Sunday, November 15, 2009
Life, In this Issue..., Atlanta

Listen to your mama

Emilie Sennebogen on the softer side of being an entrepreneur in a hard economy

By Julie Douglas

Walking into Love Your Mama—the new brick-and-mortar outpost featuring owner and “chef” Emilie Sennebogen’s soaps, lotions, lip balms and soy candles—is like walking into Mother Nature’s personal bakery: The five senses awaken, and you feel an overwhelming desire to run in a field of lavender or slurp down a steaming bowl of lemongrass soup. The effect is no surprise to Sennebogen, who likens her craft to cooking.

“Once you learn the basics, you can start playing with the ingredients,” she says.

 Sennebogen is one of a growing legion of entrepreneurs who are doing the unthinkable in a rudderless economy: chucking the long-term paychecks and making their passions the centerpiece of their lives, artistically and financially. “A lot of it is about trusting your gut.

When I don’t trust my gut, it gets me in trouble,” says Sennebogen on what it’s like to take the plunge and the circuitous path that has informed her all-natural handmade body products.

During her down time as a film freelancer, Sennebogen began experimenting with natural raw ingredients. Seven years, countless festivals, farmers’ markets and Internet orders later, she’s taking her line of body products to the next level with her storefront in Decatur. “I always had a passion for body products,” she says. “I went into the film industry thinking that was what I would do for the rest of my life. It turned out to be my business school. ” It also turns out that the economic downturn was part of the impetus for Sennebogen to reevaluate her career path as a commercial producer in a field that was steadily shrinking in a sinking economy, essentially allowing her to remove the shackles of her main source of income and take a leap of faith with the business she’s built up over the years.
The result is a highly personal manifestation of Sennebogen.

Everything about Love Your Mama—from the crisp logo to the decadent but affordable product line to the handpicked, locally made items she features alongside her brand—is an extension of the crafty entrepreneur and her life experience. She considers the past seven years to be an exploratory phase in which she was able to research, tinker and brand her body products, dreaming up concoctions and focusing them into goods she could bring to market on her own time, at her own pace. Sennebogen’s bread and butter is the festival and farmers’ market circuit, though a slow and steady groundswell is coming from Internet sales as well as her new retail space.

She strikes an impassioned note when talking about Love Your Mama, bringing transparency to her process. Sennebogen points out that every ingredient is all natural, and that she uses essential oils, which are pricier but well worth the trade-off given their unparalleled quality and moisturizing properties. This is the difference between her soaps and commercial soaps, most of which contain detergents that are drying to the skin.

This fall, the proprietress will begin sharing her vast knowledge of all-natural products—why they’re good for you and how to make them—with the general public through soap- and candle-making classes.

Much like Cook’s Warehouse’s cooking classes, Sennebogen’s shop features a demo station where students can get their hands on a bevy of sweet- and savory-smelling ingredients, creating and cutting into blocks of soap made with pure olive oil.

For those of you thinking about doing what you love for a living, Sennebogen has a few sage tips gleaned over the years. The first is to start small and don’t borrow a lot of money. The second is to take it slow; you don’t have to have a five-year business plan in hand. Try outlining a one-year plan, which will allow you to assess your progress and begin forecasting accordingly.  The third is to make sure that what you’re doing fits into your value system.

It’s proof that patience, perseverance and the occasional gut-check pay off: “This used to feel like something I was doing on the side,”

she says. “And now people are like ‘Oh, I’ve heard of you.’ I finally feel like I’m on the map, which is extremely satisfying.” SP