Being an entrepreneur is never easy. In my years working with and interviewing entrepreneurs, a common thread emerges: they all share how difficult it is to be an entrepreneur. It’s not just the constant hustle, the networking, or even the stress of being responsible for your workers and to your customers. It’s about how everything changes. Business models evolve, markets change, even consumer habits can become radically different overnight. For this reason, the entrepreneurial mindset is one that focuses on adapting to inevitable changes and embracing continuous learning.
Jonah Sison-Ramos embodies this entrepreneurial mindset. I had the good fortune of speaking with the founder and CEO of Dear Face and New Moon in my podcast, and sharing the stage with her at entrepreneurial events such as The Business Manual’s Growth Con. She has so many great lessons to share with entrepreneurs.
Jonah’s current businesses, Dear Face and New Moon need no introduction. But for those few who have somehow managed to be unaware of the TikTok hall-of-famer, Dear Face is the wildly popular beauty brand that sells beautifying multivitamin drinks like collagen and glutathione. New Moon, a relatively new disruptive product in the market, is an S-acetyl-glutathione product for those who want to whiten and brighten their skin while maintaining a healthy glow.
To provide some idea of the scale of the business, the numbers are difficult to wrap your head around. For example, Dear Face manufactures 50,000 to 100,000 pouches of Beauty Bean, one of Jonah’s most successful products, per week.
‘JUST GO WITH IT’Jonah Sison-Ramos advises aspiring entrepreneurs to “Just go with it.” Perhaps, there is no greater testament to this entrepreneurial philosophy than her personal life. As a registered nurse and one-time casino card dealer, she has gone wherever there is opportunity.
This led her to establishing her first brand in 2012. No, it wasn’t Dear Face, not yet. It was a brand called Skin Potions.
After experiencing a particularly bad skin breakout, she tried a honey oatmeal soap to soothe her skin. Jonah recalls, “And then people were asking, ‘What did you use for your face? Because you had so many pimples back then.’ And then I said, this [is the] magical soap I used. And then they asked me, ‘Okay, are you selling it?’ So there’s a light bulb moment at that time. Why not sell it, right? And then they became my resellers.”
Crucially, this is also where she stumbled upon one of her ingredients to success: her distribution model. Inspired by multi-level marketing companies, she created her own version of the networking model, one where there were multiple teams and a leader per team. And from there, the business grew.
PIVOTING DURING THE PANDEMICSuccess wouldn’t come easy for Jonah though. During a critical time for the growth of Skin Potions, the COVID-19 pandemic happened. And the timing couldn’t have been worse. The brand had recently closed a partnership with Disney, and they were also expanding into retail.
Jonah recounts, “We wanted to go all out because this is the first time that a homegrown brand actually partnered with Disney. And then eventually we came up with a flagship store in Market! Market!
“And then three months after, it was the pandemic. So the investment, the money, the funds are all in our inventory and in our store. We didn’t have our ROI yet.”
To weather the pandemic, Jonah Sison-Ramos quickly pivoted her business. As Skin Potions sales flatlined, she kept the business afloat by selling alcohol in partnership with her manufacturers.
Never one to stand still, she also started developing new brands.
“Eventually I said to my husband, ‘We need to launch this brand.’ And then he said, ‘Why another skincare brand? Why not grow Skin Potions again?’”
Rather than rebuild the Skin Potions brand, Jonah chose to start a new brand with the same distribution network. It would be a fresh start, one dedicated to helping her distributors recover from the loss of income from the pandemic.
“That’s when Dear Face started,” Jonah says. “And we started with skincare sets.”
LIVE SELLING SUCCESSSoon, the Dear Face brand began to grow traction. Its breakthrough happened, though, when it began live selling on TikTok, a platform famous for its dancing influencers that Jonah initially didn’t want to join. Yet instead of stubbornly refusing to join TikTok, she embraced continuous learning and studied the platform’s online selling arm, TikTok Shop, instead.
“When TikTok Shop was launched,” she says, “I saw brands going live. And then they were gaining like millions [of followers] in a day. So I said to myself, ‘Why not try Dear Face? Why not sell Dear Face there?’ And my distributors were very excited because they were the ones that actually explored the platform.”
One of the reasons live selling was so successful for Dear Face on TikTok was how easy the platform made buying with its yellow basket icon. Eventually, Dear Face would be given awards by TikTok for its online selling success, but Jonah says she did it for her distributors.
“I am actually going live in TikTok with their baskets, with their shops,” she says.
ADOPTING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSETJonah has had tremendous success with her brands, from Skin Potions to Dear Face to New Moon. None of it was easy. But because of her entrepreneurial mindset, her ability to pivot her business, and her willingness to learn, she has managed to come out on top of every trial.
For aspiring entrepreneurs, she gives the following advice:
“Launch a good product. That’s number one for me. Number two is you do your assignment. You do the market research, competitive analysis, everything. And then I think for the number three is just do it. Just go with it. Dedicate everything to God.”
RJ Ledesma (www.rjledesma.com) is a Hall of Fame Awardee for Best Male Host at the Aliw Awards, a multi-awarded serial entrepreneur, motivational speaker and business mentor, podcaster, an Honorary Consul and editor-in-chief of The Business Manual. Connect with Mr. Ledesma on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. The RJ Ledesma Podcast is available on Facebook, Spotify, Google and Apple Podcasts.
