Summary

In this episode of *The Strategic Expert Show*, host Matthew Ashton interviews Georgia Vanderville, an inspiring entrepreneur and candle designer. Georgia shares her journey of creating over 100 unique fragrances, selling millions of candles, and building her business without external funding. She discusses the importance of fragrance in creating emotional connections and calming environments, the challenges of entrepreneurship, and the power of meditation in maintaining focus. Georgia’s passion for her craft and commitment to customer relationships shine through, making for an insightful and heartfelt conversation.

Matthew
Welcome back to another episode of the strategic Expert show. I’m your host, Matthew Ashton. Today in this episode, we’re going to be sitting down with Georgia Vanderville. She is a remarkable friend and a wonderful entrepreneur who’s really done great things building up her company. Georgia is going to be able to share a lot with us today. I’m really excited about this. I’ve had a great relationship with her over the last couple of years. Two years. Okay. So it’s been, it’s been a, been a fun journey, and so we definitely want to welcome her into the show. Georgia, welcome in. Hi.

Georgia
Thank you, Matt. Thank you.

Matthew
Glad to have you on. So let’s go ahead and do just kind of a brief overview of your background just so people can kind of get to know you real quick. Awesome.

Georgia
Well, my name is Georgia, and I’m known as the fragrance aficionado.

Matthew
Okay.

Georgia
Because I know that fragrance does something incredible to us. And the art of scent can create calm, confidence, history, mystery, love, create so many different things. And I’ve been in the candle industry for 22 years. I’m a candle designer. And with all of that, I’ve created over 100 different fragrances that have sold over four and a half million candles.

Matthew
So that’s a really interesting title to be a candle designer. You wouldn’t think of a candle as being something that needs to be designed. But I guess on it actually makes sense, like, walk us through that. How do you design a candle?

Georgia
Well, it kind of came from years of experience, right? At first I thought it was just about, it kind of goes back to the beginning of us. So when I there actually, here, we’ll take one step back. When I was 15, I flooded my parents bathroom. And I just. Could you imagine being a 15 year old now and flooding the bathroom? That would be so normal because you’re on your phone paying attention, not paying attention to the tub. But I flooded the bathtub, and the house was so old that this horrid smell came out of the carpet. It was awful. Like, no human should ever smell this. It was bad.

Matthew
Like wet dog kind of.

Georgia
No, it was worse than wet dog. Wet dog is doable. It was like, I can’t even explain it. I don’t even want to go there. I don’t want to take my mind or your viewers there. It was bad.

Matthew
Okay.

Georgia
And I was 15, though, and so we didn’t have a car. I didn’t have any money. I just got my first job, and I had asked people, well, what should I do? Help me. How do I do this? And they said, get a scented candle. And so I had money. I had earned that money. I saved that money. I decided to spend it on a scented candle. I took the bus all the way to the store, smelled. Had this amazing experience in the aisle of smelling everything. It was wonderful. And I took this candle all the way home, and I walked a mile from the bus to my house. Yeah, I mean, it was a whole adventure just to buy this scented candle. I got there, and I lit this candle, and it smelled like nothing. It did nothing. There was no smell to it. I thought, this is the dumbest thing ever. Why in the world would people buy scented candles? They don’t smell like anything. Like, I don’t want to just smell something at a store. How’s I can help me cover up the smell of the carpet. And then at 21, I ended up making this boy I just met a candle because I didn’t have any money to buy him a gift, so I made him a candle. And it blew my mind because it smelled. And I was only 21, and so I naturally thought I had invented something.

Matthew
There you go.

Georgia
And I. So I invented scented candles, and we started selling them. And I couldn’t let this idea die because I’d created something that no one had ever done before. And it really blew my mind. And people kept coming back over and over and over and over again. We started selling it like a farmer’s market. And people would come every single week. And that blew my mind, too, that I did something that was changing people’s lives. And people would come in and they tell us all of these different stories about how these fragrances were wonderful, and they smelled incredible. And they never had an experience like this. And in being able to bring the fragrance all the way to. Now, what does that look like? So, previously, when we had just started, what was I doing? I was trying and playing around and creating my own formulas. I didn’t have anybody else to ask. I didn’t have any real help. I had a little bit of help and guidance, but I really didn’t like their help and guidance, and I appreciated it, but it wasn’t the information that I felt was going to uplift me in the right direction. So we just started kind of making our own, and now we get our fragrances, and we have kind of, like, a criteria on how we’re going to do it. So we’ll make one product, then we’ll test it and see, make sure that that has the synthro and the longevity that we like. And then we’ll continue going through our product line and make sure that it goes in all of our different products. Long, it’s intensive, it is time consuming, and it’s pretty expensive to launch a new fragrance. But we make it work and we have our specific criteria. You know, you cannot, we do not allow smoking in our candles. It’s just an absolute no. But thanks for being a flame. You’re not allowed to smoke.

Matthew
Yeah.

Georgia
And it has to smell incredible, and it has to smell incredible in all of our products across the board. And it has to have longevity to it. It has to meet certain criteria, cannot have certain things inside of the fragrance, because not only do we want the fragrance to be amazing, it can’t harm somebody in the process of that. So it has to be clean, it has to be beautiful and full of natural products. And that is really a good chunk of our criteria to coming out and making sure that that end product is great and amazing and incredible and creates beauty for the end user.

Matthew
I can tell you put your passion into this, and this is something that you really sincerely care about. And I find it interesting that you have such a strict criteria to do this because it could be very easy for you to go the opposite route. Especially, you know, as an entrepreneur, as a business person, I think that temptation often is, okay, how do we get this cheaper? How do we do this? You know, faster, quicker, better. Not necessarily healthier for people. Not necessarily. You know, how many products are there out there that, you know, it’s like, oh, well, this is really nice. And then you find out, yeah, that’s going to give you cancer. Yeah, that’s going to cause these problems. And, and nobody thinks about that. You know, that’s. That’s really interesting that you guys put that much effort into it.

