817 Jeanne Retief:

Jeanne Retief:

You can literally go from your highest high to your lowest low in a question of 12 hours. Something can go so incredibly right and you can be so excited just for something to completely crash the next day. And that’s just the nature of it. And it’s difficult to deal with that sometimes. a product-based business is a completely different ballgame because you have so much capital invested in it, because you have minimum order quantities, you have ingredients and things that you’re shipping from other countries in order to make the product. So yeah, those highs and lows can be extremely, extremely satisfying and extremely stressful.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know the truth. Starting and growing your own business is like strapping yourself to a never-ending roller coaster.  Today

Jeanne Retief shares how she learned from growing her business how to overcome panic attacks and why her Figgi Skincare brand is all about learning to accept ourselves as we are and leverage all those lows as learning.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Podopolo, the interactive app revolutionizing podcast discovery and discussion and making podcasting profitable for creators. I’d like to invite you to take a minute, download Podopolo from either app store, listen to the rest of this episode there, and join the conversation with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice … Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur whose growing skincare brand was borne of her own struggles with dry and sensitive skin, the panic disorder she developed while running her human rights consultancy, and a belief in accepting life’s curveballs and learning “it’s ok not to be ok”.

Jeanne Retief is the founder of Figgi Beauty, a lifestyle and skincare brand for dry and sensitive skin. Jeanne shares her entrepreneurial journey, the lessons she’s learned along the way, including how to handle the ups and downs.

Jeanne will be here in a moment, and first,

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Entrepreneurship can be extraordinarily stressful, especially for a surprisingly high proportion of entrepreneurs who have experienced trauma.  Yet entrepreneurship also offers a path to healing those traumas – and inspires many to create businesses that solve for others the challenges they themselves have faced.

Jeanne Retief built a human rights consultancy, working primarily with women who were experiencing significant adversity and stress. Before long she developed a panic disorder, which she says she handled poorly by trying to ignore it and put on a brave face. Before long, her panic disorder also resulted in very dry and sensitive skin. On a mission to help women find self-acceptance and prioritize their own self-care, she decided to draw on her certificate in cosmetic chemistry and launch the Figgi Beauty skin care brand and a growing community called Figgi Life.

Today she shares her journey, and what she’s learned along the way.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Jeanne Retief and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeanne, welcome to Wings.

Jeanne Retief:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m really happy to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m so curious what led you to found FIGGI?

Jeanne Retief:

Oh my gosh. It was a really difficult time, I call it the breaking. I had just moved or immigrated to Portugal with my husband and little daughter. I had a human rights consultancy and I’d been diagnosed with panic disorder that I mismanaged severely. So it all just came crashing down during that period and I had to make really difficult life decisions about how I was going to move forward and what were the things that were important to me.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so tell me a little bit about how that led you from what you were doing before around human rights to skincare because that’s quite a leap.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah. Yeah. So it’s also a lot about the community that I created, the FIGGI community, because in my human rights career, I worked a lot with women’s rights. I come from a trauma background myself, which is what inspired human rights in me. And I dealt with so many women where I was. They were struggling, they were stressed, they were not able to say it, especially not in a professional environment, not if you want to be seen as a high achiever. I also had been diagnosed with a panic disorder, I had a lot of shame and guilt about that. I didn’t want anybody to know because I wanted to have this brave facade. And that’s why I created the community.

And I thought I wanted to give a product that could help you in your self-care journey and help you feel well. And a large part of my panic disorder diagnosis was how sensitive my skin became. And I always loved skincare, so I decided to use what I’ve learned in human rights and how to make things work and how to help people without diplomacy and red tape, and went back to do my certificate in cosmetic chemistry and made my own skincare.

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeanne, you mentioned that just likely as a result of the trauma you’d experienced early in your life, you’re having this panic disorder and whatnot and you’re trying to put a brave face on it, and you create this whole community. So talk to me about how that then took you through to skincare.

