Coastal Carolina Soap Blog – Page 9 – Soaps and Beach

Taking Care of the First Order of Business

It’s crazy this time of year, isn’t it? Some of us are cooking for Thanksgiving, and some of that bunch are planning on hosting these fabulous Thanksgiving dinners and looking forward to celebrating with family. (We’re all just going to hope that the host home is a “politics-free” zone – yet one more thing that’d make us quite grateful.) For small business owners, we’re gearing up for Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday, and as small business owners, we still have our own homes to prepare for the holidays.

A year ago tomorrow, my wish for “a more relaxed Advent season” took a turn I wasn’t expecting. I was hoping that my family would willingly pitch in and help take some of the load off my plate so I could play games on NORADtracks and feel less stressed. Well, my family did step up and help with cooking, decorating, and my business – after I took a spill that resulted in a dislocated knee and six weeks in a leg brace. Not some place I want to go again!

The thing is, we absolutely must take care of ourselves as business owners and parents. I started a weight-loss regime of toning, walking, and calorie monitoring in early October. (The weight loss numbers have been disappointing, but I’ve got new muscle tone, and my pants are getting unattractively loose.) With huge orders to wrap and ship, classes to teach, a home to take care of, and gifts to make, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to find the time I need each day to get my exercise in. I need that exercise, though! My knees are happier, I sleep better, and I feel better overall.

Yesterday was one of those challenges. There literally aren’t enough hours of daylight these days to get everything done. I’d taught both girls their lessons, planned dinner, and the soaps… Well, we won’t mention those. The sink was full of dirty dishes waiting to go into the dishwasher, but I only had about an hour of light left and really wanted to get a walk in. What to do, what to do? And the fact that it was pretty chilly outside really didn’t help much. I donned sneakers and grabbed a windbreaker out of the closet and headed out for my walk.

It was a great walk, though my legs were cold by the time I got back. I waved at neighbors and had one lady tell me that it was “a blessing to see [me].” I watched Christmas lights going up on a house down the street and witnessed the little boy’s excitement as he watched and “helped” his parents. In one section of our neighborhood, one house had wreaths on the windows while the house across from them has an inflatable turkey. I saw the first star appear in the clear evening sky.

As I struck out to take my walk, I knew I had a lot of work to do for my business, my home, and my family. I have a lot of work to do for me, too, though. If I don’t find the balance that allows me to take care of my self, then I really won’t be able to take care of everything else. My knees will become sore and stiff again, I’ll be sleep-deprived, and I’ll lose some of this new energy.

My business mentor insists that we all treat ourselves to a post-holiday sales rush spa day – or a massage at the very least. This year is looking like a good time to add that to my self-care. In the meantime, though, these steps I’m taking now are helping me combat the stress before it starts.

Going into what I call “the silly season” in retail, I encourage my colleagues to work some self-care into their daily routines. (We cannot live on Christmas cookies alone!) For you folks – mostly women, admittedly – who are trying to do everything and be everything to all people, pause! Take the time to make some memories and simply be with the ones you love. Not every walk I take is intensely therapeutic; tonight I’ll be walking with my little girl who will watch squirrels and marvel at the Christmas decorations that are going up downtown, so a slower pace. And that’s OK, because I still get my walk, and she and I are making some lovely memories.

Hearty Autumn Cooking

Once all the soaps are on the rack and curing, and the 400+ tubes of lip balms have been labeled, banded, and portioned off to go to their respective customers, it’s time to whip up some edible concoctions as the nights turn chilly and we want heartier fare. Yet, as I create soups and one-dish meals, I can’t quite give up the light, bright, fresh flavors of summer; I just warm them up a bit with certain herbs and spices.

We warmed up with tomato basil bisque this weekend, accompanied by grilled cheese sandwiches, because, really, can it get more comforting and warm than that? I had a few parts of this recipe prepped already from last year’s canning extravaganza, which made it a bit easier to throw together. It’s full of fresh or frozen veggies, basil fresh from my garden, and zesty Italian spices.

I started with frozen tomatoes I had leftover from last year, sliced some fresh onion, and used fresh organic carrots (naturally much sweeter than conventional) that I sliced very thinly. The tomatoes were very juicy, so I added some powdered dehydrated tomato peel to the liquid to thicken it and increase the tomato flavor with a POW! At the end of all this, I hit the whole concoction with an immersion blender to make a lovely creamy soup with a little texture to it.

