Jennifer Loehding (00:24)
Welcome, welcome to another episode of the Starter Girlz podcast. Wherever you are tuning in, we are so thrilled to have you here today. I've got an amazing guest on, I'm so excited to chat with her. This is actually the first time we have had a chance to actually meet in the same space. Most of my guests, I get to kind of sort of have a little sneak peek before I meet them, but this is so exciting because sometimes I think these are some of the best conversations because we haven't really had a whole lot of time to talk outside of the podcast recording.

So Laura Xiao she is the founder and CEO of Henne Organics, a luxury organic lip care brand. She's also a first -generation immigrant coming to the US, and she didn't come from the beauty industry prior to launching her business. And so we're gonna have a fun chat with her. I just found out she's a brand new mom, and so I know she's got a lot of things to share with us, but Laura, we wanna welcome you to the show. So excited to chat with you today.

Laura Xiao (01:15)
Thank you for having me and yes, new mom. We just actually chatted before we started recording about how my daughter, you know, we don't know if she's gonna make a surprise appearance, but you know, we'll see how it goes.

Jennifer Loehding (01:27)
Yeah, this is so fun. So is this before we get started, is this your first child?

Laura Xiao (01:31)
Yes, yes, she's the first. Her name is Stella and Stella is 15 months old.

Jennifer Loehding (01:35)
fine.

Congratulations. And I know, you know what? All my kids are grown up now, but I have so many funny stories about, you know, I came from the network marketing space and I remember taking, you know, one child, two child, third child at different times, you know, on appointments when I had to meet clients. And I have so many crazy, funny mom, kids stories. Like I have one where my son tried to crawl through a doggy door with his diaper and his diaper, his butt got stuck in the doggy door. So I think that's one of the beauties of being a mom entrepreneur is that,

that we get to witness so many of those fun, crazy moments in our lives.

Laura Xiao (02:12)
Oh yeah, it's funny, I had a meeting, a pretty important meeting the other week and I had it in the sunroom just to make sure that I had a little bit of a distance from her and she comes, and by the way, there's someone watching her when I'm having these meetings. She's not just roaming around and she puts her little hands on the glass and she starts banging and I only have one child, but you would think there's 10 kids at home because she is so powerful. She sounds like Baby Swat and so I'm just trying to have a conversation and it's like, yeah, that's my...

That's my daughter, just in case you're wondering. But no, she's the best. Yes, and I am definitely one of those parents now where I do still say my child's month. I used to not understand that until I had a kid. I'm like, why are you still saying 19 months? Just say that they're about a year and a half. But I kind of get it because they're so different. A 13 -month -old compared to a 19 -month -old is night and day. But yeah, long story short, she's fantastic. Love, love, love being a mom. The juggling is a little bit tricky, but...

Jennifer Loehding (02:43)
She's letting you know she's here.

Laura Xiao (03:10)
Yeah, I'm still learning and it's awesome. Yeah, very, very blessed.

Jennifer Loehding (03:14)
Yeah, very cool, very cool. All right, well, let's talk about your business. I want to start there. Tell us a little bit about Henne Organics, what you've got going on here.

Laura Xiao (03:24)
Yes, so Henne Organics, like you briefly mentioned, is we primarily sell lip care products. And when I say lip care, everything from lip balms to exfoliators to anti -aging products for the lips. We have a few other products outside of lip care as well, but lips are kind of our bread and butter. And our ethos is essentially, you know, think about...

beautiful products that you would be proud to display in your makeup bag and on your bathroom counter. And they're also as clean as possible. So you can have the best of both worlds and still at an affordable price for being in the luxury slash premiere beauty category. And so that's essentially what we are. And we make everything in -house.

