As the founder of Hanahana, the sustainable skincare and wellness brand launched in 2017, the Chicago-based Ghanaian-American entrepreneur is gearing up to introduce Skin Nutrition, a new detoxifying skin mask, for the beauty line.
After a fortuitous encounter in Tamale, Ghana, with the Katariga Women’s Group, a collective of local women shea butter makers, she launched Hanahana, bootstrapping the enterprise primarily with her personal savings.
“I didn’t enter the [beauty entrepreneurial] space thinking, ‘I want to be a beauty founder’ but more so to see how I could utilize my skills and create a space for education and for understanding the process around the production of shea butter and around Ghanaian women behind it and also the Black women who continue to support and sustain the beauty industry.”
Since the launch, Boamah has grown Hanahana from a small line of shea butters sold from her Chicago apartment to a full line enterprise that counts sustainability and fairness among its operational tent poles. (Boamah is big on producer-to-consumer transparency and says that Hanahana pays twice the fair-trade rate for their raw products in an effort to provide greater economic equity among their partners.) To date, Hanahana has garnered customers from around the world, with the likes of Beyoncé taking notice.
Unsurprisingly, building Hanahana into a self-sustaining business between the Gold Coast and Chi-Town occasionally results in periods of exhaustion for Boamah, who recently took her first vacation since launching the business.
“I have definitely experienced tiredness, working all of 2020,” through a period culminating with a COVID-imposed quarantine last year. “I saw weekends as workdays. But still, I would just keep working,” she says.
Yet, Boamah is proactive about keeping her “tiredness” from escalating into full-blown burnout. How? By staying organized. “I think a level of productivity helps with burnout, and I think people don’t want to talk about that,” she says. “I think burnout happens when you’re not organized.”
“When it comes to planning my day, if it’s not on my Google Calendar or in my productivity journal or notebook, it's not a priority. I try to split up my day so that it's not just meetings. I typically start my day around 6:30. I like to make sure the first 2 hours of the day are for me—no technology, as much as possible, other than my alarm and music for my workout. From there, I get ready for work, which includes my skincare routine plus listening to my daily podcast. Then my team comes in, and we get things started.”
Google Calendar for scheduling
Asana for project management
The “Do Not Disturb” option on the phone for peace
For Boamah, getting organized also means scheduling in self-care. “I think sometimes people talk about self care in a romanticized way, but being able to have daily moments for yourself and care for yourself is truly important,” she says. “Entrepreneurship is a very consistent inconsistent thing. There are so many decisions to be made but it’s important to find time for yourself. If you’re unable to prioritize your self growth, your business can’t run.”
Part of Boamah’s self-care routine includes investing in her knowledge base with books and podcasts. Her recommendations? Peter Thiel’s influential business leadership book Zero to 1. “The book really challenged what I thought failure looked like; our understanding of it involves either quitting on your idea or somehow running your business back--either you quit or you do better.” The book also highlights more traditional tactics critical for entrepreneurship. “How do you manage a team, how to continue to grow and sustain a brand and team and communicate; how can you as a founder grow and be better, so that you can continue to push those types of attributes and things that we want,” she says.
Boamah also cites NPR’s “How I Built This” podcast as a source to help plan and a great tool, especially for those new to the world of entrepreneurship and business. The episode Carol’s Daughter: Lisa Price is a favorite one.
Ultimately, Boamah has learned to identify the onset of burnout before it becomes something more unwieldy. For her, those signs include:
· Extended periods of not feeling excited about work
· Increased levels of anxiety
· Feeling overwhelming tiredness
According to the Mayo Clinic, these are classic symptoms of job burnout. They also pinpoint the following identifiers:
· Becoming cynical or critical at work
· Becoming irritable or impatient with co-workers, customers, or clients
· Finding it hard to concentrate
· Lacking satisfaction from your achievements
· Using food, drugs, or alcohol to feel better or simply not to feel
· Experiencing changed sleep habits, unexplained headaches, stomach or bowel problems, or other physical complaints
Recently, Boamah was able to take a 10-day vacation, crediting her assistant and her team who were able to manage operations independently in her absence. Investment in her team was critical to Boamah, who believes wellness to be inherent not only in the products she makes but also in the way she manages Hanahana personnel. “It’s all about being able to build a supportive team that knows how to do work without you,” she explained. “A CEO does not have to be involved in the production every day.”
Here’s how Boamah pours into her team.
Boamah saw the value in investing in her employees early. She is adamant about seeing her team as people first—not just employees—and makes it a point to know their interests and aspirations. “I like to ask our staff what they want and what they aspire to. We want to make sure that people are heard and acknowledged in a way other than someone who just works here.”
Boamah believes that CEOs should serve their employees as much as the employees serve the company. Thus, Boamah takes an “Ask not what your [employees] can do for you” approach and regularly asks herself how she can best serve her staff. This servant-first mentality inspires confidence, respect, and loyalty from her team.
Boamah believes in putting self-care on the calendar for both herself and her team. This manifests with scheduled wellness activities like Wellness Mondays, where she brings aboard a yoga practitioner to work with her employees, and quarterly self-care meetings with wellness expert Alex Elle, who works with Hanahana staff in person and virtually.
Boamah encourages her team to read Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, which outlines fundamental principles she believes can be applied to work at Hanahana. She rattles them off: “Be impeccable with your word. Don’t take anything personally. Don’t make assumptions. Always do your best.”
Creating an environment that encourages her team to be their best selves helps them all be ready to face the vicissitudes of each day. “With quarantine and the pandemic, you have to take things minute by minute,” she says.
Boamah saw the value in investing in her employees early. She is adamant about seeing her team as people first—not just employees—and makes it a point to know their interests and aspirations. “I like to ask our staff what they want and what they aspire to. We want to make sure that people are heard and acknowledged in a way other than someone who just works here.”
Boamah believes that CEOs should serve their employees as much as the employees serve the company. Thus, Boamah takes an “Ask not what your [employees] can do for you” approach and regularly asks herself how she can best serve her staff. This servant-first mentality inspires confidence, respect, and loyalty from her team.
Boamah believes in putting self-care on the calendar for both herself and her team. This manifests with scheduled wellness activities like Wellness Mondays, where she brings aboard a yoga practitioner to work with her employees, and quarterly self-care meetings with wellness expert Alex Elle, who works with Hanahana staff in person and virtually.
Boamah encourages her team to read Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, which outlines fundamental principles she believes can be applied to work at Hanahana. She rattles them off: “Be impeccable with your word. Don’t take anything personally. Don’t make assumptions. Always do your best.”
Creating an environment that encourages her team to be their best selves helps them all be ready to face the vicissitudes of each day. “With quarantine and the pandemic, you have to take things minute by minute,” she says.