Renee Rouleau - Founder & CEO, Renee Rouleau Skin Care

Renée Rouleau is a celebrity esthetician, beauty entrepreneur and skin expert who established her namesake skincare brand in 1996. Having built her company from the ground up over the last 25+ years, Renée has learned the value of growing a great company versus a big company and building a brand that has recently being named as “A Best Place to Work” by Austin Business Journal.

 

Troy: Good morning, Austin, Texas. Hope everyone is doing well, has gotten thought out from the big freeze that we had just last week. It's crazy that it's been twice in three years now that we've had to deal with it. Hopefully everyone was safe. Hopefully most of your hou homes and property weren't damaged at all, and even your trees survived as well.

But now in a nicer, brighter, sunnier warmer day, I get to be joined by Renee of Renee. Ruo skincare who is a entrepreneur that has started her own company a few years back. A lot of times in the Austin world when we think of startups, we think of people starting a brand new company. But there's some founders out there that have had some longer term success and she's been nice enough to join me on the podcast today, so I appreciate it.

Hi, Troy. So why don't you give us maybe a quick background, origin story, a minute or two, telling us a little bit about yourself and what what got you into your

Renee: business. Yeah. So hello everyone. I'm Renee Relo, as Troy said. My company is Renee Relo Skincare. I'm based here in Austin, Texas, a great city.

I relocated my corporate headquarters in warehouse distribution to Austin eight years ago, and love every moment of living here in Austin. So my journey started when I was. School and I knew that college wasn't my path. I wasn't the world's greatest student, as many entrepreneurs aren't. There were, back then there wasn't a thing called A D H D, but I'm sure that probably is a little bit runs through my veins a little bit.

I knew college wasn't my path. Didn't really know specifically wanted what I wanted to do. It was my mother that made the suggestion. I pursue a career in beauty because my grandmother, my mother's mother was a hair stylist and gr owned her own hair salon and she was in that environment and I thought that sounded like a great idea.

And so I started my. Beauty career, going to beauty school when I was 19, right outta high school. And now fast forward, I am 53 years old and I have been doing it ever since. I'm what is called an esthetician, or what is known as a facialist. And so I went to a trade school to learn that skill. It segued into me developing a skincare line, starting my company in 1996.

I had a, my first business, my first skincare. I had for five years up in Boston, sold that and moved to Dallas in 96, started Renee Relo Skincare and 26 years later, we are now in Austin and I still own a hundred percent of my company and we are doing very well. .

Troy: That's awesome. Yeah, like that's one of the things that's always interesting when you hear founder stories and startup stories, and again, that usually, especially here in Austin, in a lot of people's minds equates to tech startup.

Like, how can I be the next Facebook or the next Google? But, way more often. The type of business that is truly successful is someone that has a passion for something and is able to grow their small to medium business, which doesn't make it any easier in reality to grow. You still have the same, a lot of the same stumbling blocks that a larger business has, especially when starting off.

But it's interesting and I get to go and I enjoy going to some of the different things for founders, but they're, it's always about how do you raise money and it's People think raising money's amazing, but it really is giving away part of your business, giving away part of your control.

And so yes, there are definitely businesses where that's needed, but to be able to have your business be successful for as long as it is and still have 100% control of it, has to be a pretty, pretty nice feeling.

Renee: Yeah, I think I have a lot of entrepreneur colleagues and many of them who have taken outside investment because that was a decision, that they made or felt was necessary.

And the amount of validation that I get when people go, Renee, if I had to do it all over again, I would do it just like you. And, I think about if I started my company now, , it's just a different landscape now. And we were, we started e-commerce in 1999 is when I started my website e-commerce.

And we've been in it a long time, so we got a real headstart that people don't now. And it's just, I think it's just much harder. I think the decision to still remain Fully in control that way is ultimately because what people forget is the reason why bec pe, why people become entrepreneurs in the first place, is because they wanna be their own boss.

