909 Jeriel Sydney & Bobbie Cunningham:

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Jeriel Sydney:

Our business is really based on this idea of this ancestral line of women. There’s always been a time where there was this thread that bonded all women. And that has kind of tuned us into each other as well, like, you can sense the anxiety, you can sense the fear.

Bobbie Cunningham:

I think there is definitely a fear of powerful women going back to witches, the idea that they were doing something different or that men didn’t like or didn’t understand we were punished. And it’s continued in all these different ways. And there is definitely a fear of women having more power, of having more opinions, of having more strength, of having more ideas, bigger ideas, all of that.

Melinda Wittstock:

History, and Herstory, is like a pendulum. As women reach ever new heights of success and power, the misogynist backlash gets triggered. Here in the US our rights and freedoms are under attack – from access to reproductive healthcare to efforts to remove women from active combat in the military. Yet women entrepreneurs continue to outperform exclusively male founding teams, and increasingly we’re learning that we can succeed only when we support each other. Jeriel Sydney and Bobbie Cunningham are the co-founders of Fablerune, a sustainable, natural and luxury clean beauty brand. Today they share their story building a conscious business that is focused on doing well by doing good for women and the world.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock, merry Christmas and happy holidays all, 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 all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today, on Christmas Eve, I hope you are taking some time for yourself, time to appreciate yourself, time to slow down a bit and connect with your soul, your inner fire, and find your inner peace. We live in turbulent times and our self-care and connection with each other has never seemed more important. Today we meet two inspiring entrepreneurs who fused their skills to build a unique clean beauty brand infused with a conscious spiritual mission and a desire to connect women to each other and our higher purpose. Jeriel Sydney and Bobbie Cunningham are the co-founders of Fablerune, which started out making goats milk soap and grew from there to a full line of skincare, hair care and home products sold direct to consumer and also available in luxury boutique hotels. They are also co-authors of The Fable Book of Runes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeriel and Bobbie will be here in a moment, and first:

In the New Year, I’m doubling down on my mission to support women entrepreneurs. Since I began this podcast in 2017, I’ve driven more than $10 million in revenue to women-owned businesses, just by doing what I love to do on this show – having authentic conversations with female founders that affirm and acclaim their entrepreneurial journeys. I believe we must all genuinely support each other from a place of abundance, so first, if you’re on Bluesky, please connect with me there – melindawittstock.bsky.social. Second, as I continue to build the podcast platform Podopolo, I’ve also become a venture partner in a new fund that invests in seed stage women-founded companies that are changing the world with a social impact mission. I’ll be sharing more about that exciting news in the New Year! 

Melinda Wittstock:

What does it take for women entrepreneurs to build businesses for social good, with business models, products and processes that are good for people, the planet and profit? Today Jeriel Sydney and Bobbie Cunningham share their journey creating a safe, shame-free environment for women, developing healthy, holistic and sustainable beauty products, and aligning with a mission to empower women. They share their insights on the transformative power of community, the importance of intentional growth, what we can learn from ancestral wisdom, and why it’s vital women support women at every life stage. Most every business starts from humble beginnings, and FABLERUNE is no different, from a rustic farm in Italy learning how to make goats milk soap to the San Francisco Bay Area, where they’ve built a successful and growing business focused on social responsibility. Plus, the inside skinny on their new book inspired by ancient runes called The Fable Book of Runes.

Melinda Wittstock:

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

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeriel and Bobbie, welcome to Wings.

Bobbie Cunningham:

Hi. Hi. Thanks for having us.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, let’s start at the beginning. I’m intrigued by how you came up with the whole concept for Fablerune.

Jeriel Sydney:

Well, the origin story is long, and I think it’s important. I think every entrepreneur has that moment where they’re, like, on a path setting forward, and, like, the cosmos come together, and they’re like, this is not the right way. And they get this pull to start pulling things together themselves. And so, for me, our house flooded three times in one month when we were living in San Francisco. And my husband is a Michelin star pastry chef. And we just looked at each other like, got to get out of here. And at that time, I was in graduate school for clinical psychology and counseling, and we just packed up and moved to Italy. And then we had been kind of grinding ourselves out in San Francisco, just working all the time, going to school all the time, and just draining our bodies for other people and for also unknown reasons.