And right now we actually live in Wilmington, North Carolina. We moved here a few years ago. So now everything is made out of here. And we have a small, but I always like to say a small but mighty team. And we're pretty much almost exclusively women, except my husband, who's also one of the co -owners or just the two of us. But we do tend to forget that there is a man at work because it's literally all women. So the topics you can imagine that flow through there are hilarious. And sometimes, yeah, we just forget he's there.

but it's a great team. And once again, really, really grateful to be running this business together with my husband. Not just because we can really share everything with each other, but also we get to spend so much more time together. And for us, that's actually something that we both really like. I know it's not for everyone. Some people might actually kill each other if they work together, even though they are like fantastic, you know, romantic partners. But for us, it actually works really well. So I do have to put this disclaimer because...

Jennifer Loehding (05:00)
Right. That's awesome.

Laura Xiao (05:03)
Yeah, it's not always the best combo. It depends. Yeah.

Jennifer Loehding (05:07)
No, I agree. I agree. I've known couples that have done really well in that. I know many couples that are like that, that have businesses and they've done it for many years and have been well. And then I know others that are like, no, we are not working together. We're okay as a couple, but not in the business part, you know.

Laura Xiao (05:20)
Exactly, exactly. It doesn't have to be one way or the other. I had a couple that was asking me, I said, it's really not a one size fits all. I know you see the two of us and you're like, well, absolutely. We can definitely start a business together. It's like, well, that's really something you got to talk about, you know, the two of you. And sometimes it works well. And sometimes if you're too similar in skillset or too similar in personality, can be a little bit dicey, you know? So, but for us it works. Yeah, it's worked. It's worked out really well. We have very different personality types.

Jennifer Loehding (05:45)
Yeah, let's go.

Laura Xiao (05:49)
very, very different skill sets. So we kind of can just self -delegate and we don't have to step on each other's toes. And so it's, yeah, it's, it's been really, really good.

Jennifer Loehding (05:59)
Right? Good, good. That's good to hear. Okay, so how long have you guys been in business then?

Laura Xiao (06:05)
We have been in business since 2015, so coming close to nine years actually, which is crazy to think about. I know it's not been that long, but still, oh, I think we have a visitor.

Jennifer Loehding (06:10)
Okay. Yeah, been around for a little bit.

Laura Xiao (06:19)
Yeah, my daughter needs to use the bathroom. So yeah, yeah, so we'll just keep chatting. But yeah, it's been almost, it's been almost nine years, which is really crazy to think about because I still remember in the very, very early beginnings, and it really, it's, you know, it really feels like yesterday. And I know we haven't been around for ages or anything, but yeah, it's, we've been around a decent length of time and the industry that we're in, which,

Jennifer Loehding (06:23)
It's okay, totally fine.

Yeah, no, totally fine.

Laura Xiao (06:46)
whether you want to call it the green beauty, organic beauty, clean beauty space, I think has transformed so much since 2015. It's really night and day. And mostly I would say for the better, mostly for the better. Just I think a lot better options these days. And I think just it's everything from the formulations to just what's available these days. It's very, very competitive with what you would call like maybe the conventional beauty market.

Jennifer Loehding (06:56)
Yeah.

Laura Xiao (07:12)
You know, now it's not just about buying a product that's natural, but doesn't really work that well. You can have everything. You can have a product that's good for your health, looks beautiful and works just as well. And I do remember that when we launched at that time, it was still, there weren't that many brands that I would have put into that category. So it's really, it's really, it's, it's really nice to be a part of it. The slight downside, I would say with that industry since then is you do have a lot of what I guess you would call green washing.

Jennifer Loehding (07:30)
Right. Yeah.

Laura Xiao (07:41)
And what greenwashing means is just brands who pretend to be natural but aren't at all. Because it's not really regulated in the States. And so you can say that, a perfect example is, I'm not gonna say the brand, but you can have a typical brand, you can find it in your normal, whether you go to Target or Walmart, and it'll have a big bottle that said made with shea butter, right? And it sounds natural. And then what they don't mention is there's like almost no shea butter in the actual product. It would essentially be like 0 .01%.

Jennifer Loehding (07:46)
Mm. Right.

Laura Xiao (08:10)
and it's actually filled with a lot of other stuff that's quite bad for you. But just because it contains essentially a drop, they can market it and then put a really pretty picture of shea butter on the bottle so you think you're getting something natural. And so I do think that has increased a lot as well over the years. Brands that kind of want to jump on that bandwagon but don't want to put up, essentially put up the money to have higher quality, safer products. But that is changing, especially in recent years. Consumers are becoming a lot more.

