Bea Dixon: Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Bea Dixon.
ETS: Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk
ETS: with women who dare to pivot out of one career
ETS: and into something new and explore how their personal lives
ETS: impacts these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. I'm
ETS: delighted to welcome Beatrice or B Dixon to the podcast today.
ETS: When I first interviewed B, I was blown away by
ETS: the complexity of her life story. Her story was so layered.
ETS: I did something I've never done before. I asked if
ETS: she would come back and do a second interview. So
ETS: this episode that you're about to hear combines these two
ETS: interviews into one chronological episode, covering everything from her start
ETS: as a pharmacy technician to her cleaning business, to her
ETS: personal experience with chronic bacterial vaginosis and how that inspired
ETS: her to create the Honeypot Company. From an early age,
ETS: B realized two things. One that she needed to have
ETS: a strong work ethic, something she learned from her mother,
ETS: and two that she wanted to build wealth. With these
ETS: two truths always in the back of her mind, B
ETS: spent years living paycheck to paycheck, grinding it out, unsure
ETS: of what her next step would be, and on top
ETS: of that, she was dealing with her BV, an infection
ETS: that just wouldn't go away no matter what she tried.
ETS: Then something happened that changed everything. Her grandmother came to
ETS: her in a dream and gave her the recipe for
ETS: a natural remedy for her BV. Having just come into
ETS: her spirituality, b took this message from her grandmother, mixed
ETS: up the potion, tried it, and for the first time
ETS: in years, she found relief. True to her nature, she
ETS: hustled and turned this dream into the Honeypot Company, the
ETS: first plant based feminine care brand to be sold at
ETS: major retailers like Target, Whole Foods, and Walmart. Since launching
ETS: in twenty fourteen, the company has grown into a multimillion
ETS: dollar business, which has sold for a massive three hundred
ETS: and eighty million dollars and is on the shelves of
ETS: over thirty thousand stores. She earned a spot on Forbes's
ETS: Top one hundred Female Founder's list and has been featured
ETS: in Essence, Ink and Fast Company, and even Grace the
ETS: Ted stage to talk about the power of listening to
ETS: your intuition. I'm excited for you all to hear be
ETS: talk about the power of listening to yourself, building a
ETS: business rooted in purpose, and how leaning into her spirituality
ETS: has shaped not just her company, but her entire life.
ETS: You won't want to miss this one, so let's get
ETS: into it.
Bea Dixon: My name is Beatrice Dixon, and I am the CEO,
Bea Dixon: chief Innovation Officer, and co founder of the Honeypot Company.
ETS: We're going to rewind. We're going to go back. Okay,
ETS: where were you born, Where did you grow up? What
ETS: was your family like? Like, tell us a little bit, Yeah,
ETS: we're going way back.
Bea Dixon: I was born in Arlington, Virginia, and I was raised
Bea Dixon: in the DMV area probably until I was like, I
Bea Dixon: don't know, like ten, I think. And then we moved
Bea Dixon: to Phoenix, Arizona because my mother fell in a manhole
Bea Dixon: and broke her back, and her doctor told her the
Bea Dixon: best place for her to live would be a place
Bea Dixon: that didn't have a bunch of seasons, and so she
Bea Dixon: chose Phoenix, and we moved to Phoenix, and so I
Bea Dixon: was raised as a child to an adult in Phoenix, Arizona.
ETS: Your mom breaking her back feels like it must have
ETS: been a pretty big event in your families.
Bea Dixon: It was. It was a massive event. She worked on
Bea Dixon: a construction site. She was kind of like a nurse
Bea Dixon: or like a medical aid on a construction site. And
Bea Dixon: that particular day, because it was in Maryland, there was
Bea Dixon: ice on the ground and somebody else had fell and slipped,
Bea Dixon: and so she was called to go and get help
Bea Dixon: the person who had fell and slipped. But then she
Bea Dixon: fell slipped. It's not funny, but it's wild when you
Bea Dixon: think about it. And yeah, I mean she was down
Bea Dixon: for a little while, she was paralyzed, she got she
Bea Dixon: got several surgeries, not just one, and then you know,
Bea Dixon: she made a full recovery. Like my mother walks, she
Bea Dixon: does everything, but she will always have a ride in
Bea Dixon: her back, you know, she will always have back shoes,
Bea Dixon: you know. But she deals with it really well. She
Bea Dixon: doesn't live on medication. She's not you know what I mean,
Bea Dixon: Like she takes care of herself.
ETS: If you were so young, nine or ten, did that
ETS: turn you into a caretaker? Like did that grow you
ETS: up quickly?
Bea Dixon: It's funny. I never thought about it like that. I mean,
Bea Dixon: I was there to help her because she was my mommy.
Bea Dixon: She is my mommy. She's not a us. But I
Bea Dixon: don't know that I looked at it as being a caretaker.
Bea Dixon: I just looked at it as though, you know, it's
Bea Dixon: your mom, Like what are you gonna do? My mother
Bea Dixon: has always been like the ultimate hustler, rightly, She's always
Bea Dixon: didn't matter what it was, she always found a way
Bea Dixon: to survive, to take care of her family, to take
Bea Dixon: care of herself. But I did start working when I
Bea Dixon: was like fourteen going on fifteen, and the reason for
Bea Dixon: that was because I wanted to get my driving permit.
Bea Dixon: And my mom was like, you know, that's cute, but
Bea Dixon: I don't have money for you to go to driving school.
Bea Dixon: And you're not getting the driving to permit unless you
Bea Dixon: go to driving school. So if you want to go
Bea Dixon: to driving school, then you have to pay for driving school.
Bea Dixon: In order for you to do that, you got to
Bea Dixon: get a job. And so I got a job at
Bea Dixon: McDonald's and I loved that job.
ETS: What about it?
Bea Dixon: I just loved that my mom had empowered me to
Bea Dixon: go out into the world and make money from a
Bea Dixon: young kid. I mean even in high school, I was
Bea Dixon: in Future Business Leaders of America. You know what I'm saying, Like,
Bea Dixon: I love being able to take care of myself and
Bea Dixon: I have been that way since I was a kid.
Bea Dixon: And I also love money, Like let's let's call the
Bea Dixon: shit what it is, like, I love I love money,
Bea Dixon: and I love the ability. I love the ability to
Bea Dixon: be able to go out into the world and make it,
Bea Dixon: not just make it meaning just like cash, but just
Bea Dixon: going out into the world and making it as a
Bea Dixon: human being, you know, and surviving. I think because I
Bea Dixon: saw my my mom was such a strong woman. It's
Bea Dixon: such a strong woman, and I saw things that she
Bea Dixon: was willing to do to make sure that we ate.
Bea Dixon: And you know, that's just some stuff that you can't
Bea Dixon: unlearn and that you have to respect. Like she did everything.
Bea Dixon: She cleaned hotels, she worked in the hospital. You know,
Bea Dixon: sometimes she might have had to drop in on somebody
Bea Dixon: to you know, like she just did whatever she had
Bea Dixon: to do. You know, she did that. She work in
Bea Dixon: laundry mats, she was a medical biller. She she just
Bea Dixon: did everything. She did whatever she needed to do to
Bea Dixon: make sure we ate. Like when I was a baby,
Bea Dixon: my mother had three jobs and she would literally come
Bea Dixon: home between them, get a little bit of rest, like
Bea Dixon: take a nap, wake up, go to work, come home,
Bea Dixon: take a nap, eat, wake up, go to work like that,
Bea Dixon: like it was just you know, and so.
