Today’s interview is with Prisca Ongonga-Daehn; mother, powerhouse businesswoman and founder of Baresop. Baresop is an innovative, zero-waste personal care brand created by Prisca when she went on her own journey to living a more conscious, environmentally-conscious life.

We talk with Prisca all about running a strong, mission-fuelled business, the biggest lessons along the way, the balance between work and life and the importance of releasing perfectionism to move forwards.

Follow Baresop on IG here.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Jo: Hello, everybody as a part of The Brand Journey podcast. Welcome to another episode. Donaji and I will be doing some new style interview-based episodes where we will take turns interviewing some of the conscious creatives and visionary business owners that have inspired us along our own business and brand journey.

And today is no exception because it's somebody that I've loved working with loved collaborating with, and is a huge inspiration to me; how she navigates her business and how she scales up her business, how she builds momentum and all at the same time is deeply infused in her mission and her vision for a better planet.

So today we'll be connecting and chatting with Prisca Ogonga-Dae. So welcome to the podcast, Prisca.

Prisca: Thank you.

Jo: Thank you so much for being here. So Prisca, a little bit of an intro. She is the founder of Baresop, a modern-day zero-waste personal care brand of powdered just-add-water, body washes and hand washes, plus some new products soon to come as well.

And every aspect about Baresop from its compostable sachets to using the powdered concentrated formulation and also the recycled waste that she has in the construction of the bottles is representative of Prisca's mission and values for a better cleaner and more conscious world.

So thank you so much for joining us Prisca. I'd love to start the conversation off with how your experience has been, and some of the things that you've started to change in your lifestyle and in your business, once you became more aware of living more mindfully and more intentionally about protecting the environment.

Prisca: Thank you, Jo. It's been a pleasure working with you and giving us an opportunity to keep challenging ourselves on how can we best engage with our community. How can we best engage with our customers? Can we inspire them on this journey as we make it easy for everyone to create change with every wash?

How do we stay empathetic to their life experience and what is important to them, in their hygiene care and the way that they use and they interact with their personal care products. So thank you. Amazing. We love that. 

So to answer your question about how has this journey affected how I live my own life. Good one. Look, I will track back and say for quite some time, I would say, even before Baresop came to fruition, I was always open and curious about how do I keep becoming a better person. How do I keep challenging my, my status quo, like how I live my life, how I express my space, how I connect with others, how I connect with me. What's important to me, and why are those things important to me. And so all of these questions. I think I would imagine most people are, I would say I am always, even now, always questioning, always curious, always curious. You know, how can I keep improving?

So with that in mind, I guess also with Baresop seeing its growth and getting where it's getting, it's continued to almost expand that journey for me. So while we do what we do, how do I also, because, when you're in this journey, like when I'm on this journey, as the founder of Baresop and what we exist for, which again, because that's usually where we start. And it's always good to actually mention that as a context. 

And that's very much the fact that we exist to make it easy for humans to create change. And we have a target of 1 billion plastic bottles avoided by 2035, which equates to 50, 000 tons of CO2 avoided as well. And 600 thousand litres of water conserved, through the use of our concept. 

And when we conserve these, we make the litres of water available to communities that are running around clean and safe basic need water. Really, without water, there is no life. 

With that in mind, how do I we live the life that we kind of preach? But when we empower others, can we also empower ourselves, right? So, yeah, very much like, how do we look at the way we use products? How do we look at the way we dispose of the products we use? How do we look at, because we are also about like a minimal lifestyle, which you can see based on our logo and our website, it's very much like less is more in a way.

Now this now leads me to answer the question. How do you take what you need? So for me, it's how do I only engage with what I need? But that's just me personally, I'm not asking others to do the same. But for me, I found that has enabled me to create a lot of space, not just physically, but also emotionally and internally.

So by almost not engaging with more than I do not need, but staying with what I need and what's actually important, right? And that's a whole other segment, right? What you need and then what do you really, really need that actually adds value to your life in a positive way? So there's a lot there.

Jo: I love that. Let's dive in a little bit deeper because you mentioned in, an interview I was reading about, you mentioned, this is pretty much what you were saying. Just what you need is very much determined by you following your North Star or your David. And so that allows you to essentially be clear around what you say yes to and what you say no to.

I'm curious about what some of the lessons or the big pivot points that you've had along your journey around creating Baresop to where it is now, where you may have had to let go of certain things that weren't part of that North Star.

Prisca: Really good question. And interesting that you mentioned that because really I went to, because I was part of the SB program that supports women founders’ journeys. And during that time, someone said something that has stayed with me. 

