We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Derek Chase a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Derek, thanks for joining us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
Yes! It was when I turned the page on my 10 year corporate career in 2017, quitting my job with L’Oreal (at the time, Head of Retail Marketing for Kiehl’s), moving to California (I’m a Boston native), and starting a new career path, making ends meet by liquidating my 401K, and doing sales and marketing freelance work. Now this was no easy decision, as I had drank the corporate kool-aid and thought that the most surefire way to have a successful career was working for a big company with tons of upward mobility, but pretty quickly realized, after about 5 years and as many promotions, how many latter rungs there were on the corporate latter, and how long it would take to get to a position that I thought suitable to make great money and be highly fulfilled. While the money came, the fulfillment did not, and I found myself getting more an more mentally unhealthy as the years rolled on. I am an anxious skewing person, and I’ve always struggled with social anxiety, but as I progressed through my corporate career, could tell that the job was making me, well, generally anxious all the time. I found that my sleep was cut short because I felt like I was not doing the thing I was supposed to be doing. I lost interest in friends and activities I used to cherish, and by year 10, had had enough. Having spent so much time politicking in corporate, I also felt like I had not applicable skills for going it on my own, starting a company, or something that would allow me to be independent of a corporation, where I could make my own hours and not report to anyone. And do something actually meaningful instead of selling cosmetics, which held no meaning to me… Luckily, through the help of one of my more woo-woo mentors at L’Oreal (if you’re reading this, Senpai, sorry!) I was able to infiltrate the NYC medicine community, and over the course of six months, did enough therapeutic psychedelic work to truly change my mind. I decided, I’m done, and I was. Page, turned. Now! This doesn’t mean that getting from there to where I am today was easy! It was far from that. I was truly starting over. I didn’t have much money, because I spent most of the money I made in my corporate job to stave off the terrible nature of my work week. So when I moved out to Los Angeles in January of 2017, I had no plan. I had no prospects. But I did have one thing in spades – MOTIVATION! This allowed me to pursue things I was interested in, and at the time I was all in on the ketogenic diet. My first client was Quest Nutrition, and I rolled this into a gig with The Charlie Foundation, running their marketing department for a year. But this still was not exactly what I wanted to be doing. I still had a boss (clients) and I was still doing things for other people, not for myslef. But once I had a firm financial footing, I was able to start dabbling in my interests. Cannabis, which had just gone legal for recreational use in California, had helped me tremendously throughout my life, so I took whatever money I made beyond living expenses and poured them into creative costs that eventually snowballed into the launch of FLORA + BAST, earning a 3-year exclusive deal with Sephora, and allowing me to build a team of highly creative and talented partners around me to do the work. After getting FLORA off the ground, I set my sights on the substance that was responsible for my new life – Psilocybin Mushrooms – creating Psilouette Wellbeing for the purpose of delivering better mental health outcomes than the current standard of care.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got into the business purely through my experience with psychedelic medicine, and the desire to bring to market an effective treatment for mental health issues. I have struggled with anxiety all my life, and was diagnosed with ADHD as a freshman in highschool, being placed on all manner of stimulant-based meds as well as SSRIs and a few other off crazy pharmaceuticals. So when I hit rock bottom with my mental health, and had the motivation necessary to make a 180 in my career, the only thing i wanted to do was to provide the same opportunities for improving mental health that I was given. And from that sprung Psilouette and FLORA + BAST, where we consider ourselves problem solvers. I think the biggest thing about our approach is that we focus on the end-end benefit – some brands go out there touting the features of their products, which for an evolved market can work, but for new markets (ie psychedelics) it really pays to highlight the real benefit garnered from our products and services. Even brands marketing end benefits water down the communication of what to expect from a product. For instance, a sleep brand will likely communicate that their products enhance sleep, but do not go the further step of exposing the benefits of good sleep. So for us, and our end-end benefit marketing strategy, we focus on educating our clients about the major changes in their lives they can have by utilizing our products and services effectively. Its not about reducing anxiety only, its reducing anxiety so as to promote more inner peace, better relationships, and more success in achieving your full potential. If we were to fall short in this effort, I feel like psychedelics would be misunderstood – making sure people know the full benefits of psychedelic assisted therapy not only helps us to recruit new clients, but creates a better result since people can hold this truth in their mind, creating a strong expectancy effect in the positive direction, flipping the script on the negative thought patterns most people come to us with, and which either creates of intensifies their stated diagnosis.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
HARD WORK! Now hard work is the result of many things, including interest in the field you’re in, an innate motivation to make a mark on the industry, and an understanding that failure is not an option. Success as I define it is simply the lack of giving up. Failure is only possible if you give up, it is never determined by outside forces. One cannot fail if they refuse to quit, because good things take time, and nothing worth while is easily achieved. I think that as a culture today, we are not taught that failure is a short term status, simply being a time period where you’ve not yet succeeded. If you care enough, you’ll eventually know enough, and if you don’t give up, you will succeed. This is how i live my life now, and what i try to instill in our employees – we can never give up because if we do we wont succeed. Hard work is what powers that dynamic, and enough hard work will eventually lead to success.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Authenticity and education. We are authentic producers because we truly believe in the power of psychedelic medicine, and live what we preach. We also focus on educating our clients on how to make the best decisions for themselves, based on the latest research and historical/indigenous use.
Contact Info:
- Website: psilouette.com
- Instagram: mypsilouette
Image Credits
Personal: John Dubois Business: Shaughn & John