When Jasmine Crowe, a serial entrepreneur, learned that 72 billion pounds of food is wasted every year in the United States and 50 million people struggle with hunger, she felt compelled to do something.
With donated spaghetti noodles and hamburger meat and lots of grocery vouchers, Crowe began feeding the hungry every Sunday in her own kitchen in her one-bedroom apartment in Atlanta in 2013.
After years of feeding up to 500 people a week, in 2017 Crowe turned her passion for helping into a business — Goodr, a food waste disposal company that connects restaurants with surplus food to nonprofits that can use the food.
“I had friends and family who were going hungry, and that really pushed me to keep going,” Crowe says.
Building the company wasn’t easy – on the one hand, investors doubted the success of their company. But in 2018, Goodr was worth $7 million, according to PitchBook, and now the company is worth $12 million, Goodr tells CNBC Make It. To date, Crowe has successfully raised over $2.7 million Dollars raised from investors, the company said.
“All the naysayers really motivate me,” Crowe says. “As long as you’re looking for something you love, you shouldn’t give up on your dreams. That’s the biggest thing.”
Here, Crowe shares her advice for overcoming obstacles and building a successful business that you care about.
Know your audience and why they say “no.”
According to PitchBook, women-led companies received only 2.6% of total venture capital funding in the U.S. in 2019. According to ProjectDiane, Black women and entrepreneurs of color receive even less, receiving just 0.64% of total venture capital investment.
“I probably held over 200 meetings to raise the first million dollars for Goodr. I’ve been told, ‘That sounds like a nonprofit,’ ‘Hunger is already being solved,’ ‘Your team isn’t experienced enough and it’s too young,’ ” says Crowe, 37. “Fundraising has helped me wasn’t any fun. It was’nt easy.”
The turning point came, Crowe says, when she really thought about her audience.
“I realized I was talking to cis white men who were never hungry,” she says. “Of course they don’t understand what I’m building. They’ve never had this problem before.”
So in addition to emphasizing that Goodr can help people, Crowe also focused her presentations on numbers, such as how much tax benefits a company could claim by donating its excess food and how much it could get by eliminating the cost of that Eliminating its food waste would save money, she said.
“Learn about all the objections and why people usually say ‘no.’ Once you learn that, it becomes much easier to get to ‘yes,'” she says. “Start learning how to counter these objections.”
Everyone has an idea, it’s all about implementation
“A lot of people have good ideas, but they lack the execution to make them a reality,” Crowe says.
When I brought Goodr on the trip, “I was staying with a friend… (and) she would say that I was on my laptop until 3 a.m. — so much so that my laptop broke,” Crowe says.
“I researched and worked every day. I’m a sole proprietor and I decided to learn everything I could.”
Ask for the right advice
Crowe recommends finding a mentor who can provide insight and guidance based on their experience. But it’s important to be prepared, she says.
“People ask for help but don’t know exactly what they want,” Crowe says. “When you ask people for help, you have to come to the table knowing what you want. It’s important to find mentors, but respect the mentors and their time.”
Find out what motivates you
“I keep going because I don’t want to fail. If I fail, I’ll say, ‘I told you so,'” Crowe says. “Everyone who said, ‘She won’t succeed. It will not work. We will not support them. We will not invest in them.’ They keep me motivated to prove them wrong.”
Additionally, “I knew that every day I was in the store someone would be eating,” Crowe says.
“There were many moments when I was the only person who believed in my company. Even my parents, I love them more than anything, but they are workers. They were not entrepreneurs. There were times when they said, ‘I.’ I don’t know if this will work. Maybe you should get a job. But I continued to believe in myself.
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