Georgia
It is very, very important because, to be honest with you, you just said something that hit home. So in 2014, my husband had cancer. And I know what it’s like to sit next to your husband as he’s wrapped around the toilet vomiting after his treatments for a week, and just being like, I love you.

Matthew
What else can you do?

Georgia
Health is everything. So making sure that the product we’re putting out there is as healthy as we can make it is key for us.

Matthew
Yeah, that’s really interesting. And the way you described your candles, you know, not, not being. Not having smoke, not having some of these other properties to them is, they’re interesting problems to solve that I think a lot of people just don’t think about. You know, it’s just kind of like, oh, yeah, it’s a candle. There’s a flame. It smokes. That’s. That’s just a natural thing. So for you to be able to find a way for that not to happen is. Is really innovative and really creative on your part.

Georgia
Thank you. I invented.

Matthew
There you go. We’re going to figure that out. Now, you’ve expressed a little bit of your story with me, that you guys have built this company without outside capital, without outside funding. What is that like? And what are some of the challenges you’ve gone through? And, like, how have you been creative in solving them? When, you know, money was tight.

Georgia
How have we been creative with. When solving them? When money is tight. When money is tight is when it’s. When it’s really easy to walk away and give up and say, I can’t do it anymore. So what we did was, we did the work ourselves. So my husband and I, you know, this. This thought just popped in my head, but I am a hiker, okay? I will hike. I’ve hiked many high peaks all across the United States and in many other countries as well. And I love hitting that peak. And you cannot hit. My son’s name is Peak. Actually, p e a k. That is my 13 year old’s name. But you cannot get to your peak without continuing to push through all of those hard moments, no matter how hard they are. And we had a time in 2008 when everything went upside down. We turned in our 30 day notice for our warehouse. And the people who own the warehouse were really mad at us. Really mad at us. But I had asked him. I had gone in, and I communicated, and I said, hey, can we work on the rent? The actual price of the rent? And he said, no. I said, well, here’s a 30 day notice. And we ended up moving back to our. Because we had built a shop on our property, we moved back to the shop on our property. And then, because we had already outgrown that shop, we then got a storage unit. And it was the largest storage unit that we could find. We got the storage unit, and we moved all of our raw materials into there. So we’d have all of the pallets delivered there, and then we would have the guy that owned the storage unit facility. Him and I became good friends, and he had a forklift, and the storage unit was considered commercial property. So because we could use his forklift and we did not have to pay commercial rates or residential rates. Excuse me. We could have all of our products delivered there. And so he would take everything off of the sparklift. And put it in the storage unit for us. And then, boom, we were good. And it was tight. And it was tight, and it took over so much more of our house. And we had been so excited that we’d moved out of the house, and then we brought it all back. But we did things more effective. We took a look at it and we said, well, how can we line the tables up better? How can we rearrange materials so they’re not in our way? How can we put shelves up higher so we can then store things up higher, still, be down below, still work down below, but then have that stuff up above us so it just utilized our space better, did a lot more work ourselves, made everything happen. And, you know, the biggest thing I can say is, when the money is tight, learn something. Look at it, and look at. Look at whatever you can and learn. Because when you’re focusing on just this small moment of this is tight, this is tight. This is tight, you’re going to push, and you’re going to push till you break. But if you can say, I understand this is tight, but I have something to learn. When you can introduce that educational part into it, that personal growth part of it, then you’ll start to see those things around you grow as well. Because when we grow internally, then things can grow externally. So when you’re tight, grow.

Matthew
I really like that. That’s a good way of looking at that, for sure. And I think as entrepreneurs, we go through seasons of that where, you know, everything goes really good, and then all of a sudden, it’s not, for some reason. And I really like that you have that. It’s an attitude of growing. It’s an attitude of evaluate how you got here and why things happen and how do you change it so that doesn’t happen again. That’s. That’s really useful. That’s. That’s really interesting. So as you guys are growing this, as you guys are, you know, you’re working through this expansion. Um, you know, how do you keep your mindset in the right, right space? How are. How are you keeping yourself focused on what really matters?

Georgia
How do you keep yourself focused on what really matters within.

Matthew
Within your business? Within. I mean, obviously, you’re a mother. You’re, you know, dealing with all this business stuff, trying to fight the fight these fires day to day basis. How do you keep yourself centered?

Georgia
Meditation.

Matthew
Okay.

Georgia
Honestly, I think you can do so much inside of this. We already do so much inside of our brain. Like, 95, 98% of our life is lived up here. So when we can slow that down. And when we can create better pictures inside of here, then we can have better experiences externally.

Matthew
I like that. I’m definitely guilty of overthinking. That’s shutting my brain off is not a thing that just doesn’t. Just doesn’t really work.

Georgia
Can I tell you a way to do that?

Matthew
Sure, I’d love to.

Georgia
I meditate every single morning, and sometimes it might be five minutes, and sometimes it might be an hour, but it doesn’t have to be that long. You know, sometimes just 30 minutes of deep breathing. 30 seconds of deep breathing can be just as effective as five minutes, ten minutes, 20 minutes. But I did this exercise the other day, and if you should try it. But actually, Matt, close your eyes.

Matthew
Okay.

