Resilience and Reinvention: Justin & Judith Sweeney on Building a Value-Driven Small Business that Lasts

Season #1 December 13, 2024

Judith and Justin Sweeney, the founders of Bubbles and Balms, share their inspiring journey of building a values-driven skincare business over the past 10 years. From battling imposter syndrome to navigating major pivots during the pandemic, they’ve learned how to turn challenges into opportunities.

🎯 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

How to build confidence and push past imposter syndrome.
Why simplifying your product offerings can lead to greater success.
The importance of mental health in entrepreneurship.
Lessons on pivoting and adapting during times of uncertainty.

📌 Episode Highlights:

00:00 – Meet Judith and Justin Sweeney and their passion for skincare.

05:50 – Overcoming imposter syndrome as new entrepreneurs.

15:30 – How they pivoted from in-person markets to e-commerce during COVID-19.

25:45 – Why simplifying product offerings improved their marketing and sales.

32:10 – The value of a strong brand identity and lessons from rebranding.

43:20 – Managing mental health challenges while building a business.

50:10 – Key advice for entrepreneurs on learning, mentorship, and persistence.

💡 Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Bubbles and Balms: Visit their website: bubblesandbalms.ca

Hayley’s book Brand Worth Loving: Check it out here ✨

Ready to Build Your Dream Business? Tune in now to hear Judith and Justin’s inspiring story and get actionable advice to fuel your entrepreneurial journey.

Don’t forget to: Subscribe to Daring Dreams on your favorite platform.

Leave a review to let us know your favourite takeaway. Every review helps us reach more small business owners who dare to dream big!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 • 0:00 - 0:13 • 97%
Imposter syndrome can ruin you for the first few years. I remember when we first opened and I was just like, somebody would buy like three bars of soap and I'd give them like two extra bars because I'm like, I'm sorry I charge you money.

Speaker 2 • 0:13 - 0:24 • 98%
If they're not getting sales, they think it's their product. But really, you probably just need better marketing to sell the awesome product you already have instead of making 20 awesome products and still nobody knows about them.

Speaker 3 • 0:25 - 0:35 • 97%
The times that I ever felt like I failed were the times that I pulled back. I didn't do things. It wasn't the times that like we went out and lost money. It was like when I didn't make the sales calls that I should have been

Speaker 2 • 0:35 - 1:13 • 98%
Making. Welcome to another episode of the Daring Dreams podcast. I'm your host, Hailey Bowen and I am here with some very special guests, Judith and Justin Sweeney, who own Bubbles and Balms, which is a amazing skincare company and they're gonna give you tons more information about it and how they stand out and all of that. I had the pleasure of working with Justin and Judith in 2020 when Covid was like roaring and at its peak and like messing with all the small businesses and they took a big pivot that year going from selling at like the local city market to selling online.

Speaker 2 • 1:14 - 1:45 • 98%
Now they're in retail stores and whole bunch of really amazing stuff. I thought today because their journey is so interesting, let them talk about like where they began, kind of some of the struggles that they went through, how they overcame them, all of that kind of stuff that like you would want to know as you enter entrepreneurship. 'cause these guys have been in business almost 10 years, so they've got lots of stories. Why don't you kind of just share a little bit more about bubbles and bombs and what you do and then we'll kind of like start from the beginning, give us the story.

Speaker 1 • 1:45 - 2:08 • 95%
Well, you know, we're always good for the story, especially Justin. He talks quite a bit. I'll start us off with that question. We manufacture products for dry and sensitive skin, but here in Lower Norton, new Brunswick. We started the company out in Alberta in 2014 and like every good maritimer, once we had our first child moved back home to the Maritimes.

Speaker 2 • 2:09 - 2:09 • 61%
Yep.

Speaker 3 • 2:10 - 2:42 • 97%
Right now, currently we're cosmetics manufacturer. We do bath body and personal care products. We have retail partners here across Atlantic Canada and they're kind of expanding westward. We operate through an e-commerce [email protected] and we are also have our physical studio and boutique here in beautiful, just outside of Hampton, new Brunswick. Right. So we we have that going as well.

Speaker 3 • 2:42 - 3:21 • 97%
And yeah, it's, and I, I will also say we're just now expanding into contract manufacturing with a, a partner who will be doing some private label work for, that'll be expanding into the us So that is, yeah, that's a nice new opportunity. And, and we're gonna have our first mall kiosk this holiday season, which is super exciting as well. Right. So a few new strategies there and things getting started. We, when we get started in 2014 and through out the majority of our first few years, we called everything practice.

Speaker 3 • 3:21 - 3:23 • 87%
Like we, everything was practice, it was our, we're

Speaker 1 • 3:23 - 3:24 • 83%
Still practicing

Speaker 3 • 3:24 - 3:27 • 92%
, it was our practice business practice markets like,

Speaker 1 • 3:27 - 3:31 • 90%
Or I guess practice for the first like four years. Four or five years. Yeah.

Speaker 3 • 3:31 - 3:42 • 98%
Yeah. Like we, you know what happened, like the genesis for the, the company. We, we were moving to Alberta at the time

Speaker 1 • 3:43 - 4:04 • 98%
And I have always had dry and sensitive skin. I've, I grew up with eczema and I always found it really difficult to find a product that I could use that, you know, wasn't oatmeal scented or unscented. I wanted products that made me feel good and made me smell good. And you just wanna feel sexy. Public

Speaker 2 • 4:04 - 4:08 • 97%
Service announcement right here. Everybody should want to smell good. Just say it

Speaker 1 • 4:09 - 4:42 • 97%
. Yes, this is true. So when we moved out to Alberta, because we're from the maritime, I was used to the humidity, which helps my eczema. However, when we moved out west, the air is so dry and my eczema flared up so bad that it was painful to bathe, which bathing is like having a bath is one of my absolute favorite things to do. You know, hence bubbles and bombs. Yeah. And so I really struggled to find the products that I was getting, which were natural products in New Brunswick out in Alberta.

Speaker 1 • 4:42 - 4:59 • 95%
Even though they claimed to be natural, they still had fragrances or colorants, which were big triggers for my skin. So after searching in a small town, this is prior to the big soap making boom and I was just so tired. So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna make my own.

Speaker 1 • 4:59 - 5:32 • 98%
So my mother and I actually went to the library and got every book they had on soap making and tried our first batch in her kitchen. And then I absolutely fell in love. I fell in love with how it made me feel. It helped my eczema a lot. It helped my confidence a lot as well. And I absolutely fell in love with making it and feeling that the love I poured into making, it resulted in a lot of love for my skin too.

Speaker 1 • 5:33 - 5:57 • 97%
And you know, like anything, if you love something you tend to do it a lot. And we had so much soap after just a couple months that like I was handing it to family and they're like, Hey, like we have nine bars already. I think we're good. . Justin came out shortly after that, he was finishing a contract in New Brunswick and he was like, this is gr like amazing.

Speaker 1 • 5:57 - 6:40 • 96%
You gotta try and sell it. So started just at farmer's markets and you know, a lot of people were, had the same experience as I did about, what is it? 60% of the population has some form of sensitivity when it comes to the skin. About 40%. Yeah. 40%. Yeah. So, and it's not something that you often talk about, right? Like you don't wanna talk about your skin disorders. You don't wanna, you know, go to a party and be like, Hey man, check this out. Like . It's not something that people are proud to, to really acknowledge and think standing out and being like, Hey, we smell great and we are for dry and sensitive skin and this stuff has brought me so much relief.

Speaker 1 • 6:40 - 6:42 • 99%
I think you should try it too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 • 6:42 - 7:15 • 97%
And I think that when we did our work together, that's really what came out. Of course they did a lot of interviews. That's what I do. You guys, if you, if you've been listening at all, you know that I'm all about the customer research and that's what they said. They're like, it smell and it does, it smells so good. And when I first walked into your shop, I was like, oh, like, this is like heaven. It's like, I can't believe you get to smell this every day. It's one of those senses you don't really think about until it's like, it's so good. But like they, that's what they said. Like, there's nothing available for us that smells so good and that like feels so good on our skin.

Speaker 2 • 7:15 - 7:27 • 93%
And so it was like that beautiful niche for you. And if you guys wanna, like, obviously you're gonna listen to the podcast, but if you wanna hear a little bit more about the strategy, you can pick up my book Brand Worth Loving. 'cause these beautiful folks are featured in it as well.

Speaker 3 • 7:27 - 7:32 • 88%
And it's a great book. I've read the book as well. Yes. So, yeah. Yeah. So I mean, okay, so

Speaker 2 • 7:33 - 7:34 • 96%
You then what,

Speaker 3 • 7:34 - 8:09 • 94%
From my perspective, I mean, I arrived in Alberta a few months after Judith. And so Judith had picked up the, the hobby a little bit and had some products when I arrived. And I was a young traditional , like I said, I don't know if traditional is regular, very typical young male. And I don't think this has changed much in that everything I washed, although it all came from one bottle, right? Like Yeah, yeah. One bottle that like washes your face and your hair and your back and your, you know, your full body.

