Get inspired by Olivia’s journey from a burnt out hospital worker to a thriving entrepreneur!
Olivia, our guest blogger today, is a nature-loving scientist and creator of prebiotic skincare products. Driven by frustration with the limited innovation in natural deodorants and skincare products, Olivia set out to examine the ingredients found in common deodorants and create a new product that would eliminate hormone interruption caused by irritants.
With her deep understanding of natural ingredients and scientific knowledge, she created a formulation enjoyed by many today.
Learn about her story of how she went from a hospital worker to a deodorant maker in this blog post and get ready to be inspired on your own journey of entrepreneurship!
Sometimes life throws you so off balance that you have no choice but to stop, slow down and have a good cry. Having worked in a hospital laboratory for nearly 18 years, struggling to keep the job going and the 3 fantastic children alive and happy, my body just had enough. I had a (1st) major panic attack that literally took my breath away causing me to run out of the lab not caring about the consequences, it was the best thing that happened to me.
We all do our best to just keep going, being positive and smiling our way out of misery but something always gives. I heard a great saying from Tony Robbins: “It’s not always easy to make decisions that allow you to live out your most authentic self”. Becoming a business owner was not on my to do list but I wanted to find a way that could make it easier for me to work from home and have flexibility but also to channel my creativity and other talents I hadn’t unleashed just yet.
SEO and GRIT
Every business owner has their own unique values and skills but we all have grit and determination, as women we tend to have the underline desire to serve and create a better world. We are amazing multi-taskers and understand that we have to constantly learn new things from marketing techniques that serve our customer to SEO to help them find us.
Related: The Three Secrets of Highly Productive Entrepreneurs
Intuition
What holds us back is the constant ebb and flow of being in business, sometimes it’s so rewarding, other times we go to the depths of despair, all in one day!! Being resourceful and reaching out to other female entrepreneurs for help and support have been a huge help to me in creating Naivilo.
Naivilo was created from a deep place of intuition, I wanted to solve the problem of body odour using natural grounding nourishing products. As much as I wanted to avoid the scientist in me it was that part of me that helped create the science backed product in the end. Helping people, especially women and young girls, overcome their body odour problem by dealing with the bacteria causing the smell never loses its joy for me.
Related: How Parenting Principles Align with Business
Mission
Hearing great feedback from customers who are sharing their experience of using a natural prebiotic deodorant going through chemotherapy gives me the grit to keep going. My mission with Naivilo is to “Change the way we deodorise our bodies, one armpit at a time”.
Connection
Looking back at these last 4 years gives me a sense of pride that I changed something about my life and created something that didn’t exist 5 years ago and now it’s in customers’ bathrooms. The journey has been exhausting but I met the most amazing people who are showing up in their own lives and sharing their skills with the business world in their own unique way. I adore that part of business, that was missing from working in a hospital…. connection to creative souls on a mission.
Related: Three Steps To Help Small Business Owners Create a Regular Writing Habit
Last Thoughts
I love this quote:
There are three solutions to every problem:
Accept it, change it, leave it.
If you can’t accept it, change it.
If you can’t change it, leave it.
Much Love,
Olivia
xxx
About the Author
Olivia is a nature loving scientist who worked in a hospital laboratory for years. The challenge of an underactive thyroid prompted her to examine ingredients in common deodorants and skincare products to eliminate the hormone interruption caused by ingredients frequently found in anti-perspirants and deodorants. She found even natural deodorant products still contained irritants such as baking soda and pore blocking ingredients such as coconut oil.
Frustrated at the lack of innovation in natural deodorants she was inspired to combine her deep understanding of natural ingredients with extensive scientific knowledge to create prebiotic skincare products. Olivia enlisted her odour-producing family and friends as happy human testers (no animals involved) to perfect the formulation now enjoyed by so many.
She loves being a mum of three rascals, living in the beautiful Cork countryside, sea air and walks, yoga and trips to gorgeous cafes. She is living her dream of creating beautiful love-infused products and providing them to her amazing health conscious customers. She hopes her story will inspire them to begin their journey to their own self-care and clean beauty rituals.
You can find her innovative natural deodorant at Naivilo.com.