How to Soar with Angel Investing

There are plenty of angels out there that do make a return, and you can, if you have a diversified strategy, you have a strategy, which is a big thing that I talk about in my book, do good while doing well, is if you have that and you know that you're spreading your risk across several companies and you're also working with the companies and the people who are helping the board, the advisers, you know, these are things that can really help to grow a company and get it to the scalability and to the change that we wanna see in the world.

Angels are those early gatekeepers. So without angels, there are so many innovations that, you know, wouldn't even have a chance to get started. Fortunately, there are angels who do, you know, give their time, talent, and treasure to that. And what we're trying to do is just encourage more people to think about that. I mean, even if you're not going to invest money, you know, think about volunteering for something like Flywheel because it's a great way. They they need a lot of help. They need a lot of advice, and it's a great way to give back.

Flywheel is a social enterprise hub. This means we help social entrepreneurs build and scale businesses that have both a financial return and positive social impact the double bottom line. Flywheel Social Enterprise Hub created the Philanthropreneur Impact Investing Group to strategically invest in start ups that represent a brighter tomorrow. Our philanthropreneur cohort embraces hands on learning about impact investing, angel investing, and alternative capital structures that build the confidence of impact investors and provide much needed support for social entrepreneurs. My name is Joan Kaup. I'm the host of On the Fly!

Today, our conversation is about the value and importance of angel investing to the individual, the organization, and the larger community. The executive director of Flywheel Social Enterprise Hub, Donna Zaring, is in conversation with two talented, knowledgeable women about social impact and angel investing, Marcia Dawood and Sue Bevan Baggett.

Marcia is Vice Chair of the SEC's Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee, a TEDx speaker, and author about angel investing. Her book is called Do Good While Doing Well.

Sue is a human centered executive advisor, innovation catalyst, speaker, and author. Her book is called You Can, You Will. Here's Donna with Sue and Marcia.

Great to see you both. I think the last time we were together was at Startup Cincy Week when, Marsha, you came to town to talk about your book, Do Good While Doing Well. And, Sue, I believe you were a part of a a panel at Startup Cincy Week talking about the importance of social impact and investing.

Yeah. And, and then we were also featuring the movie, Show Her The Money that Marsha and I are both involved in. So it was lots of stuff going on that week.

That was an awesome week for Cincinnati for sure, and, we were so glad that you could both could be a part of it. We mentioned the word start up. Not everybody listening might understand what a start up actually is. Let's let's talk about that for a minute. When you say start up company or organization, what are you talking about?

Well, usually, start up is considered it's a private company, for the most part, and it's a company that is usually small. They're working on something. However, there's a scalability aspect to it. So there are a lot of small businesses out there in The US. We hear about all different types of businesses from your dry cleaner, a bank, something like that.

But a startup is something that is usually involved with either some type of technology, maybe something around life sciences. And there's a scalability factor, meaning that the company has the potential to actually get much larger. And if there are investors that end up investing in a start up, there's a potential for them to get a nice financial return.

And and then when we talk about social impact, what does that what does that mean, and how does that relate to startups? Why are we talking about those two things together?

Well, I think, you know, when people hear the word social impact, it can mean a lot of different things to different people. But one of the ways that, you know, I've talked about it before is if you have a start up, and as part of the mission or the purpose of that start up, they are trying to address a significant social or environmental challenge. That's part of the problem that they're trying to solve with the value that they're creating in their company, then that's something that could be considered a social impact. You know, it could be something like, you know, job creation. It could be something like, you know, solving something to do with wastewater.

It could be something that's, you know, addressing one of the 17 UN global goals. There's a lot of different ways, to look at positive social and environmental impact.

I think a lot of people listening might ask themselves, well, isn't social impact mostly a function of nonprofits? Isn't that what nonprofits are here to solve? What is it about social impact and how it relates to startups that's special?

I mean, I think, yeah, for a long time, nonprofits have been involved in solving, you know, some of these challenges. But, there has been a wave of, startups that have started to address that as well. The traditional nonprofit business models are quite challenging. It relies on people giving money to change. Whereas in a startup, you can bring investors in to help to stimulate and accelerate growth.