Speaker 3 • 8:09 - 8:45 • 97%
Like, and, and I always, I had just chronically like dry skin and itchy skin had, at no point in time had I ever put any of that together. It was just, I was itchy in the winter. I had more dry skin in the winter. I never, I, I walked into pharmacies and just picked up probably whatever the two for whatever sale was that week, right? Like yeah, that was, you know, pretty much how much thought I put into it. And I remember, you know, Judith like introducing a bar of soap and me just being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that feels like we're moving backwards in technology.

Speaker 3 • 8:45 - 8:56 • 90%
Like how is soap better than body wash? I'm like, well I feel like soap was there and now there's body wash. I'm like, I dunno, I'm gonna go back. And, but it was like, it just the fact

Speaker 2 • 8:56 - 8:57 • 60%
That old school music a bar of soap.

Speaker 3 • 8:57 - 9:15 • 90%
Yeah, yeah. I was like, that's old school. I, I dunno, I won my, I want my plastic bottle with my poof of my little, you know, what I, the thing that I lather with, right? Yeah. So, but at the same time, you know, we were, I I was a little bit older than Juth, but we were still young. We had just moved to Alberta. You know, we had just taken,

Speaker 1 • 9:16 - 9:20 • 97%
I was 19, I think 1920 when I, I moved out, which would've made you

Speaker 3 • 9:21 - 10:03 • 96%
See late twenties, right? So I think I was 28 when I arrived. Right. We were pretty lean on budget and so I, I wasn't, I didn't, was not gonna go buy body wash or something else when there was 8,000 bars of soap in the house. . So it's like, okay, I'm gonna start trying to use some of the bars soap and, and it really caught me off guard. Like it caught me off guard, like how quickly it made a difference in how comfortable I felt. Like even just after the first kind of like couple days, like I, I wasn't like, you know, my, it's in my back especially like I, I will get itchy on my back and very dry skin and yeah.

Speaker 3 • 10:03 - 10:27 • 94%
So then it, it was like, oh, there is, there's something to this. Right? And so I'm very by nature, like you'll remember when we, like, I just, I am, I don't know what type of personality I'm, but I just wanna ask why, like, why, why do that? Why am I doing that? Yeah. Like it was, all right, Hailey, what do I need to do each week and why do I do it? Like I don't really, yeah. Whatever it is for marketing, right. Just tell me what I do this time and why

Speaker 2 • 10:28 - 10:33 • 95%
I love, I love when people ask why though? Because then you'll actually do it. Because if you just have a to-do list. Yeah.

Speaker 3 • 10:33 - 10:39 • 78%
Why buy it? Yeah. I need to understand because otherwise, like I a to-do list, I will not pay attention.

Speaker 2 • 10:40 - 10:53 • 96%
Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so you, you were making a ton of, of soap. What was the, and then you started selling it in the markets. When did you decide like this was actually gonna be a thing, like your full, like you were gonna do this for work?

Speaker 1 • 10:53 - 11:26 • 97%
So that kind of happened over a period of time. I was an LPN, so a licensed practical nurse prior, I had just graduated, worked maybe about a year in the field and moved six months in the field and moved out west. And it took quite a while for my license to transfer over. And that's during the time that I had fallen in love with soap making because I had nothing to do but research. And it just so happened that shortly after Justin came out, he tried working with my a family member.

Speaker 1 • 11:26 - 11:26 • 96%
When

Speaker 3 • 11:26 - 11:57 • 96%
We came out, I, I had the option of continuing into like, like I had a contract, but there was this opportunity to restore antique. So this is a, a good part of the story 'cause I think it explains a lot as to why we maybe try some different things. 'cause like even moving out there, I passed on the safe contract to go work at the college and decided to work like with a family member trying to, like, it was a restoration company, like restoring antique vehicles.

Speaker 3 • 11:57 - 12:29 • 94%
Okay. But in particular, like Jaguars, I'm like, I've never done anything like that. That sounds neat. I'll go do that . So I was like, yeah, I, I really wanna try it. And then this was literally when like oil and gas, like when oil tanked in 2014, like we got there just before that happened, all of a sudden all these kind of like projects that were slated and people that were talking like, just got really scared. All of a sudden this restoration thing fell right pretty quick. And, but we were entrepreneurial and Judith had a whole whack of soap and this was like November.

Speaker 3 • 12:30 - 12:41 • 96%
And so we were like, let's see if we could rent like the, the downtown was really in the community was like probably about a 30% vacancy rate. Right. Like lot of vacancy in the

Speaker 1 • 12:41 - 12:47 • 93%
Downtown small town too small, like southern Alberta town. It wasn't like Calgary or anything like that.

Speaker 3 • 12:48 - 13:08 • 97%
Yeah. Probably a population of about 6,000 in a catchment area of about 15,000. Right. So, yeah. Yeah. So we just said, okay, like we had just moved there. We knew a, a realtor because of like, we had met and asked her, you know, is there a location? Anyway, we found this spot that was like right between the bank and the post office

Speaker 1 • 13:09 - 13:23 • 91%
And it was month to month rental. So we didn't have to, like, we, we just moved out west. Like we were using a door that we saw it in half for a coffee table. You know what I mean? . So it's not like we could sign a lease or really even like, it wasn't a big, we just wanted

Speaker 3 • 13:23 - 13:55 • 94%
To take it for December. Like we didn't know if we were gonna take it beyond that. We took it for December of 2014 and said, well, we're gonna do a popup. We're gonna find a place to sell all this stuff. Right. So it was super low budget, well received. And I'm like, yeah, super well received and low budget. Yep. But it was like we put chalkboard paint on cardboard in order to make menus. Right? Like we, yeah, it was like, because we again, zero thought that we were investing in this for the long term.

Speaker 3 • 13:55 - 14:06 • 97%
We're popping up, you know, for this season. But then we did enough that we're like, wow, we've got like three months kind of like operating capital, like sitting in the bank if we want to continue doing this. And so,

Speaker 1 • 14:07 - 14:35 • 97%
And any money that we made, we just covered our bills and rolled it right back into the business. Right. Yeah. Like it was just like, we bootstrapped hard for those first, I'd say five years. So I worked both, I worked part-time at the as an LPN and then part-time at the shop. And Justin covered those days quite well, which was really wonderful because it, it got him in and we both come from very entrepreneurial families. Neither one of us had any business experience.

Speaker 3 • 14:35 - 14:51 • 92%
Yeah, that's a good thing to point out. Very entrepreneurial, but you know, necessarily any like traditional business acumen. Yeah. Just some, some pretty good street hustlers I suppose on, on one side. I love Right. I love it. Yeah. Figured it out and kind of put it together and, and, and

Speaker 1 • 14:51 - 15:29 • 97%
I think that added to the reason why we weren't scared to try, you know what I mean? , it wasn't something that we were going to spend a lot of money, you know, going to business school and you know, then coming out on the other side and feeling like we didn't, you know, the passion goes, but we had really strong passion for this. And it's, it was about four years I think I worked as an LPN part-time, and then you became the economic development officer and that's when, when we got pregnant with her first, it all happened around a similar time and that's when I decided to do bubbles and bombs full time.

Speaker 3 • 15:30 - 16:06 • 96%
Yeah. So to learn more because again, really enjoyed the entrepreneurial activity. But like after about a year really kind of recognized that it needed to skill up a lot on some of the business acumen as it related to the finances, strategic planning, the strategy being that still kind of like running and working and doing everything at the same time. It's like, okay, well I, I got involved with the Chamber of Commerce, started trying to meet as many other business owners as I could, trying to soak up, you know, just things through osmosis and conversations, just kind of trying to put myself in rooms and pick up on things and try things and, and test things.

Speaker 3 • 16:06 - 16:14 • 96%
And I think the hardest part was like figuring out how to actually like build a system for yourself that works without, you know, there's so many different things

Speaker 1 • 16:15 - 16:16 • 89%
To try. Just throwing spaghetti at the wall. Yeah.

Speaker 3 • 16:17 - 16:26 • 91%
So easy to just get sucked into a Yeah. A million different little like, oh you, I gotta try this, right? I supposed to be blogging too and I'm supposed to be doing, and, and it

Speaker 1 • 16:26 - 17:00 • 98%
Gets overwhelming really fast when you, when you're not sure which strategies work. And so while Justin was doing that and you know, learning more about the business side of things, becoming part of the business community and I was too, but not to the extent that he was. However, working at the, I did palliative care for our town working in palliative care and nursing homes. It's, I knew everybody's grandparent, right? It's a small community. Yeah. So it's, people weren't afraid to support us because they trusted us.

Speaker 1 • 17:00 - 17:20 • 97%
We were, you know, new to the area. Yes. But there wanted to see growth in the community. They wanted, you know, they wanted those honest people that were gonna bring value and we felt we had a lot of value to offer. So Justin built up the trust in the business side of things and the education, the business side of things.

Speaker 1 • 17:21 - 17:53 • 97%
And then, you know, customer service and building up my own confidence when it came to customer service. Because I remember the first time I did a video that we posted on Facebook, I was like literally shaking. And it took a long time to be able to feel comfortable with customers and be able to talk to people. But that also came from the more we learn, I did a lot of aromatherapy courses, some product management courses with that. I think the only way to be good at it is by doing it.

Speaker 1 • 17:54 - 17:58 • 97%
And you're not gonna be good when you first do it. And you gotta accept that if you wanna be good.

