DILO Entrepreneur – 21-5-20

Tammy Ven Dange, , Leave a Comment on DILO Entrepreneur – 21-5-20

I feel like my DILO or Day in the Life of an entrepreneur is such a learning process, something that I really am enjoying at the moment. Of course, I’d enjoy it more if I didn’t have to think about the financial implications of not learning fast enough.

This week I started testing some new products.

Testing new Harvestcare products
Skin and lip balm tests made with “rescued” beeswax from Canberra

I’m not naturally interested or gifted as a “maker.” And it’s another reason why I have an expert soap maker for a number of products in the Harvestcare line.

Double boiling skin care product ingredients
Melting raw ingredients for new product ideas

However, I realise that I can’t outsource all the making at this point for three main reasons:

  • First, it’s obviously more expensive to do this even though my soap maker has been very generous with prices knowing that we are still trying to secure hotel contracts down the road.
  • Two, because my soap maker is so busy with other customers, it takes a while to get new products made.
  • Finally, I’m finding it hard to get into local markets unless I can say that I’m making or designing the products myself. Therefore, it’s imperative that I do so for the ones that I can do.

What I really would love to do is spend more time coming up with concepts and collaborations, and to have someone else do all the making. In fact, I have ambitions to even grow some of our own ingredients that we can use in our products. How amazing would that be to go from farm to skin?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Harvestcare brand lately, and I really want it to be a relatable product line for the customer. So much so that I’ll probably share how we make some of the products online so that people can see how natural all the ingredients really are.

While it could decrease the potential number of paying customers, I reckon that most people really don’t want to take the time to do it. In fact, I think it would be nice to know that our products are so simple, they can make it themselves.

The most interesting thing coming from customer feedback right now is that a lot of people are looking for something that will work with sensitive skin – including on children. And so far, people have said that the products are working fine for them. So, it’s a new market segment that I hadn’t really thought about until now.

So much more work to do and things to learn before my test group, the “Harvesters” try out some of these new products on Sunday. Just another DILO of an entrepreneur trying to figure out market fit!

New Harvestcare displays

The realities of starting a business

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Every business begins small. I started this blog over a year ago because I wanted to show the realities of starting a business. It’s rarely a direct path, and the chances of failing are extremely high.

Few entrepreneurs have publicly shown their journeys while they are going through it – probably because there are always a lot of failures and unpleasant things that you have to experience. The realities aren’t sexy, and most the world would rather only see the successes. But once you get there, what do you really remember?

This video below is focussed on my new consumer brand, Harvestcare which is a pivot from our hotel-line that’s currently in hibernation. Both are designed to reduce plastic packaging waste.

This is still my attempt to document the good, bad and ugly of being an entrepreneur. I truly miss having a team especially when I have to do things like this that I’m not naturally good at. Yet, these are the types of things you have to do when you are starting something new.

So, I finally just set up a public Facebook page after some urging so that I can more easily share the day to day. It definitely takes me more time to capture everything in video rather than just using photos and words, but hopefully the preservation of this journey (however it ends) will be worth it to help someone else one day.

The realities of starting a business? You might decide not to start one after watching these videos and reading my blog.