Posted Under: Entrepreneurship, Our Heroes

Angela Rogers is our latest guest under the “Our Heroes” series. Angela began making perfume oils purely as a hobby but once she grasped how impressed people were with her product she decided to pursue her passion on a larger scale and it wasn’t long before Poison Apple Apothecary was born. Let’s find out more about how Angela turned her favourite pastime into a lucrative company…

DD: Who are you and what kind of corporate job were you at?

AR: My name is Angela Rogers. When I took my corporate America job at a Fortune 500 company, I only signed on as an intern.  I thought that I would only work there for a summer and then I would find my “real job.”  After my first few months at this large transportation company I was promoted to full time and given the offices’ key account.  The money was excellent and I loved my account contacts so I decided that just a little bit more couldn’t hurt.  Three years later I had been through pay cuts up to twenty three percent of our total salary, benefits were parsed to nearly nothing, and I felt like the tiniest of fish in the largest of seas.  Around this time I decided to pursue my own passion and start making my own perfume oils on the side.  I didn’t initially plan to sell them but others were impressed enough with the finished product that my confidence was boosted.  Besides, what did I have to lose?

DD: What made you leave the job? When did you realize that you wanted to be an entrepreneur & why?

AR: I had been dissatisfied with my job for a while (three years to be exact) but I don’t recall that I ever had a specific breaking point or moment.  I do recall thinking, “I love my client, I adore my boss, and my co-workers are great but I am just not happy.”  Life is too short to not do what you love.  By this point my sales at my online shop were booming and I had gained some key wholesale accounts.  One busy weekend I actually sat down and did a financial analysis of working for myself versus working for the day job.  I was surprised to find that I literally made double the money working for myself.  That weekend I drew up a resignation letter to hand in to my boss.  When I met with him and gave him the letter he said that he completely understood and that he would probably do the same thing in my position.  With my conscience left unscathed by the prospect of leaving, I had some serious work to do.  I had thirty days until self-employment and there was a laundry list of things to be done on top of the day job and graduate school.

In the following weeks I did many things to prepare for the leap.  I ordered a huge amount of supplies because I wanted to hit the ground running and start new product development.  I did a ton of research on new products I wanted to create and started to design the packaging.  On the personal side of things I arranged for health insurance.  Since I had already started my business most of my preparations were already completed, but the devil is in the details so I was sure to make sure that there were no loose ends to unravel.

DD: How did you prepare yourself for the employee to entrepreneur transition?

AR: I started my business with a few hundred dollars that I had stashed away for a rainy day.  I ordered bottles, supplies, and coordinated labels with a local printer.  I had been mixing my own perfumes for a while so I was confident in my ability as a creator, but I knew that the business side would come with a bit of trial and error.  And yes, at first there were a few errors.  I ordered the wrong labels and had to painstakingly cut them by hand until I ran out because I refused to spend more money.  I hadn’t thoroughly researched my suppliers and ended up paying about 10% more on my glass sample vials than I should have.  I look back at these silly little mistakes now and have a laugh, but these things were so important to the development of my company.  I don’t have a background in business so I had to start from the ground and work my way up.  I don’t regret doing it this way at all.  When I started all I knew was how to make a quality product.  Since this was my foundation everything has fallen into place around it; I truly believe that a well-crafted product is essential to my business.

DD: What are your Top 5 tips for employees who want to be entrepreneurs but are hung up on something?

AR: 1) I have found that the best resources for your small business are actually free and can be found very easily online, from the user-friendly SEO blogs to the business plan templates available on the Small Business Association website.  Be sure to take advantage of these free resources, all you have to do is Google to find a ton of useful information.

2) You don’t have to go into debt to create a business.  I have heard many people say that they wanted to start a business but needed to apply for a loan first.  This may be true for some businesses, but with careful planning and saving this can be avoided in many cases.  If you want to start a business, begin stashing away some cash each month.  E-Commerce is also your financial friend.  Consider the cost of renting a brick and mortar space versus the average $20 per month hosting fees online.  Bonus: you can work whenever you like!

3) Cover your bases.  Taking the leap requires a lot of special planning.  Since I do not currently have a mortgage, my biggest concern was healthcare.  I did some research and found out that I can get great coverage through my graduate school.  Along this same vein, be honest with yourself about luxuries versus necessities.  In the times ahead you may find that your former necessities have turned out to be luxuries.

4) Have a support system, whether it be your current co-workers, parents, or friends.  The beginning can be pretty rough and at some point you are going to want to have someone to lean on.  Be sure to surround yourself with positive people that absolutely believe that you can and will meet your goals.  This will help to keep your outlook positive as well, and attitude is everything!

5) Be creative.  This has been a cornerstone of my business.  There are very rarely new things that come along; for example, perfume oils have been made for years upon years.  However, if you can find a way to market your product to make it stand apart from other products of its kind, then that is half the battle.  I took my perfume oils and branded them to be Gothic style.  My customers love that they are different from the run of the mill pink-cupcake-perfume and feel that they are able to immerse themselves in another culture when they are wearing them.

DD: How are you now? Are you still in same business, and how do you feel?

AR: I am very excited about the future of my business.  This has most definitely been a learning process and I am hoping that it will turn into one of those so-called lifelong learning projects.  Things are continuing to go well at the apothecary.  I am so grateful that I was able to find the courage to jump into something that I loved, even if it was a risk.  Thankfully that risk has paid off and I look forward to many years to come at the apothecary.

DD: Wow! Thank you so much Angela for sharing your story with us. It is very interesting to me how someone can go from Fortune 500 employee to perfume oil developer; it seems like such a long stretch from one to the other, but it seems as though you made it into a somewhat smooth transition. What an interesting story!

AR: Thank you, Devesh, for being interested in my adventure from Fortune 500-er to perfumer. I am very grateful for the success of my business and it has been an incredible journey, one which I hope to continue for many years to come.

DD: That was Angela Rogers everyone, successful perfumer who went from working at a Fortune 500 company to developing her own line of perfume oils. As Angela said, “Life is too short to not do what you love”…and who doesn’t love smelling great!?

Success to all!