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

Teju, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

At Clean Rebellion, we’re on a mission to create high-quality bath, body, and personal care products made with simple, non-toxic ingredients. We are passionate about transparency and letting consumers know exactly what is in our products.

I started the company after struggling with eczema for many years. Having eczema was incredibly frustrating. I would try different creams and topical solutions from various dermatologists, and they would help for some time. However, as soon as I stopped using the creams, the itchy, annoying rashes would come back.

After years of frustration, I embarked on my own personal journey to try alternative treatments to heal my eczema. I modified my diet and took a long and hard look at how many of the beauty products that I was using actually made my skin condition worse. I got into the kitchen and started making my own soap, which is how Clean Rebellion was born.

Our mission is important because I firmly believe everyone should know exactly what they are putting on their skin every day. So many beauty products have tons of hidden ingredients—many of them are extremely toxic and cause hormonal issues, skin irritation, and more. We stand for shifting the narrative in the industry and empowering the consumer to have personal agency over deciding which ingredients and products work for them.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started off my career designing health and wellness incentive programs for Fortune 500 companies and large universities. I also spent time modeling and teaching spin classes early on in my career. So, health, wellness, fitness, and well-being were always very important to me. I firmly believe that well-being is not just about what we put in our bodies, it is also about what we put on our bodies.

I’m so proud that our signature soaps only include a few simple ingredients like water, saponified water, and essential oils. Customers can turn over the bottle, read the ingredient deck, and understand what each ingredient used in our products is actually meant to do. I’m also proud that so many of our customers have reached out to express that our product has worked for their skin conditions and issues including dry skin, eczema, and acne. While results always vary from person to person, I absolutely love hearing these personal success stories!

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

Clean Rebellion has been 100% self-funded to this point. I am incredibly lucky that I was able to use capital from my first business, The Sulte Group, in order to get the brand off the ground.

However, bootstrapping and self-funding a business can be extremely challenging at times—but I like to look at this as an opportunity for us to be creative and scrappy. To start the brand, we actually did a pre-sales campaign (before we had even produced the bottles) to determine whether there was any interest from our customer base. Those initial pre-orders and support on social media gave us the confidence to move forward and place a very small, lean initial order of our product with our main manufacturer.

Even though the self-funded route has been challenging, I do think it’s a great way to test a concept to see if it actually works. Sometimes, when you have too much capital, it is easy to try to use the money to fix the core problems of the business vs. digging in and trying to restructure the core of the business.

Any advice for managing a team?

My biggest advice for managing a team is to first read the book Topgrading by Bradford Smart. Managing a team is so much easier when you have the right people in the right roles. This book completely changed the way that I approached hiring. It helped me get better at filling key positions effectively and efficiently.

Then, I firmly believe in having team members fill out their goals and express what they want to achieve professionally and personally (to the extent that they are willing to share). This allows me to create opportunities where they can work on their personal and professional goals, resolving some of the work-life balance issues and conflicts that you often find in the workplace.

I also believe in first sharing the vision and the outcome of what you want your team members to achieve. Then, get out of the way and let them create a plan to get there. This gives team members a sense of autonomy and control over how they get things done. Plus, it helps their overall growth and career development.     

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cleanrebellion.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/cleanrebellion
• Facebook: facebook.com/cleanrebellion
• Twitter: twitter.com/cleanrebellion
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Q9zlf0mesWxRKE03z-X5A

Image Credits
Yooh Ah Jeong and Emily Aguilar