Ingredients:

2 T. butter

1/2 cup onion

1 cup shredded carrot

2 T. flour

1 cup milk (or half-and-half)

Quart of chopped tomatoes, skinned

1/2 cup powdered dehydrated tomato skins

1/2 tsp. salt (add more as needed)

1/4 cup basil

1 T. Italian seasoning

Directions:

Melt butter in a sauce pan. Add chopped onion and shredded carrots. Cook 3-4 minutes until soft. Add flour, a little at a time, stirring it in until it’s absorbed. Gradually stir in milk; let mixture cook for two minutes. Add tomatoes, basil, salt, and Italian seasoning. Let cook for 15 minutes. In small batches, blend soup using either an immersion blender or a conventional blender, processing until mostly smooth. Serve hot. Makes 4 servings.

*My frozen tomatoes had a LOT of liquid when I thawed them, so I poured out a cup of the liquid (there were 1 1/2 cups total) and gradually added 1/2 cup of dehydrated, processed-to-powder tomato skins to the liquid, stirring after each addition. I let this sit for 3 minutes before adding it to the thickened mixture. This ratio made a good sauce and increased the rich tomato flavor. You can dry tomato skins in a food dehydrator, oven, or microwave; there are some great instructions online.

Bowl of bisque — Bowl full of warm, comforting goodness! Mostly creamy with a bit of texture for bite.

Doesn’t that look amazing? I was so pleased with this, and best yet, I have one more quart of tomatoes in the freezer, so I can make it one more time. If you want the juicy nutrition deets on this soup, you can find them here. (There is one little error in the recipe; it only makes 4 servings, where I’d put 5 in the one I submitted at Spark Recipes.) It’s a bit of work, but so worth it! Enjoy!

You May Not Be Human

What do you want today? What do you want for this week? The coming month? This year? If you want it, do you want it badly enough to go after it?

In a discussion with a friend of mine earlier today, I challenged him: “You say you want something, but you never do anything to get it. Ya know, if I said I wanted to lose weight, it’s not going to happen if I just sit on my butt all day, shoving junk food in my face.” He replied, “It’s human nature to want something but never go after it.” Really? Because as I think about my friends, family members and acquaintances, I see a whole bunch of people who wanted something badly enough to go after it, including myself.

So, if there’s ever been anything you’ve wanted badly enough to work, sweat, and sacrifice for, chances are, you’re not human. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but I thought you should know.

So, if there’s ever been anything you’ve wanted badly enough to work, sweat, and sacrifice for, chances are, you’re not human.

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I was thinking about some of my “not human” friends today.

At least three who’ve given up smoking in the past year, because they wanted better health.
Several recovering alcoholics.
Many, many who have lost a LOT of weight due to diligent exercise and changing their eating habits. (One even did so well, he no longer needs insulin or other meds to manage diabetes.)
The countless others who have dared to pursue financial freedom through aggressive saving, debt-reduction, and wise investing.
Still others who are seeking financial independence through starting completely new businesses or diligently working to grow existing indie businesses.

Even animals want something enough to go after it. Have you ever seen a lion chasing a gazelle? The lion wants dinner, and that gazelle wants to see another sunrise. The lion has choices – wounded wildebeest, slow zebra, less intense gazelle. Chances are, the lion will eat. The gazelle has two choices – run like hell or feed hungry lions. There really is no other choice for him.

If even wild animals want something badly enough to pursue it by their very nature, then humans also, by nature, will go after what we want if we desire it badly enough. The difference is, we have moral guidelines and societal mores to place some boundaries on what we go after. Promotion? Sure! Neighbor’s husband? Not so much.

If my friend is right and it’s not human nature to go after what we want, then I challenge you to embrace your non-humanness. Be a gazelle. Be intense about succeeding at what you want or failing as you go after it. But DO IT. And do it again. And learn from every mistake, every miscalculation. Don’t fail and say, “Well, I tried” and never try again. Name the failure: “Shoot! I forgot to allow for that expense.” “I didn’t work hard enough grasping that concept.” “I messed up when I didn’t show up for work.” Own it. And learn from it.

