Interview with Tami Thornton

Freed fellow Tami Thornton, owner of Beehive Soap & Body Care, joins me today to discuss her business and how she got started with it. Beehive Soap is based out of Utah (the Beehive State, hence the name of the company) and has been in business for nearly twelve years!

Tami, funnily enough, started making soap as a hobby, but it eventually became a career. As a young girl, she saw herself as going into either nursing or teaching, and although she ended up on neither one of those paths, she does teach others the art of making soap, meaning that she sort of became a teacher after all!

She, in fact, has a lot to teach on this very podcast, offering incredibly helpful advice. Tami encourages us to not allow just one client to be too large a percentage of your revenue because if that one client scales back on buying from you, you don't have other revenue to fall back on. She also suggests not signing a lease until you have your business on the ground because you have to pay rent whether your business has been making money or not, and she advises us to write a business plan out even if we think that we have it sufficiently stored in our heads.

Last year was a challenging year for all of us, and Tami also shares with us how Beehive Soap was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. She describes herself as optimistic and persistent, however, meaning that she persevered, and Beehive is still around and is not going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, it's likely only going to get even bigger from here on out!

If you're interested in purchasing some products from Beehive Soap, Tami lists off the various ways that you can reach out to and purchase from the company. She even describes a few of the company's most popular products! As always, I hope that you will continue to tune in to the Freed Stories podcast as guests share their stories of entrepreneurship – their successes, their failures, their goals, their hopes, and so on. Be sure to hit that subscribe button so that you never miss an episode!

 

Time Stamps

[0:58] – We are introduced to this episode's guest - Tami Thornton, owner of Beehive Soap & Body Care.

[1:17] – Tami tells us a little bit about herself and her business, such as how she got started with it.

[2:43] – We learn that Tami wanted to be either a nurse or a teacher when she was a child, which morphed into what she does now in that she actually teaches others how to make soap.

[3:32] – Tami addresses a failure that her business endured in the past and what she learned from it.

[5:26] – Tami offers two pieces of advice to anyone who might want to walk a similar path as hers – (1) to not sign a lease right away and (2) to write a business plan.

[7:06] – Tami credits her husband, her daughter, and a program called Banking on Women as sources of support for her.

[9:18] – We gain an understanding of where the name of the company – Beehive Soap – comes from.

[9:51] – Tami lists off a few of Beehive's top selling products.

[11:07] – Tami elaborates upon how COVID-19 impacted her business.

[13:22] – Tami considers her optimism and her persistence to be her superpowers.

[14:04] – We discover where we can find Beehive Soap online.

Links and Resources

Apply for our Freed Fellowship Monthly Grant

Free Training to Help You Grow Your Business

Banking on Women

Beehive Soap & Body Care - Website

Beehive Soap & Body Care’s Facebook Page

Beehive Soap & Body Care’s Instagram Page

Tami's LinkedIn Profile