Patrice Mousseau | Founder & CEO, Satya Organic Skin Care | Business as a vehicle for social change
Patrice Mousseau is the Founder and CEO of Satya Organic Skin Care. She is a member of Fort William First Nation and a former journalist, and her journey to becoming a conscious entrepreneur stemmed the development of her own homemade treatment for her young daughter’s eczema. This treatment was based on traditional medicine and scientific innovation. With a successful natural formula in hand without the use of steroids, Patrice went on to launch Satya.
The word Satya means “higher truth” in Sanskrit. The brand is certified carbon neutral with the Coastal First Nations’ Great Bear Rainforest initiative. As well, Patrice ensures she provides her staff of women, all single moms like her, a living wage and great working conditions. Listen to this episode to hear all about what brought her here, and how her passion translates to her company.
For 10% off your order of Satya organic skincare products, head to satya.ca and use code. The Brand is Female at checkout.
This season of The Brand is Female is brought to you by TD Bank - Women Entrepreneurs. TD is proud to support women entrepreneurs and help them achieve success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing and mentorship opportunities! Find out how you can benefit from their support!
Full Episode Transcript
Eva Hartling: I'm Eva hartling welcome to The Brand is Female where every week I speak with women change-makers who are redefining the rules of female leadership. This season of our podcast is brought to you by TD bank group women entrepreneurs. TD helps women in business success and growth through its program of educational workshops, financing and mentorship.
Visit The Brand is Female dot com slash podcast. And follow the link to find out how TD can help. Patrice Mousseau is the founder and CEO of Satya organic skincare. She is a member of Fort William first nation and a former. Her journey to becoming a conscious entrepreneur stemmed from her, developing her own homemade treatment for her young daughters Eczema based on traditional medicine and scientific innovation.
With a successful natural formula in hand that does not contain steroids. Patrice went on to launch Satya. The word Satya means higher truth in Sanskrit. Certified carbon neutral, with the coastal first nations, great bear rainforest initiative as well. Patrice insures she provides her staff of women, all single moms like her, a living wage, and great working conditions.
Here's our conversation where you will hear more about Patrice and Satya's exciting journey. For 10% off your order of Satya organic skincare products, head to satya.ca and use code. The Brand is Female at checkout that's S a T Y a.ca
Patrice. It's a pleasure having you on The Brand is Female today. Thank you so much for joining.
Patrice Mousseau: Thank you so much for asking me here. I'm really honored
Eva Hartling: and I'm actually a fan of your brand and have been discovered that at my natural local health food store a few years ago, or maybe two years ago.
And yeah, I swear by your product. So very excited to be chatting.
Patrice Mousseau: Wonderful. Yeah, we haven't been in stores for a super long time, but we're very happy that our customers love us and they keep going back for more and we keep growing.
Eva Hartling: That's great. And I want to get into all of that, but I'm going to start by asking you to go back in time.
And I want to hear about, you growing up, what were you dreaming of as a career for later in life. And did you ever imagine you'd have your own business?
Patrice Mousseau: So first off, no, I absolutely never thought I was going to be in It was so far off to any of my aspirations or even which I thought was my abilities.
It was never even on the table. I distinctly remember when I was about 15, I, at that point I'd already been, doing some like restaurant jobs and retail and stuff like that. And I thought what do I want to do? And I being very, optimistic, I guess I wanted to make a difference in the world.
So I decided to start working in social services. So at this time I was still in high school, but I was working with, people at a women's shelter. I was working with developmentally challenged persons. I was working with the elderly. And and then I thought this feels like a band-aid, I want to be part of the cure.
I actually sat down with a friend and they said, if you really want to have an impact on culture, you should get involved in media because we helped to shape people's ideas. But that makes sense. So I started, answering phones. And just, from there just ended up as a national news anchor for APTN
I worked for CBC news world. I had a talk show on CFRB. I had a music show on satellite radio on Sirius and yeah, I would just, I actually thought that's what I was going to do really in some form or another for the rest of my life. But then of course had a baby and your world changes and she developed eczema and or eczema, depending on where you're from.
And, my skillset has always been of course research because of my career. So I just said, you know what? The doctor's only option was steroids. I'm going to look and see if that's really the only option.