Speaker 3 • 17:58 - 18:30 • 98%
A lot of the things we ended up doing were really things that, it was like suggestions from others along the way as well, right? And so really kind of being open to opportunities and open to change and not necessarily pigeonholing kinda what the business needed to be in the early days. We were really responsive to customer demands. Like we created, I mean we have 39 product skews now with different aroma variants and stuff like that. We had hundreds over the like just trying stuff.

Speaker 3 • 18:30 - 18:57 • 97%
Try different, trying different aromatic combinations, different bathing, like different bath bomb formulations to like really get to the point of, you know, what is an amazing experience but is super functional in your skincare routine, leaves your skin feeling great, safe for children safe below the belt. Like, and it was very like iteration feedback, iteration feedback.

Speaker 1 • 18:57 - 19:19 • 98%
And we were lucky that we had customers that would come in and tell us what they actually thought. And you know, the rejection sensitivity at first was hard, but then you learn that you can use it to your advantage, right? You can take that and apply it and see if you can make it even better with knowing that pain point for somebody

Speaker 3 • 19:20 - 19:53 • 97%
I love like business development, real estate, build it, building stuff, building businesses, yeah. Designing, bringing them from the ground up, like, you know, those early days trying to get those first sales and stuff like that. All that stuff's really enjoyable and and fun. And then came back to New Brunswick in 2018 with their daughter and had a strategy of we were going to come back and we were gonna set up in all the tourism locations, right? Top tourism locations on the east coast, starting with St.

Speaker 3 • 19:53 - 19:57 • 88%
John, new Brunswick, right down by, we had the great city market and the experience there

Speaker 1 • 19:58 - 20:28 • 97%
Before that though, like when we first moved back, just because, you know, a lot of our customers being online at that point and it's, you know, so we knew that we wanted to let people know that we were back in the Maritimes because we did have quite a few supporters back here. And so we did markets again. We did the local weekly market, which with a three month old strapped my chest. I, you know, was really challenging. Yeah.

Speaker 1 • 20:28 - 21:02 • 97%
But we got, we did it, we got to meet the community. We get to know, because it's funny, there's different aromas. We're more popular out west and aren't popular here and vice versa. So even getting to know the, you know, the scent palette of the area was really cool. And then we moved to Hampton, we were looking for a house, moved to Hampton and decided to open up in the St. John's city market. Those first few months of not having our own location though, and just doing markets was rough for me because I really need that.

Speaker 1 • 21:02 - 21:04 • 99%
I need that customer interaction. So

Speaker 3 • 21:04 - 21:41 • 95%
We opened in the city market December of 2018 and then that the first year, I mean 2019 was good. It got off to a good start. We were starting to get some inroads within the community. We were looking at a couple other locations. We were kind of going back and forth between Moncton and Ton. Then Covid arrived, you know, where we were. Like it was all driven by cruise ship traffic, right. And yeah, you know, very quickly you just kinda realized like, oh, this is like everything that was driving all of the traffic is all going to be gone.

Speaker 3 • 21:41 - 22:02 • 96%
Like, you know, this, where we were located is, you know, the office traffic. Okay, well everybody's been sent home from their offices like cruise ship traffic. Okay, well all of the cruise ships are being, you know, so it was very quickly within a matter of, you know, four weeks or so, you're starting to recognize like, okay, everything is shutting down and what is the likelihood, like if we're going through this effort to shut all of these things down,

Speaker 1 • 22:03 - 22:14 • 95%
We're not, nobody knew how long it would last. And not only that I was eight months pregnant. Well, yeah, I mean at the time like there was just a lot of stressors and a lot of uncertainty. And

Speaker 2 • 22:15 - 22:36 • 98%
I think a lot of small businesses were like, it's gonna be three months. And like I was working with a bunch at the time and we're like, okay, we just gotta get through the next three months. What do we do to get, but then like as it started getting closer, we're like, oh shit. Like this is gonna be like, we don't even know. And so then we're like, okay, now we need to figure out like what do you do if this is like for a year or more, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 • 22:36 - 22:50 • 96%
And where was my, my full-time job, right? It just, it knocks out one income. That was really important because with the cruise ships and with the office people Yeah. And even with the extra staff within the market,

Speaker 3 • 22:50 - 23:07 • 97%
Sometimes we, you know, made some decisions very well very quickly and made a lot of great decisions along the way and it sometimes slipped in our execution. And so, you know, part of that was finding out later on that, you know, I have a DHD Judith is, is, you know, likely in a similar space as well

Speaker 1 • 23:07 - 23:15 • 95%
Along with bipolar diagnosis. So it does make a challenging beyond the typical entrepreneurship, I think.

Speaker 3 • 23:15 - 23:48 • 97%
So there was some executive functioning decision making challenges that, you know, came up along the way that we were able to remedy in later years because you just become self-aware, right? Once you become self-aware, you can, you know, build systems and accommodate certain things and recognize why certain things are failing. But one of the better decisions that, one of the best decisions we made along the way was, I mean, we had the opportunity to break our lease and leave the city market. We were the only one to do. So we were out within three weeks of the first like shutdown.

Speaker 3 • 23:49 - 24:20 • 98%
I, looking at the number of industries, the way that the industries were being shut down and the volume, like that was a global black swan type event that, you know, within a matter of weeks you're seeing us react in ways that we just had not at a global scale, which told me that, you know, okay, this, and, and the challenge was we were really trying to press, you know, the, okay, well what are you going to do as a, because it was the municipality, the city that held the leases. Are you gonna force payment of the lease?

Speaker 3 • 24:21 - 24:50 • 95%
We're shut down. Right? And, you know, no responses, no feedback, you know, throughout that first month. And so what we just pushed and said, look, would you let us break the lease with everything? We'll just go And, and they agreed to let us break the lease given everything that was going on. And so yeah, we very quickly moved everything into the home and, and started to like pivot into an e-commerce model and, and, and deliver

Speaker 1 • 24:50 - 25:23 • 96%
Local drop off. Yeah. Local drop off was huge, right? During that time, like many businesses were doing it. We were just trying everything to, you know, get our customers to support us, which a lot of them were like, the local support was absolutely astounding. And many small businesses, although there was a struggle afterwards, that initial hit of Covid really showed that the community was ready to support local and try to keep other businesses open as well.

Speaker 1 • 25:23 - 25:34 • 97%
Right. We were desperate, like, you wanna order something? We'll deliver it to you for free. It's Yeah. Yeah. You were just trying to grasp at anything at that point. Yeah, well,

Speaker 3 • 25:34 - 26:06 • 96%
I mean, initially yeah, like, it, it worked fairly well in that year because, you know, you're hustling and you're just trying to make things work and you're just trying to create revenue any which way you can, but you're not really building any systems, right? Like we weren't building anything that like we could rep, we didn't have a strategy as to like, okay, here's how we're going to, you know, we, like, we were trying to go still stay direct to consumer. So, you know, we weren't yet entertaining wholesale options. I mean, we had been direct to consumer in our mindset, you know, for six years.

Speaker 3 • 26:07 - 26:26 • 96%
And so it was very organic for us for to just naturally think, okay, we're gonna pivot to an online, direct to consumer model. And, you know, trying to execute that over 20 20, 20 21 and into 2022 was like the learning that was required. And just realize that's

Speaker 2 • 26:26 - 26:29 • 90%
A whole different business that is not even like

Speaker 3 • 26:30 - 26:30 • 88%
Yeah, it is

Speaker 2 • 26:31 - 26:33 • 98%
Like, not even in the same vicinity, really.

Speaker 3 • 26:34 - 27:12 • 94%
Yeah. It was like huge learning curve. I mean, we're trying to use like, you know, capacity building funding programs and stuff like that to get, you know, your, well yourself was when we were looking on digital marketing and how do we start to create a digital marketing strategy. And I'm like, why do I have to post on Instagram six times a, like, I don't want to post on Instagram once it, it was, it was hard I think for at, at certain points in time. And I thought, I liked the idea of like building out the email flows and doing emails and doing these different things, and I like some of that piece, but it was like, I once say I was doing it like full time and like you're behind the screen.

Speaker 3 • 27:12 - 27:18 • 97%
Like I felt like I was not engaging with people like, at all. And like the business was not really, but

Speaker 2 • 27:18 - 27:18 • 93%
The fact

Speaker 3 • 27:18 - 27:19 • 99%
Where we wanted it

Speaker 2 • 27:19 - 27:50 • 97%
To be, let's just stop and, and acknowledge the difference between what you did and what a lot of other people did here. So you actually went in, you learned about SEO, you built a website that worked, you learned about the strategies that you needed to drive people to the website went into full on like learning do it right. What do I need to know? How do I make this work? Whereas a lot of other people built a website with a grant maybe, and just expected people to show up. It's not like you have a physical door where they see a sign, right?

Speaker 2 • 27:50 - 27:56 • 98%
And so I think that the fact that you guys didn't just assume people would show up to your website,

Speaker 3 • 27:56 - 27:57 • 89%
It was like, is

Speaker 2 • 27:57 - 27:58 • 98%
Why it was successful.

