We recently connected with Tina Sams and Maryanne Schwartz and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tina and Maryanne, thanks for joining us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

Maryanne: Our father was a shadowy character to the other kids, but I spent the years from age 3 to 9 with him in and out of our home. He was fun and scary at the same time. Mom stressed his artistic talent, so creativity was always valued in our family. Our grandparents stepped up and took us (Mom and 5 kids) into their home. Our grandfather was a much quieter, steady addition. When we contacted our father many years later, we realized we hadn’t missed much at all, in fact his leaving was probably the best thing he ever did for us.
Our mother decided to open an answering service (a real person who used to answer phones for doctors and other businesses.) We lived with phones ringing in our house day and night, 24 hours a day. We learned about responsibility, dedication, creative solutions, rolling with the punches and most of all how to laugh and find the humor, even in a bad situation.

Tina: I didn’t know my dad until I was 35, so he didn’t really have any influence on me, but Mom was such a good example for us as a strong, resourceful woman. In addition to the answering service, she also came up with the idea to schedule screened babysitters. This was particularly brilliant because she was already in contact through the answering service with all the professional people in the area. Doctors, business owners, lawyers, and all sorts of people needing babysitters were her customers for the babysitting service. She had a knack for seeing a need and filling it. Because of her, it rarely occurred to us that there was anything we couldn’t do.
Typing this, I’m flashing to the afternoon out back of our herb shop when Maryanne took a circular saw to shorten some display shelving, and the guys from the window and door shop next door were hanging out their windows cheering. Now my daughter has learned that from us too, and I’ve watched her exhibit extraordinary tenacity in reaching her dreams. She says we taught her, but it goes back to our mom.

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

Tina: Maryanne is my big sister, and she comes up with these crazy ideas. I go along for the ride and then it’s a new addiction. In college, an assignment was for me to dig up the100+ year history on a local farmers market. Not driving at the time, I asked my sister for a ride. While interviewing the owners, it was mentioned that booths only cost $8 per week. We looked at each other, and so began our lifelong pursuit of arts, crafts, and retailing. That paper got an A+ and was published and is stored with the county historical society. Another assignment was my first published work, submitted by my professor.
Later I joined a multi-national corporation. I really wanted to work on job descriptions, etc., but unfortunately I was involved in inventory. My boss at the time saw my frustration and enlisted me to write a job manual for tow-motor drivers who moved 4000 pound rolls of paper and stacked them 20 feet high. Note: I never want to do that job.
Then we got seriously interested in herbs, taking every class we could find and reading every book we could get our hands on.
Eventually Maryanne and I had 2 retail shops in addition to making soap, 2 or 3 speaking engagements a week, and small children at home. We became known locally as The Twisted Sisters (after renaming our renaissance fair shop for Halloween), and when people would call to schedule us to speak for their groups, they sometimes said, “You’re the funny ones, right?” Eventually we burned out, and I expanded on our newsletter which became The Essential Herbal Magazine, while Maryanne continued with the wholesale soap, renaming it Lancaster County Soapworks, Etc. We work closely together, but both have our own business.
My best advice for other small businesses is to learn to say no and don’t try to do it all. Also, customers who want special treatment or are difficult to work with will never be worth the trouble. Additionally, if a craft or art fair comes looking for you less than a 2 weeks before the event, there’s a good chance it will be a bust.