Georgia
Okay. Go ahead and relax the top of your head and your cheeks. And anyone listening, feel free to go through this, too. Relax your chin and your shoulders and your chest. Relax your stomach. Relax your hips. Relax your thighs, and relax your calves. Relax your feet, and relax your toes. Now, in this relaxed state of mind, relax your brain. Feel that. Feel that relaxed moment. And when you’re ready, open your eyes.

Matthew
That’s really cool.

Georgia
Did you feel your brain relax?

Matthew
Yeah. That was, like, instant stress relief on a lot of levels. That’s. I like that. That is a different thing we’ve never had on this podcast so far, but I think that’s really cool. Let me ask you, with this meditation that you’re doing, are you doing guided meditation? Are you just doing it solo? Are you doing it with music? Like, what’s your go to? I know there’s a lot of different ways to do it.

Georgia
It depends on what you have going on. It depends on, you know, where you’re at and what’s cruising through your mind at the time. If you are calm enough to do a guided meditation, then do a guided meditation. It can take you to a wonderful place and just follow through and do that. And, you know, I wake up a lot of times. My hip. Well, every time I wake up, my husband’s always asleep next to me. Yeah. When I always wake up first. And I will, if I have my earbuds, then I will listen to a guided meditation, but a lot of times I forget them, so I just don’t have them. So I’ll just sit there and just do a silent meditation because he’s asleep and I don’t want to play anything. And sometimes those ones right there can be the ones that take me the furthest in life.

Matthew
So, interesting. If I were to do that, I definitely would end up, back asleep. I, I’ve done that before. I’m like, I’m going to try to meditate, and 3 hours later, you wake up like, well, I got some deep rest and some deep sleep, but that was not the goal.

Georgia
But, you know, those times might be the ones where you really need it. But I’m always sitting up. So I’ll always sit up first, and then that way I’m, I’m up.

Matthew
I’ve noticed that as a trick, I try to sit in a chair. Um, you know, if I get really creative, I try to actually do like, the exercise ball. So you really have to maintain your balance, and if you start drifting off, you kind of get brought back into reality a bit.

Georgia
Whack.

Matthew
Yeah, it could get really dangerous. But now, this is, this is going to be kind of an interesting segue here. Um, but you, you and I talked briefly before, uh, before the podcast, and you alluded to it a little bit more. Uh, right at the beginning was about fragrances. Do you employ fragrance at all in your meditative states or to, like, you kind of talked about this, of the fragrance can induce certain emotions and feelings.

Georgia
Yes. So I do, no, I don’t, I don’t actually include fragrance in my meditations. I have every once in a while. But I don’t like, on a general basis. No, because I usually do it first thing in the morning, and I don’t have anything lit. I don’t have any melters on. There’s votives, tea lights, jars. Everything’s off. Because don’t burn a candle unattended.

Matthew
Fair enough. While you’re sleeping, please do not burn down your house.

Georgia
Yeah, but, you know, fragrance is a big part of helping us relax, for sure. And I was. Fragrance creates these moments where we can change what we’re looking at and change what we’re thinking about, and it will help us relax. So if there is a time where you are just going so much in your mind, you can always light a candle, you can turn on a wax melter, whatever it is, whatever type of product you like to use that helps you move forward is amazing. But an example of this is I had my son, he was real young, and he had just gotten in trouble at school, and I had been called in, and the teacher was really upset with him, which then in turn meant she was upset with me, which then in turn made me, like, defensive, and I was feeling like I was one, called into the principal’s office, and I’d done something wrong, and I was under this lady, but it was so silly. But we’re driving home, and I’m yelling at him, and he’s defending himself, and he’s yelling back, and we just have this hate toward each other in this moment, and I’m ready to, like, just not be friends with him ever again. And I’m gonna take every electronical piece away from him. So we’re heading inside the house, and my husband had lit a candle. It was actually a lavender candle.

Matthew
I love lavender.

Georgia
It’s so good. I agree. He had lit this candle in our house, and it. When I walked inside the house, this smell, I’m like, I’m gonna hurt you and kill you. Not really hurt you. Let me do it.

Matthew
Yeah, I know what you mean. Okay.

Georgia
I’m gonna murder you. No, I’m not gonna figure it in. What was I saying? I’m gonna take every electronical bees away from you. There we go. But, you know, I’m really frustrated with this child. And I’m like, hey, you know, da da da da da. And he and I walk in, and the smell hits me. And all of a sudden, I went, oh, wait a second. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. I’m sorry, bud. I should not be taking this out on you. I shouldn’t be acting like this. I’m really sorry. Will you forgive me? And he’s like, no. I’m like, okay, that’s okay. That’s fair. Because this is just, like, all of a sudden a change. But let’s just sit down and talk about what happened at school. Cool. And he’s like, fine, okay. But me being able to, like, switch and have that pattern, interrupt that, like, boom, out of that into this was really what helped us move forward. And I call that a fragrance, flip. So, like, when you’re in that moment and you’re really frustrated and you’re upset about something and something’s not moving, right, or you’re inside your mind and you’re saying, hey, I’m mad. I’m frustrated with you. You’re the pissing me off, even to yourself. That’s when we can smell something different and we can go, oh, wait a second. And that’s one of the best times to turn on a candle, to turn on a melter, light a candle, do whatever it is, smell something that just says, nope, we’re right here right now. And when we’re right here, right now, it’s okay. Everything is both.

Matthew
I love that. And I love that for two reasons. Because, one, you know, you did show that the race, the relationship between you and your son, obviously that eventually got worked out. But the fact that one of you was able to de escalate, you know, that that’s the hardest part. When you’re both fighting, you’re both going at it. It’s obviously, he held onto it for a bit longer and didn’t quite have the same effect, but it created a moment where you were able to start listening more. You were able to make your own switch, and that’s in turn, going to have an effect on him, where it’s going to be a different communication instead of you both coming at it from each other. So, like, just the conflict resolution there was really powerful to me to just realize, like, that’s the thing. You get into a fight with somebody, and you’re both in that fighting mode, and all it takes is one person to disengage from that to kind of calm that down.

