From Nurse to CEO: Skincare Success

Speaker 1: [Music] there's a lot of things that I have learned along the way I started in a 300 ft store and now today we have 13 stores in Florida we have a 20,000 foot warehouse and distribution center we have Ecom that we ship all over the us we're small publicly traded company on otcqb and our numbers are public so we do it about 12 half million a year I'm Melanie bar welcome back to the Sheil it podcast your go-to place to empower you to live the life life and business that you crave I'm here to talk about everything from Having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges I live in the city now but I grew up in a town of a thousand people I've navigated major life leaps a senior level corporate career worked in professional sports and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business technology family and making meaningful connections with you and the she built it Community I also love a good workout and dose of self-care magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so turn up the audio open your favorite Notes app grab your favorite drink and here we [Music] go welcome back to the Sheila podcast thank you for joining us Deana what were the first steps you took after deciding to turn your personal experience with skin conditions into a business the first step that I took would be research I had a little bit of background in retail and being a female and obviously an avid Shopper there was a lot of appeal to going into a retail footprint but really it was researching the product line and the types of products that I wanted to carry and tying that to my message that was really the important part at that point in time before I started my business I had a background in real estate and when you're a realtor you're used to being the face of the brand you are the brand so that was pretty comfortable for me and being able to combine that with my nursing experience was pretty cool so my immediate steps was starting to research products and the product line that I wanted to carry and did you have a skin condition before starting your company absolutely I've had eczema my entire life and my daughter has eczema it's one thing when you struggle with something but when you see your child struggling with something something that's even more painful this is hereditary my father had very dry skin my my grandfather as well watching my child suffer and struggle as a little girl didn't want to wear shorts to school and sometimes scratching till you bleed I used to say I was going to get a tattoo that says I've tried everything and nothing worked I'm not going to reference what it's referring to but in my case it was skincare because we would try a lot of different things and over-the-counter stuffff and things that dermatologist would recommend men and they might work for a short period of time but then they would stop working so there was a lot of trial and error before I started my business I already had some of that experience from being a nurse and being a mom and it was just tying all of those life experiences together that was the secret sauce and my daughter had eczema for a while she's not experiencing it right now but it's really hard to figure out what to do because you try different things and they hurt or they make it worse or you go to a hotel with different soaps and she's scratching all night long and you just feel like this is supposed to be vacation you know why is she struggling so much so it becomes really hard to figure out what to do and some people don't realize that may not even be the soap that was in the hotel it could be the chemicals that they're using to leech the sheets and so I actually travel with a little cocoon that I wrap myself up in my daughter as well because in hotels to sanitize the sheets they have to put a lot of chemicals in them to sanitize and you know that's touching your skin so if you're a really sensitive person that's a one two punch thank you it's interesting I didn't think about the sheets and other things that she would come into contact with she is free of symptoms currently but it used to flare up particularly when we traveled right in our house we don't use dryer sheets because dryer sheets are just little chemical fibers and it's tossing all these little chemical fibers into your clothes and you put it on and believe it or not people that are super sensitive it can make them itch the dryer sheets can interesting all these things I'm learning how did your background help you in starting and running napl soap company I was in real estate which is its own bubble unless you're actually running a real estate brokerage or firm that's different business if you're an independent agent like I was you're in a silo of your business so there's a lot of things that I have learned along the way I started in a 300 squ foot store and now today we have 13 stores in Florida we have a 20,000 foot warehouse and distribution Center we have Ecom that we ship all over the us we're a small publicly traded company on otcqb and our numbers are public so we do it about 12 and a half million a year congratulations good for you thank you our average order value in retail stores is which is about 70% of our business is $45 so that's a lot of transactions to get to those numbers I've learned a lot along the way and I've had some really amazing people and it's a business Journey I've had some not so amazing people along the way there's a book in here somewhere gu um yeah I've if I didn't know something I would dig in and just start learning everything I possibly could reading everything online reading books and I would seek out professionals and certain things like joining CEO support groups and things like that there's a lot of information out there and there's a ton of groups now to support small business owners and we're midsize business now doing over $10 million and it's all about that support system that you have around you so if you don't know don't be afraid to ask the question you don't have to pretend like you know and in the beginning I was so afraid I was like oh my gosh they're going to think I'm stupid or I should know this but every business journey is different and everyone has a set of challenges but we all our businesses are very specific they're like your children like each one's a little bit unique so we all have different nuances to our business so learning those nuances and figuring out who to ask through questions too is really important what do you think is the most important element of leadership when growing a business most important element of leadership for me is leading with compassion and empathy I recently sat on a CEO panel and I was asked similar question and my answer was that the people that I always say that I work with not the people that work for me I work alongside them if they're a full-time employee this is just 40 hours of their week there's a whole lot of other