Meet Laurel Smith

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Laurel Smith. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Laurel, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

I think I was born with a passion to, well, have a passion. I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t chasing some sort of purpose to fill my day. I had a pretend desk set up on the side of my Mom’s office by the time I was 6, where I used graph paper to write my “work.” I filled my evenings documenting what I did each day in my childhood journals (fun sidenote: I used a planner as a journal, even as a child!). I still remember handing my Dad very detailed notes for my very own Bridge to Terebithia that I was going to build in my pretend Secret Garden. Focus — at least on the things I was interested in — felt like breathing to me. All of that drive was modeled to me by my parents. My Mom worked her way up in the intellectual academia world of one of the top public universities in the U.S. . University of Virginia, while getting her college and master’s degree and raising three children. My Dad was on the cutting edge of everything IT, from building his own computers to eventually coding the entire grading system at the University of Virginia. They worked tirelessly and both had such passion and purpose which was passed down to me.

When I got my first corporate job as an adult, work became a reality and not just a pretend game I played — I struggled to stay engaged. The slow pace had my brain short circuiting and I felt my focus disappearing. I knew that to get my spark back, I needed to start something on my own, but it wouldn’t be easy. So, first, I studied. I researched how other people were able to accomplish their product dreams and I took notes! When I finally took the leap, I was so empowered by my research and the feeling of purpose returning to my life, that working hard felt effortless.

Now that I’ve owned my own business for 20 years (woah), I know that most days aren’t filled with stickering and picking out beautiful patterns. Most days, I go back to my graph paper roots and stare at spreadsheets or think through online selling policies. But with every single spreadsheet or hours-long conversation about a return policy, I am filled with so much purpose, and it drives me. Sometimes it’s the product that fills you with purpose and with a strong work ethic, and sometimes it’s the community, and sometimes it’s just how you were made. I’m incredibly grateful that for me, it’s all three.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

For all of my talk on focus and purpose, the reality is that you would have found high school or college Laurel as a pretty listless — an overwhelmed little one. I wasn’t a leader, at least not by choice, and I definitely wouldn’t have won “most likely to be CEO” in any contest. As I said, I liked what I liked and could focus well on that, but the other stuff made my brain turn into cotton balls. From the outside looking in, I probably could have been called lazy! I’m pretty sure my parents hoped I’d marry well. And I think, sometimes, the memory of that version of who I was can create friction when I think of myself as a CEO of a pretty large company. My goal in 2025 is to own that title, while continuing to exist in my comfort zone of a humble spirit. It’s possible to be both — I’m positive of it! So, just like when I started my company in 2005, I’m spending a lot of time this year learning. Listening to podcasts where other CEOs are interviewed, reading books, educating myself on things that are a little outside of my comfort zone, and writing down definitions of things that are hard for my brain to remember. I’m doing all of this so that I can feel confident as a CEO and as a leader. I might not do it like the others, but I want to know how they do it so that I can make it my own. The only way any of this will feel familiar to me is if I immerse myself in it and it’s been incredibly fruitful this year.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

In the beginning, I was the sole employee. And not just for a year. For a very long time, I was the customer service representative, the sales manager, the head of production, and fulfillment. I think doing that helped me to intimately understand every corner of my business so that I could clean out the dust and make efficient systems. Starting a business now is a lot different than it was in 2005 because there are so many directions we are being pulled. I get it, there’s a lot to balance and sometimes an expert is needed (for instance, if you are doing ads, you should hire a team because that’s basically organic chemistry. Unless, like, you love organic chemistry?). I would tell folks early in this process to hire carefully and if you are able to do it all for a bit, do it all. I *just* hired someone to help me with email designs this year! I needed to prove to myself that I understood the system, I needed to establish our marketing vibe and not let someone else establish it for me, and then I could pass it off to someone else. The number of employees you have isn’t a badge of ‘Real Business.’ If you need help and you are getting behind, by all means, hire your people! But try to navigate each part in the early stages. Be curious about each part of your business and what it takes to be successful in each part. It’s your own little Masters of Business without the six figure debt (hopefully).

Here’s my advice for those just starting out:

Trust your gut. Has trusting my gut always worked out perfectly? No. Do I 100% of the time never doubt myself? Absolutely not. But, as I’ve built this business, I recognized a pattern — with every single mistake, I’ve learned something that has contributed to future success. Nothing is wasted. Every single time, I have learned something. So, trust your gut. Your passion (aka: your gut) is what got you into this business in the first place, use that to drive your business and your decisions.

Be authentic and be available to your people. One of the gifts of social media is that there is no curtain anymore. It’s a channel for you to directly be in the lives of people who are interested in your product and what you have to say. It’s a gift! Believe me, because I’ve tried to launch the exact same product I am now selling a lot of without social media and it was impossible. If you show up online as someone you’re not, it’s not going to work. I started doing this towards the end of the jewelry chapter of my brand — I wasn’t feeling the encouraging, sympathy gift, serious mode anymore, and folks could smell it from a mile away. Business started to suffer. I knew I needed to change because I was faking it. If you’re not feeling authentic, ask yourself why and don’t be afraid to make some big, drastic changes.

Embrace the mess. When we were facing the import issues of 2022, things were a mess! When you googled “is Laurel Denise” the auto prompt filled with “a scam” because we were having so many import issues and had taken so many pre-orders. I got online to my little private Facebook Group and told them the truth! That we’d lost two pallets, that we’d need to refund a lot of people, and that the items wouldn’t ship until the first week of December. It was a nightmare, but it established me as an available CEO and a teammate. Don’t cut yourself off from your community — even if it’s a community of 10. Being the “cool” girl isn’t going to get you anywhere that you want to go and neither will acting like you have it all together.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

I’m grateful to be married to my biggest cheerleader and an incredibly gifted strategic thinker who also has a strong work ethic. I bounce basically everything off of him. I don’t always take his advice, but I do always walk away thinking of things from an angle I hadn’t considered before.

I also surround myself with people who are a few steps ahead of me. They might not realize they surround me because we are strangers on the internet, but I make a point to engage with, listen to, learn from, and not be intimated by the ones you have gone ahead of me.

The truth is that we all — even those people ahead of us — need a reminder that we are on the correct path to success, and that the correct path is not a downhill stroll on a midsummer’s evening. The faster I stop searching for the downhill and embrace the true hike that owning a business is, the more excited and comfortable I am as a CEO.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://laureldenise.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laureldenise
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/laureldeniseloves
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_HQs7q6zVs3T7VXeQxN82w
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@_laureldenise

Image Credits

Laurel Denise