The best part of creating and owning The Essential Herbal is in giving friends in the herbal community the confidence to put their voice out there. I get to watch lifelong friendships form through the magazine, friends get book deals, build their businesses, write for big publications, start herb schools, and more. I love it!
Somehow I got very lucky with social media (timing, I believe) and got a huge Facebook following. That’s a double edged sword because I do it myself, but strangers think it’s a large company and can be very rude, not realizing how hurtful that can be. The upside is that the large following led to publishers seeking me out. I’ve had 4 books published in the last 10 years.
We’ve had to learn 3 or 4 complete marketing concepts since going into business in the 90’s, so I’m pleased to have been able to keep on top of them. It’s about to change again, and I’m not sure what form it will take.
Our latest artistic addiction is eco-printing on fabric and paper. It was time for something new, and it combines our love of plant structure and art. Botanical art is the term, I guess. We started the summer before the pandemic, and never looked back. We’ve researched and learned to use different botanical dyes and mordants to come up with some really interesting prints. We are also working with sun sensitive paints and cyanotypes. The plants are the guides, and they want to be on everything! The first winter, I was so distraught that there weren’t any leaves around outside that I made a silk scarf using all salad ingredients. I learned a lot doing that, and love wearing it.

Maryanne: After working for a number of other businesses, usually in sales or customer service, I became disenchanted with my opportunities in industry, as a woman. I had married an old fashioned guy who offered me the chance to stay home and just keep house. With no children in the picture, I needed other outlets, starting with needlework and working up to returning to college to continue working toward a degree in fine art.
At some point, I discovered a way of giving plexiglas a light-weight stained glass look that I tried marketing to a kitchen cabinet maker. That didn’t work out, but I realized I wanted to do some kind of creative business to make a little money of my own.
I had met a friend from Denver, CO who had an upscale brass bed company. She made me her agent and I designed and bought quilts for a few years.
After our son was born 36 years ago, we moved to our current home on a Christmas tree farm. I quit the quilt business to concentrate on my child and the new house. My husband & I had grand visions, but wound up with a great little choose & cut place called Frog Hollow Evergreens that my husband cares for all year around. We are open from Thanksgiving to Christmas, five very long, but satisfying days a week.
When I got to know the owner of our local Renaissance Faire, he mentioned that he needed an herb shop. A quick call to my sister and we were in! Our first experience working together for real was great and we quickly learned so much about herbs and about people.
We had been buying hand made soap to resell in our shop. One winter I read an article in an herb business magazine that talked about making soap. We had some time and decided to learn to make our own to sell. There wasn’t much info available at that time (the early 90’s,) so it involved a lot of trial and error, but the market was there.

Tina: By a lot of trial and error, she means that every day for 2 weeks we attempted to follow the instructions in the article, before finally figuring out what we were doing wrong. Heck, it took us almost 2 months just to find the ingredients!

Maryanne: Renaissance faire is a place where one is basically forced to come out of one’s shell and accept other people for who they are. It was a great learning experience.
We have found that whatever we think we are getting into, it is always more. When we opened our own brick and mortar herb shop, we were surprised at the things that people asked us about. There was so much trust and we tried very hard to never take advantage of anyone who believed we could help them. We were in an out of the way location and decided to try giving classes to bring people to us. They were a hit. I had always been afraid of public speaking, but when you have knowledge to impart, it becomes fun.

Tina: Now try and get the microphone away from her!

Maryanne: All along the way, all the varied experiences have contributed to my confidence and comfort with my business. Every place I have ever worked has added skills to my repertoire that were needed in our various business ventures.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

TINA: People don’t understand the sacrifices that are made. With very few exceptions, most creative people either need to have a “money job” or they somehow stumble into a way to make a decent living with their art. I’m often told how lucky I am, and while that’s true to a point, that luck comes with a bucket of sweat. There’s no second shift coming in to finish the magazine before the deadline. There’s nobody going to write that last chapter in the book, and don’t even get me started on indexing! I want to be out in the garden, but work has to come first.
It is generally assumed that those who work for themselves must be wealthy. That is rarely true. Nor does the saying, “do what you love and the money will follow” really happen. What does happen is that we get to have a beautiful life filled with meaning and creativity.