Eva Hartling: And tell me about starting that journey because you create a product basically to address the needs of your daughters specifically, and then you realize there's a business opportunity here.
But not easy to just become an entrepreneur overnight. And from what you're sharing, you didn't have experience in the beauty industry prior to this. So curious to know what the start of that journey was
Patrice Mousseau: like. Yeah. So again, this was really for my own child. I needed a solution for her now, what, you know what?
I came up with cleared up esme's excema in. And I had been experimenting with this in my kitchen Crock-Pot and that's how I came up with the formulation of course, with all the research. But then, esme didn't need it anymore. So I had a whole Crock Pot and I'm like, what am I going to do with this?
So I just put it out to friends and mom and baby Facebook group that I was a part of. At this point, I didn't know how prevalent the need was. Like it's about 20% of the world's population suffers from exzema or other skin issues. It's even more. So I said, does anybody need any? And I had to make three more crockpots because everybody did.
And even then I didn't consider it to be a business. It was only until, probably about a year and a half later I met a woman. Her name is Madeline Shaw. She has a company or had a company called Lunapads. She's doing something else right now, but she was just, she's very intuitive. And she said to me, I feel like you need to come to this business conference.
It's a word-owned a business conference that are, socially minded. And I went and I got inspired by all these other women who, we're redefining business because my definition of business has always been really negative. It's always been about like profit and, bros, like just not great.
And I was just shown that business can actually be a vehicle for social change. Very impactful, even more impactful than, what I was doing before. So I decided to do my first farmer's market and that's what I did in port moody, where I started my business. And now we're in stores across Canada and online and in Hong Kong and in the U S
Eva Hartling: congratulations. And I wanna ask you because you, and I and I read about you talking about, when you came up with your own recipe for this product, and it was also out of a need that traditional Western medicine wasn't addressing, because the answer for something like exzema and other skin issues is always kind of prescription based, steroid- based products.
So I think that says something too about that lack of alternative solutions that exist in the marketplace right now. Yeah.
Patrice Mousseau: At the time when I looked there weren't any other than steroids, there weren't any other products that were out there that had, proven to work certified. No fragrance, no parabens, like it was just a lot of garbage really.
So there wasn't a good option at that time. And I think also, not to say that steroids are always bad, but even your doctor, they say here, take this and use it for a week or two. That's never enough for most people they need something they can use ongoing. And actually, I don't think steroids should be the first line of defense.
We should be trying something like Satya. And then if you need steroids. You can use end up using less. So you don't end up building up a tolerance to the steroids and then you have to, increase your dosage every time. Yeah, I think there needs to be more of a shift like that on what doctors are recommending, because I know.
A lot of moms out there just really following what they've been told by someone who they think has their best interests in, in, in to heart. And they, they do, but they're also general practitioners and they're seeing a ton of people every day and this is not their specialty.
Eva Hartling: And what was the learning curve like when you know you switched
from having your product made in your Crock-Pot selling at a farmer's market and then having it distributed around the world and Hong Kong and other places. And I'm sure at that point you had to have new suppliers and new partners to make all of that happen. Yeah,
Patrice Mousseau: Eva, it was bananas. So like I said, I started in the farmer's markets and then basically through word of mouth and me talking to retailers and like solving their problems.
Whole foods got interested. And they were like, we want to start carrying your product. And I'm like, I'm still making this in my Crock Pot, you've got to let me scale up. And they were very patient, they said, fine. I got a distributor. And so once we were able to hit that go button we went from 70 stores, but we were in, in the Vancouver in lower mainland to 400 stores across the country in two months.
So it was a huge scale up for us. And honestly, this business, every day, it's changing and evolving. I've learned so much since I started this, but I'm constantly going to be learning more, which is hard sometimes, but it's also really exciting.
Eva Hartling: What would you say was something you wish you knew before you started this adventure?
Oh
Patrice Mousseau: my goodness.
Ooh, that's a tough one. Because so much is popping into my mind cause like literally I've learned so much. I would say that probably the most important thing, which I didn't really know at the beginning was that the importance of community your business community, your people that you call friends or sisters or whatever that you can able be able to talk to.
And also to understand. It actually benefits them to spend time with you as well. You're actually almost like providing a service because you're giving them that good feeling of helping someone. Because if you keep it internal, if you keep yourself isolated, you're not going to make great decisions and you're going to.