They worked for somebody else and said, I can do it better, and they wanna call the shots. But they fail to realize that when you take outside investment and get event, investors, depending of course, how you set it up, but at the end of the day, you now have bosses, right? And you have to be, you have people that you are accountable to, and now you don't work for yourself anymore, and now you're forced to make some decisions.

You know that sometimes people sell their soul and have to make decisions that they never would've, but they are forced to because. , there are people breathing down their neck. And there, one of my, one of my favorite books is by Noam Wasserman, and it's a book called The Founder's Dilemma.

And it basically says, do you wanna be rich or do you wanna be king? Because depending on which one you wanna be, cuz you can't have. So depending on which one you need to be, you you wanna be, you have to make very strategic decisions. And so I highly recommend people look, read, there's also a PDF you can download from Harvard Business Review, I believe, online.

But yeah, people, I think in the beginning when people start their companies, You have to be so strategic about decision making because once you say yes to something and sign on a dotted line, maybe it's not really where you wanna go, but I think in the beginning you're hungry and you're just saying yes to any opportunity that comes your way and, but then all of a sudden, someday you look back and go, , how did I get here?

This was not what my vision was. And you have to be strategic early on with understanding where you wanna go and what your long-term goals are. .

Troy: Now you mentioned, how the school system didn't work well for you cuz you didn't fit your personality and your what motivated you didn't fit into that box.

Correct. And then a lot of, I think they say a lot of entrepreneurs don't realize that they're putting themselves into a different box. By by bringing on sometimes that other investment or trying to grow quickly, right? There's successful businesses who are doing well at a certain level of revenue or income, and there's sometimes this need to feel like you have to grow.

And that then brings on, even if you're not getting outside funding, you now are bringing maybe new employees having to manage more people do different things that it's Maybe not gonna make you as happy and let you beat King, because now, yeah, great. I get to make the last decision, but I need to also keep all these employees happy so they continue to work so that way we continue to get paid.

And so it's definitely a balance. That is probably the biggest challenge about being entrepreneur.

Renee: Yes. One of many what

Troy: you mentioned early on, it was your mother you said, that had pointed you towards yes. Being in and being in the hair salon in the beauty space. Yeah. What, once you went there, what was it that.

Drew your attention and wanted you to pursue it further. Because like obviously there's a lot of things that our parents point us towards that we don't really necessarily pursue. I played piano for a few years, but yeah. Definitely never took to it wholeheartedly. What was it about the beauty space hair salon that really captivated you and wanted you to pursue it further?

Renee: Yeah. Great question. So I think. First, they always say, find something you're passionate about and find a way to make money doing it. And I think that's always the missing piece. How can I, there's plenty of people who have passions, right? Hey, like you're like, Hey, I like to sit and watch football all day on the couch.

That's my passion, but how are you gonna make money?

Troy: Over the last 10 years though, there are a lot of people who have made good money talking about other people playing sports. So there you go. You're correct. Exactly right. Exactly.

Renee: Exactly. . So I, I, from an early age, I was always into beauty and I was, I just always had a passion for it.

Like apparently, and I didn't even know this, I went to a high school reunion. Quite a few years ago, and some girl said to me, she said, in the fifth grade you were bringing makeup to sleepovers and doing everyone's makeup. Now I'm not a, I'm not, I don't do makeup, but I'm an aesthetician.

I work on skin. But I was like, I did, and that, that was in the fifth grade, like that's young and then so yeah, I was just always into skin and, into beauty and so again, you get outta high school and every, 99% of my high school class goes to college and I'm the 1% that didn't.

And I'm like, what am I gonna do? And then my mom's like, how about you following the footsteps of your grandmother and going into beauty? And I, and I think at the end of the day, we all. Skill, and I, so that's why I'm such an advocate of trade schools, right? Because you go, you learn a skill no different than plumbers and electricians or, you learn a trade.

And luckily in, in beauty there's, a demand for, beauty services. I think, right now, in this day and age, a lot of people are like, I wanna be an influencer or start a podcast. And all of those things are great, but. . That must be challenging cuz is this a trend?