And I was like, “Oh my God, that is exactly the sentence I was looking for”, and that is when I can't remember who now, but someone asked somebody, how did you matter of the person who carved the carving of David?

Because it was supposed to be the best in the world, it was just like magnificent. And it was like, how did you manage to do this? And he said, it was easy for me, I just took everything out that's not David.

And with that, I was like, that's it, that is exactly the journey that I've been trying to articulate and that is how do I take out everything that is not part of David and for me that David, it's, it's our Northstar goal, whether it's my personal life, whether it's my family life.

How do I take everything that's not part of that, right? And as you said, part of that Nordstar goal. To answer your question again, within this journey, I was questioning that because I am more of, I always live my life and always say yes, always say yes. And then, walk around and I'm always a yes person.

Like, can we do this? Yes. Can we do that? Yes. Can you explore that? Yes. Can you help me with this? Yes. Can you help me with this? Can you come to our event? Yes. So I was saying a lot of yes, which is, I can't say it's a strength. I would say it's more actually can be a bit of weakness. And I realized, oh my god, what some of the things I was saying yes to.

In the end, I'm like, why did I actually say yes, it didn't actually serve me. 

So I was saying yes, as I'm always obviously wanting to help. And I always say yes to a lot of things. So realizing that it was taking me away, it was taking me away from my Northstart goal. And some of the things I was saying, you know, I was saying yes to were not actually serving me in that sense, or my purpose to where when I go to serve more people, I was saying yes but not really.

So since then, I've become courageous. To say no to the things I don't feel are going to add value on my own journey. And it's not selfish. It's really like, we cannot go get where we want to get if I don't question that. And if I don't change that, because otherwise I don't have much time and I don't have enough space to get where we want to get.

Jo: Absolutely. And I love that. I think one of the things that I find really wonderful when it comes to working with you and observing how you make decisions is your decisiveness because you're very clear around, okay, this is a no and this is a yes? But also within that, I think that mindset, the benefit of it is that I can see from us working together is that you are always hopeful and optimistic.

You're always looking at the opportunities. So even though you might not be saying yes to everything, you're saying yes to problem-solving, which is super, inspiring to be at the other end of as a designer working with you to see how you approach different things as they come through. 

Do you find that that ability to stay hopeful and joyful and optimistic has really helped you move through your business and keep that momentum and energy instilled in, in the very nature of Baresop and its growth?

Prisca: 100 percent. 100 percent. If you ask me anything about the qualities that I experienced and I engage with, one of the ones that I know has saved my life over and over again, it's that positivity. And I know that it's a word, that you know, it's a complex one, right? Because you can't just be positive.

Like, obviously, you have to open your eyes to what's in front of you. It doesn't mean like, you know, you kind of put your head, under the carpet. But on this journey, as you probably know, Jo, you have your own business as well. There are all kinds of fires coming at you all the time. And some days you wake up and you're like, how am I going to do this?

But interestingly enough, by creating all of the spaces that I mentioned, it's really helped me to be able to engage with other things. For example, like I do a five-rhythm dance every Sunday. Obviously I do yoga, meditate and all of these things. 

And first of all, I would not be able to do that if I did have the space to do them, if I was saying yes and taking all of the things around, then I don't have space even for me to do the things I need to do. So by engaging with all of these other experiences, it's allowed me to really be able to be in touch with the flow of life. And that law of staying flexible, not staying stagnant, like things are always going to change.

There's nothing that's going to stay the same. How do you keep with the flow? How do you, when you have those moments, difficulties, how do you engage with that in a positive way? Like this is here and I know I have the answer for this. I know I have the right decision.

But you cannot have that right decision in the answer when you're, when in your headspace, you don't have that capacity to actually find that right answer, or even have the confidence to know, I don't have the answer. I just need to sit down and find it. So for me, what I believe is my almost unique advantage as a founder is that I'm grateful.

I've had the capacity to actually be in touch with that, that all of the answers I do, I will not, I cannot access all of these things if I do not have the right headspace to access it. It's there for me to access, it's not like given you really have to be able to be in that sort of energy level to actually, you know, when a problem comes that you're like, yeah, I got that.

Oh, I got that. It's so I think that confidence has really influenced that positivity that you've talked about. And just that you know, yeah, it's going to be another day. So the opportunity it's, whatever every day has an opportunity and it might have also setbacks, but in the end, everything will balance each other.

And that's the segue. Like, it's all about balance. Like, things balance themselves and we can't have the good without the bad. You can't have the bad without the good. Having all of those things heightens your experience when you go through the good after you had a very difficult week and then you have this amazing growth story and the way you become present to that moment is heightened based on the experience you just had.