things that are going on in their life outside of this 40 hours that you may not be aware of and if you lead with empathy and compassion and people can relate to you and connect with you much easier and you're going to get more loyalty you're going to get better results out of people especially if they feel like they can come to you or to your management as a leader you will attract middle level management and different levels of management with the same philosophies and values figure out what your core philosophies and values are and to bring people in around you that that share those philosophy and values and mine is leading with empathy and compassion life is very challenging now especially in our postco world inflation is up and healthc Care is more expensive Child Care is more expensive so we are experiencing a tremendous amount of stress and my goal is that when our staff comes to work when people come to work here at napl Soap Company I want to do everything in my power as a leader to reduce that stress it makes that for a happier workplace it makes for a better environment it makes for better co-workers as far as their engagement with each other so if there is a point of contention for example we have a store manager meeting 13 store managers plus our executive team jumps on and our district manager every Tuesday and we just did a roll out of a brand new platform it's been challenging this is our POS system and our website and there's been so many challenges and glitches with this transition I could feel their frustration I could hear their frustration as soon as I heard that this morning I sprang into action and said okay here are the one two three four five things that we're going to do today to remedy this and you could see 13 people on this call as some of them were talking and is zoomed you can see everybody's faces you could see as they were talking their shoulders are getting higher their body language is changing and even the ones that weren't speaking you could see the physical reaction of the stress so soon as we started talking about the things that we were going to do to rectify the situation we're going to take action today we're going to do this we're going to contact it we're going to do this and this what worked what didn't you could see that relief coming over them and emails started flowing and communication started flowing and guess what we got three out of the five problems resolved before noon now I got a happier staff that's going in it's not just the managers it's their staff and all the people that work with them as well so for them they saw that leading with them and compassion that I could relate even though I don't run the POS system I'm not in that situation in the stores my job as a leader to say I hear you I see you I understand and I'm going to help you I'm here to help you everything you said is so wonderful in a leader they're going to want to work for you more your teams if you take action immediately you didn't just let them stumble along you took action absolutely it's the worst thing that you can do is to make promises to people and not keep your promises because you lose Faith people don't believe in you and then they stop communicating with you there are middle managers that we've had to remove because the communication was not there and so the staff believe that's the reflection of the company's policy when really that's not what it is but this is a stop Gap as a middle manager so you really have to make sure that as a leader as a CEO that the people that are below you are communicating the message as well that your direct reports are communicating so that they understand this is the hierarchy this is how we We Roll here you mentioned taking Naples Soap Company public what advice do you have for entrepreneurs that might want to go down the similar path do all the due diligence possible you really need to understand what the long-term expenses are of something like that it sounds romantic and great there's a lot of responsibility that comes with that with taking shareholders money it is definitely not for the faint at heart it's it's something that is a decision definitely not to be taken lately and you have to weigh out the benefits and the pros and cons and I would say talk to other people who have done it oneon-one interview and talk to other people and say hey what were the advantages and what were the disadvantages what did you gain what did you give up you can look on and see companies on OTC markets you can find companies similar to your company on OTC markets and ask them and reach out and say hey I'm a CEO of XYZ company that's similar in your space we're thinking of going public would you mind to have a brief chat about your experience and most CEOs that have gone down that path are happy to share some of that experience and you can contact neba like National investment bankers Association they have a ton of people that they could put you in touch with they've been a tremendous resource for us as well but I say get a lot of opinions and a lot of advice and do your homework and definitely don't be rushed into anything it's a big decision and it's one that you own it when you do it you own it it's a huge commitment so do your homework for sure magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy we've talked a lot about business today what is one thing that you do to make sure that you're finding and living your joy I travel a lot I like to go to places that remind me that we are about this big in the whole grand scheme of things sometimes when you're running a company especially from the CEO level or executive level the problems seem enormous there's always that weight and full responsibility and sometimes I will just travel somewhere and something that is so much bigger than myself and remind myself that you know what this is a small part of life of what we're doing and to put things in perspective I recently went to Mexico to Tulum and I looked and I was like wow the Mayans were here for a really long time and guess what they didn't make it they're not here there's just some realizations if you open up your mind to that type of thing I love spending time with my family I'm expecting my first grandchild in the spring so that's really congratulations thank you my daughter who is also a California she's in Palo Alto Family and travel are really two of the ways that I keep myself happy outside of work thank you so much for joining us today and telling us all about Naples Soap Company please share with us how and where we can find you sure you can go to naples.com that is our website has all of our full offerings it also has a store locator so if you are in the state of Florida with have 13 brick and mortar locations but we ship all over the us thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our shetit website or at Sheed on social thank you to my editor Rich trolino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave