We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tara Boyce a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tara, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

I never actually intended to start this type of business, but once I started I was in love! That love quickly turned to fear once I realized just how many other small businesses offered the same products and services. And please believe there are a LOT!

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced over the past 5 years is staying relevant and keeping customers attention. I am only 5 years into my business, but things have changed so quickly due to advancements in social media, and a younger demographic being on the scenes. They’re able to create content and products without basing their schedules around family and children. The new fascination with TIktoks, Reels, and not to mention the shortages and price increases due to Covid profit margins are narrow these days.
When I start Bodied, my goal was handmade, herbal, and all natural. Newer business in my industry have switched up the game! They add bright attention grabbing dyes to their soaps and products that not only grab the attention of a younger audience, but my target audience as well.
The beginning of Covid hung a dark cloud over handmade businesses. People were afraid of how the virus could be transmitted and needed the reassurance that products being shipped from someone’s home based business were safe. Suddenly everyone decided they wanted to make hand sanitizers and soaps and hop on this “disinfect everything” wave! This limited the availability of items needed to keep my business running. When you were able to find what you needed, the price had nearly doubled. Again, affecting profit.
While things have gotten a little better over the past 6-8 months, profits are not where they used to be. I’m hoping I can get better with the Reels and TIkTok challenges to change this!

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’m Shannon! Owner of Bodied by Shannon. This business started by accident. I shared a post on Facebook of some things I’d made for my son for his eczema and cystic acne. The notifications blew up. I did some research on selling handmade products, ordered some 8oz containers from Amazon, and we were in business!
After about a year in the business, I became sick. I was eventually diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and migraines. Because I was already doing research on natural products, I decided to search for ways to deal with these conditions rather than taking the prescribed medications that only made me feel worse.
My mentor asked me: “how did our ancestors treat illnesses? They didn’t have tylenol and other drugs to take when they were in pain. They relied on Mother Earth!” This conversation reminded me of my great-grandmother and her sister, who passed at 99 and 96. I have no memory of seeing them take medications or even go to the doctor! (of course, that doesn’t mean they didn’t!) When one of the kids were sick, they went in the kitchen, not the medicine cabinet. With that knowledge, I started school to become an herbalist. I switched up the products I was creating and started using herbs and more essential oils. I went from making “smell goods” to feel goods. My mission became holistic health. I wanted my products to not only smell good, I wanted them to heal.

In June, Bodied will be 5 years old. Hopefully this doesn’t sound boastful, but I’m around of MYSELF! I’ve always suffered with debilitating anxiety. So bad that I’d spend months at home without seeing or talking to anyone outside of my husband and kids. I’d, only leave home to go to the grocery store. Which was about once or twice a month. owning this business has required me to be more open. It’s required me to step outside of my “box” to do and BE more.
My mission of Holistic Health (healing the person as a whole. Mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.) isn’t just for my clients, it’s started with me!

I want any future clients/followers to know that while I do want my business to be profitable, I want to help people heal. I want them to leave “Bodied” better than they came.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Before we start, I have to say: “Please do not try this”! LOL Results are not typical. Very few people believe this, but Bodied was started with $20! After sharing a post on Facebook of the products I’d made for my son, a friend commented and wanted to try the sugar scrub. I told her, “just cover shipping and I got you”. She sent me $20 via PayPal. I used that $20 to buy a pretty glass container from Dollar Tree (HA!), covered shipping, and used the rest to order 8oz containers from Amazon. I already had the ingredients to make the butters and scrubs at home.

I had experience making logos and labels, I did all that myself. I didn’t have an official logo until about a year in. And in the very beginning, I hand wrote the labels.

Here I am 5 years later, and I learned so much about obtaining business credit and how important it is to have your personal credit in order to help get your business credit off the ground. Having a business plan and being LEGIT (meaning have your business licenses, LLC/Sole Proprietorship, etc) will help secure funding easier than doing things the way I did. Had I known this 5 years ago, I’d be so much further along!

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

So, when Covid hit I was just coming back from ‘maternity leave’. Which lasted a lot longer than I intended due to my baby being in NICU. Not only did I have to try to win back my customers that had been waiting for me to have “Boss Baby” I had to overcome the whole world coming to almost a complete stop. My business was closed for December 2019 to April 2020 with no sales, and visits to my site dropped from hundreds a day to less than 20 most days.

Things started picking up August of 2020, but sales were still less than half of what I was making prior to going on leave. I was getting about 4-5 orders a week (less than I was getting when I first started out.) Kids were going back to school, and some of my regulars were looking for my “back-to-school” boxes. (lotions, body sprays, deodorants.) I was so discouraged. Even though the business was closed, it still had bills to pay! And with so little coming in, things were getting rough!
I switched up marketing efforts, started putting things on sale for 40-50% off just to get attention… Then BOOM! I test positive for Covid. I had to close the business again for almost 3 months.

At this point, I was ready to give up. I opened the website, but wasn’t posting on social media. I’d drop a sale, and just wait. No promo, no ads, nothing. I was putting in the bare minimum just to say I was still trying. One day, I decided to try something different. I went on Etsy and reopened my shop. I posted only 2 products, and I posted them as wholesale. I’d searched Etsy to see what the competition was charging for similar products but decided I wasn’t going to short change myself just to get a sale. I knew my stuff was good! If I was supposed to continue the product based portion of my business, this was going to be my sign. It had to bring in something. And it did!

The very next day, I got a message from a woman in California. She already had a location, and was looking for handmade soaps for her store as well as a personal gift for a friend for Pride Month. One of the pictures I’d posted was of a rainbow soap I’d made for a challenge in a FB group I was in. (The challenge was to make a soap with different colored layers.) She not only wanted me to make that soap for her friend, she wanted 60 bars for her store “just to start with”. I explained to her how long it would take due to ordering the products needed and Covid being an issue. I also tried to get her to just order a sample to be sure she liked the soap. She wanted her 60 bars within a month!

I went straight to FB to share my “victory” and somehow, this drew attention to my site again. The visits that night were crazy! I sat and watched as 15 people with active carts checkout back to back with orders all over $100. I was back… kinda!
Mrs. P helped be regain my motivation to get Bodied back on track. As of today, she orders 10 loaves of that soap every 3 months.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bodiedbyshannon.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/_bodiedbyshannon
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/BodiedByShannon
• Twitter: twitter.com/bodiedbyshannon