Jeriel Sydney:

So, we traveled through Italy, and we spent a month on a farm there, where I had the opportunity to learn how to make goat’s milk soap and pigs fat. So very rustically, like, we made the lye from, you know, the charcoal and the terracotta. And I thought I was going to be kind of grossed out by it, but it was such a beautiful process, and I found such joy working with my hands. I grew up in a really rural area where everything we did was by hand. So, it just kind of brought me home. And I felt the strong desire to take what I had already learned in my undergrad and graduate and combine it with this thing that really fulfilled me. So when I got back to the States, I started making, like 12 soaps at a time and selling them to, like, the Scarlet Sage and, like, these weird hippie stores in San Francisco that were amazing and super supportive and provided the groundwork to build the dream of doing something bigger. And so, I dropped out of graduate school and decided to be a full-time maker.

Jeriel Sydney:

And it was a really powerful time in Oakland where they had so many support groups. And I just felt like, okay, I have the resources. I have a community to back me. I’m ready to go. And so, I applied for a craft fair that was really big in San Francisco. It’s called Renegade. And I don’t know how I got in.

Jeriel Sydney:

And so I was, like, running around trying to figure out how to do a booth, what it was going to look like, and panicking that all I had to sell was soap. And so that night, I went to Michael’s. I started making bath soaks. I made some candles, and I sold out of everything. And I was like, okay, like, I’m going to do this full time. And I did. We started the company with $286 in my account, bootstrapped, which was, looking back, a beautiful thing.

Jeriel Sydney:

And, like, such a big roadblock for me because, you know, you have so much legal requirements when you start a business. I was so naive to what needed to happen for what I was selling. And in a way, it was a blessing and a curse. But I had the support of kind of a mentor who kind of guided me through ways that I could get things done with grants and support groups and all of these things that the Bay Area had. And once the business started to grow a little bit bigger and Tim and I really realized, my husband, that we were burned out, and we needed to kind of find a space where we could open up our own businesses and really focus on. On a community that we felt like we belonged in, a community we wanted to bring something special to.

Jeriel Sydney:

We both knew immediately in our hearts that we wanted to come back tomorrow Bay, because that is where Bobbie was and her husband Dan. And so, our husbands grew up together. They’ve known each other since they were 6. And Bobbie has been my closest friend for the last 18 years. And I was just kind of, like, journaling every day that I wanted to work with her, that I needed her on board. And when I came down here, we got connected with some bigger companies like Farm Girl Flowers and a few other brands that wanted really big orders. For me, at the time, they were big.

Jeriel Sydney:

They were like 500 pieces. And I called Bobbie, and I was like, I need help. And she came over, and we just connected, and it was for the first time of doing the business, I felt like it could grow because I’m very good at, like, connecting with people. I’m very good at writing and being creative and making things. But if you put an Excel spreadsheet in front of me, like, my homeschool mind is like, nope, nope.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, this Is the interesting thing about, businesses that have sole founders, right? There comes a time where, you know, as the founder and the CEO, you cannot do everything yourself. And there are blind spots or skill things, and it sounds like you bring totally different things to the table, which is really kind of critical for growth. So, Bobbie, when you were like, okay, so you’ve been friends all this time; what was your calculus in terms of, yeah, like, I want to come do this.

Bobbie Cunningham:

Jeriel and I had been friends for a long time, and I was working in corporate finance for an automotive manufacturing company, which I felt really good at. I knew what I was doing. I, it was a very comfortable job for me, but a high stress job. It was just me burning myself out for someone else’s business and for them to basically just, you know, they got, they, they just got all of my energy, all of my, my stress. And it just, it came to a point where it wasn’t working for me anymore. And I kept having these dreams that Jeriel and I did fable together. And it just kept happening on like, more and more recurring basis. And it was interesting because I was having these thoughts and Jeriel was having these thoughts, and we hadn’t really talked about it ever.

