SMALL SHOP BIG IDEAS
My name is Sabeerah Mohammed, I was born in Trinidad and Tobago. My mom would often refer to my energy as that of 10 sons. Today it is this same energy that I channel into my small business and I hope to help you build your own business too.
I began soap making in February 2017 in my first year of University while struggling to raise a young family single handedly without support, and studying for a degree in sociology. During a project I started talking to women about different ways we can create supplemental income and someone told me about soap making. I was very apprehensive as it seemed like a costly hobby, so my friends helped me to do a bake sale and I made close to $5000 with which I was able to buy my first set of items to make my own soaps. I sold little lip balms in college and by August that same year I registered my sole trader.
Apart from the therapeutic value and alleviating my anxiety, I was able to use the skills attained from soap making to create a great fallback or plan B. From selling soaps/balms to raw materials to finally a small shop. I want you to also consider this a plan B or an informative platform on several plan B options.
My small shop began in one of the spare bedrooms downstairs. Every day I would make one batch and slowly but surely it started adding up. I was now making batches everyday, practicing new recipes, making mistakes, levelling up the techniques, started doing courses online, getting to know social media, learning how to use instagram as a business tool and so much more.
By June 2020 I had my BSc. in Social Work and now I wanted a way to integrate my passion for this career of choice mine and still earn from it. The simple answer was Rumi Secrets, a business entity as a medium to engage with the community to provide raw materials, but to also teach and become part of the process and journey to self determination and achievement. As a single mom, I want to help other single moms. Empowering others is my dream, that I can actually earn a living from my crafts and materials and 'teach a (wo)man to fish', as the old adage goes.
So why not get in on an industry that is so diversified and important. Everyone bathes, washes clothes and dishes, we use soap products in our everyday lives. You don’t have to learn it all, you can learn one and go from there. Why wait for opportunities when they are all around us? My hope is to teach you about the skill and the resources we use to make soaps, resources that are all around us.
