Written by Lauren Damon
One of my favorite public speakers/authors is Simon Sinek. I could listen to him speak for hours. Not only because he’s passionate and has a great accent (ohhhh lala), but also because he has an amazing message that packs a super powerful punch. His message is to always, ‘Start with why.’ To figure out why the bleep you are doing what you are doing. To get rock solid on why you are here. Because, real talk, if YOU don’t understand your why, then no one else does either. And why would people follow you/buy from you/give a shit about you if they don’t know why they should?
How do you stay the path when things get hard? How do you know how to make tough choices? How do you find the emotional grit to persevere when you want to give up? How do you know what road to take if you don’t know where you are going? Know your why people! Why is your compass and your navigation light. Preach on, Simon.
Side note: I am in fact a crazy, inspirational speaker watcher. I get super carried away and cry, curse, sweat, and laugh during TED talks and plenary sessions at conferences. I don’t have cable television because I’d rather just watch videos of Brene Brown and Amy Cuddy and Jen Hatmaker. I go to conferences to watch the talks that everyone else ignores because they are touchy-feely and not science-y (I’m a biologist, read my bio in the About Me Section). Don’t judge. I love the rush of inspiration I get when a passionate person takes the stage and shares their story. I’m a sucker for the story. This makes me a better person. You’ll have to trust me on that because you didn’t know me before I discovered my intensity for public speakers.
Okay. Back to why....It’s obvious what we do. We make all-natural home and beauty products. But that’s not really interesting, is it? If you only cared about what we did, then you’d be at the Etsy store checking out our products and buying them, or you’d be at one of the many other Etsy stores buying their all-natural products because there are lots of choices out there. You certainly wouldn’t be reading this blog still or wondering if I’m even going to actually tell you our why, or if I’m just going to drag you through the mud for 18 more paragraphs.
You are reading this blog right now because you care about why Amy founded this tiny business, and why I (Lauren) jumped on board for no salary at all. (seriously…zero. I work for nothing. I still work 40+ hours a week elsewhere to pay the bills and feed my kid, this is just a side gig for funsies. #boutthatLOL) You care about why we made this our thing. Why Amy slaves for hours hand-mixing and emulsifying batches of body butter, hand-filling tiny tubes of toothpaste, and lugs all of her stuff around California to festivals and shows to stand for 12 hours a day and smile even when she’s cold/hot/hungry/tired/PMSing/whatevering and explain to the 4,589,371st (plus or minus) person how to use charcoal toothpaste. Not that she doesn’t love sharing charcoal toothpaste, but, real talk again, it’s sometimes hard to be enthusiastic because repetition can get boring. It’s just a fact.
So then, get on with it lady. Why Renegade Botanicals?
Our why is two parts. One extrinsic, one intrinsic. Read on.
Extrinsic: We are here to better your life. Because there is a better way to look good and feel good than to buy the fake stuff they sell in most stores. Conventional body and home products are full of yuck that we breathe, absorb, and ingest into our bodies that our bodies must cope with by filtering, storing, removing, and excreting (sexy thought, yes?). Crap that makes us sick. Crap that literally kills us. Crap that destroys the planet. We can smell good, look good, and feel good using real things. Real plants. Real animals. Real ingredients. No toxic bs, no yuck, no fake. Cuz that’s gross. Ew. We want to give people a better and more sustainable alternative.
Intrinsic: We are here to better our own lives. Because being able to work from our future homestead is our version of living the dream. We want to roam free, raising our own food to provide for us and our community. We want off the hamster wheel that most people that live on (at least in the US). The mo’ money mo’ problems wheel. We want to slow down and enjoy more. We want to live intentional, made to order lives. We want to live the way we want to live because living any other way is no fun. Just sayin. We bout that life of luxury. #boutthatLOL
Our why is to do different and better. To give up what’s conventional for what’s intuitive. To reconnect to ourselves, to each other, to the planet. To live the renegade life.
