Show True Grit with Carol Strickland

Meet my high school lacrosse teammate Carol Strickland who has launched a side hustle that honors her dad's legacy, connects her to interest in fishing and capitalizes on her fascination with mermaids. Carol shares how she researched the spirits marketplace and landed on her concept of premium handcrafted gluten-free Mermaid Vodka. Leveraging her corporate sales experience with BMW and the courses she took as part of her MBA, she was able to quickly go to market with her niche business. She shares how all of her experiences to date have prepared her for a different competitive and complex industry as an entrepreneur. Her two year journey is netting results today and the future is bright for her company.

She talks about all of the decisions that she had to make as she was creating her company and how she evaluated each aspect of her firm to include the team she's put together to make the business a go. You'll learn why she decided to sell a gluten free product and how she did 3 way blind taste testing to ensure her product was competitive against well known brands such as Tito's, Ketel One, Grey Goose and Belvedere. She shares how challenging the industry is and how events have been critical to launching her product in Florida. We discuss her marketing outreach to the fishing community and finding a distributor to get the registered brand into the retail space.

Carol also shares her personal Brave Girl story as a breast cancer "thriver" and how she used her true grit to put her on the other side of her cancer diagnosis. We talk about how important it is to take care of your health and get the required screenings. Learning there are no guarantees in life, Carol's perspective shifted and allowed her to have the courage to take the leap and believe in herself with launching Mermaid Vodka. We also talk about the popular trend in mermaids and how that has given her additional sales opportunities for Mermaid Vodka, to include merchandise with her logo. I know that you will love listening to my conversation with one of my favorite mermaids and brave girls, Carol Strickland. So let's go!