Salome Sallehy shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Hi Salome , thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: Who are you learning from right now?
I have to say that I believe that I am now in my learning prime.
Let me backtrack to my old way of thinking. I used to believe that the best source of knowledge comes from mentors that I was connected to and had access to. But in the past 5 years, since I started my business and started making mistakes and struggling, I learned that ‘mentors’ are everywhere and we have access to them at all times.
Every book, news article, movie or work of art, and course could be a mentor and our access to their lessons is through our own intuition.
So now I’m diving deep into learning more about human health and holistic modalities, and I’m forever a student of branding and business knowledge.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m a mom of 2. About 6 years ago I founded Sugar Sugar Wax, which had been brewing in the back of my mind for years.
As someone who grew up with sensitive skin, I really struggled with the conventional hair removal methods. There were many moments that I felt fed up with the options and a voice in my head kept saying “there has to be a better way” or “it’s gotta be easier than this, it’s just hair”. And one day on my travels through Australia I experienced sugaring for the first time and it blew me away.
I knew right then and there that I had to be the person to bring this method to the world. There really wasn’t anything that you can just buy and use at home that was easy to use and effective. So I had to re-create the formula to get it to a place that someone who is brand new to sugaring can pick it up with minimal effort.
I really made it for my 10 year old self who was conscious of her leg hairs and needed something safe, easy, that gave her long lasting results.
All my life I’ve been an environmental activist so when creating the sugaring system, products, and packaging I was extremely committed to lowering the carbon footprint. Using glass and paper instead of plastic wherever possible and the sustainable sourcing our ingredients was always in the forefront of my vision.
Entrepreneurship has been an incredible journey of learning about myself and the world and the more I learn the more I wanna know. I think I have a much greater appreciation for other bold people who are making a difference and changing the world, even in some small way!
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who saw you clearly before you could see yourself?
I love this question and no one has asked me this before.
There’s such a transference that happens when you start to think about how others see you and that has such an impact on how you see yourself.
There are 3 distinct people who really made me feel seen and known. And realistically there are probably more, but for our purposes here I’ll just focus on the constants and not the chapters.
The first person that saw me clearly was my grandmother. Even as a small child I felt like I mattered so much in her presence. She was a magnificent woman and the magnificence that she saw in me took a long time for me to start to believe.
The second person who sees me clearly is my father. Every time I came up against a situation that I thought was impossible and I told him about it, he just seemed confused, like ‘of course you’re capable, why are you worried?’. He saw/sees a strength in me that I’m now very familiar with and sometimes it even surprises me. My father is a saint and unlike any other person on the planet.
The third person was my great uncle who was a much celebrated and masterful musician. The grace, honesty and artfulness that he was me with was sometimes embarrassing, like ‘why didn’t I see myself that way before?’ or ‘why am I not treating myself that way?’, which also took some time for me to get comfortable with luxuriating in being me.
I think that most people see us, not as we are but as they wish us to be, or need us to be in order to fulfill some role they have imagined for themselves. Some need you to be a hero and others need you to be a villain to satisfy their own stories.
But if we’re lucky and happen to have even one of these extraordinary people, who don’t want or need anything from you and are willing to hold up the mirror for you, then the journey to knowing yourself gets shorter and easier.
The one common thread among these three figures in my life is that each of them carried a cup that always runneth over.
Insecure people can’t see you, not because they don’t want to but rather because their sight is obstructed by their insecurities.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
That really depends on your definition of suffering and success, but I think we can all agree that success was never meant to be a teacher.
In my case suffering comes in a spectrum that ranges from frustration – think of the mouse running through the maze that keeps bumping it’s head against the same dead end – to despair – like when you lose everything that you thought mattered and you feel like you’re floating in an abyss and have to redefine your whole identity.
Ok maybe I haven’t fallen that far into the abyss but that’s what the word ‘suffering’ makes me think of.
When things are going sideways and causing suffering, we all have a choice to make. Rarely are we’re faced with the choice quickly and easily. Mostly we have to wallow in our pain to the point of exhaustion before we’re willing to face the choice. Until we face and make that choice, we seem insane to any onlookers and that’s a whole other conversation.
The choice is simple. Am I going to keep running my head into that wall or am I going to have the courage to do something different.
That choice then serves as the foundation of your learning. I’m making it sound easy and obvious but in practice and in the context of the complex human egoic mind, it’s actually a really hard choice to face and make.
The entrepreneurship journey is a great place to put yourself if you like to learn from pain.
I know so much more about finance, taxes and business modeling than I have ever wanted to know and those lessons all came from mistakes. Expensive mistakes.
I’ve also learned more about human health than a medical degree would have taught me and about supply chains, negotiations, and the list goes on and on and on. All of these things I’ve learned because of ‘suffering’ or more specifically making mistakes and having to live with the consequences. Some of the things I learned were not my favorite subjects, but everything I’ve learned has not only made me a better businesswoman but has abolished my fear in just about everything.
When you hurt, you learn. And the light of knowledge shatters all fears.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
I’m a huge fan of the work that Ken Cook has done over the course of the past 30+ years with the EWG. His example has really shown me that impact takes time.
One of the things that really weighs on my heart is the miseducation of young people when it comes to their health and wellness. And the broken health system that we have in this country where our doctors are at the mercy of insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies have absolute power over medical practitioner training and the content that students are fed in medical schools.
The imperfection of the system doesn’t bother me as much as the miseducation of our youth.
Most young people believe that their doctors are almighty where their health is concerned and they don’t realize how wrong they are, and that they have to advocate for their own health.
More young women and girls are being diagnosed with hormonal imbalances and conditions than ever before. More boys are suffering from acne, and youth are being diagnosed with diabetes earlier than we’ve ever seen in human history. Almost no one is connecting the dots.
And it’s not really any one party’s fault. It’s kind of the perfect storm. Youth are being bombarded with marketing messages from the biggest food companies who have enormous marketing budgets because they cut costs in ingredients. So our youth are being exposed most to the worst things they can possibly consume. You combine that culture with overworked caregivers who don’t have time to cook, much less educate their children on eating whole foods. Combined with a medical system that treats acute symptoms rather than treating the root of the ailment. And you end up with a vicious circle of health jeopardy that can only go in a downward spiral and there’s no attention span left to really see the problem trifecta.
My mission with everything I do is to get the message to our youth that;
1. You have to advocate for your health.
2. Your doctor is best equipped to save your life in an acute manner. Anything chronic needs a lot more attention that you’re not going to get in the 20 minute appointment with your doctor.
3. Everything that you eat or drink is going to either help you or hurt you. There are no neutrals.
I’m finally starting to put all of my research in this arena into a book as a first step.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. If you retired tomorrow, what would your customers miss most?
This is something I’ve thought about a number of times.
As an entrepreneur there are days that I definitely have wanted to throw the towel in. When the stress lays thick, and the dissatisfaction of something not turning out the way you thought it should, those days get heavy and there have been times that I don’t want to keep doing it. And then I go through my head about what a shutdown would look like and then I’ll think of the milestones I’ll miss. Then the thing that really gets me is when I think about our customers who are on a subscription and they’re on their 34th order, the ones that I know that my products have saved them in some way, and I think about what I would say to them when canceling their subscriptions and that’s when the shutdown stops.
I guess I can’t retire until someone else does a really great job knocking off our products and then retirement or quitting will become an option.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sugarsugarwax.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sugarsugar_wax/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salome-sallehy-85479712/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sugarsugarwaxUS
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCERMuE5fAKeBFuZuHhfkGcQ
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@sugarsugarwax
Image Credits
Heather Scharf Photography
Nat Visualz