Is it going to, be around forever? We know that we always need a plumber. We always need somebody to cut your hair. You always need somebody to attend to your skin or, not sometimes a facial is more of a nicety versus a necessity, but you get the idea. So I think. I really liked the idea of I'm going to school, I'm getting a license, and I'm going into a profession where I know there is a demand, and historically, always has been a demand.

Demand. .

Troy: Yeah, no, I think obviously with the crazy rising costs of traditional schools, ut and traditional four year public schools, the trade schools have started to become more appealing to people. And it's nice. I'm sure it depends on the circles you run in. There's, I'm sure a lot of people who are still primarily pushing their kids or.

pushing their students to the traditional four year degree, but it feels like there's more of an openness to being like hey, why not go into a specific field that you know you might love as a trade school, save a ton of money, right? on college costs and have not only a skill that you can start earning money with right away, but again, because of the lack of available.

Trades people that there aren't a lot of lines of work. Me as a real estate agent, there's tons of different trades that we're always short on from plumbers, electricians, and everything else, that you can make a lot of money, a lot more money than people realize. Doing some of those

Renee: jobs. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. At the end of the day, I feel very lucky because, I knew what I wanted to do and I got right to it, right? , in college, it's, you're wandering around aimlessly, taking different classes, seeing what sticks, seeing what you like. Then you're drunk half the time and and I just got right to it and I worked for two years at a salon giving facials, and then me and my coworker left, took our own, our.

Started a skincare salon. I became an entrepreneur at 21 when all my friends were off partying in college. I was managing employees. And I've, been doing my own things since 21, and as I said, I'm 53 now. So like I've, got right to it. I didn't waste time.

And part, and a lot of that is sacrifices, right? , all during my twenties when everybody's partying and having a good. I'm adulting, I'm managing employees. I have to put food on the table. I'm, building, brick by brick, creating my world. And now the nice thing is fast forward to today is I can enjoy the fruits of my labor now because I put in that work.

And there's a lot of people that finally, finally around 35, they're like, all right, I better figure out this adulting thing and what am I gonna do with my life? And a lot of people, Never even find their real calling in life. So I feel really grateful that today, all these years, being an esthetician for 35 years, I.

I'm, I still absolutely love what I do. I'm still so passionate about it. I still feel totally challenged by it. I never feel like I know everything. That and it's an industry that has only taken off more and more. There's a lot more competition in the space, but that also means there's a lot more awareness, which means there's a lot more opportunity.

People, you know your face, you wear your face every day of your life, an outfit fine. You. That sweater once a week or once a month or something, but your face showing up to the world every day. It's a, it's what people see and people wanna feel confident in their skin.

Troy: Yeah. And I'm sure it's tied into, as a society in general, it feels like we're more cognizant of eating healthy, working out right. Taking care of ourselves. Like we Yeah. We understand that. God willing, everything goes well that you could live to, you're very easily can live to be 75, 85 or older.

Absolutely. And so it's shoot, I'd like to, I'd like to look good and feel good. For all that time too. So it's, yeah. There's and there's been more research done as far as the benefits of how taking care of yourself in all of those different phases will result in better, long.

Longevity,

Renee: everything. Yeah. It's all about longevity and people, certainly when people look in the mirror, they want what they see to reflect where their brain is. Like you're like, we all feel a lot younger,

Troy: so we wanna look and be able to act a lot younger as

Renee: well too, right? We feel younger, but then we look in the mirror and then once a year, on our birthday cake, there's a ton of candles on there, , and you're like, Hey, how did this happen?

And so I think, my job. Yeah, just when people look in the mirror, they, they get to what they see a little bit more and feel a little happier about it. And a lot of it, it's so much too about, it's I always think of it similar to exercise. When you go and work out and you come home and you look at yourself in the mirror, you don't look any different, right?