Jennifer Loehding (08:14)
Yeah.

Right.

Laura Xiao (08:40)
savvy and I just think with the internet and with apps, there's so many apps you can download these days that you can literally just scan a product when you're in Target or when you're in Costco and it'll tell you, okay, is this product clean? What are the nasties? What stuff do you wanna avoid in this product? They can rate the product immediately, whether it's A to F or one to 10 or whatever kind of rating system. And so yeah, mostly positive, but I did wanna mention the greenwashing thing because I do think that's something that...

Jennifer Loehding (08:52)
Yeah.

Right.

Laura Xiao (09:09)
is still pretty rampant and it's very easy as a consumer to get fooled by that. It's not like the consumer's stupid by any means, but they can be pretty sophisticated in the marketing methods to kind of mislead a little bit. So, you know.

Jennifer Loehding (09:18)
Right.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, I think that's the same thing with food. I'm one of those savvy people. Yeah, I'm one of those savvy people that reads the labels on things and really pays attention to things. And mostly probably is part of just because I've talked to a lot of people in these different industries, right? So I feel like I've had a lot of different conversations. I'm by not all means no perfect master of any of this, but I do feel like I'm savvy in the sense of reading things and looking and you know, and I feel like they do, they have to, they can put these labels on with very minimal.

Laura Xiao (09:26)
Oh, oh yeah.

Jennifer Loehding (09:54)
amount of the right things and still claim that it's all natural, organic, or all of these things. And I used to work in, I was in Mary Kay for a long time. I was in that industry for 22 years. And I remember when we were sort of coming up against other network marketing companies, and again, I'm not going to name any names, but they were coming up against companies that were claiming they were all natural. And I used to say, well, I guess they're putting them in their refrigerator then because they're going to have a shelf life, right? But you would hear this language, it's

Laura Xiao (10:22)
Yeah.

Jennifer Loehding (10:23)
buzzword would come up, you know, all natural. And this was probably about the time you were coming out with your, your line that we were hearing this a lot. And there was a lot of just, I guess, conversation around it. What really does that mean and what, and I'm glad that they are, as you said, making that, you know, people are becoming more savvy with that and understanding all of that. So thank you for sharing that. Good. So I would love to know, because you said this was not.

Laura Xiao (10:43)
Yeah, of course.

Jennifer Loehding (10:49)
You didn't come from the beauty industry prior to this. I'm really curious what kind of led to this, because here's the thing. I think that between the two shows, I talk about this both in Starter Girlz and I talk about this in Behind the Dreamers, a lot in Behind the Dreamers. I talk about nonlinear paths and most people, I think there are very few people.

that come out of the womb and they go through get an education and they go, you know what, I'm going to be a doctor and that's what I plan to do and I'm going to do it forever. Right. And there are some people that do that. So, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I think for most people that go into the entrepreneur space, they sort of evolve into this position. They somehow something comes their way or they decide they need to do a trajectory change, a life calling something. So I'm curious to know for you, what brought you to this place?

Laura Xiao (11:38)
Yeah, first off, I fully agree to that. I think most entrepreneurs that I know also have a type of nonlinear path. And yeah, I'm no different. I so I'm a first generation immigrant. My

My dad first came to the States and he was very bright in certain academic areas and because of that he got a full -right scholarship. And the reason I want to preface by mentioning this is because my parents were dirt poor when they moved here. No money whatsoever. My dad had to save, I think for almost a year to be able to afford for a plane ticket for my mom to come here. My mom moved here and was college educated but couldn't speak English. And so what did she start off with? Cleaning hotel rooms at the Holiday Inn. I mean, that's all she could get.

And I'm not saying that that's the worst thing that can happen, but I'm simply saying she had very, very limited opportunities. And she did it. She didn't complain. And that's how things started while my dad was finishing his education. And then I came when I was about two and a half. My grandma brought me over. And so having those kind of beginnings, and especially with my parents and my dad in particular, having experienced extreme poverty growing up as a child.

