Casey Georgeson, Founder and CEO of Saint Jane Beauty
Casey Georgeson decided to take the chance and start her own beauty brand after spending her career building other beauty and wine brands. However, she knew that her new brand had to be different to stand out in the crowded luxury beauty market. After reading about CBD’s powerful benefits, she knew exactly how she was going to be different. Today, Casey is the founder and CEO of Saint Jane Beauty, her own collection of luxury, cannabis-infused products with a mission of transforming the skin.
Find Casey Georgeson and Saint Jane Beauty
- Saint Jane Beauty Website
- Saint Jane Beauty Instagram
- Casey Georgeson Linkedin
- Casey Georgeson Instagram
Episode Contents
- Branding Expert Casey On Starting Saint Jane
- Financing Saint Jane Beauty On Her Own
- How To Brand Yourself – Advice from THE Branding Expert
- Balancing Family and Business During COVID
- You Have To Be A Bit Crazy to Succeed as an Entrepreneur
Branding Expert Casey On Starting Saint Jane
Mimi:
Thank you so much for coming on today. We’re so excited to have you.
Casey:
Thank you for having me.
Mimi:
Yes. And so can you start out just by telling us a little bit about Saint Jane Beauty, where you got the idea from, and just a little bit about the company?
Casey:
Definitely. So, as you mentioned, I have a background in beauty and wine brand development. So I’ve been a brand creator, the majority of my career, and I’d always toyed with the idea of creating my own brand, but didn’t feel like I had the big idea to really catapult me from brand creator to brand founder, which is there is such a distinction between the two. So I’ve learned, but when I discovered CBD, it was around 2017 when California was legalizing cannabis. And I was reading an article on Pop Sugar and the headline of the article was CBD is nature’s Xanax meets Advil. Then I thought, okay, I’ve got to learn more about this. This is interesting, very intriguing. So I went to a dispensary and ask them to show me all of the CBD products that they carried, not so much THC. I wanted to start with CBD because I was reading it was the darling of the herb industry non-psychoactive and really had powerful anti-inflammatory properties. So I went to this dispensary and I looked at all the CBD products, but they were all really crunchy and hippy and didn’t feel like they were developed for the elevated skincare market. And so that was when it wasn’t even a decision anymore. I had to do it. I had to create this brand. And the idea is it’s inspired by Saint Jane, the actual Saint who lived in the 1500s who dedicated her life to healing women and specifically women that society wouldn’t touch the very old, the very sick unwed mothers. And it’s really in her honor that we’ve created this healing centric approach to beauty, given what we know about CBD and its benefits for the skin. So it’s also Saint Jane as an homage to the innocent side of Mary Jane. It’s a little bit cheeky as well. It’s got two meanings, but we launched in 2019, so we’re pretty new. Still. It’s been an incredible journey so far, very much like a roller coaster, but I think that there’s something about this brand that has really resonated with the market. So we’re, we’re just getting started.
Mimi:
That’s awesome. It’s a great story. I love the name. Did you quit your job? Cause I know you were, you were working before and so did you dive straight in or did you kind of do both on the side?
Casey:
So I did both. I did Saint Jane as my side hustle. I didn’t anticipate that Saint Jane would be as big as it was as quickly as it was. And so I actually was still running creative for a big wine company called The Wine Group where I had been developing brands for the wine industry. And so I did that. I still ran creative until about eight months into Saint Jane until August. We launched in January. And I wish I had focused more on Saint Jane earlier on knowing what I know now, but at the time I just, you don’t know what you don’t know. And I thought I could do both that summer just about killed me working two different jobs, but it allowed me to have a sort of a security blanket with still running creative for the wine group and testing the waters on being an entrepreneur. And I very quickly got sucked into the world of entrepreneurship a hundred percent.
Mimi:
And then did you go right in and hire somebody else? Or you do it yourself? Or do you have a partner?