Jeanne Retief:

So one of the things about panic disorder, one of the many beautiful things that you get with panic disorder, is really, really sensitive skin. Your skin is pretty much angry with you all the time because you have such heightened cortisol levels and your skin is your largest organ. And I wanted to not only have a space where women could come to and read about my life and my experiences and feel like they’re not alone, but also have something to help them make them feel better. And I thought about skincare because so many of us struggle with sensitive skin these days. It’s something that I know and understand extremely well. It’s your largest organ, so if it’s upset, you know about it. And that’s how it came to skincare. The line will expand for many more and other things that could help with anxiety and self-care. But the first thing that I wanted to do was create the skincare so you have a few seconds for yourself where you can just reset and recharge.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So I mean so much of these things, like what’s going on with our skin or what’s going on with our health in general, starts with what’s going on inside just in our spirit, in our heart, in our mind.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so how much it is just healing the skin and how much of it is really healing from the inside?

Jeanne Retief:

It’s so interconnected. I don’t think that you can heal the one without the other. It’s been a very hard journey for me because I was really never in a space where I was well-connected with the inside because I always felt like I was dealing with my trauma because I was helping other people, I was dealing with it every single day, but actually I was avoiding it so much and it caught up with me and it manifested physically as it many times does in such a chronic anxiety disorder or even chronic stress.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And so you’ve got to treat it from the outside in as well as the inside out?

Jeanne Retief:

Mm-hmm. That’s correct. Yeah, I had to make really, really difficult decisions and really big lifestyle changes because during my time in my human rights consultancy, I lived a very hurried life. I was always traveling, I was always away, I was not staying in very nice places obviously. I wasn’t taking care of my body, I was always in a hurry, I was working insane hours. So yeah, it’s a difficult space to be.

Melinda Wittstock:

That all adds up, and then especially when you’re dealing with human rights, I can only imagine, especially if you’re empathetic in any way, which I imagine you are given your inclination to help people, that all their stories, I mean you’re surrounded by heartbreak a lot of the time as well.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah. A lot of it is secondary trauma because you do think that it doesn’t affect you and it’s your job and you’re used to it and you’re desensitized. But somebody once told me the mind forgets, but the body never. And yeah, my body caught up with me and hit the brake pretty severely.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. No, it’s completely understandable. So you set out then to create this skincare line. It’s so interesting how so many women’s businesses start from a place of, “I have this issue and I don’t see anybody solving this problem.” And you look around, no one’s doing it, so you put your hand up, “I guess it’s me.”

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right? And then you end up solving it. So talk me through the process of what it took. I’m thinking of all the things you have to do to create a skincare line. I mean it’s not only the formulation and what makes it different from other things out there in the market, what makes it work? How are you going to package it? How are you going to sell it? All these different things. So talk to me about that process of what you went through.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah, I’m really happy that you’re asking me that because to be completely honest, it’s been tough. This has probably been one of the hardest… No, it’s really been the hardest thing I’ve ever done because I came from a service background, so I knew how to put together programs and projects and developments for communities and things like that. But I never done any product based business. I didn’t have any science background so I had to go back and do my certificate in cosmetic chemistry. But I also had to learn so many other things. I needed to learn about logistics, warehousing, shipping, international tax laws and setting up international businesses and where you need to be registered, the formulations, what can you mix with what? And how do you make it be the way that you want it to be? How do you do the packaging? What’s allowed and not allowed? The EU regulations. It’s been a minefield three years in the making, and I did it all myself. I didn’t have any help. And yeah, it’s hard. It’s really been hard.

Melinda Wittstock:

So tell me about why you did it all yourself and why you didn’t have any help. Did you not think to ask for it, or was it just very much you assumed that you needed to do it all on your own?

Jeanne Retief:

No, not at all. It’s just that at the stage where I was at, I had just finished with, or I had just decided to not continue with my consultancy and do something different. And I didn’t have the budget to appoint a team. I have a family, I have a house, we had just moved to a different country. It wasn’t possible for me to just go ahead and start this office and have all of these specialists advising me. I was already giving my family a knock by choosing not to have this set and permanent income from my consultancy anymore. So I had to do it myself if I wanted it to work.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I mean so many of us do that I mean I think with launching, because if you’re launching a business and you’re not sitting on a pile of money.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right?