Georgia
Very true. And all relationship situations, it doesn’t matter who the relationship is. It just takes one of you to say, hey, I’m sorry, man.

Matthew
Yeah. And I 100% agree with that. And the other part of it that you, you created, actually, a memory for me is it’s not a candle, but I love jasmine green tea, and I love it for the scent as. Just as much as the taste and everything else. It is one of those things that, when you’re having a rough day or having a bad time is I will make jasmine green tea. And a lot of the experience of it is smelling it before drinking it and just kind of taking in that jasmine. And it. It is absolutely calming, and it is one of the my go tos on the worst days when I’m the most stressed. And it’s. It’s weird how that works, but it’s absolutely powerful.

Georgia
That’s beautiful. Very well said.

Matthew
Thanks. I. It’s something that you created that memory for. You talk about these fragrances and these memories and stuff, but you just saying that brought that back to me where I was like, oh. And I almost felt a little bit of relaxation just thinking about it. And that’s.

Georgia
That’s crazy how that can happen when all we’re doing is we’re just like, jasmine green tea.

Matthew
There. Absolutely. Or, you know, when you. When you said lavender, well, lavender’s not lilac. I instantly thought of that. I grew up with a lilac bush outside of my window as a little kid, and in the spring and in the summertime, when the lilacs were blooming, you could smell it. And that is still a sense memory for me whenever I get a lilac candle or anything. Like that at Walmart, and you go to smell it, it, like, transport you back to your childhood and you, like, remember that. It’s, it’s crazy how fragrance can do that.

Georgia
That’s beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. History is everything. And, and when a fragrance can tap into our history, you know, that’s. It’s beautiful. It’s like how Facebook has your memories right there. You know what I mean? I’m gonna tap into my history with fragrance. It’s cool.

Matthew
And where I find that interesting is sometimes it brings up stuff you’ve forgotten and haven’t really, you know, you’re not storing that. Oh, lilacs is part of my memory as a childhood. Until you smell it and you go, I remember that, like, as a kid, picking the, picking the lilacs off the bush and actually smelling the bunches of them. So let me ask you this. Which are your favorite fragrances? I’m sure there’s going to be a list, which is why I didn’t ask for one.

Georgia
Well.

Matthew
I’m going to ask for your favorites and then ones you do not like.

Georgia
Well, we don’t actually have a single one that I don’t like because if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t carry it.

Matthew
Good to know.

Georgia
I absolutely, really enjoy every single one of our fragrances because I am like, you’ve got to get through me and this nose before you can get onto our platform.

Matthew
So interesting.

Georgia
I mean, I’m a fragrance girl. You know what I mean? I love wax. I love fragrance. So it’s got to be. It has to be, right? My very favorite, my very favorite fragrance is our pinion and patchouli.

Matthew
Sounds good.

Georgia
Yeah, it is really good. It doesn’t actually have, like, the chuli to it. I mean, it does, but it’s so light that it wouldn’t take over anything. It’s really like this beautiful pinyon pine uplifted with this bottom note that just enriches the fragrance. It’s one of those fragrances where if I, if I did not say the word patchouli, you would have no idea that it had it in it. But just that bottom note of it just uplifts everything and makes you go.

Matthew
Ah, there’s something about that pine smell that is just captivating. It really is. You know, I’m a big fan of, like, the doctor squatch soaps, and the ones I like is the pine tar for that very reason. It kind of has that pine pininess to it.

Georgia
Very cool. Yeah. There’s nothing better than going for the walk for a walk in the woods.

Matthew
Yeah.

Georgia
I mean, just being able to be out there and that’s how people feel sometimes about the beach, too. You know what I mean? Just being able to connect with that beautiful place that you deeply enjoyed and being able to smell it authentically.

Matthew
Yeah. When you say that and you talk about the beach instantly, in my head, I was thinking about Kramer on Seinfeld when he tried to create the beach fragrance for, like, the perfume. I was like, oh, depends on the beach. There’s some beaches that just ain’t good, but that’s true. But there is that. There’s that element to it. It’s interesting how much fragrance is a part of our lives. It really is. When you really start thinking about it, something we don’t think about often, but, like, talking with you, all of a sudden, I’m thinking fragrance is actually a marketing tool.

Georgia
You know, like, it is very much a marketing tool.

Matthew
You look at the food industry, restaurants, like, how many times have you gone out and you go, man, something smells really good. Or a barbecue place. Like, all of that element is actually marketing. And like a promotional. And candles can be, too. You know, when you’re talking an office space and having people come into your office, you don’t want your office to smell bad. You want it to smell in certain ways based on what you’re trying to do.

Georgia
Yeah.

Matthew
Yeah, exactly.

Georgia
So, yeah, help other people feel motivated as well. So when you do have some smells that you burn in, say, like an office, it can help keep people focused because they smell it and they’re there.

Matthew
What kind of smells? I’m curious because I might need to go do a little shopping here.

Georgia
I would say. I would do lemongrass. Lemongrass is a fragrance that kind of brings you, boom, right into that moment. And so you have more like, like friendlier smells. Like, oh, I want to put, like a paradise pear and I want to put that in my house and have that kind of cruise on through. Or the lilac, you know, it’s, I’m going to relax. But the lemongrass, the grapefruit, the lemon blueberry twist, the kind of more fruity fragrances, those tend to get people a little bit more focused and interesting and help them. And this is just from my, from my experience, I haven’t actually read a book. I know that there’s lots of different ideas on what different fragrances do and all of that.

