The journey of a Founder is never easy but Farah’s mission to solve a problem in this world has led her to learn that you will receive what you need when you show up. Farah realized at a young age that food could bring people together and she has created a space to make that happen.
In this episode we will cover:
- Her journey to solve a problem
- Accelerators
- How the program works
If you would like to learn more about “More Meaningful Meals” or would like to sign up for the waitlist, go to the website.
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The Legalpreneur Podcast is advertising/marketing material. It is not legal advice. Please consult with your attorney on these topics. Copyright Legalpreneur Inc 2022
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Episode 213: More Meaningful Meals with Farrah Al Chammas Transcript
Andrea: [00:00:03] Welcome to the Legalpreneur Podcast. I’m your host, Andrea Sager, founder and CEO of Legalpreneur, Inc. As a serial entrepreneur and someone that works exclusively with small business owners legally protecting their business, I’m dedicated to covering common legal issues faced by business owners, providing you with the business knowledge you need to catapult your businesses growth and showing you just how some of the world’s most elite entrepreneurs have handled these legal and business issues themselves in true attorney fashion. The information in this episode is not legal advice. This is for informational purposes only, and you should always consult with your attorney before implementing any of the information in the show. In case you missed it, our flash sale for Dream Bigger is now over.
Andrea: [00:00:50] That crazy good deal that you’ll never see again. It’s gone, however. Tickets are actually now 50% off. General VIP. Whatever you want. 50% off. Get them now because this event is going to sell out. I don’t know when. However, it will sell out. We are so excited for this. We have Ali Webb, Danielle Canty, Pauleanna Reid.
Andrea: [00:01:15] We have Chris Harder, Lori Harder. So many more big names that are going to be announced soon. So stay tuned. But for now, go get your ticket 50% off and get those rooms booked as well. I cannot wait to see you in Phoenix. October 5th to October 7th.
Andrea: [00:01:38] Hello there. Welcome back to another episode of the Legalpreneur podcast. Today’s guest is another founder CEO. She is Farah Al Chammas and I am so excited for you to hear about her founder journey because from one founder to the next, you guys, it is not easy. And I keep talking. I feel like I’ve been talking a lot lately about the journey from even small business owner to founder. It’s not easy. Like lately there’s been so many times where I’m like, I just wish Ms. being a small business owner because now I feel like that was so easy but just got to keep chugging along. So I’m really excited for you guys to hear from Farah and Farah. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Farah: [00:02:21] Of course. Thank you for having me here.
Andrea: [00:02:24] Amazing. I’m so excited. Okay, dive in. Please tell us about your journey. Tell us how you got to where you are today.
Farah: [00:02:31] Absolutely. I’ll get started with where kind of my life reset. I was born and raised in Damascus, Syria, and then I moved to the States in 2013 for asylum. And I ended up in a lovely small town in northeast Texas where I had family and my first best friend in high school was someone I never thought I would be friends with because I grew up in a country, in a society basically that sort of stigmatizes and has certain biases against people from certain cultures. I’ll be more specific. She’s Jewish and I grew up in the Middle East where Israel is referred to as the Imperialist enemy in our history textbooks. And obviously nobody told me growing up Jewish people are bad, but as a child, subconsciously, you’re watching television and you’re consuming all that, you know, little you’re hearing Israel being the enemy. So I had this association in my subconscious mind of Israel equals Judaism, equals imperialist enemy equals fear. You should run away. And so I found out about a month after we’d gotten to be really good friends, and she was my first friend here in high school. My first really, really good friend was helping me around, etc. When I first started I was like, Oh really? Are you really Jewish? And then I go home and I’m like, Mom is Jewish, can you believe it? But she’s so nice. My brain couldn’t really fathom the two, unfortunately, but I’m so grateful that I had that experience because it really shows you how bias functions and how strong it can be in a subconscious mind, but how beautiful exposure can be as a form of therapy. Yes, we became really good friends. We really, truly bonded over our love for baking. We were big together and then our families would come over, come together and come over and started to have dinners together. And that was the first light switch in my brain of how food can bring people together, especially different people together. But anyway, I went to school and I studied. I was so fascinated by this idea of how sharing meals can break down such strong barriers. So I studied the history, psychology and anthropology of sharing meals. I also took four semesters of Hebrew. My Hebrew is very messy right now, so don’t test me on it.
