going to help me in this situation. I needed to bring out my street smarts. I was on a scorching hot seat, and I had no choice but to deliver the pitch of a lifetime.
I took a sip of my drink to buy myself a few seconds. I knew exactly what I wanted, but were my dreams too big? He was a person who could either make or break my dream. My legs shook, and my palms started to sweat. I put my hands on my legs firmly in an effort to get them to stop shaking. The convulsions were something I had never experienced before. Stop. Stop. Stop.
I finally said, “Well… I’m going to tell you what I feel in my heart. Don’t judge me. I may sound crazy.” I pulled out the T-shirts and showed him what I had created in my bedroom. I told him about my friends and I being arrested. I explained how that event inspired me to start a fashion business to empower women to follow their dreams and celebrate freedom. He stared at me through his thick glasses with his arms crossed. At some points he nodded his head, indicating that he understood what I meant—or perhaps it was a “fuck-my-life” headshake from how bored he was. But it didn’t matter. Voicing how passionate I was about my mission, and how deeply it came from within my soul, felt incredible. All of a sudden the shaking ceased, and I felt a kind of relief blossom from within myself.
Then he abruptly said, “Okay, that’s enough.” My heart plummeted to the bottom of my gut. Did I lose him again? God, I suck at this.
Eric grabbed his whiskey glass from the bottom and swirled the ice in it. Then he said, “Here’s the thing. I don’t know much about the fashion industry, but there is something about your passion that I can’t overlook. I see the fire inside you. I can feel it pouring out of your skin.”
I thought it was a polite way of rejecting my business plan. I was trying really hard to keep a confident face and not cry from embarrassment. He calmly looked down at his cell while I was shaking, once again, in my pumps. I seriously considered grabbing his phone and throwing it out the window.
After about a minute, he said confidently, “Let’s do it.” All the air left my lungs in one giant gasp. I could feel my face shaking from my effort not to scream in excitement. Before he could even finish his sentence, I was already picnicking on cloud nine, envisioning my future, surrounded by my T-shirts, a brand-new design studio, staff, fashions shows… Then Eric interrupted that vision by asking, “How much do you need to start this business?”
Well, that’s a thought. I had no idea. Numbers kept flashing in my head, but I didn’t know which one to choose. I didn’t want to say a number that was too high because I was afraid he would walk away.
Eric insisted, “Come on. Give me a number.”
I said, “Twenty thousand.”
He asked, “How much equity will you give up for that number?”
I said the first number that popped into my head, without calculating any business terms. “Three percent.”
Eric started laughing hysterically. Shit, I thought. That was too low. He was laughing so much that he had tears in his eyes, and I had to fight away my humiliation. Then he took out a pen from his jacket pocket and grabbed the dampened napkin that was underneath his whiskey glass. He wrote: “I, Eric R. XXX, will invest $20,000 in Tala Raassi’s T-shirt line for 3 percent of the company.” Then he signed the bottom of the napkin and handed it to me. I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the soggy white napkin. Was this the start of my glamorous destiny?
“Is that it?” I asked.
“I will have someone from my staff draft a legit contract tomorrow and send it to you. My signature on the napkin shows you my commitment to this. Now it’s up to you to figure out how to make this successful. You have a lot of work ahead of you.” Then he stood up, shook my hand, and said, “Thank you for dinner. I have an early meeting tomorrow.” He walked out of the restaurant leaving me alone with my thoughts. I had just survived an earthquake of emotions.
I stared out the window at people walking through the bustling streets of Georgetown and attempted to process what had just happened. Getting a successful businessman to invest in my business at twenty-one years old had appeared impossible. But I had conquered my fear and managed to secure a freedom that I never thought I would be able to get. This was the kind of support that I needed to move forward in my hopes of inspiring young women through fashion.
It is very rare (but, fortunately, becoming less so) that a young person has the self-esteem to maneuver through life as an adult businessperson. But if you’re open to the unexpected, life will always shed light on an area of opportunity. You have to identify that opportunity when it comes and realize why it’s there to serve you. Once you identify your open door, you must plan a course of action toward that light to manifest the destiny that you crave. Eric was a guy I met in a nightclub, but he ended up becoming my investor with a contract written on a soggy napkin.