Matthew
We’ll call this an n equals one study.

Georgia
Yeah.

Matthew
This is your, this is your, your experience and your anecdotal, which is, okay, that’s that can absolutely be powerful.

Georgia
Yeah. But when you have, like, those fruitier fragrances, I have found that. And even you’ll watch it, you know, when we are producing those fruitier, higher energy fragrances, we will watch our team produce in a more effective manner.

Matthew
Interesting.

Georgia
Yeah, it’s really cool. And everybody, you can see people’s attitudes kind of go, hey, hey, hey. And they get more chatty and they get more excited and more, let’s get this done. And more team oriented. So that’s kind of where my expertise comes from in that is just watching my own team react to those fragrances that we have there.

Matthew
Interesting.

Georgia
Yeah.

Matthew
I guess there’s a flip side to that, is, have you experienced it where certain fragrances have slowed down your team?

Georgia
Hmm.

Matthew
Because I’m thinking ones that are relaxing or, you know, like the lavender fresh cotton things that are relaxing. I’m curious to see if that might actually affect performance.

Georgia
No, I haven’t actually noticed where they drop below, like metrics, but I have. I have noticed that there’s. If somebody doesn’t like a fragrance, if someone is like, oh, I just don’t want to work with it, then there’s a procrastination. It takes them longer to start on the project then, but I think that that’s probably with everything. If there’s something you’re just like, I.

Matthew
Hate, you don’t want to do it.

Georgia
It’s going to take you longer to get up and go do the dishes. For a lot of people. Yeah, maybe not for some. Some people. It will inspire them and they’ll be like, yeah, let’s do it now, fast. So it’s done.

Matthew
I’m not one of those people.

Georgia
No.

Matthew
Procrastination is my bread and butter. Last minute panic is the great way to get a job done.

Georgia
It does make it move fast, that’s for sure.

Matthew
Yep. Yeah. I can’t remember the name of the law, but it’s. There’s a law that says that work expands to fill the time given it. So I feel like by procrastinating, sometimes, I’m shortening that span that it takes to actually get the job done. Cause I have to have it done by this deadline, so I’m actually gonna do it. I’m curious, obviously, you don’t produce any fragrances you don’t like, but are there specific fragrances that are out there in the world that, you know, you can say commercially produced? I can think of one right off the top of my head that makes me nauseous, but I’m curious if there’s any smells or any fragrances that you really don’t care for.

Georgia
Twelve year old boy armpits. Oh, really don’t care for that smell.

Matthew
See, this, this turns me into, like, I don’t know if you’re a big Harry Potter fan, but how they have birdie bots every quarter. There you go. But how they have the jelly beans that. Some of them are really good, some of them are nasty. Like, it’d be interesting to maybe have a joke candle line that is actually, like, gross smells that you can give to your friends that say it’s something good and it’s actually something terrible.

Georgia
But we’ve thought about stuff like that before. But then you have to be happy doing it.

Matthew
Yeah. I don’t want to ruin your life.

Georgia
Yeah. Where you have to, like, sit in this poo smell for. No.

Matthew
Yeah, no, that would be, that would be disastrous. But for me, like, new car smell, that. That fragrance of that new car. Like, I don’t, I don’t know what it is, but that, that specific one is like stomach turning to me.

Georgia
Yeah.

Matthew
So it’s. I try to avoid that.

Georgia
That would make sense.

Matthew
Yeah. The, I guess, kind of getting back into you. You’re obviously a woman entrepreneur and I feel like that’s something that is important to address and talk about. And so I’d like to know, have you faced any unique challenges yourself, you know, being a woman in this space, in trying to build a business? I’d be curious to hear your opinion in your feelings on that.

Georgia
In all honesty, I am a woman in business, but I have not had any male that I can think of right now that’s ever pushed me down. I cannot think of anybody. I can think of one experience that I had. So I really wanted to buy some equipment and I found there was a huge, gigantic auction that was going on and I flew all the way to Texas to do this auction and we didn’t have any money, so I had borrowed some money from my mother in law and I had $2,000 and I was going to go there and I was going to buy something incredible. And we got there. I got there, I was all by myself and I got there and I didn’t. And it was all men. And I’m five foot tall. Everyone else was like, like seven foot tall compared to me. Not really. They were probably like 6ft, you know what I mean? Like taller than me and. And I just didn’t fit in. I felt like I didn’t fit in to. And we were going through all of this, like, you know, there’s these bids and they’re going, there was one piece of equipment I really wanted, and I had said, I’m not going to buy anything until I can buy this one piece of equipment. My max is $2,000. I had $2,000 to go into it. And I got up there and I waited and I stood in the back, and I’d watched everybody, and I hadn’t talked to anybody. And I actually ended up talking to one guy at the very, like, right before this. I ended and I said, this is the piece I want. And the entire time that this auction was going on, we had all these men, and they were, of course, in front of me because they felt they were part of the auction and they were making bids.

Matthew
Yeah.

Georgia
And they had placed themselves in front of this, in front of everybody else. And I, I remember the auctioneer, he’s auctioning, auctioning. And this guy next to me, he’s like, dude, bid on this, bid on this, bid on this, bid on this. And I’m like, yeah, okay, okay, okay. And they’ve got these bids, you know, 500, 600, 700, 800. And I am like, frozen. I can’t say anything. I can’t. I’m just like, my throat is clenched up. I’m like, I want to, I want to. And they get all the way down. They close the bid at $2,000, close the bid out. And I never bid one time, and I about started to cry. And I’m like, God, why? Why? I could have won that. Later on, there were a few other pieces of machinery, and since I still had so many, I bid on these smaller pieces of machinery. And the second I opened my mouth, these men opened up and they were like, oh, oh, oh. And every piece of machinery I bid on, no one else bid on. The second I said, I’m bidding, they stopped. It was like a rite of passage. And I talked to one of the guys about the piece of machine that he machinery that he had just won the $2,000.01 that I should have bid on. Yeah, I could have said 2000. And he said to me, he said, I’m not buying this actually for me. I’m buying it for a friend of mine. And his. Max bid was 2000, so I would never have gone to 2100. I could have gotten it. He got it for 2000. I could have gotten it for 2000.