Andrea: [00:04:44] I don’t know one word of Hebrew. So you’re good? I will not be great.
Farah: [00:04:49] I honestly would love to refresh it. It was such a fun language to learn, but I wrote my dissertation on immigrant food businesses and I was studying this thing on the side doing different projects where I was working with refugee women, watching the patterns of how people that come from different countries would move here and say, You know, I just moved here. I was an educator, engineer, a doctor, etc., and I want to start a food business. And I’m like, Why? What’s going on? And I kept seeing this pattern and that’s where that’s what inspired my dissertation. And a result of that dissertation was a lovely docu series called Talk with Your Mouth Full that I worked on with a wonderful co-founder. And basically it was a show that would bring strangers to share meals of all different backgrounds and age groups and religions, etc. And those meals would be created by immigrant chefs. So we would highlight the story of the immigrant chef, and we would basically film the conversation that these people have. And during the different pellets that we did, I was watching the magic and that sense of wholeness that you can very quickly generate with a few ingredients. And those ingredients are a good meal and the right questions that tap into that shared human experience that really shows people, even though they don’t look alike, they think they’ll never relate to each other.
Farah: [00:06:03] That deep inside we all live different versions of the same human story on Earth. Obviously, there’s variations to that. There’s probably more of like a general statement, but you get the point. Obviously, we we both went to grad school. My co-founder and I went to grad school in the UK at different universities and came back COVID hit. So we shut down for different reasons and I’m very, very grateful for all that I’ve learned from that partnership. And then I started working at an advertising firm as a research strategist, and that’s when I realized that I was suddenly now in the real world and now in college or grad school, I didn’t have any social structure around me that allowed me to have community. And now I had to go and find my own community and form one for my own. And, you know, having lived and studied and worked in five countries over the past almost ten years, I most of my friends are I realize in different countries on different time zones. So I had to go and find new ways of making friends. And I got on all the dating apps and all the social networking apps. And I slowly realized, I mean, I have very deep research done on many, many of these. I should sell it to dating apps, but I shouldn’t at the same time.
Farah: [00:07:17] But what I realized that they’re not really designed for people to make those meaningful connections and the apps are not innovating fast enough where how our brains are changing with the access of technology that we’re getting. So the value of each match that you receive decreases over time. Because, you know, you’re going to get so many different people, different options. And that is probably why people end up ghosting people and getting ghosted. And yes, I’ve been on both sides of the coin. You know, it’s our it’s our human brain. It’s your subconscious. And sometimes it’s really hard to work against your subconscious unless you actually change why it’s thinks the way it does. So I end up leaving my job about eight months in and basically, you know, did a fellowship. I didn’t study business in college. I didn’t even have the word entrepreneurship in my vocabulary. Growing up in Syria, everybody around me was in health care and doctors, so I was preventing college, but I was always tinkering around. And any time, you know, I was excited about something, I would just go and build it and gather people around it. And I’m very grateful and lucky to have always had wonderful people that I’ve learned so much from by working with them from when I was really young, even in middle school, my first, I guess like the first time that I like new found out what the word startup even meant was probably my second year in university.