Bobbie Cunningham:

And then it came to a point and we both sat down and we’re like, let’s do this together. You know, like, she needs help to grow. And I know manufacturing, I know business growth. And if we put those two things together, we’re kind of filling all the holes that each of us has. And it really kind of just happened organically that way. And it’s been, you know, it’s been a learning curve and it’s been smooth, and it’s been rocky, and it’s been amazing, and it’s been stressful. And, you know, we’ve seen our growth just continue year over year. And I think it’s because we trust each other, and we recognize each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and we support each other.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, entrepreneurship can be very lonely. Like, it’s not easy, right? I’ve built five businesses and there’s always something. You, you, You’d think that it would get easier with a fifth. There’s just new things that come at you…

Bobbie Cunningham:

The constant problem solving and the things.

Melinda Wittstock:

..You can’t control and such. And so, tell me a little bit about how you guys work with each other, because your whole brand, you know, feels very holistic to me. And it’s very focused on, you know, self-care. How do you self-care each other?

Jeriel Sydney:

Okay, this is Jeriel speaking, and we self-care, actually really well, Bobbie. If there’s a problem, she hits it head on. And for me, that’s like such a powerful form of self-care because I will ruminate on a thing I said or something I did wrong, and it will cause me this massive amount of anxiety and I can’t function, and I can’t be productive. And I think that people don’t think of that as, like, wellness. But Bobbie will come to me, and she’ll be like, hey, I feel like maybe I said something kind of harsh or, hey, you said this. And it just didn’t align with what I was thinking we were doing.

Jeriel Sydney:

And the ability for her to just, like, confront me is the most powerful tool of self-care and self-preservation and business preservation that. But also, we innately know each other. We sit by each other all day. And so, like, I can catch when Bobbie is not breathing, and I’m like, you know, hey, do you want to go for a walk or something? Like, you’ve stopped breathing.

Bobbie Cunningham:

Yeah, this is Bobbie speaking now. I think we can see physical moments in each other where the person needs support from the other one of us. And that’s been something that we’ve learned over time, and I think we’ve gotten really good at is spotting when one of us is drowning and needs help or spotting when one of us should take the lead. And it’s all just been an evolution of it too. You know, in the beginning, my directness was almost too harsh.

Bobbie Cunningham:

I’ve learned how to soften, and Jeriel has learned how to understand that I’m not coming from a place of attacking her or putting anyone down. I’m coming from a place of problem solving and just trying to make sure we recognize that we don’t have time to ruminate and stress about things. We have to find a solution and move forward.

Jeriel Sydney:

Yeah. And also, our business is really based on this idea of this ancestral line of women. And there’s always been a time where there was this thread that bonded all women. And we kind of try to meditate on that and really focus what we’re writing about. And that has kind of tuned us into each other as well, like, you can sense the anxiety, you can sense the fear. And then also just like, when you’re out and you’re doing something, and you see something that you feel like they need. Like, it’s just this intuition.

Jeriel Sydney:

I have two small kids, and they are very intense. Bobbie won’t even talk to me or anything. And she’ll come in and she’ll just like, have a matcha for me. And it’s like she innately knew that I. I didn’t sleep and I’m not okay. So, we always kind of fall back on. Like, it sounds like, oh, woo, woo. But, like, there’s a tie between us now.

Jeriel Sydney:

And there used to be this tie between all women. You know, we’re separated now by distance, by work, by all of these things. But we always try to remind our customers and remind ourselves that if you tune in, if you take a minute, you can see what the bigger picture, you can solve the bigger problem, and you can be there for the people that need you.

Bobbie Cunningham:

Yeah.

Jeriel Sydney:

And so that’s kind of become the focus of how we care for each other and how we care for our customers.