Matthew
Yeah.

Georgia
But I realized. And then later, when we were all talking, all of a sudden I’m in there with all of these men, and they’re all chatting with me. They’re all talking to me. Everything’s going good. I’m now part of the crew. And they said, oh, yeah. Well, we thought maybe you were like an old employee here because there was a ton of, like, women who were probably old employees that had come to see what was happening with the facility, but they were not bidding, so they lumped in with that crew. But it was me and my lack of confidence that stopped that situation and stopped me from growing. It was not a man. And when I did step up and I said, I’m part of the crew, I wasn’t a jerk. I wasn’t like, hey, I’m here. I was just, hey, I’m me. And I said, welcome. Welcome in. And that’s one of the biggest lessons for me, is that I have to move past that inner fear of mine and that block that I have and that idea of me being too short or not good enough or not having the same idea or bothering somebody else or getting in somebody else’s way. I have to let that go. And when I can let that go, then that’s when everything else grows around me. So it wasn’t man world versus women world, it was me. My own internal thoughts versus who I can become. And then now I’m a massive player in the candle industry. Now I hold a role here for manufacturing in northern Nevada and I represent so many manufacturers, including Tesla and Panasonic and huge companies and what they need inside of their manufacturing facilities because I’ve said I’m me and I step forward.

Matthew
That is incredibly impactful. I’m really glad you shared that story and I can see how intimidating that is. I’ve obviously met you in person and I am the six foot guy who towers over you. And I could see, you know, not even the fact that it’s men, but just the fact that, you know, you’re the only person, you’re the only woman there. There’s a bunch of guys. I’m sure they’re being loud and raucous because guys are. We’re just that way. And they’re. They’re bigger than you. Like, you almost have to fight to be seen just because you’re, you know, you’re like 5ft tall. So it’s like, I could see this. Yeah, or you’re. That would be such an intimidating situation. I’d be intimidated to be in a bidding situation and I’m one of the guys. So, you know, that’s. I feel like bids and auctions are intimidating by nature anyways. You know, if you bid, are you just driving the price up and somebody else is, or do you wait at the last second snipe in the last bid to win? Like, you know, and like you said, if you’d have gone just above your budget to 2100, that guy would have been out.

Georgia
If I hadn’t done that. But also, if I hadn’t just made that bid at 2000, they would.

Matthew
He couldn’t have gone above a bond. You would have won it.

Georgia
Yeah, I would have. I would have been the one that walked away with it for 2000. We now have purchased that same machine. We own it. Not, not the exact same machine, but the machine that does the exact same thing. We own that machine. Now, I didn’t get it from the auction, but I learned so much from that auction, and I grew bigger because I put myself in a situation and I stepped forward. And even though I stepped forward, really, really tiny, teeny, tiny little steps. Boom. Tiny steps lead to the top of the staircase.

Matthew
I 100% agree with that. And, you know, I I can relate to that on a lot of levels. Um, you know, obviously not a female entrepreneur, but that confidence is, is life changing, but it can, it takes some effort to earn, like, you. You have to earn it. You really do. Like, when I think about this and I think about, you know, what, what you kind of went through and on. And being an entrepreneur myself, there’s a real battle to that. But once you’ve taken those steps in that direction and you start getting those little small wins, the amount of confidence that comes from that is truly, truly life changing. And it’s. It takes me back, and I mentioned this in another podcast. It takes me back to Jim Rohn. I absolutely love him. He’s a phenomenal speaker. You know, all of his motivational stuff’s on YouTube, which makes it really easy now because I think he’s actually passed. But when he was explaining his mentor was talking about the need for him to become a millionaire was not for the million dollars, not for the cash, not like the end goal. To your point, the top of the mountain was not the. It was the end goal, but it was not the reason. And that the reason you should become a millionaire, the reason you should pursue your goals, is because of what it’s going to make of you in the process.

Georgia
Beautifully said.

Matthew
And this, for you, was kind of that way, being in this room, being this what it made of you in the process, turned you into who you are today and set you on that part of your journey.

Georgia
Yes.

Matthew
And I think that’s impactful. You know, the other part of this is you spoke up, you started. You finally figured out how to speak up. And for me personally, I think not. Not asking is the reason. A lot of people don’t get what they. What they want in life. We don’t want to impose. We don’t want to, uh, you know, interrupt somebody or feel like we’re bothering somebody, but you got. You have to. You have to step in. The worst they’re going to say is, what? No.

Georgia
Exactly. Yeah. The worst they’re going to say is no.

Matthew
And even then, the no’s not personal to you. And I think this is the hardest part of our own psychology.

Georgia
And it’s not solid. Yeah, it’s not solid. And no, it’s just one word out of someone’s mouth. It’s only two letters. All we need to do is change it to three letters and you’ve got a yes.