Casey:
I have a designer who I’ve worked with for 10 years. We’ve worked on every brand together and she is extraordinarily talented and she’s been working on this with me from the beginning. So she’s kind of like my right hand on the creative side. And then I hired contractors last year, because we weren’t really sure what the needs of the business were going to be in the first year. This year in 2020, I’ve got my head of PR and she’s also doing my international expansion who, you know, Daniella, she’s amazing. And I’ve got a number of other people who work on different functions of the business, but we’re still pretty lean. Like we don’t have actual employees yet. We’re converting the folks on the team to employees, but that’s been sort of an interesting journey trying to build out the team and really be thoughtful about what the right cultural fits are, plus the right functions for the business. And I feel really, really good about the team that we have. They’re incredibly talented. But I think that, I mean, you know, team building is one of the biggest challenges as an entrepreneur because you know, you’re working at 500 miles an hour and you’re trying to fill in the pieces of support team for that. And so I’ve been very, very thoughtful about who I’ve brought on board and I feel really good about our team.
Financing Saint Jane – Bootstrapping and Friends & Family Rounds
Mimi:
That’s great. The other obstacle I feel like is financing. So do you mind just talking a little bit about that? Did you have to do like a friends and family round or did you personally finance it at this point?
Casey:
We have been a hundred percent self-funded and the reason for that is we believed in the concept and we felt that we could try it. And if we needed to raise money, we would go out and do friends and family, or we would do a raise and we haven’t gotten there yet. The business has done very well. And so we’re in year two now and the finances look really good. So the question is for us as a business, what do we need to pour lighter fluid on this little concept that we’ve created and how do we take the spark and make it bigger and scale it? And so I’m evaluating those questions right now, whether there are strategic partners that could help us do that. And you know, I’m at the end of the day, you know, I am a brand creator turned entrepreneur. And so I know there’s a tremendous amount of what I don’t know out there. And there might be I’m positive. There are people out there who can help us really grow this business.
How To Grow A Brand from a Branding Expert
Mimi:
Right. So, because your expertise is brand building, where would you suggest to somebody who is new and building a brand, where would they put on fuel the fire to like grow and how do they grow it a brand?
Casey:
Well, number one is you have to be very passionate about your concept, because what I’ve learned is, you know, in brand creation, you move on from one idea to the next. And I always had teams of people who would bring the concepts to life and execute all of the levers that were required to grow being an entrepreneur. It’s not only you create the brand, but you create every single growth channel that you can. You’re like a hungry hippo when you go after every opportunity and you have to learn all of the pieces of the business. You never even knew existed from supply chain to backend site optimization and coding. And there’s, there’s just so many things. I had no idea where a part, so much a part of growth and running a business. And so I would say align yourself with other founders. And the collaboration for me has been what has helped me keep my sanity, to be honest, there are so many talented entrepreneurs out there who have different skillsets. And when I have a question about a freight forwarder or, you know, an app for our website, it has been so helpful and it’s helped me get to the answer faster by having a group of founders that have come together and we’ve agreed to help each other. And really this idea that the tide will rise all ships and collaboration is so important to all of our success. And so that, that has been really, really integral, I think, to, to where we are now. And then I would say, you know, just go easy on yourself because it’s a learning process and you’re going to have tons of failures. You’re going to have wins, hopefully that balance out the failures, but the failures are tough and you have to pick stuff up and move on quickly and not let it go too deep because there’s so much ahead.
Mimi:
That’s great advice. Now, did you put that female group together or did you happen to come upon them and they let you in? Or how does that work?
Casey:
It actually, so a few different ways. I would say it happens over time. It didn’t happen immediately. It was like anything else felt like relationship building, where it started off with, Hey, let’s connect. And I’d love to hear how it’s going for you. And, you know, we’re right around the same projectory and our brand path. Let’s, let’s just pow-wow slash commiserate. And so it started that way. And then it got more formalized where we actually created a group of women on a text chain on a Slack channel. And we started meeting once a month via zoom. And that was really 2020, where that crystallized it was 2019 sort of making the relationships. And 2020 is where that really crystallized. And I’m very grateful for it. The Clean Beauty Summer School that I’m involved in came out of that with Tower 28. It’s been really rewarding personally, but also for our business.
