The recent awareness around ingredients in foods and products has practically caused a worldwide phenomenon. Conscious consumers everywhere are beginning to pay attention to what they are putting in and on their bodies. However, Lisa Kaiser has been reading product labels and looking at food ingredients long before it was making headlines. This attention to labels and ingredients was what inspired Lisa to create her skincare business, The Good Stuff, over 15 years ago with her daughter.
Lisa came to Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA) years after launching her business with the intent to expand on her expertise. She enrolled in the online Associates of Mind-Body Transformational Psychology program, and was intrigued by the Urban Farming courses, due to her interest in reading labels and using ingredients that nature provided.
“The fact that Urban Farming was incorporated, along with the holistic nutrition classes, brought what I believe full circle,” Lisa explained.
Lisa first began creating healthy skincare products because she was interested in the benefits of essential oils for medicinal and healing purposes, in an effort to better her own health. She strongly dis-likes prescription medication, and actually experienced a decline in her health when she was prescribed medications, which inspired her to start reading product labels and paying attention to ingredients. One of her goals with The Good Stuff is to educate people about using nature and eating healthy foods to combat and even reverse illness.
So Lisa and her daughter started making their own natural skincare products. They shared these products with friends and family, and more and more people started asking for them. The only logical next step was to create a business!
The Good Stuff’s products are sold online nationally through the company’s website. Lisa also sells the products at local farmer’s markets near her hometown of Payson, Arizona. She sells a wide variety of products including anti-aging products, lotions, soaps, liquid soaps, healing oil blends, essential oils, children’s products, men’s products, loose mineral makeup, and coming soon, an infant and children’s skincare line.
“We believe simply in using real, natural ingredients that you can pronounce, and are what nature has provided to us, rather than something synthetically made,” Lisa says. “We know that what you put on your skin goes into your body, just as if you were eating food, so it should be good for you.”
One of the keys to Lisa’s success with her business is, in her words, “good old-fashioned customer service.” Her customers are made to feel as if they are part of the family, and Lisa and her staff, most of whom are her family members, will go out of their way to make their customers feel comfortable.
“I listen to our customers, find out what they like and almost always come across like-minded people who are being educated on food, good home grown food, and taking their health back into their own hands with much success,” Lisa says of her customer service style and the type of customer she works with.
Quality customer service is always a strong, beneficial business technique. However, Lisa knows that marketing her business and services is important as well. She utilizes Facebook quite a bit, as well as email marketing campaigns, sending her customers information about new products or promoting upcoming sales or specials.
In addition to selling a plethora of natural skin care products online and at farmer s markets, Lisa uses her urban farming and holistic nutrition education to advise clients. She credits the urban farming courses for motivating her to take a realistic look at self-sufficiency, not just for herself, for her family, too.
“People will ask me about this dietary product or new fad for losing weight or regaining health,” Lisa explains. “I always recommend to stay away from ‘fad’ diets, and look into revisiting organic or home grown foods. The rest will take care of itself.”
Lisa’s advice to future business owners is to remember that things don’t happen overnight when trying to start a business. “It takes a lot of hard work,” she says. “I’m still learning on ways to leverage revenue to help expand my business to a new avenue.”
One new avenue Lisa is pursuing is making her products available for sale through the extremely popular website Amazon. She is also expanding into other demographics, such as creating products for men and children.
As a huge believer in holistic healthcare, eating foods to heal one’s self, using ingredients that nature has provided, Lisa has created a successful and sustainable business. She is a shining example of how SWIHA helps graduates take their gifts into the world in a loving and profitable way.
To learn more about SWIHA’s online education, contact the Admissions Department at 480-994-9244 or email info@swiha.edu.