Farah: [00:08:34] I had started an organization where I was working with a local refugee community and one of the team members came to me and said, Oh hey, there’s a pitch competition this year and the theme is exactly what we’re doing and we should apply. And I go, What does that mean? What’s the pitch competition? And she says, Oh, we just submit a business model. I’m like literally typing in Google how to write a business model. But we, we pitched and we won second place our second at our campus around and then flew to San Francisco to pitch. And I just very vividly remember pitching in SF thinking to myself like, this is it, this is what I’m meant to be doing. This is my thing, this is where I’m supposed to be. And I’m very grateful. I think it was like one insight, but obviously over time different things have contributed to that journey. After moving to New York in August, when I left my job, I left my job in April of 2021 and then took two months off, took my own mental health break and did my yoga teacher training as well, and then did a fellowship where basically helps first time founders learn the building blocks of founding a company and was very deep in research mode at that time.
Farah: [00:09:39] And things have changed. It’s been a year and I reflect on this and wow, I mean, I’m so grateful. I’ve learned so much in the past year. It’s the best like personal development journey that I can honestly prescribe to people because every trigger, every lesson, like it’s all the inner work, is a pure and it’s a mirror of what’s going on in the company. And I’m so grateful that I have now I get different resources and obviously different people that will teach you different things. And I just had a conversation with someone who was so empowering and amazing and I’m just, you know, you learn so much and I’m so grateful. But yeah, I moved to New York in August, launched pilots and, you know, posted on a Facebook group, thought maybe like 100 people would sign up. And then definitely more than that, I did. I actually thought maybe like a few people, like 20 people would sign up and then like the same day, like kind of before commenting, I was like, Oh, okay, all right. Like maybe, oh my God, that’s awesome. So basically what I was doing is manually making reservations on the back end. And what the idea was is it was a platform that connects people over sharing meals at local restaurants, and it would have functioned similarly to Bumblebee.
Farah: [00:10:49] Over time, over the past, like since August until probably like April, I was planning different dinners in New York and SF and LA and I’ve learned so much from that. And it was trying to figure out different forms of partnership, basically de-risking as much as possible so that I have a very much confident answer on what product market fit could look like, what monetization is going to look like before I go out and raise. But what I realized, what I discovered while piloting that one concept, I discovered another problem that touches a much larger audience that still encompasses the audience that I was trying to target. I also realized that you cannot sell loneliness. I never spoke about loneliness, user facing, but internally, when I was my pitch decks, when I was talking to different printers and people, I did mention that. And I realize now. No matter how conscious of a user you are, you still don’t want to associate your identity with something that is, quote unquote, helping people overcome loneliness, because then it means you’re lonely, and then your brain says, Oh, well, if I’m lonely, then maybe it means that people don’t want to be around me, which is not the case.
Andrea: [00:11:56] Like true psychology.
Farah: [00:11:58] Yeah, it literally all is psychology. More than half the population is lonely. And that’s because we don’t know who to meet with, what to meet and where to go. And honestly, it’s the same like again. I’ve done so much research on this, so lucky to have had the tools to do that and people have contributed to the research. But what I realize is that you have like two of the same types of people that are busy and they end up choosing loneliness versus risking the pain of being rejected or being turned down or being ghosted. If putting out in a group job who’s free for dinner. And everybody else assumes that everyone’s busy so they don’t reach out to each other and then everybody ends up feeling lonely. And it’s just a cycle. Like, Why are we doing that? How do we make that easy? And also, again, like what I realize from all these pilots is that I was spending at least 30 to 45 minutes organizing these dinners any time I wanted to organize some kind of pilot, figuring out the right vibe, the right meal, the right restaurant for this occasion. And I didn’t see any good tools that made that easier. And the North Star for this company is how do we get more people to share more meals more often? So instead of starting with people that don’t know each other, we switch the order of go to market features. And it was always in the vision, honestly, to do that. I just switched what we’re starting with, and that made it feel like a different company because we’ve shifted our brand positioning significantly in the last two months, which is super exciting, went back to user interviews, scratch off all the designs, and recently finished our first prototype. And very grateful. Super, super excited.