Speaker 3 • 27:59 - 28:18 • 95%
It is hard like to churn like, like a hundred, like to get to like a hundred thousand in sales in a year and, and you know, to not have the ad. All these things you, I didn't realize going into the model, right? Like how much all of a sudden customer acquisition cost and ad spend return on ad spend and email

Speaker 1 • 28:18 - 28:21 • 98%
Marketing, the importance of capturing emails.

Speaker 3 • 28:21 - 28:55 • 96%
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The importance of capturing emails and, and segmentation. But I think especially the cost allocations that are required within a month, you know, we worked with SEO group, right? So a group that was kind of helping us on building up our SEO that's going, wow, that's a good strategy for a period of time. We're like, okay, well we're gonna like reallocate that spend for a bit. And it's like, if you're not on top of like within weeks we were seeing, you know, our keywords start to tumble, right? Like, you know, seventh, eighth, ninth, I was like, I don't think I want to spend my life trying to get like just more people going to that gym.

Speaker 3 • 28:55 - 28:58 • 85%
I like, it was really like by 23.

Speaker 2 • 28:58 - 29:14 • 96%
Yeah, it's hard. It, you're used to being with people like you built the business that you could be with people, be innovative in your formulations, but be with people and all of a sudden you're not. And it's just about like, how do I get this person to my site? And it becomes a numbers game a little bit.

Speaker 1 • 29:14 - 29:49 • 97%
Mm. It really does. And not only that, you lose a lot of the natural customer feedback because, you know, if somebody's walking into your shop and it's like, hey, like quite right on my skin, and like people aren't gonna just reach out with that over email. Like if it's just something that slightly bothers them. But if it only slightly bothers everybody who's using it, and I hear it multiple times, then I'm like, oh my God, I have to change this. Right? So I, I lost that and I lost that customer service and getting to interact with people and actually seeing the benefit is what drives me within the business.

Speaker 1 • 29:49 - 29:53 • 97%
And I was losing that and it just, it sucked the life out of me.

Speaker 3 • 29:53 - 30:16 • 95%
Well, and we hadn't done a lot like, it was like, you know, we were running e-commerce. So like the space was designed like a warehouse, right? So it was like a, a warehouse setting all cardboard box, like manufacturing, like and, and no drop in traffic, so you're not talking to anybody. Right? We had tried to maintain staff, you know, going into the e-commerce and the delivery, but you know, it's

Speaker 1 • 30:16 - 30:21 • 95%
During Covid we actually, we nearly lost our house trying to stay, trying to keep staff.

Speaker 3 • 30:21 - 30:32 • 95%
We put ourselves in a, we put ourselves a little further than we should have for sure. For trying to maintain staff that we probably didn't necessarily need to try to push ourselves as far as we did. Right.

Speaker 1 • 30:32 - 30:37 • 89%
And Justin just kept saying like, as we were, you know, losing more money, it's so hard as a

Speaker 3 • 30:37 - 30:39 • 88%
Big, I'm curious what's gonna come after justice

Speaker 1 • 30:39 - 30:40 • 72%
Just kept saying,

Speaker 3 • 30:40 - 30:44 • 96%
We kept losing money, but Justin just kept saying, what, what's the next line gonna be?

Speaker 1 • 30:45 - 31:19 • 95%
? Okay. There was a big boom in people shopping local and supporting local. But as the pandemic went on that faded and people are like, I need simplicity. I just wanna shop online, get it delivered to my door, or I just, you know, I need the cheapest version from Amazon, you know, I'll pick up the Irish spring then. So during Covid when it was, you know, this was on the part when we were losing our staff, it was really challenging. Justin kept saying, you know, let's just hold out for one more month. Like, well, I know we're gonna turn it this month, or, it was heartbreaking.

Speaker 1 • 31:19 - 31:40 • 98%
We loved our staff. They were, you know, I went to one of my staff's graduation, like I, you know, one of the staff is my best friend now and we, you know, she is always in my phone. And they were really great relationships and we loved working with them and that's why it was just so hard to

Speaker 3 • 31:40 - 32:19 • 96%
Let go. And the numbers were all improving, but just not at the rate that we needed them to. Right. So we still had a cash spend and a burn that just wasn't gonna be sustainable. And we got to the point where, you know, when we were starting to get into lines of credit for payroll and stuff, like, it's just not coming around as fast as we wanted it to. Right. So yeah, that was like, you know, getting back to just the two of us. And, and that was massive as well. Like going through that kind of experience and, and just talking about like, what do we want to do, you know, with this, like we're, we're, we kept the commerce piece going. It wasn't, we were like, this isn't necessarily the model that we want to do ongoing, but at this point, you know, we've developed products that we believe in wholeheartedly.

Speaker 3 • 32:19 - 32:47 • 97%
We know the products are doing well, we have enough of a organic following and, and ongoing following that it, you know, continues to support a pretty good ongoing line of business. Right? Yeah. So it's, you know, a lot of 2022 was just kind of like, I would say, like rehashing some things. Starting to look at what would it be like to, to work with retail partners. What would it look like if we were a wholesaler? What would it look like if we were a manufacturing partner for others? And

Speaker 1 • 32:48 - 33:30 • 96%
We initially tried a distribution partner with phytoplankton and it just, we were trying a lot of things, you know, we thought the, the opportunity for the distribution where we, you know, just make all of our products, send it to them, you know, they would ship it out and things like that. And we had, you know, we were talking about a mass amount of product. And a funny story about that in particular is we had stayed up the entire night before barcoding every single product because we realized that the barcodes weren't on them finding out the morning of that all the barcodes were wrong and wouldn't scan.

Speaker 1 • 33:30 - 33:39 • 91%
Oh. So that's the morning of drop off. So we delayed drop off by one day and we were able to relabel everything and repack everything because I

Speaker 3 • 33:39 - 34:21 • 93%
Mean, it was, up until that point, we'd only ever needed it. We had always sold direct to consumer. We used an internal skew reader, right? So like we didn't need like a UPC code 'cause we could just do an internal barcode for our own POS systems, right? So yeah, you had just that like, oh, okay, what type of, okay, I think it's this type of barcode. When we're, I was talking to the people, oh, okay, this is the type I need to create. And then I created it and we put it on every label, label and everything and it's like, oh no, no, it's not that one, it's this one. So anyway, yeah, like we had to like re sticker like every product that was going out for the initial distribution order, like the morning of into the next day, like it was, it's like, oh, okay.

Speaker 3 • 34:22 - 34:26 • 82%
distribution. And so that, that worked. You do what you gotta

Speaker 1 • 34:26 - 34:26 • 83%
Do.

Speaker 3 • 34:27 - 34:56 • 96%
We had some great learning experiences. One is like ought to have done a few more founder led sales, like us going to retailers first before working with a distribution partner just to get a better understanding as to how the product packaging, everything we had always created was in our own boutique or through our own e-commerce sites. So, you know, starting to work with retailers, the expectation is there's just a different expectation on how the product is going to be packaged, shelved, handled, as opposed to like your own channels that your own Right.

Speaker 1 • 34:56 - 35:34 • 97%
And it's different to trying to explain the product because with the customer, you're talking about a specific product that they're looking at where with retailers you're trying to communicate the benefits, but when there's hundreds of other products on the shelf, how are they gonna remember that you're not gonna be top of mind, right. If they don't have a personal connection with you. Yeah. And the retailers that we did the best with were ones who we got to know really well, similar values and you know, were interested in learning about the product because they knew that it worked and they knew that it was gonna help their customer base.

Speaker 1 • 35:34 - 35:34 • 94%
Yeah.

Speaker 3 • 35:34 - 36:09 • 96%
Yeah. And I think couple things. One, founder sales would've helped us a little bit better with just articulating that value proposition a little bit earlier on and finding out also what is an appropriate retail partner look like. Right? Like, where does this fit well, right? Does it go into, you know, like I remember the distributor saying like, it's in a convenience store. I'm like, why is it in a convenience store? It's probably not supposed to be in a convenience. That's not gonna be, no, it's not gonna perform well in an independent convenience store. A distributor is not just like, you have to be, again, strategic about how you want to execute and who the partner is and how you're deploying and where you're deploying.

Speaker 3 • 36:09 - 36:20 • 97%
And, and I think initially we try things and, and are willing to try things without necessarily knowing everything. And that has led to, you know, a few mistakes, but it's led to a lot of learning and a lot of progress as well.

Speaker 3 • 36:20 - 36:56 • 97%
Right. Another thing with the retailers 2023, it's going great. We get up to like 40 really fast and then some of the packaging starts to fail while it's out on the shelf. And so that 2023, our innovative paperboard jars that we had been bringing in were starting to fail. So like after like four to six months, they were starting to stain from the interior. So it was like things were just sitting on retailer shelves not looking good. We're like, oh my gosh, now we're like driving around to retailers like restocking, like pulling shit that doesn't look nice.

Speaker 3 • 36:56 - 37:01 • 97%
So, because from our opinion, we're just like, we can't have this out there. It's not gonna sell, the retailer's not gonna be happy,

Speaker 1 • 37:01 - 37:06 • 87%
The customer's not gonna, and it's not gonna present our brand the way that we want it to be represented.

Speaker 3 • 37:06 - 37:20 • 96%
And then we're still very values oriented. So like we tell our community like, okay, this is like not great with the packaging, but we want to finish it out. Right? So like, yeah. Run through the remainder of what we had.

