Beyond the Bottom Line with Sundra Essien (S9,E10)

What if business success isn't about endless growth? Sundra Essien, co-founder of Isang's Hair and Body, returns to Shades and Layers for our 100th episode for this discussion. Sundra and I first spoke in 2020 during the first season of the podcast and a period of uncertainty in the world. Today, she returns to once again challenge everything you think you know about entrepreneurship, sustainability, and success.
 
Sundra's Copenhagen-based personal care company manufactures hair and body products using organic, fair-trade ingredients in an open workshop where customers can witness production firsthand. Their true mission, however, extends far beyond making and selling body care products. Isangs is a platform for addressing critical issues from supply chain transparency to social justice. As Sundra explains, these everyday products provide the perfect vehicle for sparking deeper conversations: "It's a space where people aren't expecting to have discussions about de-growth and justice and politics."

Today’s conversation serves as a reflection on how far Isang's has come since our last conversation, how they’ve leveraged social media not only to stay in business, but to continue addressing all the issues that are central to the company's founding philosophy. The company's philosophy centers on de-growth—the radical notion that businesses should question the imperative for constant expansion. 

Listen now to discover how rethinking success might lead to greater satisfaction in business and life. Follow Isang's at @Isangs on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook to learn more about their mission-driven approach.

Chapters

• 0:00 Building Value Beyond Politics
• 8:40 The Philosophy Behind Isang's
• 16:35 Product First, Politics Second
• 21:40 The Joy of Enough: Decentering Growth
• 26:40 Adapting to Pandemic Challenges
• 32:40 Milestone Reflections and Future Vision

Transcript

Sundra Essien: 0:03

So that's been important for me to build something that's a really good, high quality product that people like, not because of our politics, not because of what we stand for, but because it's something that provides actual, tangible value to people's lives.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 0:18

Right, hello and welcome to Shades and Layers. I'm your host, Kutloano Skosana Ricci , and today is a big milestone for the podcast. This is episode 100, and it is one to be bookmarked because it speaks to everything that the podcast stands for. We love women of color entrepreneurs, we love sustainability, we love mission-driven founders, and we're all about impacting people's lives positively through all our actions, including the businesses we start, and so I thought there's no better way to bring this message across than to go full circle to where it started. My guest today was featured in one of the first episodes of Shades and Layers in June of 2020, Sundra Essien, co-founder of Isang's Hair and Body, a Copenhagen-based beauty supply store that is more than meets the eye. It's a platform for all the issues that plague modern society, from fair trades to sustainability, supply chain management and inclusion. Since five years ago, when we first spoke, Sundra has some updates and here she is on her origin story and where Isangs finds itself as a brand today eSangs is in the simplest form, it's just a hair and body care production.

Sundra Essien: 1:35

So we make hair and body care products using organic, fair trade, vegan ingredients, and they're made inside of our open production workshop in Copenhagen. So that's the short, simple explanation. So that's the short, simple explanation.

Sundra Essien: 1:51

Deeper explanation is it's actually a way for me to work on and look at and address issues of supply chain transparency, empathy across supply chains, understanding of the products that we use and the effects of the products that we use, and a way for me to experiment with how we can bring those issues to the forefront and surface the costs of our products to consumers, but through these products that we make, and we do that in everything in terms of in the ways that we source and making those things that we do, in terms of sourcing and the cooperatives that we source from transparent to our customers, but also in the way that we produce them in a small production workshop, when it's open, where people can ask questions and see the things that are being produced.

Sundra Essien: 2:34

We also run a lot of very information-based business where people have access to both information about the products that we use, the processes that we use, the philosophy and the politics behind our products and processes. Right now, one of our big issues that really sits really close to my heart is around degrowth, decentralizing growth in a business and really just trying to open the conversation for businesses to talk about not getting bigger and not growing and how that's going to have to be an important discussion in terms of long-term sustainability. We just try to bring up the issues that are important to us and issues that we think are important in terms of broader environmental and sustainability and justice context through care and body care products.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 3:23

So how long have you been in business now?

