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

Alright, Janene thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Imagine being a new (again) mommy, 3 months postpartum with 2 under 2, experiencing “baby blues”, trying to find yourself, and now going through postpartum hair loss to top it off. That was me in January of 2022. I decided to try to control what I could, so I began searching for hair products that could help with my hair loss, but became overwhelmed with all of the unknown ingredients many of them contained…

Rooted in Eden came into fruition after being invited to an all women’s entrepreneur meeting (but I wasn’t nor was I thinking about being an entrepreneur) where they share their lives as an entrepreneur, uplift one another, bounce ideas off of each other, and talk about our aspirations. It was my turn to introduce myself, and after being inspired from everyone’s stories and reflecting on what I was going through, I threw out there “I think I want to start a natural hair care line”.

I decided to create an all natural hair care line that aims to educate customers on the importance and benefits of using God-given natural ingredients found within nature to promote healthy hair. Just like trees are nourished from the root to the branches and leaves, every strand of hair is nourished from the roots. I wanted to create products that would reverse any hair or scalp conditions experienced by women, men, and children. After researching different cultures and learning about their remedies for combating hair loss and retaining hair length, I found that through the use of essential oils, botanicals, herbs, and natural oils, the scalp is nourished encouraging healthy hair growth.

My approach is not to just sale a product, but to educate people going through scalp, hair, or skin issues. Many people do not realize that the hair loss or skin issues that they experience can be caused by situations such as stress, poor diet, the environment, or even lack of rest; this is what Rooted in Eden is all about, getting to the root of the issue, and solving it naturally.

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 back background and context?

I’m a Jacksonville, Fl native who moved around a lot due to both parents being in the military. I settled back in Jacksonville my junior year of high school, graduated, and moved to Atlanta where I received my Bachelors degree in Psychology in 2014. I decided not to pursue further schooling and I went unto a career in recruiting.

In 2019 I became pregnant with my first son, unfortunately the pandemic hit in 2020. With this being my first child, and honestly being terrified of what was to come, my husband and I decided I would be a stay at home mom.

Due to lack of knowledge, and it not being a highly talked about topic, I actually experienced postpartum hair loss with my first son. I thought I was delusional, and a little ashamed to ask questions about my hair falling out, so I cut my hair and just continued on as nothing happened. I later found out more abut postpartum hair loss when I joined a mommy group on FB.

When I had my second son in 2021, I knew that amongst the other postpartum issues, I needed to stay on top of postpartum hair loss also. Before being an entrepreneur crossed my mind I decided to pay attention to and stay on top of my diet, hydration, and low tension hair styles. I made my own hydration mist spray for my hair with ingredients that promoted hair growth and combated dry scalp.

Like previously stated, after hearing all the talented ladies in the entrepreneur meeting I attended, it sparked, I knew what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be apart of… I know firsthand how it feels to lose your hair hair after one of the most important moments of your life, and also know the hurt scalp, skin, and hair issues cause people due to family members experiencing psoriasis, eczema, and alopecia. So, the research began.

Rooted in Eden’s passion stems from personal experience as well as biblical principles; to look to nature for remedies, to love others as we love ourselves, and spread the good news. The herbs, botanicals, natural and essential oils, that helped me regrow my hair healthier than before, I can now share with others! By the grace of God, I have had some great outcome thus far with customer testimonials.

I want potential clients to know that from the beginning, Rooted in Eden was bigger than me. It’s never been about generating revenue or receiving a return on my investment. It’s always been about pointing to the gift God has given us through nature to remedy anything they are going through. I’m grateful that I’m able to this.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

These past few weeks I believe I’ve been in the process of pivoting.

For a few months now, I’ve felt like I wasn’t doing enough, I wasn’t “being seen” in an oversaturated market, I began to compare myself and envying other entrepreneurs in my industry; it had me questioning a lot.

I lost hold of why I was doing this, and who called me to do it. So I decided to take a social media break for a while, spend time with God, and redirect my business and marketing plans.

I decided that following the trending sounds or music that others do, isn’t what I want or need to do. Yes, it may catch the eyes of some, but if I’m going to be in this for the long haul, I have to be authentic, true to myself, and true to God. So I’m focusing on the educational side of things, and creating an experience for customers and potential customers alike to trust me as a person as well as a brand.

This has just started, and it’s tempting to jump on the bandwagon again, but I know it’ll be worth it in the end.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

I sell my products on my site through Shopify. I decided to go through Shopify because I loved the way I could make the site my own; I could bring my vision to life. I was able to learn the ins and outs on a few of the backend setups while having my site built by my developer, so I don’t have to depend on anyone else to fix an issue.

A con would be that it’s triple the work to market my site. Keywords put into a Google search will 10/10 bring up shops on Etsy or Amazon. This is why I’m now working with a developer to help with SEO.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rootedineden.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/RootedNEden
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/RootedNEden