It is not really a surprise that a lot of immigrants, when they have their children, and I'm first generation -ish, I came when I was two, so I'm technically first generation, but I have spent most of my life in the States. But either way, it's not really a surprise that parents typically want their children to aim for a profession that they deem is safe and will give them financial stability.

Right. So for example, in the Asian community and all, I can't speak for the whole Asian community, but I'll just speak for the Chinese community because I'm ethically Chinese. So amongst Chinese, we do have the stereotypes that they typically want you to become a doctor or an engineer, right? Maybe, maybe lawyer, but even being like a, like going into banking is a little bit questionable because I don't think a lot of parents fully understand that industry. So it's typically Chinese, like a Chinese culture doctor. Fantastic. That's like number one. And then engineers also like a.

almost at number one, it's like a solid number two on average. And I mean, they knew very early on that I wasn't gonna go into either of those professions. They're like, okay, all right. But then my dad, who has a PhD, master's, all the shebang, he was like, what about becoming a college professor? It's so safe and then you work X amount of years, then you could become tenured and then you get, for him it was all about safety, wanting his daughter to pick a safe path.

And I think actually probably by, I would say 11 or 12, they started realizing this is just probably not going to be the case. I've always been pretty headstrong and I just was not, I was very different from.

the other children of my parents' friends. And we had a lot of social gatherings where, you know, the adults would hang out and then the kids would be there. And I think they noticed pretty early on that, oh, Laura's very different. She's just not willing to, I would, you know, whether you want to call it conform or just wasn't willing to do it and just, yeah.

And I've been that pretty early on. And so I initially thought that I wanted to go into broadcast journalism. And I thought that from a pretty young age, when I was, I remember being a little kid and I used to watch Dateline NBC, which is not something you're supposed to watch when you're seven or eight years old. I used to grab my hairbrush and instead of wanting to become Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera.

This gives you an idea around my age because I'm almost 36 and that's what was cool back then. I would pretend to be Jane Pauley next to Stone Phillips talking in Dateline NBC. That's not normal as a kid, but that's what I thought was fascinating. And so that was kind of my dream. And then fast forward to college, I went to university in Missouri, you know, did their broadcast program and I learned within a year into it through some internships and then working at an NBC affiliate. I was like, this might not be for me.

I realized that what I, a lot of times what you picture in your mind or your, even your dreams, when you actually get hit with reality, it's very different. I realized I did not have the burning passion to maybe, to be able to withstand being a journalist because that type of career is very, very, very exhausting. And the pay is not great and it's dark as well. You're mostly covering hard news. And so I learned.

pretty early on, this might not be for me. And then long story short, my husband's Swedish, I know I'm fast forwarding a lot, but I actually ended up moving to Sweden with my husband and that, I was kind of a fish out of water even more, don't speak the language. Now all of my work experience, my background doesn't mean anything. My Swedish level was probably that of a toddler when I first moved there. So no one's gonna be hiring me to go on air unless it's like a show about, hey, let's teach this American how to speak Swedish because you can't.

And so I remember getting applying for certain jobs, getting pretty much rejected by all of them. And so then I started realizing, Hey, I need to teach myself some other skills. If I'm going to live abroad and you know, we're going to be together and I need to, I need to find another way. And so a lot of, it was a lot of twists and turns that led to Henne

And so prior to that, like, you know, we lived in a few countries, so Sweden, New Zealand, Australia. And during that time, after I had picked up other skills and started working freelance with certain things like graphic and web design, that was actually when I started getting the inspiration for Henna. So at that time in Sweden and in New Zealand, but especially Sweden, they were a lot more ahead of us, but it came to having more natural options for consumer products, not just food, right. But.

Jennifer Loehding (18:16)
Mm -hmm.

Sure. Right.