Matthew
There you go. And sometimes it’s a default. Like, everybody defaults to no. I’ve got a really good friend of mine that’s an adventure, since you’re a hiker, just like I am. Like, we like getting out in the woods. I have a friend who’s been an adventurer his entire life. When he got out of universities, he lives in England. He traveled the world for four years on a bicycle for, like, $7,000 in his pocket. Biked around the world, has done a bunch of adventures. But a lot of what I get out of listening to his adventures is how many people tell him, no, you can’t do that. You can’t go there. It’s not going to happen. Specifically one he did, because he lives in England, they wanted to go to the very northernmost part of the UK, which means they have to go through all of the Shetland Isles. And so instead of taking a ferry, what they would do is they would bike across each island and then blow up these little inflatable pack rafts, put their bikes in the rafts and raft across to the next island. But every, every time, yeah, every time they were stopping at the pub or anywhere else, they’re like, what’s the crossing like? Is it dangerous? Is it safe? Are we going to be okay? Everybody’s going, oh, you’re not going to make it. You’re definitely going to die. Like, don’t do it. But they made it all the way and they had this great adventure. It was gorgeous footage that they got. And he goes, everybody’s default is no. And I found that really, really interesting.

Georgia
So it’s a protection mechanism. It is no means that you don’t have to put out any effort. You don’t have to think, you don’t have to save anything. You don’t have to save anybody.

Matthew
I really like that. That’s really, really interesting. Let’s talk about your vision for the future of what you’re doing. Where do you see yourself going? What’s the, what’s your current goal? What are you striving for? What’s, what’s your top of the mountain right now?

Georgia
My top of the mountain right now is to grow our TikTok followers to 100,000.

Matthew
Nice.

Georgia
And, yeah, and be able to. So for so many years, one of our biggest things was we are nothing. We don’t know. Well, excuse me, let me back up just a second.

Matthew
Okay.

Georgia
It has not been our area of expertise in connecting directly with the customer unless it’s on the phone or face to face. You get me. So it’s fantastic. You don’t get me anymore over the phone specifically, but you’ll get my team, and my team has been trained by me, so they understand exactly. You know what I mean? Like, they are so compassionate and incredible. So you’re going to get my through talking to somebody over the phone. But when online, you don’t get me online. You don’t have a personal relationship. But there’s branding. And branding has always been something that we’ve never put time and energy into because we’ve put all of our time and energy into our product, improving the product, getting the product to the customer, creating relationships with our vendors, doing all of that. But now what we’re really working on is creating a relationship with our audience because we ship, say we ship 800 orders a day. It’s really wonderful to see all those orders go out to get everything going out. This is so much fun. But I don’t know you. But I want to know you. I want to, I want to have that package sealed and see everything in the big crates and see them being pushed out to the trucks. And I want to say, I know you. I know who that’s going to. I understand you. I get you. I love you, and I just want that relationship with people. So that is my mountain right now, is getting to know our customer, getting to know how our products help them deeply, you know, because fragrance is so much more than just a surface level thing. You know, you can pour a cup of water on your hand and you can let the water drip off, but there’s, but there’s something about fragrance that just, it stays and it goes into your soul and it just says, I feel loved, I feel cared about, I feel seen, I belong, and I want people to have that, and I want people to experience that. And I want them to know that they’re seen, that they’re heard, that they belong, that they’re loved, that their history means something, that, you know, all the mysteries inside of them are incredible and they can follow their adventures. And that’s what I’m working on right now, is getting that message out.

Matthew
I love that. That’s absolutely fantastic. And I can understand, you know, as, as a media marketer, the challenge in trying to get that level of a connection through social media. So I’d be curious. You know, I always look at a mountain and go, there’s multiple ways to the top. There’s, there’s a lot of ways to skin the cat. You know, you can go directly up the face, you can take the saddle. You, you know, there’s a lot of ways to get up to the top of a mountain. I’m curious, what are you currently trying to employ? And you don’t, you don’t have to go into detail if you don’t want to, but I, what’s your current strategy to try to get to the top of that mountain? How are you trying to foster that connection online.

Georgia
One customer at a time?

Matthew
Absolutely.

Georgia
That’s really, you know what I mean? Just, yeah. Taking a look and saying, I’m here, and really I spend more of my time on Facebook, on our shorties, candlest, Shorty’s candle company Facebook page, because I understand how to work with Facebook. I know how to navigate Facebook. I would not say I’m like, the best. Like, you have some people that have hundreds of thousands of followers and I don’t, but I don’t. But I come from a very genuine place.

Matthew
Yeah.

Georgia
Not from in. I understand marketing and I know how to do branding and all of that. So I’m going to nlp my way into your brain. I come from a, I’m here, I hear you, I see you, and I want to be part of my circle.

Matthew
I think that’s more, much more important than the hundreds of thousands of followers. Um, we actually talked about this in a previous episode with Paul Dietz. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with him. He’s another ten xer. Um, but he really talks about being your authentic self on social media, on LinkedIn, on Facebook. Um, and we’ve talked about, you know, it’s, it’s so easy to fake followers these days. It’s you know, somebody can go out and buy bots and end up like, oh, I’ve got 600,000 followers. And then when you do the deep dive on them, you find out every single account that follows them has been deleted. They still count as a follower for some reason, but it’s like, these are all bots. They don’t actually exist. These are, it’s fake. Versus, I think when somebody like you gets on and gets very genuine and very authentic, the thing that’s actually more important is your engagement level and how much people engage with you, and you’re going to get a lot more of that and you’re going to get a higher engagement rate. So you may not have as many followers, but you’re going to have people who actually listen to what you have to say.

Georgia
Yeah. And that’s important. And I want to have those friendships and I want to have those connections because those just, they bring the world together. And that’s what we’re here for, is really bringing the world together, bringing the friendships together. And one of the biggest things for me is I, if I could go around and I could touch the top of everybody’s head and I could just say, you belong, and I could just make them see that they belong and that they’re loved, that I would give up everything in the world just to do that, just to say, you belong.

