Let Me Tell You About My 2018
You know the old saying… You can’t make this shit up. 2018 is the antithesis of that saying. It started out on a great note. Great holidays, great new year and ready for new adventures in business and in my personal life.
I had made new goals for myself both professionally and personally. Derek and I were looking to buy a home, and I was excited about plans for new products that my clients were planning on launching throughout the year. This was going to be the best year yet!
Instead, 2018 would prove to be the most heart breaking, and most fulfilling year of my life. This roller coaster ride did not stop- ever! In fact, as I write this, on December 30th, it is both a great day, and a bad one. So weird...
My 2018 roller coaster ride started while at the Global Beauty Exchange, held at the beautiful Half Moon Bay Resort. This particular event consists of approximately 22 meetings over two days. With lunches, dinners, social events with my colleagues - it’s a very fun, yet intense and nonstop event.
The first day started well and was exciting as always. Surrounded by lots of friends both buyers and vendors. We were all having a very successful time. Each meeting consisted of approximately 20 minutes with five minutes in between. After about the second meeting on the first morning I saw that I missed a call from the largest brand that we carried. And not just from anyone, but from the Director of Sales. She never called me on my cell phone so I knew it was a call I should take. So after the meeting I was in - I called her right back and let my business partner take meeting number three.
Long story short, they had been bought by an extremely large company over a year earlier, and had decided that we would no longer work together. This was my absolute worst nightmare. I had been talking to my sales team about the danger of having approximately 60% of our sales in only one “bucket.” I had given every incentive known to mankind to try to spread the sales across the other channels. But to no avail since this brand was so popular at the moment and such a huge Instagram success that it was just easy sales. So here I was, listening to my worst fear happen over the phone.
I went back into the meetings, and said nothing. I waited for lunch break and turned to my partner to tell her the news. Obviously we were both in shock. I immediately removed the brand from the table where we were presenting and adjusted accordingly. We both quickly removed all of the papers in our proposal folders that included that brand and just kind of decided that we needed to deal with this later we cannot deal with it now - let’s move onto meeting number five.
Meeting number five was a success, so was six. We were on a momentum now selling the other brands and we felt hope. I had just closed three new clients on one particular brand as we were sitting there that morning. We can do this!
Meeting number seven. Then a break. I looked over at my partner and she was staring at her phone cussing. What? She handed me the phone.
I’m sorry to tell you this, I read, but we are closing our company down immediately. Last night we had a fire that burned down one of our facilities and we are not able to fill your orders, and will, in fact, shut down the line completely. We must concentrate on our other businesses.
I read it in disbelief. How is this happening? This is the brand I just sold three big new clients on! But I removed it from the table as quickly as I could, before meeting number eight.
I had brought a couple of cute bags with little travel sizes of another brand to show a client that I knew would be there. This particular client always liked travel sets so I had brought her a couple of different options that I could look at and possibly create for her. I took these three travel sets out of my roller bag put them on the table and rearrange the entire table.
I told our next meetings that day. Meeting number eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 that these were the new travel sets.
Look at this!
Right in time for travel season and spring break!
Aren’t they beautiful?
Holy shit! Keep smiling!
We sold over 60 of these travel sets that day, so now I just needed to figure out how to get them fast enough to ship to these clients on time. Shit… Shit… Shit… I will have to figure that out later.
Thank God day two was better. But we had to figure out a way to make up for what was now 80% of our sales gone. But we had determined that we would do it.
Out of 22 meetings, we sold our other remaining brands and these impromptu travel sets to 12 of them. We can do this- we just have to convince our sales team to get on board!
What was crazy was that this particular event has a kind of MVP award for the best vendor and the best buyer. To my surprise during the closing dinner I was announced as the MVP vendor. I was completely blown away because I would’ve thought two or three others Vendors would’ve been named MVP. But here I was having the worst two days of my career and at the same time being recognized by my peers. I was so grateful to have that at that moment. I needed that boost.
