Grown-Up Gigs Ellie Scarborough, dumpee-turned-founder of Pink Kisses

Grown-Up Gigs Ellie Scarborough, dumpee-turned-founder of Pink Kisses Betty, the Pink Kisses mascot. Reminds me of Nancy the Ballerina Nurse! One of my clients recently broke off her engagement. While it was obviously heartbreaking, she knew it was for the right reasons and she had a good head on her shoulders about the whole thing. However, she sent me a link to Pink Kisses, a a smart and thoughtful community  who promises to help you get over any guy faster stronger than ever before. I knew I had to pick Ellie Scarboroughs brain (and chastise her for not being there to help me through a major dumpfest in 2005) and find out how she built this quirky, successful, lovable, service-giving (in more ways than one!) business. 1. What did you wanna be when you grew up? I wanted to be a journalist on TV, just like my dad, whos been on air in New York for decades.  And thats exactly what I did: I got into broadcast journalism right after college, and worked my way through several media markets until I hit my goal of landing in a Top Ten market before the age of 30.  For me, that market turned out to be Houston, which is where I was living when a guy broke my heart and, without realizing it, gave me the idea for my company, Pink Kisses. 2. In your amazeballs video, you mentioned that Pink Kisses was born after you realized your recent dumper wasnt gonna come back to ya with flowers so you decided to send them to yourself. Genius! Lots of my readers and clients have a seed of an idea, but the actual implementation is overwhelming. How did you make that seed into a reality? Where did you start? It occurred to me that there wasnt really anything out there online to help a girl like me get through the stuff I was dealing with.  So, once the idea for Pink Kisses started to really take hold in my brain, I started moving forward with it just by talking to girlfriends and seeing if the need was real.  When I realized it was, I started brainstorming all the things I could offer, and then the development stage came creating tools, developing content, picking a name, and buying the URL. Once I started working on it, I never really stopped.  It was zero to sixty and go, go, go. 3. You  offer consulting services, merch, and an array of products (like flowers and action texts!).  How do/did you decide what you want to provide, and is there ever a fear that its too all-over-the-place? Really, the heart of what PK offers can be found in three main things: the Betty Plan (a daily email with action steps and points of inspiration and encouragement), the texts a little virtual product called the Kiss Him Goodbye. In fact, youll see us focusing more and more on these products more in the future. But! No two women are exactly the same, and not all of us deal with stress in the same fashion either. I believe in helping women in all kinds of different ways so thats where the stylist, chocolates and flowers come in. Sometimes we need a little pampering, sometimes we need tough advice, sometimes we need straight-up encouragement, and sometimes we need a taste of all of the above.  Pink Kisses tries to cover all the bases, and now were hosting an online community calle d Bettyville, named after the PK mascot, where women can come share their stories with others who are going through something similar and want to talk about it.  I really want to reach women from every angle and give them the tools they need to bounce back and really find their inner bombshell. 4. Your Press page is as long as my leg. How do you get yourself out there and have the media take note? Ha!  Its true PK has gotten a lot of great press, which has been awesome in terms of helping it grow.  It comes down to working hard and working smart, really. To be honest, I set some lofty goals right from the start and then did everything in my power to achieve them. It helped that my background was in media, so I had connections and skills in that arena.  I knew what reporters and producers needed in order to put their stories together, so I took that old saying work with what youve got and really lived it.  I was incredibly open about my personal story since I knew a lot of women could relate to heartbreak and disappointment, and I think that drew people both the press and the audience itself into the concept right from the start. 5. If you can have your present self give your pre-Pink Kisses self one piece of advice, what would it be? Oh, its as simple as this: in the words of Winston Churchill, Never, never, never give up.