Do you want the success bad enough? Then go after it. Do you want a better life, better health, more disposable income? Then work for it. You can do this!

Small Business Spotlight: A Greener Lawn

As a small business owner, nothing excites me more than watching small businesses, whether new or existing, do amazing things, and today I want to shine the light of excellence on a local chemical lawn service company, A Greener Lawn. Being close to the owner as well as receiving amazing lawn service from him, I have a special perspective on how this business has grown from non-existent last month to a force to be reckoned with this one.

It started in December 2015 with news of an impending corporate take-over and resulting lay-offs. Actually, it was a bit more coercive than that: Lose your job, or join this other corporation that has a bad reputation and requires you to work 3 Saturdays a month on top of the Monday-Friday hours. So for six months as the two corporations battled it out and decided what they were going to do, Peter made plans and established goals, backed by the advice and support of his boss. When 14 July hit, the last day of his employment with his previous employer, he was ready. (Actually, more accurately, I told him it was time to fish or cut bait, and he took the leap.)

Peter had had some brilliant guerrilla-style business strategies in mind, as well as some outside-the-box ideas that his former boss never wanted to implement, but with only himself to answer to, Peter had no problem taking these wild, creative ideas and putting them to work in his own business. At the two-week mark, he said being in business for himself was “exciting.”

It’s been about six weeks now, and the business has certainly grown, thanks to Peter’s hard work, his indomitable work ethic, creative ideas, the love of his loyal customers, and even the positive word-of-mouth from his small business competitors and cohorts. A competitor tried to get customers in an area that they’d agreed would be Peter’s. Upon hearing that the customer had already signed up with A Greener Lawn, the competitor said, “He does good work, and he’ll treat ya right.” How far do you think that word will spread in that very small town?

A friendly competitor just this week said he’d send customers to A Greener Lawn if they were outside his target area. Over against all this, I’d say a sure sign of this company’s success is the fact that a large corporation is feeling threatened by this little start-up’s position in the local green industry. Customer after customer is cancelling service with this corporation, the one that took over the previously existing company. The sales reps are begging people to tell them who this company is. If they find out his first name, they claim “all the techs from XYZ are working for us now,” and promise to send Peter right out. Dishonest? Yes. Misrepresenting themselves? Yes!

These are external manifestations and validations of success, but I think what will make this company successful is what the owner himself brings to the table.

A Greener Lawn started out as a dream over 20 years ago. That dream led to plans, goals, and finally, execution. He owns all of it, including its success.
The owner’s knowledge of the industry makes this company successful. This is a guy who knows grasses, weeds, how to make grass green and lush, and how to make weeds disappear. Peter is happy to share that knowledge with other professionals and his customers, believing that his customers’ knowledge will make them valuable colleagues in caring for their lawns.
For the owner of A Greener Lawn, it’s not about the money. Sure, making money is a good thing for every business, but that’s not the motivating factor for him. In the course of a normal business day, he might retrieve a ball from a tree, let a new widow cry on his shoulder, or empathize with a customer’s health issues. He values his customers and takes the time to care for them. Part of the service includes walking around a customer’s lawn with them and listening as they discuss their concerns.
Peter is really outside-the-box in his thinking. He asks, “Why not?” and “How?” as he searches for ways to grow his business, takes even better care of his customers’ lawns, and matures as a business owner. This takes guts, as outside-the-box thinking is more the exception than the norm, so there are few precedents to determine where a course of action will lead.

I’m excited to see how far this very young business will go. It’s definitely off to an excellent start, and I see amazing things ahead!

What an Entrepreneurial Family Looks Like

It started off with me owning my own business. It’s not a unique business or completely new; people have been using soap for thousands of years. I do, however, have my own special niche that is unique in the industry. My daughters and husband are willing and (sometimes) enthusiastic helpers, because they know the advantages of my business being successful.

Then last summer, my older daughter began to run her own small mowing business. The goal at the time was to earn money to go on mission trips, but then she discovered that she really likes having money of her own. Her business grew a little this year with the incarceration of her primary competition. Hey, gotta seize the opportunities as they come.