Matthew
I really love that. Yeah. You come from a very, obviously, a place of being very loving and very caring. And that is very interesting as an entrepreneur because I think there’s a lot of entrepreneurs who are not. You remind me a lot of Courtney Bannon that we just, we just did an interview with, because she comes from yoga as her central, central space and utilizing yoga to impact the rest of her life versus, you know, a lot of the entrepreneurs I’ve met know, especially the men, tend to look as entrepreneurship, as a battle. It’s a fight to be fought. And it, it’s so interesting to hear your perspective in Courtney’s because it is, it is very much an opposite philosophy, but I think it’s more impactful.

Georgia
You have to introduce me to her.

Matthew
Yeah, I will definitely have to. It’s very, very interesting because there’s somebody, I just saw this quote this morning. I’ve seen it before, but it basically says, if you focus on money over relationships, pretty soon you’ll have neither. And that instantly came to my head as you’re talking about this, because the way you approach business, the way you’re approaching your company, your branding is relationship based. It is trying to connect with people, and I think that that’s massively impactful.

Georgia
That’s the important part.

Matthew
Yeah, 100% is. So I actually have some ideas on how you might be able to utilize social media. We’ll get into that off the call and we can kind of talk on it, but I’ve got some ideas that might help you get some of that expansion, get some of the connection, and, and even potentially some of the one on one connection with some of these people. Um, I, I think there’s some good ideas that you may even be already employing them. If not, maybe they’ll help you out and achieve that, you know?

Georgia
Sounds good. Thank you.

Matthew
Yeah, I think it’s important for us to work together. You know, sometimes you need that extra help to get to the top of the mountain. I mean, I, I did a lot of hiking as a Boy scout, and so I think about that, and when you talk about hiking instantly, that that’s something I’m like, oh, this is another thing we connect on. And every year the Boy scouts do this signal, uh, with mirrors. And so every, um, and they do it the entire length of the rocky mountains. And so what they do is all the Boy scout troops climb up on mountains, and we flash the mirror signals from one mountain to another. So we wait till we get a flash from somebody and we flash it to the next person and go on and on the mountain. I grew up hiking is called Prater Peak. It’s in, uh, Star Valley, Wyoming. And Prater is a steep bugger of a mountain. And for some reason, we being the scouts and the twelve year olds and 14 year olds that we were, we never once went up the switchbacks and went up the easy way. We had to go up the face, and we went up the face every single time despite not learning. But there was a lot of times when we’d have to help each other where there were, uh, you know, there were situations where it was just harder. We were just tired or maybe somebody wasn’t quite as prepared. Um, I remember there was one time I was just wiped out. And so one of the scout leaders ended up, uh, giving me some hard candy, um, like some jolly ranchers. And that allowed me to have something to suck on, a little bit of, uh, carbs, a little bit of calories, a little bit of sugar. That allowed me to make it the rest of the way because I wasn’t prepared at the time going forward, I had them and I was ready to go, but I would not have learned that if it wasn’t for somebody else trying to help me because they had the experience I didn’t have.

Georgia
That’s awesome story. I totally understand that analogy because sometimes, yeah, you just need that tiny little jolly Rancher you do.

Matthew
And you need the experience of somebody who’s been there before and somebody who can maybe see something you’re not seeing. And that’s why I love this podcast. That’s why I like interviewing what I consider to be experts and entrepreneurs and other people because I get to gain so much from people like you. I definitely am one of those guys that looks at business as something to be fought and gone after and do it by the hard numbers because I come from a math background. That’s just kind of how it is. So to get this soft side of it is awakening to me that there’s things I need to work on and develop as a, as an entrepreneur. So I do want to thank you for being on here today. It’s been impactful for me. Even if you’ve impacted nobody else or any of the audience, which I know is not going to be the case, you’ve made a difference just in my day today, just being able to be on here.

Georgia
Awesome. Thank you. I’m grateful to have you. And Shorty’s candles is grateful to have you. So we’re grateful to be here.

Matthew
Absolutely. Georgia, where can everybody find you? Where can they find the candles? How can they connect with you and your company?

Georgia
Go to shortyscandles.com. very simple. It’s shorties. Shorties. Scandals.com.

Matthew
Perfect. All right. We’re going to make sure we link to that in the show notes as well. We always do. And everything we post out on these, all the shorts and stuff, we’re going to make sure we link out so as many people can find you as possible.

Georgia
You know, we should put a link in there to our Amazon store as well because that makes it really easy for people. So fantastic. It can ship it. Actually, a lot of times it will still ship from our location or it might ship from Amazon, but same product just in different warehouses.

Matthew
So yeah, Amazon has made things nice for sure. I even had that, you know, with Courtney’s book, I was able to buy it and get it the next morning. So the Amazon warehouses can sometimes be a convenient way of doing it. And obviously, you know, you guys are still partnered with them. So, uh, we’ll, we’ll link to both for sure. Um, thank you. Yeah. And we definitely would love to have you back again in the future. For sure. I’d love to go into other topics, go deeper on some of the stuff you’ve talked about today. Uh, there’s some stuff we haven’t gotten into. I know we’re both kind of Mindvalley fans, and so there’s, there’s an element of that I want to explore with you. So I think we’ll definitely be having you back real soon.

Georgia
I’d love to come back. That would be an honor. Thank you.

Matthew
All right, well, thank you. And thank you, everybody who’s been listening. If you like the podcast, please like and subscribe. Please go to Shorty’s candles and pick up one today. Support Georgia and her work. She’s absolutely doing a fantastic job and has a unique product. We’ll see you all next time.