Meet Morgan Rasmussen of REBL Jane & The Clean Beauty Confidential in Fort Collins

Today we’d like to introduce you to Morgan Rasmussen.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Morgan. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
My entrepreneurial journey started when I was 24 years old working in commercial insurance. Sitting behind a desk every day sifting through policies and contracts wasn’t exactly the creative path I was hoping to be on right out of college! At that time, my entrepreneurial spouse had opened his first restaurant and was prepping for expansion.

I remember driving down to Kansas City one day with our dog to visit family when I began concepting my very first brand. I had been on the hunt for an eco-friendly dog collar/leash set for our new furry family member and was struggling to find something that met my needs! What I wanted was something with vibrant patterns, eco-friendly/natural, sustainable and urban, but everything on the market at that time was very “granola” with muted/neutral tones + nylon webbing.

That 3-hour drive was when I finally decided to take the leap and launch PINC Paw (Pooches In Natural Collars). This was the day I said yes to creating a business plan and building out the brand. The following Monday I went back to my 40 hour/week job and spent every other waking moment on my new startup. Lots of early mornings and late nights for sure!

Over the next few months, I went from contracting a local seamstress to fulfill the one-off orders I had coming in to outsourcing to a manufacturing facility shipping hundreds of units to dog boutiques across the US and Australia. I remember my first meeting with the largest retail franchise, called Three Dog Bakery. I was so nervous walking in with my brand and products, but they fell in love, placed an order for over 100 units and solidified me as a preferred vendor for all of their franchised locations.

Looking back, I was so green as an entrepreneur (I eventually sold the company in 2013), but gosh I learned so much about my self during that process. I learned a heck of a lot about sourcing raw materials from other countries, website coding, e-commerce and marketing via the old fashion “knocking on doors.”

PINC Paw was the confidence booster I needed for myself. It was the “See, you CAN do this. You can take risks. You can and will make mistakes – but you have the drive+ the passion and you’re resilient!” I knew entrepreneurship was it for me.

A few years later my spouse Tyler sold his restaurants in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and we had the opportunity to work/partner as franchise owners of a retail supplement chain on the East Coast. Tyler took on the role of operations and I headed up the marketing for all of our locations. This was our first stab at working together and it wouldn’t be our last!

A few years into this venture (and a baby boy later) I became enthralled with the environmental health movement having learned so much about this topic during my first pregnancy in wanting to birth and raise a healthy human! It was at that time that I found a newer startup based out of Santa Monica California called Beautycounter – a company dedicated to education, safety and whose mission was to get safer personal care products into the hands of everyone. Many don’t know that there’s a lack of regulation/oversight in the personal care industry which means we’re often exposed to health-harming chemicals and ingredients through our personal care and beauty products on the daily. Think hormone disruption, carcinogenic chemicals with links to various forms of cancer, reproductive issues, allergens, and more.

I joined forces with Beautycounter as an educator just two weeks before my due date with our first son Brooks and never looked back! Today I lead a team that has helped to place millions of dollars of cleaner beauty/personal care products into the homes of many across the US and Canada.

Meanwhile (because entrepreneurs get antsy) – my husband and I sold our nutrition stores on the East Coast and moved our little family to Fort Collins, CO in 2016. In 2018 (after the birth of our second baby boy) Tyler and I were itching to fill a void we saw in the supplement market. Having prior experience in the industry, it was a no brainer for us to explore launching our own brand/concept that would cater to the “modern woman” through smart supplementation. In June of 2019, REBL Jane was born and we launched with our first product called “Stress Fighter.” After polling hundreds of women, we knew stress was the number 1 issue women today are battling. With careers, babies, side hustles, gym time, meal prep and just trying to “do it all” – it’s no wonder high achievers are stressed to the max!

When we concepted REBL Jane, we knew we wanted to be more than a product company. We wanted to create both amazing products for the Modern Woman and relevant content that would give value back to our community. Our focus right now is keeping hyper-focused on listening to our community and working with our team to develop great content. Simultaneously we’re hard at work developing additional supplements that can help high-performing women optimize their health. So far the launch has been successful and we’re getting fantastic feedback about Stress Fighter!

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Is entrepreneurship ever a smooth road? Heck no! You go through it and you GROW through it. Everyday is an uphill battle of overthinking everything while trying to scale, stay relevant, hire the right team (also firing accordingly), fine-tune your operations, marketing, investments and the list goes on and on!

I feel as though my first business was the one that taught me that you can’t do it all – you’re only one person. You must hone in on your absolute strengths and outsource your weaknesses in order to grow and scale quickly. I remember researching sewing machines and where to take classes thinking I was going to make the products myself out of my basement – ha! After many long nights of trying to teach myself how to build a website (10 years ago you had to know code – building a website today is a piece of cake!), I hired a web designer. And right before I sold I was looking to hire a sales team and find a warehouse to pack and ship my products. Of course this was all on a shoe-string budget. Looking back, I would have taken out a small business loan in order to scale and build more quickly!

When my husband and I owned the retail supplement stores, we had multiple locations and nothing can prepare you for going from one to two locations, especially when they were in different states! I’ll never forget the first few months of 2013. Our baby boy was six months old and we had lost a good portion of our team in one of our stores. So we packed up and we lived in an extended stay hotel Monday – Friday and would drive back home on the weekends. We did this for almost six weeks and yep…little Brooks made the trip each week too. Did it test our strength? Absolutely!