Speaker 1 • 37:21 - 37:28 • 97%
And the reason why we had so much is because it's, in order to get your cost of goods down, you have to order in a large

Speaker 3 • 37:28 - 37:30 • 90%
Quantity. Well your MQs, right?

Speaker 1 • 37:30 - 37:36 • 93%
Right. Yeah. So we had initially brought in 5,000 jars, which lasted us years.

Speaker 3 • 37:36 - 37:50 • 91%
It was like for that particular, yeah, for that particular SKUs. For those SKUs, it was like more than we needed. Right? Yeah. It was like a 24 month supply as opposed to, you know, like a six month supply or something. That's not reasonable. Right. So,

Speaker 1 • 37:50 - 38:20 • 97%
But another lesson learned, right? So yeah, we actually just finished those off not that long ago and we've switched to tins now, which are still, you know, they're highly, highly recyclable. You can use them after too. Yeah. Which we feel good about. It's, you know, it's not fully compostable like the paperboard was, but people are gonna love to use it. They're gonna look at it, it's gonna look fresh each time that they use it. It's just gonna add to that comfort feeling of knowing that this is the right product for them.

Speaker 3 • 38:20 - 38:53 • 97%
Yeah. And so we went out and started doing a lot of markets and stuff again, to kind of push some of these extra units out and do some more direct to consumer and get some of this packaging. And one of the most effective like recurring revenue strategies for us is just our email strategy, right? So as much as, you know, whatever I say about e-commerce and the challenges with the site, like our email strategy that's come out of that has, it's not as high as it was, but in those years was driving close to 40% of the revenue.

Speaker 3 • 38:53 - 39:12 • 97%
Like, it was amazing what we were driving through email in like 20 21, 20 22. It's gotten a little bit harder. I find like our open rates are still solid, but I find our conversion rates on email is like lagging right now. It's a little challenging, although we're just doing a lot of nurturing heading into the holiday season.

Speaker 3 • 39:12 - 39:43 • 97%
Right. We, we've just been doing nurture, nurture, nurture, and then we'll, we'll have a, a good holiday season ahead, but go, we were going doing physical popups, capturing those emails, you know, driving those repeat sales kind of through the e-commerce site, worked through the remainder of the packaging. And while we did that, we redid a, did a rebrand as well. 'cause we wanted to lighten things up. We felt like the brand was a little bit too dark. It wasn't round like a bubble. So we were like, look, if we're like, you know, bite the bullet on the packaging and stuff again, let's just like hit this out right.

Speaker 3 • 39:44 - 39:53 • 92%
The way that, 'cause we, we just kind of always piecemealed like, oh, we'll add this piece on and that piece. But it was never really set down like, let's build it and design it all.

Speaker 1 • 39:53 - 40:28 • 97%
Add it once. What's our color palette? What's the, you know, what are the brand colors that you use on the website? What color and font goes with the title? Which one goes with the header? Which one? You know, it's all those things that make a solid brand. I was so focused on, you know, the ingredients and the, you know, the customers and things like that. And as long as that get out there. But there's a lot to say about how it's presented because if it's presented well, people are more likely to pick it up and to be curious about it.

Speaker 1 • 40:28 - 40:35 • 96%
And nobody wants a stained paper jar on a shelf. Yeah. They're not gonna go and pick that up and open it

Speaker 2 • 40:35 - 40:41 • 94%
Up. But it, but I must say the jar is beaut the jar, the paper jar was beautiful when it wasn't stained

Speaker 1 • 40:41 - 40:51 • 92%
When it was first poured. Yes. Which we're also a paint to pour because, you know, you couldn't touch the outside of the jar at all because you could stain it Right. With the oils and stuff.

Speaker 2 • 40:51 - 41:22 • 97%
I think that's a good education piece, what you just said. When you are doing a local business where you are talking to people and you basically are your brand, you have products, but you are your brand, right? Yeah. It's very different than when you go e-com retail and you're not there. Your brand has to then stand for itself. Yeah. Right? Because they don't know you, you're not there to, to build that connection. So that jar and the look, the brand identity, I guess has to say everything that you need to say. And that's tough.

Speaker 2 • 41:22 - 41:24 • 85%
Yeah. And that's why branding so and

Speaker 3 • 41:24 - 41:57 • 94%
So. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I, yeah, I didn't mean to cut you off . Yeah, you're exactly right. Like, that's why branding and, and is so important. When we decided, you know, like, okay, we're liking this retailer model, okay, we're liking, you know, popping up and seeing people in person. We're loving the kiosk project for McAllister Place Mall this holiday season. Yeah. Like, you know, we, we've found the pieces that we really like and that drive revenue, right? Yeah. So some of those physical in person experiences, our retailers we're now growing again.

Speaker 3 • 41:57 - 42:14 • 98%
We're, we're now doing more outreach and looking to grow our retail list again, because we've now moved through a lot of the, like I said, the packaging issues. But then when we're going through the rebrand, it's like we had so many products to rebrand. It took us 12 months, like to move through all of the different packaging, all of the labels, each of the iterations.

Speaker 3 • 42:14 - 42:46 • 95%
You know, we had never thought about, like with the branding and the branding work, we'd always like, you know, slight evolution, build a little better. But then, yeah, last year it was like, you know what if we're gonna continue doing this and we like, let's make it the business that we want it to be for. And like, so it was literally like a white page. Like it was like, wow, blank slate. Let's go into this knowing now, now we know we're dry and sensitive skin. We know we're bath body and personal care products. We know the aromatic plays one of our strongest plays.

Speaker 3 • 42:46 - 42:59 • 97%
We know the values that we have. So now we've actually built, like, taken the time to build and design the company. And it's like, we could go and go into the, the branding work with all of that in mind, right?

Speaker 3 • 43:00 - 43:38 • 95%
And then you, you can think about how, how do the cowers want to make you feel, right? Like this is, this is like the most comfortable sweater ever, right? And it's like, that's, but that's the whole point. Like it's, it's we're it's we're about comfort, right? Yeah. We're comfort in your skin. Like the whole idea of using bubbles and balms is like crawling into that big comfortable sweater, right? Like that is the feeling that we're going for. It was like, okay, we now know all of these things. And, and the way that it looked was not, it didn't sync up and, and we realized that we, you know, just happened to be in this capacity building program that would connected us with this.

Speaker 3 • 43:39 - 43:45 • 96%
She just really focuses on brand. That's it. It's, it's like, look, feel, what is it? Look, feel color,

Speaker 1 • 43:46 - 44:09 • 98%
Something else. She's a color specialist too. So she really had insight into, even when it came to the different types, so like bath body, face, like there's different colors that represent and how those make you feel like we use purple for bath because you know, even though Blue is a really great color, most females, there's a lot more females that take baths. And purple is, you know, associated with females. Right.

Speaker 3 • 44:09 - 44:14 • 93%
And shape too. And shape. Like we never thought she, like it was just so plain when she said like,

Speaker 1 • 44:14 - 44:17 • 94%
Why isn't your logo a circular? Yeah.

Speaker 3 • 44:17 - 44:22 • 96%
She's like, bubbles. Like, she's like, everything's bubbles. We're like, yeah. And she's like, so why is your logo square?

Speaker 1 • 44:22 - 44:49 • 96%
Yeah. You know, represented all these things but just made our brand look kind of childish and it didn't really go with our brand, but I was, was so in love with this bubble bug that I was like holding onto it for the dear life. And then Amy and or the consultant and Justin were like, just let it go. Let it go. So finally I gave in and let it go, but I told Justin I was gonna get it tattooed on my butt. So. Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 3 • 44:49 - 44:50 • 90%
Yeah. You can

Speaker 2 • 44:50 - 45:16 • 96%
for sure. Okay, so my question then is, do you feel like you could have got to this brand look, because really the brand is two parts, right? It's the strategy, which is all the stuff you talked about, your values, the comfort, the niche, all of that stuff. And then the look and feel is the brand identity. Do you think you could have got to where you got without having that strategy stuff in place first?

Speaker 1 • 45:17 - 45:51 • 97%
No. No. Absolutely not. We actually, we took the, a lot of the work that we did with you Haley, and we made sure that at the end of the year in January was our strategic planning from that point on. And we went over all of the exercises to, you know, make sure that our values were still the same. That you know, what resonated with our business the best, did our value statement and our mission statement line up still. We really tried hard to stick to that. And the thing is that we've learned is that you need one source of truth.

Speaker 1 • 45:52 - 46:09 • 98%
So whether it's a process document, whether it's, you know, you just use Canva, you need to have that source of truth that you continually work on. That's not pieces of paper everywhere and documents everywheres. You need to have one thing that you're continually, it's a working document.

Speaker 3 • 46:10 - 46:24 • 96%
Yeah. And it's hard, it's hard to go back 'cause it's so tempting to just like, oh, I'm gonna just go start this like new thing and do this over here. But it's like you want to pick up what you have, right. And start with where things are and really just kind of go from there and, and work with them.

Speaker 1 • 46:24 - 46:32 • 98%
The first couple years were was hard. But now we use it so much that it is like, thank God I have this so that I don't have to keep in my brain.

