Earlier this year, we asked several of our RootedGood friends to respond to this statement, "This is the time for entrepreneurship. Agree or Disagree?" The following is a response from long-time friend, Cristin Cooper. Cristin Cooper is the Soup Maker of Coop’s Soups and the Pastor of Soup Church. Sharing food is her love language. Here's what she had to say:‍

This is the time for entrepreneurship. Agree or Disagree?"Agree! Entrepreneurship is about transforming the world by solving big problems. While entrepreneurship includes creating a business and scaling it to generate a profit, entrepreneurship is about being a part of the solution, making a difference, and contributing to the world’s flourishment. In this way, with the world beginning to look at itself post-pandemic, entrepreneurship is the creative solution to the many needs uniquely revealed over the course of this last year. Of course, the recipe in beginning these new ventures includes large amounts of empathy.In my own experience as an entrepreneur, I have discovered empathy as a sustaining source for creative problem-solving. Coop’s Soups is soup to share as an awesome way to make friends and fight off loneliness. The soup’s origin story begins with loneliness. My relationships with others felt rushed, shallow, and performative. In hopes of slowing down and building relationships of depth and honesty, I began to share soup among peers and neighbors. In learning I was not alone in feeling lonely, I started Coop’s Soups. To deepen community connections, the soup’s vegetables are locally sourced, and each jar of soup comes with a conversation starter. While many community-building events were canceled during the pandemic, I discovered sharing soup to build community could still be counted on.People all around the world have been affected by the pandemic in one way or another. New and recurring needs are on display in ways they previously were not. Now is the time for fresh business models that start from a place of empathy and invite us all to latch onto the truth that we are indeed one another’s keepers.