You Are What You Harvest
What difference can your seed make in an overcrowded urban environment?
The beginning of every inspirational story starts with an idea, a seed, that slowly grows given just the right amount of water, light and environmental support. How do we then take an idea, a dream, a vision and nurture it to maturity? Its full potential? What are the ideal, but unique and specific seasonal conditions it requires?
Listening to Alicia Ferrer, sole founder of GrüneoBox, a resilient attitude of positivity and self-belief becomes apparent. A woman who started small, but trusted her business instincts while understanding her strengths and weaknesses. Most striking is the stark contrast to how ambitious her idea is, but how she allows herself time to learn, adapt, rest, keep balance and ultimately stay focused through both the stormy and clear weather days.
With a background in Business Administration and Marketing Alicia took all the time she needed in thinking about her DIY urban gardening idea. Although she didn’t yet have a materialized product, she was certain of wanting to have a positive impact with a connection to nature. A trip to South East Asia gave her a fresh perspective of ways to be more conscious of food production and upon returning to Berlin she spent time creating focus groups using various methods in trying to understand the needs and characteristics of her target market.
The starting steps of all entrepreneurial projects are most often the most challenging and crucial. Combined with an urgency and need to see results quickly in order to justify or fuel our own motivation for pursuing a vision and measuring up to expectations, both external and internal, sadly means many seeds are never given a chance to bloom.
Since September 2018, Alicia has developed her organic qualitative product, a starter kit with seeds and instruction for growing your own organic greens, through a number of prototypes, but has also struck a balance between development and the amount of money she has invested.
This ability to take the time to implement feedback as well as know what advice to take and ignore, has made her more resourceful and creative while furthering her trust in herself and remaining true to her vision.
I’m reminded of the analogy of the growing lettuce by Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. How if the lettuce is not growing well, we look for reasons it is not doing well, but we seldom blame the lettuce. We take into consideration the things it needs more or less of in order to thrive and we adapt striving to understand what it needs and how better to care for it.
So often we give our entrepreneurial endeavours and ourselves so much stress under the weight of expectation, comparison and overwhelming responsibility that we suffocate our seeds, our unique visions, that need the space, time and TLC to bloom in a natural, organic and sustainable way.
Alicia is honest about the responsibility of being a sole founder and the advantages and disadvantages that it carries. She too suffers from days of insecurity where her dreams and fears battle each other, but she deliberately includes positive habits into her daily and weekly schedule in order to ensure that she enjoys her daily life outside the constraints of a regular day job. Enough sleep, exercise, reading and hobbies such as art classes allow her to strike a balance during overwhelming periods and provide her with a sense of inner calm. Not being part of a team and having someone to talk to, share opinions and the workload with are challenges of a sole founder, but Alicia is not prepared to rush into including a co-founder who isn’t perfectly matched with the ideals and skills that compliment her own. She knows this will take time and she is prepared to patiently wait, enjoying the time to make her own decisions and trusting that she knows what is best for her vision.
It’s important to remember that your idea is as important, as well as dependent, on your health, creativity, self-confidence and experience that you are steadily gaining.
It is indeed a growing process that requires structure and diligence as much as it needs fun, flexibility, patient feedback and trips back to the drawing board.
This customized lifestyle is definitely a highlight of being an entrepreneur, but one that is usually the first to be sacrificed in pursuit of the business idea. Having monthly goals, a weekly checklist and consciously choosing not to suffer from other people’s expectations of what she should be doing, how fast they believe she should be progressing, have only bolstered Alicia’s sense of self-confidence as she sets and keeps her own momentum on her own terms and at her own pace. This tenacious attitude of self-confidence, self-care and being the biggest believer in her idea has set GrüneoBox up for sustainable success in the long term.
As we all return to a greater awareness and connection to nature, let’s try and keep an image of our vision, a seed, growing in a small space within an urban environment. Why eat from someone else’s garden when you can live the ultimate DIY goal of harvesting that which you yourself nurtured to fruition?
So go ahead and plant that seed of yours and give it the patience, determination and empathy it deserves to flourish. You need only your own permission to start!
Tune in to this savvy, fresh and motivational conversation to learn more about Alicia’s entrepreneurial journey.
FemGems features rising female entrepreneurs from all over the world.
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