Meet Sabrina Gardner

We recently connected with Sabrina Gardner and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sabrina , you’ve got such an interesting story, but before we jump into that, let’s first talk about a topic near and dear to us – generosity. We think success, happiness and wellbeing depends on authentic generosity and empathy and so we’d love to hear about how you become such a generous person – where do you think your generosity comes from?
When I was 12 years old, there was a hurricane in South Carolina. My Dad was part of a volunteer effort that flew down to help with the cleanup and provide supplies and food for those who lost their homes. I can still remember walking through the streets with homes torn apart and pieces littering the streets seeing the grief in the faces of those who had lost everything. The gratitude they had for the relief we had brought with us was tangible. This opportunity to help had a lasting impact on my life.

I spent most of my college years volunteering teaching children to read, running field trips for lower income schools, and working the front desk at the local hospital. Over the years I was able to help fundraise, travel to remote parts of the world photographing and interviewing victims of natural disasters and act as an advocate for many causes from gender equality to clean water. Despite all of this, I wanted to have an even greater impact in the non-profit space so I built a company to change the way businesses and non-profits interact. Salt by Sabrina donates $1 for every custom product sold directly to charity. As we grow, so does our non-profit impact. I am working to encourage other business to partner with non-profits so that we can provide them with reoccurring revenue. This allows non-profits to focus on what they do best, helping people instead of fundraising. The more businesses that build charitable donations into their business models, the more impact for good we can have.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Organization is transformative. Changing a space and taking control brings a sense of peace and also empowers us to deal with life’s daily challenges. My family and I moved in March of 2020 to our new home during the start of the pandemic. It was a time of complete upheaval and uncertainty. We were surrounded by chaos in the world and in the boxes strewn everywhere around this new house. I spent the next six days working around the clock to unpack and organize every square inch. The result was a tangible change in my family, how we felt and the peace it created in our home. It became a safe space to live and be while the mess raged outside around us.

As I organized, not only did it hit me how impactful organization was but I also realized there was a huge problem with the organizational products on the market. None of them fit my drawers, shelves or cabinets. Nothing was designed to work and most of the products were not high quality or made to last. I searched everywhere and tried dozens of products. I ended up returning them all. And that was the start of the idea for Salt!

I created a line of organizational products that are custom-fit to our customer’s spaces. For the first time, you can have access to a drawer organizer that actually fits your drawer! The result is a system that works in the long term, looks beautiful, is chemical-free and designed to last the life of the drawer. There is something magical about slipping in an organizer made just for you and what you want to store inside. We offer a line of custom-fit, premium acrylic drawer organizers for every type of drawer in your home. We also offer access to our design team if you want something designed completely from scratch. Our mission is to create peace in the chaos of life through beautiful and functional product designs.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
People are everything. Every relationship or connection that you build and foster matters. I love the magic that happens through networks! I am humbled by those who have so willingly supported me and believed in what I wanted to build.

Believe in abundance. Lift those around you and look for opportunities to help. When you are a part of others success, it will bring joy to your life especially when you are facing your own challenges. It is empowering to be a force for good.

Organization is key in all areas of business. Build efficient systems and always look for ways to fine tune and improve. Be intentional and organized from the start. When I built Salt, I worked diligently with my COO to make sure we had the best operational system we could, solid accounting practices, good legal advice and that our company had a clear vision of who we are and what our focus would be. Those systems have paid off tremendously. It has allowed Salt to grow at an extremely fast pace and be ready to scale.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Rarely can you say that a book has changed your life, but with Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat I can say that without hesitation. The concepts, so passionately written about by the author, of fear, joy, time, conceptual framing, etc. have altered the way I look at almost everything in my own life. His story is one that starts with tragedy and this is his journey to find the equation for happiness.

One of my favorite ideas is the understanding that life is chaotic by design and that when things go wrong, that is normal! It’s so easy to feel picked on when life goes sideways. But, the reality is that when things go right, that is the anomaly. It helps me be so much more grateful when things are running smoothly and feel like less of a victim when things go wrong.

“If events remain as they are, but changing the way we think about them changes our experience of them, could we become happy simply by changing our thoughts? Of course!”

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Allison Niccum – photographer

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