In fact, Marcia and I were both involved in a fund. It was specifically set up to to demonstrate to it was called the Next Wave Impact Fund. It was specifically set up to demonstrate to people that you can have, purpose driven and high growth together in the same company and have that be a successful return on investment and return on impact.

Yeah. I kind of have a love hate relationship with the word impact just because I do want to make impactful change in the world. Sue and I both invest in a lot of different types of companies that will that we hope will help to bring change to the world. But in a lot of cases, when people hear the word impact and they especially if they hear the word impact investing together or social impact investing, they think, oh, well, that just means that you're, you know, you're not really expecting a return. You don't really think that something's gonna happen.

So but that is absolutely a 100% not true. And to Sue's point about nonprofit business models, they're just we're putting the burden on nonprofits to basically solve all the world's problems, and that's just not fair. They don't have the funding. They don't have the structure to be able to do that all by themselves. Like, it's a it would be great if more for profit companies, especially startups who are working on some of these amazing technologies, were able to work more with the nonprofits and kind of help take some of that burden away.

Well, you talk about the burden. Even if you just look at the amount of money that flows through nonprofits, which in The US is only about 1% of the value of The US stock market. So how can we put all the burden of change, on those companies? We really do need to be looking at for profit companies to do their part.

And tell us about your your book, Marcia, do good while doing well. Is this a topic that that you cover in that book?

Yes. I cover that quite a bit. You know, Sue and I have talked to a lot of people. Once they learn about what angel investing is, there's plenty of books and resources out there, especially through the Angel Capital Association to be able to teach them or train them on how to be a good angel, you know, how to do diligence, how to pick a company, what are you look what are you looking for and all that type of thing. But I didn't really couldn't find anything out there that was able to demystify what is this.

Like, I would talk to people and they would say angel investing. I don't I don't even know what that means. Like, what what is that exactly? And how do you do it? And who has to do it?

And I thought it was just for rich people. Do I have to have a finance degree? There were so many questions. And I thought, wait a minute. Let's try to demystify all of that before we actually get into, well, how do you pick a company?

How would they even know that they wanted to pick a company to invest in if they don't even understand the mechanics of angel investing in general?

I joke with Marcia because she actually got into angel investing before I did. She's one of my angel mentors. But I choke that up. I'm an accidental angel investor. I if you had asked me years ago I mean, I have an innovation background.

I thought a lot of the innovations were happening in large companies. If you would ask me ten years ago that I was gonna, you know, kind of get on the field as an angel investor, I would have laughed at you. And it wasn't until, I started understanding, you know, how much innovation was happening, in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, how that impacted, you know, the communities growing, thriving, etcetera, and, how angels really have the first vote on which innovations get to go forward, you know, that that was, you know, part of the motivation to to learn more. That and the fact that, you know, I found out that women were only getting 2% of venture capital. And I was just shocked and said there is just, you know, no way 50% of our population has only 2% of the good business ideas worth funding, and that, is how I ended up getting connected into, you know, learning about angel investing.

Yes. And nowadays, people can invest for as little as a $100, $200 through equity crowdfunding sites. So some people might have heard of Kickstarter, Indiegogo, which is a rewards based crowdfunding where there's no exchange of ownership, or maybe even like GoFundMe, which is a donation based crowdfunding. People pool their money together in order to help a cause. But with equity crowdfunding, you are actually getting a small percentage of ownership of the company.

And the crowd, in a lot of these cases, can help them to market the product or the company or help them to to grow and expand. So this is something that isn't talked about very much because it's only been allowed since 2016 when the Securities and Exchange Commission allowed for equity crowdfunding platforms to to do this type of thing. And I think, you know, if we can get more people in at least to kind of get started, learn about it, it's a very easy way for people to learn without really having to put out any money. I mean, they these public their public platforms, the three that have the biggest market share right now are Wefunder, StartEngine, and Republic. And people could just go on to those sites and peruse and kind of look around and just see what it is that actually makes up a startup because each one of these platforms, when there is a a company on their fundraising, they have to have a certain amount of disclosures and and talk about, you know, the different aspects of a company.