ETS: Yeah, these mother's influence continued to be a motivating force
ETS: for her. When it was time to graduate school and
ETS: move on with her education, you followed the advice of
ETS: her mother.
Bea Dixon: Look, I don't know about every other culture, but having
Bea Dixon: a black mother, either you're gonna be a doctor, you're
Bea Dixon: gonna work in the medical field, you're gonna work in law,
Bea Dixon: you're gonna work in it was like, you need to
Bea Dixon: choose a field that will never be obsolete. And so
Bea Dixon: my mother conditioned me into that. At a young age,
Bea Dixon: I thought that I wanted to go to school to
Bea Dixon: be a doctor. But the only caveat was is I
Bea Dixon: hated academia. I just did not like it. I didn't
Bea Dixon: enjoy it. And so from a young age, if I'm
Bea Dixon: not passionate about something, I cannot do it. I just can't.
Bea Dixon: And I'm lucky enough to have a mother that didn't
Bea Dixon: force me to do things that I didn't want to do.
Bea Dixon: Her thing was if you're not going to do that,
Bea Dixon: then what are you going to do? Because if you're
Bea Dixon: not going to school, but you're going to have a
Bea Dixon: job because you can't live with me forever, right, So
Bea Dixon: that was okay with me. That just meant that I
Bea Dixon: had to work really hard. And then I worked in
Bea Dixon: pharmacy and I did that for like ten years of
Bea Dixon: my life. But I knew being a pharmacy technician I
Bea Dixon: would always have work. But then I kind of proceeded
Bea Dixon: in working in hospitals and things like that until I
Bea Dixon: moved to Atlanta when I went to work at an
Bea Dixon: oncology pharmacy where I basically made chemotherapy drugs for chemo patients.
Bea Dixon: And that was actually my last job in pharmacy technician work.
ETS: It didn't burn you out and it sounds very heavy.
Bea Dixon: That actually was like one of my favorite places to
Bea Dixon: work because you got to interact with people and you
Bea Dixon: got to face a version of mortality. And I think
Bea Dixon: when people are terminally ill, you know, they look at
Bea Dixon: life a little different. So got to talk to people
Bea Dixon: all the time and hear their stories and see them fight,
Bea Dixon: which I think is really it's so beautiful. It's hard
Bea Dixon: obviously because they're not well. That that part isn't beautiful,
Bea Dixon: but the way that you look at your life and
Bea Dixon: spend your time when you are potentially dying that is beautiful,
Bea Dixon: you know, when you can be able to see that
Bea Dixon: and experience that. So it was actually that was actually
Bea Dixon: a really good time for me because I learned a lot,
Bea Dixon: you know. Even working in hospital pharmacy, you learned a lot,
Bea Dixon: you know, because when you're working in a hospital as
Bea Dixon: a pharmacy technician, you're seeing all kinds of things.
Bea Dixon: Right.
Bea Dixon: Sometimes you know, you might be servicing somebody that's like
Bea Dixon: in the ICU, you could be servicing a child that's sick.
Bea Dixon: You can be you know, there's just.
ETS: A lot, you know.
Bea Dixon: So it was heavy. It was heavy, and I think
Bea Dixon: that I got to a place where I've always been
Bea Dixon: a natural born healer, which makes sense when you look
Bea Dixon: at my work life, even where you look at where
Bea Dixon: I went after I left working in the world of pharmacy,
Bea Dixon: I think I just needed You're right, I needed something else.
ETS: So Be made her first pivot and left the medical field.
ETS: She knew deep within her that there was more out
ETS: there for her to explore, but she also wanted to
ETS: enjoy life.
Bea Dixon: I wanted to work within wellness in a different way.
Bea Dixon: I wanted to figure out how to heal people, but
Bea Dixon: not necessarily from a Western medical point of view. Even
Bea Dixon: though I deeply believe in Western medicine because I think
Bea Dixon: that it's necessary, right, I also think that the other
Bea Dixon: side is necessary too. And I think that even though
Bea Dixon: I was a young person and I was like really
Bea Dixon: enjoying my life living in Atlanta, you know, this was
Bea Dixon: a very very very fun time in Atlanta in two
Bea Dixon: thousand and five to two thousand. It was like crazy
Bea Dixon: fun and I was out till like three o'clock in
Bea Dixon: the morning. I would have to be to work at eight.
Bea Dixon: I got to experience that, and it was beautiful. But
Bea Dixon: in order for you to be entrepreneurial, you have to
Bea Dixon: have a strong work ethic. And so I think that
Bea Dixon: that part of my life was the get your work
Bea Dixon: ethic in line, get that together. I think that that's
Bea Dixon: the phase that I was in, and so, you know,
Bea Dixon: I think I went from work ethic to how do
Bea Dixon: I make my own money and not have to necessarily
Bea Dixon: punch somebody's clock.
ETS: Eventually be founded her first pivot into entrepreneurship.
Bea Dixon: And then I remember, like, you know, I was on
Bea Dixon: my way out from working at the pharmacy, and I
Bea Dixon: remember me and my friends would just hang out with
Bea Dixon: some people and they were talking about how they needed
Bea Dixon: to get their house clean, and I was like, well,
Bea Dixon: I think clean your house, pay me, I'll do it.
Bea Dixon: And me and my best friend and we just did it.
Bea Dixon: And it was like, oh, well, we could probably do this.
Bea Dixon: So then we started a cleaning business, and then that
Bea Dixon: became what I did. That was my entry way into entrepreneurship.
ETS: We had figured out how to work on her own time,
ETS: but between her social life and the unpredictability of cleaning,
ETS: she was struggling to make ends meet.
Bea Dixon: You know, we had been cleaning houses for a while,
Bea Dixon: but we weren't able to make our rent. We got evicted,
Bea Dixon: didn't have a place to live, but we had like,
Bea Dixon: we had really cool clients. So sometimes our clients would
Bea Dixon: let us stay. Sometimes our friend, you know, my one
Bea Dixon: of my best friends, Rachel, she would let us, you know,
Bea Dixon: sleep on her couch. Sometimes we would literally clean people's
Bea Dixon: house to get a Motil six or like Motil six ish,
Bea Dixon: it wasn't always Motil six, but like we never like
Bea Dixon: lived on the street, but we didn't have anywhere to live.
Bea Dixon: And that that on for a couple of months. But
Bea Dixon: that right there was the moment that I was like,
Bea Dixon: I gotta get it together. That was when I was like,
Bea Dixon: this can't be my life. It was the beginning of
Bea Dixon: when it was like, this can't be my life. And
Bea Dixon: then we met. We were cleaning this guy's house and
Bea Dixon: he was telling us, you know, pretty wealthy guy, and
Bea Dixon: he was telling us how he needed to find somebody
Bea Dixon: to rent one of his houses. And he was like,
Bea Dixon: you know, if you know anybody, let me know. You know,
Bea Dixon: I don't really need a ton of money. I just
Bea Dixon: want somebody in there. It's going to take care of it.
