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Lan Ho, founder and CEO of Fat Miilk.
Kindly Lan Ho
Lan Ho worked as a retail pharmacist in Walgreens, earning about $ 120,000 a year before she decided to quit work to create a coffee company.
Getting the role of the pharmacist was a difficult feat. She has experienced a decade of higher education, where she received a Bachelor of Chemistry at Lindenwood University, a Master of Finance at Harvard University and a PhD in the Pharmaceutical College of St. Louis.
Despite everything she had invested, Ho said she feels unhappy, working as a retail pharmacist. One day she had epiphany: “What am I doing in the back of Walgreens, such as hidden from the world?”
“I think this complex effect just woke up every day and was extremely unhappy and unfulfilled (and), it was like this drag in my heart, where I just couldn’t do the pharmacy,” Ho said.
It is the feeling that eventually pushed her to change her life trajectory.
Today, a 35-year-old guy is the founder and CEO of the Vietnamese Coffee Company A greasy cutie that brings more than $ 500,000 a year, according to documents considered CNBC do this.
Refugee roots
Born in Auckland, California, and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, Ho grew up in the household immigrant. Her parents were both fugitives from Vietnam, and they urged her to pursue a pharmacy because they wanted her stability.
“If you have parents who came from a torn war … Many of your most impressive years (is) very in the energy of survival,” Ho said CNBC did it.
“I went to a pharmacy school greatly because my dad thought it … There was the best thing I could do for myself. And I respect him that I wanted to make him proud,” she said.
However, while in a pharmaceutical school, she started to feel very fulfilled and experimented with business ideas on the side. She tried blogging and even tried to open her own fashion company.
“Fat Miilk is not the first company I launched. I actually launched so many other businesses. None of them really took off,” she said.
Ultimately, she realized that she was always a great consumer of coffee throughout her life and was very fascinated by this industry. It became the idea that she went to everything.
“I just love the creativity and expansion of coffee. In the end, I feel like this is such a ritual,” she said. “You see that so many people take on it, and add their own culture, my own sense of sense … And I just always been very fascinated (the coffee industry)”
Drop the pharmacy
In 2018, working on her first retail pharmacist work, Ho also experimented with her coffee business on the side. Until 2019, it included the company, formed LLC and the Fat Miilk market.
And only after the pandemic in 2020, when Ho was postponed for two months from work, she finally found more time to focus on business: “During these two months I launched Fat Miilk, and when they asked me to return, I said” No. “
She left Walgreens and took on the role of Diem in Telehealth, which gave her greater flexibility. Along with using her own funds, she also borrowed money from her loved ones and lived from credit cards to download her coffee company.
“I would say that the first three years … My mental state was definitely a combination (u) feeling inspired. But, for example, it was very changing,” she said.
March 2022 became a turning point for Ho and its business. In that month, the Casting Director of the Gordon Ramsai Stars’ TV shows reached for it to join the program participant.
A couple of weeks later, she flew from Illinois to Los -Angeles, where they filmed the series. Ho ended as a finalist in the competition and had the opportunity to come to Gordon Ramsey about Fat Miilk on television.
“I did everything to the end. I posted (my business) in Gordon Ramsay, and I knew it would attract this national attention … And it was the point when I really started to build,” Ho said. “From the moment I came back from the picture so far, (I decided), we will go with it.”
According to it, she gave Ho two main advantages. Outwardly, it gave her much more trust, and inwardly she got confidence in thinking about her business.
In February 2024, she opened the first Fat Miilk cafe in Chicago. Ho also intends to open a second outlet in Prophet, Illinois in 2026. Third place-and their first store outside the state-also works.
Ho said one of the biggest lessons she learned while traveling is how to take up space and take care of herself along the way.
“It was what allowed me to create new bands and stories for myself, which eventually brought me to where I am now,” she said. “If I were looking for permission, I would still expect.”
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