It and I think a lot of times when people go and they see the videos and they look at what the companies are working on, they think, oh, I had no idea that this is like how a company is structured, how they actually ask for investment. And I think you can actually learn a lot just from kinda looking around.

You know, I think a lot of people may be asking themselves, how can a how can a company or a start up that's focused on social impact make any money? How is this something that would be good to invest in? What would you say to someone who might have a question like that?

Having a significant purpose is a real advantage for a start up when it's very clear what their mission is and what they're trying to accomplish. And, really, what is a company doing? A company is looking to create value, and there is a lot of value in some of these, you know, purpose driven companies. There's a company called Solo Funds, and they set out to, disrupt payday lending. And for those who don't, payday lending is something that is, you know, a lot of people live paycheck to paycheck, and they have challenges that come up.

And sometimes even as much as a couple $100 could put a person in a position where they have nowhere else to go for a loan to a payday loan. But that causes a a a spiral of people in terms of debt. And so solo funds, you know, decided, you know, there are gotta be a better way. What if there were a community lending platform so the humans could help other humans once they understood what the needs were and, you know, set the payback rules and all of that? So community lending to replace payday lending is an excellent example of, you know, value value creation on both sides.

And when you have a for profit business, it's a self sustaining business model. Right? It's going to be able to be around for a lot longer. Sometimes they need extra help with the start for, you know, this whole start up, right, at the start. But once it gets going, the business model can keep going.

So you can really magnify, the impact over time. Whereas, you know, a lot of nonprofits are having to go out for money on a consist basis and just keep asking people to give to them. So I think it's a really powerful model.

Yeah. Me too. I I always you know, just coming up through innovation, working with different companies on building new products and trying to find new markets for products throughout my career. You know, the first rule is always find the unmet need. Right?

Find the under met or unmet need. And when you look at some of the challenges that we have in our community, these are big, big issues and big needs. And if we can innovate to try to find a better way to tackle some of these things, that's that's a huge unmet need that that you're solving and plenty of market potential.

Yeah. Well and some people don't even realize. Like, I grew up my, my background is in global innovation at Procter and Gamble, and Procter and Gamble has always been a purpose driven company. They have a very specific statement of purpose related to improving the lives of the world's consumers. And, you know, improving people's everyday lives was part of my motivation, why I enjoyed doing innovation in that where and, you know, it is also a, long time, you know, high growth public company that is making a profit as well as having a purpose.

So I really don't see why they can't coexist.

You know, the term social impact actually was first used in a Yale University seminar in 1969 on their ethical responsibilities of institutional investors. I thought that was really interesting that the the term social impact has been around for that long. When were you first aware of social impact, and and why did you become interested in it?

Well, you know, the actually, it was a Cincinnati based company that made me first aware of social impact, an organization called Nehemiah Manufacturing, which was founded by Dan Meyer. And I had been doing some innovation work at Procter and Gamble. One of the products that I innovated was a little too small for P and G, and Meeamiia Manufacturing actually took over this product as part of what they were doing. And their social impact was around hiring, second chance citizens. So they were doing branded consumer products, you know, creating them.

It was a for profit company, but at the same time, they were giving, you know, people who have had challenged backgrounds an opportunity to work there and progress. So it was my interaction with with Nehemiah that was one of my first exposures to a purpose driven for profit company that could do both.

You know, early on after I first learned what angel investing was and was so fascinated that there were entrepreneurs working on such cool innovative things right in my own backyard. I was living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the time, not too far from Cincinnati. And I was just completely fascinated thinking, wow, there's so much innovation happening all over the world in every city and every town. But then I started to realize, wait a minute, like, so little funding is going to women, as Sue mentioned, and, you know, how how is this how do we change this, and what does this all mean? And so as I got to be more involved with that and learn about, you know, where the funding was actually going and what types of things were actually being funded, I thought, wait a minute.