So again, a whole other segue we could go into.

Jo: Yeah, I love that. I feel like there's that element of enjoying the presence that you get from every moment that it's like a gift. And sometimes even if it feels like a setback or even if it feels really challenging, it's something that prepares you for the highs that you'll get to as the next step.

Business is so interesting. Then that's why I love this aspect of how much that spiritual connection that we have with ourselves really plays out in our business as well. Because we can observe, if we're connected to that part of ourselves, we can really see the highs and lows for what they truly are and what they mean for the growth of the impact that we have on the people.

We want to serve the impact that it has on us. It's a really holistic system for testing out our own connection to ourselves. Thank you so much for sharing that. That is really powerful. And I think that so many people would take that for that part of the conversation to be super inspiring for them whenever they feel like they're challenged in their business or in their life as well.

I'm just curious in terms of what's coming up for Baresop? Like I know that you've mentioned that there’s a few, like, new products on the horizon, so I'd love to talk a little bit about that. What's coming up for you in 2024? 

Prisca: Jo, you know, I love you. What I'm trying to say is like, I'd love to share what's coming, and it's super exciting. I'll just go into like, why, like again, why do we, why do we bring new products, right?

Jo: Oh, I love that.

Prisca: We actually try to again, think about why bring something new and also being aware that there's an experience that it's not like you just keep bringing new products for the sake of increasing the size of the order value, right?

So we ask ourselves, we talk to our customers and see, okay, what do you need, right? So we always lead and work to fill a gap that exists for them. And so when we go through that innovation and design a new product phase, it's not about, “Oh, this is what excites us”, but it's more like what excites our customer.

So being very open, almost like it's a clean white page. We don't know what the next product is going to be, what the next innovation is going to be, until we have the data from our customers.With that in mind, the next we are looking at, from that data, which is very much okay.

Based on why we exist, which is very much to make it easy. It's usually the main thing for our customers to be on the right side of the street. And so we keep challenging ourselves, like, is this the easiest solution possible? We can, can we, so we are never tied to the solution.

We aren’t tied to the vessel to the solution, right? So it's not like we're not tied to do powder to form. We did this because this is what the data we got from our customers as the easiest solution that they saw for them at this stage.

At any point when that changes, we are flexible to change with that.

And, and this again, just to share that we have four minutes, but that's where I live. I live in find in looking at. The solution we have and questioning, like, how can this be better always because I believe it can always be better, you can never finish that design piece because I can look at this glass and I'd be like, how can this be better?

And again, so also always start to like, how do I not go, because I could completely spend too much time designing. So the next product, we have got the data from our customers. Now we have our current vessel, it’s made from recycled waste, the bottle recyclable, you know, we ticked all of the boxes, but in Australia, our pump as well. So, therefore, the next piece is, do we actually need the bottle and the pump?

Is there a way for us to eliminate that next process and be able to give our customers a product that makes it even easier for them so they don't even have to have the powder and then add a vessel and then another vessel? So it's just literally. Yeah. So, yeah, so I'm not going to say what it is right now, but that's, that's the question we are working with; the easiest solution possible to help eliminate waste and CO2 and water wastage, and still being very empathetic to our customer journey; their health, how they experience the personal care, the, the scenting piece and even going into bio and probiotic. Dow do we again start to blur that line between a soap and food and a health product?

So it's very exciting. Actually, I'm super excited. We are working every day with our partners to bring it to life. There's some challenges, but I'm 100 percent positive that it's going to be here very soon. Let's touch base when it's ready so we can talk about it's, it’s actually super exciting.

It really is. I'm not trying to do that because I'm really just saying, even for me, who, you know, is in innovation. I'm just like, oh my god. This is actually now I know we are changing the world, but this is really the next step. 

Jo: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I love that you have a continuous dedication to refining, iterating and innovating on your products and that sense of adapting to the next thing that's really, truly going to make such a big impact. For everybody listening at home, where can they find Baresop as a final question?

Prisca:Oh, you can find Baresop from our website, which is really just www.baresop.com. We are also in a number of detailers and pharmacies. I'm sure if you Google us, we are in a lot in so many places. So, you have a lot of options to have access to our products and solutions and change the world with us, you guys. Because we believe everyone has the power to create change, however little it is. So thank you so much, Jo.

Jo: Thank you so much. It's so lovely to have you here with us today, Prisca. And we're very excited for everybody to hear about the wonderful insights and wisdom that you have to offer from our conversation today. So thank you so much. And thank you so much to our listeners for tuning in.

We'll see you in the next episode of the Brand Journey podcast.