FarmboxRx might be Ashley Tyrner-Dolce’s brainchild, but bringing the company to life wasn’t a one-woman show.
Tyrner-Dolce founded her food subscription service in New York in 2014 after struggling to find and afford fresh fruits and vegetables as a young, single mom. Her company partners with health insurance agencies to send low-income Americans healthy groceries at a low-to-no out-of-pocket cost, and brought in roughly $55 million in annual revenue as recently as 2023, according to a company spokesperson.
FarmboxRx, which is now based in Boston, has been consistently profitable since 2022, the spokesperson adds.
She credits her success at least partially to a simple idea: finding people you can trust, and relying on them to help you in difficult moments, across any facet of your life.
When Tyrner-Dolce moved to New York from Arizona in 2011 with her then-newborn daughter, she dealt with the city’s high cost of living by staying with friends, she says. Now, as a CEO, she says surrounding herself with “the best talent” is more important than prioritizing her own ego.
“That’s a really difficult thing for entrepreneurs to do. You have this idea and so you feel like you should implement it this way, and it’s hard giving the reins over to other people,” says Tyrner-Dolce. “But you can’t do everything … Your true job as a CEO is to actually just surround yourself with people who are way smarter than you in other pieces of the business.”
Her advice extends beyond entrepreneurs and CEOs: Countless leadership experts and business books preach the value of delegation. Recognizing when to let the smart, capable people around you help shoulder your workload can help you mitigate burnout, build trust with your colleagues and improve your team’s overall efficiency.
“One of the key lessons, I think, was getting out of my own way,” Apothékary founder and CEO, Shizu Okusa,“In terms of allowing and hiring people that were much better than I was in certain areas of business. Now, I just move aside. I have my strengths and give my weaknesses away.”
Tyrner-Dolce counts her husband, colleagues, entrepreneur friends, other family members and even the nanny who cared for her daughter during FarmboxRx’s early days as people who’ve helped her manage all of her responsibilities.
She cites the Silicon Valley Bank collapse in March 2023 as an example: FarmboxRx had eight figures’ worth of money inaccessible for more than 18 hours, Tyrner-Dolce says. She couldn’t get in contact with her banker, and panicked at the thought of losing so much money, she adds.
Her COO supported her through the ordeal, she says — initiating a wire transfer to move cash to another account and keeping her level-headed during what she describes as the “worst day of my life.”
″[The village] that I’ve surrounded myself with has allowed me to focus on growing the business [as a working mom,” Tyrner-Dolce says. “I’ve had really great advisors along my journey that I’ve been able to bounce off of. [That’s] really, really important for any business that’s growing.”