Andrea: [00:13:29] Oh, my gosh. That’s so exciting. I’m sure you’ve had so many ups and downs, like, what am I doing? Like, should I just quit? I am right there with you. But that is so cool because. So as a single female, I. Eat a lot by myself. I like there are times where I love it and I’m just like, I don’t even want any company. Like, I just want to be alone. But there are times where I’m like, Man, I just wish I had somebody to just go eat with who even if it was another male who didn’t think it was like a romantic date, just somebody to share it, like you share a meal with. Like, so I love this. I really think especially with I want, I don’t want to say the dating scene, but there’s we all know the dating scene is shit right now, whether whether you’re actively dating or if you’re just single and not just gave up on seeking. I think it’s really hard for people to connect because it’s we just assume everybody’s there either, oh, they’re looking just for a relationship or Oh, they’re just looking for sex. And I love this premise of sharing meals because that’s all it has to be. It just has to be like, you just share a meal and I love this, so I’m really, really excited for you. So a couple of things that I would love to dive into. Number one is. What is your current wait list looking like right now?
Farah: [00:15:02] Like number wise? Yeah, I think that’s probably a little bit more than a thousand right now and that’s incredible.
Farah: [00:15:10] I’ve done zero marketing zero since I got started. This is all organic. And I’ve intentionally not done any marketing because it’s like. Marketing. What marketing looks like now for Okel is actually a personal TikTok account that I very recently started. I’m by no means an expert on TikTok, but I’m starting to share the magic of sharing meals and sharing more meals with more people and actually sharing the lessons that I learned because I want to show people the value of what this is and what you can gain, therefore why you should do it more often. But in terms of marketing, everything is organic so far, thankfully, some Facebook groups, some features here and there are always helpful and I’m excited to do like real go to market marketing when we’re ready and we’re ready for it.
Andrea: [00:16:00] So talk to me about the accelerator that you did, what it was. You said it was in New York.
Farah: [00:16:06] Yeah, well, it was.
Andrea: [00:16:08] So I’ve never done an accelerator. I’ve been thinking about it. I was going to apply recently, but. It’s so hard. Like some of them, it’s like you have to travel and like go somewhere and stay. Which is fine. I’m totally down for. But having two kids, I’m just like, Oh, can I really do this and not feel? I mean, obviously I’m going to feel bad, but it’s like, is it worth it? So I’m having that struggle accelerator wise. So I’m just really interested to hear from your perspective, like, how did it help you? What did you learn? Yeah.
Farah: [00:16:43] I’ve done a few different ones so far and they’ve all been different. The one that I mentioned, which was it was what I did when I got started because it was very much it’s a fellowship, it’s not really an accelerator.
Andrea: [00:16:54] And it’s really quickly, sorry for the audience, for the listeners. Can you explain what an accelerator is?
Farah: [00:17:01] Yes. Well, I also have to preface this by saying that they’re all different. They all have different focuses. And I think different programs call themselves an accelerator. But what does that really mean? I can define that for you. I can define my own experience. And I’ll say the first one was very content heavy. So lots of content, lots of speakers and office hours with different people that will help guide the building, guide you as you go about building your the foundation of your company, whether it’s research, red positioning, setting up, I don’t know, an LLC or a C Corp, whatever it is. Different things that are more. You know, like theory based, I want to say, like literally how to like what’s user persona. That’s your business model, stuff like that. Another one was more community focused. It’s not really an accelerator. It was more of a residency, founder residency. Very, very grateful for it. And honestly, I think that put me on a different path truly, because before that I didn’t come from tech. I didn’t have a tech job before, and I didn’t work in tech, so I didn’t know how things worked. I just kind of found myself into this thing. Like, we’re like there are some founders that are building companies because they want to be founders and I admire if people can do that. I just sort of found myself doing this thing because I love doing what I do and I’m so passionate about this problem specifically. So I’ve had to learn how to also exist within the tech community and how things work within the tech community, how to build venture back company, which is not the same thing as building a company.
