April 2018 – Coastal Carolina Soap Blog

There Is No Shortcut to Success

Want to know the secret to my success as a businesswoman?

I’ve been in business for almost sixteen years. I’ve read scores of books on business and soapmaking, watched hours of webinars, sat in seminars, and spent time with my mentors, both in soapmaking and business. Business isn’t a one-and-done proposition; it must be a continuing journey towards growth and improvement.

Business isn’t a one-and-done proposition; it must be a continuing journey towards growth and improvement.

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Being a home educator, I obviously love teaching. Being a business owner, soapmaker, and cosmetic manufacturer, I love sharing that passion with others, teaching what I’ve learned through the years. Whenever someone comes to me with a true desire to invest themselves in learning, I’m happy to take time to teach them. I’ve even thought about offering classes in beginning soapmaking and setting up a small business.

One of the things that I’ve experienced many times is requests from newbies wanting my success. If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, “Can I have your best selling soap recipe? I want to sell them at the flea market this weekend,” I’d have my dream beach house and be comfortable for life. I thought those days were behind me. Then Sunday happened.

A local lady I know messaged me on Facebook: “Can you give me a crash course on making soap?” I explained to her that there is no “crash course” to soapmaking. I further shared that I spent six months learning how to make cold processed soap, and that’s the average. I have books on techniques, formulation, oil analysis, soapmaking chemistry, and labeling. This isn’t a quick and easy knowledge set; it takes time, dedication, and work. I quickly got the feeling that the lady wasn’t interested in spending time learning the craft; she wanted my best soap formulation so she could make soaps to sell in our local area. She wanted my 10+ years of knowledge and experience fast and free! I gave her what she needed, though not what she wanted. The lady wasn’t happy with this. She wanted the shortcut.

Just as there are no shortcuts in soapmaking, there are no shortcuts in life. If you want to be successful in any endeavor, you absolutely must invest the time to do it and do it well.

Business: Those of us with successful businesses are enviable, I’m sure. We have wholesale accounts, websites, active social media accounts, and a customer following. We make it look easy, because no one sees the work we put in after hours (like right now it’s after 10:30 p.m. as I type this). My friend and I put it, “It takes a lot of time and hard work to become an ‘overnight success.'” Some people seem to have that one magical idea that nets them a small fortune seemingly overnight, but those people are few and far between. The rest of us put in a lot of work, sweat, and tears into making our dreams profitable.

Fitness: You’ve probably seen the great, awesome boiled egg diet that kept popping up all over social media a few weeks ago. Lose 24 pounds in 2 weeks with the boiled egg diet! This diet has nothing to do with eggs, though they’re great sources of low-fat protein. The diet is very close to keto and extremely low calorie. A quick estimate of calories indicates maybe 1000 calories a day and very few carbohydrates with this diet, so losing weight will be quick – and temporary. Those pounds won’t stay off once the diet is over. If you want lasting weight loss, deprivation isn’t the way to go. You’ve got to make lasting life changes, not temporary weight changes, if health is your goal.

Peace of Mind: Who doesn’t love a trip to the beach or the mountains? We breathe in the fresh air and the change of scenery helps us unwind. When we get home, though, it’s like all the stress and pressures quickly envelop us again. That’s why I developed my beach-inspired soaps, so you can bring the beach home. If you want to de-stress and stay calm, relaxing needs to be a daily goal. Yoga, meditation, or just getting off by yourself to chill for a bit will help lower the stress, which will, in turn, improve other areas of your life.

So what’s the secret to my success? Hard work. Studying. Learning from others. Making material investments in my improvement. Years of experience. And years of mistakes. Part of the joy of rebranding was starting fresh with all my years of experience as well as the lessons learned from my mistakes – lessons I happily pass along to others. And underscoring it all, I work with integrity. A business owner can have vast amounts of knowledge and experience, but if they lack in basic integrity, then their business lacks in other ways, too.

What are some of the secrets of your success? Please share them below.

Soaps Bear Memories and Share Happiness

It’s spring. Well, it’s supposed to be spring, anyway. Everything in me leans towards cleaning – cleaning up and cleaning out. The soap rack is no exception. As I’m constantly making new soaps and restocking my supplies, I also spend time getting rid of soaps that aren’t saleable. Usually these go into donate piles with one or two meandering upstairs to the basket in our bathroom.

One Monday, my younger daughter was waiting for her sis and me to catch up with her at the church where my teen goes for her language arts class. My daughter had noticed a sign with a bin underneath; one of this church’s ministries was collecting toiletries for migrant workers. Being especially compassionate towards non-native-born Americans at this particular point in our nation’s history, she said, “Mom, you could donate some soaps.”