You haven't lost, 20 pounds with one workout or look any d. . But after a good workout, when you look at yourself in the mirror, getting ready, you know your clothes are off, whatever, and you're looking at yourself, you feel better. You are not so critical of yourself because you just had a good workout.

Why? Because that workout created all those happy hormones that make you feel better, right? So same with skin. When wash your face, you put a serum on, you put a moisturizer. , maybe you did a little facial scrub or something. When you look, when you look at your skin in the mirror, it's not like you've had a facelift, like the skin may look a little smoother or something, but you feel better. So it's those rituals that just make you, when you're putting effort into something, you get the reward of that, that the emotional reward. Wow. Like my skin just looks better because you did something nice for it.

Yeah, and people just wanna feel more confident and feel better about who they are when they show up in the

Troy: world. . Yeah. And like you say, similar in the fitness kind of thing too. It's not the one time thing. There's definitely benefits to the one time thing. Sure. Doing a lot of different things, but it really is the consistency and building those habits up long term is where you really start to see the benefits.

Whether it's eating healthy, working out right, skin care, all those kind of things. It's really in the consistent daily, weekly, monthly habits of things That's right. Truly bring the greatest benefit. .

Renee: That's right. Yeah. No it's you get a short-term fix for that moment, but then if you keep up and keep up that good work, then there's that long-term benefit as well.

For sure.

Troy: So you mentioned like most Austin, I, myself included, that you're not originally from Austin. What was your journey sounded like Boston then Dallas tossed and what prompted those moves and change?

Renee: Yeah. From the age from kindergarten to my senior year in high school, I was in seven different schools.

So my dad was the first so I was born in Minnesota. My dad was the first team of 26 people to work for Target stores. So my father was in retail. He worked for Target for 25 years. He eventually became, , I think he was the executive vice president when he left Target. I think he, that's where he had made it to.

Fast forward a million years later, probably his biggest claim to fame is he was the c e o of Michael's Arts and Crafts and which was the Dallas based company and took them from 400 stores to like 1300 stores. So my dad. A very ambitious man, grew up in rural Minnesota. Grew up with nothing paid for his way, from college out, in coll paid his way through college was one of the few people that makes it out of this small rural town he lived in and he wanted.

A different life for himself than what he saw with people around him. So I had a father that was very ambitious, but part of that is we moved a lot because he was taking new jobs, new positions within Target, et cetera, et cetera. And had just a very strong work ethic. And so again, I moved a lot every two to three years.

My father sat down with the family and is Hey. We're moving. And I remember when I was in high school one of the times, and there's a whole backstory to it, but one of the times he told us on a Friday and we literally moved on Monday . So crazy story. But anyway, so we moved a lot and I think when I look back to those years of moving, it's never fun to all of a sudden be uprooted, particularly in junior high school or high school, and now you're leaving all your friends like, yeah, when you're in second grade, no big deal, right?

You can make friends anywhere. But when I look back on it I really love that we moved a lot because it allowed me to reinvent my world every time and kind of make new friends, what worked, what didn't, and you just start over. It's a clean slate. So when I , when I was living in Boston yeah, I went to high school there and then started my career in aesthetics, had my business, but ultimately I think I got antsy because I had stayed in one place for a long time.

I was like, wait, I've been here 11 years. This is insane. And I wa wanted to, I was a different person now I was an entrepreneur and I was just in di different mindset and didn't feel like my world in Boston was. Who I was anymore. And I think particularly up in Boston there's this kind of mindset where no one really leaves.

And it's this mindset like, , if I haven't known you since out of the womb, like you're not, we're not, you're not in my circle. And so I was moving away from some of my college friends because now I wanted something more. I wanted people that were career minded, ambitious, and it was very hard to meet new people.

And again, I was young, I was only. 20 my business, I had it from 21 to age 26, and it's, it was just hard to find people like that. And so I made the decision to sell my half of the business. I'm still super close with my business partner. It was beautifully amicable, but I, for personal reasons, I needed to move.

