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Women In Wellness: Kerrigan Behrens of Sagely Naturals On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Customer service is a job you can’t outsource. In the first two years of the business, the customer service number was my cell phone. Hearing directly from our consumers about what they loved and didn’t love was helpful in ensuring we got our products and our service spot on.

As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kerrigan Behrens.

Kerrigan Behrens is the co-founder and co-CEO of consumer wellness brand Sagely Naturals. Most recently, Kerrigan guided her team through an acquisition by HempFusion, expanded the brands ingestible offerings with gummies, and launched a non-CBD infused product collection in Target under the Sagely Naturals umbrella. She and the brand have been featured in publications such as Forbes, Fortune, Glossy, Coveteur, Vogue, and Green Entrepreneur.

Kerrigan has been at the helm of the brand since it launched in 2015, and has successfully galvanized and accelerated marketplace acceptance of CBD as a natural and effective alternative for the products you would already find in your medicine cabinet. Kerrigan lives in Los Angeles, which also serves as Sagely Naturals’ headquarters, with her husband and daughter.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

The first time I tried CBD in 2015, it literally changed my life. I have been dealing with chronic back pain for years and a friend recommended that I try it to help alleviate the pain. Someone gave me some CBD honey to try and about an hour after I used it, my back felt better than I could remember in years. At that moment, I really felt like CBD had the potential to change a lot of peoples’ lives for the better.

The next day, my co-founder Kaley Nichol and I got medical marijuana prescriptions and went to a dispensary for the first time. We were shocked by how unappealing the CBD products were to consumers — the products all contained THC and the branding didn’t feel trustworthy or compelling. We wanted to provide people with approachable products utilizing the therapeutic benefits of CBD, without the psychoactive effects of THC. Thus, Sagely Naturals was born. We now offer a range of topical and ingestible products for muscle aches, sleep, calm, and overall wellness — and have distribution in CVS, Sprouts, Target, Rite Aid, and many more retailers. Sagely Naturals’ mission is to allow people to do more of what they love and we do this by making over the medicine cabinet with plant based, effective alternatives.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

Having my company acquired! While it was always a dream of mine to start and sell a business, I always knew it would have to be at the right time and with the perfect partner. Less than a year ago, Sagely Naturals was acquired by HempFusion Wellness. We had known the brand for years, since we both launched in 2015, but when we started to learn more about them it became an obvious fit. While quality was always of utmost importance to the Sagely Naturals brand, in getting to know HempFusion, my cofounder and I quickly recognized that their quality standards were second to none. Their foundation of regulatory compliance and safety studies and their usage of Certified Organic hemp material was something we realized we wanted and needed to be able to offer to our consumers. Kaley and I are still Co-CEOs of Sagely Naturals, so we are still setting the vision for the brand, however, we now have the support of a larger organization to work towards that vision.

Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I’ve always been a perfectionist and I thought that would be helpful in starting a business but it’s actually one of the worst qualities you can have when you’re getting started because it can stand in the way of progress. Because there were no beautiful brands in the CBD space, I wanted Sagely Naturals to look like a product you would be proud to display in your bathroom rather than something you’d hide in the back of your medicine cabinet. As a result, we almost spent the majority of our startup budget on a branding agency. We needed the money for other things — to launch the website, for example — but I couldn’t see beyond wanting to use a really professional (i.e. expensive) branding agency. My cofounder ended up putting our brand project on 99 Designs — it was free unless you chose to work with a designer — and we were pleasantly surprised with the work that was submitted at almost a tenth of the cost. The branding wasn’t perfect, but it allowed us to get something into the market that worked and that consumers and retailers had a chance to react to. I now think about progress over perfection everyday when I get stuck trying to perfect something. I now think that the only thing that really needs to be perfect is your product and your customer service. Everything else can be iterated upon.

Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

Sagely Naturals offers products that help consumers feel their best everyday and reinvent the medicine cabinet by harnessing the power of botanicals and CBD. Our offerings invoke excitement and exploration by providing products that are accessible, approachable, and trustworthy. Each of our products are made to exceed the industry’s high standards, formulated with clean and natural ingredients, Leaping Bunny Certified, and vegan.

Since we formulate our products with carefully selected botanical co-ingredients to help amplify natural healing benefits and constantly seek eco-conscious ingredients found in nature, we are able to thoughtfully avoid known toxins, carcinogens, allergens, animal by-products, reproductive and endocrine disruptors and ingredients that are generally harmful to people and the environment. .

Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.

  • Take mental health breaks during the day — Even a 5 minute walk around the block can make a difference.
  • Fuel your body with proper nutrients — I always start my day with a few drops of our Wise & Well tincture to help support a sense of wakeful calm.
  • Take in nature when you can — Even if this means going outside to look at the sky or the trees around you, absorbing nature is always grounding
  • Maintain a “wind down” routine before bed — It doesn’t have to be lengthy. I love taking a bath but when I don’t have time, I at least try to read in bed for a little while before I go to sleep.
  • Get as much sleep as you’re able to — I try to get at least eight or nine hours of sleep every night and find that I function at a much higher level when I do.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

  1. You have to be prepared to hit your head against a wall on a daily basis. Not taking no for an answer is, in my mind, the biggest indicator of whether someone will be a successful entrepreneur or not.
  2. Your network is your biggest asset. If you don’t have the right network, you need to network more. Entrepreneurship is the control of assets you don’t own so your ability to influence people to be on your side is critical.
  3. Set deadlines for yourself — when you’re your own boss, you need to set your own deadlines so that you hold yourself accountable and aren’t tempted to tinker with something forever.
  4. Your business and your life become inextricably linked. Vacations aren’t true vacations because you will always be thinking about work. On the flip side, you will never be as passionate about any other job.
  5. Customer service is a job you can’t outsource. In the first two years of the business, the customer service number was my cell phone. Hearing directly from our consumers about what they loved and didn’t love was helpful in ensuring we got our products and our service spot on.

Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

While I care very much about the environment and love the hemp plant in part because of its eco-friendly qualities, mental health is the dearest topic to me. Women deal disproportionately with pain, stress, and trouble sleeping and I have personally dealt with all of these things throughout my life. This was the biggest reason why I felt compelled to start Sagely Naturals — there are many ways people can address these challenges in their lives like with sleeping pills or NSAIDs, but most of them are not natural and can cause side effects. The ability of CBD and other botanicals to address these issues is mind blowing — it just requires more education and access, which we hope to provide.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this

Women In Wellness: Kerrigan Behrens of Sagely Naturals On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.