Then it happened. After six months of “any day now” and corporate postponements, my husband got laid off as part of a corporate takeover and decided to launch his own business, a dream he’s harbored for at least twenty years. His former boss told him that he’ll be working harder the first six months than he has ever before, and his chemical supplier said that after the first one hundred customers, it gets easier. (He seems to be getting closer to that mark every day.)

Peter is doing what I call the “entrepreneur hustle.” The day after receiving his last paycheck – this happened to be a Saturday – he was busting butt building up his customer base. He’ll work for several hours taking care of his customers’ lawns, then come home and make phone calls and do computer work. My daughter went out with estimate sheets as she was working on her customer base. I go into shops and make contacts with people via email with whom I want to have a working relationship. Being an entrepreneur is all about doing the hustle. (Not to be confused with hustling customers, which is a bad practice.)

Being an entrepreneur is all about doing the hustle.

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I’ve gotta insert a quote by Dave Ramsey here:

“If you work like no one else now, then later you can work like no one else.”

What does that mean? Most people are happy getting by working a 9-5, Monday-Friday job. They make enough to pay their bills, tend to their families, save a little for vacation, hopefully put away for retirement. They are content biding their time, ticking off the minutes until retirement, complacently working as a cog in a larger wheel. Then there are the entrepreneurs. These are the ones who have a dream and a passion; they happily put in at least 60 hours a week to pursue their passion, and they reap the benefits from it. That means that they can set aside even more for their retirement nest egg and retire early, enjoying life while others are down in the coal mines of corporate America.

One day not long ago, my daughter was heading over to a neighbor’s lawn to mow. Peter was working in the office, and I was thinking a quick nap would be nice; after all, my work wasn’t going anywhere. I discovered that it doesn’t work that way anymore. Having this many entrepreneurs in the household has a peer pressure-type of motivation on each of us. With all this hustle going on, we each know that we’re not the only person working.

We also help each other. Peter has done a lot of legwork for my business. He’s made initial contacts with potential customers, he’s picked up oils for me, and he’s helped with manufacturing. Both of my daughters have helped wrap soaps and have helped make them. They often accompany me on deliveries and customer visits. My younger daughter and husband help the older daughter with her lawns when she needs a break. And we’re all helping Peter with his new business venture.

I spent part of Sunday night hand-addressing envelopes. The curse of having the best penmanship in the family.

This was how I spent Sunday night. I had a stack of envelopes that I’d told Peter I’d address for him. I sat in the living room at my parents’ house (we’d gone up for a funeral) while they watched a Chuck Norris series from the early 90s, and Dad and I ruthlessly critiqued the commercials, all aimed at the elderly and gullible. I’d discovered that the handwritten note goes a long way towards making customers feel special. Peter had over 60 letters in this stack alone, and no way were we handwriting that many letters! This is time-sensitive, though we did personalize the mail merge, and one of my former soccer families got a personal greeting at the bottom of their letter. Each was hand-signed, as well.

Whether or not they’re all working on the same business, the entrepreneurial family shares some characteristics.

Entrepreneurial families help each other out. People go into business to make money, and usually that money is to help the family in some way, which creates a common goal. Helping each other is a way to ensure that everyone meets his/her goals.
Entrepreneurial families encourage each other. “Ohhh… That soap is gorgeous!” “Her lawn looks good!” “You’ve got this!” And one I texted today: “Yea! But this is getting so commonplace now :D,” upon learning that Peter had sold another account. Frequent encouragement keeps each other energized and confident about the next step.
Entrepreneurial families motivate each other. “What do you mean you’re going to sleep for two hours this afternoon? Get your butt up and get working!” “Hey… I need to use the desktop this afternoon. Why don’t you go ahead and get your computer work done while I’m in the workshop?” When you’ve been working all week on a new business and the weekend rolls around, the last thing you want to do is work more, no matter what the work load looks like. Motivating each other helps keep the work flow going and ensures they meet each next small or large goal.

I never dreamed we’d have so many entrepreneurs in one family! It’s an adjustment for sure, but we’re all feeling calmer, more confident, and way more excited about what lies ahead.

Making the Change, pt. 3

You can read the first part of this saga here, and the second part here.

