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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Countless Podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by Schneider Electric,
[00:09] SPEAKER_00: supporting Canadian businesses with innovative energy management and automation solutions.
[00:15] SPEAKER_00: Schneider Electric, your digital partner for sustainability and efficiency.
[00:21] SPEAKER_03: Hello and welcome to Edmonton's podcast with Mario Tonoguzzi on Canada's podcast network.
[00:26] SPEAKER_03: Joining me today is Vanessa Marshall, who is CEO of Jack 59 in Edmonton.
[00:33] SPEAKER_03: Thanks for joining us today Vanessa.
[00:36] SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having us Mario.
[00:38] SPEAKER_03: Well tell me what Jack 59 is and what you do.
[00:42] SPEAKER_01: All right, Jack 59, we're a sustainable company, so we focus on sustainable hair care.
[00:48] SPEAKER_01: We do have some other body care items that we make.
[00:53] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we love to create new items that are sustainable.
[00:59] SPEAKER_01: We have a little bit of a, you know, some of our items are available for refill.
[01:02] SPEAKER_01: If we have a packaging that we can't, that we can't eliminate 100%.
[01:07] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we try to put the actual goodness into the sustainable product.
[01:13] SPEAKER_01: So that people, it's an easy transition for people to lower their carbon footprint.
[01:20] SPEAKER_03: So, so things like like shampoos and conditioners, that type of stuff.
[01:26] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so and we're actually we have a few new items that are in the works.
[01:31] SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give you a little sneak peek of one of them because they're super cute.
[01:35] SPEAKER_01: So this is one of our, this is like a packaging, a typical packaging that we would have.
[01:40] SPEAKER_01: It's just a paper packaging.
[01:42] SPEAKER_01: So we have for hair mass.
[01:45] SPEAKER_01: So they're a little hurt.
[01:47] SPEAKER_01: And so you'll get four of them in there.
[01:49] SPEAKER_01: Super like top secret still.
[01:54] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we have like care masks, leave in conditioner.
[01:58] SPEAKER_01: We are just about to release a couple body wash bars.
[02:04] SPEAKER_01: We have a hair oil treatment.
[02:07] SPEAKER_01: We have lots of goodies.
[02:08] SPEAKER_01: We're coming up with some dog shampoos.
[02:11] SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
[02:13] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
[02:14] SPEAKER_01: We're we actually one of our creations that I'm really proud of is our shower container.
[02:20] SPEAKER_01: So it's actually it looks like it's plastic and the lid becomes the face, but it's actually 100% home compostable.
[02:29] SPEAKER_01: So it's made out of sugars and starch and eventually it will just fire the green.
[02:35] SPEAKER_01: When did Jack 59 start?
[02:38] SPEAKER_01: So we've been around since about 2015 early in 2015.
[02:43] SPEAKER_01: It took me a little while to get my focus on to what I actually wanted to make.
[02:47] SPEAKER_01: We adaptable in all kinds of beauty products, lotions, bath bombs, whatnot, but it was my own personal experience.
[02:56] SPEAKER_01: Actually, I got me into the hair care really the shampoo bars.
[03:01] SPEAKER_01: The shadow and conditioner bars are on main focus.
[03:03] SPEAKER_01: That's really what are you know, that's our mean product.
[03:06] SPEAKER_01: That's what we love to always, you know, offer to people and keep improving it as we learn.
[03:14] SPEAKER_03: So how did you like started?
[03:16] SPEAKER_03: Like why what was the reason for beginning this journey?
[03:21] SPEAKER_01: So in the in the very beginning, I'm actually a dental assistant by trade.
[03:25] SPEAKER_01: So my but my child was in daycare all day and I had gone to the university of Alberta to do pre-med to be a dentist.
[03:36] SPEAKER_01: But I went to go visit an old dentist and realized they were in the same doing the exact same things in the same office.
[03:44] SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh my gosh, I just can't.
[03:47] SPEAKER_01: It wasn't something that I'm kind of an adventurous spirit.
[03:50] SPEAKER_01: I need that I need to have change and creativity in my life.
[03:54] SPEAKER_01: And it just wasn't going to happen.
[03:56] SPEAKER_01: So I actually just went back to dental assisting and then eventually I just quit.