Mimi:
That’s awesome. Now, what would you say has been the hardest part about launching this business?
Casey:
I would say that I didn’t in so many ways, I feel very blessed that it shot out of the gate, like a cannon, but I didn’t have the luxury of learning and growing and testing and growing as we went into our first year, it was sort of like, we just sort of launched onto the stage and we had to build the airplane mid flight. And so 2019 was a lot of fight or flight emotion where it was like, Oh my gosh, just don’t mess it up. Just don’t crash the plane. And I feel like 2020 is a little bit more. We have our footing, we understand these growth channels. We’re figuring out where to dial them up. But I made the analogy to my husband recently where I said, you know, I feel like Saint Jane is definitely like our fourth daughter for sure. But all little startups are sort of like toddlers until they’re about five years old. And so you feel like you can’t take your eye off them. You have to watch them all the time. You have to make sure they don’t go off a cliff. And that’s what it has felt like for the past two years. Whereas, you know, you just, you work all day, you go to bed, reading emails and getting work done. You dream about your business. You wake up the next morning and you do it all over again. It’s seven days a week. And so that I think has been really challenging trying to strike the right balance for myself personally, for our family, for the team. But it’s something that I’m actively working on on a daily basis. It’s just a challenge.
Selling Out of Product – A Great but Tough Achievement
Mimi:
I know it is very hard. And you brought up a good point. Because you did so well right off the bat, did you have an inventory issue? Because a lot of times it’s a good problem, right? You launch and the demand is great, but sometimes people invest in the inventory and the lead time for the inventory is longer than you think. And then you’re out of stock right away. Did that happen to you guys? Or did you actually have the inventory?
Casey:
No, it definitely happened to us. We just sold out of our eye cream, which was a huge surprise. I did not think that that would happen as quickly as it did. It sold out in four weeks. And we’ve sold out of our lip shines because we won a women’s health award and it just sold us right out. And so, yes, I’ve had to get comfortable with out of stocks and just working as fast as possible to get back into stock. When we first launched last year, we did a pretty good job of demand planning. We definitely over bought and it worked out for us. But yeah, I think it’s with this not very much time under our belt as a business demand planning is challenging, but we got a pretty good sense early on for what the POS would look like from our retailers and our direct business, thankfully was pretty small in 2019. It’s much better in 2020. So we could, we could ramp up accordingly, but no, we have, we’ve had some out-of-stocks and you know, we’re trying to use them to our advantage when we relaunch we’re when we’re back in stock. So we’re trying to use that out of stock moment to generate some excitement from a marketing perspective, because we’re all excited that the products are doing so well.
Mimi:
That’s awesome. And most of your customers are direct or are you mostly retail?
Casey:
We’re still mostly retail. And I look at our business from essentially three large channels and it’s our direct business, our indie retailers, and then our bigger retailers. And so I would say we are growing in all channels. Some brick and mortar has been challenged because of the closures with COVID. But overall, our DTC is probably, I would say about a third of the business right now, which I feel pretty good about because it’s been such great growth over 20, 19, 2019. We couldn’t do a lot because we’re a CBD brand and there weren’t a lot of levers available for us to pull. Like we couldn’t advertise on Facebook. We couldn’t do much with Google. We were just getting our footing on understanding that area of the business, sort of the e-commerce pillars for success. And so 2020 we’re unlocking those which has seen, we’ve had a lot of growth in DTC.
