We recently connected with Dominique Gilbert and have shared our conversation below.

Dominique, appreciate you joining us today. Do you take vacations? Why or why not?

Yes, yes, and a million times, yes haha.

Taking vacations as a small business owner can be hard, but is very much so needed.

For me, being a small business owner means being the social media manager, the customer service representative, creating all of the products, and filming/editing new content for the social medias. It’s a 24/7 job that requires a lot of dedication, love and work. This is also on top of my 9-5. All fo this can be extremely overwhelming which is why I always plan a nice vacation for myself.

I try to take a vacation at least once every 6 months. During that time, I don’t worry about replying to DMs, emails, posting, or sending out orders. In between those vacations, I try to take at least one day a week to myself to just decompress.

As business owners, it’s important for us to take some time that’s free from social media. It’s so easy to become tired or even burnt out from working 24/7 for so long. Living like that isn’t healthy in the long-term and can even cause the love for your business to diminish.

Having a self-care business, I think it’s important for me to walk the talk. I routinely promote taking time for yourself, going offline, and putting your own self first.

How can I promote that, but not take the same advice for myself?

I advise everyone, business owners or not, to try and focus more on yourself. Take that day off, buy that candle, and enjoy your life.

Dominique, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi! My name is Dominique and I’m the proud owner of Eye Wonder Beauty – a vegan self-care and skincare business dedicated to providing products for those with sensitive skin.

I launched my business in June 2020 during the pandemic like a lot of other small businesses. I’ve always been interested in natural skincare and knew that quarantine was the perfect time to finalize all the final details for the business.

I had the name and logo for Eye Wonder Beauty conceptualized since 2019! Natural skincare had becoming more important to me once I learned about the side effects of long-term topical steroid use and experienced it firsthand. I had been using topical steroids since I was a toddler and have experienced skin thinning and decoloration from extended use.

It’s important for me to find natural skincare options that work. Not everyone wants to use products filled with chemicals – it’s all a personal preference.

Since I launched I’ve been able to help others with sensitive skin and skin allergies find natural products that actually work for their skin. It’s been such an amazing 2-year journey so far and I cannot wait to see how we continue to grow with time.

I currently sell body scrubs, body butter, facial oils soap, lip scrubs, eyebrow serums, and room sprays. We have some new releases planned so expect to see that list keep on expanding!

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Personally, most of my customers come from Twitter. It’s a much easier platform for me to market and manage myself due to me not having to spend hours editing a video to have a potential hit.

On Twitter, it’s much easier to find those looking to buy products because they tweet about it! They’re tweeting: looking for small businesses, need a new body scrub, or something of the like. Those are the tweets you need to market yourself under with a great intro about your business and amazing product pictures. You only get 280 characters so make that tweet count.

Even if they aren’t interested in your products, oftentimes, they will retweet your post and that brings you to the feed of their 3,000+ followers. The algorithm is much more user-friendly compared to other social media sites, so there’s a better chance of you being seen by their followers.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

I’ve sold on my own site since I launched. I felt like using a third party platform would just be a lot of fees and I wouldn’t be able to have that creative control that I desired.

As of right now, I have no regrets about my decision.

I’ve used BigCartel and Wix to host my site. I absolutely love how my website and brand has appeared on both platforms. With BigCartel, I was just starting out and the limited function was fine with me at the time. However, when I rebranded, I definitely had to upgrade the website.

I’m currently using Wix to host my site and I’m loving the creative freedom I’m given in creating my site and how in-depth the analytics is in regards to customer traffic. It really helps you get more in tune with what appeals to the customers and what products initially attracts them the most.

Contact Info:

• Website: eyewonderbeauty.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/eyewonderbeauty
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Eye-Wonder-Beauty-111143047299363/
• Twitter: twitter.com/eyewonderbeau

Image Credits
Dominique Gilbert