We were lucky to catch up with Leonora Shell recently and have shared our conversation below.

Leonora, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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.

I certainly can’t take all of the credit. Essential Montessori has always been a joint effort between my husband, J.J. and myself, although I’ve taken over full time as of November 2019.

I always knew I wanted to raise my children using the Montessori method from birth after learning about Maria Montessori in graduate school. Of all the early childhood educational philosophers, her method of following the child and preparing the environment made the most sense to me. When I was three months pregnant in March of 2013 I went on a business trip to NYC to collect ants in the medians of Broadway with a group of scientists. My husband had experience in e-commerce and woodworking and, before I left for the trip, we had been looking for affordable Montessori materials from birth onwards. The only ones we could find were made overseas and extremely cost prohibitive. J.J. has always been entrepreneurial and before I was back home from my trip he had set up an Etsy shop of a couple handmade Montessori materials and even had some sales!

We wanted to create a US-based company to develop and make affordable handmade educational Montessori materials to save other families who were struggling with the same cost-prohibitive shipping costs and prices. We quickly connected with local schools and early influencers in the Montessori parenting spaces on Instagram and have been so grateful for the community that grew organically around our materials and the philosophy of implementing Montessori from birth at home.

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?

When I was growing up my grandfather was always making or inventing something in his workshop. As I got older I made my own dining room table, refinished my dresser in middle school and was always drawn to making things with wood. In Montessori classrooms, it’s important to offer natural materials to children; it’s a way of honoring them by providing quality and authentic experiences. I love working with wood because it is always different but extremely grounding (and humbling sometimes!), but mostly it’s always warm and comforting. I still have some of the wooden toys that my grandfather made in his workshop with his scroll saw, they sit on my daughters’ desks and they are used to this day. My husband worked in e-commerce selling and refinishing wood furniture for a decade, so it wasn’t as daunting to take this on; it was a perfect intersection of our interests and needs at the time. Ten years later, this March, we’re still going strong. I make everything myself, from the drilling, sawing to the plant dyes using local, organic ingredients. We even make our own finish using organic beeswax and olive oil.

I feel like I’m honoring the tree the wood came from by making these materials, and it’s the absolute highest praise when I hear from parents that they are using them with their third child or saving them for their grandchildren to use. That was our goal. We wanted to make something right, and if it’s cared for properly, it can be handed down.

We went back to Maria Montessori’s original designs for her materials in her Casa Dei Bambini in Rome and re-created them for our families. I’m most proud of how many repeat customers we have — those that come back to us year after year and include our products in their easter baskets, in Christmas stockings, as Eid and Hanukkah gifts, baby showers, birthdays; I hand write each gift message if included and they’re always so sweet, I feel honored to connect a gift giver with their recipient in this way. It’s a small thing, but it makes it all extra special.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Yes! I started full time with Essential Montessori in November 2019. On good terms, I resigned my “day job” position as an education director for a science nonprofit after I found myself feeling much more creative about the marketing and product development for the shop. At that point J.J. and I sat down and made some SMART goals for stepping into a COO role and wanted to make sure that my income was replaced; based on projections that was true so it was the time to take the risk and go for it! This last year we hit 23,000 sales on Etsy and 10k followers on Instagram and are continuing to grow.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I feel like our Instagram (@essentialmontessori) has always been a supportive place for us in the Montessori community; parents are always seeking and sharing advice and what worked for them. We just did the same, maintaining relationships with friends we’ve never met but inherently know because we’ve been on this parenting journey together for the last decade. We share about our homeschooling adventures, our pet rabbit, transitioning to life in New England, being business owners, parents, and educators. There’s always something that connects you to others! We also get a lot of traffic from Pinterest and love to see what other products/boards our materials are used alongside. Everyone is so creative and inspired when it comes to preparing a nursery environment for their children. I am still getting the hang of TikTok but having some fun over there, too.

My advice is to just try things and see what works, the algorithm is always changing for each person, it seems, so pay attention to the types of posts/videos/sounds you enjoy and try to make those. I always try to stay positive because there’s so much negativity out there in the world — no one wants a bummed out post from a woodworker. I used to manage social media for other organizations and got too caught up in chasing the next meme and each statistic, which took any remaining fun away. Now I view social media now as just that… social — a way to connect and have fun. That’s all either terrible or wonderful advice, but when you wear so many hats as a business owner, you have to choose your battles.

Contact Info:

• Website: essentialmontessori.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/essentialmontessori/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EssentialMontessori/
• Other: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/essentialmontessori/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@essentialmontessori

Image Credits
Photo of me (Leonora Shell) at the Makes Like a Girl event at The White Room in Worcester, MA is taken by @kelseyhaleymedia, used and shared with permission. Other product photos taken by me, the one with Leonora Shell and J.J. Sylvia IV in it at Maria Montessori’s Casa Dei Bambini in Rome was taken by our then 5 year old daughter, Athena Sylvia.