We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elly Vogt a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Elly, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned while working at a prior job?

One of my first jobs out of college was at a startup media agency. My role as an account manager was sales oriented and I was reviewed based on reaching the company’s sales goal every month. When I was offered the role, I was under the impression it was a marketing and creative role, so it was a shock to me one I realized it was a full on sales job. I was directed to be pushy to obtain clients but it felt misaligned for my personality. Once I started to be more of myself, honest and patient with clients, I actually did better in sales. This was an important lesson which taught me that you can be successful no matter what your personality is. You don’t have to be pushy to get people to buy from you. In reality, people like to buy from people they trust. If they sense you are desperate for their money, it automatically pushes them away. This job gave me the confidence that I can create my own business and sell my products the way that feels right for me. Even to this day, I do not force my products on anyone. It’s more of, this is what I have to offer, if you like my products great, if not, no worries. My motivation for intent was never driven by finances, which gives me the freedom to run a business that feels aligned with who I am and not what I feel like I would “have to be” as a business owner.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories – perhaps a time when you took a risk marketing wise or pulled off a sale where the odds were heavily stacked against you. 

One of my favorite giveaways I have run is the “giving giveaway”. This is where instead of entering yourself to win a product, you enter your friends or family members. It was refreshing seeing all of the people who entered who wanted to brighten their loved ones day. With endless options for products these days, it’s easy to become selfish in only buying things for yourself. I wanted to support the giving mindset and remind others the beauty and simplicity of thinking of others. Giving is more rewarding than receiving and that feeling can get easily lost when our consumer culture is focused on obtaining more for yourself. I was happy to see the intent community participate and winners were pleasantly surprised to win something their friend or family member entered them for. It was a win for all.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media takes time to build a community. There is often this false thinking that as soon as you launch you’re going to have a bunch of followers, but it truly takes time and patience. Consumers need to connect with a brand and see consistency for them to be able to want to follow you. At first, I started researching other sustainable brands in the market and seeing who followed them and who they followed to get insight into the industry my brand was in. I received most of my followers by doing giveaways with big sustainable media accounts such as Waste Free Planet or other sustainable brands and local businesses. Engagement is more valuable than the number of followers. It is better to have a low following and high engagement than a high following with low engagement because then you are building an illusion, not a community. Yet, every business has their own goals and the algorithm is always changing so strategies will always evolve. The end of the day it is just important to stay authentic to yourself and your brand.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Weekends or weeknights are the only time I have to work on my business so there is always this guilt feeling that I am not putting in the effort that I need to grow intent. I cherish my other career and want to put my efforts into that as well so there are times where I might not do anything with intent for weeks or months. I also want to utilize my weekends to be with friends or take care of myself so I have had to make some hard decisions of not working weekend markets. It has taken years to give myself grace in the decision to put intent on the back burner and focus on my career in international education or other goals without being hard on myself. There are times I wonder where intent products would be if I worked on it full time but right now, that is not a desire of mine. I feel I would lose the sense of freedom and agency I have if I fully relied on my business to support myself. I have so much respect for business owners to take the risk to fully invest full time in their dream but I also realize you can have more than one dream or career, and nourish them in different ways depending on what feels best to you in that time of life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://intentproducts.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intentproducts/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/intentproducts/?ref=bookmarks
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellyvogt

Image Credits
Arielle Levy Photography https://ariellelevyphoto.com/