Laura Xiao (18:22)
natural consumer products that you could actually buy in the pharmacies. And they didn't work great, but they were pretty good. And it was still a far cry from what I was seeing in the States. Like if I was walking into a Whole Foods or, you know, even going into, I mean, at that time going into a Nordstrom or a Neiman Marcus or a Target, it was almost just no options at all. And I started getting this idea like, Oh, wouldn't it be great if I could launch my own type of product sometime.

Jennifer Loehding (18:36)
Sure.

Laura Xiao (18:50)
because I had already become very passionate about trying to find non -toxic alternatives when it came to my food and my products. And I was in my early to mid twenties at that time. And I just thought, this is, there's just no way. Like, this is such a pipe dream. I have no money saved. I have no experience. Like what, working at an NBC affiliate and an NPR affiliate, that's not exactly beauty, right? No connections in the industry. So I thought, why don't I do that? Maybe when I'm in my

Jennifer Loehding (19:15)
Yeah.

Laura Xiao (19:20)
late 30s, 40s, 50s, even once I've earned my stripes, I've saved up money, I've built some type of solid career in another area. And so that's just what I thought. And so we worked, I worked with my husband and another guy and we had a small little firm where we did that different types of web related work for a few years. And then fast forward and moving back to the States, had saved a little bit of money and we moved to Vegas and I actually got really gnarly dry lips.

And so I often like to say it's inspiration meets desperation. So that's when the desperation kicked in. So made a lip balm for myself, my husband, our mostly guy friends, because we were working out of a tech co -working space at the time. And I like to joke that those tech guys, the great thing about that, they were all my friends. They don't BS you. They're not, you know, most of them are just your average tech bros who don't care about what products they use. They, you know, they could use, they could use a $1 chapstick.

Jennifer Loehding (20:07)
Mm.

Laura Xiao (20:16)
from Walmart, they don't care. And so if you're gonna give products to them, it just needs to work. And they were raving about the lip balm, like freaking out about it because they weren't taking care of their skin or their lips. So a lot of the guys had issues and they just thought it was just, they joked that it was like lip crack because it just was, felt amazing and it healed the lips so quickly. And so, you know, the wheel started turning and I had some serious discussions with my husband who was my fiance at the time.

Jennifer Loehding (20:16)
Right.

Laura Xiao (20:44)
No, sorry. Oh my gosh. If he hears this, he's going to make fun of me. I always forget when we got married. We were already married by then. I'm the worst. I actually forgot when we got married, like two days after we got married, because we got married at City Hall. My bad. Okay. If he hears this, he's going be like, wow. So we were already married at that time. Yeah. Yeah. And we had a serious talk about, Hey, I think I want to step away from what I'm doing right now. Like, is that okay? Cause we're running that business together.

Jennifer Loehding (20:56)
Oh wow, yeah.

It's all good, it happens.

Laura Xiao (21:11)
And I think I really want to give this a shot. Can we do this? You know, financially, is this okay? Are we going to bootstrap? Are we going to look for funding? And I decided, uh, I wanted to bootstrap and actually to this day, we're still self -funded and that's kind of when the journey started. So that was 2014 when we started really having those discussions. And then by 2015, um, I launched Tene or actually we launched had together because he started helping me very early on and that with just one lip balm.

And then we kind of just took it from there. So very, very nonlinear, very, just very random actually.

Jennifer Loehding (21:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think it's interesting. Yeah. Well, and I think it's interesting though, when you, a lot of the, a lot of really good successful stories come out of a need though, right? Like there's something where you figure out I needed something. I mean, I always tell people, even like the work that I do, the coaching that I do, all of the things that I do really came as a need because I needed it for myself. And I, and I figured out the value in that and the things that I didn't, that I wish I had known earlier on that I didn't learn, right? I was bullied. There's a time that we weren't,

things when we're supposed to learn them, but I realized that there was a need and that's how my stuff, this is how we got this podcast today. It wouldn't have been here had I not gone through all those things that I've gone through. But I think it's interesting to me.

how these things just really kind of involved. What I do want to ask you is what do you feel like because you've said a lot of really good things here and I and I feel like I could probably kind of sum some things up listening to you right now because I feel like this is what I love about this show is I get to listen to you guys talk and tell your stories and I can kind of get a feel for who you are as a person and your character and all of that's the best part but I would love to know what you feel like has been maybe one or two things that you believe has contributed to the success of this company.

