Today we’d like to introduce you to Surena Mitchell.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Surena. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I graduated college in May of 2015 with a BA in Public Relations. I walked across the stage with no job and did not know what I was going to do next. I finally got a job working in Atlanta, GA and I was so excited about finally getting out of South Carolina and moving to a big city.
When I finally moved to Atlanta in August and started my new job, I realized that I got myself in a horrible situation and I was stuck. I HATED my job. It was horrible and nothing that I thought I would be doing. It was to the point that me and my roommate (who also worked with me) would literally cry every morning going to work and we would catch ourselves going into each other’s room to give the other a pep talk about why we should get out of bed and do life that work day. My first full time job was just not where I needed to be and I took the decision to quit my job.
Crazy right? How could I quit my job and I have bills to pay for. Well the answer was that I walked my faith and trusted God. I felt like he wasn’t going to let me fail and was gonna make a way to provide for me. Within a month of me quitting my job, I received a position working for a Fortune 500 company and took my talents to Macon, GA. I was finally making the money I deserved and I thought I couldn’t be happier. I was wrong. I was MISERABLE. I hated my life even more than I did before. It was a couple of months of living in Macon that I was laid off from my job. I had mixed emotions about this. I was happy to finally be getting the hell up out of Macon, but I didn’t know where I was going. I had cancelled my lease and only had a severance package for a certain amount of time to allow me to live. What do I do?
It was then that I became a couch hopper. Yep me. How is it that the girl who has never had an issue with money, always had her own place (meaning not living with her parents) and always was known to be shopping or having new clothes ended up with nothing? My life wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed to have a perfect life and travel and be this role model. I wasn’t…yet.
I used to be so embarrassed to tell people my story and my situation. Who would respect or remotely be interested in somebody who sleeps on couches and has her entire closet in her car? But I never let on to others that I was struggling or that I was in a horrible place in life. I kept a smile on my face and put up a front that eventually had to be put down if I wanted to progress in life and be the person that I am now.
After a couple months of sulking and feeling sorry for myself, I knew that something had to change. I can’t depend on somebody else to give me money (meaning a 9-5) so what do I do?
Well for starters, I went to church. Going to church is a weekly thing for me, but this time I went to church more times in a week than usual. I decided to attend different church than I usually attend with a friend of mine and heard a sermon called Great Faith. I left out of church that day feeling so empowered and like I could conquer the world and one thing that I took from the sermon was that it takes great faith to start over after you have fallen. And that’s what I was gonna do. I was gonna rely on my faith in God to figure out what my next move was.
A week later on March 12th, 2017, my mother and I were talking about life and about why our life wasn’t what we wanted it to be and we realized that we needed to have Great Faith in ourselves and in what we know could be successful and that was hookah catering.
I’ve always enjoyed hookah since I was 19 when my college town opened up a hookah lounge and I kept up the hobby so why not create a job for myself doing what it is that I know and enjoy doing? It was perfect. My mother and I brainstormed until 3 am that night even though we had to be up in a couple of hours for work and we wrote and talked and came up with what would become Exhale Hookah Company.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The process of starting my own business has definitely not been easy but I have had an amazing support system from my friends and family. Some of the struggles that I faced were startup costs. I wanted to be a legitimate business owner and that meant getting a tax id, LLC, the materials, t-shirts, flyers, logos, and everything else in between. But through having Great Faith, we were able to get all the materials and legalities that we needed to launch on April 22.
Other struggles included negativity from others that heard what I was doing and even strangers. It got to the point where I would have to stop reading forums online because I would get discouraged by what people would say about the hookah industry or young business owners and sometimes I would doubt myself and want to give up but I always had the encouragement of my mom to keep me going,
Please tell us about Exhale Hookah Company.
Exhale Hookah Company is a hookah catering and outsourcing company that currently serves AL, GA, NC and SC. We specialize in giving a full-service hookah experience at your event or venue no matter how large or small. Our full-service experience includes us providing all materials (hookahs, shisha, coals and sanitation items), we provide hookah attendants to prepare, sanitize and clean up and teach you how to properly smoke hookah to get the best experience.
As a company, I am most proud of the fact that it is owned by African American women. Being an African American and being a woman is empowering and we are so strong and it is time that we show the world that we are able to be successful business owners while giving back to the community.
Another thing that I am proud of and it also sets us apart from others is that we focus on growth and the betterment of others through having an annual endowment called the Exhale Dream Endowment that is given to a dreamer between the age of 18-26 who has aspirations and a dream that they want to accomplish, but do not have the money to do so. So many great ideas do not come to fruition because of lack of resources and the Exhale Hookah Company wants to help as much as they can. Although smoking has a negative connotation to it and people view the tobacco industry as negative, I wanted to find a way to give back to the community through scholarship and promote entrepreneurship in young adults.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start over, I would do everything the same. I am thankful for the mistakes that I made and lessons that I had to learn. Failing is the best teacher and without making mistakes or doing things the hard way then I would never be able to make the necessary changes for the future.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.exhalehookahcompany.com
- Phone: 864-525-5573
- Email: info@exhalehookahcompany.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exhalehookahcompany/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/exhalehookahcompany/
Image Credit:
Shantell Everson and Adrienne Cooper
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