Sundra Essien: 3:26

Well, we opened the shop in 2012. So this is our teenage year. This is where we turned 13. But I registered the business first in 2010. So technically, the business has existed for 15 years. But those first couple of years were just going out to markets, testing the concept and seeing if we had anything that people were at all interested in. And then we found the physical location for our production and shop in 2012.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 3:57

Okay, so when you started out, is this what you were aiming for to be a platform for this discussion or did you have a different picture in?

Sundra Essien: 4:08

mind. I mean, I didn't have all of the details about what exactly, how it exactly would look and how, and at that point I had no interest or relationship to social media. So the way we bring out the message is different than I imagined, but the message is quite I mean, it's surprisingly close to what I envisioned a long time ago when I wrote our manifesto back in 2010. Which is that I'm, oddly enough, despite the fact that I make hair and body care products, oddly enough, despite the fact that I make hair and body care products, I'm very uninterested in hair and body care products or skincare or makeup in and of themselves.

Sundra Essien: 4:51

But I think they're a really powerful vehicle for addressing change, and that's just because everyone uses them. They touch all of the issues, so it's kind of a right market to be disruptive in, because it really just affects everyone. It touches everyone and they affect everything from misinformation to supply chain issues, to growth issues, to issues of self-esteem and body image, to overconsumption they're all packed into hair and body care.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 5:19

It's the meeting point, this whole crossroads.

Sundra Essien: 5:23

It is of all the issues. So I think it's a really it's a really great space to be in if you want to have a platform to address these issues in. Um, I don't want to say sneaky, because it sounds like there's some deception built into it, but it's sort of a approach to it where people aren't expecting to have the discussions about degrowth and and justice and politics in a hair and body care space. So I think it disarms people a bit that these are the conversations we're having inside of this, and that was what I wanted to do. I never thought that I would really be able to fold out in the way that we've really been able to fold out in the last couple of years in the last couple of years.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 6:03

Yeah, what do you think it is that makes your brand resonate with customers? Because you've been standing firm for the past 15 years and seemingly thriving.

Sundra Essien: 6:15

Yeah, I mean, the thriving part has had its ups and downs.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 6:23

Of course it's a business, it's a business.

Sundra Essien: 6:26

It's a business, and there have been times where I've been way more focused on the business aspects of it than I'd like to, because I mean it does have to work as a business concept. Have a product that people want to buy, that people come back for. So that's been important for me to build something that's a really good, high quality product that people like, not because of our politics, not because of what we stand for, but because it's something that provides actual, tangible value to people's lives.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 6:55

Right.

Sundra Essien: 6:55

That's the foundation of it, Because if we don't have that, then for me it's a bit silly to talk about, oh, overconsumption or all of this, but buy this product that you don't need. Which happens?

Sundra Essien: 7:10

yes, it has no future value to you because you like the story that it's selling. So in many ways we built the business on the products and a lot of our customers met us like product first. We solved or addressed a need that they had, whether it be deodorants or shampoos or body oils, something to deal with these really harsh copenhagen winters. So so we lead first with addressing and providing value and then we kind of sneak in our politics, um, along with those, and I don't want to say sneak in our politics along with those, and I don't want to say sneak in and like that, because we're very forthcoming.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 7:49

You've been very open about where you stand on issues.

Sundra Essien: 7:53

About where we stand. We're very clear about this we're a business, we sell this, and these are our politics.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 7:58

Yeah, and do you face pushback when you push your politics?

Sundra Essien: 8:02

Not at all. I mean surprisingly little back when you push your politics. Not at all I mean surprisingly little, but it's probably because most people meet us and hear our politics so early on I think they weed themselves out if they're not interested in it. So it's not like people expect one thing and then meet us and then are really surprised to find out that we support fair trade cooperatives, that we work with olive oil producers in Palestine. We've been doing that for the last 12 years and we've been open and vocal about it.

Sundra Essien: 8:30

And we work with small farmer cooperatives in Ghana and women's cooperatives in Brazil and salt farmers in France, and so none of this surprises anyone who had either come into our shop or met us on social media or been to our website. You get kind of confronted with this early on, so if it's really not their cup of tea. People just move on.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 8:54

But, like you say, it's all about the product also, right. So what makes your products effective and have such broad appeal?