[04:01] SPEAKER_01: I called my boss and said, I'm not coming back.
[04:03] SPEAKER_01: I can't do this anymore.
[04:05] SPEAKER_01: So I got to have my daughter at home.
[04:08] SPEAKER_01: And then, but then I got bored and I needed to come up with something.
[04:11] SPEAKER_01: So this really made sense for me.
[04:14] SPEAKER_01: I love the creativity.
[04:15] SPEAKER_01: I was doing the pre-med, gave me a lot of chemistry background.
[04:20] SPEAKER_01: So it was also very intriguing to know, you know, to kind of dabble into what other people were doing and realizing, like, this could be done better.
[04:30] SPEAKER_01: So and then eventually a few years into the business when I really started to focus on the hair care was because we were actually traveling.
[04:38] SPEAKER_01: And I had a shampoo bar with me from another company.
[04:43] SPEAKER_01: And it drove my scalp bonkers.
[04:46] SPEAKER_01: It was terrible. I was itching.
[04:48] SPEAKER_01: I was so annoyed.
[04:50] SPEAKER_01: So we actually had to go purchase some, you know, liquid shampoo.
[04:53] SPEAKER_01: And then it really made me kind of like, okay, like what's happening here?
[04:57] SPEAKER_01: Why is this, you know, so irritating?
[05:00] SPEAKER_01: So it was, you know, it literally took me a matter of maybe 10, 15 minutes of research.
[05:04] SPEAKER_01: And I knew instantly what was the problem.
[05:09] SPEAKER_01: So and I kind of had that aha moment.
[05:12] SPEAKER_01: This is it. This is this is the product that I want to make and improve.
[05:17] SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't find an option in the world that was focused on the hair care as opposed to justice sustainability portion.
[05:24] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[05:25] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. It was, you know, it became, it became Jack 59.
[05:30] SPEAKER_01: And I call, I say that's when we truly began because that's when my passion really became apparent for the products.
[05:39] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that was, that was how we came up.
[05:42] SPEAKER_03: So tell me like, where does Jack 59 come from?
[05:46] SPEAKER_03: What is that name signify?
[05:49] SPEAKER_01: Right. So when we started, we, so before we started, we should say we lived in Northern Alberta, a very rural area.
[05:59] SPEAKER_01: And the little dog came out of the forest.
[06:02] SPEAKER_01: And he was not doing great.
[06:04] SPEAKER_01: He's starving and hitchhikers all over him.
[06:06] SPEAKER_01: And my daughter who was worth a ton of things to take him in and fix him up.
[06:11] SPEAKER_01: So we did.
[06:12] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I was like, we're not going to keep him.
[06:15] SPEAKER_01: We're going to take him to the town when he's also.
[06:17] SPEAKER_01: Of course, that didn't happen.
[06:18] SPEAKER_01: So I said, you need to pick a name for him.
[06:21] SPEAKER_01: And she just worded it out.
[06:22] SPEAKER_01: Jack 59.
[06:24] Speaker UNKNOWN: Oh, wow.
[06:24] SPEAKER_01: It's like interesting name for a dog.
[06:26] SPEAKER_01: Makes me wonder where the other 58 were, but.
[06:30] SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, so that little puppy though didn't stick around kind of pulled a little less to go and left us.
[06:38] SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
[06:38] SPEAKER_01: That day, so like literally that she aimed him and then he was gone and she was heartbroken.
[06:45] SPEAKER_01: She cried.
[06:46] SPEAKER_01: I'm not getting for probably too weak straight.
[06:48] SPEAKER_01: Oh, man.
[06:49] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was, it was terrible situation.
[06:52] SPEAKER_01: We searched for him, but we couldn't find him.
[06:55] SPEAKER_01: So it's very common in the room.
[06:58] SPEAKER_01: In those towns for dogs to just kind of wander away and then wander back home.
[07:02] SPEAKER_01: So we hope that he was doing fine and all, but years later when we started the company, we were looking for a very unique name.
[07:09] SPEAKER_01: And she kind of came up to us all like, you know, it was all key.
[07:13] SPEAKER_01: And so can we just use the name Jack 59 so that we can remember them forever?
[07:17] SPEAKER_01: And at first I was like, oh my goodness.