Bea Dixon: And so we ended up being able to rent that
Bea Dixon: person's house. Maybe it was like fifteen hundred dollars a month,
Bea Dixon: which isn't a lot of money for the type of
Bea Dixon: house this was. I mean, this house was absolutely beautiful.
Bea Dixon: And I think once we got into that house, maybe
Bea Dixon: we had lived in another place right before that, but
Bea Dixon: once we moved into that house, it was during that
Bea Dixon: time that I was like, I got to change my life.
ETS: Change didn't happen overnight for me. She slowly started to
ETS: shift the puzzle pieces of her life, changing her scene,
ETS: picking up more odd jobs, and finding her way to
ETS: her spirituality through a Lakumi reading. Her friend invited her
ETS: too and.
Bea Dixon: I went and got myself in reading and it was
Bea Dixon: beautiful and it really kind of just changed my life
Bea Dixon: and it made me wonder what it would be like
Bea Dixon: to potentially practice the spirituality, and so that came into
Bea Dixon: my life. So there was a lot of things that
Bea Dixon: were changing and ebbing and flowing, and you know, I
Bea Dixon: was just in the next phase of whatever that was.
Bea Dixon: And then I started working at Whole Foods and I
Bea Dixon: really enjoyed that work so literally, I remember I was
Bea Dixon: working at Whole Foods and there would be brands and
Bea Dixon: companies that would come in all the time, and they
Bea Dixon: would like come in and they bring their reps or
Bea Dixon: sometimes it would be the owners of the brand, and
Bea Dixon: they talked to you about what they did and why
Bea Dixon: it works and why it's so, and sometimes Whole Foods
Bea Dixon: would send us on immersions. So one of the biggest
Bea Dixon: immersions that I remember was when I went to the
Bea Dixon: Gya Farms because Gaya is like one of my favorite
Bea Dixon: herb supplement companies, right, and so I'm doing all this
Bea Dixon: work and I'm like, I want to do this, like
Bea Dixon: I think I could do this, And that was when
Bea Dixon: I got the itch. That was when I was like
Bea Dixon: I want to do this. I could have a brand.
Bea Dixon: I didn't know what the brand was going to be,
Bea Dixon: but I was like, I could totally have a brand.
Bea Dixon: That's when the second itch, entrepreneurial itch, came into play,
Bea Dixon: because I knew that I couldn't be in the service
Bea Dixon: business because from my point of view, the type of
Bea Dixon: service that I did, the only time I was making
Bea Dixon: money was when I was serving people. I needed to
Bea Dixon: be in the I make money in my sleep business,
Bea Dixon: and I learned quickly that that was through products.
ETS: When we come back, Bee walks us through just how
ETS: her personal medical issues and spirituality inspired what was to
ETS: become her multi million dollar business, the Honeypot Company. Stay tuned.
ETS: Before the break, we left off with b dreaming of
ETS: something bigger for herself, a way to make money in
ETS: her sleep. She knew there was something more out there
ETS: for her, and the stars finally aligned when she searched
ETS: inward for a way to heal her BV. So.
Bea Dixon: I was dealing with bacchio vaginosis for like a year almost,
Bea Dixon: and it was really bad, Like it was like I
Bea Dixon: stink up the car bed, I stink up the bathroom bed,
Bea Dixon: like I just walked in went to go pee. It
Bea Dixon: was very embarrassing, a lot of shame, and I was
Bea Dixon: trying everything. I was like living on Google. I was
Bea Dixon: living on Google forums. I was like wrapping garlic with
Bea Dixon: cheesecloth and like sewing tampon streams on and like putting
Bea Dixon: that in. I was like freezing yogurt and an applicator
Bea Dixon: and tampon applicators. I was living on antibiotics. It was wild.
Bea Dixon: So my microbiome was shot. And then I was trying
Bea Dixon: all of these like old wives tale type of recipes.
ETS: It was bad.
Bea Dixon: And then one morning my mom had moved with me
Bea Dixon: to Atlanta and we had a cute little house, and
Bea Dixon: one morning I was having this dream. It felt like
Bea Dixon: a dream, but it wasn't a dream. It was you know,
Bea Dixon: in the morning, right when you're in that really beautiful sleep,
Bea Dixon: like the sun is starting to come up and you're
Bea Dixon: just like in a really beautiful, very relaxed, you're in
Bea Dixon: that kind of rim sleep, and your consciousness at that
Bea Dixon: time in the morning is a bit high. And so
Bea Dixon: my grandmother, who I never met in this life because
Bea Dixon: she died when my mother was a child, she came
Bea Dixon: and she told me it was wild because she looks
Bea Dixon: just I look just like her, even more than my mother.
Bea Dixon: I look the spinning image. If you saw pictures of
Bea Dixon: my grandmother, I am the spinning image of her. And
Bea Dixon: so I remember us looking a lot alike. And I
Bea Dixon: remember her telling me that she had been walking with
Bea Dixon: me and she saw me struggling, and she knew what
Bea Dixon: to do. And she handed me piece of paper and
Bea Dixon: had a list of ingredients, and she told me that
Bea Dixon: this was going to solve my problem because she she's
Bea Dixon: one of my guides too, obviously, and she had been
Bea Dixon: seeing all that I had been doing for that year.
Bea Dixon: And she handed me a piece of paper and it
Bea Dixon: had this list of ingredients and a lot. The wild thing, Emily,
Bea Dixon: is that a lot of the ingredients were a lot
Bea Dixon: of the things that I was doing singularly. But what
Bea Dixon: the problem was was I needed to put them all
Bea Dixon: together and make a potion. And she told me to
Bea Dixon: memorize the paper, and so literally I just kept repeating
Bea Dixon: the ingredients over and over again, and I literally woke
Bea Dixon: up saying out side of vinegar, lavender, rose garlet like
Bea Dixon: I literally woke up saying that, and I wrote it
Bea Dixon: down and I went to work because I worked, and
Bea Dixon: hope foods obviously, and I bought all this stuff and
Bea Dixon: I went home that night and I made myself whatever
Bea Dixon: this was, I didn't know what it was going to
Bea Dixon: turn into.
ETS: We tried different measurements and concoctions before she finally found it.
ETS: She tested it out and like magic, her grandmother's gift
ETS: to her work.
Bea Dixon: And once it did what it did for me, I
Bea Dixon: was like, Oh, this is it. This is what I
Bea Dixon: was supposed to be doing. So I very much knew
Bea Dixon: that I wanted to be in the consumer packaged good space.
Bea Dixon: The other reason why I knew it is because I
Bea Dixon: worked in the service business. I used to clean people's houses,
Bea Dixon: I organized. I mean, we talked about this, right, I
Bea Dixon: did everything that you can imagine, but I knew that
Bea Dixon: that was not the way to make money for me.