Speaker 3 • 46:32 - 47:04 • 96%
Well, and I mean our business journey, like we can also say like, you know, there was, you know, 2018, we also moved, you know, 4,500 kilometers, you know, over this time. Like our, our daughter's six. Our son's four, right. So yeah, I've continued working outside of the house a lot of the time. Like I haven't, like we've been full time here the last 12 months, but you know, up until that period of time, like I maintained, you know, half to two thirds of my time outside of the business. So we continuously paid the mortgage and some of these things were covered.

Speaker 3 • 47:04 - 47:22 • 97%
So like we created these kind of systems that allowed us time. Right? Yeah. And, and time to try and to, you know, even if we failed a little bit, we could, we still had the time to fix or work on some of the challenges. I'm not saying any of it was easy. Like there's a lot of times where resources are, you know,

Speaker 1 • 47:23 - 47:29 • 90%
. There's been many times where I've, I've looked at Justin and I was like, I can't do bubbles and Bobs anymore. I can't. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 • 47:29 - 47:39 • 95%
Yeah. Like that's a good, like why, why like you're an LPN right? , why, why do this for 10 years? I think a lot of people will ask that .

Speaker 1 • 47:39 - 48:19 • 98%
Yeah. No, and I think that it's, I've always been a creative person. I've always been a comforting person and highly empathetic, almost to a fault. You know, having a passion is, can be a rare thing, you know what I mean? To truly have passion for it. And when that passion is ignited by values, it explodes. Right? And although there's been many times that I've said I've wanted to quit, I am so thankful that I haven't, because, you know, prior to going for my LPN, I actually wanted to take my LPN and then go to art school so that I could not be a starving artist.

Speaker 1 • 48:19 - 48:57 • 98%
Right, right. You know, things just happen and, you know, six months out from nursing school moved to Alberta and suddenly have all this opportunity to be creative during the time in which my license was switching over. And it just made me realize that I'm a heck of a lot happier when I have something that's giving that fire in my soul. And it's not something that happens very frequently at all. Yeah. And that's why I keep doing it. I keep doing it because my formulas keep getting better. I keep learning more and I'm really seeing such a big difference in the people around me and the comfort that they feel.

Speaker 1 • 48:57 - 49:07 • 96%
And I think a lot of people feel so uncomfortable on the inside and from our mental health experience in the past. I don't believe anybody should feel uncomfortable on the upside. Yeah.

Speaker 2 • 49:07 - 49:15 • 93%
I love that . So your purpose, your brand purpose, I know when we chatted about it was better every day. Yeah. Is it

Speaker 1 • 49:15 - 49:46 • 97%
and I actually, I still like put that in my journal almost like a couple times a week. I still better each day is still like, even though it's not our brand motto, it is still my personal motto because when you know better, you do better, 1% better each day leads to a heck of a lot of improvement over a year. It's been a statement that we carried through the brand for a while and we really felt like it was our main personal belief and not so much explaining what we were doing and why we were doing it.

Speaker 1 • 49:46 - 49:52 • 95%
We wanna bring comfort for dry and sensitive skin because that's what we have. That's what we want and that's what we make.

Speaker 2 • 49:52 - 50:12 • 97%
Yeah. Yeah. But what I love about you guys is you're always learning, right? Like the amount of learning that you guys have done is like an MBA and like a chemist degree and like, it's just, you know, it's, it's interesting. I think that's probably part of the reason why you love it so much. Like you're continually evolving and learning and learning, right. And

Speaker 1 • 50:12 - 50:49 • 97%
I think too, it's because we're learning about the things that we're passionate about. You go to business school and you're learning about, you know, marketing and you absolutely hate marketing. You can afford to, you know, after a while knocking your head against the wall with our Facebook and Instagram, you know, it's a lot easier to hire somebody else else out because we're gonna make more money doing things that we're good at to help cover whatever cost that does and it makes our life happier, right? So you have that opportunity when you have experience in the business as well as having that freedom to do so because you're not answering to somebody else.

Speaker 1 • 50:49 - 51:01 • 95%
You can make those decisions so frequently. Justin and I are, are very hard workers and being able to have that flexibility, even for our own mental health days and our children, you know, you can't put a price on that. Yeah,

Speaker 2 • 51:01 - 51:21 • 98%
That's true. That's true. So what would you give somebody starting out on this journey, following their passion, wanting to build a life around their passion, passion business? I guess what advice would you give after being in this business for 10 years so they can avoid some of the, the long way around? Or do you have to just take the long way around? Yeah,

Speaker 3 • 51:21 - 52:03 • 97%
I think that you're always taking a, a bit of a long way around. I, I don't think there's any direct shot. Like here's your way to get out there and be super successful, super quick and easy and not have any hiccups or bumps or failures or tears or anything along the way. Like when I talk, I think about why I would continue doing this while I, I will always like, whether it's within bubbles and bombs, which I'm very passionate about, or if it's kind of that that next project and opportunity I have found, like the process of building a business has been immeasurably valuable in building up and rebuilding my, you know, mental health, my confidence, my self-esteem.

Speaker 3 • 52:03 - 52:25 • 95%
You know, you're continuously putting a challenge ahead of yourself, not a challenge that you don't need to do any of these things. That's, that's the thing that I think, you know, you're, you're vol, you're, you're, you're stepping up and you're opting into these things that are, you know, continuously more and more challenging. Sometimes you, you do it and you're like, my God, why am I, this is so, and all of these frustration struggle.

Speaker 1 • 52:25 - 52:27 • 72%
I just want a paycheck. Somebody pay me.

Speaker 3 • 52:27 - 52:59 • 96%
Once in a while, you just kind of, your head pops up and you just realize like where you were six months ago and where you are now, and you're like, holy shit, you know, this is different. Like, I'm a different person. I am, I am, I'm, you know, my confidence is different. How I carry myself is different. The progress as to where you can be in, you know, one year's time of committed effort, but then in like 10 years time of learning and year over year comp, I mean, you know, when we started this, the dream was like, imagine if we could have kids and like the kids could come home and we had a business and they could come home on the bus, which they're doing now.

Speaker 3 • 52:59 - 53:17 • 95%
And like, imagine if we could, you know, all these things that, like when we started out that it's like we're living now the shit that we were dreaming about five and 10 years ago, we still often forget to take the time to enjoy that. Right. It was, I'm still thinking like five years down the road. Well, three years typically.

Speaker 1 • 53:17 - 53:49 • 97%
And I think that by doing it and working in it, growing at it and really knowing your stuff because you've repeatedly said it so much that it's just, it's, it's in there. It just comes out whether you're knowledgeable about it or not in the moment. Yeah. And you know, it really, that's what gets rid of imposter syndrome because we know that there's many, many business owners, especially ones who don't have a business background that are going into it. Yeah. Imposter syndrome can ruin you for the first few years.

Speaker 1 • 53:50 - 54:01 • 96%
I remember when we first opened and I was just like, somebody would buy like three bars of soap and I'd give them like two extra bars because I'm like, I'm sorry, I charge you money. That's so true. Yeah.

Speaker 3 • 54:02 - 54:32 • 95%
Like undervaluing underpricing yourself. Like Yeah. You know, I, I said, I, I was gonna say one thing, especially as it comes to like passion and passion oriented work is the passion will wane. Right? Motivation will wane. It is, you know, reminding yourself, there's gonna be a lot of days where the passion just is not there at five 30 in the morning when you're jumping outta bed and you've gotta, you know, hit those emails and then jump in the car to go do some delivery or whatever you need to do.

Speaker 3 • 54:32 - 54:54 • 96%
So as much as it is, you know, the passion can drive you in those early days. I think you need almost that passion and motivation to go through some of those early challenges. But I would like be patient, except that it's not gonna be passionate every single day. That there's gonna be grind days where you don't want to be there. And that's okay. Doing those grind days is really what's gonna make you better and stronger as a business owner. You know,

Speaker 1 • 54:54 - 55:30 • 97%
Mentors, I know for sure like getting mentors within your field, getting mentors within the business space is like ridiculously valuable. It's taken me eight years to find a mentor in my space that I, I really connect with, but I have found a mentor that I really enjoy and it's helps make amazing business decisions. And having a mentor helps you avoid a lot of their mistakes that they did because they walked this path. And even though, you know, businesses might be different, they still have a lot of things that are similar between all of them.

Speaker 1 • 55:30 - 55:44 • 97%
And, you know, having a mentor, somebody who can, you can call once a week, you're on a, you know, maybe you video once a month. That's key. I think that's almost as important, as important as, you know, the passion.

Speaker 3 • 55:44 - 56:15 • 98%
And then the only other thing that I always think now, and I think like if I could just give myself one piece of advice when I was getting started, it would be simplify. Find one thing to sell to one person, and then try to do that over and over again as many times as you can. And then add another thing. And then, so, you know, because I think initially it's like, oh, you know, you're one person in front of me. You want me to make this and make the, I'll do all these different things. But then at the end you're realizing you're not really super,

Speaker 1 • 56:15 - 56:21 • 96%
Can't market a hundred things at once. Right. And yeah. You don't get that repetition of making things better each day.

