Rachel & Rob Byrne, Founders of Wild Rose Botanicals
Wild Rose Botanicals is a husband and wife soap making duo whose story is so much more than soap and suds.
Rachel is originally from bright and sunny southern California brought to Ireland as a single mom studying abroad. Who fell in love with a charming and handsome Irish man named Rob who had some kiddos himself and they joined forces and have since added three more sweet babes to their Irish Brady bunch clan.
They share a deep connection for a natural and simple life filled with art, the outdoors, and using their hands to create. They had a stirring passion for expanding our knowledge and a thirst for new and shared creative outlets, so they decided to try their hand at soap making. The rest is history!
They create soap from the traditional cold process technique. It's the perfect way to honour and incorporate everything that they love and believe in.
From the gentle stirring of oils to the final cut of soap, they handcraft all their products using only the finest 100% natural and organic ingredients from the wilderness to create an eco-friendly product that is safe for both your family and the environment.
Their family thrives on the importance of living a natural and chemical-free life, and making handmade soap is their way of sharing their passion and introducing others to skincare products that are cleansing, beneficial and beautiful without harsh chemicals and synthetic ingredients!
They believe that there is nothing more rewarding than creating a lovely product that will help others achieve their goal of living a healthier and natural lifestyle.
Tell us about your current role and what you like about your career/role or areas of focus.
Together my husband, Rob and I are the founders of Wild Rose Botanicals. We create by hand in small batches of organic and vegan sustainable beauty products.
We LOVE what we do. It's truly a passion brought together by two people who found each other across oceans and continents, a love for the wild and ancestral wisdom of the past, shared visions of change, and driven by family.
It's an honour to work with each other as husband and wife, mama and dada, and as partners in business.
Rob: For me, I personally enjoy that working with plants and making soap involves more precision, math and science then one might expect. It is the alchemy of working with raw ingredients and finding a synergy between them and then infusing the innate power of essential oils to help, heal, and bring positive energy to those that use our products.
Rachel: I love that my role in this business embraces and pushes my creative soul. I've always been inspired by art, culture, history and past knowledge. As an artistic person, I always dabbled and bounced betweens modalities of creating —writing, painting, weaving/fiber arts, pottery, etc. Somehow magically this business has brought all of this together, and I get to bring my visions to life, create these beautiful bars of soap, potions, name and design them, and then bring our offerings to you with love and intention.
What inspires you, motivates you, helps you to make each day count?
We are both deeply inspired by nature and our travels. Memories and places are something I'm always striving to evoke through smell and colour so getting outside and being surrounded by nature is always a source of inspiration.
And without meaning to sound cliche, we are motivated by the desire to do good in this world - bring some positivity, enact change and hopefully encourage people to think about natural beauty and living.
Outside of your professional work area, what hobbies or interests do you have or what other areas of your life are of real importance to you?
Our business grew out of what we were already doing as a family, learning to become wholly self-sufficient - grow our own food, wholesome nutrient-dense cooking from scratch, learning old traditions such as making bone broth, sourdough, learning to weave, natural cleaning/ditching all the chemicals and obviously soap making was born out this craving for knowledge.
Rob and I are perfectionists by nature and get bored, so we are always looking for a new challenge! We also have five kids and are expecting another baba in October, so the family is probably the glue that keeps us centered, and we always come back to as being the most important no matter how busy life gets.
When it comes to your life chosen career, is there a phrase, quote or saying that you really like?
Rob: I personally live by the belief that everything can be achieved; nothing is too impossible or out of reach.
Rachel: Throughout life, this quote has always grounded me. "Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something." - Henry David Thoreau
What are you most proud of in your life?
Hands down our love story, our marriage, and our children. It's what we pray stands the test of time and becomes a beautiful legacy to our family.
What do you wish you had known when you started out?
Rob is the risk-taker, and I'm a striving perfectionist, so it took much convincing and pushing me off the edge of the cliff on his part into starting our own business.
I felt like we had to be "ready" that every detail needed to be practically perfect in every way for me to launch, and that's a downright lie.
Probably not only in running your own business but in life, drop the ego, the self-doubt, the feelings of failure before you even start and just JUMP!
Heart first into whatever sets your soul on fire and figure out the rest as you go. That's where the magic is at!
