Leslie Bradford-Scott is the founder of Walton Wood Farm, a line of cruelty-free and consciously-crafted personal care essentials. Thoughtfully-packaged and made with sustainable ingredients, Walton Wood Farm’s high-quality bath and body care essentials are free of harsh ingredients like SLS, Paraben, and Phthalate. They are also Vegetarian/ Vegan-Friendly and Gluten-Free!
Leslie and her husband launched Walton Wood Farm with several goals in mind:
- Create a non-farming income to sustain themselves
- Create rural jobs
- Save historic 1850s barns for future generations, and
- Preserve their county’s agricultural history.
A former car salesperson and high school dropout, Leslie built her multi-million-dollar brand by reading books and listening to long-drawn-out podcasts from the world’s greatest thinkers.
What is Walton Wood Farm all about?
Combining tongue-in-cheek humor with the sweet sentiments of your favorite greeting card, Walton Wood Farm tackles the world of gift-giving with our expansive line of women’s, men’s, and pet bath and body products. Walton Wood Farm is committed to creating high-quality products made with sustainable ingredients, helping to protect both our history and environment for future generations. With themes like Year from Hell, Nurse’s Rescue, Winter’s a B*tch, and Sh*t Storm Rescue, there is a Walton Wood Farm product for everyone on the gift-giving list.
Walton Wood Farm products are available online and in over 2500 brick-and-mortar stores across North America. The items are produced in seven different factories in the USA and Canada.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
In 2014, the idea of Walton Wood Farm was born to create a non-agricultural, diverse income for our family farm and to save our historic barns. I turned six-bath salts I made in my kitchen mixer into over 125 personal care products uniquely targeted as gifts and for self-care.
Instead of doing what everyone else was doing in the start-up world, I went old-school to test my business. I hoofed it down every small-town main street with my pick-up truck and cases of bath salts asking people to buy my products. And they did! I knew that face-to-face feedback was critical, and if the products didn’t sell themselves off the shelf, I better rethink my model before investing too much time or money.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
- Resilience – if you can’t zig and zag like a quarterback with 5 seconds left on the clock, you’re not going to make it. Plain and simple.
- Lifelong learner – if you don’t become your own expert in just about everything, you’ll miss opportunities, get ripped off, and never keep up with the competition. There are bad lawyers, bad accountants, and bad advisers. If you’re not constantly educating yourself, you’re relying on people whose performance you can’t audit or understand. I’ve fired a few bad apples, and I would have missed the cues if I didn’t speak the language. I’ve learned so much through reading books and listening to podcasts.
- Dogged determination – there are millions of jobs you don’t want to do, but you push through them because you must keep the giant stone flywheel turning. Otherwise, it will roll backward and crush you—and nobody wants that.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
We currently make products for him, her, and pets, and are expanding to offer products for baby, kits, gourmet food, and home. Each time we add a category, we increase the cart size and store range. We are positioning ourselves to be the “Hallmark Cards” of personal care, and we want to “own” the whole household.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
We speak fun themes! We meet the market by carefully watching and staying ahead of trends and using humor to engage the customers. When COVID-19 hit, we already had “Nurse’s Rescue” and “Week from Hell” collections, but quickly added “Front Line Rescue” and “Year from Hell” themes. We knew we needed optimism for 2021, so we launched the “Good JuJu” collection.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
- I was terrible at hiring. I’m an optimist, so I assume people are going to work out if they are eager and show interest. A bad hire can kill culture and a company, and I’ve made far too many of those mistakes. Bad hiring practices have created grief, financial disasters, and setbacks in growth. They’ve taken a heavy toll on me personally, too.
- Hiring the wrong bookkeeper and accountant. Manufacturing and scaling are specialized and require professionals who have experience. It can take years to untangle the mess made by the wrong professionals.
- I wish I had a partner to share the load with. Having someone with the opposite skills and a stake in the game can halve your workload and free your energy to work on the things you’re good at.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
Our products are built to market themselves right off the shelf, and most of our growth has been organic. I tried digital advertising, but the competition was fierce, and I felt like I was not getting a reasonable ROI.
I created two of my own podcasts; 15 Minute Wisdom, and ReWriting Dad, and made my company the midroll sponsor. It’s evergreen content that cost me nothing but my time.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
3rd party shipping and warehousing have nearly been the death of me. We’ve lost a couple hundred thousand dollars in theft, destroyed products, and inflated shipping costs. It’s taken six years, but carefully working on finding the right process and partners has found us at the end of our 3PL woes.
If you started your business again, what things would you do differently?
I would use the book Who by Randy Street and Geoff Smart as my playbook for hiring. I wouldn’t divert from it, and I would only hire A players. I’d be years ahead of where I am at today if I had started the company with a solid hiring process.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
- Monday.com – this is a great workbook for our team and projects, and to archive our procedures and assets.
- Slack – for team communication, especially with remote offices.
- Quickbooks Enterprise – this provides a powerful, cloud-based accounting engine built to scale.
Can you recommend one book, one podcast, and one online course for entrepreneurs and authors?
I love the Akimbo podcast by Seth Godin. He’s a genius marketer and offers a fresh take on culture, human behavior, and how they relate to marketing and product development.
If you only had 1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would start with one collection of six products, but not in the same category. I began with six bath salts and six themes. I should have started with one theme and six products: the “Week from Hell”, “Hand Rescue”, “bath salts“, “lip balm“, etc.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business?
I’m all in. At this stage of scaling, there is too much to lose to take my eye off the ball. I have to keep digging trenches, otherwise, the trenches will fill in… on top of me.
What is your favorite quote?
If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential
– Ray Dalio
What valuable advice would you give new entrepreneurs starting out?
See the above quote! It is so pertinent to do whatever you can to maximize your potential as a business owner. This means pushing the limits of your abilities.
Who should we interview next and why?
I think you should interview Sweet Reads Founders Kerrie and Mark Hansler. They are one of my B2B customers, and we supply products for their subscription boxes. You can find out more about them at Sweet Reads Box.
How can readers get in touch with you?
To get in touch, you can visit our website at Walton Wood Farm. You can also find me at my podcasts, 15minutewisdom.com and rewritingdad.ca.
Entrepreneur Interview: Chelsea Baldwin: Starting a Podcast to Support Your Business.