We we have a problem here. You know, there's a lot of money going into health care, but how much of it is actually going into women's health care? So we've got a huge discrepancy there. So then, like, again, with the word impact, is it really impact investing to invest in a women's health care company because it's women's health care as opposed to men's health care? Well, that doesn't make any sense.

So, you know, all of those things is really why the Next Wave Impact Fund was put together, as Sue mentioned, because we were trying to prove like, hey. Wait a minute. We can actually show that there is, there are returns to be had even though we are working on all the things trying to make the world a better place.

You both are angel investors. Is angel investing the first round of money for these startups? Have they had to use other tools to get started? What are some of the things that you hear from the startup founders?

I would say that, you know, angels are early. I don't know that they're always the first money in nor should they be. In a lot of cases, you know, it's a very tough balancing act at the very beginning to figure out like how much funding are you going to take, when are you going to take funding, from who, how much, all of these things. Because in a lot of cases, as entrepreneurs are building their companies, they are really wanting to bootstrap and try to get at least a minimum viable product to show to investors before they would actually have, you know, ask for an investment. And Sue and I actually co wrote an article about how one of the very important things that I think entrepreneurs miss is this building of relationships before they actually need to ask for money.

Sometimes entrepreneurs will be like, no. No. I don't want to show you what I'm working on yet because, you know, it's like it's so private and I don't want you to see it until it's perfect. And really that's not the right way to think about it. We want to know what you're working on, how you're building it, how you're thinking about it, build a relationship, you know, Sue and I are both a part of MindShift Capital.

We invested in a company where I knew the founder for six years before we actually made an investment. So there are a lot of things that can really help a company at the very beginning to make sure that they're fundraising properly. Just because somebody needs the money doesn't necessarily mean that they should just run out and try to get investors because that's where I usually see companies fail. They really need to be thoughtful about where they're starting, how they're starting, and that's why Sue and I both are huge fans of crowdfunding. And, you know, I explained equity crowdfunding before, but sometimes rewards based crowdfunding is just as good, if not better, because you don't have to give any away any equity in order to do that.

So that's another place that people can start.

There also are sometimes opportunities, for founders to get access to early capital through through grants, and that is a great way to start, particularly if you're working in an area of positive social environmental impact. There might be grants available. We're very fortunate actually at Cincinnati to have Main Street Ventures, which is providing grants that help kick start, entrepreneurs. So that's a great place to look. And, you know, you know, that that would be the one thing, you know, one I would, you know, add on to what Marsha is saying.

And just to be clear, like, you know, building those relationships early, you know, they need to be thinking about all the different relationships they're gonna need. They need to think about their investor relationships, but there's also a lot of people out there that are willing to help start ups if they take the time to interact. Now, of course, they should have their legal representation and make sure they're, you know, that they have their, intellectual property plans in place before they go out and do a lot of broad scale sharing sharing. But that sharing, that interaction will really help them hone their ideas. I mean, all the best innovation, it requires iteration and experimentation.

And if you're not sharing your ideas with other people, you could be going down the wrong path. Right? You need to be sharing, sharing those ideas and understanding. Are you building value? How are you building value?

Do you have that right, as Marsha said, early market product fit? And then, you think about where do I get the investment that I need to potentially scale it.

And and that's really where organizations like Flywheel come in and for us in particular focusing on social impact. That's where we bring in a broad network of coaches, subject matter experts, like yourselves. And, Sue, I know you've been a coach for many of our startup founders throughout the years. But, yeah, we we believe anyone who's interested in changing the world and willing to invest their time, money, and expertise is considered an angel. And sometimes, you know, as we work through through the eight weeks that we coach startups who are working in the social impact space, we see that they're very good with the the idea and they know what problem they wanna solve, but they're not always savvy on the aspects of running a business.

And other times, it may be the other way. They may be very tech savvy, but aren't really aren't really able to focus on what it is they're trying to solve. But it's thanks to angels like yourself, we get the guidance that they need to get their concept to the right place where they can then start thinking about funding. What are some of the things you tend to see with with startup founders as they're starting out besides how to ask for money? What are some of the biggest challenges that you see when you're coaching?

