The Faith of the Start-up Founder in Cincinnati

In June 2015, I moved to Cincinnati, OH to begin the Brandery Accelerator program with my Wyzerr co-founders. By this point, I literally had no money in my bank account. In fact, we were negative -$253. However, I strongly believed the Brandery would help Wyzerr grow so I took a leap of faith and moved to a city I had never even thought of visiting. I asked a close friend, Krystle Uche, to spot me the money for a plane ticket to Cincinnati. (Side note: even though Krystle had paid for my plane ticket, I forgot to ask her to pay for my check-in bag too. When I arrived at the airport, I had to call Krystle on the phone IN FRONT OF A FULL LINE AT LAX and hand my phone to the airport agent to take down her credit card number to pay for my checked bag. It was so embarrassing but also so humbling. I am forever grateful for these experiences to keep me grounded.)

Anyways, I arrived safely into Cincinnati. I had a place to live but no money to buy furniture. Another close ally in the entrepreneur life, Pablo Arellano, came through for me and brought over an air mattress. He gave me $20 to buy lunch but I saved it to buy toiletries for my new place. It was my good fortune that around this time CVS had just launched their new mobile app and was giving away $5 CVS bucks if you downloaded the app and created an ExtraCare account, which is their rewards program. I created 4 different Google Voice numbers and registered 4 different accounts to each number. This little hack allowed me to earn $5 CVS bucks four times and buy $20 worth of groceries, which lasted me a week and a half.

The $1.50 that Changed Everything

By the time Saturday night rolled by, I was down to $3. I had asked some of the people in the program where folks go to church and most people said “Crossroads in Oakley” was the place to be so my cofounders and I headed to Crossroads the next morning. We sat in the very last row of the section, but even from way back there, I was moved to tears. Praise and worship was phenomenal. When offering came around, a little voice inside of me told me “Give half of what you have.” I only had $3, and to someone that had zero money in my bank account, $3 was better than nothing. It gave me a little bit of security. That little $3 may come in handy for something so I tried to push the voice away. “God you don’t need MY $3. This is all I have.” But it was clear, God wanted half. The little voice grew louder and made my heart start pounding. I couldn’t give half of $3 because that was $1.50 and I only had 3 one-dollar bills. So I gave $2, which I’d like to point out was 50 cents more than what I wanted to give, but God will sure stir your heart until you can’t do anything else. God received my little $2 that day in faith.

After the service, there was an altar call for prayers. My cofounders and I raced to the front to ask for prayers. It was really loud so we couldn’t really explain what we needed prayer for. We just got into the posture for prayer. The woman prayed a blessing over each of us. At the end, she leaned over to me and said “I know God has called you to this city to do amazing things.” I felt goosebumps because I hadn’t told her we had just moved to Cincinnati from out of state. Within 3 months from that moment, Wyzerr secured a term sheet for $1.5 Million and ultimately raised a seed round of $2 Million. I have no doubt in my mind that this was God blessing my $1.50/$2 offering to Crossroads on that fateful June Sunday. He showed me then that He could take my pennies and turn it into millions if I was just obedient and faithful.

I am grateful that I haven’t been in that desperate of a situation in a long time where I only have $3 to spend. However, I often find myself in situations where I feel God is telling me to do something that I don’t want to do. This blog has actually been on my heart to do for years now but my fears overpowered my faith to follow through on it. I worry that nobody will believe the miracles that have happened in my life and call me a liar. I worry that nobody will even read this blog so it would be a waste of my time. But like that day at Crossroads 6 years ago, I believe there’s a miracle on the other side of my obedience and faithfulness.

Love,

Natasia