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

Je, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One deeply underappreciated facet of entrepreneurship is the kind of crazy stuff we have to deal with as business owners. Sometimes it’s crazy positive sometimes it’s crazy negative, but crazy experiences unite entrepreneurs regardless of industry. Can you share a crazy story with our readers?

One of the craziest things that have happened to me as a business owner was throwing my business into an opportunity. I started branding my business by doing small vendor events around Indianapolis. I quickly came to understand that these pop-ups and small vendor events would not be the cause of my becoming well-known and successful. One evening, I decided to google “Vendor Applications” in search of larger events. I found the Suburban Indy Home and Garden show, which included a marketplace of small business vendors. I emailed the coordinator of the event and expressed my interest in the upcoming Fall show. The coordinator was thrilled that I reached out and asked if I could be part of the Spring show which was two weeks away. This was a huge opportunity for me at the time, at the very beginning of my launching my business. I was nervous about accepting the opportunity with only two weeks to prepare, but I pushed myself to do it. It was such a phenomenal experience. The coordinator also made sure that the local news covering the event stopped by my booth and interviewed me, and she brought the host of an HGTV show by my booth to be aired on television as well. This single moment boosted me into huge brand awareness in my area. Even to this day, I have people coming up to me and telling me they saw my brand and me on television, and that made them interested in trying my products.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

“It takes money to make money” or so the saying goes. There are two big risks involved in making the initial investments to start a business. The first risk is the loss of time. It takes an incredible amount of time to start a business, and if your business is not successful, you just lost the time. You don’t get it back and you get little to no return on the time spent trying to be successful. The second, and perhaps most heart-racing risk, is the money invested in the startup. Most people start a business, out of a need for more money…and I wasn’t any different. I was just coming out of bankruptcy and trying to get some solid financial grounding under me. I had tried a couple of pyramid hustles to get some financial relief, but none of them were beneficial as I had hoped. When I came up with the idea to sell natural skincare (an already saturated market), I was taking a risk to invest in all the expensive oils, equipment, and certification courses to give myself a shot. I financed the startup cost on a nearly maxed credit card and told myself that I refuse to lose. Fast forward a little over a year, and I’m comfortably in my second year of business, with 3 employees, and working towards scaling up to my own brick-and-mortar.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Opulent Radiance was initially inspired by my own transition to natural skincare products. I started buying natural body butter from a friend’s Etsy shop. One day I was studying the label and noticed that all the ingredients that were being used to make the product were in my kitchen or were available to buy from the natural grocery store. From there I started my Google and Pinterest research on how to make body butter. This expanded into a true passion for plant-based oils and their benefits for the skin. I was able to master two variations of body butter but I was aware that I was limited in the products I could make safely if I didn’t learn how to emulsify, safely test and preserve my products. This awareness prompted me to seek more knowledge. My next step was to take certification classes in natural skincare. The United States has very lax regulations in the cosmetic industry so I chose to take certification classes from schools in Europe. Europe has some of the strictest regulations and compliance guidelines in the beauty and cosmetic industry. As my knowledge developed in how to safely formulate and test my products, my line expanded. I love making my own skincare formulas but I hope to outgrow my own personal manufacturing. Opulent Radiance will always be a small batch manufacturing company thus ensuring that the products will always be freshly made with the freshest ingredients. My aspiration is that one day I will have my own personal small batch manufacturing operation and hopefully this operating system will also be able to help upcoming skincare entrepreneurs that need help increasing their manufacturing capacity.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is an area in which I’m still trying to build a solid following. For Instagram, my personal account organically had over 10,000followers when I started my business so I converted my personal account to a business account. I did a slow transition by incorporating the introduction of the products and making the products before I eventually stopped posting personal images. I learned several things from executing this method. My organic followers were not primarily my target market so many of my posts got low interaction. As a result, most of my postings that incorporated myself interacting with my products did statistically better on this account, but these analytics were deceiving. Conversely, new target market followers get excited to see that the account has so many followers and gives them reassurance in the stability of the brand.
On Facebook I created a new business page when I started my business. Seeing how my organic following has built over the past year is interesting. While I still have under 1,000 followers on my business page, the impressions are much higher than on Instagram. People are more inclined to interact with my posts on Facebook too. This is great for when I want to stimulate feedback or interaction on a production or event. Most of my followers on Facebook are people who have visited my booth at a vendor event. This helps to foster a more personal feeling through the interactions) I love this aspect of Facebook.

As my company is beginning to grow I understand the need to reach more people than I meet at events. I have recently hired someone to help build my marketing strategy and social media presence. Even though our relationship is still new, I’ve still noticed an incredible traction in the flow of people to Opulent Radiance’s social media and then the carry-over to the website. Investing in help with my marketing strategy and social media presence has been instrumental in aligning the company in a position for exposure and growth in ways I couldn’t do on my own.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.OpulentRadiance.com
• Instagram: www.Instagram.com/Opulent_Radiance
• Facebook: www.Facebook.com/Opulent Radiance
• Linkedin: www.LinkedIn.com/Opulent Radiance