How to Get Investors on Board: With Carrie Peele
It can be challenging to kick off a new entrepreneurial journey. Finding the most effective resources, the right people, the best team, and generous investors all at once can be daunting.
Our guest on today’s episode of The Frame of Mind Coaching™ Podcast is Carrie Peele. She is the CEO and Co-founder of Jade Lending, a capital fund that helps women and minority entrepreneurs access money to fuel their businesses.
Carrie comes to the show with great stories about her business and a great challenge. Carrie’s greatest challenge is finding the right investors – people who have the same mission and vision as her company. However, her real challenge might be that many candidates haven’t invested before, so they’re afraid to take the leap. She also may not be looking for investors in the right places.
As we discover in our conversation, the solution is right in front of her, and it goes beyond investors!
Four steps to finding investors for your business
Starting up a new entrepreneurial endeavor can be daunting — whether you’re the owner of a small business or a tech-sector employee launching your own app, a new business idea can quickly drain your bank account and strip you of the resources you need to turn your budding business into a successful organization. While the idea of striking out on your own might sound lucrative and exciting, locating the right resources, people, team and, perhaps most importantly, finding investors, can sometimes seem like an impossible task.
To help provide clarity on your path toward entrepreneurial success, we’ve brought in a special guest to discuss the many business successes and challenges she’s experienced in founding her own company. Her name is Carrie Peele, and she serves as the CEO and co-founder of Jade Lending, a capital fund assisting women and minority entrepreneurs in drumming up resources to support their exploits.
Carrie has had her own struggles with finding investors for her business. If you’ve been having similar challenges — and finding investors for your business seems impossible — stick with us for a deep-dive on how to overcome your own financial challenges.
1. Start without a “Plan B”
Peele began her experience as an entrepreneur during an extremely daunting time. As a newly-divorced mother of two children in her early twenties, Peele understood that others in her position may have given up. Instead, she chose to borrow $15,000 on several credit cards — at 27 percent interest, no less! — in order to fund her first luxury car transportation service.
That service ended up working out: Peele sold the business for seven figures after a successful golf tourney transportation stint in order to fund her next venture. Her thoughts on the process? “There was never any plan B ever,” says Peele. “We don't have plan B's in our house, we just go for it.”
That part is important: while you might feel like something is stopping you from starting your own business, it’s important to go in knowing you could fail, but not planning to fail. See the difference? Knowing failure is an option makes you human, but planning for failure encourages you to pull out the moment things get tough.
So, if you’re lacking in investors, it might not seem wise to take out high-interest loans from credit corporations… and we’re certainly not suggesting you should do it. But you should have the same kind of can-do attitude that Peele has, because if you believe you can make your entrepreneurial goals a reality, chances are good you’ll find a way to do exactly that.
2. Consider alternatives to your de-facto business
Business models that don’t adapt fail. It’s as simple as that. Peele knows this — and that’s why she invites all of the women who borrow from her funding startup to consider alternate possibilities when their initial ideas may no longer be viable.
For instance, one investor worked in the catering business. At 29, things were going well for her… until the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, and threw a wrench in her plans. Without any in-person meetings, there were very few people to cater for.
Fortunately, after running the numbers on alternative options, Peele found a lucrative path forward: “One of the things that we shared with her was an idea… [I said], ‘Hey, what about a food truck business?’" With a top line profitability of 52 percent, things looked good for Peele’s client. That resulted in a $65,000 loan that has helped her client acquire the resources required to get her food truck business underway.
3. Align with those who align with your values
In her recent appearance on our podcast, Peele notes that her own company, Jade Lending, sometimes has difficulty attracting the right kinds of investors. Because the business largely supports minority women, Peele has consistently approached women-owned firms to secure funding for her lending. However, many of those firms are not onboard with Peele’s philanthropic interest rates, and as a result, many investors decline.
But what if Peele approached more philanthropically aligned groups? Instead of simply targeting investors who are looking to make a return on their lending, might it make sense for Peele to hone in on those who share her vision of providing low-interest loans to women looking to create their own startup opportunities?
The lesson here is simple. If you’re working on finding investors for your business, consider expanding your scope of pursuit to find those who are onboard with your mission. Don’t just look for people with deep pockets; instead, look for people who want to help you succeed at what you’re trying to accomplish.
4. Dip your toes in first
Question: when you’re approaching investors, how much are you asking for? If you’re not getting any responses from your initial ask, you might be shooting a little too high — to start, anyway. Instead, why not get your foot in the door, and go for a bigger ask later?
For example, maybe you’re asking for $50,000 upfront from a large lender. Because you’re a new company with relatively little history of paying back a large sum like that, you might get turned away at the door. However, if you ask for only $5,000 — a “throwaway” sum that a large firm is more likely to agree to — and prove that you know how to spend that money wisely, you’ll build up a better track record with that lender. After you’ve repaid your initial ask, chances are good you’ll be in better standing to ask for more.
Find investors for your business by attacking the problem in new ways
If there’s anything you should take away from Peele’s experience in providing and seeking funding for new business ventures, it’s that it pays to attack old problems in new ways. When it comes to finding business investors, if you’re running up against a wall over and over again and coming up short, now is the time to start climbing the wall — not tackling it.
If you want more advice like this, there’s two places you should go: first, listen to our full conversation with Peele on her experience as a business owner, investor and investee. Then, check out our personalized coaching program to learn about new ways to start, run and manage your budding new venture. We hope it helps!
To learn more about managing your start up, check out this episode we did with John Mautner.