Together they founded a business based on family-friendly essential oils and sprays. From helping with diaper rash to head lice sprays, they have it all! They are here today to tell us about how they are able to juggle being parents and run their business. If you enjoyed today’s episode remember to subscribe in iTunes and leave us a review!
Best Ever Tweet:
Candice Romo & Hollie Siglin Background:
-Co-Founders of Hawk + Sloane, a line of family-friendly essential oil sprays, to give busy parents everywhere a helping hand
-Hawk + Sloane named after Candice’s first born son Hawkins and Hollie’s second born daughter Sloane
-Working on growing business through online media, influencer support, and retail presence (just did a stint in Dallas Market where wholesalers placed over 60 orders to get H+S in stores across the southeast; headed to Atlanta Market in a few months)
-Line of sprays essential to facing various parenting challenges – diaper rash (Soothie Spray), potty mouth (Sassy Spray), bedtime blues (Sleepy Spray), monsters under the bed (Scary Spray), stinky diapers (Stinky Spray), and headlice prevention (Lice Spray)
-Based in Dallas, Texas
-Say hi to them at www.hawkandsloane.com/
Made Possible Because of Our Best Ever Sponsors:
Are you an investor who is tired of self-managing? Save time, increase productivity, lower your stress and LET THE LANDLORD HELPER DO THE WORK FOR YOU!
Schedule Your FREE TRIAL SESSION mylandlordhelper.com/joe with Linda at Secure Pay One THE Landlord Helper today.
Joe Fairless: Best ever listeners, how are you doing? Welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m Joe Fairless and this is the world’s longest-running daily real estate investing podcast. We only talk about the best advice ever, we don’t get into any of that fluffy stuff.
We’ve spoken to Emmitt Smith (Hall of Famer, also real estate developer), we’ve spoken to Barbara Corcoran (Shark Tank) and Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and whole bunch of others. With us today we have Candice Romo and Hollie Siglin. How are you doing you two?
Candice Romo: Great!
Hollie Siglin: Thanks for having u!
Joe Fairless: Nice to have you two on the show. Best ever listeners, I hope you’re having a best ever weekend. Because today is Sunday, we’ve got a special segment, as we normally do, called Skillset Sunday, where by the end of our conversation you will have a specific skillset that perhaps you didn’t have before, or you want to hone. The skillset today is juggling parenthood with your small business.
We have Candice and Hollie, who are the co-founders of Hawk + Sloane, which is a line of family-friendly essential oil sprays that help give busy parents everywhere a helping hand. With that being said, Candice and Hollie, do you wanna give the Best Ever listeners a little bit more about your background and tell them what you’re focused on?
Candice Romo: Hollie, do you wanna start, or…?
Hollie Siglin: You can start, go ahead.
Candice Romo: Okay, well Hawk + Sloane was created because as busy moms we look for shortcuts and things to help us make life go smoother. It kind of started with our first spray (Happy Spray). As parents, and we talked with moms in group settings [unintelligible [00:03:53].11] things that are working and not working, and somebody had mentioned putting apple cider vinegar in the mouth; we thought “That’s kind of a good idea, because apple cider vinegar is still good for you” and a lot of people [unintelligible [00:04:07].07] takes it daily to equalize the system.
So we thought “That could be interesting as an (oral) disciplinary action”, so we thought “How do you spoon-feed vinegar into a mouth of a four-year-old that’s running around [unintelligible [00:04:20].25] so we thought we’d put it in a travel spray bottle, and just do a little squirt in the mouth when they’ve been sassy, or biting, or screaming, or back-talking… And it turned out to be a big success.
We actually also included a bunch of vitaveggies in it, so it doubled the dose of nutrition for you… [unintelligible [00:04:42].03] as a lot of businesses start, we would [unintelligible [00:04:45].15] other ideas… Because sprays are just so convenient and so much easier than creams, and things of that nature. So our line was born, and that’s kind of how it started.
It’s been great. We’re best friends and we do it together, so it doesn’t feel like work that much.
Joe Fairless: So you two have a line of sprays… It sounds like the first one was Sassy Spray, is that correct? And then it snowballed from there. I’m reading here you’ve got a Soothie Spray, which is for diaper rash, Sleepy Spray for bedtime blues, Scary Spray – perhaps my favorite; I haven’t had it yet, but perhaps my favorite – for monsters under the bed, Stinky Spray for stinky diapers, and Lice Spray for, obviously, head lice. Is that the line that you’ve got so far?