I was sitting at the beach, and I’d lucked out on a bench swing overlooking the ocean. The air was nippy (it was April), the water was a beautiful greenish blue, the sky was a crystal clear gradient blue, and the wind whispered through the sea oats on the dunes. I closed my eyes and allowed my other senses to study my environment. My mind went back to countless beach days – warm beach, friendly kids for the girls to play with, sand in the bathing suit (hey, it happens), sunscreen. And there it was. I would make soaps that capture by scent my memories and associations of various North Carolina beaches, and this would be my niche.

I already had been making one soap, Crystal Coast Morning, that was inspired by wonderful memories of waking up at Emerald Isle in the late autumn (think early December) when the air is clean and brisk and the beach is silent but for the waves and breezes. Kure Beach is kissed with a bit of sunscreen and a little sand. Outer Banks is wild and primitive – sudden storms, cedar-sided houses, the ghosts of pirates. And Ocean Isle has a hint of fruity drink (with an umbrella, of course) served ocean-side.

These four soaps form the heart of my new niche. A surprise gift of 5 pounds of Bolivian pink sand were the inspiration behind a new type of salt scrub, also in these fabulous scents (though, being a “man scent,” Outer Banks isn’t yet available in salt scrub). You know how your skin feels after you’ve been at the beach? That fine layer of sand exfoliates your skin as you wash it off. Then you wash off all the sunscreen and salt, slathering on the lotion afterwards, and you feel sun-kissed, moisturized, and completely luxurious. That’s what Bolivian Pink Sea Salt Scrub does for your skin.

From my niche came my conception of my ideal customer. It was the oddest thing. I was transferring soaps from table to rack late one night before bed, and I started talking to her in my mind. In a flash, my ideal customer came to me, and I knew everything about her. Experts put out worksheets to help businesses identify their ideal customer, but I kept getting stuck when I’d do them. Apparently, though, at 11:00 while I’m doing mindless tasks, I can come up with lots.

Anyway, moving on… (I just get really excited about my new products, if you couldn’t tell!) We’re moving forward on this rebrand, right? I had the blessing of 1 1/2 weeks without the girls to make products, take pictures, talk to my web developer. Things were looking good! I would take a few pictures a day as soaps cured and were close to being ready for sale. My web developer and I worked hard, troubleshooting and setting things in place. The launch date was 1 June, and I was trusting him to be working his coding magic behind the scenes while I dealt with the front-end and administrative tasks.

Then another one of those screeching halts came at the end of May. My husband and I both lost two people close to us – his mentor/friend and my grandmother. My work time was then pushed into traveling, and I pushed the launch for the following Monday, giving us the weekend for final tweaks and adjustments. I wasn’t hearing anything much from my developer, so I took deep breaths and trusted that all was going fine on his end. Then Monday comes. And Monday goes. No website, and nothing at all from my developer. It’s like he’d dropped off the face of the earth. Panic ensued. If this site was going to be ready for the grand new business launch, I was (a) going to have to build it myself, or (b) pay someone big bucks to build it for me. I knew I couldn’t afford option B, so A it was.

I started with my shopping cart, a trusted one that I’d used for years with my old site. I was familiar with the admin, was pretty comfortable navigating the cpanel, and I was ready to roll. The first problem hits. No big. I go to the support forums, find the solution, fix the problem, roll on. The next problem crops up. Same thing. By the third problem, I had figured out I was in over my head and started exploring other shopping carts. Getting started and through the first three problems took me… probably about 20 hours to deal with, and I hadn’t gotten very far at all. I found a new shopping cart, scrapped those twenty hours’ worth of work, installed the new cart, and after about another six hours’ work, had a rough but working website. Score one for the not-developer!

Several more hours, messages between the shop’s developer and me, even more hours, and the site was done and ready to launch a little over a week later. Given that website development really isn’t my forte’ at all, I really have to be proud of the fact that the launch was only delayed by two weeks, and for the most part, I built my site by myself (though again, with valuable help from the template developer’s team and my own friend Bobby). My web developer is still MIA.

Even while all that was going on, I ordered note cards, postcards, and business cards. I invested time in sending personal notes to some of my customers. I set up email addresses… And to my surprise, last Monday, one of my customers who received one of those notes talked about it in her own blog. You can read about that here.

So, that was pretty much my rebrand, start to present. There’s so much minutiae to doing this – opening new accounts, changing account information on websites, making it official with the state – but that’s boring stuff. However, if you’re rebranding or launching your first new brand (the steps are quite similar), be sure to include these tedious but necessary tasks on your task list so you don’t forget them.