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

You have to create diamonds out of coal somehow. So there is a phase where you are doing it all yourself necessarily, but there’s a certain point where to grow, gosh, I mean we all need help. Was there a certain-

Jeanne Retief:

For sure.

Melinda Wittstock:

Have you built a team now around what you do?

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah, and I think that’s what we don’t talk about enough. And that’s one of my things with the FIGGI community as well is just how tired I am of all of this self-help, how to advice, because life happens and it’s not fair to demotivate people by a way that describes how they should be thinking or acting or being positive or not being positive. And the same with businesses, you can read all the best books and have all the best advice. But to me personally, it always feels like they skim over this part. “Oh, it was so difficult in the beginning, but then everything went great and the company just grew and everything was amazing.” But that little three sentences and the chapter of it being hard is actually the story. That’s what led you to the success. And that chapter is really, really difficult. And it’s okay. It’s okay if you’re there and it’s okay if it’s difficult. I just feel like people need to know that there is a community that supports them in that and you will get through it. If you want to, you will.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, 100%. I mean I ask though because women in particular do have a hard time asking for help, let alone [inaudible 00:12:31] it. I mean we are wired to think we have to do everything ourselves.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

And I know I’ve struggled with that in my entrepreneurial career, just getting better at just asking and then allowing there to be silence and allowing myself to receive. And it sounds so simple, but it’s actually been quite a struggle actually to get to that, where I can actually do that.

Jeanne Retief:

No, for sure. That I completely agree. And especially when you’re in the beginning and you’re doing something completely new, it’s also the fear of asking because you don’t want to ask stupid questions for one, and for the second one, you don’t want to make mistakes. So that also comes into not asking for help. But I have to say that I am finally in a position with FIGGI Beauty that I can now ask for help and I can have a good team behind me. And it’s really made such a difference to me because I’ve recently had a relapse in my panic journey because of taking all of this on myself and just having no rest and just going forward, forward, forward, forward. And it’s been so necessary for me and I’m so, so grateful because it’s made such a difference.

Melinda Wittstock:

So what were some of the biggest challenges along the way? Because you mentioned there’s a long list of things you had to do.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

What was the hardest? I mean what was something that you had to overcome or those moments like, “Oh my God, I didn’t anticipate this, what do I do?”

Jeanne Retief:

I would say for me, the hardest part, it’s been an uphill battle, has been marketing because from my previous background, when I say I had no social media experience, I mean I didn’t even know how to open Instagram because when you work in a human rights field, I mean it’s a really big no-no to be on social media and you work with a lot of sensitive content. So that was just really never my world. And when I started FIGGI, the whole landscape of business had changed, especially product businesses because everybody’s stories on Instagram, everybody connects with you there or on some kind of social media platform and I just had no idea how complicated these algorithms are and how you should be posting and what you should be posting. And I honestly did not know, it was that complicated. And it has bolt me over so many times this past year, it has really by far been my biggest challenge.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. It’s interesting because all these learning curves, right, there’s so many different aspects of a business and there’s this necessity in the beginning when it’s all you to learn all aspects of it. And then after a while, you can hire people because when you try and be good at everything, I mean nobody’s good at everything, right? You have your natural things where you’re a genius and things where you’re excellent, things where you’re competent and things that you suck at, everybody’s the same, right?

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

So trying to get into the thing where you’re in your zone of genius and maybe a little bit in your excellence but you’ve hired the rest is the optimal. So how big is your team right now and how is that organized?

