We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lauren Lauterbach and Courtney Cunningham a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Lauren Lauterbach and Courtney Cunningham, so great to have you on the platform. There’s so much we want to ask you, but let’s start with the topic of self-care. Do you do anything for self-care and if so, do you think it’s had a meaningful impact on your effectiveness?
We implemented a self-care day right into our business! Every Friday we have a Development Friday when we take a moment away from social media (posting is already planned and lined up!) and focus on ourselves. We get inspired by heading out into nature for a walk or forest bathing, making crystal grids or reading our favorite crystal books and meditation. We will also perform crystal healing on each other to get our energy moving and anything that is stuck to be released. We have come up with our best ideas these days! Slowing down actually creates more meaningful work.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
We launched Moon & Stone in 2022, but we found our friendship over 20 years ago. And we believe what’s good for life is good for business — AKA, uplifting, positive vibes!
Our business was created out of stress and fear. Lauren had a health scare, and Courtney faced sudden relationship issues in her marriage.
In order to heal ourselves, we were game on to explore EVERY. EMPOWERING. POSSIBILITY. out there — mindfulness, meditation, Ayurveda, the chakras, past life work, you name it.
But, we almost drew the line at crystals. Good thing we didn’t! We dove into researching & discovering how crystals work. It sounds strange, but utilizing the energy of crystals saved our lives, they brought us the clarity and guidance we needed.
Getting into the crystal game can be overwhelming and confusing. It was for us! We have taken all the guesswork out of starting a crystal collection for our crystal newbies by creating our brand new product: Glow With The Flow. This crystal starter kit will help people rediscover joy and reconnect with their true purpose (even if it feels like the universe has been playing favorites!). It’s got everything a crystal-curious newbie needs: sparkling stones, spiritual cleansers, and THE most uplifting energies.
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?
1.. Drive and Passion. Running a small business is HARD. So much sweat equity and blood sweat and tears goes into starting a company so without the passion, the fire to continue to move forward and jump through all the hurdles can fizzle fast!
2 .Willingness to take the time to learn! In order to save money, small business owners need to know a lil bit of just about everything! We save so much money by doing all our own social media advertising. To learn the back end of Meta is HARD. It took about a full year to learn how to create audiences and create engaging content that will convert! We get asked all the time how we grew out following so quickly in such a short amount of time. There is no quick easy fix. It takes time and lots of learning!
3. Having a great business partner. We say all the time that we couldn’t do this business solo. Having a business partner to bounce ideas off of and create with is one of the most important things at Moon & Stone. We constantly have the support of each other and we have learned how to debate and play devil’s advocate so that we can always provide what is best for our community and for Moon & Stone. We are so lucky that we each have different strengths and weaknesses. Lauren is the “Stone ” and is in charge of the website, finances and all systems. Courtney is the “Moon” and is the creative mastermind for the business.
What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
Live Sales! Crystals photograph beautifully but sometimes it is hard to convey their magic through a static image. Showing our pieces live online through Instagram Live has allowed us to show our customers our one of a kind pieces and allows us to capture their true power and beauty straight to our customers!
Contact Info:
- Website: moonandstone.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/m.o.o.n.a.n.d.s.t.o.n.e/
Image Credits
Moon & Stone
