{"id":17080,"date":"2017-05-04T22:30:32","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T02:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=17080"},"modified":"2017-05-04T22:30:32","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T02:30:32","slug":"whipped-goodness-washica-shica-hagood-little-96","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/whipped-goodness-washica-shica-hagood-little-96\/","title":{"rendered":"Whipped goodness: Washica \u201cShica\u201d Hagood Little \u201996"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Clemson<\/a>Shica Hagood Little saw her waistline expand as she was drinking multiple cups of sugar-and-cream-filled cups of coffee while teaching and working on her Ph.D. in education leadership at Grand Canyon University. But Little wasn\u2019t ready to cut coffee from her routine. Something had to give. That\u2019s when she got in her kitchen and started from scratch.
\nShe bought cream, butter, spices and vanilla and blended it with a hand blender. \u201cIt came out horribly,\u201d she said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t perform the way it should and didn\u2019t taste the way it should,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I started researching.\u201d
\nMore than 2,000 batches later, she\u2019s the proud creator of \u201cDr. Shica\u2019s Healthy Surprises,\u201d which includes \u201cIncredi-Whip,\u201d a coffee creamer, fruit dip and whipped cream in one. \u201cInitially the product was called \u201cCoffee Whip,\u201d but once I started working with a couple of the stores and buyers, I decided it should be not only for coffee drinkers, but for everyone,\u201d she said. The product doesn\u2019t include artificial colors or flavors, high fructose corn syrup, carrageenan or gluten. With many of the ingredients that were going into her 1,000-calorie cup of coffee gone, Little said she was able to drop about 40 pounds using her product instead.
\nThe next step was to bring Incredi-Whip to the masses. Little saw an audition for \u201cHatched\u201d on the CW network, where entrepreneurs pitch their brands to business moguls. Her pitch was a success, and she partnered with investors Mark Koops, \u201cHatched\u201d TV executive producer, and Freddy Cameron, retail expert and host of season 1 \u201cHatched,\u201d to bring her product to Walmart, Sam\u2019s Club and Kroger. \u201cWhat that show did for me is amazing,\u201d she said. \u201cThey have consumers come in and try your product so you have real-time feedback, and they tell you what you have to do to get on shelves.\u201d
\nLittle has gone on to appear on another show called \u201cMVP: Most Valuable Partner\u201d on Verizon\u2019s Go90 television, where she earned the endorsement of basketball star Kevin Durant and his mother, as well as three other sports stars on the series. Little\u2019s research showed Durant\u2019s mother was an avid coffee drinker, and he was going to 7-Eleven every night to get her a coffee.
\nLittle knew she had her hook. \u201cI didn\u2019t know if any of them wanted to work with me, but they all worked with me.\u201d Little said she always dreamed of being \u201csomebody\u201d and going to California to lead her life. In October she was able to make her dream a reality and work full time for her brand that\u2019s helped her rub elbows with industry titans and earn superstar endorsements.
\n\u2014 Julia Sellers<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shica Hagood Little saw her waistline expand as she was drinking multiple cups of sugar-and-cream-filled cups of coffee while teaching and working on her Ph.D. in education leadership at Grand Canyon University. But Little wasn\u2019t ready to cut coffee from her routine. Something had to give. That\u2019s when she got in her kitchen and started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":17018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[881,882,994,1020,1579],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-17080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","tag-cw-spring-2017","tag-cw-spring-2017-alumni-profile","tag-diversity","tag-dr-shicas-heathly-surprises","tag-incredi-whip"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/04\/Profile-Shica-Little.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17080"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}