Farah: [00:18:31] And that particular residency was really amazing in terms of surrounding me with the founders. Being around people, walking your walk is so much more effective for me personally in my personal journey has been more effective for me than reading any book than. Watching whatever webinar you learn so much by. You only learn so much by reading and you learn a lot by doing. But in my experience, I’ve learned the most by doing in community and that has been so pivotal, so grateful for it. The third one was another. The third one, they are called an accelerator and it’s operator focused. So they’re very hands on with how you are building your company. So there’s like office hours every week. There’s a team dedicated for your company and it’s a smaller accelerator ran by former college students or current students, recent grads who focus on helping underrepresented founders, which is a term that I, I still I don’t know how I feel about the I have some resistance around the term underrepresented. I don’t really want to identify with it. I don’t feel like it serves me so much to identify with any of these labels, to be honest. But it was also very helpful. I’ve seen like, so what I can say about accelerator is like figure out what you need and what different ones have. Different ones have different focus and strength. So find out what you need and apply for that.
Andrea: [00:20:06] Amazing. Okay, so. For these accelerators. I know a lot of them. You do have to give up equity in the company or did you have to pay for any of these or have you given up equity? I’m just curious like, what’s your process so far?
Farah: [00:20:22] So two of them I paid for and then one of them was equity free and offered a grant, which was very nice.
Andrea: [00:20:31] Nice. That’s awesome. Congrats.
Farah: [00:20:34] Thank you. It was a small, humble, meaningful grant.
Andrea: [00:20:37] So what? Ah, I’m curious. Like, what are some issues that you’ve run? Like some big issues that you’ve run into, not even legal talking, but when you’re building and you’re like, oh my gosh, like, what am I going to do? Like, what are some things that have kept you up at night? One building. This is something that fascinates me. I’m just like, What is keeping you up at night?
Farah: [00:20:57] I’m currently in one right now and it’s like we are promising x by x date and we don’t have people to build it. So how do we do that?
Andrea: [00:21:07] Where are you building?
Farah: [00:21:09] We are building the first version, a web app, basically like the first possible minimal version of what we need. But we’re we’re excited. And I honestly, throughout this whole journey, one thing that I’ve learned is that things come when you show up. Even when I moved to New York last year, I mean, I had worked for eight months, post-grad, had saved basically most of what I’ve worked. That was eight months because I could and I’m very grateful and I’ve used that to bootstrap until recently and have gotten like that one tiny grant and I’m very grateful for. And it was I couldn’t have done that living in New York had I not gotten like an amazing deal that is truly a miracle. And I had moved to New York. I was looking for apartments and it’s like, okay, God, like, please, this is the situation. And that’s exactly where I am right now. But in another way I’m like, Here’s the situation. And I think I reflect back on this. I’m like, Why is this happening? But I think all of it is really building your trust muscle. Like how much faith and trust can you have in this process? You have to you have to do what you need to do. That’s not say like, oh, just like surrender your entire power and like let the things flow. Like, No, that’s not how it works. Like you have to actively sub, do your work and also be open to things that might surprise you. And that’s where I’m at right now and I reflect back on last summer. So much to keep myself sane, like, how are we going to do this? I’m like, exactly how last summer, you know, when this is also going to go. And I’m very grateful I ended up having an it was truly a miracle hike on my apartment in New York. It was like a $500 per month situation.
Andrea: [00:22:51] Oh, my gosh.
Farah: [00:22:52] A waterview, too. It was like a really nice like, I know. It’s insane. Very, very grateful. And I say that to expand people. Like, I want people to know that when you’re doing the right thing, the right resources will come your way. And I use this as evidence in my own life as well to expand my brain. And that was possible. The next miracle can come if I can continue to do what I’m supposed to do and show up.
Andrea: [00:23:14] Yeah. Oh, my God. That’s incredible. That’s a crazy deal. $500 a month in.
Farah: [00:23:21] I don’t think I wouldn’t be able to get that anymore.
Andrea: [00:23:23] There’s no way I can get that here in Houston.
Farah: [00:23:26] No.