[07:20] SPEAKER_01: What am I going to do with that?
[07:22] SPEAKER_01: But when I started processing it, it really sounded like a name that belonged in a salon.
[07:28] SPEAKER_01: And really that's where we wanted to focus on was true professional hair care salon quality.
[07:34] SPEAKER_01: So if we we kept it and it's grown ever since.
[07:38] SPEAKER_01: And I'll actually give you a little tidbit a little inside information.
[07:42] SPEAKER_01: So we're actually releasing a sub brand right away called Mela by Jack 59.
[07:50] SPEAKER_01: So my daughter throughout COVID has experienced some mental health issues and challenges and some anxiety through just, you know, not being with her.
[07:59] SPEAKER_01: She's 11 now.
[08:00] SPEAKER_01: So just being away from her friends and stuff has created some issues.
[08:04] SPEAKER_01: So we put her into counseling and she's doing great.
[08:07] SPEAKER_01: I'm not she's doing really well, but we got her a little emotional support puppy.
[08:12] SPEAKER_01: So and she's tiny she's a little tiny black puppy.
[08:15] SPEAKER_01: She's happy to have you working and she named her Mela.
[08:19] SPEAKER_01: So we thought it was really fitting that we did the sub brand with her new puppy.
[08:24] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's going to be some accessories.
[08:26] SPEAKER_01: We're going to have some hair care, some scrunchies, some chowel wraps, some really fun products in there.
[08:33] SPEAKER_01: So we'll be releasing that probably it's going to be a little while maybe a longer to still, but yeah, new things going.
[08:42] SPEAKER_00: At Schneider Electric, we empower Canadian businesses to utilize energy and resources efficiently Schneider Electric, the future of energy.
[08:54] SPEAKER_03: And then just to let people know we are taping this interview on May 28th.
[09:01] SPEAKER_03: So so it'll it'll appear in a future time, but I'm sure that the stuff will be out there at that time.
[09:11] SPEAKER_03: Tell me what you like about being an entrepreneur Vanessa.
[09:16] SPEAKER_01: You can answer the question.
[09:18] SPEAKER_01: It's an amazing feeling.
[09:21] SPEAKER_01: There's a you work twice as hard.
[09:24] SPEAKER_01: You have twice the amount of stress that you would have at a normal job, but the rewards are beyond anything that I can describe.
[09:33] SPEAKER_01: I mean, now we're you know, we're getting to a part where there's like a financial aspect that can be you know up and down.
[09:41] SPEAKER_01: You really have to have a certain type of personality to really be able to jump in and take some rest that maybe the average person wouldn't take.
[09:50] SPEAKER_01: So you know, maybe I'm a bit of a addictive personality.
[09:55] SPEAKER_01: So having those kind of little adrenaline rushes and like we're going to do this and you get into creating a product and it's it's super exciting.
[10:04] SPEAKER_01: Then there's another aspect of it where we've actually grown this amazing team of women.
[10:10] SPEAKER_01: So that that is super important to me.
[10:14] SPEAKER_01: I you know, as a woman in working in the world, well, I went through having children and whatnot.
[10:22] SPEAKER_01: I have lost positions in my life just because my husband was a breadwinner.
[10:27] SPEAKER_01: If we had a sick child, I was the one who had to stay home.
[10:31] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[10:31] SPEAKER_01: So in the dental field, there's not much leeway, you know, there's no there's no patience for compassion for that.
[10:38] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I am I'm able to provide them with you know, a stable work environment where we can we can become a team and you know and make decisions together.
[10:50] SPEAKER_01: I I love having their involvement.
[10:54] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and then we also have the opportunity where somebody needs to take the day off.
[10:59] SPEAKER_01: They can take the day off and I don't I don't have to be like, you know, I'm not, you know, I don't need anything.
[11:05] SPEAKER_01: If you need the day off, you tell me you want the day off and you can have the job and the girls, you know, you would people are like, well, don't take advantage of that.
[11:13] SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't really happen because when you enjoy being at your job, you know, you'll take the time you need and you'll be here, you know, for the rest of it.
[11:24] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, but yeah, it's amazing. It really is amazing.
[11:28] SPEAKER_03: What is you know, when you look at your journey in this entrepreneurial world, what areas kind of help you along that path?