Melinda Wittstock:

What a beautiful vision, especially at the time we find ourselves in. In the world where women are finding their voices, finding their power and that connection. We literally have been separated from each other sort of on purpose. And I wonder what you think about this. Whether the reaction and the misogyny and just like the crazy stuff that we’re seeing that’s coming out into the open is really just a reaction that actually validates in a way of that power that we have, whether it’s expressed in entrepreneurship, art, like, you know, medicine. What are your thoughts on that?

Bobbie Cunningham:

I think there is definitely a fear of powerful women. And there has been, you know, going back to witches. Like, you think about women, and they weren’t doing anything wrong or anything weird, but the idea that they were doing something different or that men didn’t like or didn’t understand, we were punished. And it’s continued in all these different ways. And there is definitely a fear of women having more power, of having more opinions, of having more strength, of having more ideas, bigger ideas, all of that.

Jeriel Sydney:

This is Jeriel speaking. I got my undergrad in gender studies. And so, for me, watching the difference as education became more available to women. The way that that shifted the relationships at home, the increase in domestic violence, the increase in divorce, all of these things kind of coincided with women reclaiming their voice, reclaiming their power and finding again, through sisterhood, through those friendships that I thought I wasn’t good at math, I thought I was, you know, not smart because I missed kind of four years of school in this homeschool situation. And I know now that I am incredibly intelligent, I’m incredibly intuitive. And that comes from having a supportive husband who believes so much in, like, women’s rights, women like the activism that I’m always doing, the work that Bobbie is doing with me, and the way that everybody has been coming together to help teach me the things that I lost, especially in college. And now you see this fierce, like, push back on women, and you even see women pushing back on it, because I think we’re afraid of how much power and how much intellect we have and how much capacity for change that we could possibly make. It’s so fear based and it’s the repercussions of that.

Bobbie Cunningham:

That power.

Jeriel Sydney:

Yeah. And it’s inevitable. It’s going to happen. You know, we’re resilient, we’re strong. We’ve been doing this since the 1600s, like having, you know, these weird male doctors behind a shield while a woman’s giving birth and the midwife is doing all of the work, but this doctor is getting the credit, and he won’t touch blood. You know, you look at this history and it’s just fucking. It’s bizarre. And I think that now that we have this powerful form of communication through social media, through like social groups, online, through self-care.

Jeriel Sydney:

Yeah. We’re seeing women come together in ways that we never have before. We do workshops all the time at the warehouse. And it’s these nights where Bobbie and I do facial sun and every. And every women, all the women in the class. And then we also do something creative, have them make a product or whatever. But by the end of the night, you have 20 or 30 women without any makeup on just loving on each other and like cheering each other on and sharing how hard the burden is to be a moment, to be in charge of the household, to be in charge of the finances, to have to work, to have to get to every soccer game, all of that. And it’s this shared camaraderie.

Jeriel Sydney:

And it’s like, I could help you and you can help me. And I see that growing, you know, politically, I see it growing in entrepreneurship, I see it growing in business, and despite what’s happening right now politically, I see the sea change coming, and I’m so optimistic and, like, deathly afraid. But, you know, it’s this combination of women have always been resilient. We have always come together, and we will always save each other, and we will always save, you know, humanity, for that matter. So, there’s a lot to be said about what will happen over the next four years and the way that women stand up and strong women like you, strong women like us, and the role we play in it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, exactly. It’s a really interesting thing about how to navigate this without falling back into scarcity and fear. I mean, one of the things that I’ve been on a mission on for a long time, and in fact, the reason I do this podcast, is to really encourage an ecosystem where women really show up for each other, beyond the kind of ‘you go girl’ sentiment, but in actual things like buying from other women, right? Promoting other women, mentoring other women, and close to my heart, investing in other women and other women’s businesses and really encouraging women to do that. And I think sometimes just in that kind of scarcity, we fall into the trap of doing so many things right because we balance so much with business. We have kids, relationships, this, that, whatever.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m curious your thoughts on, like, how to help women into that practice? Because as long in current circumstances, especially as long as we can really focus on that, there, there’s like literally kind of strength in numbers, right? But it requires that kind of abundance, mindset, and truly being excited for other women to help other women fly. Do you know what I mean? That we’re all. We all, like, literally soar higher when we fly together. So, what are some of the conversations that you’re having, like, together, but also with your customers, with, you know, other female founders along those lines?