Jeanne Retief:

So at the moment, I have a team of consultants that are helping me and I have a team that looks after Instagram. I’m so grateful because I really still don’t understand it the way I’m supposed to. I also have a team of two that are helping me with my Facebook and the advertising part with regards to that. Then I have a team of chemists and 3D designers and packaging designers that help me with the marketing materials and the actual formulations and making the formulations. And I also have a team of two that help me with shipping and logistics and warehousing and just understanding what is the best options to get things from point A to point B and not get stuck in customs and duties and all of that. So I’ve been really, really blessed to have been able to accumulate this outside knowledge to just help me full on where I’m definitely not my strongest.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well what’s very funny is when we read about entrepreneurs, I think people who are not entrepreneurs who haven’t actually done this and they have an idea of what it’s like and it may seem even very glamorous, this idea of you’re your own boss.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

You’ve got freedom to set your own schedule, you’ve got flexibility, you have all these things, and a lot of those things for sure are true. But the glamour part, I mean that comes at the end once you’re successful and there’s a whole phase where it’s anything but that. Was it surprising to you in your journey some of the things? Just I’m thinking of all the stresses and strains we go through because there’s a lot of stress involved like, “Oh my God, can I make payroll,” that kind of thing.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah. I always describe to be an entrepreneur as four seasons in one day, because you can literally go from your highest high to your lowest low in a question of 12 hours. Something can go so incredibly right and you can be so excited just for something to completely crash the next day. And that’s just the nature of it. And it’s difficult to deal with that sometimes. And luckily, I had some experience with that because of my consultancy, so I’ve had ups and downs there as well. But a product-based business is a completely different ballgame because you have so much capital invested in it, because you have minimum order quantities, you have ingredients and things that you’re shipping from other countries in order to make the product. So yeah, those highs and lows can be extremely, extremely satisfying and extremely stressful.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it’s true. Actually that’s the thing I’ve found over time, I mean with all the businesses I’ve done. Now, I mean I can have a day that has those ups and downs but they’re not as dramatic. And it’s probably because I’ve lived through so many of them. So now it’s like, “Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, right, sure.” I have no idea how something’s going to happen and then just… But I’ve lived through this before so I’ll do it again, you know what I mean?

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah, for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:

After a while, I mean the thing that I’ve come to is that it’s not really about me in the end. All these things, they’re just happening, right? And it’s how you react to them that matters. There’s so much that you can’t control. So as these things are going on, trying to figure out how to dis-attach from any sense of not good enough feelings or unworthiness feelings or shame of not having succeeded to where you thought you were going to be or all these sorts of things, because that’s the stuff that makes it hard. So if you can dis-attach yourself from those sorts of things and just like, “Oh, okay, I’ve got this challenge. This is interesting. This is a learning opportunity,” and reframe adversity I guess in that way. What’s your process for dealing with that? Have you noticed changes in terms of how you deal with the inevitable stress of all of this?

Jeanne Retief:

Because of my diagnosis, I have to be very careful about how I deal with that stress. So I have to be very aware of my mindset. And I have seen that I have become more desensitized to some of it because it’s almost like it’s mentally and physically impossible to just stress out about everything all the time. But I do find it hard to let go, especially when it’s something big that I’m really, really stressed about. I will lie awake at night and I will worry about it, and it’s just not feasible. So now when it happens, I try to pour myself a glass of wine or buy myself a massage or something that I wouldn’t usually do and celebrate it. Just like you know what? It didn’t work out the way that I wanted it to work out, I’m celebrating it because that means something else will come along or tomorrow is a new day.

So instead of focusing on all the negative about it, I try to take it into a positive space and just be happy with it and celebrate it. It’s an achievement instead of a failure or instead of something that didn’t go my way.

Melinda Wittstock:

This theme comes up with all female founders and it always prompts me to say if you want therapy, be an entrepreneur, because the stuff that it throws at you makes you have to grow, otherwise you just don’t succeed at it. Because there’s so many challenges, you have to grow as a person and your mindset and all these different things. To me, it’s almost become a spiritual exercise now. I mean it sounds weird, but really true. So if I’m in the right mindset, stuff just tends to happen sometimes even without my effort. And it’s a very, very different lens. So rather than worrying about, it’s often just surrendering, letting it go and then amazing things happen. I don’t know, it’s odd, but I’ve noticed that in my life.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah. No, I completely agree. And because of the blog and the podcast, it’s been a very cathartic experience for me having FIGGI because I had so much shame and guilt, for example, about my panic disorder in my consultancy and what would people think and they would think I’m lesser than, or that I can’t handle stress, or that I can’t do the type of work others can do. And letting go of all of that and being so raw and vulnerable in my blogs and my podcast, sometimes I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m going to say this and I’m going to put this out there.” But just understanding that I’m not the only one. So many other women feel this way and it’s okay.