[11:38] SPEAKER_03: Like were there people that gave you advice and certain pieces of that advice that you remember the most that resonated with you?
[11:47] SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
[11:48] SPEAKER_01: You know, my father was in entrepreneur.
[11:52] SPEAKER_01: Most of my like my sister is an entrepreneur. My brother is an entrepreneur. So my whole family really are entrepreneurs.
[11:59] SPEAKER_01: So that that always kind of been ingrained in me as to, you know, that that is a potential lifestyle.
[12:10] SPEAKER_01: Other women, I follow a lot of other companies. So I'm actually meet you. So my mom is full of creep.
[12:18] SPEAKER_01: So I follow and listen to a lot of other Aboriginal women entrepreneurs, you know, to name a couple. There's one in particular, the owner of Satya Organic.
[12:34] SPEAKER_01: She's an amazing lady. She does speeches.
[12:39] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm in a group of women called the no women. I don't get to participate as much as I like to because I'm very busy, but really finding your people, you know, finding like-minded women, really not taking no for an answer.
[12:58] SPEAKER_01: I think there's also just a personality type that I don't often talk about this and I don't like this to be a focus, but actually have a background in addiction.
[13:10] SPEAKER_01: And so through my dealings with that, those personality traits can really be turned around and they can really be put into a positive aspect.
[13:24] SPEAKER_01: So really that's what happened and I talk about having an addictive personality. It kind of how it's because you really want to like when you find something that's positive and you focus that energy towards it, you can really, you have the tendency in the, in the, in the
[13:40] SPEAKER_01: drive to get it done. And that is a unique characteristic for entrepreneurs. So.
[13:46] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's interesting. So I'm curious. Your other family members, what kind of businesses that they have?
[13:54] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure. So my dad owned an electrical company for most of my life and so my husband actually did his apprenticeship through my father. So now my husband is also an electrician.
[14:09] SPEAKER_01: My sister owns a coffee shop in high prairie Alberta. So that that little shop is called Fresh Inspirations. It's a gorgeous shop. She's an amazingly creative woman.
[14:21] SPEAKER_01: And so she's very passionate about that. And my brother is in the oil field industry. So he has a couple of businesses. He has a picker truck and he does some lumber and whatnot. He has a little meal and yeah.
[14:35] SPEAKER_01: So very, very prosperous company for sure.
[14:41] SPEAKER_03: Yeah. So it's obviously quite nice and great to have people close to you that are sharing kind of the journey with you. Right. And yeah.
[14:53] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely because there's challenges that you know that I would you know if you're not an entrepreneur, you wouldn't you wouldn't understand it. And there's also passions that you get to share that other people don't necessarily understand, right.
[15:09] SPEAKER_01: Sometimes my husband is like, you know, you're talking about the, you know, the things that meet me super excited about the business. So yeah, it's great to have that support and yeah.
[15:23] SPEAKER_03: What do you think since you started the business, what have been the biggest challenges you've faced being an entrepreneur?
[15:35] SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll tell you one of the biggest challenges is definitely financial. I mean, in order to expand and grow a company needs that you know capital income.
[15:47] SPEAKER_01: So I've been very fortunate because I'm meeting in Alberta. There's a company called a key to go sand. So they offer business loans and part of that is a grant to entrepreneurs who are doing businesses and indifferent.
[16:06] SPEAKER_01: I believe there's different categories and why not. But yeah, so we've actually been fortunate to be accepted for a couple loans to go through our expansion. So a portion of that is a grant, which I am like I am forever grateful for because it was really.
[16:26] SPEAKER_01: It was really our kickstart that really got us started. So yeah, that definitely is one of the one of the biggest challenges. I mean, it is what it is. You need money to expand and that, you know, so yeah, very grateful for that.
[16:43] SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's always challenges I guess knowing knowing how to grow and knowing at what rate to grow. That's a really big challenge and we're, you know, when it comes down still.
[16:59] SPEAKER_01: I have a wonderful team. We have a social media team. We have a media team. I have the team of girls here. But often I just I'm still wearing a lot of hat. So yeah, I mean, but I always wanted to keep. There's a big part. There's two parts that are super important to me of this company.