Hollie Siglin: You nailed it, yes. That is it, that’s our six sprays.
Joe Fairless: Sweet. Earlier, before we started recording, we very briefly — I was like “Hey, are we good for this time?” and you both said yes, but one thing, Candice, you mentioned is “Hey, but I do have my kid with me, he’s kind of running around…”
Candice Romo: Yeah this is a perfect segment for juggling parenthood and a small business, because I’m sitting here at the pool with my kids trying to watch them — I have other adults watching them as well, but… [laughter] School’s about to start, and it’s this kindergarten party thing and I don’t want them to miss it, so I had to be here, juggling while we’re sitting at the pool for this little get-together. [laughter] If you hear some screaming and pool splashing in the background, I apologize.
Joe Fairless: And know that there’s someone else supervising as well, in addition to that.
Candice Romo: Yes, of course.
Joe Fairless: Yeah, so that is a perfect segue… How many kids do you have, Candice, and how many kids do you have, Hollie?
Candice Romo: I have two boys, and our third boy on the way, due in August. Hollie?
Hollie Siglin: I have two girls, and my third child is a boy… Six, five and two.
Joe Fairless: Wow, okay. So you each have more than one child. Candice – two boys, and a third on the way; congrats on that, and Hollie, two girls and one boy. And then quick fact – I don’t think I mentioned this, but Hawk + Sloan was named after Candice’s first-born son and Hollie’s first-born daughter… Is that correct?
Hollie Siglin: It’s actually my second daughter. Candice and I grew up playing golf together, and we had kind of lost touch when we both went off to different colleges and stuff, but then we ran into each other and we had the exact same due dates, with Hawk and Sloane… So that’s kind of we rekindled our friendship and we started doing life together, as we like to say… And that’s why we chose Hawk + Sloane, because they are little best friends now; they’re five, and they’ve been in the same class every year. Their birthdays ended up being a week apart, but we were both due with them on 13th April.
Joe Fairless: Got it, okay. That makes sense. How long have you had the company Hawk + Sloane?
Candice Romo: We launched it last April, so it’s just a little over a year.
Joe Fairless: Okay, a little over a year. So for a little over a year you two have had a startup… How were you juggling the launch of the startup along with the family stuff?
Candice Romo: It’s probably the same for both of us, but for me, I’m actually — my primary job was real estate, so I’m doing jobs actually. I’ve been a residential realtor for ten years. It took a lot of juggling, obviously. I have three kids, and Candice has almost three… So it comes with a slew of teamwork that we do everything and we get it done, but that’s what’s been nice in doing this together – we really look to each other; when the other one is tied up with something one day, we both have each other’s back and we can kind of do the juggling between the two of us.
Hollie Siglin: What we both tell people too is it takes a team. We’ve got husbands that can help, we have babysitters that we utilize, and grandmas and grandpas that we try to utilize. There’s a lot of people that help us get things done in addition to ourselves.
Joe Fairless: So for father or mothers who are listening who are also juggling a full-time job and then launching an entrepreneurial venture, which I consider real estate – Hollie, I’m sure you would agree with this… I consider real estate an entrepreneurial venture. The key is teamwork then – is that what you’re saying?
Candice Romo: Totally.
Hollie Siglin: Definitely. I’d love to be able to say “Oh, we do it all. We can do it all”, but we really can’t do it all… So between school hours and family and baby sitters and [unintelligible [00:09:17].17] it’s a team effort.
Joe Fairless: With the team effort how do you identify what your responsibilities are and what the other team member’s responsibilities are?
Candice Romo: This is a good question, because we are such a yin and yang… Hollie and I work so well together because her assets are not mine, and my assets are not hers, so we’ve never even had to give each other a job description because we just kind of know, even with e-mails, which e-mail I need to take and which e-mail she needs to take, because it just fits with our personalities.
I’m more of a creative, I deal with more of the artwork and the vision, and I do our market boosts and a lot of things visually, and I do a lot of packaging, and things.
Hollie is our CFO, and does numbers, and tells me “We can’t spend that much, Candice… Find a cheaper [unintelligible [00:10:13].08]. [laughter]
Joe Fairless: And then with the other team members that you have… Are there any other employee of the company that you’ve brought on, or is it grandma and husband and others who happen to be around you and you just pull them in on a case-by-case basis?
