Sent out an email to Jessica at Greenlight Bookstore, who had capitalized their business with community funding. She's out of town until the 10th, but hopefully I will hear back from her soon after. Got her information from Amy Cortese, the author of Locavesting. Hoping I can learn a lot here.
Scheduled a lunch with Amy Cortese at Rucola for next Wednesday. Also very excited to see what she can tell me about the brooklyn local finance scene.
Spent some time reviewing securities offering exemptions and options for small businesses. Made a small business securities grid to prepare for meeting with BedStuy organic. Met with Darell Brown and Evelyn Oliver of Organic BedStuy to discuss their financing options. They are a startup, but are trying to create an organic grocery in BedStuy, which is a virtual food desert, so hopefully that works out. Fortunately and unfortunately, they are seeking a relatively small slug of capital ($85,000), so they may have some difficulty getting any investment. Very interesting to meet them and hope they do well.
Discussion with Mark O. today about the possibility of coding the back-end of the platform, which he says shouldn't be too complicated. Am interested to see what type of product he can put together and see if it can form the foundation of the site.
Swapped some emails with James G. about setting up the servers and the PayPal sandbox. Hope to pull the trigger on those arrangements as soon as I get the incorporation documents back from the NYSOS. Hurry up!
The biggest issue is to just get out there and start talking to businesses. I need to figure out a game plan for this, I am stalling and I don't have any good reason for it other than just being nervous about the process. I'm hoping to spark that process by creating a few more organic relationships that get my foot in the door rather than blindly soliciting, so we shall see how that goes for a couple more weeks, otherwise I will need to just suck it up and get going.
***
This is also the third day after we watched "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead", which is a documentary about an aussie who decided he was too fat and too sick and went on a 60 day juice fast across the United States. Pretty remarkable stuff. I was entirely skeptical and definitely had the "oh here we go again" thought once I saw him making juice in the back of his SUV...but after the first 30 minutes I was hooked. It was fascinating to see the changes he underwent. Even more fascinating is his encounter with a morbidly obese truck driver who he happened to encounter at a truck stop and the unbelievable transformation the truck driver underwent after attempting his own juice fast. Pathos galore. I didn't pull this hard for Rudy. (well maybe)
In any case, Kristen and I were so enthralled we decided to go on a 3-day mini fast:
Cooked food once a day.
No alcohol.
No meat.
No eggs.
No dairy.
No fish.
No flour.
No refined sugar.
No simple carbohydrates.
Lots of green smoothies and fresh juices.
I have to admit -- this shit is difficult. I find myself hungry ALL of the time. Even after eating a barrel of vegetables, my stomach feels oddly hollow. I am grumpy. I am just sorta uncomfortable and not really in the mood to eat another raw piece of vegetable.
That being said, I do feel strangely better that I am just filling my body entirely with plants, lots and lots of greens, lots of water, nutrients and nothing refined. Also, even though the first day was kinda shitty, the second day feels normal. Lets see how the third day goes.
(Why only three days? Visiting Kristen's family down at the shore this weekend and it's unlikely that we are going to be eating only vegetables and not drinking anything. And we don't want to have a conversation about it. I, myself, find myself very easily annoyed by dietary zealots and raw foodists and juice people and fasters, etc. I just am curious and already fully subscribe to "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Why not see how it goes?)
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