Beyond the floor with the amount of stress and worry that you're going to be going through. And so if you can develop that network either through, different working groups or whatever I'm a part of SHE-E-O in Canada and that's been amazing. And so like you have to talk to people because we do not do this on the on our own.
And certainly not if we want to succeed, we cannot do it on our
Eva Hartling: And often women entrepreneurs, especially we tend to go in thinking, we're going to make it through, we're used to getting over obstacles and we can do this on our own. And we wait longer than necessary to ask for help.
Patrice Mousseau: Also been fed, the fallacy that it's a self-made person, or, The reason for their success is they worked really hard. No, the reason for the success is a lot of different factors and it involved a lot of different people. And so I think that needs to be a number one, teaching for anybody going into business.
Eva Hartling: Yeah, absolutely. And I wanna ask you a question about your career before you became a head of your beauty brands and, or beauty is probably not the right word. Exactly.
Patrice Mousseau: No, but I, yeah, we're more of we are, in fact, I'm certified by both health, Canada and the FDA to make health claims. So we are here.
We've our formuour formulations beenwe can actually say that. Yes, this is an anti-inflammatory and people can use it instead of steroids.
Eva Hartling: Great. Congratulations. Okay. So I'll remove the word beauty from my vocabulary for this conversation, but also
Patrice Mousseau: use it as a makeup primer, I mean know it is, it's a, Frank's red, hot of skincare if you get my meaning.
Yeah.
Eva Hartling: And I wanna ask you about your time in media. Women are typically I don't know if it's true, but I think women usually face. Challenges, gender bias especially when it comes to being an anchor on Canadian television. We know that there's a limited number of women that, make it to the top or can have a very long career on the air.
Especially when it comes to BIPOC women. I'm curious to know what that experience was like. Lessons from that time for you. And just generally what that experience was like.
Patrice Mousseau: You have a lot of people who are dismissive and especially on the outside, people who are dismissive of your success. I was told just for example when I was living in Toronto, I was on CFRB.
This is the number one top station in Canada. I was on air doing my job for two hours at a time, which is basically you sitting in a room talking for two hours out, into the, out, into space. I had people tell me that it was because of, being indigenous or being an attractive female that I got the job.
And I'm like, you cannot see those things on radio. It's incredible how people will try to diminish your accomplishments, but you would not find that for men,
Eva Hartling: are there any kind of lessons from that time that you find are useful in what you do
Patrice Mousseau: today? Not everybody is going to get it, not everybody's going to like you, unfortunately, especially cause I'm one of those people.
Like I want everyone to like me, but the reality is they're not. Screw them too, right? Yeah. I would use stronger language, but I'm not sure we're allowed to.
Eva Hartling: Loud too. Oh yeah. We can curse on his podcast. You're fine. Okay. Yeah.
Patrice Mousseau: Yeah. Yeah. You just got to say what I going to say? Yeah.
Eva Hartling: Yeah. I can hear what you're trying to say.
You've talked about the community that you felt and the importance of building that community as an entrepreneur. Were there role models along the way who inspired you or gave you a model to
Patrice Mousseau: follow? As I mentioned that Madeline Shaw. From the get go.
I probably wouldn't have started my business without seeing her and what she was doing. Vicki Saunders, as I mentioned, SHE-E-O like she has literally created,
Eva Hartling: we had her
Patrice Mousseau: on the show. We talk about global movement. And she did it and she did it so fast. And so well, like such an inspiration, but also, I have a friend of mine through the SHEEO network.
Is she Jodi, she has held aware and she was an engineer. Her overalls didn't fit her as in a woman's body. So she decided to change that she decided to fix that. And I feel like with women, that's what we, that's what we do, where we see a problem and we decide that we're going to fix it.
We're going to make it better. And that's why we get into business. We don't get into business to make a ton of profit and, give our shareholders bigger bank accounts. Like we're in. To do good. And I love that about women entrepreneurs.
Eva Hartling: This season of The Brand is Female is made possible with the support of TD bank group, women, entrepreneurs, confidently building your business, take sound advice, plus guidance to the right connections, tools, and reasons.
As a woman, entrepreneur myself, I know I need all the support I can get. What's great about TD services for women in business is their collaboration based approach. They work with both internal and external partners who can provide education, financing, mentorship, and community. TD employees are able to be proactive in the advice and guidance they give to women in business.
