We recently connected with Tod Barnett and have shared our conversation below.
Tod, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.
When life felt darkest and most bleak, the things that brought me out of the feelings of hopelessness that I experienced were when I found something to have faith in. For me, faith comes in the form of spirituality, a trust in the universe. Looking back at the path I feel like I’ve been led on with my company, I knew that every step, every breadcrumb I followed was leading me somewhere.
The sooner I trusted the journey that I knew I was on, and tapped back into the faith that as long as I kept doing the work and following the breadcrumbs, I would get to where I needed to go, I was able to reclaim the control I needed to pull myself out of my hopeless feelings.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I come from a design background, working in queer nightlife and nonprofits, and ultimately entering into the product design space. I’ve always been motivated by sustainability, and becoming the founder of my own business gave me the ability to solve a problem with a sustainable solution, and do it beautifully.
I started by upcycling glass kombucha bottles into candles, but I knew that people would throw them away after they finished burning them, completely defeating the purpose of reusing the glass I, then, shifted focus to making a product that was so beautiful and so functional that after it was done burning, it would have a thoughtful and intuitive purpose of being reused as a planter, while giving the customer the seeds to plant in it.
I feel confident in the product I offer now that it’s clean burning, beautiful to enjoy, and won’t end up in a landfill after it’s finished.
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?
Three areas of knowledge that I would recommend keeping in mind for any business owner would be:
1) Your time and energy is finite. Bring others on to keep things moving, because although it’s cheaper to do things yourself, ultimately it isn’t– when you look up and weeks have gone by trying to juggle everything. Let others help you.
2) Learn who your customer is, and develop a relationship with them as soon and as often as possible. They want to hear from you, and they’re going to become the lifeblood of your business.
3) Don’t get lost in the sauce. Your product doesn’t need to be perfect. Especially if you come from a design background, it’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to fuss over every detail, every pixel until it’s exactly right. Done is better than perfect. Iron out the details later.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
My first nugget of wisdom isn’t about which book to read, but rather HOW you read. I’ve started listening to audiobooks while I’m driving or working out, and what I’ve discovered is that I can absorb material at the speed for which I have excitement for the topic. I found myself listening to audiobooks at 1.5x and 2x when I’m really thirsty for knowledge, and that speed forces you to focus because you can’t drift or you’ll miss something.
The books that I devoured at insane speeds were Russel Brunson’s secrets trilogy: Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets and Traffic secrets. His work was foundational in changing my relationship to marketing, and I can’t recommend these books enough.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.plantbasedcandles.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/todb
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/hautetoddy
- SoundCloud: www.soundcloud.com/hautetoddy
Image Credits
All photos are mine
