We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nishan Gugsa a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nishan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers
I was out of town for what was supposed to be a week but turned into only three days. This was my first time traveling since the start of Covid, so I was excited to finally be out and about. While at dinner on my second night, my phone started buzzing constantly. I didn’t look at it, because I try to be present versus on my phone, especially at the dinner table. Once dinner had ended and I was on my way back to my room. I finally pulled my phone out, which was still buzzing by the way, to see over 100 sales notifications. As I scrolled through I kept thinking, what the hell, is there a glitch, where did all of these sales come from and are they even real? I was puzzled, so I start going trough the backend of my website to see if the sales showed as high risk of fraud and they were legit. So then I looked at my site traffic and saw a huge influx of visitors. BUT WHERE WERE THEY COMING FROM?
I finally checked traffic by source in my analytics and saw that they were coming from Instagram. Next I headed to Instagram to see what activity was going on there. Once in my business account, I see a notification that one of my customers had tagged my business on a popular blog that had put up a meme about the ineffectiveness of natural deodorant. The customer shouted us out saying how great our products are and that they really work. I could not believe it. I was so excited and grateful!!! I then went and commented as my business, further educating people on why they should use natural deodorant, how our brand came about, and what makes it better. Then several other customers saw it and replied with a co-sign. That caused another wave of more orders.
In the midst of my excitement it actually hit me that I now needed to make all of the product to fulfill the orders and each order was for more than one product. On top of that I was out of town, the person that usually helps me was also out of town, I only make small batches so I’ve never made more than 50 units at one time, and I needed to make sure I met our guarantee of fulfilling and shipping orders within 3-5 business days. That excitement quickly changed into an “oh s#!t” moment and my anxiety was through the roof! How was I gonna get this done with no help?! Needless to say, I hauled ass home and GOT TO WORK. After four days of nonstop around the clock production, I had finally finished and shipped every order. I was mentally and physically exhausted but happy and proud of my ability to push through with limited resources.
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 am a Baltimore native and daughter of an immigrant. The youngest of three and the only girl. My favorite role in life is being an aunt to my nieces. I got into the beauty and personal care industry by accident. It started with me just wanting to make a natural deodorant for myself after years of trying other brands that failed me.
I garnered immediate business after I gave out samples for others to try and have been making and selling it ever since. The main problem we solve for our customers is safely eliminating body odor. We also address wetness and product buildup on clothes, as well as provide a detox mix to help customers quickly transition from antiperspirants to natural deodorant. Unlike other brands, our products don’t mask odor, we eliminate the bacteria that causes odor and keep our customers dry by including ingredients that absorb moisture. Additionally, we make sure our products don’t ruin their clothes with heavy buildup and stains. I am most proud of the fact that I actually made something from scratch that makes life better for others.
It’s funny because deodorant seems like such a small part of our daily routine, until you’re out in public and it stops working. We all can agree that being the funky person in the room is embarrassing! Also, we can agree that wearing a product with ingredients that can lead to cancer, damage to the central nervous system, Alzheimer’s disease, a hormonal imbalance and so on, is scary! To know that I created something that allows people to go out into their day and have confidence and peace of mind fills my heart with so much joy. I actually use those two terms in our branding, “confidence” and “peace of mind” because they come from a lot of our customer feedback.
As a black woman that knows we as black women are exposed to more toxic chemicals in personal care products than any other race, I have made it my mission to provide safe products that works with your body, not against it. When I came up with the name of the company I wanted it to not only represent the products we make but the amazing tribe we’ve built. Our products can be used by everyone but our primary consumer is black women. We are an extremely marginalized portion of the population, often disregarded and disrespected. So I want our consumers to know that not only are they GOOD, they are PLENTY – more than enough and are worthy of all of the GOOD THINGS.
Have you ever had to pivot?
As a serial entrepreneur, Good + Plenty Naturals is not my first time at the rodeo. Funny thing is Good + Plenty was formed in the midst of me shutting down another business I co-owned. The previous business I owned was a behavioral healthcare program. Within that business we had to pivot at the start of the pandemic, transitioning from in-person to telehealth services.
Thankfully we had already been using cloud based software so there wasn’t many setbacks on the administrative side of things, but we faced many on the clinical side. Working with a population who often didn’t have access to the technology needed to receive telehealth services was a major challenge. We had to get creative with the way things were done all while making sure our consumers were getting the care they needed and their right to privacy wasn’t being violated. Although we were able to successfully pivot, I still made the decision to shut the business down due to the lack of cooperation from my business partner.
Upon shutting down I fully launched my consulting firm, which I had previously been doing part-time. This was my greatest career pivot of all, I was still doing something I loved – developing and implementing startup behavioral healthcare programs, without the high levels of stress that came from owning and running a program, and I had a better work-life balance. For the first time in years, I was actually able to enjoy life. It also allowed me the time to pour into building Good + Plenty. I know people often look at closing a business as failure or changing direction as being all over the place but, there is value, courage, and peace in stepping away from what no longer serves you. As miserable as I was running that business, I’m always grateful for it because it led me to another that I absolutely love.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
The initial capital for my business came from my customers. As I’ve shared previously, I gave away samples and started getting orders from my beta testers telling other people about our product. I hadn’t even thought of creating a business but people started asking how much did the deodorant cost. So, I did some quick research on how to determine my cost of goods sold plus the markup to arrive at my retail price. Once I had the price, I let all interested parties know and then they started giving me money to reserve their deodorant. I took that money and used it to buy all of my raw materials in bulk. The additional capital for the containers and manufacturing equipment came from me. As sales started to grow and I decided to make this into a business, I used the additional sales revenue to register my tradename, purchase labels, and get a website built. Fun fact: our first month of business we didn’t have a name for the company or any labels, just blank sticks of deodorant.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.goodplusplenty.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodplusplenty/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goodplusplenty
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCkmgkMZkY_OAkZc9lo16JdQ