Sundra Essien: 9:02

I mean, I think it's a number of things. I think one of the things that makes them effective is that we're really good at expectation managing. We're not selling a miracle or a dream. And in many ways we're selling stuff that other people in theory could also sell just high quality products at a reasonable, affordable price right.

Sundra Essien: 9:19

It's not in that sense so revolutionary, but we don't try to claim or sell anything revolutionary and I think people are really pleasantly surprised when they're not met with companies saying smear this on, and then in two seconds you know you'll have a 15 year old child and just make more and more absurd claims and it gets harder and harder to just trust anything because like yeah, but okay, is this going to like solve male pattern baldness with this oil?

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 9:48

I just rub on.

Sundra Essien: 9:50

Wouldn't that be true? And so I think, when you're constantly underwhelmed and disappointed because companies are constantly over-promising and we're constantly in some way under-promising, they're promising. Yeah, people are oftentimes just like oh wow, that's, that's really refreshing to get something that does what it should and more, and you get a lot for the for the money. So in many ways it's a really simple strategy. We just make money Good products that do what they should, made from good ingredients.

Sundra Essien: 10:22

But I think most people are unfortunately trying to push out as much money as they can out of the products, which means they're watering down the ingredients, taking as many shortcuts they want as they can and then, at the same time, constantly over-promising what people are going to get, how they're going to feel, how their lives are going to change. Shampoo is never going to change your life. It will wash your hair.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 10:46

It will wash your hair, hopefully make your hair cleaner than it was before.

Sundra Essien: 10:50

We don't claim to help anyone deal with anything beyond cleaning their hair with our shampoo. We're not in your friend group or making you happier, and we're very vocal about saying that. And I think that people find that honesty refreshing and authentic and it makes it easier for people to be satisfied because you're not promising them the world.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 11:12

Right, right, Okay. So, unless you're running a charity or a non-profit, your motive for being in business is profit. Great. But then the question comes how fast do you need to have that profit reflected on your bottom line? Well, that depends on many factors, but my guest today on Shades and Layers, Sandra Essien, co-founder of Isang's Hair and Body, has some thoughts on how she's been playing the long game.

Sundra Essien: 11:40

Our goal is to run a profitable business. We're not a charity. We say this often. Then we also don't think fair trade, a lot of sort of our justice issues. These shouldn't be things of I'm doing it out of charity. I'm doing it because it makes for a system that functions better for us all. It actually makes for a business environment that's more stable for also me to continue to do business in. So if I'm just running to grab everything I can at the expense of a system that eventually will collapse and make it a less fun and interesting and stable world for me to exist in, it's also ultimately worse for my business. So in some way it's a long-term strategy where you sacrifice some short-term profits but we're profitable term profits, but we're profitable. We're just not aiming to be billionaires.

Sundra Essien: 12:29

I don't have a big lifestyle. This business probably wouldn't afford me a huge lifestyle, but I'm also not interested in one. I don't have a car. I ride a bicycle. We live well within our means and we have time to do all of the other stuff that we enjoy and want to do. So I feel in many ways more free, but it's not money that's providing that freedom. We're at a point now where the business is stable, we're able to meet our bills and pay our employees and then not have to be there all of the time, have enough people to cover the shop shifts. When I set, instead of setting a floor which we also, of course, you have to meet this, you have to earn this much in order to meet your budgets, for example we also set ceilings and say like, okay, when we reach this point, we're just at sustaining mode, we're no longer at chasing growth mode, and I think there's a season, different seasons, for businesses. When you're starting out, of course, you're probably going to be in some level of growth mode.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 13:27

Right.

Sundra Essien: 13:28

Reaching a point where you're sustainable, where the money in covers the money going out. That's not as far off, I think, as some people are led to believe, if your goal isn't continuous growth and world domination.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 13:42

Absolutely so. It's reaching that point of knowing when enough is enough, exactly. So, what led you to this path, because it's a mindset.

Sundra Essien: 13:52

I've never been sort of just personally super interested in having a whole lot of money, so that's in some way I've inherited that from my parents, particularly my mom, who's sort of one of her big lectures growing up is that you know, after a certain point, I mean, everything has its propensities After a certain point.

Sundra Essien: 14:11

Food doesn't get better the more you pay for it.