I needed to start over again and create a new life for who I was. So I set my sights on Dallas I did a bunch of research and found that Dallas was gonna be the place. Fun fact. Your name is Troy. And I, part of that decision making was because I had a big crush on a quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, whose name was Troy.

And . Troy was in Dallas, and if I was gonna marry him, that's where I needed to be. . Anyway so I moved to Dallas and, but I loved Dallas because they're very appearance oriented and I knew that, being in beauty in a city like Dallas was gonna work for me. So I had my company there for 20 21 years.

No, 21 year. 19 years. 19 years in Dallas. But I love Texas. I love Texans. They're very ambitious. Can-do people have that hard work ethic, which which I was grown up to to have, side note, sometimes people are like, oh, Renee's dad bought her business for her. And I'm like, no he didn't.

I took out a loan from the bank. My dad is I did, I had to do it myself. You're gonna do it yourself. So I am, self-made in the sense that I didn't rely on anyone. I just relied on myself and glad I never asked him for money. Cuz ultimately I'm glad I did it my way. And the last thing I would want is my dad, who's very tough to be breathing down my neck.

He would've now been my boss. As I was talking about earlier, if I borrowed money from him, I would've been reporting my dad. I don't know if I would've liked that. So anyway. But yeah. And the decision to move to Austin eight years ago was again, part of that decision of Wow. I haven't moved in 19 years and I really wanna do something new.

So moved to Austin eight years ago and I love it here. I can't see myself moving here. I travel a lot, so that kind of gets me out to see the world. But but Texas has been really good for me, both per personally and profess. .

Troy: That's cool. It's interesting you talk about, people, I feel like the skeptics, there's always gonna be skeptics.

The skeptics, the, haters is what they want to call it nowadays. Yeah. Are always gonna have reasons or excuses of why something works for somebody else, but not for them. Instead of. Applauding that, that would work for you. Cuz there, even if your dad had been the one to give you money, there are plenty of people who have gotten money and still have not been successful.

Yeah. Like that's not a guarantee of success. And at, but at the same point in time there, it sounds like there's a lot of traits. that your dad probably did pass on to you that have helped you be successful as well too, that, are awesome, that are awesome things that sometimes other people, if you didn't come from a home that was super hardworking, super career oriented it's just not something that you may realize is how you can move up in the corporate world.

Yeah. For you, it wasn't moving up corporately specifically, but it was still moving up in your own.

Renee: Yeah. Yeah. No and it's only been probably like the past two years that I've really taken a look at how. My upbringing, particularly how I was raised by my dad, has molded me into who I am today and the decisions that I make.

And I am, I'm grateful for seeing all of that now, but also grateful that, he taught me how to work hard. Like he was a, he's my dad, he's still living, and my dad is, has been very successful. , but he taught me that you just, put 10, 10 toes down and you just get it done.

And so I really am grateful for the hard work ethic that I have now, the downfall of having a hard work ethic. And so sometimes that creeps into other areas of your life where you're neglecting or doing other things. So I try to get that balanced to make sure that I'm not being too much of a workaholic, which certainly can be my.

Troy: and at the same time there like it's, the, one of the big phrases over the last 5, 7, 8 years has been work-life balance. And I of the opinion that there's not, there's no such thing as work-life balance. It's you have your work-life balance, which might not be the same right thing for me, but if it's the right thing for you Yeah.

 If it's not dis, if it's not destroying relationships that are important to you Yeah then it's a good work-life balance. doesn't mean. , you need to be home more or homeless or any of those kind of things. And correct. It's always it's the easy to throw rocks at glasshouse when ex

Renee: Exactly.

. Yeah. I think, and I think for a lot of hardworking entrepreneurs, the crazy part of it is that, working doesn't feel like work, but non-work feels like work. , right? It's like for me to I'm much better. I went through a big life transition about four years ago, which I'm, I could probably touch on, cuz this is probably one of my life's greatest lessons in many ways.