Jeriel Sydney:

Okay, this is a long answer and a short answer, but when I worked at the resource center, oftentimes we would take survivors and have them come and work and teach the other survivors how to process what they were going through. And so, in our business, we’ve taken that mindset of we take the time, and we heal one woman. You know, we take the time to heal her skin, talk to her, and then she has a capacity, she has a strength, she is empowered to tell someone else and tell someone else and tell someone else, and it comes Together where we have this community where they’re teaching each other and they know if they need a resource, we’re there for them. But then we have this other community where we’re get to meet women like you and you know, different beauty editors and different writers and you see this circle slowly form and you get more comfortable after. For me, I got more comfortable after watching these survivors support each other, asking for help. You know, I think as women, we don’t want to ask for help. We want to bear the burden; we want to carry the load.

Jeriel Sydney:

You know, like, it’s the myth of…

Bobbie Cunningham:

…Like, women can do it all. Yeah, A bullshit term. And it shouldn’t be that women have to do it all. Women can do a lot, and they can also delegate and they can also ask for help, and they should do all those things.

Melinda Wittstock:

Thank you for saying that. I’m a partner of a new VC firm that’s really focused on investing in women. And j in the time that I’ve been building businesses but also mentoring other women and such, I’ve always asked questions like, why don’t you play a bigger game? Where are the female-led moonshots? Like the female led potential billion-dollar companies. And I’ve always noticed there’s just a kind of flicker of dread in the eye of anyone.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, oh my God, I’m already doing so much. And so, there’s this artificial ceiling put on what’s possible by the thought that you have to do it all. And it keeps us playing smaller than we need to. So that whole aspect of really understanding leverage, like, you know, you don’t have to do it all to have it all. Right. Like, so thank you for saying that. I mean, I think it’s really important for all of us to remember that there shouldn’t really be limits or artificial limits to dreams.

Bobbie Cunningham:

Well, and I think too something that we’ve realized is that it fluctuates. At some points in our life, our children are the priority. At some points in our life, our business is the priority, our friendship is the priority. And it’s okay to shift those priorities around occasionally to make it for you to have the stress level reduced, to have you at your best in whatever priority is at the moment. You can be the best mom, right now, take a break and go be the best business owner for a little while.

Melinda Wittstock:

And there are seasons.

Bobbie Cunningham:

Yes.

Jeriel Sydney:

Yeah. And this is Jeriel. Just because we’re working together, there’s times when Bobbie can say, I’ve got a soccer tournament. I’ve got this, this, and this, and you need to take the helm. And there’s times when I can say, I’ve got this, this, and this. You need to take the home and creating that dialogue, because we’re both women, we’re both owning the company. There’s no shame ever saying, I don’t have this, and I need your help and stepping up for each other. And it creates a wonderful environment for our employees, for our daughters to see.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Jeriel Sydney and Bobbie Cunningham, co-founders of clean beauty brand Fablerune.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Jeriel Sydney:

I think that that’s truly important is asking for help, delegating and just knowing it’s not possible.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. 100%. So, let’s talk about your business. Let’s talk about your products. What makes them different, special? What are some of the things that women can find right now on your website?

Jeriel Sydney:

I think the biggest thing about our brand that is so special is that we’ve looked at the women’s life cycle. You know, both of Bobbi and I have had terrible skin. I had the most to be dramatic, oppressive cystic acne. Like, I couldn’t leave the house. And I never had someone telling me it was okay. You know, beauty was number one. Your health was second. And so, we put our bodies through all of these things.

Jeriel Sydney:

When we started with Fablerune, it became our priority to look at how our bodies change with adolescent hormonal changes, perimenopause, menopause, pre and postpartum, and focusing ingredients that are going to deal with that specific PH change and. And help women cope with it. And also know you’re not alone. If you’re 40 and you got, you know, a weird acne breakout on your chin, so do like 3,000 other women. You’re not alone. There’s not an idea of perfection. There is an idea of health and healing coming from the inside, from your mind, and then it comes to your skin. It’s a holistic approach, you know, and we’re not trying to sell people a billion products.