Andrea: [00:23:27] Oh, my gosh. That’s crazy. Okay, so one thing I’m curious about when I know you say you’re delivering X by X date and you’re I’m guessing you’re going to be testing in certain cities first, what is your proposed timeline and order of cities that you plan? I’m just curious, what is what.
Farah: [00:23:45] How’s the state of New York? Definitely starting with New York, obviously because of the density of the restaurants and the population will make it much easier to launch in New York versus any other city. I have made a list of 64 metropolitan cities in the US and abroad that would make for good places for this to operate and be profitable. And that’s based on the social cultural dynamics of each of these cities, regardless of whether they’re us or Asia or Europe. But yeah, there’s, there’s background research on each of these cities that have gone on that list.
Andrea: [00:24:24] It sounds like you’ve definitely done your research and which I know, like being a startup founder, a lot of it is just research at the beginning when you’re trying to build and it’s like, okay, what? Like researching all the things I. Even though we so we’ve been operating, we’ve had the legal preneur membership now for three years and first it was in the law firm. But even today we still research and research and research like we were just flying by the seat of our pants for the longest time. As a small business owner, which was okay and it worked fine, but now transitioning into startup founder, it’s a whole nother ballgame. And it’s I will say, like, it’s. It’s a lot of cleaning up because I’m not going to say it was a mess, but. Going through like the like pitching VCs. I learned a lot. Like I said, I haven’t done an accelerator, but I learned a lot of what VCs are looking for. And so that has helped kind of guide us. But at the same time, part of me is like I feel like we do need an accelerator just to get everything lined up. But at the same time it’s also like, but is everything ever really perfect and perfectly lined up? No. So it’s just a constant battle, which I know you truly understand. And so transitioning a little bit more. Tell me, I know you said you had a headache going on right now. Do you want to talk about that?
Farah: [00:25:56] Well, not exactly why now, but I think I mentioned there was a little situation that is very limited to this conversation I have in this past weekend. Obviously, being new to this, you don’t know, especially if you’re not from a legal background, like you don’t know that you’re going to sign up for learning how to pay taxes and how to like file register company. I’m grateful to have used a service that incorporated the company, but when it was tax season, the first tax season recently, I just asked the HR and block person please like do you know how to do? She does my personal taxes usually. And I said, Do you know how to do for taxes? And I honestly in my gut had a feeling that this would probably not go with that. But I did. And I don’t know, I still honestly have no idea what she did, but I applied for a certificate of good standing with this with the state of Delaware, and it was taking a lot of time. And I got an email this past Friday that says that you didn’t pay your Delaware taxes, so you can’t file for one. And I was like, yes, we have. I paid for taxes. What do you mean? And I know I paid for taxes, so I went back to the H&R BLOCK thing. And I think she’s done small business taxes, which I don’t know how that’s different. I, I honestly have no idea. Like, I’m going to have to figure this out.
Andrea: [00:27:15] I will tell you to calm your fears. I will have my paralegal email you. We have this I mean. We have this come up as well. When we filed when we switched Legalpreneur to a corporation and I don’t know if you looked at that. Did you look at the estimate?
Farah: [00:27:37] So that’s the story. That’s the end of the story.
Andrea: [00:27:39] Yeah. Yeah. Not accurate, because I think we got this same like we I think the estimate was it like in the 10,000 plus range?
Farah: [00:27:47] Oh, my God. So yeah, you’re talking to like a 24 year old founder who’s and then I opened my portal from this email and I see an $88,000 tax bill. And I’m like, This is a scam. There’s no way. So I go on the website and I’m like, Oh my God, this is like the real website. There’s no way this is this is their real website. I’m like, somebody scammed our internal papers with Delaware. There’s no way. Like, there’s absolutely no way. I was like, there’s absolutely no way. Internally, I was freaking out for like 24 hours. I was honestly panicking. I honestly, genuinely think the state of Delaware should truly change that because that is not nice to people’s mental health. Like, I consider myself like a mindful person. Like I was meditating to call myself down. I was like, I had the resources, but if someone doesn’t like that could cause that could have really bad consequences. They really should change that. Thankfully, 24 hours later, as I’m crying on the phone to one of my friends saying, I don’t know what to do, I’m obviously not going to tell my family, like not sure what’s going on. Like, you can’t tell investors that either. Like you can’t tell anybody. I have an 88,000 tax bill, like maybe I did something wrong. The other thing that I realized that it was my fault, that I didn’t know that the Delaware taxes weren’t paid. Technically, it was the H&R BLOCK person to have said to me that that was coming because she said Everything is taken care of, like that’s it.
