Nancy Twine, founder of haircare line Briogeo, knows a thing or two about starting from scratch. The former Goldman Sachs finance executive realized she wasn’t living her passion and jumped ship, but not before she had a solid plan.
Using her grandmother’s special ingredients, Twine built a brand from the bottom up. The entrepreneur spoke to Essence.com about juggling two completely different jobs, sacrifice and the power of taking your time.
Goals Lead to Success
Write down some goals. In order to really measure where you’re going or to get there the right way, you have to understand the steps that you need to take. Then as you take those steps, how do you measure your success? You measure your success by setting goals. So before you jump into anything you want to really plot out what getting from A to B looks like. Then the next step is really doing the homework and that research and figuring out what help you need and what resources you need. Thinking about it methodically and doing things that way helps to boost your confidence because you know you have a plan and a framework to network and bounce ideas off people. When you have a plan laid out you can get guidance.
Take Your Time
I’m a big believer in not necessarily quitting your day job until you’re really really confident and you’re ready to make this business venture a full time one. I think that sometimes what can trip people up is that they get really really excited about an idea and then they just want to jump into it without taking the time out to really do the research and test the market and then also just get some experience under their belt. There’s nothing wrong with moving slow and working on your entrepreneurial idea on the weekends and after work until you get to that point. That’s exactly what I did and I feel like if I would have just taken the leap into this without giving it that time to really test the products out, get feedback and make a few mistakes, it would’ve been very difficult for me to have gotten to the point that I’m at today.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask For Help
When you start a company there’s no way you can be an expert in everything. When I was first launching the line I actually tried to do the packaging design on my own. I went and took Photoshop classes and was so determined to do everything myself and then I quickly realized that I’m just not a packaging designer. Why risk my future brand identity thinking that I can do it? So I went to find a designer that understood my vision. It was very challenging when I was trying to do everything on my own but I think I finally overcame that when I realized that my job wasn’t to do everything on my own but to do what I was good at and find people who were good at dong the rest of the things.
What Entrepreneurship Taught Her
We really can’t be stopped. And so much of it doesn’t have anything to do with anyone else but it’s our perception of ourselves, what we believe we can do, getting into the mindset that you can do anything and if there’s something you struggle with you can find people to help you. It’s really about pushing yourself and proving to yourself that you can do the impossible.