I had also at the same time started blogging about my life and career. I had several people ask me all the time how do you know this? How did you learn this? How did you figure this out? And, trying to possibly be humble about it, I kept saying I don’t know I just figured it out. And shrugged off the question.
Until one of my dear friends who is wonderful enough to always tell me the truth said to me – you are being selfish by not sharing your knowledge with others.
Yikes! That hit me hard but I appreciated it so I began writing down my lessons learned, just really for the girls in the office who would ask me all the time. But then as I started writing them I realized - wait... I only knew this part because of what I did before. Or I only learned that part because of something that happened as a child, and before I knew it I was writing my life story as it pertains to growing pains and life lessons.
This event was the first time I realized anyone out of my small circle of friends actually read the blog! Many people talked about it at the event and mentioned it and told others about it. So again - very exciting, but at the worst time ever!
Back to the story... We went back and tried to figure out a way to make up for the second brand that had gone out of business and finally we realized that there was a way to get them to keep the brand. We called them and made a deal. The plant had only burn down one ingredient, the most important ingredient – but the brand was more than just the one ingredient. So we made a deal with them that we would pay more for the products if they could source the ingredients someplace else and still make the five most popular products for the brand. Didn’t they have tons of the empty jars still left in the warehouse anyway? Why let them all go to waste? Some money is better than losing money!
They agreed! Apparently they had time to calm down too and clearer heads prevailed- so we continued on. We were able to save that brand. But we still had to come home and tell our sales staff that they were essentially taking a 60% pay cut of their commission by losing the first giant brand.
This was a hard one to swallow for them, and as you can imagine they did not take it well. Sales are all mental and when you mess them up, it is hard to get them out of their rut.But life continues and so did we. Until two weeks later in the beginning of March when the third brand called and told us that they were going bankrupt. They owed us a lot of money since we had also acted as their fulfillment company for their other clients, and they were not able to pay it. Again, bad timing seeing as we just lost 60% of our income overnight. But don’t worry, they said, you can take the equivalent of what we owe you out in inventory!
Well, that was a great theory, and we appreciated it, except that it would take me three years to sell that much stock. So there we were. We did not dare tell the sales people that they had also gone out of business. We had enough inventory to hide that little fact. I knew that they could not take much more.
What was keeping hope alive was all the new products and new branding that our other clients were going to be doing beginning in April through June. We could point to that, hold onto that, and use it to sort of like re-launch the brand both in house and to our clients. We were very excited about it!
The problem was that, in May, brand number four sent out a newsletter touting two new products. And to this day has not actually launched any of those products. The reason being is that they were sold to a new Company as well. In fact, a few months later their furniture showed up in my warehouse. They were also a brand that I have both distributed and did fulfillment for.
I called them and asked what is going on? They said oh don’t worry we just all decided to move out of the offices and work from home! What? That never sounds promising. And why am I holding your furniture? Oh so that we can just pay the regular pallet cost for rent. Can’t we do that? What am I supposed to say? I guess?
But still, not promising towards our future growth as a company. When a Company tells you they just got bought, and then a few weeks later everyone starts working from home…. RUN!The list goes on and on and it just never got better. Everyone was struggling against the Amazon boom, Department Stores closing, and needing to pivot as quickly as the market was in this online world.By June my partner had had enough. She was ready to move on to new things and we mutually agreed to separate. I took on the company and decided to do whatever I could to try to cut costs and grow the brands we still had. I had to save this Company!
On the flip side….At a trade show in June, in Las Vegas, the strangest thing kept happening. People kept coming up to me and asking to meet me, and asking to take pictures with me. Apparently they were reading my blog and loved it! What is happening? The girls and I could not stop laughing – it was surreal! Later I realized I had 1,400 readers!
But then a dear friend, who is also the editor of a prestigious magazine, came to me and gave me a serious talking to and told me I needed to turn my blog into a book! I had thought about it, of course, but it was all just a Crazy pipe dream in my head. But here she was, a respected and recognized editor in chief and she was telling me that she wanted to be the one to edit my book! I was dying! But I knew that I needed to keep writing and figure out the book thing later. I had a company to save! But thanks for that boost!