Jeriel Sydney:

We want you to look at what works for your skin. And we’re happy to, like, look at other brands and say, this is what you need to try because we don’t make it, and this is what you need. This was what will help you. And in conjunction, use our cleanser with the turmeric and the charcoal and the copy, but because that will Balance your PH and this will heal the acne scars. And also trying to take away the shame that women feel about, you know, getting laser or, you know, getting support healing acne scars. You know, I think a lot of beauty brands, especially in our realm where it’s very holistic, very clean, there’s this narrative of you can’t, you know, go get like med spa treatments.

Bobbie Cunningham:

Sometimes the damage is done in your youth and it’s before you have all the knowledge, it’s before you have all the right ingredients, the right products. And you need some external support from a laser treatment, from a chemical peel, something like that that really boosts the collagen, that peels those scars. And we’re, we’re not afraid to talk about that, talk about the things that we’ve had done to our skin. You know, we really are trying to be honest with our customers about what realistically topical treatments can do versus like what you have to do to repair like historical damage.

Jeriel Sydney:

Yeah. And coming back to your gut, coming back to your mental health. But also, just women have existed in shame for so long and it’s kind of our mentality is like, no shame here.

Jeriel Sydney:

You can say anything to us and it’s like, yep, we’ve heard that before, we’ve done that before. And so, we really try to make it a safe space for women and men. I mean, not to be like by any means discriminatory, but we do just work mostly with women. I just, it’s so important that the shame is taken out of our narrative as a culture.

Melinda Wittstock:

So true. Yeah. So, tell me where the business where you sell primarily online through your own website, but also in luxury hotels as well.

Bobbie Cunningham:

A lot of our business is on our website, fablerune.com and then we have a really great hotel partner here on the central coast that owns seven properties. They carry our amenity line, which is our shampoo, our conditioner, lotion, cleanser. And I think we have about 15 properties total. Not all here on the central coast, but California and like the western regions. And then we partner with boutique stores all across the nation. We really look for people who are like minded, who care about the environment, who care about the products that they’re selling, care about the founders of the products. It’s not just a product anymore.

Bobbie Cunningham:

You have to know a little bit about the founder. And what are they about and because if they aren’t living the life that they’re promoting, like, you shouldn’t be selling their products. And so, we rely on those retail partners to be kind of the boots on the ground as far as getting our products into new hands of customers. And we’ve experimented with things like Amazon stores and with Whole Foods and Erewhon and larger subscription boxes. And they’ve been. Some have been great, and some have been okay, and some have been awful. And that’s a learning curve for us. We try to say yes to as many opportunities as we can, but I think we’ve found the most success communicating directly with our social media following directly with our newsletter followers.

Bobbie Cunningham:

That’s where we get real questions, we get real people, we get to really connect and kind of bridge the gap between them. Feeling like they can’t talk to the founders of this company.

Jeriel Sydney:

Yeah. Also, we do have an esthetician program, so we have these beautiful bodyworkers that are using our products and sharing how they can shape your skin, how they can heal your skin. And so that’s also like a really great avenue of growth for us, like having these proxy people to be us in front of our customers. And, you know, we’re looking now to expand a credo and detox market and looking at these bigger retailers that have similar mindsets as us Cap Beauty and just kind of focusing on growing in that direction and just being more intentional. You know, when you start a business, you’re so blind to what you truly want to be and what your brand really stands for sometimes. And just like, you know, aging as a woman, you realize so much of yourself is so different than you thought, and that’s the way it is with the business. You know, we undervalued ourselves, we undervalued our product, and, you know, we’ve reached this place where you see the beauty in the product, we see the results in the product and the value in the product. And we’ve kind of reclaimed where we want to be and how we want to sell and how we want to connect to our customers.