But but basically, , this past four years I've explored a little bit more of working less and it took some conditioning to like, go, oh wow, this is, I actually have some things outside of work that I feel passionate about, and so I, I have a much better, work-life balance as we call it.

But at the end of the day, when I wake up every day, I wanna do what makes me happy and what brings me joy and what makes. Fulfilled and where I feel like my purpose is, and a lot of that revolves around. .

Troy: Yeah. No, I think any successful entrepreneur has to again, it's not finding what you love kind of thing, but has to enjoy the working because it's something you have to do.

I know another struggle for a lot of, especially early entrepreneurs, but even people who've been doing it longer time is sometimes it's hard to understand that you can. Step away or delegate some stuff and things will still get done to, if not the exact same level, you would do them to a high enough level that your customers, your clients, whoever.

Sees that as good quality work, which then allows you, because again, we do only have that 24 hours in a day. And so if it's all of the responsibilities on you specifically, that's gonna be impossible to really grow a business unless you start to let go a little bit. And so I know a number of different business owners.

Sometimes through accidents or through, not even through accidents, sometimes unintendedly, they had to back away from a business because of a health reason or because of something that came up and suddenly their business grew because they got out of the way a little bit and had to rely on other people when that can be a difficult thing to do as an entrepreneur because a lot of times you get into it because I can do it and I can do it better, and I want to do it.

I enjoy doing it kind.

Renee: Yeah, no that resonates with me tremendously. Troy, and I'll, I guess I'll go into the story that I, or I mentioned I had a big life change about four years ago 10. So I've had my company 26 years and 10 years into my company. My, I think it was fiance at the time. But he joined my company as my coo.

And I, someone gave me the advice once, business isn't romantic and so I ever hesitate, you know, I always hesitated bringing him into it, but, I needed him and his skillset, and we decided to bite the bullet and do it. So my husband, we were together 22 years, so he was involved in my company as the COO for 12 years.

12 of those, of the 26. And or actually at, I guess at the time he, whatever. I'm not a math person. But anyway, but point is for 12 years he was a great asset and a great leader in our company. And four years ago he was he passed away four years ago. And sorry, gimme one sec.

Troy: You're fine.

That would be tough for . That's it. It's, it's tough whether it was a regular employee when it's your husband, and obviously, that makes it, it's one of the challenges of family owned businesses is dealing with the. good times and the bad times because they get so intertwined. Yeah, with family that it can make it challenging to not have the bad times roll over into what should be fun times of going on vacation with your family for sure, and vice versa.

But obviously if you did it for 12 years, you had to make it work pretty well at that point in time. So then it makes those times even better because you get to have these great times. professionally and personally with someone that you loved that much?

Renee: Correct? Yeah. No. A hundred percent, all of that.

So yeah, so he was diagnosed with cancer and it came on suddenly the type of cancer he has. He had when you get diagnosed it's already in stage four and they basically gave him six months to live and he passed away two days, shy of six months. And so naturally he gets this diagnosis where the doctors are basically saying, pack your belongings because you've got six months to live.

And again, we had been together 22 years, and so all of a sudden, Now you've been given this news and he has six months to live and I now, again, he's the coo, I'm the c e o, and I think at the time, I don't know. We probably I don't know, 18 employees or something like that, both in Austin, but still we had our skincare spas in Dallas.

So we ha we still had those going and now I'm wanting to spend as much time with them as I can. Me and my stepchildren, and. , but Al but also we gotta make a plan for the business because, now two people are stepping away. And that ended up being such a life lesson there, because I had no choice but to rely on the team and couldn't be everywhere.

And so that was really the first time that I. , let go of the vine as the expression says. Because I needed to rely on them. And what has happened since then is, once I got back into the company, after he passed away, I hired a new coo. And I have, dramatically relied more on the team.

It's still always a work in progress. Yeah. But that was, beautiful lesson to learn Sure. As a result of something tragic. Yeah. .

