Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Pauline Dumail, Founder of Feel By Smell, located in Paris, France.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
I create perfumes with a major part of raw materials for firms or organizations that want to spread a nice and gentle smell in their office. As essential oils have great effects on well-being, these perfumes also help you take care of your colleagues. The firm can also use this perfume as a marketing tool for perfumed goodies. The smell is a forgotten, very important, impacting sense. Invisible and so deep. It creates a strong anchor that will help you build your image. I make the fragrance on my own, with my team, but I can also co-create it with your colleagues during a very special team-building!
Tell us about yourself
I am an aromatherapist, olfactotherapist, and writer. I am the author of a perfumed novel, "La vie est un parfum, Respirez-la!" ("Life is a Perfume, Breathe It!"), a quantic and intuitive story. I've always been torn between rationality and heart, between words that belong to analytical thought and fragrances that belong to emotions. Therefore I feel like a tightrope walker on the medium line of the brain, translating words and smells.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
It was a hard and long journey to be able to offer this service :
- Finding the right methods to enhance collective cleverness.
- Finding the right hyphen between words & humans & smells.
- Re-work the formula with experts to get a convenient final product, respecting international regulations, finding a laboratory able to produce in small quantities, and eventually, finding the best technical solutions to diffuse the fragrance.
This is my best accomplishment: turning this vision into a reality. It took me ten years to make it come true.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
It's to be ahead of your time but without being conscious of it. Because if this happens, you lose your self-confidence, thinking you have failed. If you have a consciousness of what is happening, then, things are very different. You can prepare yourself for when the time comes. And during that time, lead your business in the directions the winds lead you.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Be crazy.
- Be yourself.
- Never give up.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.feelbysmell.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/huilesessentiellesetfleursdebach
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulinedumail/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Pauline_Dumail
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulinedumail/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
Turn your craft into recurring revenue with Subkit. Start your subscription offering in minutes and supercharge it with growth levers. Get early access here.