Social Entrepreneur Live, Part 1, Precious Drew, Perk: The Natural Beauty Lab

Perk: The Natural Beauty Lab upcycles fair-trade, used coffee grounds from local coffee shops to create natural skincare products. Precious Drew's reserved, yet bubbly personality naturally attracts people to her. Yet, she has a bit of a contrarian streak. "I've always challenged the norm and enjoyed debates arguing the less-popular opinion, whether I agreed with it or not," Precious says. "I liked the challenge of being able to fully understand and argue for opinions I don't exactly agree with." Precious likes to defy expectations. "I grew up in a household with seven siblings: six older brothers and one younger sister. I never really followed what my brothers did. From a young age, I knew that I had control over my destiny and that no one would do the work for me. I am the first of my siblings to attend and graduate from college." Precious does not allow others to define her. "Growing up in low-income, inner-city environments, I witnessed many of my peers fall behind and get left behind by the educational system, community, family, and friends. People gave up hope and deemed them less than, unworthy, and unable. I heard the negative statistics about the communities I come from. I knew that I didn't want to be a part of those statistics." She points to her mother as a positive role model. "My mother inspires me. Despite our circumstances living in poverty, she always made a way and kept a smile on her children's faces. Growing up, I would describe my family as highly mobile. Before moving back to Minnesota during the last two months of my freshmen year of high school, I had changed schools over 13 times. My single mother prioritized living in safer, less violent neighborhoods." Precious knew she was more than her environment. "I wanted to show my family, friends, and community that we could accomplish so much in life despite our circumstances. It would take a lot of hard work, self-advocacy, support, and determination. But I knew it was possible. Society often forgets, dismisses, and downplays the true potential of low income, inner-city black, and brown kids." Precious realized early on that others were looking to her to be an example. "With a younger sister looking up to me, I had no choice but to strive for nothing but the best. Between my hard working single mother, younger sister, and the negative statistics that indicate I shouldn't have accomplished half the things I've done at 22, I found a lot of purpose throughout life." An Idea Begins to Percolate It seems that Precious always had a side hustle. "In middle school, I established a revenue-generating partnership with YouTube, making videos for my favorite young musicians," she says. In high school, she was deeply involved in the National Black MBA Association and Junior Achievement. Her LinkedIn profile is littered with achievements from Upward Bound to Enactus to Hip Hop LDN. While she was a student at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University, Precious attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany. When she returned, she began spreading the message about climate change. She soon found that "Just talking about it was not enough." She began to change her personal habits, but still, she wanted to do more. In her junior year of college, Precious participated in a highly-selective entrepreneurship program, the Donald McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship. It was there that she met her classmate, Lucy Cervino. "We wanted to identify things around campus impacting students that we thought we could make better," Precious explains. "Being college students, the answer was easy: coffee, a product that a majority of students consume. There were many efforts to recycle the container or use a reusable cup. However, we found that no one was putting efforts toward minimizing wastes from their morning cups of latte." Solving Two Big Problems Americans love their coffee. According to The National Coffee Association, we consume 400 million cups of coffee per day or 146 billion cups per year. But what happens to the spent coffee grounds? The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that more than 260 million metric tons of coffee waste are added to landfills every year. As coffee breaks down, it releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is 35 times as potent as CO2 as a contributor to global warming. At the same time, Precious and Lucy worried about the disturbing number of chemicals used in skincare products. Reading the ingredients in beauty products was like a chemistry lesson. Ingredients like BHA, BHT, coal tar dyes, dibutyl phthalate, parabens, and triclosan were far too common. Precious and Lucy wanted to take on these two big issues at the same time. They came up with a natural skincare product utilizing coffee waste. In 2017, they co-launched the for-profit venture, PERK: The Natural Beauty Lab. "PERK aims to defer the amount of coffee grounds being sent to landfills while also addressing the growing concern among women about the alarming amount of chemicals in today's skincare products," Precious explains. PERK now sells an all-natural coffee body scrub through e-commerce and pop-up shops. A Student-Led Startup With guidance from the Donald McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship, the two cofounders followed a systematic process, yet they were flexible in how they applied it. "Early on, we conducted a feasibility analysis, concept tests, and sampling sessions with potential consumers. Additionally, we participated in pitch competitions on-campus and in Denver to spread the word. From there, we partnered with on-campus coffee shops to spread the word about our company. Once we launched, we began pushing those interested in our products to

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Social Entrepreneur Live, Part 1, Precious Drew, Perk: The Natural Beauty Lab is an episode from Social Entrepreneur: Conscious Companies | Benefit Corporations | Impact Investing by Tony Loyd.

This episode is 15:41 long.

This episode was published on Oct 22, 2018.

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