Creating the Product and Using USA Made CBD
Mimi:
That’s awesome. Congratulations. Now, did you, when you launched, how did you know where to start making your product? Like, did that something you had to research you already had this contacts? Because I think that’s a big hurdle. People have ideas and they don’t even know, do I make it in the United States or make it outside of the United States? Who do I even call? Like where, where did you start?
Casey:
Well, I knew I wanted to make it in the United States because I wanted my CBD to be from here. And I wanted to make sure we were straight a students and following all of the rules of the road with CBD. And so S was, was a given, however, all of the contacts that I had from my days in developing beauty brands, not very many, I mean, really none wanted to work with me. We were CBD and this was pre farm bill. So the farm bill passed in 2018 and December, which opened a lot of things up. But before that, it was still, you know, it’s still a schedule, one substance and right up there with heroin. So a lot of my vendors that I knew were like, great to hear from you Casey, but there’s not a lot we can do for you. We can’t formulate with this ingredient yet. So I had to get really creative. I did a lot on my own. So I started working with different botanicals and I really educated myself on which ones were going to be the most efficacious for skin. We started with our luxury Beauty Serum, which is our hero product. And I found a formulator that felt very likeminded was here in California and really helped me educated me on how these botanicals work together, why it’s so important to responsibly source them and how we can create sort of the boldest, most efficacious face oil that we could with CBD. And that risk that they took on us was, was incredible. And now it’s paying off obviously for all of us, but it was, it was a trying time to make sure that we were able to align with the right partners, but we were able to do it. We got very creative and it worked out.
Mimi:
That’s great. Now, do you find yourself, are there other companies similar that are popping up that are CBD beauty brands? Are you pretty much like our leader?
Casey
So there are a ton of CBD brands and products out there, and I think it’s been just a flood in the market and in 2020, the good news for us is that we were a pretty early mover. And I think we were able to establish ourselves as the CBD beauty leader, meaning we do skincare, we do color, and we straddle those two categories, unlike some of our competitors that do ingestibles and gummies and things like that. We have stuck straight in our lane, beauty and beauty skincare hybrid. And so I think, yes, we do. We do stand out in that sense on our own. But the market is really flooded. You see a lot of haircare coming, you see tons of other skincare brands. You see not a lot of, not a lot of color, but I’m sure that’s coming too. We hear it from editors. We hear that there’s just so much being sent to them and it’s really noisy. And so it’s really going to be about the brands that are creating brands, not just CBD products that ultimately succeed. I think you’ve got to go beyond just one ingredient if you’re going to be a brand that has longterm value proposition.
Mimi:
It’s really interesting. Okay. So do you have advice for somebody who wants to start out in the beauty industry? Like, Hey, I have this idea or do you think it’s pretty saturated at this? More like forget the CBD, just the beauty industry as a whole. And, and do you have any advice for them?
Casey:
Well, I was listening to a founder of one of the more successful retailers here in the U S for clean beauty. And she made an interesting comment yesterday. She said, it’s not enough to say I didn’t see this opportunity in the market. So I created my brand. It has to be a very compelling hook. Everybody says that about their brand and you can probably find an option that has already answered that consumer need. So it really has to be a powerful idea. The way I look at it is I think it can’t just be one point of differentiation. It has to be two or three, and I would say probably three. And so for us, it was, we were CBD. We were luxury CBD, which is, you know, was very differentiated and still is, and we’re clean, we’re meticulously clean. So that sort of trifecta and market opportunity really felt like we had some meat to the bones of the concept. And it’s allowed us to really dial up different areas of the business to see which ones are most resonant with our clients. But I think one idea is just not, it’s it. You have to make sure you’re very passionate about it. It is. You’re going to eat, sleep and breathe it and dream it, like I said, but you also have to make sure that you are answering a need in the market that goes beyond just what you see, but also has some, has some teeth to it with that multiple layer messaging
Balancing Being A Mom, A CEO – All While COVID Is Happening
Mimi:
Right now you are a mom of three little kids. Like, I think you said that the oldest is nine. And so how do you manage it all? Because especially during COVID we are all home homeschooling, do you have any tips? Do you, are you a paper person? Are you a computer person? Do you have apps, like in any advice to all of us trying to kind of do it all?
