I’ve been partnered with Beautycounter for almost two years now, and it’s high time I wrote about my experience because it’s been positive, life-changing and very empowering from a business AND personal perspective! Read on to learn more about the five most important reasons why I work with Beautycounter.
1. Trust
I took about 12-14 months of dutifully trying out Beautycounter products. They have been the safer complement I was looking for when my Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS) started to flare quite severely in 2015. Before trying them out, I was accruing more conventional make-up products that I cared to admit, all in an effort to hide the flares as I was trying to sort them out with dietary changes (for anyone out there struggling, my biggest triggers are yeast and milk powder. Comment below and I’ll easily connect with you resources so you do not need to keep suffering alone with HS.) I didn’t like caking makeup onto my skin, and I never have. I felt like I didn’t have any other choice and felt in a bind.
Anyone who has struggled with skin issues can know (yes, even though who work to dismantle diet culture!): when you don’t know what’s going on with your body, when it’s a mystery and it scares you, you hold onto that scarcity all day, every day. And when you can see that pain, that body that is literally erupting, it stings, literally and figuratively.
I first spotted Beautycounter at Target, actually. I knew it was a line of safer products and had read an article or two that had mentioned the company, but that was about it. So while I didn’t buy the products I saw in the store that day, but I did go home and research the company more. I found their Ingredient Glossary and was like “ok, hi, where have you been all my life?”
2. Advocacy
The level of advocacy and desire for true environmental change headed by Beautycounter blew me away the first time I learned about it. Also, as a questioner with rebel tendencies, I doubted it! Like, hey, don’t blow me away unless I validate you, first! But I stuck around and waited patiently to see if their actions align with their words, and, they do.
I am a huge fan of Lindsay Dahl and her work as the Vice President of Social and Environmental Responsibility with Beautycounter. She’s a fellow Minnesotan and I have heard only the best from others who have worked with her during her pre-Beautycounter days. This validation of character goes so, so far for me. And I see the company standing up for their employees by their hard work to sustain certification as a B Corporation. Their products are also EWG certified, meaning they, again, adhere to setting the new standard for transparency in personal care and beauty products.
The 2018 Social and Environmental Responsibility Report is my go-to for outlining the moving pieces that we stand tall and proud on when it comes to data regarding how and why Beautycounter is at the forefront with product efficacy, environmental impact, community expansion efforts and more.
In short: When I partner with a company–you better believe it’s a damn good one… just like mine.
3. Income
I’m a business owner, and maybe you are, too. Actually, in our current culture, sometimes I wonder who isn’t a business owner at this point? How many side hustles do we all have, whether to pay down our debt faster, to save up for fun trips in the summer or simply to have more ability to re-invest in ourselves as business owners?
I have realized that as a business owner, you choose how much or how little you talk about money. Just like every other subject, how you talk about money will be very telling when it comes to your relationship with money itself.
For me, having a history in fields and career paths that tend to make the desire to make money out to be a bad thing, or some potential happenstance that would maybe happen in the field you were supposed to love so much, but, not SO much that you made a comfortable life for yourself in the process. Yeah, not THAT much. The fields of wellness, social work, heck, even food service have felt full of martyrs–and I don’t desire to martyr myself in my business life.
Choosing to partner with Beautycounter was, and is, a financial decision. And I find it to be a hella smart decision, too. These statistics are from 2017 and can be found on their Income Disclosure Statement. They’re not hiding and neither am I:
4. Leadership
Here’s the funny thing–in Beautycounter, if you choose to lead a team (and you can run a business with monthly income without one. Remember, I joined as a consultant and stayed quiet for a year before really stepping into my role. Been there!), you become a leader. The teams with the most success have leaders who:
- embrace their position
- engage in personal development as part of their business practice
- advocate for the well-being of their team members
- coach their teams
THAT IS MY JAM. I love my ability to mentor others. I love the amount of self-reflection, intuition and growth a business like this encourages. Because guess what? You have to get solid with yourself when you work with a company that is dismantling the stigma of the original side hustle. The dreaded tried affiliate we all hear about? Yeah, you have to build authentic confidence and you CAN do that with this business because it’s so transparent from the beginning.
Two years ago in July, I gave myself a break from the day-to-day routine of the office nutrition job I was at. I lived in Utah for a full month and saw all my client virtually–but nothing else. Between client sessions, I had a lot of intentional downtime and I read, read, read (ok, and listened, listened, listened to audio books, too.) I read all the popular self-help books (Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life is still my favorite, with Awaken the Giant Within a close second). My takeaways almost always came back to one of my biggest core values: be service-driven.
Personal growth is to able to be free to make choices in the world that helps the world be what you desire it to be. So, I desire to lead others to their own financial freedom. I desire to lead others to find safe, effective products that work, if they so choose to use personal care products (because hi, autonomy). I desire to embody all of these practices and share what I learn because of the truer freedom I feel.
5. Community
Can my fellow entrepreneurs agree, being your own boss is magical, freeing, and, well… lonely? I can easily go all week without seeing someone in person unless I make a point of it! Also, I can take any principle I’ve learned in the last two years with Beautycounter and directly apply it to my own business decisions within my offerings at Essential Omnivore, LLC. I consider my partnership with Beautycounter as a leg of my business.
Another reason I stepped into my partnership was because I saw other driven, savvy and successful business owners I admired partnering with the company. It gave me pause and drive–if they, these people with robust businesses that had been around for much longer than mine, were choosing to make time for Beautycounter, and really making amazing strides with it, why couldn’t I?
In Summary
My call to action for you is to start questioning. I find this is one of my biggest strengths, and it’s what I coach so frequently. I used to feel embarrassed for what I would question. Not everyone likes a good question, you know? But I wonder, for you: what, in your life, can you question today? What can you offer yourself, the thing that would make the world feel like it was melting awesome for you? Go do it. Go give yourself the willies and try it out. Try it out softly or loudly or with careful planning or with abandon.
If there is anything I’ve learned in the last two years, it is that you must try. No one else will try for you.
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