Who do you most admire in business, academic or creative circles?
Honestly, the movers and the shakers who are bringing transparency back to business.
It's not trendy to be "organic" or "sustainable" and not mean it on the back of your label or be capitalizing on the backs of others. These "buzz words" should be part and parcel of the fabric of society.
It's a huge reason why I love living in Ireland and seeing that shopping local is a way of life and small business is what makes this country so vibrant!
What companies, brands, or institutions do you like or do you think are right?
I love businesses with a story and who are brave enough to share their beauty with the world (I'm a sucker for aestheticism).
I've followed Rifle Paper Co who are stateside for ages and love that they bring detail, colour, and playfulness into everyday items. Did I mention they are a husband and wife duo!
Here in Ireland, one of the first companies I fell in love with was Folkster. In a moment it brought me back home to California filled with all my boho and goddess dreams, gorgeous homewares and thoughtfully curated pieces, female-owned and Irish grown what's more to want!
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Rachel: My grandma when I was younger said that "each moment is just a chapter in the journey, and you have to enjoy them all because it will be a part of shaping you into who you are." I never thought much about that at the time, but how true it is!
I would have never imagined that all the twists and turns would have led to where I am today. A little cracked with experience, a lot loved, somewhere wildly beautiful, and more than I could have ever dreamed of!
What drives or motivates you each day in a work environment?
We work from home and have to work around the hours of our kids, so that's mostly into the wee hours of the night, but we love getting to spend time with one another, stirring oils, cutting soaps, mixing potions it's when the magic happens.
We are motivated by the desire to provide for our family, help others and hopefully educate them about plant medicine.
What are your thoughts on the future of social media?
I think social media is a great place to discover new and exciting businesses, and it's important to have a social media presence these days, but it would be nice to see people unplug from it and realize that it's a false reality.
Even as a business, social media can paint self-employment in a glamorous light of flat lays and preset coordinated grids, but it rarely shows the blood, sweat and tears it takes to build all that.
Is any social media work that you like/follow and why?
@jessicadefino_ is one of my very favorites to see pop on my feed. She's calling bull on the beauty industry and leading the conversation in what is really hidden in the products that line your beauty cabinet while promoting less is more, sustainability and beauty from the soul. A real soul sista!
Do you have a mentor, or have you ever been a mentor to anyone?
Not necessarily. We'd like to think that everyone we meet and encounter we can learn something from or share something with.
Young or old, book smart, street smart, well educated or self-taught, there is an enormous wealth of knowledge that we can gain from others. Mother Nature by far, though is our biggest teacher if we only just listen.
How do you network? What is your preferred way to network?
In-person! Nothing beats good old' fashion in-person networking and conversations!
What advice would you have for someone looking to get into the same area of work?
Read books, watch videos online, take workshops, ask questions and most importantly decide what your values are. There's plenty of soapers and natural beauty product makers who use fragrance oil, micas for colors, "safe synthetic" fillers, plastic packaging, etc.
But by knowing your values from the beginning, it keeps you from being blinded by what others are doing or what trends may be hot for a moment.
What do you feel is the most common reason for people failing or giving up?
I think most people give up way too soon mostly because their hearts are not truly in the work they are doing, they want easy success or believe that cutting corners is the way to get there, but that never works out in the long run.
There's also the other people who are so afraid to fail that they never even try, and people who fail and let that define them. But the thing about failure is that it has so much to teach us, we need to be able to fail, dust ourselves off, learn from it, and move forward.
How do you define success, and what lessons have you learned so far that you could share with our audience?
Success is as big or as little as you make it.
Sometimes we get lost in the big overall goal that we lose sight of the everyday victories! Celebrate everything!
What skills do you feel have helped you to become successful?
Being willing to put yourself out there to learn and try new things, opening up to the flow of creativity, and getting back to basic skills of doing it yourself can get you pretty far in life.
Between Rob and myself, we have had our fair share of odd jobs, degrees, and life experience and that has gotten us further than any business degree or course ever could get you.
Is there anything new that you are working on or involved in that you would like to share?
Oh, there's always a new project in the works for us! Currently, it's getting a website up and running, a line of mama & baba offerings, and herbal hair rituals.