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A Publication of The Handmade Beauty Network
ISSN 1530-9630 | Vol. 5, Issue 14
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Foaming Oat Facial Cleanser is an easy to make recipe that will leave your skin feeling clean, soft and refreshed!

New Features At MakeYourCosmetics.com! Register to enjoy printable recipes, site user recipe ratings and your own personal recipe book! HBN members are automatically registered using their usernames and passwords! To register, just click here!! 

When you visit MakeYourCosmetics.com, it's easy to buy the ingredients you need by clicking on our Selected Supplier links:

Essential Wholesale: pure essential oils, over 200 cosmetic bases, hundreds of carrier/fixed oils such as meadowfoam, cranberry, jojoba and shea butter plus a new Short Run Private Labeling Program!

Bramble Berry, Inc.: over 105 different fragrance and essential oils (including their exclusive "Energy" and "Relaxing"), all soap tested, soap molds and unscented soap bases!

SunRose Aromatics: pure essential oils (many organic), carrier oils and other aromatherapy products, each carefully selected for quality. Check out their new Perfumer's Emporium.

The Scent Shack: fragrance oils and soap supplies. Fragrance oils are pre-tested in cold process, melt & pour soap, and candles, and test results are listed at the Web site. Scents tested by soapers for soapers!

From Nature With Love: over 1,600 ingredients and supplies, including cosmetic ingredients, spa supplies, bath accessories and packaging supplies!

This Week's Question: I am a chemical that occurs in essential oils. I am potentially toxic and can harm the skin when an essential oil containing me is applied topically. Examples of me are bergaptene and citronene and I occur in angelica and ammi visnaga oils, among others. What am I?

Be the first to correctly answer this week's question and win a bar of Coffee & Vanilla soap!

Please read the contest rules here before submitting your entry. Put "TRIVIA CONTEST ANSWER" in the subject line or your answer will not be considered.

While time does not permit me to respond personally to all entrants, the winner's name will be announced in the next newsletter!

To be sure, there is no one core group of traits that guarantees the success or failure of a Lifestyle CEO and her venture. In fact, one of the best things I've noticed about independent business owners is what a diverse group we are. Some are married and with or without children. Others are single and with or without children. Many have enjoyed decades as successful people in other lines of work while others are in their 20's just starting out. We come from all walks of life with various educational backgrounds. Thanks to the Internet, we're not even concentrated in particular areas of the country anymore! Take a look around you at the diverse lifestyles, priorities and talents of small business owners and you will see that there really is no pattern.

Having said that, as diverse as we are, to be successful, each of us must display certain characteristics from time to time, like it or not. This series of articles has attempted to identify some of the most valuable of those characteristics. I like to collectively refer to them as the FFOSH Factors. Here's a recap:

1. Flexibility. Because our businesses are not behemoths, we have the freedom to be flexible. Failure to exercise it could leave us in the dust of competitors that are either more agile or simply enormous.

2. Friends & Family. Because we are often in business alone, those closest to us can either be our greatest downfall or the wind beneath our wings. We don't get to choose family, but we can choose to give their comments -- both positive and negative -- the proper perspective. We can choose our friends, and any who are not sincerely supportive (although constructively critical at times) should be dropped like hot potatoes.

3. Open Mindedness. Being receptive to new possibilities is a big part of what will keep a business fresh and fun. We can't chase down every new thing, but we can learn to quickly judge what is and is not likely to be worth our time and pursue those things that seem to present to the most promising opportunities.

4. Stamina & Energy. Yes, we'd need a lot of energy and stamina to climb Mt. Everest, but nearly as much  to enjoy longevity as a small business owner. It's not stress-free -- it's anything but!! We must maintain energy and stamina for maximum success!

5. HUGE Thinking. No one ever got anywhere by thinking small. While, it takes small steps to accomplish anything of substance, in business, our reach should always exceed our grasp. In this way, we can think HUGE and accomplish HUGE things for ourselves, our families, our communities and our world.

Consider the FFOSH Factors often and observe how much you are called upon to display and exercise them. If any one of them does not naturally come easy for you, that's OK; excellence is just repetition in practice. As we grow our businesses and implement the FFOSH Factors over and over again, they take hold and begin to be part of the glue that binds us -- and our businesses -- together.

Visit our suite of Web sites serving the handmade toiletries industry:

HandmadeBeauty.com: the leading industry trade organization
MangoButter.com: 450+ suppliers of raw materials and packaging, updated weekly!
MakeYourCosmetics.com: ingredient encyclopedia & original cosmetics recipes
DonnaMaria.com: sound advice for your small business, Create The Life You Love™