Well, I think you you hit on one that I see frequently, which is, sometimes you'll get highly technical founders who, are, you know, really good at solving the technical side of the problem, but maybe not as good at solving the human side. And quite honestly, the human side is often the more challenging one. And so, you know, so I do see that happening, quite a bit. And, you know, you need you need those kinds of skills. Right?

You need the human skills as well as the technical skills to have these scalable, solutions. So I definitely see that. And, and then I know what you said initially too that we often see that the founders, understand the problem that they wanna solve, but they may not have all of that full range of of of business skills. So really, encourage them to look for places like Flywheel where they can get that sort of help and advice and guidance.

I'd also add that, you know, sometimes entrepreneurs, they are solving a big problem, but they can't articulate exactly what that problem is in a timely manner. What I mean by that is sometimes as they're going through their pitch deck or they're talking investors, they're very, very focused on what their solution is, whatever they've built their baby, which is great, except that if they're not solving a really big problem, then basically they just have a solution that's in search of a problem. And if it's not really that sticky and we're not going to change our behavior in order to use it, then it might not actually scale and grow and be something that is marketable. So I always encourage entrepreneurs from the very beginning to be very, very, very clear on exactly the problem that they're solving and how big this problem really is.

Yeah. Regardless of whether or not they're in social impact. Right? That's just that that's true for any kind of business.

Exactly. Yeah.

And then, you know, Marsha, you reminded me too. The other thing in terms of scalability, it's gotta be a big and important problem, you know, that people are anxious to find a solution for. And then you you also need the sales and marketing skills to do that. And, initially, it's the entrepreneur that is all of those things. You know?

They're the number one fundraiser. They're the number one marketing person. They're the number one sales I mean, so they really do need a broad range of they need to develop a broad range of skills. They might not be the expert in all those eventually when they get to the point, but early on, they need advice in all those areas, and they need to be able to bring that together to build a sustainable business.

Think it's just an important time to be having a conversation about women and investing and what that means. Tell us a little bit more about what you are seeking to accomplish with Show Her The Money.

The film, it's a documentary, Show Her The Money. It's basically showing several fund managers and then the companies invested in and what's happened to them over a period of time. And really what the film is meant to do because television and and movies tend to get people's attention and build awareness. And really, that's the heart of the documentary. And Catherine Gray, who is the producer and the brains behind the movie, she's really the one who not only came up with the idea, but she also has done so many other things in order to promote it and get more people involved in it.

And I met her because someone saw her TEDx talk and saw mine and said, do you know you guys are talking about the exact same thing? You should know each other. And so from there, we ended up having a conversation and she said, hey. You know, I'm putting out this documentary. It's almost done, but I still need a couple of investors.

Would you be interested in investing? And I thought, well, that's kind of interesting. And so I went to Sue and said, hey. What do you think about this? And we looked it over, thought it over, and then, of course, pretty quickly, we're like, hey.

Yeah. This is, like, totally in line with what we care about.

Yeah. Because we're talking about things that skills and backgrounds that, you know, you need. And Marcia and I really wanted to drive change. We wanted to drive more people onto the field for angel investing, support more of these, you know, amazing entrepreneurs. And, you know, here and media is not in either of our backgrounds.

And here was an opportunity to to do that collaboratively. It's been amazing to see how well received the film has been. It's won multiple awards. And and now, we were doing live screenings all throughout, 2024. And now throughout 2025, there will be, a lot a lot more opportunities for virtual screenings as well.

So it's exciting to see it. The momentum building, Catherine calls it the movie mint, the momentum building, and people, and and it's really and it's actually just a fundamentally fun movie to watch because the storytelling is is really good. The Kai Dickens, who's the director, did a fabulous job of bringing all these stories together.

Angel investing. It's oftentimes one of the first investments for a startup founder for a company. Why is angel funding so important?