[17:19] SPEAKER_01: One of them is the person to person communication with our clients and the customers. I always wanted to be on that front line. So if, if any person who purchased is one of our products has something that they need, you know, questions or feedback or something is not 100% working for them.
[17:40] SPEAKER_01: I want to be that person to answer that question. If they can call me, I put my phone number everywhere. So that because I wanted that isn't it the most frustrating thing to, you know, love a product, but you have an issue and you can't talk to somebody about it.
[17:55] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the worst feeling ever. So I always wanted to maintain that. It is a little challenging time wise, but I will do that for as long as I can in as much as I can. And the other challenges I still formulate all of our new product.
[18:11] SPEAKER_02: Oh, well.
[18:11] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there's, you know, we have to go through working out the formula itself. We have to go through the testing. And then I actually have to go through creating the packaging for that because there's a lot of technical names and stuff that, you know, I haven't incorporated somebody into my team yet to do that.
[18:29] SPEAKER_01: It's like giving away little pieces of your babies.
[18:33] SPEAKER_01: I haven't been able to give that one away yet.
[18:38] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, we overcome all of our challenges and we throw and move on. And yeah, a new ones come along.
[18:45] SPEAKER_03: Well, you once come along. We've had a big one here in the last year or so, right with the pandemic. I'm just curious of, you know, Vanessa, what do you think you've learned as a business owner throughout this year and a bit through the pandemic?
[19:02] SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the biggest things is really to trust myself.
[19:08] SPEAKER_01: We have had some consultants come on board. I'm all about getting feedback and listening to people and groups and whatnot.
[19:17] SPEAKER_01: But I've also had gut feelings about certain things and I've listened to other people.
[19:22] SPEAKER_01: And I feel like those were some of our biggest mistakes.
[19:27] SPEAKER_01: So it's staying true to my self and where I want the company to go is really important that I learned that through because the when COVID hit, we really had to pivot to, we really had to pivot.
[19:45] SPEAKER_01: But we didn't have any packaging in the very beginning. And I wanted to keep it like that because our focus is, you know, sustainability. We don't, you know, we, that wasn't our intention.
[19:56] SPEAKER_01: But we, so we have probably 150 retail locations across Canada.
[20:03] SPEAKER_01: And some of our retailers were finding that people were not trusting our product in the sense that they didn't want to touch it or they thought somebody else may be touched it because there was no packaging.
[20:14] SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see.
[20:16] SPEAKER_01: So that was one of our biggest COVID challenges is we really just took, we dove in. We created paper packaging for all of our product.
[20:25] SPEAKER_01: So we did a rebrand at the same time. We brought on an amazing branding company called Curio Studios.
[20:32] SPEAKER_01: They're fantastic company. But they're actually doing the rebrand, are not the rebrand, the new branding for our sub brand, we love now.
[20:39] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I mean, we were super fortunate. People started focusing more on buying local through COVID.
[20:47] SPEAKER_01: Because we had great push from all of our local people supporting us. We did the rebrand.
[20:54] SPEAKER_01: And we are one of the fortunate companies that we, and we increased our staff from, we have members to we have now have eight.
[21:04] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I mean, we've been very fortunate through COVID and again, all new challenges, but we're here and we're doing great.
[21:13] SPEAKER_03: Happy and then get into the dentist area that.
[21:16] SPEAKER_01: Right.
[21:18] SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of dentist offices getting closed where we are here.
[21:22] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[21:23] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a wise and career choice, obviously.
[21:27] SPEAKER_01: I can't imagine my spirit if I was, you know, yeah, I'm happy was it was a great choice for sure.
[21:37] SPEAKER_03: Well, thanks a lot for joining us today Vanessa. That was great.
[21:41] SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Mario. It was a pleasure. Absolutely.
[21:44] SPEAKER_03: Okay, super. That was Vanessa Marshall, who is CEO of Jack 59 in Edmonton.
[21:50] SPEAKER_03: This has been Edmonton's podcast with Mario Tomaguzzi on Canada's podcast network. Thanks for joining us today.
[21:59] SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by Schneider Electric supporting Canadian businesses with innovative energy management and automation solutions.
[22:07] SPEAKER_00: Schneider Electric, your digital partner for sustainability and efficiency.
