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

Hi Yawa, thanks for joining us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

The big risk that I have ever taken in my life was quitting my job to start my small business without any tangible knowledge of how to operate a business. Couple years ago, I have working as a lab manager for a contract research organization. Although I had a good paying job, I progressively grew tired of working there partly because I felt under-appreciated and the long hours I was working. Then the 2020 covid -19 crisis happened. Our workload more than tripled and we were struggling to keep up. The already long hours became longer and I wasn’t Ok with that anymore. My need for something new grew bigger.

So I made the difficult decision to quit the lab job to just focus on my little side hustle. I had no prior knowledge of how to run a business, but I had already quit my day job. I took some of the savings that I had, and invested in supplies for my soap business . I have a passion for Chemistry that is easily translated in the products that I make. The beginning was a struggle. I made a ton of products but I had no customers and I didn’t know where to find them. Being an introvert, I usually just keep to myself. I quickly realized that for my small business to be successful, I had to get comfortable being uncomfortable. I need to put myself out there and that’s when I started posting on social media.

Along the way, I made some very good friendships that kept me motivated and slowly many opportunities opened up for me. Now I own a beautiful store where my customers are happy to shop and I couldn’t be any happier. The risk that took is starting to pay off and I am very blessed to have such a positive outcome.

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?

My name is Yawa Mensah and I am the owner of YAWA & CO, a Kansas soap, bath and body company. I started my business in 2020 out of a need for a career change. After 8 years of working in the animal health and clinical research organization industries, I wanted to focus on my passion while still utilizing my skills. Being a Chemist, I turned to soapmaking as it is the only legal chemistry related job that I could do from home.

My first batch was based off a very basic recipe that was shared in one of my chemistry lab in college. I was instantly hooked and wanted to make more. In researching, I discovered that I could make beautiful soaps with different patterns and fragrances. An obsession was born. Ten years later, here we are with a handmade bath body business! I have been providing feel good , accessible, affordable and effective daily self care essentials to many friends across the country. I am very proud to be able to contribute to my customers’ self-care routines.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

My debut on social media was very challenging. Being a private person,I rarely shared anything about me on social media. When I realized that by not sharing enough, I was only hurting the business I was trying to build, I had to change. I took time to study accounts in the same type business to determine the types of contents that I could share. Once I figured out the types of content, I tested the type of content and time it was being shared to determine which combination gave the most interactions with my audience. I then start posting similar contents to those with most interactions. I will say that the key of my success on social media came from consistency.

Social media is hard nowadays, so to anyone starting, my advice is to find your niche and be consistent with posting content that will bring value to their audience.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

I do sell on my own website (www.yawaandco.com). I made the decision early on to have my own website because I wanted to grow a strong brand that people will remember. Basically I wanted. to have unlimited design options and as much space as I needed to creatively get my brand across. Having my own site allows me to use as much copy as I need to hook my customer in and tell them my story, and use imagery to get across the mission and personality of my brand. I also didn’t want to deal with the high competition on platforms like Etsy, Amazon, Cratejoec, etc…

It also allows me to have more controls in regards to my shop policies, and the choice of payment processors. It was important for me to use payment processors that will take a much lower cut.

Having say that, there are some cons that come with owning your own site. It is time consuming to set up especially if you don’t what you are doing. With your own website, you are responsible if there are any hiccups or things that go wrong on your site.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.yawaandco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yawaandco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YawaandCo
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/yawa-co-llc/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@yawaandco9321/

Image Credits
Special thanks to Sarah Reeves from Reeves Photography who took these beautiful pictures.