Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brianna Nolan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Brianna, appreciate you joining us today. Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?
As my small business grew, I gotten more strict on my products being at the highest of quality to its most beneficial state of use because I do believe in quality over quantity.
It took many trails and errors to keep researching and testing out new ways to have my BriOrganics Skin Care delivered and presented to the customers at its highest quality.
In the beginning, I started my business pretty spontaneously and it grew via social media – I was first selling sample face scrubs on my personal instagram then the capacity was literally crashing my Instagram and phone notifications, so I had made the @BriOrganics instagram page and created my website that now is TheBriOrganics.com to take orders properly instead of doing everything manually in the beginning.
Taking proper steps to be able have structure, use only sustainable packaging products eliminating plastic waste and have high quality organically crafted formulas helped me shape BriOrganics into a stronger small business on the back end of the business to grow in order to glow on the surface level!
There is never need to rush greatness, especially when it is has a lot of thought and love into it. The best never comes easy!
Brianna, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
First off, I’d like to give my greatest gratitude to CanvasRebel for giving myself the opportunity to have this interview.
For who all that may not know me yet, my name is Brianna ‘Bri’ Nolan, I was born and raised in the Metropolitan area of Washington, DC in Montgomery County, Maryland.
In 2017, I originally registered to attend West Virginia University for Environmental Geoscience (Research Study of Geology & Geography) and Astrophysics, with a minor in Communications Studies. The second half of my sophomore year in 2018, Ieft WVU to go explore and learn from amazing internship offers that I had in Boulder, Colorado the beginning of 2019. Originally, I was scheduled to stay in Colorado from February 2019 to August 2019 but ended up staying the whole year in 2019. The internships in Colorado helped me landed scholarships at West Virginia University to finish my degree. In 2020, when I returned back to Morgantown, WV for school – it was a very short transitional period from leaving Boulder, CO back to West Virginia University, just to move back home to Gaithersburg, MD due to the shutdown that was pronounced by pandemic of COVID-19.
In that short time of exploring, learning, transitioning, and experiencing life, I felt like all that I was super passionate about with being outdoors into nature, playing sports and being artistic was coming to an end.
At the timing the social distancing and closing of everything actually impacted me when I felt like I was just beginning my adulthood the right way being very out there and wanting to grow to glow in my own way!
My face was breaking out with intense acne and dark spots. The stress I was feeling was showing on my face. I was not permitted to leave the house because of COVID-19 and with city laws of curfews at the timing. I remembered Amazon at the time being was also having delays, and inflation was a thing due to people not being able to leave their homes. I went into my kitchen and thought about all the organic herbs and ingredients would be good for my face at the time being. Living in Colorado, one of my most long-term and favorite internships that I did have was working at the Boulder County farmers market, which was an organic only market. It had reminded me of all of the ingredients and herbs that I used to work with at the farmers market every single week. I knew if eating all of those ingredients back then did something great for my weight loss journey at the timing then I believe that some of ingredients would have to work on my face! I did some research and put the ingredients together and made a successful skin care mask and face serum spray that cleared up my acne fully in a short amount of time.
Shortly after testing my product a few times, I was showing my results on my instagram story and was giving samples out to those that wanted to try – suddenly I found myself sourcing ingredients, mixing, testing, shipping and running my own skincare line in a short period of time and crafting BriOrganics Skin Care into reality.
I started off crafting the BriOrganics Turmeric Mask and Aloe Vera Spray!
At the timing, what had set me apart from other small businesses and companies was that at the timing – I was crafting product samples during the day to prepare to making them nightly deliveries for 8 hours+ to have the people and mutuals I have in my community give my product a try. I was literally promoting, making tutorials, hand crafting labels to make shipping at USPS easier, packaging, restocking inventory in a short period of time, almost EVERY DAY after my instagram story promotion that I didn’t think that was going to blow up at the timing.
No matter what, I am so PROUD to continue this journey no matter how many hardships that are faced. I always have a joy facing my problems instead of running away to learn how to grow to glow from them! Sustaining a great business is never easy but very rewarding when time is taken to nourish the mission of the business.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
My audience through social media mainly started out from only being people I know personally! I have moved around a little, definitely a bit outgoing so being social is great to actually connect with someone but to check in and hopefully see each other again, that’s where the social media comes in. I usually am being my authentic self on my social platforms especially with the content I do put out, so I guess authentic post = authentic followers (im hoping lol). I’m not really on social media much because I love being very present in my life. Of course, I love keeping in contact on social media because this world is beautiful and big, but also very small at the same time – you never know who knows who in this world via having mutual friends on socials!
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
YES, I love reading so much! The books that significantly had an impact on my management and entrepreneurial thinking are; Rich Dad Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, The Road Less Traveled, and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
On the daily, I am always listen to self care, discipline and love podcast on Youtube.
Contact Info:
- Website: theBriOrganics.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briorganics/
- Facebook: @BriOrganicsSkinCare
- Twitter: @theBriOrganics
- Youtube: theBriOrganics
Image Credits
@CreativelyRae