If you have questions about rebranding I didn’t address, please leave them in the comments below.

Making the Change, pt. 2

In the first part of this account, I shared my thought processes behind rebranding my business and went over the “why” and the “how.” Not just a few business people have expressed interest in what was behind all this and how I did it.

The What – There were two necessary tools I used the most in all my plotting and planning, and I carried these tools with me everywhere! They went to my parents’ house, my in-laws’ house, church, the orthopedist, my best friend’s home, and sometimes even to bed. What was so important that I couldn’t leave them behind? A legal pad and a pen. So cheap, so simple, so necessary. If I go through the muscle exercise of writing something down, I’m going to engage with it more. Plus, computers crash; I’ve stuck with hand-written notes (think HOURS of research in Div school) even when most people are keeping their notes on their tablets or in their computers.

The first thing I had to do was decide on a new brand name. Since we live at the coast and want to stay at the coast, it had to be something to do with the coast. But what part of the coast? We live in the Cape Fear Region, but we want to live in the Crystal Coast. Given that, the brand couldn’t be specific to either area, because then I’d have to rebrand yet again, perhaps before I’d be ready to, business-wise. Christmas night, I was in bed at my parents’ house thinking about a new name and Googling my ideas on my phone to see if they were already in use. Luckily, Coastal Carolina Soap Company was free, so I claimed it.

(I’m outlining the big steps, but in the background, I was reading articles, listening to recordings of industry success calls, watching webinars, etc. And always – always – making notes on my trusty lavender legal pad. So while I’m not going into great detail about my accessing those resources, that was a huge part of the process.)

Next came determining my niche, and this process took a few months, to be honest. OK… Coastal… Beachy… Salt bars? Pain to try to swirl and temperamental to make. Make soaps with sea water? Hmmm… Winter. Beach and ocean are COLD! Knee wasn’t quite recuperated enough to be traipsing on loose sand down to the ocean. Extra labor time sterilizing the water leads to higher product costs… Nothing was quite clicking, so I pushed that to the back burner, trusting that the answer would fall out of the ether eventually.

Business was continuing to go on for Sara’s Soaps ‘n Such – restocking ingredients, making products, filling orders. For all anyone knew, it was still business as usual. I wanted an image to go with this snazzy new business name, so that was the next step for me. I’d conceived of a logo and my older daughter sketched it out.

The first conception of my logo. I’m thinking about framing this for my office.

I found a graphic designer. I answered his 15-or-so-question design questionnaire (after writing the answers long-hand in my pad). I sent him the file for this image. Let’s just say that he didn’t quite grasp the vision, and after a couple of weeks of frustration, it was time to move on. A fellow Indie recommended Natalie Dalton of Natalie Dalton Designs, and within the agreed-upon time period, magic happened. The logo she’d created based on my daughter’s drawing and my affinity for Art Deco literally took my breath away. I remember being at my parents’ house when I opened the file and getting to share this beautiful design with the three females to whom I’m closest – Mom and my daughters. Even my older one who’d drawn the design agreed that Natalie’s design was fantastic. And she’s a bit embarrassed at the idea of my wanting to hang her drawing up, but she’ll get over it.

Natalie’s logo design. Soooo pretty!!!

Next came what was probably the most arduous part of this whole process, and that was, setting up my property on the World Wide Web. I’m no novice when it comes to websites, but website design is far from my forte. I purchased my domain and rolled up my sleeves over our Spring Break, ready to get started. Only… <eeerrrrk!> Screeching halt as I was unable to get into my new store’s admin (the back room of the site where a lot of the work takes place) and my web host was far from helpful. My launch date was tentatively set for 1 June, the beginning of my business’s anniversary month, and my web developer Donal and I had 10 weeks to get this site built, developed, tested, and live.

Weeks went by in which I was still getting no practical help from my host. Donal, in the meantime, was having health and family issues, so neither of us could get anything done. I wasn’t sweating it; he’s good at what he does, and we had a plan in place. After way too many weeks of wasting time with my host, I shopped for and signed on with a new web hosting company. I installed the shopping cart I wanted to use, and Donal and I spent a few afternoons a week for a couple of weeks fine-tuning the vision while the girls were vacationing with the Grands. We were looking good for the launch date.

