We are proud to announce that Three Ships can now be purchased at Credo Beauty in store and online! Credo Beauty has the highest clean beauty standards, carrying brands that avoid over 2700+ potential harmful ingredients listed on the Credo Beauty's own Dirty List.

Joining us today on the blog is Credo Beauty's co-founder, Annie Jackson! She shares her business journey, best piece of business advice, and biggest challenge as a business owner. Let's dive into it!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself, and what inspired you to start Credo Beauty?
I was lucky enough to start my career in beauty with Estee Lauder and later be part of the U.S. team that rolled out the first Sephora doors.  We saw this tidal wave of indie brands that needed a platform to showcase their products coupled with the debut of “open selling” and the customer response was incredible in those early days of Sephora. The catalyst for Credo has been a parallel to that, a second generation of entrepreneurs and makers who are passionate about the beauty category but are conscientious and informed about the harmful ingredients that exist in most conventional products.

We started Credo because we were inspired to change the way people think about ingredients and products they put on their bodies. We want to create a safer, more sustainable, more ethical beauty industry. This is what “Clean Beauty” is.  We offer about 135 brands formulating with safe ingredients in our products, but our focus is on beauty first. In other words, it’s firstly about making people look good and feel good.

What does your typical day look like?
I never have a typical day and that is what I love!  I think that’s probably what fuels most entrepreneurs-and others that like to know what each day will be like.  I think the biggest learning I have had from scaling a startup is to know the difference in these two types of people and hire really carefully.  It is ok to want continuity in your work - but that type of person usually doesn’t thrive in a team that loves to wear a lot of different hats.  You need people that see daily business challenges as part of the journey.

What was the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Stop and think about how you want to react to pressure or high stress vs how you actually do.  It is really hard! How you handle a heat-of-the-moment high pressure situation (if negatively) can be so damaging to relationships and how you collaborate with your team.  I have certainly handled stressful situations in the past really well and others not so much! This is not new advice - but there is a reason you hear it so often:  write down what you want to say and do not hit send.  Take a walk, give it some air time and start over.  Really think about the person you are delivering the message to and consider carefully how you’d feel being on the other side of the conversation.  Building and maintaining relationships as you build a business is the most important skill a person can have and continue to develop.  No one is perfect - but every day is a new day and investing in relationships is the best, most rewarding thing a person can do.

Did you always know you wanted to start your own business? If not, what did you dream of doing growing up?
I have always been very entrepreneurial and only recognized it when I joined Sephora.  Back then, we were a very small team outsourcing most functional areas from other LVMH divisions.  You had to be scrappy and resourceful and we also were exposed to so many different facets of the business in addition to what you were hired “officially” to do.  It was such an incredible experience and one that I realized I thrived in.  Corporate day-to-day life was not for me.  Wearing a key card on a lanyard gives me nightmares.

What is your biggest challenge as a business owner? What is your favourite part of being a business owner?
The biggest challenge is to prioritize what you need to get done vs what you want to do next.  When you are excited about certain initiatives you want to do it all - and so does your team.  But capital is not infinite and neither are resources so prioritizing and pushing down the road things that might seem really impactful to your business to give way to something that is operationally more the right time are sometimes the hardest decisions to make.

Where can we find you online?
Website: credobeauty.com
Instagram: @credobeauty
Personal Instagram: @anniejackson_shopgirl

If you liked this interview, you might like our recent interview with Jaime Schmidt, Founder of Schmidt's Natural and Laney Crowell, Co-founder of Saie Beauty.