They can facilitate and connect you to workshops, coaching, and mentorship, and they engage other like-minded business leaders in an authentic way. So we can share experiences and learn from eachother.. And speaking of doing good. So what kind of responsibility do you feel comes with that role? And you're in a niche where you're creating a product that's, actually helping people's health.
And I know that your background is in social services. You've talked about, going into that field to do good. How does that come true in the decisions you make for your business on an everyday basis, for example.
Patrice Mousseau: So right from the get-go I chose the name Satya because it means truth, like a higher truth.
Like not just being honest or whatever, like the honest company it's literally about what is the truth in life. And the truth is that we are all here together. You have to do, just try and always do the best you can. And I wanted to be a role model for my daughter. I wanted to show her that you could have these kinds of impacts and create businesses that do good in the world.
We don't just make a great product. It is fantastic, but we also have to look at every other aspect of the business, right? Like we, and hire all women or non-binary persons. Not that we're excluding men. That's just, who we are at this moment. We're very cognizant of paying, living wages as well.
That is really important to us. We have to have great relationships with our vendors and make sure that we're not getting any of our, packaging and ingredients from somewhere that's very dodgy. We also look at the packaging. And how do we do better? So we have, we have glass jars.
We have, oh, we have these are fantastic. These are brand new. I don't know if you've seen this yet. This is, these are refillable. So it's a stick version of Satya so you don't have to put your finger in the jar. And once you're through this, you get a, this is our refill pouch, It's compostable.
So you empty this, you melt it and you can pour it right back into the container. And then this is compostable and it ships really easily. So it's not heavy. So it's actually dropping our carbon footprint there. We are carbon neutral with the great bear rainforest as well. In addition to this, because this is.
Like we bought high quality plastic. It is recyclable, but we bought really high quality so we can keep reusing it. But in addition to that, whenever somebody buys one of our new sticks, we're actually in partnership with a company called the plastic bank. So what happens is we are paying people in developing countries to go to their local waterways, pull plastic.
Take it for recycling exchange it for credits for medical care, educational tuition, or household items. And then that plastic is recycled and resold to large multinationals at a premium for what's called social plastic. So you're addressing not only, the supply chain, global poverty ocean plastics, all with this one little product.
So we just try to think of every facet of the company. And we're always evolving too. We're always trying to do better. Yeah,
Eva Hartling: that's that is so great and I love the concept of social plastic. How do you think, you're proving that it's absolutely possible to, lead a business space on purpose and values and really.
Enact that in every decision, around your company what do you think needs to change with the general industry when it comes to health products? Let's roll in beauty as well, because we know it's a huge source of pollution overuse of plastic packaging just, a heavy supply chain that has a lot of points that caused damage to our planet.
What, how can we address this on a bigger scale?
Patrice Mousseau: Just talking about the sampling for one, those little plastic pouches hate those, which is why I created my small travel size 10. You get enough for about two weeks and then you can really see how it works with your body's chemistry. But I'm also working with a local university to develop an innovative sampling product that's going to be completely compostable and or recyclable.
So no more plastic pouches and then we're going to make it available to everybody in the industry as a way to start doing sampling for every single other company out there. So that's one of the things we're doing and, I think it, me. It's my first business. I'm a single mom.
I'm here working on my laptop in my house, running my business, but it's because I prioritize the things that I'm going to be able to sleep with at night. Like sleep well with at night. Yeah. And I think the other, other those big companies just need to do the same and not be dismissive.
The reality is for example these pouches, I told you these compostable refill pouches, they're also dropping or shipping costs. Because we can ship these a lot more inexpensively. So not only does it do good for the planet, but if you do it right, it can actually benefit your company.
And I think people need to see that there is financial benefit as well.
Eva Hartling: Yeah, absolutely. And you're proving that, and that can be adapted to our large scale. It's not just for a small company with, small batch production.
Patrice Mousseau: Absolutely. Yeah.
Eva Hartling: Hopefully your story inspires more and the work you're doing.
In research that university is going to get others to join the movement.
Patrice Mousseau: I'm happy to talk with anybody about it too Making myself available, collaborating, just finding unique and innovative ways to do it. And I feel like perhaps it's because this is my first business and I was never taught how to do business.