Backing up a bit… Being slowed down and in the company of my beloved daughters day-in and day-out for a few months had begun to wear on my mind and soul. Don’t get me wrong; my daughters are fantastic – smart, creative, compassionate, loving, innovative, and beautiful – but they are sisters to each other and sometimes drama ensues. (And I think I need to take Drama Appreciation again, because apparently it didn’t take effect the first time.) So after church one Sunday, I zipped down to the beach for a few hours, just to sit, meditate, and pray. My prayers consisted of “thank you”; I couldn’t think of a single supplication to make beyond the on-going prayers for sick loved ones. In the midst of this time, it came. The focus. The niche. I breathed the air and felt the sensation of being at the beach, and suddenly I figured out what sorts of soaps to make.

That’s long enough for today, don’t you think? Stay tuned for the next part, coming up soon. Be sure to subscribe to receive articles delivered right into your inbox.

Making the Change, pt. 1

The idea had been germinating for a while. Do I change the name of my business, or keep it? My business was over thirteen years old, steadily growing, increasingly successful. Would I be shooting myself in the foot by rebranding at this point?

As you know, if you have followed me from my Sara’s Soaps ‘n Such days, I spent the month of December sitting around delegating like a boss (haha!) with my right leg up, my knee in a brace following a patellar sublimation right before Thanksgiving. Idle hands lead to active mind, and I had nothing to do but sit around and think. Sometimes I dreamed up mischief, sometimes grand ideas, with the grand ideas quickly dominating my thoughts. It was in this time period that I decided to rebrand my business.

Why? My original business, Sara’s Soaps ‘n Such, spun off of a hobby. My name is Sara, I made soaps, I made other stuff (the “‘n Such”), and it seemed like a good name at the time. Over the years, though, it became so cumbersome! It’s long, it’s ridiculously easy to mistype, and it didn’t really reflect what my business had become. I went from a hobbyist-turned-business owner to a full-time business owner with large order accounts. My business had grown up, so it was time for the name to grow up.

How? Starting in 2014, I had developed strategies for growing my business in different directions, shifting my focus from primarily retail to primarily wholesale and private label, and along with this, I set annual goals for how I would accomplish this, and I wanted these strategies to manifest themselves this year (2016), which they have. Sitting around on my duff for 6 weeks afforded me many opportunities to catch up on educational opportunities related to my business and taking it where I wanted it to go. These educational moments highlighted for me the mistakes I’d made previously, but you know what was so cool about this process? It was like getting a second chance to start a new business, but in addition to the great new resources I had, I also had 13+ years of mistakes and experiences from which to draw.

Stay tuned… Part 2 will come up soon!

Nineteenth Century Chemical Peel

I greatly enjoy Jane Austen and have read most of her novels by this point. (I’m trying to pace myself, since I know no new novels will be coming out.) I am also greatly fascinated by the later history of cosmetics as various chemicals started coming into play. When these two come together, this it’s downright delightful!

I was reading Persuasion not too long ago, and I came across a reference to Gowland’s Lotion. As Austen so rarely makes direct references to products of her time, this stood out sharply, and you know I just had to start hunting down the reference. Gowland’s Lotion was a simple (4 recorded ingredients) lotion guaranteed to remove “every kind of coarseness, eruption, and unpleasant appearance.” In short, this lotion was all the mode for clearing up blackheads, pimples, freckles, and blotchiness in order to give fashionable ladies of the court a smooth, translucent complexion. Oooh la la!

Doesn’t that sound amazing!? And historical sources tell us this stuff really worked! You can even look at the ingredients and, with any knowledge of chemistry, see how it’d work. The ingredients – bitter almonds (essential oil, maybe?), sugar, water, and mercury chloride [mercurous chloride, most likely] – would certainly take care of freckles, zits, and uneven complexion. They’d take them right off, along with a good layer of skin! Mercurous chloride is a fairly strong acid; it’s a corrosive that’d strip a layer of skin. Combined with the exfoliation the sugar provides, the user certainly would be left with a blemish-free complexion and a “lovely” rosy glow.