Laura Xiao (22:59)
Yeah, I would say one of them, if I'm being completely honest, is having a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. I think a bit of that is, I do feel some of it is feeling the need to kind of prove that I can do it. And that's a combination of first, like I said earlier about taking a very different path from what my parents wanted, showing them that it wasn't all in vain, that I didn't.

You know, of course, a part of you, we want to make our parents proud. We don't want to disappoint our parents, but especially with their background, I really wanted to be able to show them, like, look, it's paid off. I'm going to be able to actually not only live off of this, but I'm going to be able to thrive. You don't have to worry about me. And so I think that part of it is a little bit of having a little bit of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to wanting to prove not just my parents, but just a lot of people around me.

And I think a part of it actually is having is my sports background since I did compete When I was younger in table tennis, that's actually how my husband I met I think having that type of foundation having that sports background Helped a lot when it came to overcoming hurdles everything from rejection to just you know, having thicker skin work ethic also knowing what failure feels like because the tricky part is you know, if you've never really failed

Jennifer Loehding (23:55)
Yeah.

Laura Xiao (24:22)
it could be very difficult to become an entrepreneur or just to do a lot of things in life, but especially entrepreneurship because, for example, I had a small venture I tried before Hennep, it did not succeed. I tried that with my husband and one other individual and it did not succeed and so in that sense we failed. Do I think it was a complete failure? No, because I learned a lot from it, but my point is just when you're doing sports, you will not always win. So there are times when you lose and especially a solo sport like

table tennis. When you win, it's great. All the glory and all the accolades, you get so much of that. And then you lose, you just have to look at yourself in the mirror. You didn't have a teammate, you didn't have someone else that, oh, they dropped the ball. You just have to accept that either you did not do your best or your best wasn't enough today. And if your best wasn't enough today, what can you do to make it better? I think that has helped me a lot because

The beauty industry is, you know, as, as every industry I'm sure is, it's, it's, it's interesting. And as an outsider coming in, there are sometimes things that you don't know and that you need to pick up on. And, but sometimes it's a good thing.

Like I remember having a conversation with a friend, someone who became a friend of mine, another beauty brand owner. And I was actually over one or two glasses of wine. I remember we were in LA and I think Henne had been around for a year and a half or something at that point. And so after a glass of wine, she was like, okay. She kind of wanted to know like, how did you do it so far? Because.

I was seeing, I guess, more success with my business at that time than I guess she thought she was seeing with hers. And I think she wanted to hear kind of like the magic answer, like a quick and easy, how did you do it? And I said, honestly, I did a lot of bitch work, you know, that's what it came down to. I said, I sent hundreds, if not thousands of cold emails. I got some days I woke up and I got rejected like 40, 50 times in my inbox. It's not like I was thrilled about that every day. Some days were harder than others, but.

I just had to do a lot of that. I just pushed through. And I think also knowing that I didn't have the connections and I didn't come from the industry, I did not have anything to fall back on. I didn't have someone I could call or, and I'm not saying that people who have that, that they're lazy in any way, because a lot of times they've earned that. When you see someone, when I see some women that launch a brand and it looks like it succeeds out of nowhere.

Jennifer Loehding (26:37)
Right.

Laura Xiao (26:43)
Well, you know, you don't know that they've been working in corporate in the beauty space for the past 15, 20 years. They have worked to reach that level where they know what they're doing. When they launched, they have the capital, they have the connections, they have experience. I did not. But like I said, I think the way that my sports background helped me was that I was just determined and I think I know what failure feels like. I know I can survive it. It's really not a big deal. And I have pretty thick skin and

Jennifer Loehding (26:50)
Right.

