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

Erika, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

To be successful, I think you should work hard and keep your expectations low. The idea of success is subjective and relative to you. Everyone has an idea of what their end goal is, but if you only focus on that big win you’re never going to feel like a success. It’s important to continue working hard and appreciate the small wins along the way.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I’m a graphic designer for small businesses and the founder of the skincare brand, The Sknimn (skin-im-in). The start of my entrepreneurial career began as a graphic designer. It’s a skill I taught myself. My very first client was someone I worked with who was quitting to start her own business. I was going to school for film/television at the time and I volunteered my video services to her to begin building my portfolio. However, she ended up asking me for a logo. Even though I didn’t know how to design one, I didn’t turn her down and begin figuring out how to create one. With a little help from my boyfriend and photoshop, she was so happy with how it turned out. For me, It was cool that I created something that made someone happy.

I continued to design other things for her business, and this is how I enhanced my graphic design skills and branding knowledge. I learned how to create collateral items, as well as websites and started to do the same for other small businesses and new entrepreneurs. I really enjoy doing this because I’m helping others follow their dreams.

Graphic design was just a side hustle for me, but then the Covid-19 pandemic happened, and I lost my job. After that, I began branding full-time. During the pandemic, I started to have a yearning to create a product that I could sell. So I decided to create a body oil because,having dry skin has always been an issue for me. I’d recently started using oils on my skin and that began to work a lot better than lotion. I began researching all the best oils for skin and combined them together. I loved the results the oil gave me, so I shared it with a few friends, and they loved it too! That’s how my first product was born. And because I already knew branding, it was easy for me to design and develop my own brand. I named the company “The Sknimn” because I want everyone to feel good in the skin they’re in; physically and mentally. Since then, I’ve created two more go-to products for dry skin and their slowing becoming everyone’s favorite. I now continue to do branding for small businesses and sell my skincare.

In everything that I do, I want to make people feel special and make them feel that they can accomplish anything. We’re no less capable than the next person. We all have superpowers, we just have to discover them and use them for good.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Word of mouth has been the most effective strategy for growing my clientele. I try my best to provide good customer service and do good work. People will choose you over the next person because you treat them well. People are going to talk, and you want them to say good things about you.

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

The best source for new clients/customers are pop-up events. The bulk of my branding business comes from word of mouth, but when it comes to my skincare brand being a vendor at events has been an amazing source. It’s hard for people to experience something like skincare online, so giving people a chance to touch it and feel it at events has really increased my returning customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thesknimn.com
• Instagram: @thesknimn
• Facebook: @thesknimn
• Other: Brand Consulting: www.erikamajor.com Instagram: @itserikamajor