INTRODUCTION
In November 2018, I launched a campaign called “How Chic Are You?” — a global challenge to celebrate kindness, curiosity, and acts of giving.
When I saw potential of virality from Bucket Challenge, Mannequin challenge, I decided that I could combine love for making the world a better place and to connect it to my brand. I was eager to take $2000 credit to reward person with the most inspiring stories of generosity.
HERE IS THE CHALLENGE:
How Chic are you?
☑ Finding happiness in giving
- Making others happy
- Supporting local businesses
- Helping non-profits
☑ Celebrating achievements
☑ Constantly learning (improving skills, acquiring others)
☑ Embracing other Cultures (through learning about different traditions, communicating with others, traveling, trying authentic food)
☐ Tried Chic Zefir (Zefirchic® or Зефирчик is only available through zefirchic.com)
QUESTIONS FOR THE CHALLENGE:
Finding happiness in giving
- 3 times your actions were meaningful and joyful to others without you waiting for something in return?
How are you being the source of positive changes for yourself and your community?
Maybe you are performing acts of kindness on the regular basis? Perhaps you are standing against bullying and preventing it whenever possible? That includes stopping people harassing others because of physical appearance, race/ethnicity, gender, disability, religion, sexual orientation.
Maybe you are supporting Kickstarter creators by helping them to fulfil their dreams and ideas, achieve their goals to make lives of others happier or solve some of the previously unsolved problems? Maybe you are super helpful on the social platforms giving precious professional detailed advice or a good point of view based on your experience, for no charge at all?
- 3 or more charities you helped/ supported or planning to contribute your time/ energy/ money towards? Remember that Help is not based on giving money. It starts with being ready to spread your resources, including time and abilities towards someone else happiness. Maybe you are participating in charity events, fundraisers, volunteering for good causes?
Keep in mind that 4 drinks at the bar or 8-10 cups of a purchased beverage equals about $40 that could significantly brighten someone’s life. If you have that amount of money for yourself, you can give it to those in need. Feel free to explain why particular foundations mean so much to you, educate others, Share it with World!
- 3 or more local businesses you tried out and enjoyed? It could be an eatery, a local craft shop, a beauty salon or anything else.
- Give some Examples on how you are embracing other cultures.
Are you attending festivals, social gatherings, maybe you are reading about other ethnicities in book groups, watching YouTube videos about customs, celebrations and traditions all over the world? Maybe you are tutoring foreigners to perfect their language and to be accepted by society?
- Are you constantly learning and educating yourself?
Getting smarter? More creative? More skilled? Learning from online, book or real face-to-face mentors? Attending seminars, trade shows, online courses, exploring journals and other sources of knowledge? There are no achievements without education. The more skills and knowledge you acquire and expand, the higher the chances for you to be great in the chosen field.
- What are your recent achievements or steps towards your inspiring great goals?
Maybe you decided and started executing exercising monthly, may be running for a mile, acquired a new skill or tried a healthy habit? Tell about doing your personal best and celebrate the great feeling of being acknowledged for being awesome.
MY ANSWERS:
1. Finding happiness in giving
For me being chic is trying to make the world a happier place.
I opened a coffee shop as my home away from home for residents and tourists of Portland, ME. At my café Sip of Europe which has been around for over 2.5 years, I am known to be giving free samples, nice discounts, meals giveaways etc. Each espresso drink in a cup comes with a free biscotti as a lovely treat.
I love seeing the smiles on my guests’ faces when I bring them their delicious food. The same would apply to creating delicious crepe cakes for my customers’ orders in Maine and Massachusetts.
I am no stranger to participating in charity events and fundraisers, I am also donating money to different causes and hope you do too.
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southern Maine
• Habitat for Humanity
• Girl Scouts of Maine
• Portland Community Free Clinic
• Organization DINE OUT for Equality (EQME)
• Seeds of Peace
• GREATER HOUSTON COMMUN (hurricane fund)
• Organization ONE AMERICA APPEAL (hurricane fund)
• HISPANIC FEDERATION (hurricane fund)
• Delivering Good in support of Delivering Good’s Disaster Relief efforts (hurricane fund)
• Muscular Dystrophy Association
• Immigration Counseling Service – Unaccompanied Children program
In addition to that I enthusiastically support Kickstarter creators, including some of the great local (Maine) entrepreneurs (Sticky Sweet is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, check them out!).
2. Embracing other cultures
For me traveling and learning about other people’s lives is through meaningful conversations, food, sightseeing, and getting to learn the customs. I am happy to share my heritage, culture and vision through my café, my website about breathtaking Russian city St. Petersburg (https://web.archive.org/web/20190602114422/http://glad-to-meet-you.com/) and travel websites such as Tripadvisor.
3. Constant education
I am always learning, trying new things, researching, developing. The range goes from learning cooking techniques or IT knowledge to getting acquainted with the last trends in business world.
I love the educational portal Coursera, reading thematical researches and trends, watching Ted talks, getting inspired by Food Network; I enjoy business-related shows such as The Profit, Shark Tank.
I was happy to see one of the Sharks from Shark Tank, Mr. Wonderful in person at Kevin on Wealth seminar.
4. Celebrating achievements
Fun fact: during senior years in school, I was honored to be added to the list of talented Russian youth as I won National educational Championship and received Presidential Grand Prix.
In 2015 without any business experience and a very small budget I opened the coffee cart in Maine USA and then the café which has been highly rated by customers for over 2.5 years.
This year the café was awarded with Portland Phoenix title as best crepes In Portland. That award has an incredible value as Portland was recently named the main food city of the USA. Consider a very tough competition in a foodie city between amazing food establishments and mobile vendors. You can find the list of my favorites on my café’s website sipofeurope.com
HOW IT WENT
I found platform to host my questions called Rafflecopter. It turned out to be a website where people participated in everything by clicking without thoughts or giving it a minute to read, scrolled endlessly for fast rewards.
I still chose a random winner and was waiting to hear back from that person. That person never contacted me, I did not have to take the credit and I continued making world a better place through my hospitality jobs.
The whole experience made me realize that people love to be rewarded, yet very few platforms connect rewards with purpose.
That realization became my mission: to build an ecosystem that rewards curiosity and inspires people to explore, learn, and uplift others – through travel, food, and culture.
Now I call it a Generosity challenge. I realized that it made me do a lot of self-reflection, figure out my moral compass, my values, my business pillars.
VIDEO FOR THE CHALLENGE
Here is my video that I filmed for the challenge. You can see the script below:
Hi! My name is Yulia, I own this coffee shop Sip of Europe in Portland, Maine. Welcome to #How chic are you challenge!
I nominate creators, makers, dreamers, achievers to show your talents, accomplishments, inspirations, mottos, awesome facts and goals, your positive impact on other people’s lives.
Also winning a $2000 gift card to the Apple store is a no joke!
To get an opportunity to win this awesome prize, I challenge you to share information about your chicness. I have created a quiz which will be your entry into the challenge. The more points you get, the more chances you have to win. You can also get additional chances to win by sharing this challenge with your friends.
If after completing the quiz you feel like you are investing your time, your money, your passions, your skills into activities that make others happier, better, you are already a winner. You are chic, amazing and wonderful and you deserve to be rewarded.
Oh, you know what else is chic?
This treat, Chic Zefir, or in this case ZefirChic Roses. I’ve created, developed and perfected this Chic treat.
Thousands of treats later and after constant delight and interest from customers and samplers I am pleased to announce that Zefirchic is now available for pre-order on zefirchic.com
My posts about the challenge