Speaker 3 • 56:22 - 56:23 • 90%
Yeah. That market

Speaker 2 • 56:23 - 56:56 • 96%
. And I think actually that's such a good point. Like I think that so many small businesses get into the, I like to create, I like to create, I just wanna like make something new, make something new. If they're not getting sales, they think it's their product, right? They're like, oh, I gotta make a different smell. I gotta make a different scent because nobody's buying that one. But really, you probably just need better marketing to sell the awesome product you already have instead of making 20 awesome products and still nobody knows about them. Right. Or your marketing's lacking. Yeah. So I think I see that a lot because small business owners, we're creators.

Speaker 2 • 56:56 - 57:00 • 94%
We wanna create, we wanna invent and that's our go-to is like,

Speaker 3 • 57:01 - 57:05 • 95%
Yeah. Like it's, it's a little safer in there, you know what I mean? Because like it's, it's

Speaker 1 • 57:05 - 57:08 • 96%
Okay, you know, like this, try this, I make this really good. Yeah, well,

Speaker 3 • 57:08 - 57:39 • 96%
Yeah, exactly. And you don't necessarily have to put yourself so much behind one product, right? Like, you're not so invested. You're like, oh, okay, we don't like that. That's fine. Here try this one. Oh, you like that? That's fine. Here try this one. Yeah. But it's like, you know, when you go out and you say, look, here's a, here's one product that I really like. We know how to make it, we know how to make it well, you know how many different places. Yeah. And people can, can we potentially get that to, and then once that's running and those people are ordering that thing.

Speaker 3 • 57:39 - 58:01 • 98%
Yeah. Right. Then you can start looking at, okay, what's that next thing or that next demographic? But I know like for us, like we were just trying to sell too many different products into too many different like psychographics and demographics. Like just trying to be too many things to too many people and it just exhausts you. Like it's fun at first 'cause it's so creative and it's fun and there's all these different things that you're doing,

Speaker 1 • 58:02 - 58:03 • 97%
But the maintenance of it,

Speaker 3 • 58:03 - 58:11 • 95%
Yeah. You need systems to fall back on. Right. Because otherwise it's you. Like you do, you run outta passion some days and those are the days you need your systems to kind of carry you through.

Speaker 1 • 58:11 - 58:11 • 98%
Yeah,

Speaker 2 • 58:12 - 58:35 • 97%
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. One more question. 'cause this is a long interview , but it's interesting and you guys are fun. Okay. So what would you say, each of you, I guess I'll ask each of you, what would you say is like the best surprise of entrepreneurship for you? What's like the biggest blessing, best surprise that maybe you didn't realize was gonna come out of this journey?

Speaker 1 • 58:35 - 59:11 • 97%
Biggest blessing for me, I think overall, and it could change from day to day. You never know how I'm feeling, but with my, I was diagnosed with bipolar shortly after the birth of our son. So four years ago. And it was really, really hard. And it still is. And it took at least two and a half years to get on the right medication. It was followed by, you know, deep depression that would lead me into, you know, I'd have to sleep for a month. I couldn't produce for a month, I couldn't work for a month, or I just had so much brain fog or anxiety or panic attacks.

Speaker 1 • 59:11 - 59:44 • 97%
And it led to me searching for a solution for that. And, but not only that, it gave me the flexibility to not have to quit my job, right. Because I could just, you know, I had staff that could, you know, pick up a little bit here and there. It was able to survive without me because, you know, stock was, it was in stock from after Christmas. It allowed me a space where, yes, there's many days where after work when I don't want to or you know, or pulling weekends or Justin does a lot of late nights for paperwork and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 • 59:44 - 59:54 • 98%
It's, even though those days suck, being able to rest when you need to rest and not feel guilty about it because you're answering to somebody else Yes.

Speaker 1 • 59:55 - 59:58 • 99%
Is nice because you know, you're not kidding when you need to rest.

Speaker 2 • 59:58 - 1:00:06 • 98%
Yeah. Wow. I'm sorry that you're went through that or go through that. I didn't know that about you, so that's tough.

Speaker 3 • 1:00:06 - 1:00:17 • 93%
Yeah, that was, yeah, I didn't, I I it's been almost half giggled as you started talking 'cause I was just thinking like, yeah, I almost forgot there was also that on top of like the children and the covid

Speaker 2 • 1:00:17 - 1:00:17 • 90%
So much

Speaker 3 • 1:00:18 - 1:00:23 • 90%
And the e-commerce learning and the, yeah. I forgot there was also that piece that you've

Speaker 1 • 1:00:23 - 1:00:54 • 95%
Worked through and it's just as difficult for family and the people around you to deal with that too. Right? Like I'm, I'm fairly high functioning. It's definitely made me more self-aware of my emotions. And Justin's very, he's a lot more organized than I am, which also helps with maintaining a bit more structure. We bounce each off each other really, really well. And I am thankful that he stuck by me through the diagnosis process. 'cause that was, you know, it was challenging.

Speaker 1 • 1:00:54 - 1:01:13 • 97%
But I am thankful that to have gone through it. I, I'm able to be more aware of my emotions when it comes with my children as well. I know when to walk away. I know when to take deep breaths. I know when I need to take extra medication. And so yeah, like that was a, a big hurdle as well. But I'm on the other side of it and it feels good.

Speaker 2 • 1:01:13 - 1:01:17 • 95%
That's good. Well, I'm glad that it's managed. Yeah. Yeah. And thank you for sharing that. Oh

Speaker 1 • 1:01:17 - 1:01:17 • 94%
Yeah.

Speaker 2 • 1:01:17 - 1:01:31 • 95%
Well I, it's a vulnerable sharing. I think it's, it's important like life happens and when you're a business owner, I guess that is a super happy surprise that you can deal with life. You're, because you're not necessarily nine to five.

Speaker 1 • 1:01:31 - 1:02:01 • 97%
Yeah. It's, it, when I first was diagnosed, I definitely felt like I had a big B on my head and I felt ashamed of it. And I felt like, oh my goodness, I'm this crazy person. When I first started telling people, like, there were some people that were really supportive, but there was others who almost had a scared reaction. And it was really heartbreaking because I'm still, me, I've always been me. It's just there's days where, and I have a type of bipolar where I'm not in a manic state. Like I get hypomanic, but it's not too, too bad.

Speaker 1 • 1:02:01 - 1:02:03 • 99%
There's been instances where

Speaker 3 • 1:02:03 - 1:02:08 • 93%
It's pretty good. It's pretty all well managed. I mean, there, there's challenges that come with that. But I mean, you know, I,

Speaker 1 • 1:02:09 - 1:02:54 • 97%
But I live in the depressive kind of side of it most days. But with the counseling that I've done and the work that we've done and the stability and everything like that, like I'm, I'm open to talking about it because there's, there's not a lot of people that are willing to talk about it and that are willing to talk about it without having a scared mentality around those types of diagnosis. Depression, anxiety, they're talked about all day and they're celebrated and hey, you're brave for talking about it. It's not that those aren't great things to talk about, but when you get to bipolar and schizophrenia and all those that are a little bit more unheard of or not so much seen or portrayed in the media as being like absolutely horrid when, you know, they portray the worst sides of those things.

Speaker 1 • 1:02:54 - 1:03:10 • 95%
Mm. They don't portray, you know, the creative that is that comes from that. They don't portray Van Gogh was bipolar. Right. So it's, yeah. Yeah. There's, and like there's celebrities that are bipolar too that you would never expect think

Speaker 3 • 1:03:10 - 1:03:41 • 95%
It's like I, so it's been interesting. I mean, we've had, so I had my first mental health diagnosis at 19 Right. With an anxiety disorder and then was kind of reclassified later as basically as there's symptomology or things that were never going away, which we figured it was a DHD. So it was like, okay, that's not, it's not anxiety, right. But it's like, it's, yeah. I don't know. I think for me, and in those periods too, it was very isolating.

Speaker 3 • 1:03:41 - 1:04:03 • 95%
And so I know like in Judith's diagnosis, like it's hard to see yourself outside of that box again. Right? Like once you're kind of put into this, like you have you, are you this right? Yeah. To see like inside, once you see yourself that way and you kind of ruminate in it for a while 'cause you kind of have to like come with some sort of acceptance with it and then Yeah.

Speaker 3 • 1:04:03 - 1:04:35 • 97%
Like, you know, seeing yourself on the other side that it's like, oh, okay, maybe like these are slight variations and you know, maybe a neurochemistry and how I react to certain things. And realistically they, they don't show up very often for you, you know what I mean? Like, it's not, and and yeah, so it's, it's been challenging I think in a lot of ways, but we also are very open about it. 'cause for us it's just like, for me it's just been an aspect of like, whether it was, like I said, like with that initial diagnosis and then I was like, I'm a heck of a lot happier now than I was before that.

Speaker 3 • 1:04:35 - 1:04:53 • 93%
Trying to like deal and self-medicate with drugs and alcohol and, and everything else. Yeah. And, and not having any self-awareness about, you know, some of the internal differences that might make, you know, just certain habits and stuff like that. I don't know, for me, with entrepreneurship, I'll, I'll wrap it up the Yeah. The happy,

Speaker 1 • 1:04:53 - 1:04:54 • 83%
Happy little

Speaker 3 • 1:04:54 - 1:05:25 • 97%
Story. The one, the one, the big thing from entrepreneurship for me is actually just like how great everything feels on the other side of the fear, right? Fail success on the other side, things feel really good, right? Yeah. So it's like that, that to me, with the entrepreneurship, like, you know, especially early on feeling like I can't talk about it unless it's successful. I don't even know how to get into it. Like, I'm not successful enough yet. I'm not, I need more success. I need

Speaker 1 • 1:05:25 - 1:05:27 • 95%
That whole thing about failing forward.