Candice Romo: Either way with that, we’re actually business; we’re the only two behind the actual business right now, but we’ve made amazing relationships as far as our fulfillments and our lab that manufactures it, so we feel like we have a team just based on all the relationships that we have founded throughout this process. It isn’t just us doing the packaging, and we have a wonderful graphic designer who does our website and everything… So it feels like a little family we’ve created for Hawk + Sloane, although it’s really just us [unintelligible [00:11:02].22]
Joe Fairless: What’s been the most challenging part over the last year, as it relates to this business?
Candice Romo: Hollie and I might have different answers, but I think from my perspective is slower than you want it to be. We have ideas and we have things that we wanna get done, but you rely, like she said, on a lot of relationships and a chain reaction of things, and it just takes time. It takes time for people to respond, things don’t come in, you can’t just make some things overnight… So I think for me it’s learning to be patient, and that this isn’t gonna be an overnight process. Hollie, would you agree with that?
Hollie Siglin: I agree. I think Candice and I – our personalities are very similar, and I think probably one of our greatest weaknesses is that we’re impatient; we like things to happen right away. So it just an entrepreneurial journey for anybody, I’m sure. It’s just such a process, and it’s step-by-step, and it’s [unintelligible [00:11:59].22] You just learn so much along the way…
We launched our company last April, like I said, but to me – and I’m sure Candice would probably agree with this – it doesn’t really feel like until the last three months we’ve really known exactly where we wanna go, and I think that that’s something that is just starting to become clear through this process of what our goals are gonna be and where we see our products – all of that stuff has really taken time to figure out, and that’s been something that we’ve learned… Until you’re really selling and you’re out there, you can’t figure out exactly what avenues you wanna take, until you’ve experienced everything.
Joe Fairless: On that note, once you two had this idea, how long did it take you to get up and running? Did you wait a long time, or was it “Let’s get this thing going and then we’ll start testing”?
Candice Romo: Pretty quickly from the time that we started using the Sassy Spray… We were like “Wow, this really works. Why [unintelligible [00:13:02].07]” and then from there Candice had a meeting with a lab within a week, and [unintelligible [00:13:07].22] Then all of the testing and development – I’d say we probably built everything over 9 months to a year before we actually launched. So it was a process to get there, but fairly quickly, I’d say, from idea to actual launch.
Joe Fairless: Candice and Hollie, is there anything that we haven’t talked about as it relates to juggling parenthood with launching a small business that you two wanted to mention?
Candice Romo: [unintelligible [00:13:35].11] we don’t wanna sit here and act like we can do it all. We just really can’t. We do rely on late nights and scheduling around kids’ stuff, because at the end of the day we’re still stay-at-home, and [unintelligible [00:13:46].05] We do rely on school hours and things to give us time to do this, and I don’t wanna ever give a mom the false impression — I want them to know that there is juggling and hard work. We’re not just over here saying how easy it is.
Joe Fairless: Well, thank you two both for being on the show. How can the Best Ever listeners learn more about the company and go buy some of these sprays?
Hollie Siglin: Our website is www.hawkandsloane.com. We’re also on Instagram @HawkAndSloane, and Facebook, and all of that.
Joe Fairless: Excellent. That link will be in the show notes page, Best Ever listeners. Thank you again, Hollie and Candice for being on the show, talking about — the main component that you mentioned is teamwork. First off, having the self-awareness to know what you’re really good at, and then having a partner that plays off your strengths, so that you two can tackle things independently, but also as a team.
It reminds me, your comment about things happening slower than you wanted, but it takes time… I was talking to Jillian Michaels recently, and she said something interesting that stood out to me – she said one thing that she could do better that she would have had more success doing in her business – if she had more patience. I said “Well, what about the patience thing? Because if you had more patience, would you really have accomplished what you would accomplish so far?” and she said “Well, if I had more patience along the way I would have stuck with certain things instead of just dismissing them… And it sounds like you two are doing just that – having the patience, going through the process and having success along the way, so kudos to you.
Thanks for being on the show. I hope you two have a best ever weekend, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Candice Romo: Thank you so much!
Hollie Siglin: Thank you!
Subscribe in iTunes and Stitcher so you don’t miss an episode! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwTzctSEMu4L0tKN2b_esfg
Share this:
