This weekend I attended the *first ever* Vegan Professional Bootcamp in Berkeley, CA. It was an awesome event! Kudos to Vegan Mainstream and Karin Brighten Events for a job wonderfully done.
I am still so excited that I attended! Amazing business leaders spoke about their business journeys and shared on topics that are so essential not only in a vegan business, but in creating, launching and running a thriving business in general. I’ll say it again…it was awesome and I’m so glad I took the leap to sign up for it! There are five additional bootcamps later this year, including one in LA, and I just may have to attend that one as well.
One kind of “basic” idea I took away and started to implement today was, for lack of better phrasing, “you need to get it together and be vegan 100%.” What does that mean exactly? Well, how this resonated with me was, I eat a vegan diet, yes, that’s true. Some items in my home, however, are not vegan. I don’t add anything non-vegan to my home these days, but I haven’t exactly cleared my space of “lingering non-vegan items.” So what does this entail? For starters, I know there are some shoes that I haven’t worn in awhile but are not vegan. These shoes were made possible because a sad, helpless animal suffered for the creation of something fashionable for me to wear. Yuck and yikes!
So what did I do today? That’s right, I went through my shoe collection. Some shoes I had a hunch were leather and others, to my surprise (and sadness), were also leather. I started going through them and seeing on the bottom or on the inside lining, phrases such as: “leather upper” or “leather sole.” Sounds familiar, right? So, out with the old, ugly and downright gross! And in with the…(nope, not new)…in with the put-my-money-where-my-mouth is.
Today I took to ebay to sell these gross shoes. I know I could trash them, but honestly, they are still wearable. The profits that I make from selling these shoes will go straight to PETA to support all of the work they have done for years to stand up for animals and educate the world on our need to end the cruel treatment of animals.
And to hold myself accountable (and so you know I’m just not full of B.S), here is a screenshot of my ebay postings.
And once they all sell (I’ll drop prices if I have to…I’m new to ebay so I’m learning!) I will post on this blog again with how much I am able to donate to PETA.
So, goodbye non-vegan shoes…hello to more support in PETA…and once I find some great places to buy non-vegan shoes, I’ll post about that too 
Now it’s your turn! What is (or was) the first step you will take to going vegan?
Enjoy!