By the time Austen wrote Persuasion, Gowland’s Lotion had already received some bad press. However, it’s all about who you know, and John Gowland had already been appointed the Official Court Apothecary in the court of Frederick, Prince of Wales, heir to George II. Therefore, all the fashionable young ladies of the court were using Gowland’s Lotion to achieve their enviable complexions, and this trend would have spread to the lower classes, provided they could afford a jar. Not being able to afford a jar meant not only keeping your skin in-tact, but also avoiding the risk of mercury poisoning. I think I’ll keep my freckles, thank you very much.

What cosmetic treatments have you heard of that would be considered “crazy” by today’s safety standards?

Hard Business Lessons

I’m a great business owner. I’m far from perfect, and I certainly make mistakes. But I’ve got a good deal of experience behind me, enough that people come seeking my advice.

Know what ticks me off? When a customer gets under my defenses and stomps all over my boundaries – and I let them! I’m ashamed just admitting that this happened to me, but it did. I want to share with you the learning opportunities I had from this experience.

First, a little background. When this wholesale customer came on board, I was making cold process-method soap, as well as melt & pour novelty soaps in various shapes. When the customer wanted some of both kinds of soaps, I had no problem making and selling them. When she wanted to add other novelty soaps, I shrugged and said, “OK, sure.” Then something happened. First, she wanted soaps in shapes and designs that simply don’t exist, and she didn’t seem to understand that I couldn’t purchase a mould that doesn’t exist. Second, I changed; something within me changed. These soaps that I used to enjoy making were now making me miserable. They took forever to make, were really vulnerable to moisture in the air and dings, and I had to clutter my work space with my wrapping system, because it’s important to wrap these almost as soon as they come out of the mould.

You know what? Life’s too short to be miserable doing anything. I own my business and I work for myself, not for any of my customers. This means I choose what I offer and what I make. It took a variety of very unpleasant emotions for me to buck up, pull up my big girl panties, and put a stop to all this unhappiness.

And I did. First, I chose not to let this customer dictate my day’s agenda. She wanted me to drop everything – taking care of my younger, teaching my older, maintaining my schedule and goals for a particular day – to do something for her that would take an hour or two of two hours I had left to meet my goals for this day. I promised I’d make what she asked a priority for the next day. This wasn’t an urgent thing for me. The task was out of my hands and out of my control. (That was a win for me.) She didn’t communicate with me at all once I’d fulfilled my commitment to her; she was mad that I’d set and maintained that boundary.

Second, on the urging and encouragement of my awesome business colleagues, I set new policies in place. They, apparently, were tired of hearing me talk about how much I hate making these novelty soaps. I drafted a memo outlining my new policies regarding the novelty soaps. Following the practice and teachings of one of my grad school deans, I sat on it for 48 hours, sending it out yesterday morning. Then things started feeling “off.” The customer tried to manipulate me, but I could fall back on my company’s check policy.

Finally, I decided it was time to fire the customer. This isn’t ideal to have to do in any situation, but to everything there is a season. With resolution, I sent a professional, polite, brief email stating my intent to dissolve the business relationship.

My mistakes in brief…

I allowed a customer to dictate what products I would make and sell.
I didn’t set boundaries against the text message blitzes I’d endure during my working times, teaching times, and late at night.
I didn’t listen to my gut soon enough.

The take-aways…?

Have policies in place. These policies should outline what products you’ll sell, which products, if any, will be exclusive, and policies regarding payments. This way, instead of arguing with a customer, you can simply say, “It’s a company policy.”
There are some great apps out there (I now have one on my phone) that will block texts and calls with an automated message, and you can write your own custom message and decide during which hours texts will be blocked and which numbers will be blocked. This saves me much anxiety in the evenings, so I know if my phone chimes, it’s a soccer coach or friends.
Some people rely purely on logic and rational thought processes to the exclusion of everything else. Our guts – those visceral feelings we get – are there for a reason. Once that starts flaring (and it’s not heartburn), we need to attend to our visceral feelings, analyze them, and take action.

Raising a glass of sweet white wine to ends of chapters and beginnings of new chapters

The dissolution of the business relationship didn’t exactly go smoothly, and it wasn’t particularly pleasant, but it’s over and done. I spent my evening celebrating the lessons and relief with my family and friends, and I capped the celebration with a glass of wine and some dark chocolate.

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