Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Olia Saylor. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Olia, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I have to thank my grandparents and parents for it – they were the example of how one can not only overcome the obstacles and survive, but also thrive and live a fulfilling life. And I learned from them that the resilience stems from three things: optimism, or a strong belief that tomorrow always brings new opportunities; hard work that isn’t limited to only your routine tasks, but also includes perpetual learning and acquiring new skills; and, of course, fearlessness – using whatever strategy is available to you to tackle your fears, especially this big one we all have – the fear of failure.
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?
I’ve always felt the need to express myself artistically – whether it was writing a whole “poetry book” in one day when I was 5, staging a photoshoot when I was 25, or blending a perfume composition at 35. The sensory experience of smelling was always a huge part of my perception of the world, too. I dream in scent, and I can easily recall the smell of any place I’ve been to, in detail.
I started Black Labdanum as a blog about perfumery many years ago – to connect with like-minded people, and as I kept being curious and educating myself on materials and techniques, the fascination with aromas resulted in a full-scale lab – at first, I was creating things for my personal use, and as my confidence grew – I started a small company.
Black Labdanum will soon be celebrating the second anniversary in business – and I know for a fact that along this journey we’ve made quite a few people happy with our custom fragrances! That is definitely the most fulfilling part of my work.
We often take our noses and the sense of smell for granted, and perhaps don’t realize how scents affect our brains, emotions, and mental activity. I take all that into great consideration when creating fragrances for candles and perfumes. In the past few years, I have been focusing on natural and environmental scents – especially those of forests and their ecosystems. I even made a fragranced candle called Amanita Anima where along with white floral and mossy notes you can get hints of mushrooms.
Currently, our small team is getting ready to reopen the “doors” of our online store after a relocation – Fall is our favorite fragrant season and I am very much looking forward to bring in some new wonderful autumn compositions!
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?
As awesome as your artistic path or creative entrepreneurship can be, there might always be moments of feeling burnt out. Learning that it’s okay to step back and take care of my emotional state and well-being, in the way that works best at that particular moment, has helped me tremendously in my journey. And that, of course, includes making peace with the fact that I can be imperfect, or make poor strategical choices or mistakes. Taking these intentional self-care breaks really helps me being consistent with my work in the long run.
One of the qualities I highly value is a strive to build genuine relationships with people. Those that will cheer and support you while you are making your first steps, and the ones that will be happy to witness your growth and grow with you. I am a pretty introverted person, but I take great joy in connecting with other artists or my customers.
Another great quality is knowing how to process the criticism of your work. In the early days of my artistic career, I used to show my works to professionals – the criticism was tough! But I am now very grateful for it – it helped me better my technique in no time.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I have been going through the stage of developing and perfecting my fragrance products (it truly is a never-ending process!), but the grand plan, or the perfect plan of mine was always to create an artistic collective with a synergy of sensorial experiences – be it music, or visual arts, or any other media. I always welcome collaboration ideas! If there’s something on your mind that sounds exciting, please let me know by writing an email to info@blacklabdanum.com.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.blacklabdanum.com
- Instagram: blacklabdanum
Image Credits
Olia Saylor
