Fairytale Lemonade

DIY. We all know what that means. Do It Yourself. It’s
usually applied to home improvement projects. Like, “Why pay a
professional to tile your bathroom when you can DIY.”


Well, whether or not you can tile your bathroom as well as a tile
layer is debatable, but there’s one thing that a number of
people, at some point decide they just have to DIY - and that’s
life. Especially work life.


You can stay in your job, doing what you do, and be perfectly
happy. But if you’re not happy with the way things are, if you
feel unfulfilled, and you wish you could change your current
situation, well, you can make the leap and DIY.


Ronnie Anderson has a great job. He’s the Laboratory Technical
Supervisor of Baton Rouge General, at the Ascension and
Bluebonnet locations.


But when his daughter asked him why there were no princesses who
looked like her in the fairy tales he was reading to her, and
Ronnie couldn’t find any anywhere, he picked up his pen and
started writing.


To date Ronnie’s written six books of fairy tales, united by the
mythical Anboran, a place where young readers can find a diverse
collection of people, and princesses of color.


Taking DIY to a whole other level, Ronnie also founded the
company Rogue Star Publishing, to publish his books. 


Nenette Gray called herself “a legal drug dealer” for the 12
years she was in pharmaceutical sales. Then, when pharma
decided to part ways with her, Nenette decided to turn lemons
into lemonade, and created Lemonade Creative Marketing.


Lemonade does marketing for brands like Exxon Mobil, Blue Cross,
Baton Rouge Community College, and many more. But you won’t
see Nenette’s marketing ideas on billboards or TV. You find them
on items like coasters, coffee mugs, phone cases, and thousands
of other pieces of promotional material.


A company can go online and get a million keychains made with
their logo on it, but that kind of DIY is a bit like being your
own bathroom tiler. It’s not the same as having Nenette’s
creative marketing team devise a campaign of inventive
promotional items specifically for your company and your clients.


We’re all looking for inspiration. It’s why we gaze at the
sunset, read fairytales, meditate, and dream about
retiring. You can find inspiration in all those
activities. But you can also be inspired by people. Everyday
people.


Here in Baton Rouge we don’t have a culture of celebrity. So, you
never know, the person shopping next to you at the store, or
stuck in traffic in the car behind you, might have created a
mythical kingdom for children. Or be creating inventive
promotional marketing for one of the biggest oil companies in
America.


They might be Ronnie Anderson or Nenette Gray.


Ronnie and Nenette both grew up here, and live here, like the
rest of us. But unlike most of us, their imagination, creativity,
and courage to chart their own path is inspirational.


This episode of Out to Lunch is hosted by Olivia Stewart, CEO
of Oxbow Rum Distillery. The show was recorded live over
lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from
this by Erik Otts at itsbatonrouge.la.


 


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