We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emily Spiers a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Emily, appreciate you joining us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

In the fall of 2014, I unexpectedly went from making soap for my family to making soap for strangers. The shift happened during the Christmas season of 2014 when some neighbors asked if I would be willing to make some soap for them to give as Christmas gifts. When my husband heard I was doing that, he mentioned to some people at work what I was doing and they asked for soap for gifts, too. Live.Simple.Soap was born.

In the months before Christmas 2014, I made, cut, stamped, wrapped, and sold 600 bars of soap. At night after the kids would go to bed, I would clean the kitchen, make batches of soap, clean up the kitchen again, and then repeat the process the next night all over again. During the day, the kids and I would cut or stamp the soap to get it ready for the curing rack and then when it was time, we’d wrap and package up the soaps for the customers.

That was the process for three Christmas seasons until the spring of 2017 when my husband suggested I move the entire operation to the basement so I could both expand the business and spread out. This was a timely move due to a number of factors, not the least of which was the need for bigger quantities of ingredients. Instead of buying oils in gallon jugs, I needed to buy them in 5 gallon buckets. Instead of making 40 bars at a time, I needed to make 140 bars at a time. Live.Simple. was growing and it was nearly impossible to sustain the growth from the kitchen.

Slowly and steadily I continued to serve my business as it grew. First time customers became repeats, orders started getting bigger and began coming in from across the country. The basement seemed to get smaller and smaller. I was using every square inch of space and feeling a bit cramped but I had no idea what my options were. I didn’t want to rent space outside of the farm for production. I knew that the heart of this business is the fact that it IS made on the farm. In early 2018, I resigned myself to the idea that I had grown as much as I could and I was at peace with that. My heart was settled with the notion that I was serving my customers to the best of my ability, with the best product I could create, in the most peaceful atmosphere I could conceive.

My husband approached me at the beginning of 2018 with an idea: what if we built a building on our farm that was dedicated production space? My mind reeled. My thoughts were spinning. My heart was racing. What if?

This idea of his came at a time when both of my amazing parents were in the middle of treatment for cancer, our kids were coming up to the end of their homeschooling years, and I was grapling with the idea of ‘who am I’ if I wasn’t a homeschooling, stay at home, mom. And not only that, but the unasked questions that loomed in the back of my brain sounded like ‘what if no one buys all of this soap?’ and ‘what if you are crazy?’ and ‘what if this fails?’ and ‘can you really sustain a business on a bar of soap?’

Knowing that we were looking at thousands and thousands of dollars and God only knew how many months to build out this unspoken dream, we talked about this extensively. Where would we put the building? How big does it need to be? What type of structure does it need to be? What does it need to contain? And a million and one other questions.

He drew up some rough sketches to help me be able to see it a little more clearly in my head. I have a tendency to see things with my heart and I was struggling to believe in myself and believe that my business was worth not only this financial expense but also the emotional and physical expense. But my husband believes in me and in my business.

The sketches took more and more detail as we talked about it- where the doors and windows would go, where the sink would go, electrical outlets, light fixtures, countertops, and all of the other parts involved. We actually had a plan. I could see it in my head and in my heart. And looking back on it, I know that during the moments of doubt I had about it, I could draw on the confidence my husband had in me and my business until my own confidence returned.

In July of 2018, my husband put together a material list for the lumber. I had it delivered and he actually sunk the first pole of the new building. It was at that moment that I realized there was no going back. This was our reality. This was the point of no return. As each pole was put up, and the framing started to take shape, the realization hit that the space was going to be too small. As he was building the structure, I was still growing the business. Much to my disbelief, we had to go back to the planning stage and rework it and add more square footage. It only took one conversation to realize that we had to go all in on this as we only have one chance to make it work.

What started as a conversation in early 2018 as a way to get me out of the basement took almost 3 years to come to fruition. During those three years, I lost my mom to complications of cancer, both of our kids moved out, our daughter got married, the pandemic happened, I was hit with health issue after health issue which nearly sidelined me for good, my husband changed jobs twice, and a whole host of mundane minutiae of life events.

The amount of blood, sweat, tears, energy, effort, loss of sleep, money, stress, heartache, sore muscles, delivery fees, and delivery pizzas it took to build this building ourselves was life changing. Except for pouring the actual concrete floor, my husband and I (but mostly him) shoveled every shovel of gravel, positioned every truss, screwed every screw, hammered every nail, painted every surface, hung every piece of OSB, hung every piece of tin, hung every window, ran every electric wire, laid every piece of water line and PVC, and watched as the dream became a reality. Every moment my husband spent on that process was an act of love.

In July 2021, I moved into my new space and it’s glorious. I still sit in amazement at the massive undertaking of it all just because of a dream I have. But it has allowed me to grow in ways I never thought possible. It’s allowed me to employ others and help them provide for their families. It’s allowed me to work with organizations to provide bags full of items to offer comfort to women in chemo. It’s also allowed me the opportunity to stay on the farm and continue to be a place of peace and refuge for others.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started making soap for my family as a way to increase the items we produced from our farm. At the time, in 2013, we were homeschooling and growing/raising as much as we could. We had a large garden, an orchard, we raised our own beef, pigs, chickens for eggs and meat, turkeys, and goats for milk. I made our bread and baked goods, we made our own sausage, bacon, and ham, and produced or grew as much as we could. Our trips to the grocery store were few and far between. I had two things I wanted to learn how to make: cheese and soap. I found a soap making class first and signed up for it.

The more I learned about soap and the chemistry involved, the more interested I became. In the beginning, I wanted to make soap for my family, but as the years have gone on, I’ve found that serving others through this business is where my heart is. I love hearing stories of people who have found relief from itchy skin, sensitive skin, dry and patchy skin, and oily skin through the use of my products. I love hearing the stories of people who have found new confidence in themselves through the use of my shampoo bars. I love that some of my customers have become friends because of our similar foundation of recognizing the value of using natural products.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I’m a big picture thinker. I always have been. I used to think of it as a hindrance because some of my good ideas would die between concept and reality. I could come up with the ideas but I struggle with putting together the process to bring them to life. I think the thing that has helped me the most in this is two-sided. On one side, it’s the awareness that creating processes or steps is challenging to me but isn’t challenging to other people and on the other side is finding that other person to help me bring the idea to life. I’m grateful that other person is my husband. If I can dream it up, he can build it. If I can break it, he can fix it.

I have learned that my brain doesn’t work wrong, it just works different. Because of that fact, I work within my strengths and then let other people work within theirs. I know the nuances, the variables, and the subtleties of my business and my products. I know how to harness those and either direct or redirect them to suit my goals. But I have no idea how to build a spreadsheet to track hard costs.

Learning about my strengths has made me stronger. And on the flip side, learning about my weaknesses has also made me stronger. I no longer beat myself up for places I lack and I take those spaces of ‘less strong’ and let the others involved shine because it’s in their space of strength.

Any advice for managing a team?

My best advice comes in an unconventional way from a book I read years ago called Traction by Gino Wickman. In it, he wrote: decided which business you want to be in and be in that business.

I know what my business is and I know what it isn’t. I know what my products are and I know what aren’t my products. That helps in managing because everyone is on the same page and what we do we do well. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. Always. But is there space for excellence? Yes. I own a soap and beeswax candle business. We also make and sell a small amount of skin care products. Because our roster is exclusive, our quality is high. We know what business we want to be in and we are in that business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.livesimplesoap.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/live.simple.soap
• Facebook: facebook.com/livesimplesoap
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/emily-spiers-915aa014