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

Rachel, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

I was a solo entrepreneur for my first three years in business. Before that I had worked at my family’s company and managed a team of eight, to eventually fourteen, people. So, when it was time to hire for my own company, I felt like a seasoned pro. It’s only now, nine years later that I realize how far I have come as a manager & employer.

My first hire was my best hire; she’s still with me today! I just got lucky on that one. But over the years, team members have come & gone for various reasons. As a young company we didn’t have the revenue to afford employees with five, ten years of experience. I was hiring entry level, recent grads. But my expectations were too high. I was looking for people like me; who shared my passion & my drive but no one really lived up to that. How could they? This was MY business, MY passion – it wasn’t realistic to expect people to care as much as I did.

I learned to start asking my team members what they wanted to get out of the role; to build a mutually beneficial position for them at my company. If their answer is “a paycheck” it’s not going to work. I have always sought out employees who feel called to their role and who really WANT to do the work. Now, I always start by asking where they’re coming from & why they’re interested in working with my company, and I really want to know!

I have also learned that I need to pay attention to the strengths & weaknesses of everyone on my team, and to tailor my expectations to their performance. If I know someone is really great at selling but not very organized, I’ll shift their responsibilities around so everyone is thriving in their role and we’re all working as a team. I believe in sharing the workload.

The most important part of our training process, however, has been re-learning how I work. I understand that my work ethic and work style has a huge impact on how my team performs. I want to show them that I’m here to work, but that I love what I do and that we should all be finding joy in our jobs. I am constantly training myself to be more diplomatic, more aware & more helpful for everyone on our team, because I want to be a leader they are proud to work for, and that they enjoy working with.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Rachel DeCavage and I am the owner & creative director of cinder + salt, an eco-friendly clothing and lifestyle brand. cinder + salt is a culmination of all the things I love in life and that, truthfully, is the reason I started the company. Not to change the world, not to solve a problem… but to build a life for myself that I would love and feel passionate about every day.

The name, cinder + salt, is inspired by the residue of a weekend well spent; the scent of campfire on your clothes and the taste of saltwater on your skin. I wanted our name to evoke a feeling more than I wanted it to explain what we do. And there is nothing better than joyful memories spent in nature, and all the sensations that come with it.

At our core, we are a casual apparel brand and we make fun, colorful graphic tees for guys, ladies, kids & babies. But we also have a very strong company ethos centered around sustainability & building joy around nature, what I call ‘eco-optimism.’ All cinder + salt designs are my original drawings I do with Sharpie marker. They are then hand-printed by myself or my team, using recycled inks on a 30 year old press, in our zero-waste & solar powered printshop! Our line is carried in over 500 stores nationwide which is a feat I am deeply proud of.

With a core focus on environmental sustainability, we lead monthly beach, street, trail & river clean-ups throughout CT. We offer clean waste recycling opportunities through a collection bin service at our store. We also provide free reusable shopping totes, upcycle all of our waste into art sculptures and host volunteer eco-retreats around the world. I truly believe in creating opportunities for folks to engage with nature & sustainability at every level; to invite them to contribute to the health of our planet & to make it easy to do so.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

In 2011 I left my position at the family business and started my first company. It was a 330sf, second floor storefront in a cute town that had absolutely no other retail stores, and it hovered over an Italian restaurant and beneath medical offices. It was a chapter of my life that I refer to as “Business Plan Planning.”

I had very little money; I put the store together with a thousand dollars, $700 of which was the deposit for the space. I made all the fixtures from scrap wood (hello, pallets) and hand stitched one of a kind apparel and home decor with upcycled fabrics. I made my own jewelry with scrap findings & vintage baubles. And I topped it off with a very small batch of screen printed tees.

I boot strapped like nobody’s business. Know why? I couldn’t get a loan to save my life.

I was 26 years old. I drove a financed Corolla, I had $34K in student loans, I rented my apartment and I think the highest item of value that I owned was a $100 pair of citrine earrings. I had barely enough cash to live on; a meager credit score because I don’t know if I even knew what that was at the time, and I didn’t even have a business plan. I applied for a $5000 business loan and the bank manager offered me a $500 personal loan with 12% interest. I called bullshit and stormed off. I get it now… but at the time I was pissed.

Let’s fast forward two and half years.