I also knew that I needed to find new and exciting brands that were being smart about Instagram and willing to work with online resellers. I researched brands at the June Spa show, and then attended Cosmoprof in July in Vegas to research, learn, and meet new brands that could help dig us out of this hole. I needed brands that the sales team could get excited about. They needed a boost of hope, and in turn I could turn this Company around.
The problem was that while I was away for the week - the negativity was brewing, by the time I got home everyone was in a tizzy and talking themselves out of their own jobs. I was so excited to show them the brands – and they LOVED the brands. But I could tell by that meeting that 8 out of ten of them were done.
It did not help that right after we had this meeting, Brand Number 5 sold to Guthy-Renker – the king of infomercials (think - Proactive and Cindy Crawford Meaningful Beauty). It did not matter that we had put them in hundreds of spas across the Country, including Anthropology stores – they only wanted to be on infomercials going forward. So our services were no longer needed.
And so – there were only three brands left….But oh wait… one of our brands is now selling so many units per week Internationally that they had found a new production Company to keep up with their high volumes. But now, we are getting almost 20% of the units being returned because they were not charging or working at all!
Fuck… Fuck… Fuck…
I had to, that month, let three of the sales people go. They had just gotten to the point where they were done and wanted to make more money but they could not pivot with the times. Or they didn’t want to. And that’s totally OK. But at that point I realized that it would not make any sense to bring in any new brands. We were either going to make it with this new skeleton staff of sales people or we were not.
It never happened. It was just too late and we could not get them going fast enough.I talked to my entire team in October – warehouse, sales, and support teams. I told them my plans going forward. I would end Aesthetic Ambassadors by the end of the year.
I would continue on somehow and look to new avenues of income to build on. There are a huge trends happening because of the internet and I just needed to re-face the entire way of doing business going forward.
At that point I set about a plan with each of our remaining brands to help them transition to new Sales Companies by the end of the year, as smoothly as possible. They had trusted us with their brand – I did not want to screw this up.
I thought that I had finally figured things out and could at least continue consulting work concentrating on helping my other brands grow – we are going to make it! I had a whole plan. The rise in shipments that we would do during the Holidays, cut more costs, and I will stop paying myself. We can do this!
But apparently, a few rogue employees had a different plan. They decided to get on the phone and start calling my biggest clients. I suppose they thought that if they gave them some good gossip and some inside information into my business it would help them to get good paying jobs at my clients businesses. And not only were they spreading lies to my clients, but to the others in the warehouse.
This kind of behavior is so foreign to me because I am so open about what is happening with the business, good or bad. My successes are their successes… And if I struggle I let them know and ask for help so that we could all accomplish success together. But for these two particular employees, they were on a different path.
Because these were large clients that I did not work with directly on a daily basis, I was not able to stop the gossip fast enough. When I would walk into the warehouse I knew there was something going on - but I could not figure out who and what until it was too late. Suddenly I heard from one client that these two employees were making calls and after a few more conversations with some of my other clients I had put everything into place and realized what was going on.
Essentially the message was, watch out she’s going out of business you better get your stuff out before she shuts her doors without telling you! Again, they thought this would give them some kind of “in” at these other companies and they would then be rewarded with a great paying job. In fact it did the opposite. And it proved to be the final nail in my coffin.
I called the landlord of my 43,000 square-foot building and told him I could no longer pay the rent, and defaulted on my lease. I had to get out as soon as possible.
It is only because of the team that chose to stay with me, and because of their loyalty, because they refused to leave me until it was all over – I was able to take apart the business slowly and carefully. It was not easy to keep it all together and it affected me so deeply.
No one knew what was going on with me. Only a few close friends. But all of my peers in the industry thought it was business as usual. I was attending my favorite trade shows all through September and October and making a killing! I was so happy to see everyone and really that was my only escape from my reality at home.