Sundra Essien: 14:13

Clothes don't get nicer the more you pay for them.

Sundra Essien: 14:16

Over a certain point your life doesn't get improved over a certain amount of money get improved over a certain amount of money and in some way I think it's not just diminishing returns, but in some way over a certain threshold I think you have negative returns on every additional money made, because then it takes away from other things that you could be doing, like building relationships that actually in all of the studies on health and happiness those tend to be more important than the amount of money people have over a certain threshold, and that threshold is kind of like basic needs, housing, clothing, but all the excess over that.

Sundra Essien: 14:54

If you're spending all of your time gaining 20 outfits a week, then you're cutting into your budget for relationships and all of the other stuff that will lead to some genuine happiness. So I'm fortunate enough that I was raised in a household where they recognize that and were very open and vocal about the benefits to your general happiness of living below your means and not building a life so big that you have to constantly be at, constantly a slave to maintaining this large life right right then you kind of can find that point where it's like I have enough, to where I'm not wanting for the basic needs but I have to work a little bit to get some of the extra stuff.

Sundra Essien: 15:34

Because that also provides like some process and some learning and some fun, because if you never had to work for anything, then it's not fun having it right it takes, it sucks a lot of the fun out of it.

Sundra Essien: 15:46

So it's something about like oh, I want to take this great vacation, but I have to save up a little bit for it. That process, there's learning in that there's, you know, there's also accomplishment, and you've already gone through something before you've gotten there, which makes it a little sweeter on the other end. So I don't, I don't want't want to strip myself of all the processes and just say, oh, I just skip to it because I just have infinite amounts of money. So money doesn't, I mean it provides something.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 16:14

Yeah, I mean, it's that whole thing of if you don't have friction, then what's the point?

Sundra Essien: 16:20

You don't have growth. I mean, it removes so much of the and it's hard to really understand the benefits of going through something to get to something on the other side. But I think it's reflected in so many natural processes, everything from childbirth, like just physically going fighting through the birth canal good things, babies, immune systems, and it's not. It doesn't mean that if they don't do that, all is lost. But I think even in a bunch of natural systems we see that sort of fighting to get chickens, when they fight to get an egg. If you cut them out of the egg then they won't survive.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 17:02

Yeah, they have to struggle for it.

Sundra Essien: 17:06

Struggling out of it that strengthens their bones and and makes them robust enough to survive on the other side of it. So I think money, when it, when it kind of becomes the thing that just cuts you out of the egg, then I think it also it can be a bit a damage. Yeah to us.

Sundra Essien: 17:25

Yeah, having being both equipped, but also some of the happiness that comes on the other side of of earning something we don't talk about it a lot because we feel like everything will be good on the other side of a whole lot of money yeah, we like convenience though we are primed for convenience yeah and convenience is killing us.

Sundra Essien: 17:41

it's literally killing us every day. I think, okay, I'm privileged enough to live in a space where they have bike routes and good public transportation. I didn't grow up in a space like that, and instead of thinking like, oh, this means I can't have a big life where I have a nice car, I'm like I get to be in motion 40 minutes a day, which means that I get movement.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 18:01

I'm getting all sentimental now I get movement. I'm getting all sentimental now.

Sundra Essien: 18:05

And that's a privilege of being in Copenhagen, right, that is such a privilege of being here, where you're like you know, I can hop on my bike and instead of seeing it as like, oh, it's something that I don't have because I don't have the money to have it, I'm like it's something that I get to do, that both is great for my mental and physical health. I can't be on a screen.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 18:25

It's essential, absolutely it is essential, yeah.

Sundra Essien: 18:29

Yeah, fresh air. I get to see the city around me. I get to do that.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 18:33

Yeah, no, absolutely. So. There's a word that you mentioned degrowth. Can you quickly explain what is degrowth and how we should think about it in a society that's obsessed with infinite growth?

Sundra Essien: 18:47

Yes, I mean, when I think of degrowth I think of well, a couple of things. So, on the backdrop of it, it's just general recognition, first, that in a finite world we can't have infinite growth, some basic level. We all recognize that there's limits to all of this growth, even though we constantly are pushing it. But then degrowth looks at and this, this strategy, can be applied in any sphere. Right now I'm talking about business, because that's the sphere that I'm in right now, but it just looks, it's. It's more about just de-centering growth.

