Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Meier.
Hi Laura, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’ve always been creative for as long as I can remember. Whenever I’d stay at my grandma’s house, we’d make everything from quilts to gingerbread houses, to soaps, panoramic sugar eggs, and much more. She taught me that the best gifts are made by hand and with a lot of heart. When I was in Jr. High, I had a business making and selling jewelry on just a corner of her table at her senior center’s craft shows. I didn’t make much money off that business because, well, the jewelry wasn’t that great, but I knew at that point that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I bounced around from idea to idea of my dream business, from being a wedding planner to a sports massage therapist to mobile bartender, but nothing really stuck.
During my brief stint as a wedding planner, I developed severe depression. I was spending months at a time in bed, getting up to only go to work at a job I got after I gave up on the wedding planning business. Some days, my mom and dad would sit me down in the kitchen to brush my hair and put on my makeup, then drive me to work because my mental space was so bad. I couldn’t find any reason for self-care. Eventually, when I got into therapy, my therapist gave me the task to just get out of bed to brush my teeth every day. Slowly, my ‘homework’ increased to more self-care-related tasks, then to managing my depression and anxiety, then to finding a purpose for every day.
By that time, I had developed close friendships with some of my coworkers. My ‘work mom’ knew what I was going through and was so supportive of me in and outside of work. I knew I needed to make her something special for Mother’s Day but wasn’t sure exactly what yet. I had stopped into one of my favorite stores in Redlands and found this amazing smelling body scrub made with essential oils, but the price was way out of my price range. I made some simple body scrubs as gifts in the past, but I wanted to make this something extraordinary for her. I gave it to her a few days before Mother’s Day because I just couldn’t keep my amazing creation to myself and she LOVED it. She showed it to everyone at work that day, and by Mother’s Day, I had 15 orders for scrubs in different scents and colors. The gifts were all very well received and the orders just kept coming! I expanded the line to lip scrubs in a variety of flavors and colors, and I was eventually bringing a separate tote bag full of products to work every few days.
I added made-to-order lotions, bubble baths, bath soaks, soaps, and bath bombs to my repertoire while collecting hundreds of fragrance options and dozens of colors. I had a vision of one day selling my sweet-scented products from a short bus, and my friend made me a logo of a little blue school bus. I named the company Short & Sweet Body Care for both those fun aspects I envisioned for my business. My website went live, and I stumbled through getting my business registered, licensed, and insured while celebrating every little step. My mom and I vended at eight local markets the first year from October through December, and though it was a ton of work, I knew this was exactly what I was meant to do. Six months into the business, things were going well, and I was looking forward to what the next year had to offer.
Then Covid hit. Markets shut down, I couldn’t get my supplies in person or online, and no one had much money for extras like self-care when the future was so uncertain. My job had me working as much as possible, so while I was lucky in the financial aspect of my life, my business was on the back burner until last November. I applied to a few markets on a whim, and to my surprise, I was accepted! We sold out at the three markets we vended at and met so many amazing women who owned their own businesses. Most of them were in my position of waiting for the world to go back to normal to continue working part-time and having a side hustle, but some were actually running a handmade products business full time! In March, I set my goal to have a long-term plan to quit my job. Yes, I was planning on having a plan. It seemed too scary to leave a stable job to jump into making lotions and scrubs as my main income. After getting passed up for a promotion at work, my boss sat me down and said he knew I wasn’t happy there. His wife loved my products and though I was a good employee, he wanted to see me pursue my passion. It was basically like, “If you don’t go on your own, I’m going to choose for you to go”. I couldn’t believe that what I was manifesting was actually coming true, even if not on my preferred timing or financial situation.
Then my dad said he thought it was the perfect time to buy the short school bus. We’ve been working on converting it into my dream mobile workshop and retail store in our spare time, but considering I’ve done 18 markets since I left my job in May, there’s not much spare time! Every day is a wild new adventure. I’m currently making products almost every day for weekly markets, custom orders, getting wholesale orders from businesses and subscription boxes, buying things for the bus and installing more things into it than I ever imagined, keeping up on inventory and ingredients, and still making time for self-care! I know this is where I’m meant to be, and though I still don’t know 100% what I’m doing with the back-end processes of running a business, I wouldn’t change it for the world!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My biggest obstacles have been dealing with the long-term issues of mental health. Though my biggest struggle so far with depression and anxiety has passed, I still get overwhelmed with thoughts of self-doubt on a nearly daily basis. I was constantly listening to the thoughts saying that I wasn’t good enough for people to buy my products. When the market is so saturated with self-care products, why would someone choose me over someone else who is more experienced, educated, has a better social media presence, has a better market set up? My impostor syndrome was running and ruining my life.
I still struggle with these thoughts every once in a while, but the biggest factor in overcoming this has been talking to my therapist every other week and listening to the Jasmine Star Podcast with her guest Sophia Amoruso. Amoruso called impostor syndrome her “inner saboteur,” and it honestly changed my outlook with one phrase. My mindset is the biggest thing holding me back, not someone else or whatever situation I’m in. I’ve also changed my mindset about things that are out of my control, so instead of getting anxious, depressed, or playing the victim in the situation, I shift my thinking to what I can learn, what the situation is trying to teach me, and where to go from there.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a self-care and self-love advocate, focusing on sensory comforts to ground and uplift. I make curated self-care products like lotions, body scrubs, soaps, bath bombs, essential oil blends, lip balms, and candles for a seamless mix and match bath and body product experience through fragrance and color.
In other words, I make custom body care in small batches to exactly what my customers order. When an order comes in, I start with the base ingredients and portion it for exactly that order. For lotions, I add the base to the container, then add the customer’s desired fragrance and color, then blend it in that same container. This way, I can offer hundreds of fragrance and color combinations at affordable prices with a quick turnaround time. I love that I can offer all my fragrances in all my products. Just the look on someone’s face when they find their new favorite fragrance and realize that it comes in any product they could buy from me is worth all the research and hard work! I even offer quite a few designer dupes and I love creating someone’s favorite scent that they can’t get from a big store anymore.
Soy candles are my favorite to make, and though I hate math, figuring out the ratios of wax to fragrance can be fun, and embedding the finished candle with crystals is even better!
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?0
The biggest lesson that I’ve learned is that things happen when they’re supposed to, and you can’t rush them. You can’t beat yourself up over where you are at that moment. You can’t compare where you are in your business to where someone else is in theirs.
I realized that some people are more selfish than ever before, and some people are more caring. Some people used this time to focus on themself and now demand what they think they’re owed, and some people work hard to make their dreams happen. I know who is ready to make a difference in the world and who is still stuck on what could have been. I want to move forward and make my business even better because of last year, and I know who to partner with to make that happen.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@shortandsweetbodycare.com
- Website: shortandsweetbodycare.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/shortandsweetbodycare
- Facebook: facebook.com/shortandsweetbodycare
Image Credits:
Profile Photo: Dearly Adair Photography, Adair Carrillo
