We recently connected with Annabel Mendez and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Annabel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I started Aromalief 4 years ago when my mom was having extreme chronic pain and we couldn’t find anything to help her without side effects. Since then, I have been on mission to help women with chronic pain by providing products that ease the pain with more natural ingredients. 2 years ago, we were contacted by Carrie, a breast cancer survivor that found our creams to be the best for nerve pain caused by her cancer treatment. We are now proud partners of breastcancer.org and cancerxrelief where we donate money and product to these organizations. We want to be a better pain relief company for everyone.

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

I’m Annabel and I have a background in engineering and at the age of 7 I decided that I would create products to help people not suffer. Our pain relief brand, Aromalief, is unique because they are made for women by women. Even though most people with chronic pain are women, they are often neglected in how the products are designed. Our creams have special ingredients to provide relief on the more sensitive female skin without a burning sensation. They are also wonderfully scented because we learned that when women smell like “medicine”, they are too embarrassed to be around others and this may lead to solitude and depression.

We also just launched our first device. It’s a self-applicator that allows people that live alone to be independently apply our roll on cream to their back and other hard to reach areas. I invented this with my husband and submitted a patent application and I am also proud to be making them in the USA.

Nothing brings me more joy than to hear from our customers on how our products have improved their pain. I think back to my 7 year old self, and feel that I never gave up on that dream to help people.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

I woke up one morning about a year into the business with our top product on Amazon shut down due to poor reviews. My chest tightened and the tears began to flow. Our little self-funded business was stopped right on it’s tracks. It took me 1 year to find a new formulator and manufacturer to fix the issue. It was our customers that kept me going, I would get calls and emails asking me when the product would be back and that it was the only product they had found that would help. I owed it to them to keep trying to bring back our brand. I the mean time I launched our scented creams line and kept learning and tacking obstacle after obstacle.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I have always been very good at school and solving technical problems as an engineer, but I had told myself that my business wasn’t growing fast enough because I wasn’t good at business. I came over from Nicaragua when I was 6 and had a humble upbringing. This further mentally blocked me from having the confidence to run my business. I have since learned that to be a good business person, I had to change my approach. I didn’t have to be the smartest person in the room and that I had to surround myself with people that could help me. I also had to give myself more grace because when things didn’t go my way, I had to keep trying and that’s how business works. It’s not as predictable as technical challenges, but more of a trial and error and that failing was not a judgement of my aptitude. It is part of the process.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aromalief.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aromalief/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aromalief
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annabelmendez/

Image Credits
Odette Fernandez Nathalie Fleitas