From Struggles to Success: Genee Carr s Journey with Brown Tings & Natural Skincare

Hi, Laura. It is so nice to speak to you again. I’m so excited about our conversation.

First off, thank you so much for pronouncing it correctly because it is Tings. I don’t know how much you know about the islands, but in the islands, they drop off the H. Instead of saying thing, they say thing.

Yes, absolutely. Again, my name is Jané. Most people call me Jeanie the first they see my name. But I like to remind people it’s Renee, just with a G. I am originally from Brooklyn, New York, from Bedford-Stuyvesant, which is a pretty well-known ghetto, if you will, of Brooklyn. But I think a lot of things come out of rough places. Growing up in that type of atmosphere, it really put a lot of ambition in me, and it made me just want better for my life. I grew up knowing that I had a responsibility of of escaping my surroundings. I was always taught that the way to do that was through education, but I later learned that really the way to do that is to do it through business. Throughout my life, I grew up trying to find myself. I was always a really creative person. Never really wanted to be a part of the corporate world for long, but I used those assets to just make myself a better person. How I got into business. I met my best friend in college, and we hit it off and stayed friends up until this day. We always just spoke about just doing entrepreneurial things together.

Am I getting ahead of myself? Because I know you have a lot of questions, and I don’t want to jump ahead.

Perfect. Another thing about me, I grew up with eczema pretty severely. I was told by doctors that it was chronic, so I tried everything. Creams, ointments, and I would get temporary relief, but it was never something that actually brought any healing to my body. I went through a lot of trial and error. I started using natural products, but I just couldn’t find something that would keep the consistency. I would try something, it would work for a little bit, and then I would have a breakout, and it wasn’t effective. Me and my best friend, we came up with the idea. We were like, You know what, girl? We could make these things ourselves. So we started using natural ingredients and we loved it. And we were like, Okay, we like it. So I’m sure that there’s other people that can help. We started allowing our friends, people at our church, to start trying out the products, and it really just blew up from there.

Absolutely. So we pride ourselves on being plant-based, so we don’t use anything in our products that are not derived from a plant, which is very important because there are a lot of brands that will portray themselves as being all-natural, and they’ll use that as an umbrella to sell their product. But I’ve been finding that a lot of them, especially when they experience a certain level of growth, start to change their formulas. If you have sensitive skin, that’s very important because the chemicals that they’re using can have an adverse reaction to your skin. That’s something that we promised ourselves that we were never going to change our products. We do offer body butters. We also offer body oils. We also offer rosewaters. We actually launched our first men’s product this year, which is a beard oil. All of our products are in BPA-free packaging so that there’s no chemicals from the plastic that are seeping into products, which can also cost a flare-up. That’s something that we’ve decided that we’re never going to change no matter how big we get.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s the thing about it. A lot of times, especially if you use your products sparingly, the shelf life is very important. Let’s say you buy a lotion and you keep it in your cupboard or something for months, the plastic from the bottle that it’s in gets into your lotion. Something that I’ve been finding is that we’re so used to having toxins in our bodies that we don’t recognize the effects that it’s having on us. But most products that are on shelves nowadays, especially popular ones, they’re not in BPA-free packaging, which is even causing cancer in some cases. It’s something that we take very seriously, and I do want more people to pay attention to those types of things.

Exactly. Most people don’t think about it, but if we pay attention, there’s been an uptick in cancer. How can that be explained? It has to be something that we’re ingesting. It’s in food, it’s in the products that we’re using, and something else I found even in cookware. So we really do have to be diligent about the things that we’re putting into our bodies. I’m a firm believer that God created the Earth that we need for optimal health. That’s something that we consider when we’re making our products. We don’t want to put anything in it that God didn’t create. That’s something that we keep in mind.

Absolutely. Unfortunately, you have to question the perimeter. Like you said, I could talk about this stuff all day. But even things that are presented as organic, they’re not even organic anymore. Something that I’ve also been noticing is, especially in fruits in particular, there are so many seedless fruits and vegetables, which makes you have the question, if it doesn’t come from a seed seed and it doesn’t have a seed, what is this and where does it come from?

Yes, definitely social media. We make sure that we’re consistent with posting on our Instagram in particular. We also have been looking into TikTok, but I’m an in-person girl, and I found that is something that has been really effective for us as well. Just getting out in-person, doing networking, and also different vendor events, those have been the most successful for us because we don’t find ourselves in spaces where people are just looking at our packaging. I love our packaging. It’s luxury and it is attractive, but it’s one thing if you’re making a decision based on how a product looks versus you being educated about it. Having those in-person events allows me to educate my customers and just build that connection and build that loyalty. That’s been something that’s been really successful for us.

Yeah. One of the biggest challenges, I would say, is finding reliable vendors, especially because we actually launched the business at the start of in the middle of the pandemic. We actually launched in 2022. There were a lot of strikes, there were a lot of layoffs. There was just a big issue with finding accessibility to the packaging that we want to use and even the ingredients. Something that we decided to do that’s really helped us to overcome that is to start using Net30 accounts with reputable brands. That allows us to have access to to larger quantities to the packaging that we need and then also the ingredients, and then also navigate the ebbs and flows of business because it gives us a little bit longer to pay those things. Something else I would also say, just more so on the personal level, is overcoming self-limiting beliefs. That’s something that I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they really deal with, especially at the beginning of starting a business. It’s hard to find that support if people don’t really understand what you’re doing. Something that I would really encourage people to do is surround themselves with people that are doing similar things and have a similar mindset.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re friends, I’m not going to say all of them, but it is important to find other people that you can connect with. That’s been something that has really helped us to stay successful and be consistent because I speak to people that are not only on my level, but are higher and in places where I want to go. That keeps me motivated and then grounded at the same time. I would say the limited access to products and ingredients, and then also my own self-limiting beliefs.

My goodness. That’s another topic we could talk about for ourselves. Honestly, I want to grow past just skincare, because obviously from our conversation, you can see that wellness in general is something that is really important to me. What I really want to do is create a marketplace for wellness experts, other experts in skincare. We also want to create a place for people that are fitness experts, also mental experts, and then also people who can make the connection between spirituality and then also your physical well-being. We want to create a space for people within that industry. Then also, we do want to launch a gym. I didn’t know I was going to talk about this today, but we want to launch a gym, a women-only gym that promotes not only just your physical well-being, but your spiritual well-being as well. The way that you feel, it comes out in your skin. A lot of people get frustrated because they don’t think that they’re using the right products. While that is very important, your mental and physical well-being plays a direct role in how well you look and how well you show up. That’s something that we definitely want to do and just encourage women to just take care of themselves holistically.

Yes, absolutely. It’s www. Browntings. Com. Com. If you just Google Brown Tings, we’ll pop right up for you.

That’s right. Yes. T-ing, mom.

Thank you so much, Laura. It was a pleasure for me as well.

Bye-bye.