My initial reaction was consternation; I don’t have any soaps on hand that I’m discontinuing completely. As we were sitting at breakfast the next morning, though, I looked up at my soap rack, which was behind her. And I paused, my mind calculating its unseen contents (the shelves are high from a sitting position). She said, “What?” And I smiled.

“I have some soaps we can donate,” I told her. Her dimple popped out and she got excited. I didn’t have many; you can see the pile isn’t terribly big. I had some Burberry soaps that didn’t behave well in the mould and came out all weirdly quadrilateral but not particularly rectangular as they should. And I had some cucumber soaps that were eventually to have these beautiful dragonflies applied to them before I determined that those soaps are cost-prohibitive to create and discontinued them. One of those bars made it to the basket; its age will guarantee a mild soap and a wildly fluffy lather.

While I was busy elsewhere, the Hubby and she pulled down and wrapped the soaps. She was so excited to bag them up and put them in the bin! That felt good to me, too, and the space on my rack was certainly welcome.

Women wash hands more thoroughly than men -Study

From Small to Colossal to Small

Do you remember KB Toys? KB Toys was a chain of inline stores found in malls nationwide in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, with a few tenacious remnants making it into the early aughts. I loved this store! They had the best selection of Barbie clothes anywhere – of course, with matching shoes.

Then the 80s brought the likes of Toys ‘R Us to markets nationwide. While KB Toys was a large chain of small stores, TRU was a large chain of huge stores. Now, TRU is closing its doors, demolished by billions in corporate debt, as well as its big box store competitors. According to CNN, Amazon and other online retailers did not mark the beginning of the end of TRU as previously suspected.

The vast entities known as the major online retailers – walmart(dot)com and Amazon, to name the two biggest – certainly didn’t help matters any. In the past ten years or so, while many people dragged themselves out into chilly late November weather to battle the after Thanksgiving toy store mobs, many others stayed home and shopped in their pajamas, enjoying free shipping and avoiding the crowds. As Cyber Monday became more of a thing, businesses everywhere encouraged customers to buy online instead of from brick and mortar businesses.

Toys ‘R Us’s problems were at the corporate level. Too much debt, too poorly managed assets. Sure, I shopped at TRU several times, and I’ll never forget the excitement of completing our baby registry at Babies ‘R Us when Hubby and I were expecting our first child. However, I never got that feeling shopping at TRU that I remembered from KB Toys. While the warehouse-feeling space was vast, it felt impersonal, and there was seldom a great selection of what I wanted. Two aisles of console games? No, thank you. An entire creepy doll aisle? Get me outta here! And by the time my older daughter was into Barbies… Where the heck are all the Barbie ensembles??? Plus, I thought the prices were ridiculously high compared to KB Toys (when I was at a toy-buying age during the companies’ overlap).

Small retailers do struggle with this to some degree. When will a corporate giant sink us? Yet, a lot of us indie retailers were born, grew, and thrived over against our big box store counterparts. We can offer what customers want. Products I make and sell are not available from Bath & Body Works, for example. Customers get to meet us personally and often get a sneak peek behind the scenes at what’s going on with our brands. Many times, they also get the opportunity to give us quick feedback on products we carry that impact the business directly. Small indie business becomes a relationship between seller and guest, and we love nurturing that relationship.

Small indie business becomes a relationship between seller and guest.

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And now, what do I see but that KB Toys is coming back! A company that revitalizes old brands has bought the KB Toys name and plans to open 1000 stores for Black Friday and the holiday selling season. I suspect that a lot of GenXers who share my nostalgia around the brand and the experience of shopping there will line up to bring some of that remembered joy to their own children. I hope the owners will not go big but will instead focus on smaller size with outstanding customer care.

KB Toys is coming back! So exciting!

The likes of Amazon and Walmart will be with us for the foreseeable future. They’re both retail giants who have managed to maximize profits. Additionally, Amazon treats its employees well and pays them far above the minimum wage favored by some retailers. I enjoy my Prime membership and the perks it brings me as I happily click my way to new stuff. Yet, the small indie retailers will also be around for the foreseeable future, because we can offer what no dot com can; a personal and personalized shopping experience. Amazon is not going to message me to let me know that they have a new assortment of workout tanks or that those shorts I ordered are on sale if I want to get more of them. However, a small business owner will take the time to contact a customer, making that person feel important. Plus, we humans are tactile shoppers. We like to feel, smell, and experience the things we’re thinking about buying. No online experience can duplicate that.

How do you like to shop? Will online retailers wipe out your brick & mortar shopping trips?

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