Troy: No, I say, yeah it's obviously a super unfortunate situation, but as much as you guys enjoyed the business together, that's really not how you probably wanna spend the la when you, if you're getting hey, you have six months, like diving more into the business isn't really how you wanna spend that time.

So that, that does force changes. And now because he is there, , you're taking two people outta the business, right? Not only for you is it like, Hey, I need to step away because of this situation, but our kind of, my co-captain is also having to step away. So that required a lot of trust in your team and for them to step up, which sounds like they did an amazing job of

Renee: Yes, they did.

They did. And I think, that was really, the whole thing is when I hired. The new coo the direction I gave was get me exclusively in the visionary seat and because at the time when my husband got sick, If you looked at our company, org chart, we were still all, he had three seats.

I had three seats. So we were both, still, we hadn't delegated a lot and we were doing a lot. And so now when two people have to step aside, that's, step away. That's six seats in the company that now are on pause. And so yeah. So I realized not, that's not good.

And so now I still have one other seat. I have two seats in the company, visionary, but then I'm also in the marketing side, which is part of, I'm the brand ambassador. I do videos. I'm in charge of new product development. But slowly but surely, we're trying to, get me to the point where I wear exclusively that visionary hat.

Troy: then you can just dabble and jump, with some of the other seats and use your expertise and exactly insights to, to help them as well. So as the chief Visionary Officer, what are some of the things that you're looking to do over the next year or two with the company?

Renee: Yeah. It's such a good question and great timing. I, with everything in life, you only know what you know. And you do your best to get out there, educate yourself, read books, listen to podcasts, talk with colleagues, and you're always looking how to be better, right? Both your personal life, your professional life.

And I never really understood the concept of growing a company. And again, like cuz I didn't go to business school or anything, and. anytime I saw growth, cuz I was very, I grew up in a household where it was like every man for themselves. You don't rely on anyone. And so I built my company doing everything myself.

So this is why it's been such a hard thing to delegate because I'm just used to doing everything myself and, but I, anytime I would think of the concept of growing the company, I'd. How can I possibly grow? Because there are only so many hours in, in a day and I can't I can't I can only do so much.

So I was at the mercy of our growth and even though we've always grown every year, and, but it was all like, okay, growth means I now no longer can sleep at night because I'm the one doing it, and I now have just in the past. , I don't know, year really opened my eyes. And again, cuz I've gotten inspired from some people in my life and them in my ear about things and really going, wow, like growing doesn't mean I necessarily have to work harder.

It's working smarter. And so we're really in, in a mode right now for 2023 is we are exploring some growth strategies that I never thought I would do because again, . I'm like, I don't, I can't do it. I don't have enough room, hours in, in a day. And so it's a really exciting time because we're exploring some things I never thought I would do, and not that.

Because they were bad. But again, I was like, I can't possibly you place full, you buy place full or I don't have the expertise, I only know what I know. Yeah. Guess what? There's people out there that know how to do these things. And so we are, we're hiring a lot more right now. We're hiring three new people this month and really getting a little clearer on our long-term plan.

And now I'm like, wow. , we could actually have this be a weld oiled machine and me still be able to get eight hours of sleep at night. Imagine that . And so yeah. So it's, things include, we're exploring being in retail for the first time ever. My skincare spas in Dallas were our retail, but we shut them down in the past three, four years.

So now we're exclusively a product company. Skincare. Sold exclusively from re renee verlo.com. So we're not in any retailers. We've been selling online, as I mentioned, since 19, 19 99. We ship all over the world. We do very well online. There's, especially in a post pandemic world and the way the internet is more crowded these days, we think that maybe.

We need to explore a retail opportunity, so that's very exciting. I continue to innovate with new products. The goal is to help push out new products faster. Because again, it was just all me and now we have two new people as part of my new product development team that I certainly didn't have a year ago.