Bea Dixon: Where the only time I make money is if I
Bea Dixon: do a service. I knew that I wanted to make
Bea Dixon: money in my sleep, and what's the best way to
Bea Dixon: do that is through products? And so yeah, like my
Bea Dixon: brain was doing on I want to do this. And
Bea Dixon: the wild thing is I was dead broke, like I
Bea Dixon: was living check to check, you know, Like, how was
Bea Dixon: I going to start a brand? I wasn't even thinking about.
Bea Dixon: But I knew that I could do it somehow, some way,
Bea Dixon: you know. And then my granny came man, and here
Bea Dixon: we are.
ETS: Timing is everything, and context is im So I want
ETS: to contextualize whereb was both personally and spiritually. We briefly
ETS: mentioned be spirituality, but when everything changed for her was
ETS: when she was most connected to her new faith.
Bea Dixon: So I had just initiated into Santadi or Lukumi, and so,
Bea Dixon: you know, and that initiation is pretty It's it's serious,
Bea Dixon: you know, like you shave off all your hair, you
Bea Dixon: wear white for a year, you do that, you know,
Bea Dixon: you really go in. And the way that our spirituality
Bea Dixon: works is you can't do anything without content without It's
Bea Dixon: like you your ancestors. Then the spirits, right, like it's
Bea Dixon: like anything that you do, you call them in first.
Bea Dixon: And so I think I was pretty wide open. The
Bea Dixon: women in my family are intuitively gifted. I believe that
Bea Dixon: all of us are, right. I think I think every
Bea Dixon: human is. The the ones in my family, though we
Bea Dixon: have tended to really cater to that part of them,
Bea Dixon: and so it's really just kind of a thing that's
Bea Dixon: just in my blood. I think that when it comes
Bea Dixon: to the relationship that I have with my ancestors, it's
Bea Dixon: actually a part of my spirituality, which means that it's
Bea Dixon: by nature, it's just the part of me. And that's obvious,
Bea Dixon: right because if it wasn't for them, I would not
Bea Dixon: be here. And so paying respect to them is really important,
Bea Dixon: but also understanding that their bodies aren't here, but their
Bea Dixon: soul and their spirit were definitely still very connected. Like
Bea Dixon: I know that my grandmother is one of my guides.
Bea Dixon: I know that my father is actually like my protector
Bea Dixon: in a way. When he was alive, he was like
Bea Dixon: six foot four. Now my father's like twelve feet tall.
Bea Dixon: That's how tall his spirit is, you know. And so
Bea Dixon: and he's like always here always, He's like my security guard.
Bea Dixon: And it's not like a thing where I'm like talking
Bea Dixon: to him often or anything, but like, wh when something
Bea Dixon: like this comes up, he's here, Like I feel him,
Bea Dixon: just like I'm here talking to y'all. His energy is
Bea Dixon: right next to me. But yeah, like I was definitely
Bea Dixon: open for her to be able to come in as
Bea Dixon: clear as she did. And not only that, I was
Bea Dixon: in a bad way because I you know, I had
Bea Dixon: BV constantly. You know, some of that was probably hormonal.
Bea Dixon: Some of it was probably because I was just going
Bea Dixon: through so much at that time, you know what I mean.
ETS: I love this idea that the personal had to come first,
ETS: that the honey pot company would not have existed without it.
ETS: But I had to know how did be think of it?
ETS: Did she see the business opportunity that she had been
ETS: looking for all along? Right away?
Bea Dixon: It wasn't like we the business kind of energy. It
Bea Dixon: was like, shit, if this could work for me, this
Bea Dixon: could work for other people. That's what it was like.
Bea Dixon: It was like I was remembering those Google forms that
Bea Dixon: I was living on, and I was remembering remembering all
Bea Dixon: those humans with vaginas that I was talking to. I mean,
Bea Dixon: these forums had thousands of women on them. It was wild.
Bea Dixon: So it was more so remembering those things and knowing
Bea Dixon: that there was a white space.
ETS: So how did you start? How did you get the
ETS: capital to have the supplies? How did you start selling?
Speaker 3: It?
ETS: Sounds like you probably knew where to find the market.
Bea Dixon: For a year and a half, we didn't do anything right.
Bea Dixon: I had went to my brother's side to help because
Bea Dixon: I didn't know anything about business. Not for real, He's
Bea Dixon: so smart, he knew I mean he went to business school, right.
Bea Dixon: He went to schoolbyas CPA, you know, and so he
Bea Dixon: was a person who had the business savvy that I knew.
Bea Dixon: He didn't know about CpG business consumer package goods, right,
Bea Dixon: And I went to him and I was like, you know,
Bea Dixon: I need help with this thing. But I can't just
Bea Dixon: put this out into the world. I have to, like,
Bea Dixon: it wouldn't be responsible to just like that day, figure
Bea Dixon: out that this had worked for me and then take
Bea Dixon: that same exact formula and start selling that. Like, you
Bea Dixon: can't do that. You have to test it. You have
Bea Dixon: to make sure that it's the right because it's not
Bea Dixon: like my grandmother was able to tell me use a
Bea Dixon: cup of this, she used a teaspoon of that. It
Bea Dixon: was like, here's the ingredients. You're going to know how
Bea Dixon: to figure it out. Figure it out because she knew
Bea Dixon: I had worked in ivy rooms. As a pharmacy technician,
Bea Dixon: you have to know maths, right. There's different problems that
Bea Dixon: you I mean, anytime you're batching a medicine or whatever,
Bea Dixon: you have to know what's the dose of a milligram
Bea Dixon: whatever the milligrams is that you need to pull out
Bea Dixon: of that vial so that you can put it into
Bea Dixon: that iv bag, right, and then you do that, You
Bea Dixon: put it in the syringe, You put the ivy bag,
Bea Dixon: and you put it in front of a pharmacist. They
Bea Dixon: check your math, they do everything, and they sign off,
Bea Dixon: and then you put it in the bag. So she
Bea Dixon: knew that I knew how to do that. She knew
Bea Dixon: I knew how to compound skincare because I had done that,
Bea Dixon: you know. But I also knew that it would have
Bea Dixon: been irresponsible to just go out into the world with
Bea Dixon: a formula that I had only tried on myself. And
Bea Dixon: so I went to side and I was like, I
Bea Dixon: need help. And he was like, since I have my
Bea Dixon: own business, I'm an accountant, I'm not a I don't
Bea Dixon: know anything about vaginas except what I know about vagina's
Bea Dixon: like and I was like, I get it, but I
Bea Dixon: need help, Please help me. And so he did. You know,
Bea Dixon: he was there. He helped me in all the ways
Bea Dixon: that I needed help. So he gave me like this
Bea Dixon: five hundred dollars credit card.
ETS: You know.