Speaker 3 • 1:05:28 - 1:06:03 • 94%
Yeah. And then like realizing that I, the times that I ever felt like I failed were the times that I pulled back. I didn't do things I did, you know, that's when I felt like I, it wasn't the times that like we went out and lost money or Yeah. You know, that I hold on the staff too long or I made a, in like certain decisions, it was like the time, it was like when I didn't make the sales calls that I should have been making or you know, some of these other, like the things that were fear oriented that maybe I stayed away from, you know, certain aspects of business development or things because of, of that fear.

Speaker 3 • 1:06:03 - 1:06:19 • 96%
And then just realizing that no, it's actually, it's just like going through that fear. It's just like doing the experience anyway, right? Like it's win lose or draw on the other side doesn't matter so much, as much as you showing up and just putting an effort into it. Right. And trying. Yeah.

Speaker 2 • 1:06:19 - 1:06:46 • 97%
I love what you just said. This is quotable moment for you Justin. And I might not be quoting it perfectly, but you just said it feels so good on the other side of fear. Yeah. Regardless of the outcome. Like you actually said that that was it. That's a really like powerful quote I think because I think that is literally why entrepreneurs are quitting too soon. Yeah. And I think it's why entrepreneurial people aren't doing it. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 • 1:06:46 - 1:07:17 • 95%
So, and it is, I mean it's, it's like for us it's like internal fear, self-judgment, peer judgment. Like there's, there's just so many of these fears that then almost manifest as reasons or explanations. And a lot of times it's like, no, you just, you gotta pick up the phone and say, Hey, this is me and this is what I do and what I offer, and do you want it? And that person might hang up on you and you have to pick up the phone and just do it again. Yeah. And like, yeah. And then like after a couple you're like, ah, to nuts, to that person, I'll call somebody else.

Speaker 3 • 1:07:17 - 1:07:31 • 95%
Like, you know, like you, you, yeah. You, you just, you realize like, okay, you, you build up, like I said, some of the more of those confidences and stuff like that, I mean, because of the anxiety and different issues like, you know, younger and stuff, it was, yeah.

Speaker 3 • 1:07:31 - 1:08:02 • 95%
Like it was, I, I don't know, I always could put myself out there and stuff, but really being willing to like stand behind something and have the show up just to continue showing up, you know what I mean? Have the courage of your convictions. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause it's easy when you're passionate and motivated and you're like, I'm gonna take on the world and everything's gonna be great. Yeah. And then it's like, you know, three to six months in when it's a hard grind and a bunch of people don't care about your idea and like, you know, you've got a few clients that believe though, and it's like you, you know, like Yeah. That's when it's, yeah.

Speaker 3 • 1:08:02 - 1:08:24 • 97%
It's, it's like you just show up, you do it again another day. And, and like I said, for me it's so many times boxed in by that fear. Right? And, and then like just getting on the other side of it and realizing, oh, it's always so much better to just lean into it early. Like to, as opposed to try to dance around it or avoid it or like, whether you call it eating the frog or whatever you need to do, right? Like Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 • 1:08:24 - 1:09:00 • 95%
Just that. And I think you made the point too is when things are going well, it's not really scary, but some like things it, it's like this, like you're going in like loopy loops when you're an entrepreneur, right? Like it's like you said, it's not a straight line and it's just the ability to get the imposter syndrome syndrome out, know that you can go through hard things and get to the other side without quitting . Right? Like it's just, I love that and it reminds me, I was tell my son was having an issue the other day and he had made a decision, a big decision in his life and he was kind of regretting it.

Speaker 2 • 1:09:01 - 1:09:21 • 97%
And I said, who made that decision? Was that decision you or was that decision fear? Because if you let fear make the decision, you're listening to the wrong thing. Right? And so I think that was helpful. And then he went back on his decision that he made because it was a fear-based decision. And so if you take fear out of the equation, what would you do? Yeah.

Speaker 1 • 1:09:21 - 1:09:21 • 66%
,

Speaker 2 • 1:09:21 - 1:09:25 • 98%
Right? I think that's an interesting, I love that.

Speaker 3 • 1:09:25 - 1:09:37 • 98%
I think it's such a big factor. It's such a big factor in everybody's life, right? It's so nice being on the other side and not wondering, it's just like whatever it is, if it's done like you did it, you tried it, whatever it is, like, it's just, it's so much better than wondering, right?

Speaker 2 • 1:09:38 - 1:09:41 • 98%
Yeah. Even if it didn't work out, it's so much better than wondering. Yeah.

Speaker 3 • 1:09:41 - 1:09:58 • 97%
And then like within days you're jazzed about the next thing. Like I very rarely like, you know, does the failure ever hit for like more than like a day into two when I would either quit or let the fear that would last a heck of a lot more than a day or two, right? Yeah. As opposed to, you know, the hit of a failure. Right.

Speaker 2 • 1:09:58 - 1:10:14 • 96%
So has that trickled into your personal lives, that ability to push past fear now? 'cause you've probably practiced, I know your business was practiced at the beginning, but like when you're an entrepreneur, you're literally practicing pushing past fear like all the time. Right? Has that changed anything else?

Speaker 3 • 1:10:15 - 1:10:32 • 96%
Yeah, it's, I think that's it. It it's throughout your life, right? So it's like even, you know, fear of like making new friends as an adult, right. And going out and meeting new people and, and like, you know, creating new friend groups and, and being vulnerable in public spaces and like feeling

Speaker 1 • 1:10:32 - 1:10:35 • 99%
Undereducated compared to all those around you,

Speaker 3 • 1:10:35 - 1:11:08 • 94%
Right? Yeah. But still being willing to ask a question. Yeah. And like, you know, just raise a hand or be like, look, I'm curious about this, this is good. I, it's just, I don't know. It's that part of like becoming more comfortable with yourself and just, you know, being like recognizing you have value. Like just all these things that I struggled with, right. That yeah. You know, it, it, it, the, the discipline of it, the, the trial and error, the having to overcome the fear, having to, to do it yourself. Nobody's there pushing you to go, you know, and yeah.

Speaker 3 • 1:11:08 - 1:11:11 • 96%
So yeah, like, it's like anything. Right? And

Speaker 1 • 1:11:11 - 1:11:29 • 98%
That's how you build confidence too, right? Just facing fear, doing it anyways. Getting used to, you know, maybe everything not going your way or something's not going your way and learning how to pick yourself up and learn from it and move on, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 • 1:11:29 - 1:12:00 • 96%
Yeah. I love that. On that note, I think that's a great spot to stop. So can you share, I'm gonna put in the show notes. Of course everybody who's interested in, in test checking out bubbles and balms, I'll tell you, I am addicted to their bath bombs. The, the citrus one sweet orange I think is the, the scent, like addicted. I want it sent to my house every month. Love it. Best bath bombs in the world. If somebody wants to buy my favorite bath bomb or any of your other products, , where, where do they go?

Speaker 3 • 1:12:00 - 1:12:34 • 97%
Bubbles and bombs.ca is gonna be your, your best spot. We've got a list of retail partners stockists on there as well. So you'll be able to go on and and find them their cross The Maritimes fairly well New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. So yeah, that is, that's the best spot. Or if you happen to be near Hampton, new Brunswick, you definitely need to look us up. You'll find our, our, you know, page on Google pretty easily and you can actually come to the studio and see in behind into the studio space where Judith is making everything and Judith and, and the team that's in there.

Speaker 3 • 1:12:35 - 1:12:35 • 99%
So yeah.

Speaker 1 • 1:12:36 - 1:12:38 • 97%
And shop at the same time. Pick stuff up, give it a sniff.

Speaker 2 • 1:12:39 - 1:12:49 • 94%
Yeah, I know, I, I remember working with you and saying like, how do we just like get the smell? Like if we could just get the smell of this from your, your website, like you would be like billionaires.

Speaker 3 • 1:12:50 - 1:13:06 • 93%
So. Well it was like, I still remember that was one of our key strategies in clear when we were out west in Alberta 2014 to 2018 when we were between that bank and the post office and this like any day where the weather allowed door open fan blowing out into the street, right? Like, oh

Speaker 2 • 1:13:06 - 1:13:21 • 97%
Yeah. People are like, what is that? Anyways, thank you so much. So good to catch up again. So proud of you guys hitting 10 years. That is no, like, that's a big deal. That's a huge deal. And you should be really proud of what you've accomplished, like you've done it all and I'm so happy for you. Thank,

Speaker 1 • 1:13:21 - 1:13:26 • 94%
Thank you, you so much, Hailey. It's been wonderful to see you again. And thank you so much for having us on your podcast.

Speaker 2 • 1:13:27 - 1:13:28 • 91%
You are welcome.

Resilience and Reinvention: Justin & Judith Sweeney on Building a Value-Driven Small Business that Lasts

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