Sundra Essien: 19:19

And we've kind of built our entire economies on constant growth. But in some way it's almost like a pyramid scheme where you have to keep like recruiting more people into it, recruiting more people into it for it to work and you're like it's not actually functioning. You're just recruiting more people into it, so you don't have to deal with the consequences of a system that doesn't actually work and at some point.

Sundra Essien: 19:42

we're going to bump up to the point where there's nothing, no more people to recruit in this pyramid scheme, no more resources, and we're going to look back and say we don't actually have a sustainable functioning system or economy because growth just masks so many of the problems, because you're just throwing basically like throwing growth and money at it without realizing, you have something that's incredibly broken.

Sundra Essien: 20:03

And I think, in terms of business, decentering growth means that you can focus on other things, which means you can clear up your, your space, your mental space, to say, like what do I want this business to do besides? Just get bigger, and it's almost the easy thing. What do you want to do with business? Be bigger? It's the easy answer, we've been fed. But it's like why get bigger? What's the purpose of that? Are you able to do what you want to do better when you're bigger? Are you able to have more free time? Are you able to have better relationships with their employees? Are you like what? What does growth achieve for you?

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 20:38

and for your business?

Sundra Essien: 20:47

I think people don't ask that question enough. They just say like, oh, that's obviously a good business is a business that's growing and a better business is a business that's growing even more, which means you can have the absurd reality that you have so many quote unquote really successful businesses, where I mean CEOs, are making some absurd amount of you know exponentially more money than the lower level employees who are barely scraping by on a minimum wage or a living wage. You can have a completely unequal distribution of wealth. So it's looked like the company's getting bigger, but that money isn't being shared equally throughout the company, or at all throughout the company.

Sundra Essien: 21:15

It's just one man getting more and more yachts, or the damaged externalities to the environment around them. Those are just getting bigger, intact with its growth. That's not being accounted for.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 21:28

It's never accounted for.

Sundra Essien: 21:29

It's never accounted for. And if growth is our only measure of whether or not something is doing well, then we completely ignore all of the other ways that they can contribute to society, but also ignore all of the other ways that growth makes them damaging to the society.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 21:45

Right, this is Shades and Layers, and my guest today is co-founder of Esang's Hair and Body in Copenhagen. Sandra Essien spoke to us in 2020, and when we first spoke, her business had reached some level of stability, but then came the COVID lockdowns, which meant less traffic to their physical location, so they had to switch gears Up. Next, she tells us all about how this affected the trajectory of her brand, and we also get into the shades and layers rapid fire.

Sundra Essien: 22:18

Uncertainty is always a bit challenging for many people and for businesses also. Before that, we reached a point where we could kind of predict with some level of accuracy what's going to happen in the next year. So it allows for just better planning and better understanding of what's going on and better budgeting or easier budgeting. But then suddenly we're just thrown into a completely unknown situation where we couldn't open a physical shop. That was really hard for us because prior to the pandemic we weren't really we didn't really have an online presence and we built our reputation on people physically coming into our shop, having a relationship with us, talking to us, seeing our production, learning about our products from us, and it's a very kind of face to face, one person at a time. We still don't do paid advertising, so that presented a really big challenge for us when we couldn't open our physical shop, but it also presented an opportunity, which was that we sat down and said, well, how do we translate this online?

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 23:17

You have a much stronger online presence.

Sundra Essien: 23:19

Yes, exactly and now I mean our entire online presence was built in response to the fact that we could. We could no longer reach people in our physical shop because we were closed down and we said we're just going to have to translate our message and our energy and our vision to an online audience. And and how do we do that?

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 23:41

Yeah, does that mean that you also had to ramp up on online sales, and how did that affect your operations?

Sundra Essien: 23:50

It didn't really change much. In that sense it just shifted. We've always had three sales channels that's our online shop, our physical shop and then our wholesale shop, which also runs through our web shop online. I mean the customers that were in our physical shop moved online. I know some businesses just saw this massive uptick during Corona from online sales. We just we didn't see a huge net gain in sales, but that's almost shifted back.