Bea Dixon: Eventually he became my co founder, right. I think then
Bea Dixon: I knew in my mind that he was my co founder,
Bea Dixon: but he wasn't thinking about it like that. He gave
Bea Dixon: me this credit card they had five hundred dollar ballance
Bea Dixon: on it, and so that's what I used. I would
Bea Dixon: buy products to make the product, and then I would
Bea Dixon: make different type of versions and that I would just
Bea Dixon: give away. And then we did that for like a
Bea Dixon: year and a half and then somebody was like, hey,
Bea Dixon: you should launch this at the Brown Brother's hairshell. And
Bea Dixon: I didn't know about the Brown Brother's Hair show. That
Bea Dixon: was my first time ever hearing about it. And I
Bea Dixon: went to side again and I was like, hey, I
Bea Dixon: really want to do this thing. He was like, we
Bea Dixon: don't have the money to do that thing, Like this
Bea Dixon: little five hundred I'm giving you every month, like that's
Bea Dixon: a lot of money, because it is, but like we
Bea Dixon: don't have the cash. And I got on my hands
Bea Dixon: and knees literally and I was like, Simon, please, I
Bea Dixon: really feel like this is a thing. And he was
Bea Dixon: like okay. And I think these were the moments where
Bea Dixon: things were really they were real. But this is when
Bea Dixon: things were becoming really real because he went found like
Bea Dixon: twenty thousand dollars. He pulled it together with some of
Bea Dixon: his money and one of our friends' money, and that's
Bea Dixon: how we bought bottles, caps, labels, the shrink wrap. We
Bea Dixon: were using hair dryers. It was wild, you know, ingredients
Bea Dixon: and we made it as simily line and we like
Bea Dixon: made all these we made like six hundred bottles. We
Bea Dixon: had to get banners and you know, just all the
Bea Dixon: things you need to go to a trade show. And
Bea Dixon: I told him, I was like, if this doesn't work,
Bea Dixon: I will never bother you about this again. I will
Bea Dixon: never say anything. I will never come toy like I promise.
Bea Dixon: But at worked. We sold six hundred bottles in a
Bea Dixon: weekend that we made ourselves with our hands, in our
Bea Dixon: friend's hands, and that was really the beginning.
ETS: Getting the validation she needed from the trade show. Be
ETS: leaned in and did everything she could to grow the
ETS: Honeypot company. But it wasn't always easy. She was still
ETS: working full time as a buyer for whole Foods, and
ETS: not to mention, she was actually married at this time,
ETS: and unfortunately not happily.
Bea Dixon: I was just grinding. I had to survive, I had
Bea Dixon: to eat, I had to pay bills. Was starttarting, you know,
Bea Dixon: with starting Honeypot, and you know, and I didn't even
Bea Dixon: know what that meant, with starting honeypot man. I wasn't
Bea Dixon: thinking necessarily about what it could be. I just knew
Bea Dixon: that it could be something beautiful, and at that moment,
Bea Dixon: I just wanted other people to be able to experience
Bea Dixon: the healing that I was able to experience for myself.
ETS: You know.
Bea Dixon: So you know, so like it was a hard time.
Bea Dixon: You know, I was in a interesting marriage. I was.
Bea Dixon: I wasn't happy with myself. I was very overweight, you know,
Bea Dixon: I was. I just wasn't in a great place. What's
Bea Dixon: the point of being successful if you're not happy? That
Bea Dixon: shit is stupid? Like why am I killing myself to
Bea Dixon: be successful? And I'm not happy inside my body? I'm
Bea Dixon: not happy inside my mind. I'm not happy inside this marriage.
Bea Dixon: I'm not you know what I mean, Like those two
Bea Dixon: don't go together for me. This is all for me.
Bea Dixon: I don't mean this for anybody that's listening to this.
Bea Dixon: You know.
Bea Dixon: This is just my story, my woes, my feelings. So
Bea Dixon: I don't want anybody to hear this and take offense
Bea Dixon: to what I just said. But that's how I felt
Bea Dixon: as it related to myself, and so I needed to
Bea Dixon: get it together because I remember me and my mom.
Bea Dixon: I was going to the doctor to figure out if
Bea Dixon: I could get pregnant or not. And the doctor found
Bea Dixon: some issues with my thyroid, and my mom was like,
Bea Dixon: we don't have thyroid problems in our family, Like, girl,
Bea Dixon: what are you talking about? And it's an old wives
Bea Dixon: tale that if you have thyroid issues, that you're lying
Bea Dixon: about something. And so what was the thing that I
Bea Dixon: was lying about? That I was tremendously, tremendously unhappy in
Bea Dixon: my marriage. It was not serving me. It just wasn't good.
Bea Dixon: It just it wasn't good. But I was afraid to leave.
Bea Dixon: And I remember my mom telling me. She basically was like,
Bea Dixon: but she gonna die, Like what are you doing? Like
Bea Dixon: we could drive home right now and we could get
Bea Dixon: into a car accident and die, And would you be
Bea Dixon: happy with your life if me and you were to
Bea Dixon: die right now? And nobody had ever put that shit
Bea Dixon: so eloquently to me before. Nobody had ever said that
Bea Dixon: to me before. I had never even thought about enjoying
Bea Dixon: every moment of my life. You hear about people say that,
Bea Dixon: but like when you're not in a good place, you know,
Bea Dixon: those kinds of sayings just kind of roll off your back.
Bea Dixon: But the way that my mother put it to me.
Bea Dixon: It just contextualized everything. It was like I just woke up.
Bea Dixon: It was like I was asleep and she poured some
Bea Dixon: water on me, and I woke up, and I think,
Bea Dixon: you know, within weeks I had told my then husband
Bea Dixon: that I couldn't do this any more. I just I
Bea Dixon: kind of did a one eighty in my life. I
Bea Dixon: just started getting it together because I just couldn't do
Bea Dixon: it anymore. I just I couldn't do it anymore. But yeah,
Bea Dixon: so business came first because it had to come first,
Bea Dixon: because the opportunities had presented themselves.
ETS: And soon Bee's biggest opportunity landed on her doorstep, from
ETS: none other than the Silver Bullet for any product Target,
ETS: I want to kind of build out. How did the
ETS: deal with Target change things?
Bea Dixon: Oh, like night and day, it was wild. You have
Bea Dixon: to realize, before we got into Target, all we made
Bea Dixon: was washes, and then we worked with companies that sold
Bea Dixon: wash and sold pads and sold you know, and sold
Bea Dixon: baby care part We were just selling all kinds of
Bea Dixon: stuff on our website. And so when Target reached out,
Bea Dixon: we knew because we have been doing like just trying
Bea Dixon: to test a bunch of theories and test a bunch
Bea Dixon: of products and see what was gonna work. We knew
Bea Dixon: by this time what was gonna work because we had
Bea Dixon: like eight x our website, because that was really the
Bea Dixon: only place we were doing business. We were in retailers,
Bea Dixon: but it wasn't you know, we were technically in whole foods,
Bea Dixon: but we were only in one store of whole foods.
Bea Dixon: We were in a bunch of like small shops, you know,
Bea Dixon: co ops, natural food markets. Why were we in those
Bea Dixon: places because I was a broker at the time and
Bea Dixon: I was servicing those places. And so when Target reached out,
Bea Dixon: we were able to get some prototypes made because we
Bea Dixon: knew by this moment that we needed to be more
Bea Dixon: than just a wash business. We actually needed to be
Bea Dixon: a vagina business. And so that's what we set out
Bea Dixon: to do, and we hired a branding agency. We essentially
Bea Dixon: like went to a place that does like prototype for packaging,
Bea Dixon: and we proto typed a brand that was washing wipes
Bea Dixon: and pads. The other thing to know, Emily, is that
Bea Dixon: that had never happened before, No brand had ever crossed
Bea Dixon: the aisle before. And so we ended up getting eleven
Bea Dixon: hundred doors of Target with our washes and our wipes,
Bea Dixon: and then within six months we were able to get
Bea Dixon: our minstrel our herbal menstrual pads in into like fifty stores.