Sugarplum has transformed into cinder + salt. I had made a deal with my dad to purchase his screen printing equipment for $14,000ish. (A total steal, but at the time I thought I had made a very generous offer.) I paid $5000 in cash for the equipment and I bartered the other $9000 by doing all his bookkeeping for 18 months and building him a new website for one of his accounts. I was really hustling when I had sugarplum; doing lots of side gigs to make ends meet, and working to pay for the equipment was a big part of that.

In my first year as cinder + salt I established my printshop by basically making a wall of boxes and folding tables around the equipment, which was still in my dad’s company’s building. My sales were doubling every quarter; I had taken on one full and one part time employee; I was paying myself; my business plan was still slightly nonexistent but I had 3 years worth of income statements that showed really good growth.

It was time to move my printshop into my own space and I needed a loan. I had gotten this far by bootstrapping but I didn’t think I could do any more. I needed actual funds. I was equally exhausted and confident when I went in and applied for $70,000.

The bank was going to need some more documentation.

I spent two weeks getting my act together. I signed a lease for my new space; I got my insurance. I fine tuned all my financial reports, collected all my receipts, drafted a budget, yada yada yada. I went back in with my stack of paperwork. The bank manager looked over it and said, “Oh sweetie, you did a really nice job on all of this…. But we’re not going to be able to write this loan.”

I know my face turned beet red. I was angry, embarrassed and deeply, deeply saddened. I struggled, and I mean REALLY STRUGGLED to keep my shit together. I watched her stack all my papers up, neatly stuff them back in their envelope, hand them back to me and I graciously (with a cracked voice I’m sure) thanked her for her time. I went to my car. I started the ignition. I drove home. I went upstairs to my room. I knelt on the floor between my bed and my bureau and I let out a deep, guttural shriek and essentially face planted into the carpet. I sobbed, and hyperventilated, and sobbed, and dry heaved, and sobbed for a very long time.

This wasn’t really about the $70,000. It wasn’t really about my business’s survival or viability. For me, as a young woman, an artist and an entrepreneur, this was about my worth. My net worth and my self worth.

Two and half years later I still had $20,000 of student loan debt. I was still driving the Corolla but I had paid it off. It was now the most valuable thing I owned but it was still only worth a few grand. I was living with my boyfriend so I had no rent, but I also had no assets. My credit score was probably the same as last time I tried to get a loan. But I was so tired.

I had come so far. I had done so much. I had a proven track record of a successful business but it meant absolutely nothing. I was crying on the floor asking the universe (or, the carpeting) how you can expect anyone to get ahead when no one will help you out. And because I have no net-worth, like I literally never had a bank balance above $200, in my mind, that translated to zero self-worth as well. When all the work I had done meant NOTHING because my numbers weren’t amazing enough, it meant my work wasn’t amazing enough. It meant I was a failure. It meant I was not worth any faith or trust or chance in success.

I wish I could say that this was the first and the last time I had this feeling; but it wasn’t.

The lesson for me, in hindsight, now seems superficial but it’s still important. I felt really bad for myself and also very vengeful at the same time. I felt like I had been done wrong and I wanted to prove to my bank that they were the ones who were wrong. I wanted to prove to everyone who had ever doubted me that I was a force to be reckoned with. That resolve is 100% what pushed me through for many years.

When I was done ugly crying into my bedroom carpet I got to work on plan B. Spoiler, plan B was more bootstrapping. The BEST outcomes come from bootstrapping. You get to know what you’re made of, flex your creativity & learn a hell of a lot of lessons that you would’ve had to learn anyways, only without having 12% interest and a greedy bank hanging over your shoulder.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I find inspiration & motivation in strange areas. I can’t really ever point to a book, podcast or person who really inspires me, but I have collected words over the years that have been total game changers. I literally have cut small bits of text out of magazines and taped them to my fridge. The most impactful being…

“When given an opportunity to prove yourself, there’s no excuse for showing up empty handed.”

I have no idea who said this because I only clipped out this sentence, but if I did know I would thank them endlessly. Because of these words I am always on time, always over-prepared and more often than not able to seal the deal.

Another line I have always loved is, “It’s like driving a car at night – you never see further than your headlights, but you make the whole trip that way.” – E. L. Doctorow

We can never know what tomorrow will bring, but you do your best with what you have. For some reason, these words make me feel more stable in most decisions because I’m able to accept that there is so much I can’t see, or don’t know.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cinderandsalt.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cinderandsalt/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cinderandsalt/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-decavage-1753867/