Sandy Gibson (Better Place Forests) - New natural traditions for your final resting place

My guest today is Sandy Gibson, founder of Better Place Forests. Better Place Forests is America's first conservation memorial forests. Instead of graves and tombstones, families choose a private, protected family tree to return their ashes to the earth together. In this episode, we talk building a business that focuses on the end of life, burial traditions and cemeteries. Sandy is one of the most unique founders I've had on the show on this and his story is very inspiring.

Some of the questions I ask Sandy:

1. What was your initial attraction to entrepreneurship?
2. Why did you decide to focus on the burial / end of life space? - making the world more beautiful
3. Traditional burials have been around for thousands of years. It's typically part of one's tradition and tied to cultures, faiths. When it came to timing of launching your business. Why now? Do you think people were questioning tradition? Was there a certain statistic that stood out?
4. A grave is something that can last forever, at least longer than a tree as all trees just like all living things die. When you think about eternally, how are you able to make people feel comfortable that their resting place will be a tree rather than something that could last longer?
5. How do you describe your target audience?
6. How did you go about securing land?
7. What's the typical sales cycle?
8. This is a sensitive area to talk about. How do you approach that in your marketing?
9. Since this is a product that only one person will buy never again, how
10. When did you need to raise capital and why?
11. What was your fundraising strategy?
12. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
13. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
14. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
15. What's one piece of advice for founders?