I was also asked to speak for a women’s group. For the first time, in a long time I stood up and spoke about lessons to pass on to new business owners in a room full of over 100 women. It was so inspiring and almost ironic since I was going through the toughest time of my entire life. But I was learning so much and being able to pass this on to others.
In October I finally shared what was going on with just a couple of people. And I was overwhelmed by the support that they showed me. They vowed to help me through it and support me in any way they could. And I am forever grateful for them! This is what lifted me up and carried me through.
All they kept saying was, you will get through this. You will be fine. What they did not understand was that I did not care about myself. I knew I would get through this. I was worried about my team! I was worried about being able to finish the year and make sure that they were not losing their job during the holidays.
What would happen to them?How could I save them?
I was so stressed out that I began some kind of strange gagging reflex. I didn’t need to throw up, and my stomach was not upset, but I would be driving down the street, or walking around the office just gagging! WTF???
I was also crying at a drop of a hat. I don’t cry goddamnit!
And then I lost my voice. I sounded like I was sick for almost two months. I couldn’t sleep- i was surviving on three- four hours a night- week after week.
It was not until I was able to find every single person a job, or help them plan a new career, or go back to school, that I was able to sleep. And then I immediately got my voice back.
At this exact same time I was recognized in two different magazines for my work. And literally as I was moving out of my offices, ready to cry because of exhaustion, I was stopped by one of my friends in the industry.
Congratulations Hannah! That’s so awesome you are named as one of the most influential leaders in Spa!
What???
Are you sure?
And there it was. My name listed with heroes in our industry!I was literally going to sit on the curb and cry from exhaustion, but instead he blessed me with news, right when I could not deal with the day any longer.
I also realized something about myself that surprised me. One day my husband, Derek, in a moment of protectiveness said something like “I better not hear anyone talking shit about you and what’s going on.”
I sat for a minute and interrupted him. I realized in that moment that I KNEW that no one would talk shit. I KNEW that I had so many people behind me, supporting me, lifting me up, and cheering me on. I KNEW that what I had spent so many years putting out there would come back and hold me up.
What a freeing feeling. What a peaceful feeling.
It is so hard to explain it. But by realizing this – I felt peace and hope.
There were so many other catastrophes that happened, but I think you get the point…
And so…the business is closed and I have moved on. My team has moved on and everyone is OK. But as I look back and reflect – there are a few things that I hope I can pass on to you and any other business person.
First my mistakes...
I let my sales team decide what they felt like selling. All managers of brands with multiple lines will tell you this is a problem. Do not let it happen. I still do not know the answer to this so I will take any suggestions!
Do not put your eggs in one basket. Do not let one client determine whether you will live or die.
Cut bad employees quickly. I was so worried about affecting the rest of the team, but instead let these employees stay too long and they proved to be my demise.
My advice…
Take full responsibility of everything that has happened. In the end you are the boss\business owner. You signed the checks. It is your fault always. Do not make excuses.
Lean on your friends. They will truly help lift you up in your greatest times of need.
Keep investing in good people however you can. Not just monetarily, but trusting them with information, and thank them profusely and appreciate them every day.
Most importantly… Do not give up. You know what you need to do to keep moving forward. You need to just do it. It will keep coming back, even in your darkest hour and will surprise you in new and beautiful ways.
And last but not least… Be forever grateful that you have had the opportunity to make these mistakes, learned lessons, and survive for new adventures.
I cry as I write this blog. Not for sadness, but for relief. I am tired but I am relieved. I am looking forward to simplifying and taking it all down and building it back up. I have done it before and this will not be my last time I will have to do it again.
I have already started recreating my new life - and it is going very WELL. I am staying in my beautiful, loving industry - and I am excited about my new stories not yet written.
I want to thank you for reading this blog, and for sticking with me as I have shared my story this year. I look forward to sharing new ones with you as I am finally getting my Mojo back and ready to share new lessons and stories.
Most of all…I wish you a very healthy, happy, and successful new year. And hopefully that success means lots of new adventures, more family time, and more mistakes that will help you grow… but hurt only a little.
Here’s to 2019!
