Set aside, for a moment, that Blake Lively is very famous.
Let’s tell a story that so many entrepreneurs have lived:
It started with the dinner parties. Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds (yes, fine, also very famous), hosted them for their friends. Lively over-saw everything: the appetizers, entrées, desserts. Lively loves to cook and loves the meal’s procession, too, with its beginning, middle, and end. Like a great movie, a great dinner party abides by a narrative arc.
In 2018, the couple’s parties took on a new narrative. Reynolds had purchased an ownership stake in Aviation Gin, so when friends came to dinner, they wanted to try some. Lively oversaw that, too. Lively doesn’t drink but wanted to make cocktails—and yet, when she bought mixers from grocery stores, she was disgusted by their taste. She thought she could do better, so she started mixing fruit. Friends raved, but Lively wasn’t satisfied. “It’s easy to make a delicious drink if you muddle a bunch of blackberries or raspberries and put some mint in there,” she says. “But it’s harder when you want it to be more subtle and crisp and clean.”
It became a project. She and Reynolds experimented on the nights and weekend afternoons they weren’t hosting—Lively tasting the mix on its own, Reynolds blending it with some Aviation—and then she brought her best results to their next party.
The raves changed. Lively’s mixers weren’t just amazing, her friends said. They had become professional grade.
You should sell these, they said.
Now you see the familiar story. It’s one that’s launched countless entrepreneurs: But Lively thought selling her mix was ridiculous. She was a full-time actor and fuller-time mom, who loved her family and career and nights hosting friends. She mixed cocktails because she loved to. It’d be weird to.