Jeriel Sydney:

You know, like, we have calls all the time at the office, and I’ll sit, talk to somebody for like 15 minutes about their skin. And it’s not always reasonable, but I hope that someone at our space is always available to answer the phone and answer those questions. So, we train our team to not just be a production manager, but also to be a support system for. For our customers, you know, because you never know who’s going to be there any day. Who’s going to call, who’s going to email? It’s all about education, and it’s about choosing the right partners and just knowing your value.

Bobbie Cunningham:

Yeah. I think in the beginning, when you’re a really young brand and a door opens for you, it’s so exciting to just walk through that door because it’s an opportunity. But as we’ve grown, we’ve gotten the ability and the strength now to say that we don’t need to walk through that door. There’s another door waiting for us that we want to walk through. And to be able to choose the path that we go down has been really beneficial for us in the last couple of years.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s wonderful. Very, very inspiring. And so where do you see this going when you think, when you put your kind of business, like, your business bottom line, kind of hat on? Where do you see this business going, like, in the next, you know, several years, five, ten years out? What’s your ultimate vision?

Jeriel Sydney:

This is something Bobbie and I talk about a lot, and we would love your input. Obviously, like, you are a mastermind in this world. But we’ve seen so many beauty brands that are not profitable because they’re just looking to sell. And our goal as we built this business with so much integrity at the bottom is to be a legacy brand that possibly can pass on to our kids. You know, our kids come in and they work at the warehouse. And we’re hoping to look at it in a way that we can make it profitable, and we can pass it on. So that is where the future is. That is what we’re looking at doing and finding, like, the financial stability to do that, to not just be spending money, spending money, spending money.

Jeriel Sydney:

So, it looks like we’re making money when really we’re in the red, you.

Bobbie Cunningham:

I think that comes down to picking the right partners, picking the right retailers that, that create this sense of quality, of wellness around your brand that we’re really looking for. Our goal is not to, you know, be able to brag about our massive sales numbers. We want to be, but we would like to. I mean, we want to happen organically and sustainably and in a way that we can manage it without losing integrity in the business.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Yeah. A very holistic approach. I think women tend to come to business, more, you know, with that attitude, but that you can do well by doing good, you know, having a social impact, having a sustainability mission.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think those businesses are going to be the ones that actually ultimately become more profitable than others. My prediction, because it’s just that people want to feel connected to a brand, right? Connected on an emotional, authentic basis to a mission or something that’s bigger than themselves because you buy any kind of product.

Melinda Wittstock:

But that’s really the differential. And we’re starting to see that in the data, too, in terms of companies that just return more on every dollar invested, for instance, have a social impact. So, I think you’re very much on the right track. And you have a book out as well. Tell me about that. It’s called the Fable Book of Runes.

Jeriel Sydney:

Okay. But one really quick thing to share before we do that. I know we’re running out of time, but when we started the company, we did start a give back program right out of the gate. Super unprofitable. But when you buy a bar, we donate a bar to a domestic violence crisis and resource center. And so, giving back has always been the cornerstone of the brand. Because that was my passion, my goal in life, in my career, was to be able to work with women to help them heal. And so, we’ve kind of come into that, and we’ve worked with, like, the Shoebox Project, We’ve worked with Lipstick Angels, we’ve worked with food banks.

Jeriel Sydney:

During COVID things got really, really bad, and we were just donating out the door, shampoo, conditioner, like, things that people just could not get anymore, they could not afford because they were losing their jobs and all of that. And I just want to take a second to say, like, that’s what built this brand. Those deep connections with those women who in that moment didn’t have enough money to. To take a shower. Didn’t have them enough money to have the soap. And we got it to them, and we made a difference in that moment. And so that is a big part of our brand.

Bobbie Cunningham:

And that’s been always the priority over profitability.

Jeriel Sydney:

Yes.

Jeriel Sydney:

And then back to the book.