Bea Dixon: It changed everything one because we had to go out
Bea Dixon: and raise a lot of money, which the amount we raised,
Bea Dixon: If you asked me, was that a lot of money? Now,
Bea Dixon: I would tell you no, But at that time it
Bea Dixon: felt like a fortune because I had never even seen
Bea Dixon: that amount of money. And so the changes were we
Bea Dixon: had to raise money. Target came out of nowhere. Gratefully.
Bea Dixon: Our buyer had went to get her hair done and
Bea Dixon: her hairdresser was because because the other thing that we
Bea Dixon: did too is we used we used hair shows as
Bea Dixon: a way to market our products. Makes sense, right because
Bea Dixon: there's nothing but humans with vagina's walking around and so
Bea Dixon: because of that, she heard about us through her hairdresser
Bea Dixon: and that's how she reached out. She went to our
Bea Dixon: website and she reached out on our support email. It
Bea Dixon: was it was crazy and so yeah, like that, but
Bea Dixon: it changed everything. We went from making the washes in
Bea Dixon: our kitchen to working with the manufacturer, which meant that
Bea Dixon: we had to we were running a whole different operational
Bea Dixon: type of system and business because I mean all we
Bea Dixon: made was washes. We didn't understand how to work with
Bea Dixon: a manufacturer. We had to raise money. We had never
Bea Dixon: worked with a branding agency, not one that was gonna
Bea Dixon: take it to the next level, you know what I mean.
Bea Dixon: Like we were going into wipes and paths, which those
Bea Dixon: are two separate types of businesses. Washes and wipes are cosmetics.
Bea Dixon: Paths are our medical device. Like so many things change,
Bea Dixon: but it's good. Change is good.
ETS: The honey Pot company began to grow and grow, making
ETS: bees dreams of both helping other women experience the same
ETS: healing she experienced and to make money in her sleep
ETS: a reality. After the break, Bee talks candidly about how
ETS: she strategically grew her company and how she strategically sold
ETS: her company. More soon, you built this incredible business and
ETS: then you started looking to sell.
Bea Dixon: Yeah, I mean the moment we took venture capital money
Bea Dixon: is when we knew we would have to see Listen,
Bea Dixon: in the beginning, the type of investors you have are
Bea Dixon: typically probably going to be friends and families, angels. They
Bea Dixon: call it friends and family, but that doesn't mean that
Bea Dixon: they're your friend or your family. It's just like around
Bea Dixon: that's like just private people investing in your business. Then
Bea Dixon: your business grows. Now you need money that has some
Bea Dixon: intelligence behind it. You don't just need money, you need
Bea Dixon: know how. And so you go to a venture capitalist
Bea Dixon: that specializes in consumer package goods. Then you need to
Bea Dixon: go back out into the market again and raise more money.
Bea Dixon: This time you're probably going with like private equity, which
Bea Dixon: is like even stronger know how because you're probably when
Bea Dixon: you're looking for growth money. You know, that doesn't mean
Bea Dixon: that private equity can't typically invest with growth, but growth
Bea Dixon: money typically can look like venture capital money because they
Bea Dixon: can typically get an earlier. Private equity money is more
Bea Dixon: like you're like, you know, you've done about ten million
Bea Dixon: dollars in sales and you're ready for that next phase.
Bea Dixon: Now you're looking at getting from ten to one hundred, right,
Bea Dixon: And so you know, those types of investors can't just invest.
Bea Dixon: They have to invest, and then they have to know
Bea Dixon: how to help you. Because what your business is when
Bea Dixon: it's at ten is different from a business that's even
Bea Dixon: at twenty or fifty. It definitely looks night and day
Bea Dixon: than one hundred million dollar business. And so also though
Bea Dixon: when you get in business, and like I said, and
Bea Dixon: when you take venture VC money or you take PE money.
Bea Dixon: They typically have investors that invest in their portfolios. They're
Bea Dixon: called LPs, but they have to give their LPs a
Bea Dixon: return on their money. They're not like an angel that
Bea Dixon: can be around. That may be a person who saved
Bea Dixon: their money their whole life, or they've been able to
Bea Dixon: be successful in business, but you know, and they just
Bea Dixon: want to put their money to work. No, these are
Bea Dixon: like licensed investors and they come with rules. So that's
Bea Dixon: why the type of PE money that we took, they
Bea Dixon: can't even invest. They can't even look in your direction
Bea Dixon: unless you've done ten million dollars in sales, unless you've
Bea Dixon: got there's just there's levels to it, there's rules to it,
Bea Dixon: and you have to be able to scratch off most
Bea Dixon: of those boxes. They may be able to look past
Bea Dixon: a couple of rules, but they're looking past it because
Bea Dixon: they know that you're probably going to be reaching whatever
Bea Dixon: the numbers are, whatever the rules are of engagement, right
Bea Dixon: and so, but because of that, because of them being
Bea Dixon: accredited and licensed and all the things, their fund has
Bea Dixon: to turn over within four years or five years. And
Bea Dixon: so if you're going to take that kind of money,
Bea Dixon: then that means that you are signing up to either
Bea Dixon: sell or ipo and that that's just the way that
Bea Dixon: it goes because they have to see a return.
ETS: Was that a hard reality for you when you came
ETS: to that realization or you've torn them accept up by
ETS: that point, No.
Bea Dixon: It wasn't. It wasn't a hard reality for me at all,
Bea Dixon: because I know that that's typically the way that you're
Bea Dixon: going to find your wealth. You can get wealthy founding
Bea Dixon: a company and holding it forever. It just takes time
Bea Dixon: and it can be a risk because anything can happen.
Bea Dixon: You know. It's hard to get to wealth and be
Bea Dixon: a small business. And a small business is anything under
Bea Dixon: ninety million dollars. That's what the SBA considers to be
Bea Dixon: a small business. And then when you're in the medium
Bea Dixon: sized business, that's a really hard place to be because
Bea Dixon: now you're not the newest thing on the block, you know,
Bea Dixon: so now you're trying to get from like your one
Bea Dixon: hundred plus to a billion or half a billion. These
Bea Dixon: are really hard numbers to hit. These are hard things
Bea Dixon: to do, you know, and the business is just different
Bea Dixon: every time you're hitting these different milestones, and so you
Bea Dixon: really have to know how to continue to scale and
Bea Dixon: that's what conglomerates are there for. I mean, you know,
Bea Dixon: conglomerates aren't specializing in innovation. The way that they innovate
Bea Dixon: is they acquire businesses. That's just the way that it's
Bea Dixon: always been. So it's not hard for me because honey
Bea Dixon: pot is my life's work. I'm not reaching for a
Bea Dixon: success only for money. And you have a business so
Bea Dixon: that you can make money, so that you can so
Bea Dixon: that you can create wealth for you and your family.
Bea Dixon: I mean that, let's call the spade what it is.