So I go over a lot of this in my book about why people would become angel investors. And there's several reasons. In fact, I started a podcast called the angel next door back in 2021. It highlighting people and asking them these very questions. Why do you do this?

Why would you put your after tax dollars to work in something that is relatively risky? You know, we lose probably on average about 50% of the money that we put in. If out of 10 companies, five of them will probably completely go under, maybe two or three will return money, and then the other one or two you're hoping will be big wins and kind of cover all the rest of those losses. So, you know, this is something that you really want to think about before you would put in some of your money knowing that there's a possibility that you might lose it. But at the same time, to Sue's point from earlier, we really care about innovation.

We care about the things where we wanna see change. And what if there weren't angel investors? Because those bigger VC guys, 90% of their investments that they get to invest in down the road when they are a little bit more established only happen because angel investors came in early. And in a lot of these cases, we're talking about being able to help these entrepreneurs to grow and scale their companies. And, you know, Sue is a perfect example because she's an incredible mentor and a great coach to a lot of startup companies.

So not only is she investing with her dollars, but she's investing with her time. And so many angels do that. At the Angel Capital Association, we have about 16,000 members, and we've estimated that there's about a million hours of volunteered to startups over the course of every year from angels. So imagine if we didn't have this. So we're always trying to encourage people to, you know, put their money and their time into the things that they care about.

And we're not talking about your entire life savings. Certainly, please don't use your kid's college education money when they're like 15 years old. Don't do that. But at the same time, you know, at the Angel Capital Association, we say probably of your investable assets, maybe 7% is something that you would put into a riskier asset class like this. But keep in mind that there are plenty of angels out there that do make a return, and you can, if you have a diversified strategy, you have a strategy, which is a big thing that I talk about in my book, do good while doing well, is if you have that and you know that you're spreading your risk across several companies and you're also working with the companies and the people who are helping the board, the advisors, you know, these are things that can really help to grow a company and get it to the scalability and to the change that we wanna see in the world.

Yeah. And, just to, you know, build on what Marsha said, I mean, we angels are those early gatekeepers. So without angels, there are so many innovations that, you know, wouldn't even have a chance to get started. And, you know, fortunately, there are angels who do, you know, give their time, talent, and treasure to that. And what we're trying to do is just encourage more people to think about that.

I mean, even if you're not going to invest money, you know, think about, volunteering for something like Flywheel, because it's a great way. They they need a lot of help. They need a lot of advice, and it's a a great way to give back. It's very rewarding. It is very rewarding to see these entrepreneurs get empowered, see them growing their businesses.

It's, it's an exciting thing. And then the other thing I would mention is, yes, you can use your investable dollars with money from your self directed IRA, and you can use money from a self directed donor advised fund. So you can actually use philanthropic dollars. And so then even if you're not getting the return on impact, but you can make your philanthropic dollars go farther. Because if your investment does get a return, then you can keep on investing in in new innovations.

So I think there's just a lot of aspects of angel investing that people just don't know about, but there's a major, opportunity for a ripple effect when you do participate.

That's so true. And and even for those who just want to make a social impact and get a a return on investment in terms of social capital, there are ways to use donor advised funds to support work and through for example, Flywheel offers the philanthrepreneur program. So most of our contributors are from donor advised funds who wanna take those dollars that they would otherwise give to, you know, other charities. They invest that with Flywheel for us to be able to provide some support for startups as they're just getting started before they're ready for angel capital. So there's a lot of different ways you can put your dollars to work.

And it's a great way. It's a great way to do it. It's a great way to seed innovation that's important in creating the changes you wanna see in the world.

You know, we say be the change you wanna see. I love that. I just love that phrase because it says so much about our ability to not just see things that need to happen in the world, but do little things to make a difference. What are some examples of any of companies just doing things to create social impact that really inspire you?

Well, we talk a lot about women's health care because that's something that is extremely underfunded. For many, many years, they looked at women as little men. And if you can believe it, it wasn't until recently, maybe like a decade ago, that they actually started putting like making sure that there were women involved in clinical trials. In a lot of cases, they would have a clinical trial on some kind of a drug or treatment or something like that, and there were no women involved in it. So like my best example would be like, okay, aspirin.

