Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mike Leyva-doherty. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Mike, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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.

I started my career in digital advertising, and loved how the advertising field combines elements of art, business, sociology, psychology and data into one field. I found some of the advertising world to be a bit dark, and wanted to create a space to lift up good businesses run by great people. The act of advertising is to drive customers to a specific business, and I believe advertisers should have a moral obligation to drive customers to businesses they know are acting in good faith. I believe in the power of commerce to affect positive change, and have created a business based around this idea. We seek to lift up the businesses, and by proxy, the voices, of businesses you would feel good about recommending to your family, or using yourself.

For Intuitively Living Co., I have always been a fan of skincare, and have tried everything under the sun. I wanted to use products that gave the same experience as a high-end brand, but was fully plant based, vegan and organic. There seemed to be a hole in the market for products I could buy that gave me the experience I wanted for my daily routine, and also aligned with my morals and ethics.

Each of our skin products are hand crafted and my husband and I test them and tweak the recipe for six months to a year before we settle on the final recipe. I wanted to build giving into the core brand, and productize my goal of affecting positive change on a large scale through commerce, and established a partnership with the non-profit, One Tree Planted, to plant one tree for each product sold.

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?

The Wholistic Agency is a full service digital marketing agency. The services we offer are:
– Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising
– Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
– Social Media Marketing
– Social Media Advertising
– Website Designed and Development
– Graphic Design

We are a boutique agency who love working with good companies run by great people. We believe in creating partnerships with our clients, and believe honesty and transparency are paramount for any good partnership. We offer quick startup times and solutions tailored to your goals.

Intuitively Living Co. is a plant based, vegan and organic skincare company. We sell products such as moisturizes, face serums, tattoo balm, hair butter, room sprays and soap. We believe using natural products shouldn’t feel granola, but should provide the results, and feel as luxurious as your big brand faves. We plant one tree for each product sold, through our partnership with One Tree Planted, and never use plastic packaging.

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

I manufacture all of the products for Intuitively Living Co. I have always been big into skincare, and believe in the importance of taking care of your skin, and the positive impact a simple daily skincare can have on your mental health. It’s important to take time for yourself, and just taking a few minutes each day for a skincare routine can have a positive impact on your day.
I had been researching how to make products for a few years before deciding to take the plunge. My husband and I are kind of homesteaders, and enjoy making the things we use. I started with the face moisturizer first, and did a lot of research into how I wanted to craft it, the benefits of all of the different types of oils and essential oils, and how these interact with skin, and matched that to what we were looking to achieve. I learned a lot during the initial product discovery phase that I was able to pull from for the subsequent products. We used this iterative process for each of our products, and I continue to have ideas for new products to add to the line.
I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way in the sensitivity of these elements, and how a small change in the crafting process can substantially change the texture of the finished product. I’ve also learned all about butters, oil penetration, benefits of different kinds of essential oils on the skin, where to buy packaging and labeling from and shipping products. It’s okay if things to go great the first time, those are just lessons learned for next time.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Both the Wholistic Agency and Intuitively Living Co. have been self-funded. The Wholistic Agency has low overhead, as we are a virtual digital marketing agency, but did require initial startup costs, and monthly costs for platforms and tool usage. Intuitively Living Co. had a much higher startup cost, as I needed a large array of ingredients for each product, along packaging, labels, and an ecommerce website. The way I managed this was to start small and grow incrementally.
I started with a face moisturizer, and worked on that by using it daily, tweaking the recipe throughout, and once that recipe was in a place that I and my co-owner were happy with, we moved on to the next product to begin crafting and coming up with packaging. I think this approach was really valuable, for me to go through the crafting process in a methodical way, to be able to build products I am happy with, and explore the myriad of options that are out there for creating products, packaging, labeling, and selling online.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wholisticagency.com | www.intuitivelylivingco.com
• Instagram: @wholisticagency | @intuitivelylivingco
• Facebook: facebook.com/wholisticagency | facebook.com/intuitivelylivingco

Image Credits

Images created by Wholistic Agency