And so yeah, continue to innovate with great, amazing products. And yeah, so there's lots of. Things that we're exploring right now that in a way feel scary. But scary is a sign of growth. And so I'm just like, oh my gosh, I never thought I would do that. I always said no to that. And now I'm like, Yolo, why not

It's an exciting time and I said to my team yesterday, I said, I know, three years from now I'm gonna look back onto, like where we are then versus where we were here, and I'm gonna be like, oh my gosh. So I really see a lot of exciting things happening in my company. But a lot of that is me continually letting go, delegating more and really, using my skills where the company really needs me.

Cuz right now I'm still doing a lot of things that don't make sense that I'm doing. There's someone else that can do it better than I. And so we're turning all that upside down right now and really and working smarter, not harder.

Troy: Nice. So for people look into, find out more about you, what are the best ways to stay in contact or get in touch and come

Renee: do that?

Yeah. Yeah. So all things re renee relo.com. That's probably our website is probably the best place to go if you wanna learn about skin, if you wanna take our skin type quiz and get a skincare routine curated for your website. Sorry for your own skin type. And then all the links to our social channels are there.

Sign up for our emails. We have really great skincare content, even if you don't wanna try my products. I've been a practicing aesthetician for 35 years. I know everything about skin Still learning cuz there's still more things to learn. But if you are. Curious about how to care for your skin. How do I get rid of these dark circles?

What can I do for acne? All the things. We have incredible content from my blog that we feed into our emails, and then all the social channels, TikTok and YouTube and Instagram. For me, I have my personal Instagram and company Instagram because I have a lot of things to talk about more so than just skin, where that's our company, Renee Rolo Skincare.

Instagram is more about skin, where my Instagram is. Yes, I talk about skin, but I talk a lot about entrepreneurship and success tips and just, my life and travel and adventure and all the things behind the scenes, running our company. And so that's, if people wanna know more, The different hats I wear.

My personal Instagram, Renee Rolo would be the one to go. .

Troy: Cool. That's awesome. I appreciate you taking the time to, to be on the show today. It was hard to believe it's already been 40 minutes. Like it's gone by. Been such a fun, cool, interesting conversation to hear. Thanks. Had going

Renee: on. Yeah. And I wanna ask you one quick question.

What what's your two questions. What's your what you love most about living in Austin and where's your favorite place to. .

Troy: I'd say two things with Austin. One, the weather primarily, even though we have this, huge ice storm, like I much prefer the hundred five degrees summer days over the 32 20 negative 10 degree winter days that I used to experience when I grew up north as well.

Yeah. So that's one. But then two, I think like you, one of the things you mentioned in talking about the Northeast is because so many people in Austin are not originally from here, right? It feels. , it's a very welcoming city, right? Like almost everyone you meet Ha is seems more open because they were either two years ago or 20 years ago, new to Austin as well.

And so I think part of it's the mindset of someone who's willing to move somewhere else is they're just more open to meeting other people and yeah, it has just a cool mindset that way. Whereas say if you're up in the Northeast, it's , do I need to know you then? I don't.

If I don't, then I'm not going to. There's not really a reason to. Yeah. To to get out there. Favorite restaurant, it definitely depends a little bit on the mood you're in. There's There's a barbecue place that's up north by me called Interstellar Barbecue. That is Oh yeah. Amazing.

They actually got rated as the second best barbecue place in Texas by Texas Monthly Magazine, six or so months ago, which has made their lines even longer, unfortunately. But I'm, it's, I'm so stoked for them because they put out amazing food. So like that you can't be anything but happy for their success.

So that's a fun place to go. The only downside with it is because I don't go very often. You always buy way too much food because you want, I'm out One of that, one of that, one of that, one of that you have like food for the next four days. Which, if you're trying to be healthy, you know, and hit those New Year's resolutions, four days of barbecue probably isn't the best way to, to accomplish that, but it's well, worth it.

Very

Renee: nice. I love that. Awesome.

Troy: So appreciate everyone today and hope everyone has a wonderful week. We'll talk to you guys soon,

Renee: Thank you.