Laura Xiao (27:12)
So I think it just helped me in a lot of situations where I do think I'm not saying everybody would have just caved and given up, but I do think there are situations where maybe someone else in my shoes would have said, this is enough. I've been rejected enough times. I've been beaten down enough. I'm not doing this anymore. And like I said, it's not like I had days where, you know, of course I had days where I just couldn't deal with it in the sense that, okay, I'm taking today off because it's just too much. But overall, I think being able to push through and that

has helped me immensely and having a spouse who not only works with me on the get like, you know, we own the business together, but also comes from a sports background. It's easier for him to also support me because he knows the way I'm wired. You know, I actually am not the type like I don't want you to go give me a hug for 20 minutes. I want you to tell me and encourage me to go and get my workout in today because that's what makes me that's what makes me happier. You know, if I'm really stressed,

I need to get a workout in, I need to sweat it out. And it used to be actually me taking a lot of kickboxing classes. So he knows like we're all different. It's not that I don't want those hugs, I still want those hugs. I want a hug and then I want you to tell me, Laura, you're gonna feel so much better after you go to that, after you go and you punch that punching bag for 20 minutes. You need to get it out. And him having that sports background, like I said, knowing the way I am wired has been so important for him to support me, not just as a business partner, but also as my husband.

Jennifer Loehding (28:21)
Right, right. You got this. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Xiao (28:41)
You know, and it works both ways. I also know how he is wired and we're maybe just wired. We're all wired differently on earth. All of us are, but I think, you know, the two of us, even though we have very different skill sets in that way, we are actually very similar, which is really, really good for both of us. I think, especially for our, like I said, for our marriage, for our business, things just work better when we understand that about ourselves.

Jennifer Loehding (28:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Laura Xiao (29:09)
We're both very high functioning, but also can be, I guess, yeah, we're just, we both, yeah, we're just, we process things in a certain way and we need that support from each other.

Jennifer Loehding (29:10)
Yeah.

Right.

That's good. No, and I haven't talked to a lot of, I was a runner, my husband's an endurance athlete. And so I understand, I understand the parallels. It's fun because I really enjoy talking to people that have an athletic background because yes, I do think that the more accustomed we get to failure, the easier it is for us to take risk and assume the responsibility that there will be some failure. But I also like to say, I've had so many people come on here and they always like to tell me,

me or they like to reframe the failure. We can coin the term whatever we want, whether you want to say it was failure learning, whatever. At the end of the day, how we process it, move forward with it is the important. I don't care what the term is, right? However you want to call it. I always say, to what extent was it really a failure, right? Because there's always something to be gained out of an experience that we go through, right? It's really just taking that experience and saying, what do I need to pull from that and extract? And what do I need to use to move me and propel me forward?

So I really love talking to all my athletic background friends because I think there are a lot of parallels in there. And if you can take the skills that you learn there and you can bring them into business, oh my gosh, you just, you get it, right? So good for you. And I love that you two have those similarities because yeah, I think it's important to have.

people in your corner that can understand what you're going through and can support you and encourage you and however you need that encouragement. I'm probably a little like you. I don't need to be coddled. I need somebody to tell me you got this and go to work, right? Like you got it. I have your back 100%. That's what I'm talking about. So I love it. I think you and I share that part together. One last question I want to ask you before we wrap this up. I would love to know, you've said a lot today, really kind of what does the...

Laura Xiao (30:52)
Yep.

Jennifer Loehding (31:07)
What's the big goal in all this for you? Like what's the future look like for you with this?

Laura Xiao (31:13)
it's changed a bit since we had, I had my daughter. It used to be, we mainly talked about, you know, of course, helping as many customers as we can. We have a lot of customers who have had issues with their lips and their skin where they feel like this is the only product that works and that in itself is very fulfilling. And then we used to talk about, you know, wanting that true financial freedom, right? True financial freedom. And that is still something I absolutely want to achieve, but I really want to...

use the business also as I think as a way to as a way to help me.

have a really good, I would say, work -life balance. Because ever since I've given birth to Stella, I've been able to work part -time almost the first year. And I've been able to spend a lot more time with her. And because the business reached a point where I could step back like that, and everything can pretty much still run smoothly, I've been able to do that. And so I think that this business, I think, is I wanted to set a great example for my daughter. But I also, in fact,

you know that you know mommy can look at mommy can do both right mommy can be a great mommy I hope and also mommy and daddy can run this business but I do also hope more importantly that she sees that I still put her first and she is first and so I love my business do not get me wrong I'm passionate about it I hope that you know I want to hold on to this business for years to come

Jennifer Loehding (32:24)
Right.