Bea Dixon: And I don't want to be a slave to this
Bea Dixon: for the rest of my life, and you don't have
Bea Dixon: to be. But it's hard work doing this work. And
Bea Dixon: if you do it the way that me and my
Bea Dixon: team do it, we give this everything everything. I give
Bea Dixon: this everything that I have. You know, I've given it
Bea Dixon: everything that I have and you know, and so it
Bea Dixon: has to pay me back, it has to it has
Bea Dixon: to make me whole, and you know that. And that's
Bea Dixon: the way that it is. So no, it doesn't. It
Bea Dixon: doesn't freak me out, it doesn't scare me because I
Bea Dixon: understand the rules of engagement, you know, and I know
Bea Dixon: that the reason why you go into business is to
Bea Dixon: create wealth for yourself, and that's what I'm doing it for,
Bea Dixon: and to serve humanity, like it's it's not only that, right,
Bea Dixon: But yeah, how did.
ETS: You learn these rules of the road. It seems like
ETS: something you can't but you can't intuitively know. I didn't
ETS: intuitively know. I had no idea.
Bea Dixon: I didn't even know this is a thing like I.
Bea Dixon: You know, I remember the first time we did a
Bea Dixon: pitch like, I was so nervous. I had no idea.
Bea Dixon: I had never asked anybody for real money before. I
Bea Dixon: never even conceived of you know, I thought real money
Bea Dixon: was a million dollars. I remember I wrote a check
Bea Dixon: for myself for a million dollars and I and I
Bea Dixon: posted it. I put it on my ceiling. I thought
Bea Dixon: at one moment, because you know, all I had ever
Bea Dixon: made when I worked in the workforce was like, what
Bea Dixon: fifty sixty thousand dollars a year, which isn't a lot
Bea Dixon: of money. But I thought I was doing okay for
Bea Dixon: me making a lot of money. Man, I was making
Bea Dixon: one hundred and fifty thousand. Until you get to make
Bea Dixon: one hundred and fifty thousand a year and then you
Bea Dixon: realize that actually isn't as much money as you think
Bea Dixon: it is. Then you make your million dollars and you
Bea Dixon: realize that actually isn't as much money as you think
Bea Dixon: it is. Because the more you make, the more your
Bea Dixon: lifestyle increases. And if you're a person who's like me,
Bea Dixon: who's a giver, I'm not just taking care of me.
Bea Dixon: And so I don't know, Like I think, you just
Bea Dixon: learn as you go. You just flow through it. I
Bea Dixon: had no idea how to do most of these things,
Bea Dixon: you know, but I have my brother, had my team,
Bea Dixon: I had investors, and you just learn. You just thumb
Bea Dixon: through it.
ETS: Something I really admired was about how honest you are
ETS: about your commitment to building wealth.
Bea Dixon: Yeah.
ETS: Sometimes I think about, like for women, that we often
ETS: feel required to build something meaningful and making the profit
ETS: and like success is that kind of secondary to it?
Bea Dixon: So now they go hand in hand.
ETS: Yeah, tell me more about Like you know, you speak
ETS: candidly about the attention to make money.
Bea Dixon: One of the indicators that you're doing well is money.
Bea Dixon: It's finance. We get into business to do what when
Bea Dixon: we go to work every day? What do we go
Bea Dixon: to work for to make money? Any company that is
Bea Dixon: that is experiencing success or not experiencing success. It takes
Bea Dixon: a lot to run that business, especially if it's a
Bea Dixon: business that came from nothing, which every single business in
Bea Dixon: the world at some point did come from nothing, right,
Bea Dixon: And so if you're going to sacrifice your time, your money,
Bea Dixon: sometimes your health, your nervous system, your brain, your relationships,
Bea Dixon: time away from your family, it should be in service
Bea Dixon: of you being in a position for that thing to
Bea Dixon: make you wealthy. Like that, there's nothing wrong with that.
Bea Dixon: Like I believe that what we should do should be
Bea Dixon: changing the world, and at the same time, the humans
Bea Dixon: that are building it should be able to experience a
Bea Dixon: level of financial freedom. That doesn't mean that every single
Bea Dixon: human that's working on it is going to become a millionaire,
Bea Dixon: but hopefully they become one hundred thousandaires. That's why every
Bea Dixon: human at our company holds equity because that's very important
Bea Dixon: to us. If you work on this thing, you should
Bea Dixon: share in the benefit of this thing. And we do
Bea Dixon: what we do to make money. We are a for
Bea Dixon: profit business. You can't be broke and be trying to
Bea Dixon: do and build one of the you know, greatest companies
Bea Dixon: in personal care. If that is your goal, which that
Bea Dixon: is our goal. That is my goal. I want honey
Bea Dixon: pots to be here for the next hundred years, two
Bea Dixon: hundred years, as long as it can be, so that
Bea Dixon: even when I'm long gone, it's always here in service
Bea Dixon: of the humans of humans with vaginas. Right. But in
Bea Dixon: order for us to do that, we have to be
Bea Dixon: financially successful. You can't have one without the other.
ETS: And can we talk about how you found the right
ETS: partner to sell to? Like what those factors were? I
ETS: had read that you had rejected offers that were hired.
Bea Dixon: Yeah, yeah, so what were the factors there? Didn't want
Bea Dixon: to sell our soul? Yeah, didn't want to sell our soul.
Bea Dixon: I you know, while personally I can only speak for
Bea Dixon: my two shoes, you ask my partners, they'd probably tell
Bea Dixon: you a different thing. Because there's a big part of me,
Bea Dixon: like part of me knows that I have to do
Bea Dixon: the part of doing this work has to be for
Bea Dixon: the finding is right, Like we have to be successful
Bea Dixon: because the revolution has to be financed. Shout out to
Bea Dixon: Emmitt Dennis who says that all the time, right, you
Bea Dixon: can't be successful and not be making bread. You just can't,
Bea Dixon: because that's how you continue to have success. But that's
Bea Dixon: a small part of why I do what I do personally.
Bea Dixon: The biggest part is that we are here to be
Bea Dixon: the change in the world that we live in. Being
Bea Dixon: that we make products for people's bodies, we have to
Bea Dixon: be responsible with how we do that. We have to
Bea Dixon: do that with love, with care. We have to treat
Bea Dixon: each other well within Honeypot so that that reflects out
Bea Dixon: into the world. I just believe that when it comes
Bea Dixon: to finding a partner, it cannot just be for the money.
Bea Dixon: And that's not just partnership as far as like going
Bea Dixon: into acquisition. That's even just with investors. When you are
Bea Dixon: shopping for investors, there's periods of time where you most
Bea Dixon: of the time for us, you know, it was like
Bea Dixon: desperate situations. Desperate situations can make you do shit that's
Bea Dixon: not very smart. Where you sign on investors or people
Bea Dixon: who aren't really great for you. Hopefully you can be
Bea Dixon: in a position to get those people out. But once
Bea Dixon: you do.
Bea Dixon: Business with somebody, y'all go together, right because they're not
Bea Dixon: going anywhere. They're on your cap table. And being that
Bea Dixon: this acquisition wasn't a full acquisition, it was a majority acquisition.