It’s okay not to be okay. It’s okay not to have all the answers. It’s okay to struggle. It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to do it the way that it works for you. It’s okay. It’s just that I don’t think we say these things out loud often enough to other women in this space and we end up feeling so alone, and that loneliness causes the stress and the pressure to be so much worse.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s really true because that’s the thing, we’re all going through the same thing in fact.

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s why this podcast has been of therapy for me. With every female founder I talk to, I hear something of my own experience in them and vice versa. And you realize that everybody’s slightly different, but everybody is pretty much going through a lot of the same things. So tell me a little bit more about your skincare brand then. I want to know what’s different about it in its formulation and such? How does it stand out from anyone else out there who has a solution for sensitive or dry skin?

Jeanne Retief:

So the most important thing is the green rooibos extract. I’m South African and rooibos tea is a staple. It’s got so many scientifically proven benefits. It’s an amazing anti-inflammatory for your skin. It’s a powerful antioxidant and it only grows naturally in a very small part of South Africa. And all the products have that. So that’s the big, big thing. Then all of the products are not only fragrance free, but essential oils free because a lot of times you will buy products that are fragrance free, but they have essential oils to mask smells and essential oils are very or can be very upsetting to sensitive skin.

And honestly, it’s been so tough for me to find products for sensitive skin that not only work, but still make me feel like I’m having a luxury skincare experience. Sometimes those two minutes that I have to look after my skin is my only me time in the day, and I still want to feel special. And a lot of the sensitive skin products have been regaled to, I don’t mean it offensively, but to these drugstore, really boring packaging skincare. So I wanted to bring the luxury experience back to sensitive skin with the knowing that you’re okay and it’s really a formulation that will not upset your skin, and that will really just work for you and make you feel special.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s wonderful. The skincare and cosmetics entrepreneurs that I’ve had on the show, always has their secret ingredient and often it is from something specific to where they’re from or whatever. So I’m always fascinated by that. The skincare industry really is changing pretty quickly as well, I think, isn’t it? I mean are consumers just demanding more and more transparency into what the ingredients are and the formulations and such?

Jeanne Retief:

Yeah, for sure. And I completely understand that because I have sensitive skin myself. And I mean it’s so upsetting for me if I have to spend half of my day looking for a body lotion that’s fragrance-free and lanolin-free and essential oils-free because it severely upsets my skin. And then you get the product and there’s ingredients listed on the bottle that was not there when you purchased it online. So yeah, transparency is a very big thing. And I’m very pro that in FIGGI Beauty, I’m open to what it is and what it is not. And if it’s for you, it’s for you. And if it’s not, it’s not. But I’m not going to say, for example, the entire line is natural because it’s not ethical to do that.

Rooibos is natural and it is organic and many of the ingredients is natural, but it’s not legally correct to say that your entire product is natural if there’s any ingredient in your product that has a synthetic base, and most products have preservatives, most natural ingredients need some synthetic energy to release the extract to be able to work in the formulation. So a lot of skincare companies do that, but I’m just not into that marketing line. So I understand the transparency thing and I understand why consumers wanted it, because it’s really hard if you’re looking for something specific and you can’t find it or you’re promised something that it in fact is not.

Melinda Wittstock:

I want to make sure that people know where to find you. Of course, you have a podcast which is amazing and also where to find FIGGI Skincare.

Jeanne Retief:

You can find the FIGGI Skincare at FIGGI, F-I-G-G-I.eu, that’s the shop. You can also find it on figgilife.com where you’ll find the shop, the podcast and the blog.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Jeanne Retief:

Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I’m so, so grateful.