Sundra Essien: 24:18

It took a couple of years for it to shift back, but it's pretty much shifted back to where it was pre-corona. It also took us a while to build an online project the pandemic was well finished by the time we cracked the code in terms of what worked for us online and started to really build an audience. That was well after the eye of the storm of the pandemic was well passed.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 24:41

Right, I mean, you seem to have also become something of an education channel. There's a lot of information on sustainability, fair trade, et cetera.

Sundra Essien: 24:50

And that's what we've always been doing.

Sundra Essien: 24:52

We've been information first, and sales are sort of a bonus that comes from people getting the information that would be useful for them. Sometimes it means it's not a sale and it means that people discover that it doesn't work for them or it doesn't make sense for them or it's not what they need right now, or it's not. It wouldn't be useful for them, and we're perfectly okay with that. We even train our employees on that sort of I would rather people walk away with feeling like, okay, now I understand this problem better, even if it means that they don't walk away with a product from us which is also a big reason why we have really high satisfaction and return levels is because we're willing to give up a sale to have someone get what really makes sense for them.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 25:32

Yeah, yeah. So you're not just pushing products for the sake of pushing products.

Sundra Essien: 25:36

Exactly and defocusing products, I think works really well with our idea of decentering growth. A lot of it's like we're telling about something, or telling about a product, or telling about what it can do without making the and then buy it. If all of that information means that someone finds that this makes sense for them, then they'll typically connect the dots.

Sundra Essien: 25:57

I don't have to force the dots down their throat and say like but this means you need to go buy it. But I can say like okay, this product does solves this, this issue. It does this and it does it in this way, and this is the chemistry behind it. This is why we use this. This is why we use these ingredients. So I see, my role is just giving them as much information and then letting them decide what to do with that information.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 26:17

Yeah, yeah, oh sure, yeah. So this brings me to our rapid fire. Don't think about it, just a few questions. What are the three milestones that you are proudest of at eSanks?

Sundra Essien: 26:43

like banks or broader, bigger organizations that would have influence on what I'm allowed to say or how I'm allowed to say it, or funders or investors. At one point that might've felt like a failure, that we weren't attractive enough for people to want to give us money like bigger investments or banks. At one point they're like, you know, it's too risky, and now I'm just so happy that we've been able to make this happen, run a sustainable business that's profitable without them. Now I don't owe anyone anything, and not in the sense of physical money, but I don't owe anyone my silence or my complicity. I can say what I want, how I want, when I want, and I think that feels like freedom.

Sundra Essien: 27:21

And any others that you're proud of I mean, I think a lot of them on the slightly similar vein, but in sort of more practical um, that we're able to, that we've reached a sustainable point economically. That took a while. That took a long time embarrassingly long before we could say like, okay, we're not stressed every month, we you know it runs, while keeping all this like where we just have all of these almost dogma and principles that we've put in, where we're paying, just like we buy this olive oil from Palestine it costs 40 times the cost of olive oil that can get organic from Italy or Greece, and but like we were able to hold onto those principles and still and manage to be sustainable.

Sundra Essien: 28:01

I think I'm I'm so proud of that because it's something that people would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's nice, you talk about all these principles, but that'll never work. Like it's me being able to say, yeah, you know what, it did work and it does work. And I think that's that's a more powerful message than me than ever, if I can say, if I you know, talking from the outside, businesses should do this, businesses should do this, or I can keep prices low, but like, basically, like we've handicapped ourselves at every turn and despite that, we're able to run a business, have a business that works and that runs that's amazing I'm proud of that you gotta hang in there, man gotta hang and some of it's just just pure hanging in right like.

Sundra Essien: 28:39

It's just like if you could, just if you could just be there for for a long enough time. That resolves a number of issues. But hanging on when you know, when you're just kind of getting a ram from every side, it can, it can also just be hard.

Sundra Essien: 28:56

Yeah, and I don't fault anyone for not being able to stand it, because it is it. I don't say I don don't. I don't look back on it and think like, oh, that was, that was easy and manageable. I look back and I think I'm so glad I didn't know what I was gonna have to go through beforehand, because I don't think I would have ever walked into it without the great naivety yeah, ignorance is bliss sometimes, yeah. And bliss and necessary yes yes. If I knew, then what?