Bea Dixon: Whoever we partnered with they were going to own majority
Bea Dixon: of the business, so they had to be doing that
Bea Dixon: with our best interest at heart. Our best interest at
Bea Dixon: heart is the community that works within honey Pot and
Bea Dixon: the community that we serve in the world. We have
Bea Dixon: to be in service of those two things.
ETS: What is one thing that you look back on now
ETS: and at the time you saw it as a real
ETS: low point, and now you see it as having really
ETS: positioned you to where you are now.
Bea Dixon: I think the first time we were raising money, I
Bea Dixon: was again I can only speak for my two shoes.
Bea Dixon: I was working a job. I was a broker, which
Bea Dixon: meant that I liked so I sold food for a
Bea Dixon: living to retailers, food and products. I was living on
Bea Dixon: the road, probably three to four weeks out of the month.
Bea Dixon: We had a business. I mean we were making six figures.
Bea Dixon: It wasn't like a massive business, but we had a business.
Bea Dixon: We were making the product, we were shipping it out.
Bea Dixon: We had no fulfillment. So I was working, we were
Bea Dixon: making product, we were shipping product, we were raising money,
Bea Dixon: and we were raising that money literally to pay bills
Bea Dixon: because we had gotten into target. It was wild. I
Bea Dixon: was so unhappy. My mental health was not great, and
Bea Dixon: when you mix that with the exhaustion of just what
Bea Dixon: my life was. I wasn't in a relationship that was
Bea Dixon: serving me at all. If anything, it was taken away
Bea Dixon: from me. It just was a really really, really really
Bea Dixon: low time. And I don't necessarily know, I don't know
Bea Dixon: that my answer is precisely what you asked me. But
Bea Dixon: being able to be that low was really good for
Bea Dixon: me because I knew what bottom was, you know, And
Bea Dixon: I believe when you know what bottom is, you know
Bea Dixon: there's only what's only what's left, it's up. And I
Bea Dixon: at that time, obviously I didn't understand that because I
Bea Dixon: was at bottom. But I'm so grateful for that moment
Bea Dixon: because when I finally got to the place where I
Bea Dixon: realized the relationship that I was in was hell, and
Bea Dixon: I got the courage to end it, and that was
Bea Dixon: the beginning of our scale point. That was where we
Bea Dixon: were on our way to scale at that moment. And
Bea Dixon: normally when you're on the way to scale, that's when
Bea Dixon: shit is real tough, especially if you're a company that's
Bea Dixon: doing it bootstrapping. But you know, that moment was necessary.
Bea Dixon: I mean, I will never forget that moment in my life.
ETS: So I think our version of success changes for ourselves
ETS: at different points in our lives. What is your version
ETS: of success for yourself right now? Like, what does success look.
Bea Dixon: Like right now? That's relative, you know, and personally, my
Bea Dixon: version of success is being able to be present. Is
Bea Dixon: being able to have a calm nervous system. Is being
Bea Dixon: able to be physically fit and work out five days
Bea Dixon: a week if I wanted to. Is being able to
Bea Dixon: eat really well. It's being really happy in my relationship,
Bea Dixon: first to myself, been to my partner. Is being able
Bea Dixon: to be in beautiful relationship with my friends and family.
Bea Dixon: Also to be in beautiful relationship with the humans that
Bea Dixon: I work with, because they're my friends too. I think professionally,
Bea Dixon: it's being able to have a beautiful flow state with
Bea Dixon: my team where we are just moving and flowing and
Bea Dixon: growing and executing and working together, and really being able
Bea Dixon: to intentionally connect to the humans that we're serving and
Bea Dixon: intentionally make them beautiful products, intentionally continue to make the
Bea Dixon: things that we already make better. I don't say this
Bea Dixon: with ego, but I believe the honeypot was a gift
Bea Dixon: to the world is a gift to the world. I
Bea Dixon: believe the work that we do is very sacred, it's
Bea Dixon: very spiritual, it's very tapped in, and especially because we
Bea Dixon: really do the shit that we do, Like it's like
Bea Dixon: we don't say the things that we do to make
Bea Dixon: it seem like it's deeper than what it is. Like
Bea Dixon: we really do believe the things that we do. We
Bea Dixon: really believe in them.
Bea Dixon: You know.
Bea Dixon: We put a lot of effort and intention and love
Bea Dixon: and really beautiful energy into this work, into these products,
Bea Dixon: into how just the whole curation of the thing. It's
Bea Dixon: just not a thing that we take lightly. And part
Bea Dixon: of why we don't take it so lightly is because
Bea Dixon: it was a gift from my ancestors. It's really beautiful
Bea Dixon: work that we get to do at Honeypot, and you know,
Bea Dixon: and I just have a lot of respect for that.
Bea Dixon: I have a lot of respect for the humans that
Bea Dixon: choose to use our products and put them on their
Bea Dixon: body and in their vagina and on their vagina and
Bea Dixon: wash with our things. And it just means so much.
Bea Dixon: I mean, this part of the body is how we
Bea Dixon: are all here. When you think about that, shit is wild.
Bea Dixon: So it just deserves, you know, the beautiful things. We're
Bea Dixon: not only in vaginal care anymore. We've gone into personal
Bea Dixon: care with body watches, and you'll see some more body
Bea Dixon: products coming out through Amazon and online in the coming year.
Bea Dixon: But like, we really are doing some really dope stuff
Bea Dixon: and we get to do that, and I'm just grateful
Bea Dixon: for that to be able to get to do these
Bea Dixon: things and to be successful and to be profitable, and
Bea Dixon: to like, there's so many companies that are not getting
Bea Dixon: to do those things, and I just want my guides,
Bea Dixon: my ancestors, my customers, you, the people that listen to
Bea Dixon: this show that maybe never even tried our products or
Bea Dixon: heard about them. I just want you to know how
Bea Dixon: grateful I am to be able to do this work.
Bea Dixon: It is a gift, and thank you so much for
Bea Dixon: having me that that's also a gift. So I'm very grateful.
ETS: Thank you. You've heard so with us. Thank you so much.
ETS: It's so great to talk to you. B is still
ETS: working to expand her brand to empower women through wellness
ETS: and entrepreneurship. Be and her team continue to push boundaries
ETS: and redefine what's possible for women's health. If you want
ETS: to keep up with all the incredible things Be is doing,
ETS: you can follow her on Instagram at i amb Dixon
ETS: and check out the Honeypot Company at the Honeypot Co.
ETS: Talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to this
ETS: episode of she Pivots. I hope you enjoyed it, and
ETS: if you did, leave us a rating and tell your
ETS: friends about us. To learn more about our guests, follow
ETS: us on Instagram at she pivots the Podcast, or sign
ETS: up for our newsletter, where you can get exclusive behind
ETS: the scenes content on our website at she pivots the
ETS: podcast dot com. Special thanks to the she pivots team,
ETS: Executive producer Emily eda Velosik, Associate producer and social media
ETS: connoisseur Hannah Cousins, Research director Christine Dickinson, Events and logistics
ETS: coordinator Madeline Snovak, and audio editor and mixer Nina pollock.
Bea Dixon: I endorse She Pivots.