Bobbie Cunningham:

The very starting point of the book is when we changed our name from Fable Soap company to Fablerune. I found this word, runes, that were kind of this ancient Alphabet that women used to share stories, to share secrets, to send messages, to communicate with each other when there was no. Women weren’t writing, they weren’t reading, they weren’t doing these things, but they could send symbols to each other and have an understanding about it. It hit home with us this, again, this tradition of women sharing secrets, sharing knowledge with each other, sharing this tether between each other. So, the word rune really hit home with us. And so, we changed her name to Fablerune, and we started just learning more about runes themselves and the history and how to use them.

Bobbie Cunningham:

We had a set of rune stones at our warehouse for several years. And when we would have, you know, a weird business situation happen, we would pull a rune about it. If we felt lost in on the path that we were going down, we would pull a rune, and it would give us some sort of guidance or at least some sort of peace of mind that we were headed in the right direction. It’s been a really strong tool for us to feel like we can leave things up to chance a little bit. We can leave things and let it happen, how it’s going to happen, and also just to not have to stress to. Just to read the words and. And kind of be able to move on and ruminate on it and come back to it later.

Bobbie Cunningham:

But many of the books that go along with the rune history and how they are interpreted are written by men. And they’re. They just didn’t always resonate with us. It was difficult to understand.

Jeriel Sydney:

You know, like, they’re very wordy and they’re very pompous. And for us, I have a background in theology and worked a lot with yoga and meditation and things like that. And a girlfriend was like, you guys should just like, make your own tarot card deck, essentially, but it would be runes. And Bobbie and I sat down, and we were like, we should make a book that anybody could turn to and that offers or reinforces whatever is happening in their life and how to. How to cope with it. And this very maternal, compassionate way that also has a stern voice, such a deep history. Yeah. So, we wanted to just to build that into our brand.

Jeriel Sydney:

You know, a lot of people exist in isolation right now, and books have been such a beautiful way to connect. It felt like the natural progression was for us to take the runes, to study them, to break them apart, kind of dive deep into their deeper meaning and what they would have meant to a woman. And, you know, the time before there was like, the Latin Alphabet. And so, we wrote our own runes. And then we put it into a book, rewrote it ourselves. We illustrated it ourselves. It’s beautiful, and we hope it offers some kind of comfort to people who are just feeling lost or alone. But it is kind of a similar situation to, like a tarot card deck where you have a question and you pull a rune and there’s all these myths around, like how you pull a rune.

Jeriel Sydney:

It’s fun, and it’s a playful way to kind of bring people into the business and also to connect with us because it’s our writing, it’s our voice, it’s us sharing what we truly believe. It’s us giving guidance like we would to our kids and to our family and friends. And so that’s coming out really quite soon. And we’re so excited because it’s been.

Bobbie Cunningham:

It’s a long. It’s been a long project.

Jeriel Sydney:

Yeah.

Bobbie Cunningham:

And, yeah, we can’t wait to. Can’t wait for it to be out there and let women just kind of dive into it and interpret it how they will.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. Amazing.

Jeriel Sydney:

I know this is a business podcast, so it just gives us another kind of avenue, like another cash flow, you know.

Melinda Wittstock:

Of course. Yeah.

Bobbie Cunningham:

It expands our different opportunities as far as we’re not just tapping into the skincare or the wellness. It’s still a wellness book, but now we’re in. We could be in bookshops, and we can be in other places.

Jeriel Sydney:

Yeah. And it gives us hope that, you know, we have. You know, Bobbi and I have been writing a proposal for a book for a long time that goes back through ancestral healing and all of the different kind of wives tales, quote, unquote. It gave us practice at how to write a book, who to talk to, how to do it the right way, and what kind of pressures really come with writing a book. So, it was another great learning experience for us without taking a huge financial leap.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well, I’m going to make sure that all the links are in the show notes so people can find you both and find your products and the book, obviously, and everything. Jeriel and Bobbie, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Jeriel Sydney:

Thank you for having us. I know. I feel so honored to get to talk to a woman with your pedigree.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Jeriel Sydney and Bobbie Cunningham are the co-founders of clean beauty brand Fablerune and co-authors of The Fable Book of Runes.

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

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