MARYANNE: I think it is important to take one’s business seriously. If you say you will finish a project by a certain date – finish the project by the promised date! If you have hours posted, be available at that time! This has always been a hard and fast rule for us. As inconvenient as it may be for you, imagine being a customer counting on your promise or your hours. If you don’t come through, you will never see that person again.
I was shocked when I joined an online swap of other jewelry makers (yes, I picked up lamp-working and jewelry making along the way, too!) There was a date set that all pieces should be in to the organizer of the swap who would then send everything out to the participants. The date kept changing until it was over 9 months past the deadline! Just because you are creative, I don’t believe it is an excuse to let everyone down in a situation like this. I would certainly not be eager to do business with that person or those who held up the schedule. Plus it made a mockery of those of us who played by the rules.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Probably everyone addresses covid right now, and we are too.

TINA: Just before COVID became an issue, I announced that we would become a digital-only magazine. I knew that would cut my readership by 30 to 50%, but printing and shipping are so expensive, I’d still be making more with half the readers. I expected to print for another year, though.
Then COVID happened and I immediately stopped printing.
For many reasons, I’m very grateful for that decision. At the time, mail was really unpredictable due to several fairly nefarious situations. ONE issue going missing would have crashed the business. I would have needed to reprint and reship, and that was impossible financially.
It’s been a few years now, and I’m still really glad we quit printing. There are occasional rebukes and insinuations of greed , but overall we can offer a lot more through a digital product. Also, a friend suggested that in addition to the 6 regular issues each year, perhaps we could send out a little morsel between issues. Initially, that was intended to be a recipe, a crossword puzzle, or a profile of a single herb. Instead, it’s become a mini magazine, and we get great feedback on that exclusive content. I call it a win-win!

Maryanne: We are in a popular tourist area and I have found that my best customers are also part of the tourism industry here. When COVID hit, needless to say, tourism tanked.
My soap business has always been strictly wholesale and my website reflected that. When it appeared that the wholesale business was drying up, my sister urged me to switch my website to make it retail friendly. It certainly did not make up for the loss of regular business, but at least I knew that I was still IN business! It made up for about one nice wholesale order every month.
There have been many many times when we have had a seemingly disastrous situation hit us – usually just as we were feeling very confident – but we put our heads together and came up with a way around it or sometimes an even better solution than the original. Sometimes, they force a change or an upgrade that we were reluctant to make.
When we had our shop, we had an old balance scale that we used to weight ounces of various herbs that we bought by the pound and sold by the ounce. One day, out of the blue, the weights and measures inspector showed up at our shop, wanting to check our scale. We always found inspectors terrifying, but eventually realized they are there to help us find a way to do things correctly – sometimes how to get around regulations. This inspector checked our scale and found we were weighing “heavy” which explained how we never got 16 ounces out of a pound! We were cheating ourselves. We had to shell out the money to replace the scale, but we knew we were never cheating anyone (including ourselves!)

Tina: We pivot, regroup and change direction. I get into ruts with providers and don’t want to rock the boat. That’s not a good thing. When the USPS decided that I would need to take my bulk mail shipments about an hour’s drive away rather than 5 minutes, it was a gut punch. BUT I asked my printer how much it would cost to have them do it. I should mention that prepping the bulk mail was 2 days of work for us here, heavy lifting, printing labels, and lots of stress. It turned out that the cost was minimal, and we got a couple days back!
Every time a printer let me down and forced me to change, the new printer offered more for the same money. I know with Maryanne, she’s had similar experiences with many of her suppliers. The same has been true of shipping services for my non-magazine products. Each change brings more convenience and usually less expense. It’s been an interesting lesson. First I get all freaked out, and then realize it was really a good thing.
I’ve had a couple aggressive and destructive competitors. First comes the panic, and then we decide to dig deep and come up with a better product, eventually thanking the competition for forcing us to do that.

Contact Info:

• Website: essentialherbal.com (Tina) AND lancastersoaps.com (Maryanne)
• Instagram: essentialherbal
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/essentialherbal
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TwistedSisses/videos
• Other: free summer mini mag https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0375/4753/files/Summer_2020.pdf?v=1593441175 blog https://theessentialherbal.blogspot.com/2023/07/july-august-2023-essential-herbal.html