We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful McKenna Rees. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with McKenna below.

Hi McKenna, thanks for joining us today. So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

I love supporting family businesses because I feel like I am helping real people who love what they do. Typically in family businesses multiple members of the family including children are involved in its success and I love supporting that education and work ethic. In my own small business my kids help take care of our goats and other farm animals. They help me load and unload supplies and deliver my packages to the post office. My daughter enjoys helping me make products and especially cutting soaps into bars.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is McKenna and I live on a farm by the river in the country. I have goats, pigs, a jersey cow, chickens, quail, rabbits, dogs, and lizards! I love all my animals and the opportunities they give my children to learn how to work hard and get dirty. I enjoy gardening and learning how to better homestead our land. I love making beautiful soaps with my goats wonderful milk and providing my products to anyone who is interested.

I made my first batch of goat milk soap the summer of 2016. I didn’t know what a stick blender was so I tried to mix my first batch using a hand drill. Needless to say we made a late night run to the store to get a stick blender! I have had many failed batches over the years but through that I have learned so much.

I started selling my soaps in 2017 and have expanded a little to include solid shampoo and conditioner bars, solid lotion bars, body butter, bubble bath bombs, soy wax candles and more. I love making these products and sharing them with ya’ll.

Thank you so much for any support you give my small business.

If you’d like to follow along my farm adventures and stay up to date on my next shop updates and more you can follow me on Facebook and Instagram.

How did you build your audience on social media?

It took a number of years to build my social media audience. Participating in group giveaways helped as well as consistent posts and engaging stories. My work attracted the attention of a large company I buy a lot of my supplies from and they started resharing my posts and asked me to be involved in their promotion campaign which helped me gain more support. I honestly haven’t put in as much effort as I could to have even greater growth but I am trying to maintain a balance of home and work life.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

I got started in soap making because I had a lot of extra goat milk and I started researching what else I could do with it besides making cheese. I discovered is makes a wonderfully moisturizing soap and I thought I’d give it a try! I watched a lot of tutorials online and bought a few books and all the ingredients I needed and gave it a try. My first soaps were quite plain and basic but as time went on I tried new techniques and developed my own style. I have production weeks where I am making a lot of soap and working a lot. Then I have the slower weeks before an update where the soaps are curing on shelves and I am making my products that don’t have a cure time like lotion bars and and body butters. During that I have my consistent social media and advertising work. It’s a lot of work and time but being my own boss has its benefits for sure. I can work myself to death anytime I want! I can also slow down and do less (if I can allow myself to). I love my business and what it has grown into. I am grateful for this opportunity to share it with y’all.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.stoneriversoaps.com
• Instagram: @stoneriversoaps
• Facebook: @stoneriversoaps