What does a handwritten recipe, a jar of barbecue sauce, and sleeping on a Coleman cot in an empty apartment have in common? They're all part of Charlynda Scales' story, and she's not hiding any of it.

Charlynda is an Air Force veteran, TEDx speaker, serial entrepreneur, and the author of Rock Bottom Has a Trampoline. She's the founder and CEO of Mutt's Sauce, a barbecue sauce company born from her grandfather's original 1956 recipe — and a legacy she inherited on a handwritten piece of paper. What she did with that piece of paper is the story of hard work, grief, grit, entrepreneurship, and ultimately, peace.

In this session, Charlynda talks about the grandfather who she called Daddy because he raised her. He was an Air Force veteran whose call sign was Mutt for his ability to make friends anywhere and blend in everywhere. She shares how she turned his recipe into a product while still on active duty, the mentor who believed in her before she fully believed in herself, and what it looked like to show up on magazine covers and television while sleeping on a cot in an empty apartment.

This is a conversation about what it means to let your work speak for itself, to give grace to your own rock bottom moments, and to discover that peace--real, quiet, uncomplicated peace--might be the greatest trampoline of all.

StorySessions — where your story matters.

• Website: charlyndajean.com
• Instagram: @charlyndajean
• Mutt's Sauce: muttssauce.com
• Mutt's Sauce on Instagram: @muttssauce
• 6888 Kitchen Incubator: 6888kitchen.org
• Rock Bottom Has a Trampoline on Amazon: amazon.com/dp/195690669X

Charlynda Scales is a serial entrepreneur, Air Force veteran, TEDx speaker, and author. She is the founder and CEO of Mutt's Sauce LLC — a multi-flavor barbecue sauce company built on her grandfather's original 1956 recipe — and of OH Taste LLC, with its nonprofit arm the OH Taste Foundation. She is also the co-founder of the 6888 Kitchen Incubator in Dayton, Ohio, a shared-use commercial kitchen for food entrepreneurs.

Charlynda and Mutt's Sauce have been featured in Yahoo! Finance, NPR, Forbes, QVC, Men's Journal, CBS News, NBCUniversal, Black Enterprise Magazine, and Military.com. She was also featured in Shark Tank investor Daymond John's bestselling book POWERSHIFT.

Her book, Rock Bottom Has a Trampoline: How to Turn Every Loss into a Win with the Like-Hearted Mentor, was published by W Brand Publishing in October 2023.