I'm having to think out of the proverbial box and come up with some innovative solutions. It's a great thing to be, to becoming an entrepreneur. If you don't have that business background,
Eva Hartling: I want to ask you, what does leadership mean to you and as a woman, what kind of leadership skills do you think you can bring?
That are specific to what you bring to your role as a founder and leader of your brand.
Patrice Mousseau: So I'm going to tell you what I told my daughter. The other day she asked me, she said mummy, why is optimus prime? The leader of the robots, the transformers that's right. Oh,
Eva Hartling: I was like wrong target audience.
I don't know what you're talking
Patrice Mousseau: about. So like the little toy robots, and he's like a leader. And I said to her, and I absolutely believe this. I said it's probably because he's a good listener. Cause that's what you do as a leader, you listen to what people are saying and encourage them and enable them to do their jobs better.
That's what you do. If you're too busy doing things inside of your company, you cannot help other people succeed. And that's what you do. Yeah.
Eva Hartling: And women typically we tend to apply more of our emotional intelligence and nurturing skills to listening practice. Yeah.
Patrice Mousseau: We have business superpower.
I like that line.
Eva Hartling: And what would you say to somebody who's looking to start a brand, a business a, in a similar category? What kind of tips would you
Patrice Mousseau: have? Build community, reach out to people recognize that nobody knows what they're doing and so you can go out there and, do your own thing.
You'll be OK with instability. You think me as a single mom, wouldn't be the best person to jump off the cliff, but I always loved challenges and I love, always love changes. So that makes you, I think makes me rather a good fit for entrepreneurship.
Eva Hartling: Yeah. And then I'll ask you a question that you've partly answered by, describing what makes you a good entrepreneur, but what's one thing that keeps you up at night.
What's one thing that you're maybe. That makes you anxious, that makes you nervous and that you're potentially looking to.
Patrice Mousseau: Yeah. Consumer packaged goods, CPGs, which I'm involved in that usually causes you have to have a big outlay of money to do inventory runs. And then if you sell a whole bunch, then you have no inventory.
So it's, for me, it's always cashflow. It's like trying to make sure that the business runs smoothly. And sometimes, I remember I did a small article with the press the newspaper in Quebec and, we sold out across the country in two days, right? Like we sold $30,000 in a day online.
Awesome. But I was also on the floor crying because I'm like, how is it that I have a great product? People love it. It's successful. And I'm still failing at how to run this business. So it's, be kind to yourself.
Eva Hartling: That's such good advice. And I think again, not to generalize, but I think a lot of women entrepreneurs I speak to on this show, it's we have this gift for honing in on the one thing that we think we're not doing properly or not good enough.
And even with the success keeps piling up. So I think there is a lesson here about the importance of celebrating those wins. Cause we're always thinking of the next thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Patrice Mousseau: I should have done this versus look at all the amazing stuff you just did. Like we need to see that.
Eva Hartling: So what does success mean for you?
Patrice Mousseau: Success means, safety and security for myself, my daughter the people inside the company. Being a role model for other companies and having them come to us and say, how did you do that? And how can we do something similar? Helping people like literally helping people when I get emails or phone calls from people saying that, I help them or their child or their elderly parent, I know what that feels like.
To have to want to help someone and not be able to like the gut kick when your child is crying and bleeding, to be able to do that for people or to also, make people feel more comfortable in like their literal skin skin issues can be very Emotionally taxing. A lot of people don't, like they feel like, oh, I can't shake somebody's hand because they're going to think I've got a disease or I got to hide my face.
Or, when people, I get hugs sometimes from people like that is that's success. And I just have to figure out a way to keep being able to provide that to people. So that's, So good thing.
Eva Hartling: We've talked about your role models earlier in a conversation, but I'm curious to know who inspires you today.
Who's somebody you find inspiring. Maybe it's a group of people that kind of fuels ideas and general inspiration for you, right? Sound
Patrice Mousseau: cliche. But honestly, it's my little girl, like her ideas are amazing. She. She has this idea for an in-store display for kids and, cause the stick is actually super easy for kids to put on themselves.
So she wants to do like a little box with a big cat head on it and she drew it all out. And then she also has someone at her school who has who's only got part of her arm and she's how does she put the product on, how do we help people with disabilities? Use the product. Like I was just blown away that she would even think about that and be inspired to think, yes, we can actually have an impact for people and she's 9..