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 29:29

I know now. So what's the hardest part of your job?

Sundra Essien: 29:32

Right now I'm at the stage where I'm getting to enjoy the fruits of the labor. Right now I feel like sort of this is the. We've gone through all these narrow tunnels and now we just opened out into a wider field where we're like, oh, because we built it up in this kind of in, do you kind of sustain this delicate tightrope walk where you know, not too much, not too little, right at balance and keeping out like it can feel like a bit of a sort of balancing on a tightrope and while juggling a bunch of things?

Sundra Essien: 30:18

I hope none of this stuff falls right now circus feet and I'm like, but at some point I feel like it's not gonna feel as good and easy, but right now, today, it feels yeah, yeah, take a breath, man like it feels like we can, and sometimes you know, you know you almost feel like you can't breathe, like not that can't breathe, but you don't allow yourself to like this is it's okay for it not to be like hard useful and almost feel like that's how things should feel. I feel joy going into the shop, meeting the people, like I feel joy making content. Now, that was not the case for the whole time until like the last year, a year.

Sundra Essien: 30:59

Right, then like a thing I have to like motivate and push myself and find ideas. But now I'm just like I have a long list of ideas that I want to find, so, okay, let me find the. I'm excited about them and yeah, yeah.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 31:13

So if you had to write a memoir, what would you call it and why?

Sundra Essien: 31:17

If I had to, it would definitely be something around degrowth and sort of like joy around degrowth or how to get smaller or something like that like so yeah like that, the anti-book to the book everyone else. Everyone wants to write like how to get bigger and bigger lives, and no one's writing portraits about people that made it and and just don't have a lot of stuff in a yeah, and it's a small in small ways right.

Sundra Essien: 31:42

It's almost like a celebration of the small, the joy of small, or something it is exactly just kind of like I don't want it to get into the realm of, like I said, frou-frou, but like in, like abstract, like very tangibly, like actively pursuing less as a business, as a I mean just for everything, like the opposite to all the self-help and advice that we get. And people are like you should just have money for generations. You're like why Now you want us to like hoard money, not just in this lifetime, but hoard money like for future lifetimes, both robbing my future generations of the benefits of the process and robbing my current self of the joy of relaxing and enjoying the now because I'm saving for 10 generations down. I mean, all of it seems so absurd.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 32:34

So if we turn the movie into sorry, if we turn the book into a movie, who would you have play lead actress?

Sundra Essien: 32:43

I have no idea. Oh, I don't know. Now I'm just naming people that I like Luke Pizzer, oh yeah, just people that I respect and I like, and I think it's just like. Oh, but I have no idea. I have no idea, okay.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 33:02

No problem with that either, but uh, if you had to have a conversation over dinner with a famous black woman, living or dead, who would it be?

Sundra Essien: 33:12

right now I I think octavia butler. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah yeah, a novelist she writes a lot of sci-fi fiction, dystopian, and I almost think that these types of writers are almost like fortune tellers.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 33:30

Yeah, they're prophets.

Sundra Essien: 33:34

They are almost like, because in her writing she was just like oh, I want to see where this ends. They almost sort of take the trajectory to its logical conclusion and then just make stories about it, which I think is in some way more interesting than nonfiction in understanding the world and the people in it.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 33:52

I think Octavia Butler so if people want to work with you, find out about what you do, be inspired by your story, where can they find you?

Sundra Essien: 34:02

I think social media is probably the best place to get both get in touch with us, but also get a little insight into who we are and what we stand for. And that's at Isangs on Instagram and on TikTok and on Facebook, and it's I-S-A-N-G-S Perfect.

Kutloano Skosana Ricci: 34:19

And that is all from me today. This episode brings it full circle to where it all started Copenhagen city. Thanks for the catch up, Sundra, and for sharing your wisdom. I hope you had as much fun as I did on this episode. Thank you for listening and for supporting the podcast for the past 100 episode. If you liked it and found it useful, please share it with a friend. I'm Kutlonos Kosanarichi, and until next time. Please do it with a friend. I'm Gudwana Skwasana Ritchie, and until next time. Please do take good care.