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

Hi Alissa, thanks for joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

My grandparents (who raised me) instilled a love for reading and learning in me before I was even able to hold a book. No matter how poor we were, the house was full of books, they just made it happen somehow. I have hours and hours of memories of watching National Geographic with my Pawpaw and reading books with my Nana. I was encouraged to learn everything I can and dream as big as I could, and to never stop learning. With their encouragement, I had my first small business at age 7- I was even featured on the local news! So it only makes perfect sense that this is where my career would go in adulthood.

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

Hi! We’re Alissa & Molly, the owners of Hill Magick Candle Co. We create clean-burning, vegan wooden-wick candles with a witchy/metaphysical theme! We’ve been lifelong best friends, we’ve always done almost everything together, and throughout our college years, we came to the conclusion around the same time that corporate life wasn’t necessarily for us. We wanted to create something of our own, that not only brought us joy to do every day but that could also bring a little light and magic into others’ lives as well. Our city of Charlotte has such a massive and supportive small business community, and we would always go to the markets and get so inspired. We were seeing other young women entrepreneurs absolutely killing the game, and we were seeing that there was room for everyone to succeed, we thought “we can do that too!”.

The idea of candles came from a mix of deconstructing our baptist upbringings, our love for candlelight, and noticing a lack of color and variety in the local candle space. I had recently discovered wooden-wick candles and was using them constantly while studying because the crackling sound they make as they burn was just so soothing! But I also noticed that there weren’t many wooden wick candle brands, and even fewer had color!

At the same time, we had recently found a real identity with witchcraft, after being raised Baptist and dissenting against it/trying to break away from it for so many years. Witchcraft felt like home. It felt like peace, it greatly called to us. So we decided to combine our love for the magickal world and colorful, wooden-wick candles to create Hill Magick! Hill is actually my maiden name. Molly came up with the idea of using the name as a play on the magick that is in the world all around us: the hills, the ocean, the rivers, and in you.

We’re only getting started, and we’ve only been in business since December 1st, 2021- but there is no better feeling than when someone in the community comes up to us at a market and says “I remember you! I bought a candle last time and I loved it.” It just means so much.

We want every single person who purchases a candle from our small business to know that they are crafted with the utmost love and intention, right from our kitchen.

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

We do manufacture our candles ourselves! We actually make them out of our homes and every candle is made by our hands.

Truthfully, when we came up with the idea of Hill Magick in early 2020, we had no earthly idea how to make candles. But we wanted to do something we were passionate about and knew we could learn. This is why it took us until very late 2021 to launch, we had to teach ourselves! Once we learned how to make candles, we spent a solid nine months perfecting our formula to make sure that our candles had the longest burn time possible and would fill a room. We didn’t stop until we were happy.

The biggest lesson I think we’ve learned is that supply chain management is no joke, you need a way to track your supplies so you know when to re-order. It is HARD to make sure you have a consistent supply to make. I can’t tell you how many times it never occurred to us to re-order a supply and then we would have to wait for it to come in before we could make more. But we have a system now and we are getting better!

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Absolutely! I have two podcast reputations that I stand by with all my heart. The first is “Financial Feminist” by HerFirst100k. I’ve learned everything I know about finance from her, she is the ultimate financial feminist, and I’m just so grateful for her and her team. The second would be “Making Good: Small Business Podcast” by Lauren Tilden, I have learned more from listening to this podcast about marketing, accounting, strategy, etc. than my business degree could have ever taught me!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hillmagick.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hillmagick/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hillmagick
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hillmagick