Eva Hartling: I was going to ask how old she is. That's amazing. You've got an in house, product consultant and branding consultant working for you. And what is next for Satya? What is something you're excited about? That's maybe coming up in the next few months. Yes. So
Patrice Mousseau: we've been talking to our existing customers
about things that they really want to see from Satya, which is more products. They love us. They love the brand, they love our values. So they want to have more, which is wonderful. First up, we're going to be launching a actual lip balm. Right now you can use the formula on a lip balm, but we want to have something that is what I do.
It's what you do. So something that's a little thicker, like a little more thickness and maybe some flavors. Some natural flavors, which would be really nice. And then potentially either a bodywash or probably first we're going to do a face oil. I make a face oil that I give out to my friends that they love.
So I think I might start making that available to people as well. I might even do like a small run of 50 or a hundred just to see what people like. And I'll hand-make it. And yeah, you never know. I gotta get
on
Eva Hartling: that list.
Patrice Mousseau: Sounds great. It's really.
Eva Hartling: Yeah. And what is on the list for you?
Something, self-improvement something that you're trying to work into your routine. I can imagine that as a single mom, entrepreneur busy with growing your company. It's often a challenge to stay grounded and, stay connected and stay sane among all the craziness. So what's on your personal agenda for the future.
There's a
Patrice Mousseau: lot going on. Like school started yesterday. My cat has high blood pressure oh my God. But I've got all these people to like, I'm taking care of plus I'm taking care of the business. Of course. So my commitment that I just did for myself, which is take a probiotic every morning. And so far I've done it.
So I'm very pleased with that. And I think that is because we all know, like the probiotics are intestinal gut health, our microbiome on our skin. That is so huge for health in general. So that's my number one thing. I'm doing one probiotic, just doing a little bit, one probiotic every morning.
That's a manageable thing to do
Eva Hartling: and yeah. That's and that's a great step to take, right? Greater health and other good habits. I think,
Patrice Mousseau: We beat ourselves up because we're not doing everything we should. I think we all just need to be a little bit kinder to ourselves and just do by increments.
Like I've put on a ton of weight since know since having my daughter and since running my business, like my stress is just bananas, right? So instead of going, oh, I've got to lose, 60 pounds or something. I go, no, I'm going to lose. And I'm only focused on losing that, those two pounds. And then when I get there, think about the next two, but right now, just thinking about two pounds.
Yeah.
Eva Hartling: It's the little gestures, and it all adds up. Yeah.
Patrice Mousseau: Over time. Absolutely.
Eva Hartling: You've actually given me some elements of response to the next month, but this is my favorite thing to ask, on this show, what do you wish women and nonbinary people would do less of. Something that needs to come off our plate do
Patrice Mousseau: less of, you obviously it's, we've got to stop doing less work that other people can do and do better, less.
I want people to stop doing the work that they don't enjoy. I want people to go, you know what? I'm not good at that. I'm going to give it to someone who is good at that, and I'm not going to feel guilty, but the fact that I'm not doing it because I'm actually giving them something that brings them joy.
And for a lot of businesses starting out that doesn't necessarily mean hiring. But you can look at grants, you can get a student, you can get somebody because these are tasks that should be off your plate so that you can grow your business. That's
Eva Hartling: smart. Thank you so much, Patrice.
It was a pleasure getting to know you and you're the story behind Satya. Very excited to see the new products coming out and looking forward to staying in touch.
Patrice Mousseau: My honor honestly, it's been really great to talk to you as well. Thank you so much.
Eva Hartling: I really hope you enjoy today's conversation.
And if you did, as always, don't forget to subscribe, rate and give us a review wherever that is possible. Thank you to TD bank group women entrepreneurs, further support of The Brand is Female. You've got it in you to succeed. Let TD help guide you. Visit The Brand is Female dot com slash podcast and click on the TD logo.
Thank you for listening. I'll be back in a week with a new guest. Thank you so much for listening to a podcast by The Brand is Female I'm Eva Hartling. And this episode was produced by our team sound engineering by Isabel Morris research and production support. Claire Miglionico marketing and digital growth, Kayla, Gillis and partnerships, Natalie hope.