What has been the most challenging thing about getting your business up and running?

Funding! By far nothing is tougher and more challenging than to get funding to start any business. Especially being a women and a person of color, the setbacks have been long, arduous, and daunting. But by finding the right mentors, advisors, and business programs, I have been able to bring to life the revolutionary solutions that Healing Mama™ Co. has for the entire birthing community.

Can you identify a moment in your business that was pivotal in your success? Have you had an “AHA!” moment(s?

Six months after launching [in December 2019], I applied to be a part of the Female Empowerment Project. Being a brand new company, I had no idea what my odds were of being invited on the call, but it was worth a shot to be able to be with five incredibly successful female entrepreneurs and to get their honest feedback about the work I was doing.

To my amazement I was accepted and I got the official invitation to be on their third call. The call lasted a profound three hours, alongside twelve other female entrepreneurs, where we all shared our businesses, and the feedback from these incredible entrepreneurs was absolutely priceless!

One of the female entrepreneurs on the call was the CEO of a brand that was pioneering movements in their industry and I wanted to get some of their products into the Healing Mama Home, so I made the ask for a one-on-one call together and she accepted! Two weeks later, I was on a call with this incredibly successful and impactful CEO and Founder, which was supposed to be a 20-minute call but lasted 52 minutes. I shipped her my biggest kit that I had at the time. During our call she was very tactical, insightful, and straightforward with her feedback.

She said "Rhowena, what you are doing is needed but you need to do it better!" With my heart sinking at this response, my soul jumped at the realization that "YES! I CAN DO IT BETTER" and "YES! I WILL DO IT BETTER!"

I completely scrapped almost everything and started from scratch! Six and a half weeks after this pivotal call, working 100 hour weeks, I relaunched, redesigned, and recalibrated my entire company from top to bottom and came back to market with an acute clarity about what the birthing community actually needed from a retail company versus what I thought it needed, and I very quickly learned that I knew nothing!

Do you have a mentor, formal or informal? What role have they played for you?

Yes! Healing Mama™ Co. would not be able to experience its level of growth and scalability WITHOUT the mentors and programs that I have been a part of! I cannot emphasize this enough, find advocates, mentors, teachers, advisors, people who have done this longer and better than you have. People that will give you feedback to grow or even stop and consider new perspectives, pivot, etc. The contribution of people who have been there and done it, is the most valuable and tangible way to grow, scale and succeed.

What communities have been important for you as you grew/developed your business?

Over the last two years, I signed up to be a part of every group call, community, chat, forum, and outreach solely for female entrepreneurs that I could find, especially the ones that did not require a financial membership plan. Being a bootstrapped, self-funded company, budget is tight and I knew that I had to do the work to find places where I could get the feedback, insights, and advice I needed. It was through these groups that I eventually found my first mentor, that snowballed into being accepted into a business accelerator program that gave another mentor and three industry specialists, that then turned into getting my first substantial amount of funding and another impactful mentor.

Do you have any advice for other women who are getting started in business?

Here are three pieces of advice:

1) Make sure that the work you are doing, the business you will start, the vision of your work is BIGGER THAN YOURSELF. Bigger than anyone’s opinion, bigger than your imagination, and most of all, bigger than your belief systems. So, when $h!t hits the fan, and everything feels like it's crumbling, or if everything is literally crumbling beyond what seems like your "control," the vision and clarity of your work will give you the strength and energy to keep moving forward.

2) Have an exit strategy. Do not be so attached to your business that you cannot see an end or a transition from it. Just as in life, our end strategy is death. Beginnings and endings go hand in hand, and ignoring one will impede your level of success.

3) Build a community! It is ONLY because of the community that we have built that we are still alive today, quite literally. It is almost impossible to know every person your work has impacted but by being engaged, vulnerable, transparent, conscious, and authentic, you invite them to come into your world and together make your work evolve in ways you may have never imagined.

Thank you, Rhowena, for sharing your advice and journey with the WMarketplace!