Casey:
Well, you’re a good example of being able to do it all I should ask you.
Mimi:
That’s why I keep asking people. I keep getting ideas from people you always learn about like an app or like someone, like one time was like use rinse.com. And I was like, Ooh, what’s that? And it’s like, they come to your house and do laundry. So like, when I know I’m like, okay, you know, tough week or during COVID when you don’t have extra hands, like that’s an easy, like put the laundry out on the front door and they comes back 24 hours later. So, you know, that’s why I love asking that question. Cause you always, I always learn something new every day.
Casey:
That’s amazing. I need to find rinse.com in my life because laundry is the bane of my existence, I would say so. So my kids are five, almost five, almost nine, almost 11. And thankfully they’ve been really understanding through all of this madness. I will say, I definitely have a love hate with this quarantine shelter and place for, you know, all of the challenges that we’re facing. I love that we’ve slowed down and we were crazy chickens with our heads cut off for years. I can’t remember a time when we’ve had this much sort of quietude, but we were running around to club volleyball and club soccer. And every weekend was packed with events and games and, you know, we were just so, so busy. And so I like that this time has been slower for our family. It has, you know, obviously come with a lot of challenges, but my life hacks for it. I probably need more and I need to start investing and learning about all of these life hacks, but we finally have our nanny back, which has been really helpful. We didn’t have her for six months. And so all the kids and I were just in my office doing their homeschooling and me doing Saint Jane. And it was interesting, but fun. And I dunno, I mean, for me, what’s really important is I need to exercise every day. Getting outside is essential, walking, running, listening to podcasts. I love, I love your podcast. I love the Goop podcast. I love, Oprah’s just like kind of podcasts that are really good for the soul. And I think walking stimulates creativity with, you know, so basic, but like your left right movement. It does stimulate creativity in the brain. And also for me creates a lot of space for me to actually think about the business and how to grow forward and our family and our kids and my husband. But, you know, in terms of sanity, again, I wish I had more apps. I needed to discover rinse.com and probably a million others. I have, you know, a cleaning lady who comes and helps me, which keeps me sane, but that’s about it. I need more!
Mimi:
You do this, like on a piece of paper and just kind of cross them off as you go.
Casey:
Yeah. I mean, I’m definitely a to do list person. I keep lots of notes in my phone. I need to be better about writing them down. My husband has like an app. Remember the milk, which I think is circa 2005, but he, it works for him. I just make lists and lists than I and I cross them off.
Mimi:
So all your team is remote obviously, cause we’re not back at work. Is there any kind of system that you have in place that you guys talk to each other is like, is it a weekly meeting or do you have like a sauna or something that you guys kind of all coordinate and make sure things don’t get dropped.
Casey:
We just started using Trello and it’s new to us. So we’re going to, I’ll let you know how that goes, but we needed a project management system. We just have too many balls in the air. So hopefully that streamlined some of the workflows. But thankfully I have this amazing team of women who are really, you know, I don’t want to say scrappy because that undersells it, that they’re just really innovative. They’re really creative, super high integrity. And so we do have weekly meetings per sort of function area of the business. And we also, you know, jump on the phone all the time, jump on video chats all the time. And you know, like my head of PR, I talked to her usually, right when I wake up before the kids are awake because we have this little slot of quiet time and we can bang a lot of stuff out, but it’s something we constantly work on. Not being in person is a huge challenge, but we’re all we live in different areas. Anyway. So my head of designs in Southern California, the head of PR is in Southern California. We have someone who helps me with social media who’s in Nashville. So I don’t know if there’s ever to become a world where we’re in person, but we figured it out. We figured out how to be remote and stay connected, which is nice.
