Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Cody Brown, Founder of Neurotic Roots, LLC, located in Temple, GA, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Neurotic Roots specializes in small business consulting with a laser focus on agribusiness and environmental sustainability. Our mission is to work with other small businesses to help bloom their visions into a vibrant reality. Specifically, we offer consulting in entity formation, marketing, advertising, project management, scaling, investor relations, and sustainability practices. In addition to consulting, our firm owns and manages other entities in the agribusiness sector that have proven track records and are in the expansion phase.

Tell us about yourself

After becoming a full-time scholar at 15 years old, I always thought that my life purpose was to advocate for others through the practice of law. After graduating from Oklahoma City University School of Law in 2015 and spending the subsequent five years excelling in the legal industry in Texas, I realized that having talent and fulfilling a calling are not mutually exclusive. In 2020, I switched gears and ventured into government consulting, where I spent about two years with Deloitte & Touche on contract with the Department of Homeland Security, where I started as a Junior Analyst and excelled to a Senior Executive Operations Consulting before making the ultimate decision: starting my own consulting firm.
As a patient suffering from severe cPTSD, High Anxiety Disorder, Depression, and ADHD, I found the best relief through legal hemp flower (CBD). Once I ventured into gardening during the pandemic, I wanted the ability to grow my own food and medicine and grow clean, sustainable medicine for others, but even though it's legal in the eyes of law enforcement, my government clearance prohibited me from pursuing that dream. When my contract came time to renew, and I already had multiple businesses at my doorstep asking for help and expertise in hydroponic gardening and business and legal consulting, my wife and I decided it was time to put everything we had into starting our own firm.

Now our firm owns a local hydroponic & garden supply store that has served the Atlanta community for ten years part of an international organic fertilizer company that is the first of its kind to turn 1 ton of waste into a hydroponic-safe organic fertilizer in 48 hours and teaches in local schools about sustainable garden practices and hydroponic gardening and is on the cusp of securing ownership in multiple other ventures in agribusiness.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Although my firm, less than 2 years old, just successfully completed its first business acquisition, my biggest moment of pride and satisfaction came from volunteering to teach hydroponics at a local elementary school. I taught for about 6 weeks to Third, Fourth, and Fifth grades about hydroponic gardening and the impacts it has on water conservation. At the end of the teaching period, the students and I put together a video presentation to submit to the Georgia Association of Conservation Districts and Georgia Foundation for Agriculture for their fall 2022 STEM Challenge. Working with the students and watching them design their own hydroponic systems was a sense of pride I will never forget.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

As with any start-up venture, generating cash flow was a big struggle. The first six months without a salaried income were full of odd jobs and volunteer work, but keeping an open mind and exhibiting a willingness to table our egos, work less than ideal temporary hours, and make sacrifices to pay our bills. Looking back, though, I think the hardest part was not the long hours or grueling work doing odd jobs, but instead, it was the discovery that most of the people in your life do not believe you can make your dreams come true if those dreams are off the beaten path. It's a rough road to self-belief, but it's a road my wife and I will never regret traveling.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Don't fear failure; embrace it. The sooner you can view your failures as a lesson learned, the sooner you can overcome and implement new methods the next go-round.
  2. Stay open-minded and willing to listen to the advice of others, even if you don't agree with or implement that advice - bad advice can be just as useful as good advice.
  3. Most importantly, at least in my entrepreneurship journey, find what it is that you care about and do not sacrifice it for anything. Your integrity as a person will carry you so much further than any amount of sales or revenue that you can generate. Your integrity will attract the right people, circumstances, and environments. Whatever you do, don't give up.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.neuroticroots.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/supersaiyanhydro/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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