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How One Girl Scout Alum Takes “Cookie Entrepreneur” to the Next Level
It's not hard to see the connection between young Asha Carroll's cookie boss status and adult Asha's plant-based baking kit business, Cake in a Crate. She credits her years of selling Girl Scout Cookies to her success as an entrepreneur and start-up founder. Cake in a Crate has seen exciting growth over the last two years, and for its founder, the business has been a great opportunity to connect with bloggers and share her love of delicious baked treats—a sweet deal, according to Asha.
“My favorite part is the connections I’ve made and the people I’ve met who are passionate about plant-based baking," says Asha. "As an entrepreneur, I work remotely, and it can be a little lonely. But I have support no matter how many miles away I am from all these women. And getting to share stories, triumph, and failures has been so exciting for me.”
But the extroversion and social skills needed to run a new business, connect with bloggers and press, and lobby funders for start-up cash wasn't a skill that initially came naturally to Asha. For a painfully shy only child growing up in North St. Paul, Minnesota, opening up to new people was difficult. However, the Girl Scout Cookie Program was Asha's motivating factor to join her local troop. “I was very excited about the cookie program, even before I became a Girl Scout," explains Asha. "I wanted to be where the cookies were!”
Asha knew she'd need to face her fears if she wanted to get in on the Girl Scout Cookie scene. And in true Girl Scout fashion, she stepped up to the challenge and learned to put herself out there. With a cookie sale sheet in one hand and her cordless phone in the other, Asha punched in the phone numbers on her list and started calling prospective cookie buyers. “What motivated me was to contribute to my troop’s goals. I had a sense of responsibility to our team, to our sisterhood," says Asha. "Even at the time as a shy kid, when I was nervous to make those calls, I was motivated by something bigger.”
With each box of cookies sold, troop goal set, and badge earned, Asha's confidence grew exponentially. And as an empowered Girl Scout Senior, she earned her Girl Scout Gold Award in 2007 by creating a free library for underprivileged children in urban St. Paul. "I [partnered] with Alley Shop, which is operated by the church and community volunteers and doesn't take money,” she remembers. “At the time that I was planning my Gold Award, the shop didn't have books. I organized regular book drives in local churches and community centers through which we painted bookshelves, categorized history books, and nature books, and established a mechanism so there would always be books."
With ten years of Girl Scouting and some serious confidence in hand, Asha moved to New York City in 2013 to pursue her dream of being an opera singer. And although she arrived in the right place for chasing that dream, she found that it wasn't as fulfilling as her other passion: business and entrepreneurship. "It didn't come all of sudden; it was something I'd always wanted to do. I wanted to be in charge of my own tasks and lead," says Asha. Inspired by striking food photography on Pinterest, Asha saw meal kits (premeasured ingredients packaged together to make cooking or baking at home easier) as a way to address the disconnect between what brands share on social media and the accessibility and cost of plant-based ingredients.
The cookie boss was back in business.
"[Through Girl Scouts] I definitely learned the art of putting myself out there. I learned the art of the ask, which is a huge part of being a successful entrepreneur."
Once Asha realized the path she now wanted to traverse, she took up a familiar task: going through a list of phone numbers and selling the value proposition of a product, this time Cake in a Crate. “[Through Girl Scouts] I definitely learned the art of putting myself out there. I learned the art of the ask, which is a huge part of being a successful entrepreneur," says Asha.
Asha continued to draw from the lessons she learned as a Girl Scout in her fledgling business. Just as her Gold Award project was more than getting books to children, Cake in a Crate is more than getting ingredients to health-conscious bakers. With Cake in a Crate, Asha continues cultivating relationships—which seemed like a stretch in her youth—to keep fresh ideas and ingredients coming.
Asha also discovered that the supportive, inclusive troop environment didn't disappear after she graduated high school. The members of her Minnesota Girl Scout troop still play a vital role in her life today: her fellow Girl Scout alums were the most encouraging of her business, and they even tested her prototypes and gave feedback.
Asha credits her former troop leader, Cindy Schmidt, for being an important ally as she stepped into the unknowns of launching a start-up. In fact, Cindy was the first person Asha called when she experienced a lull in the first year of the launch. "I spoke to my troop leader, wondering, 'What if this isn't right for me? What if I don't have what it takes?,'" she recalls, "And my troop leader said to me, 'I don't think this chapter is over for you. You've just started.' She was there for me, and hearing her voice was all I needed. And with Cake in a Crate now going strong, I can't imagine throwing in the towel."
"Realizing the power of your own voice and of your ideas and that they are valid, even if you’re not seeing others do that—maybe that’s your opportunity. If no one else is doing it, why not you?"
Asha is continuing her expansion into the health food sphere with a new retail brand, Plantfood, launching at the beginning of 2019. “I found myself reaching for nutrient-rich snacks that I could prep on the weekends and enjoy throughout the week when my mind and body needed a boost,” she explains. “I wanted to bring style and ease to the smoothies, snack balls, moon milk, lattes, and desserts that hang out in my Instagram feed. And so Plant food was born.”
Bringing new ideas to life is part of the joy of running a business, and Asha is excited about what lies down the road. “It’s that [courage to pursue an] idea, that’s what Girl Scouts gave me," says Asha. "I was always a kid who had ideas, but I wasn’t always comfortable putting them out there. Realizing the power of your own voice and of your ideas and that they are valid, even if you’re not seeing others do that—maybe that’s your opportunity. If no one else is doing it, why not you?”
Spoken like a true entrepreneur.