Farah: [00:29:06] But I had no idea that there were other taxes that need to be paid that are separate from whatever she’s done, that I still need to figure out what she was even needed or not. I don’t know what she did. So I finally texted some of my friends at our founders and thankfully they saved the day and they’re like, Yeah, same happened to us. We freaked out. We talked to attorneys. They do the estimate wrong. You go on the website you just a few things and I did end up paying a I think it was like $695 tax bill and that’s where the penalty and like the interest fee because there was like a late fee penalty. I’m like, it wasn’t my fault that we missed the deadline. I didn’t know that there was this thing, but that was definitely a much easier tax bill than the 88,000. I truly honestly that was like not a funny joke to like I, I honestly my brain was like, I’m going to set up this nonprofit, call it f scammers like raise funds, like help people that are getting scammed. Like my brain was giving all sorts of different ideas, like that’s where my brain was going. But if somebody didn’t have the tools like that could have been a really sad, sad.
Andrea: [00:30:10] Right. And we same thing with us. We we went to go pay it or I had my paralegal going in to pay it and she was like, I don’t know if this is right. And I was like, What? And we were kind of freaking out for a minute and then we got it figured out. But I’ve had a number of people tell me the same exact thing, and so I’m like, Yeah, don’t believe the estimate on the Delaware Corporation website, if you have to pay the Delaware annual taxes, don’t believe that.
Andrea: [00:30:39] It’s not accurate.
Farah: [00:30:40] Yes, and I agree. Like it. It can be very detrimental.
Andrea: [00:30:47] It can be. Somebody that doesn’t know any better. And that system is still recovering. And the thing is, it will deter people from actually pursuing their business because some people are going to see that tax bill and they will never open it up again and they’re just going to abandon their business. And they’re like, fuck business. Like, fuck this. Like, I’m not made to be a founder. I don’t have money for this not knowing that it’s probably just a couple of hundred dollars for their first year. But thank you for sharing that with us because I actually have never mentioned that on here. So I’m glad you mention that because I know people should know.
Farah: [00:31:24] Yes, people definitely need to know that.
Andrea: [00:31:26] Yeah. I mean, I need to share that on Tik Tok, by the way, thank you for that. Okay. Well, Farah, please tell the listeners where can they they sign up for the waitlist because we all need to have dinner connected with new people. And I’m really I’m really excited for this to come to Houston. You have to let me know. I will be one of the first users in Houston. And yes, I’m really excited for this.
Farah: [00:31:54] I’m glad you say that, because the the way we’re launching is actually not with new friends. We’re making it easy for people to connect with people that they know or with members of existing communities that they may not know each other. And then we’re adding the feature where you’re going to be able to meet new friends. So if you are interested in sharing more meaningful meals, you can check out join www.meaningfulmeals.com And join the waitlist to stay updated. Hopefully we’ll be in your city soon.
Andrea: [00:32:23] Amazing. Thank you so much. And you guys we will put everything in the show notes. Everything will be there. Go sign up. Help out a fellow founder and CEO. Trust me, guys, it is not an easy ride. So kudos to you, Farah. Your whole journey, being a refugee, like everything like that is incredible. Like. Kudos to you.
Andrea: [00:32:45] Thank you, Andrea.
Andrea: [00:32:47] All right. Well, thank you so much.
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