We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ponchitta Lanoue. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ponchitta below.

Ponchitta, appreciate you joining us today. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed.

When I launched my business, I started with $20,000! That’s more than enough to start if you operate on a low budget! However, I tried to go too big too fast and my expenses ate all of my capital up! That’s when I learned very valuable lessons about the importance of watching my finances! Unfortunately, not long after I had launched, my then husband filed for divorce! I launched a business and failed and my husband was divorcing me all within 18 months! It would take me five years to recover! Those were the toughest five years of my life!

Ponchitta, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

PONCH Cosmetics is a botanical skincare brand created for women of color to help treat dark spots! When I was 16 years old, I burned my skin using an extremely strong skincare product! From there, my obsession with clean beauty was born when I could not find affordable skincare products to reduce acne scars!

Many years later, I would take a marketing course in college! I had to complete a project where I had to market a product that I loved and I chose skincare! I did so well on my project that my professor encouraged me to launch my own brand! I did! I invited 100 friends and I made $2000 in two hours!

Then I started to host skincare parties and building community! That’s where I learned the pain points of my customers! Black women want more affordable options for sensitive melanin- rich skin! I sought to create these products for my community! PONCH is an acronym that stands for plant-based, organic, nontoxic, clean and holistic! I use these ideals as my North Star for product development!

I am most proud of how far I have come! I remember going through my divorce and thinking that I don’t care about losing my husband, but please don’t let me lose my business! I fought hard to stay afloat! I managed to overcome every obstacle to remain in business and grow from 0 customers to 1,000.

I want readers to know that trouble or doesn’t last always! No matter what you go through, you can get through it! Perseverance is the strongest character-building trait! You will never know how strong you are if you fold any time there’s pressure! No matter how hard it gets! Trust the process and don’t fold!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn doing what’s easy! You wanna know why people always wanna do what’s easy? They’re lazy!

I’ve had some reality checks about cutting corners! I missed out on an opportunity to get a big ticket order out because I decided to cut a corner early in business! I lost an opportunity and I lost a very lucrative order!

Now I don’t cut corners! I don’t care what I gotta do, learn or fix! Im just not cutting corners! Im asking questions and I’m learning whatever I need to learn no matter how hard!

I used to think that I wasn’t good in math, but that’s not the case! I was lazy! Once I started taking my time to learn and unlearn bad habits, then I realized that I’m not dumb in Math at all! I was just lazy! I needed to learn some Math to stay on top of my accounting for my business!

The lesson I had to learn was my bad habit of taking the easy route instead of the road less traveled, which is never wasy! Now I challenge myself to do what’s hard just to push myself!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

During the pandemic, everybody had to pivot! Prior to the pandemic, I made most of my money hosting in-person events! After the pandemic, I had to take everything online! That was challenging, but it shouldn’t have been if I was marketing right online! Well I wasn’t! I had to get up to speed fast! I lost about $50k during the pandemic! I had to work out a lot of online kinks and bugs in my business! It took about 18 months to get my online events going good, but I got it done! Now I’m successfully making money online and in-person!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ponchcosmetics.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ponchcosmetics
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ponchcosmetics
• Linkedin: https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/ponchitta-lanoue-9b887459
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ponchcosmetics
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/ponchtv