You Have To Be A Bit Crazy To Succeed as an Entrepreneur
Mimi:
That’s great. Um, where do you think it takes to become an entrepreneur, a successful entrepreneur, right? Anybody can be an entrepreneur, but actually succeeding.
Casey:
You have to be a little crazy. You have to be willing to put in the work and you have to be kind of addicted to it. It’s not a decision right now. I just am so compelled to do it. And I think that’s what I didn’t expect. Being an entrepreneur was just how much effort was going to go into the day to day to really feel like I’m doing right by this brand and this concept. And so I would say having that drive, but also knowing how to balance it and how to turn it off and how to take breaks because it can be a marathon at a sprints pace and you can burn out. And so finding those moments where you can just calm it down and have some space from it, that’s essential. A passion for your idea is also really important because you’re going to be telling the same story five times a day, some days. And so you have to believe in it. And then I would say on the point about believing in it, it’s also about what’s going to compel you as an individual. For me, with Saint Jane it’s giving back, the business was built on, you know, the legacy of this woman, Saint Jane, who healed people. And so part of our mission as a brand is to give back and I still don’t take a salary. That’s just part of how the business has shaken out. But it’s important to me to give back to the organizations that I believe will help women in society from, you know, an equality perspective from a entrepreneurship perspective, from, you know, we support lipstick angels, which goes into hospitals and helps women going through cancer treatment to feel like a little slice of normalcy. And so that for me is very rewarding. And I think that’s a part of being a successful entrepreneur is like figuring out what’s going to continue to drive you when you look around. And you’re like, why am I doing this again? This is so hard. You have to go deep and be like, Oh, I’m doing this because I believe I can X, Y, and Z for me, it’s affect change and help women. So, and as a mom of three daughters, it’s kind of, I’ve been a feminist since 1995. I like to say,
Mimi:
Oh, that’s great. As I always say, you always need to know your why. Right. Kind what you’re doing and have that focus. Did you know, you were going to start a company, like when you went into brand and market strategy, were you like, okay, I’m doing this. So that eventually when I start my own company and be my own entrepreneur, I will know what I’m doing. Was that in the back of your mind, or did you never have the intention of starting your own brand? I didn’t have
Casey:
The intention of starting my own brand until 2016. When a friend of mine, who’s the founder of a big beauty brand said to me, why haven’t you started a, like, I have people coming to me all the time saying they want to start a brand, but of all people, like you should start a brand. And it was the first time it even occurred to me that I could do that. I’d always just thought about being the wizard behind the curtain and creating brands for other people. And I was more comfortable. I was a TV producer in the beginning of my career. I was more comfortable behind the camera versus in front of the camera. And I didn’t feel like jumping into being a founder was right for me, from my family perspective with being a mom, it just didn’t feel right. And so, but 2016 was the first time I’d really thought about it. I just, again, like, I didn’t feel like I had the big idea. And once I discovered CBD, that’s when it was like, okay, well, here we go. I’m going to try this and I’m going to do it until it doesn’t feel right. And it’s never not felt right since then. That’s great. So to end, do you have any last minute advice or tips or anything that you want to share? Um, I would say go easy on yourself right now, especially with COVID and all of the crazy things that 2020 has brought and delivered, delivered to us, especially going down yourself because it’s a unique time and we’re going to all be okay, we’re going to all get through it. But if we don’t go easy on ourselves, it’s going to be a lot of extra stress and the stress is not helping. So I’d say that’s probably my big piece of advice is just take a breath and go easy.
Mimi:
That’s great. Thank you so much. And good luck to you. I’m so thankful that you came on and anybody who wants to try your product, just go to your website. Saint Jane Beauty. And I have tried the vitamin C serum and it’s been fabulous. I love it. So thank you for sending it, check it out and thank you again so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Casey:
Thank you for having me.
Mimi:
Thank you for joining me on the badass ceo podcast. If you enjoy today’s episode, please leave a review and see you next time. Thank you.