If you have a bottle of aspirin and I look at the back of it and see what the dosage is for me and I see what the dosage is for my husband, is it different? No. It's not different. But we're very different. We're very different size.

We're very different weight, you know. So it's not that's a, you know, kind of a a basic example. But I mean, that's happening if you think about it across a lot of health care. So if we can see companies, and Sue and I see a lot of them, that are working specifically on solving healthcare need for women, like we're all about it. In fact, one company that we're extremely excited about called JoyLux is working not just on pelvic floor issues and a lot of things that women experience after childbirth and even during menopause, but they're working on a platform community ways that women can talk to each other and actually learn about how they can overcome a lot of these challenges where before these were kind of taboo topics.

Nobody really talked about me. I'd ask your mom and maybe your mom wouldn't even wanna tell you about it. So, you know, now we're getting into a lot more where we are seeing there's more being talked about it. It's not so taboo and we can really start to make a difference in women's lives.

I build on that with, there's another company that's part of our Next Wave Impact Fund called Motivo. And basically, what they're doing is improving access to mental health care, which, you know, even before the pandemic, it was an issue. And now it's so much more of a widespread issue. But in order to be qualified to provide mental health care, people need to have observational hours and things like that. So this is a private platform that allows for many more, mental health professionals to be trained more efficiently, more effectively.

And, you know, that's something that benefits benefits everyone, when you can increase access and do that in a in a scalable way.

Awesome. So making the world better and just doing business better. It sounds sounds like a good concept for a book. So what any last thoughts as we get ready to wrap up and and, you know, you amazing women continue to go out into the world and make investments and change. What what's what's your final last word of advice to our audience who's thinking about how they can change the world with their investment and time and treasure?

Well, I think it's just something people need to do. Don't wait. Don't hesitate. We see a lot of people who are like, oh, this is really a great idea. I would really like to do this.

But then, you know, life happens. They don't get involved. They're not really sure where to go. And, you know, especially in the Cincinnati area, there's lots and lots of things happening, but would people actually think that Cincinnati is like a start up hub? But there is so much happening there in Pittsburgh, in all of these places, in every city, in every town.

So all you need to do is just do a an online search of entrepreneurship in my area or startup events or, you know, the most simple thing, angel investors in and then put in your town. And you can find so many things that are happening and actually meet some really fun and cool people. Soon, I would have never met if it weren't for angel investing. So that's also a big perk.

Yeah. I know. I was thoroughly enjoyed meeting Marcia and all the other angel investors. You know, everybody who's involved is really all about helping more startups succeed, which is exciting. And, you know, I would say the same thing that Marcia did is it's, you know, don't wait.

Get out there and see what's happening, and you can really get excited about innovation. And it could be all the things she said. It could also be an accelerator that's in your area, and, it could also be the university that's in your area. A lot of university programs are, you know, bringing together entrepreneurship programs. And, you know, once you get a taste of it and you see the exciting things that these entrepreneurs are coming up with, that'll that'll get you involved.

And where can our listeners learn more about you? How can they learn more about the work that you're doing?

Well, I have a website. It's simply my name, Marcia, m a r c I a, Dawood, d a w o o d dot com. Everything's there.

And the best way to to find me is on, LinkedIn. And I think Marsha would say the same. Anybody who wants more information about Do Good While Doing Well, about angel investing, about all the different pathways that you can use, general advice funds, you know, IRAs, etcetera, we'd be more than happy to connect with folks and help them find their path to being a change angel. Fantastic.

Thank you both so much for all the work that you're doing to create opportunities for more people in our in our world and for being a guest on our podcast, On the Fly! It's great to hear from you both, and, I look forward to seeing you very soon.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks so much.

On the Fly! is produced by Joey Scarillo with music composed by Ben Hammer, recorded at eighteen nineteen Innovation Hub in Cincinnati, Ohio, courtesy of the University of Cincinnati.