“If you have all of these costs and everything is adding up, your bottom line is going to be red,” she said on “The Breakfast Club. “But what I didn’t know is when we were growing the company, everything I’m just signing my name on personal guarantee because nobody ever thinks about the business that it will fail. Nobody thinks like, ‘OK, this ain’t going to work one day, so don’t do that.’ Especially not me.”
Cole also said in the podcast interview that she filed an assignment for the benefit of creditors, which she described as “bankruptcy’s first cousin,” to restructure the business out of court. She said this cleaned her cap table and led to her losing ownership of the company and her position as CEO. The estate took control of Slutty Vegan and its assets to sell them to pay off debt. After 43 days, she regained control of the company, buying it under “Ain’t Nobody Coming to See You, Otis LLC” — named after a quote from the popular 1998 film “The Temptations.”
“Who else’s going to buy Slutty Vegan except for me? So 43 days later, I bought the company, but here’s the kicker. After I bought the company, I’m like, ‘OK, cool. Everything is good.’ Next thing I know, the creditors are coming after me personally because I’m the party responsible from the old co,” she recalled on “The Breakfast Club.” “So even though the old co is dead and I don’t have to deal with the old co no more, they’re coming after me ’cause they like, ‘All right, she’s a public figure. She got it. She can pay for it.’ But smart entrepreneurs know that you don’t really hold no assets in your personal name. On paper, I ain’t got nothing personally and as it should be. So, OK. All right. You have to file for bankruptcy ’cause I got lawsuits.”