On the flip side, sometimes the struggle can lie in growing too quickly! While growth is always a major positive, it can leave you scrambling and unprepared. This was the case with my husband’s first restaurant and my current clean beauty business with Beautycounter. When I joined forces with Beautycounter I was also working 40(ish) hours a week with my husband as the Marketing Director for our retail supplement stores. Becoming a clean beauty advocate was something I didn’t intend on really growing/doing full time. But after a few months, the growth was happening at a pace where I needed to have that hard conversation with Tyler about where to place my time. I was a new mom with a baby at home. I was doing a lot of the marketing coordination with our retail stores and my Beautycounter business was taking off at a pace that was making it hard to juggle “all the things.” After quite a bit of discussion, we decided to hire someone to fill my full-time position within our own company, hire a nanny to help with our son and I dove headfirst into growing and scaling my newest venture. Because of this decision and having more time to allocate to this business, I grew my income over 600% in 2 years.

And of course our newest venture REBL Jane has its own series of challenges as a new startup. We’re in a really competitive marketplace and scaling a brand takes a lot of capital! Additionally when you’re starting a business, your team is usually small as you work to figure out what your needs will be. This mean a lot of the heavy lifting is on you!

REBL Jane & The Clean Beauty Confidential – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
So let me start with my role as a #cleanbeautyboss

We are leading a movement to a future where all beauty is clean beauty. We are powered by people, and our collective mission is to get safer products into the hands of everyone. Formulate, advocate, & educate—that’s our motto for creating products that truly perform while holding ourselves to unparalleled standards of safety. Why? It’s really this simple: beauty should be good for you.

Decades of studies indicate that serious health issues (including but not limited to asthma, cancer, and infertility) are on the rise and are due in some part to our ongoing exposure to toxic chemicals—whether it’s in the shower, on our commute, while we eat lunch at a local restaurant, or when we clean our kitchens at home.

There are more than 80,000 chemicals on the market today. Many don’t have any safety data. This is particularly true of those used in the skincare and beauty industry.

What’s worse is that the Food and Drug Administration (the agency that regulates cosmetics in the United States) does not have the authority to remove harmful ingredients from the products we put on our bodies and on our kids’ bodies every single day, day after day.

Today I get to partner with thousands of #cleanbeautybosses as we build businesses that are impactful, meaningful and financially rewarding.

What do you specialize in? I would say I’m the world’s best cheerleader and information sharer!

What are you most proud of as a company?
Most definitely our mission. We walk the walk. I’ve had the opportunity to travel to Capitol Hill to meet with senators and lobby for more health-protective laws. We’re out to change the world, so watch out 😉

What sets us apart from others? Our disruptive business model of being a direct to consumer brand. Consumers can shop with us through one of our strategic partnerships like Goop.com or through one of our retail stores (we have stores in New York, Denver, a pop-up shop in Nantucket and an LA store coming soon). You can shop for safer beauty through our website or you can shop with a consultant/educator like myself! Think of me as your personal shopper and go-to person for product reviews, recommendations and education.

Beautycounter is also a B-corp (people + planet over profit) and that’s something we’re incredibly proud of because it’s a standard that’s incredibly HARD to achieve.

And our mission and advocacy work as I mentioned before is unlike anything I’ve ever seen with a business. A company who is asking for more regulation and oversight in the very industry we’re trying to compete and build a business in. That’s unheard of!

Now on the REBL Jane story.

We learned a few important lessons after several years of working in the supplement industry. The first being that there is a group – a very important group – of individuals being ignored. These are the passionate, hard-working females who are focused on the health and wellbeing of themselves and their families; a.k.a., the “Modern Woman.” We also learned that there is a serious lack of transparency in the industry. We watched companies hide diluted products behind proprietary blends as a marketing tactic. We saw companies who were claiming to produce “quality products” were actually cutting corners, and sourcing low-quality ingredients. We knew it was time for a change.

The idea for REBL Jane really started taking shape after our second child. I was wanting to get back to feeling like myself again, so Tyler dove head first into researching and experimenting with natural remedies. Before long my sleep had improved (even with an almost 5 month old – ha!), my energy levels were up and my business was growing. The need for clean, transparent supplements for women like myself was REAL. Women who were looking to optimize their life and their health needed a solution…enter REBL Jane.

So, to the risk-taking entrepreneurs, the super moms, the hustlin’ executives, and the rest of you who must operate at a high level every day, this is for you. You deserve to feel your best, and you have a right to know what goes in to your body. We invite you to join us in prioritizing health, saying “hell yes” to clean products, and becoming a part of the REBL Jane community. Let’s REBL against the ordinary!

What do I do with this company/brand?
Oh gosh…where do I even begin? I mean this entire brand was born because my husband knew he could create a line of products that spoke to what I was personally wanting and needing as a female and mother and business owner doing all the things and wanting to do them well. Therefore I’m the product tester, I get to help dictate what our product line up should be based on my needs and the needs of other women around me. I’m also a social storyteller and love working with the “branding” and our “voice” as a brand. I’m also working on the REBL Jane video podcast that will launch this fall. This project is all about community and bringing women together through value-added content. Think episodes with interviews from badass women doing amazing things in the world and sharing their stories. Really this podcast is about aligning our brand’s mission and commitment to women through content and connection.

What are you most proud of as a company?
100% our commitment to transparency in our products and ingredients. We’re also incredibly committed to giving back to female entrepreneurs…more to come on this!

What sets you apart from others?

The way we communicate with our community and our products.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I would 100% say that my proudest moment in my career to date was promoting to the tippy top of Beautycounter’s compensation plan all while raising a baby and building another new business with my husband. When you’re passionate about something when you stay true to who you are, when you’re authentically sharing and staying consistent + persistent…you’ll always come out on top. These are just a few of the ingredients when trying to building a successful business.