Laura Xiao (32:44)
but I want her to see that I prioritize her first. And so that's something that I'm making. Yeah, I'm making a really big and conscious effort to do. And I realize now that that is actually my top priority is I want her to just feel very, very loved and appreciated. And I don't want her to think that my financial success or our financial success is more important than her. Because, you know, I know it's great that

I'm not living the way that my parents had to, like, I'm not going through what they had to go through and all that kind of poverty. I'm very grateful for that. But I also don't want it to go too far, where all we have is just, mommy and daddy are always gone. They're always working on their business and we don't give her.

Jennifer Loehding (33:23)
All right.

Laura Xiao (33:29)
the attention and the love and the time that I feel like is needed. So yeah, I think my priorities have shifted, but in a way that makes me happier. Because I do feel a lot more purpose now. And I think that's going to benefit our business. I think just the decisions that we make, I think even the way we approach certain opportunities with our business and just certain...

like I said, decisions that we make, they're from a different lens and I actually think it's better for the business as a whole. Yeah. So.

Jennifer Loehding (33:59)
Yeah.

That's good. Thank you for sharing that. No, and our priorities do. I do think, you know, once we have kids, obviously they change, right? Things go different directions, but I love that. And I do think that our values become our business. And so how we define our values and then we attract the clients that share a lot of those. I talk about this in my program that I built, 63 % of consumers, they did this study and I forgot how far back it is. I've got it noted in my course, but they did this study and they found the...

of consumers buy from companies that they align with. And so I think your values really become part of your business, you embody them. And so I think that that's a great value to have. And I do think it sets a clear path for your children also, because I think that more is caught than taught. They see that and when they see what you do, and you definitely learn great skills, talking about that chip on your shoulder, you learn some of that from watching your parents work hard. And so I think that these skills we develop,

develop, we take with us and they become our values and you know they shift and mold but we sort of have what that looks like for us and we put that in that into the work that we do and teach our kids those same things. So good for you, you're doing great things. One last question I want to ask you, if our audience wants to get in touch with you they may want to learn a little bit more about you know organics or a little bit more about you per se, where do we want to send them?

Laura Xiao (35:16)
Oh, thank you.

Yes, the best place is still to go to our website, henneorganics .com. So H -E -N -N -E organics .com. And if they want to ask me any specific questions, I say that, you can always send us an email, info at henneorganics .com. And I try to answer still as many questions as I can myself. And I think those, yeah, those are the two best places. Instagram, you can find us, henneorganics. That's probably the one where we're the most active. And yeah, it's been so great talking to you. I hope.

Jennifer Loehding (35:53)
Yeah, it's been fun. It's okay, I do too.

Laura Xiao (35:55)
Yeah, I know I babble a little bit sometimes and Stella made a little surprise appearance, but.

Jennifer Loehding (35:59)
Hey, you know what? Listen, we get excited and passionate. I'm excited to see that you're passionate about what you're doing. And that's what's great. I think people, they like passion and it's obvious to me that you enjoy what you get to do. You love what you're doing. And I think that's all that matters. So don't worry about it. Cause I do the same thing too. I go on podcasts and I'm chatty too. I love it. All right. So this has been great. I want to tell you, thank you so much for sharing with us, sharing your story, your time, all of that good stuff. Keep inspiring, keep doing your thing.

Laura Xiao (36:26)
Thank you so much.

Jennifer Loehding (36:28)
All right, to our audience, of course, if you enjoy the show, head on over to Apple. You can give us a review over there. Click that subscribe button on YouTube so we can keep sharing all these stories and all this content with you and featuring all of our amazing starter girls that are out in the world doing good and making a difference. And as I always say, you guys be safe, be kind to one another, and we will see you next time.