Why Selfmade is Going into 'Rest Mode'

"We have something that has been in the works for the past 3.5 years that we feel excited about," says Lee. "Selfmade was never meant to just be a beauty brand. As a tiny team, we realized that the only way to bring this innovation to life in the way it deserves and our stakeholders deserve is to conserve energy, be disciplined about focus, and remove stressors that do not help us build to this bigger vision."

Lee adds, "It feels scary to slow down when peer brands are moving quickly and the world never stops. To live what our mission is, our team needed to take a break and reset our nervous system so we don’t act out of fear, numbing and anxiety. It’s the only way to sustainability build something for maximized impact."

"[I]f we recognize the societal forces that contribute to burn out, then we have the opportunity to embrace that we have some choice," says Stephanie Lee. "I recognize that rest in our society is a privilege whereas, from a mental health and human hierarchy of needs, it is a physiological need."The brand's latest self-care campaign, launched in conjunction with the pause, is called Rest Mode; the campaign focuses on resting to come back stronger.

Lee found themselves hyperstimulated amid the challenges and demands of scaling up a small beauty business. In response, the brand has instituted "no meeting/Slack Wednesdays" to give the brand team room to focus. (More on that in a moment.)

The brand's site has been updated to focus on ease of use, versus a fixation on newness. Its social feeds have also been paused.

Selfmade has also instituted a site-wide 40% off sale until its products sell out, making room for what's next. It's also launching a bundle with topical tools and somatic resources. 

The Rest Mode initiative is fronted by Ev’Yan Whitney, a somatic practitioner, sexuality doula and author who has created a limited-edition Neurobeauty Rest Ritual and corresponding workbook that features individual practices for Selfmade’s four hero products that are paired with rest- and recovery-centered mind and skin rituals.        

Lee notes, "While you can purchase the physical form with our new bundle, even more excitingly folks can access the digital version completely free by signing up to join the community. This was so important to me because resources that help to strengthen our connection of brain and body should be more accessible and not gate kept as a luxury."

The founder adds, "What this means is that we want everyone who touches Selfmade to walk away with something valuable even if they don’t spend a single penny. So we are sharing through education and an upcoming community event in LA as a way to remind all of us that even without massive resources and the ability to buy our way to recovery, that rest is more than sleep or naps, a baby step is pulling back and making time for rest as a reconnection of mind and body."

"We took inventory of what we’ve been doing, what has been working, what feels good, and what is dragging us down from a mega, macro, micro, and individual level," says Stephanie Lee. "Over the last 3.5 years, we’ve done a lot in building a business and leading a conversation on how stress affects skin health and vice versa.""We took inventory of what we’ve been doing, what has been working, what feels good, and what is dragging us down from a mega, macro, micro, and individual level," says Lee. "Over the last 3.5 years, we’ve done a lot in building a business and leading a conversation on how stress affects skin health and vice versa."

Lee adds, "We're not conscious of this happening, but the body and skin are always working for us. Rest is important because the body is consistently working to keep us safe all the time. As a human population, we navigated the global trauma of COVID-19, isolation and loneliness, faced mortality and violent systemic racism, reproductive rights being taken away, and tried to make sense of socio-political uncertainty."

The founder concludes, "On a personal level, wrestling with my own ego to overcome self-doubt, amplified by being underestimated by racism and sexism, and losing a family member. Professionally, growing a brand of a future finding its footing today, showing folks that this is a real thing based on credible science, managing how my ADHD impacts the business and others, to consistently flexing creative muscles to pivot and problem solve as a low resourced business. All of these things are a lot alone, and together incredibly overwhelming. And my body and skin have been messaging me all this time that it’s being negatively impacted."

Ultimately, Lee's relentless work on Selfmade ran in some ways counter to the brand's ethos.

Lee explains, "My executive coach, who works with Fortune 500 CEOs, kept reminding me that I'm building something to enable self-care for others. How can I do that if I’m not taking care of myself? Of course, rather than listening I kept grinding. Then a year ago, my body decided it was time to sound the alarm because I was ignoring its more subtle signs of acne and inflammation. I realized I don’t know how to rest when my ADHD is unmanaged and my brain continues to work (so much so my brain is busier at night than in my awake state!)."

There were more serious indications, too.

"The wakeup call was when my blood test came back saying that I’m dangerously close to being pre-diabetic and my neurologist said that I’m on track for a heart attack before forty years old unless I make major changes," Lee explains. "I didn’t believe him until I started to experience superventricular tachycardia where my heart would beat as fast as 180 bpm when I was just sitting, not even working out. It was terrifying."

Lee adds, "From a community sense, every time I asked people how they were feeling and doing there was an extremely constant theme of being tired and burnt out. It didn't matter what the person did as a job or focus in life, everyone was feeling more tired and stressed now than they were pre-COVID. It’s clear to me that we haven’t recovered from the pandemic era, mainly because we’ve been so excited to quickly put it behind us."

"We’re no longer churning for productivity's sake and shifting into deep focus," says Stephanie Lee. "There is so much about having a business that is performative whether it is putting out social posts all the time or responding instantaneously to each ping of an email, message or DM. So we’ve gone dark on our socials and will only posting intentionally.""Like everything we do, this is new for us," says Lee. "We’re not 30-year beauty veterans, we’re a community of emotional and ambitious human beings who came together to solve a problem unconventionally. So operationally this is something that we’ll be navigating as we go."

For example, says the founder, "We’re no longer churning for productivity's sake and shifting into deep focus. There is so much about having a business that is performative whether it is putting out social posts all the time or responding instantaneously to each ping of an email, message or DM. So we’ve gone dark on our socials and will only posting intentionally. We’re encouraging folks to subscribe to email to hear what’s going on with the brand and how we’re building on the next phase of the business."

Meanwhile, the meeting and Slack pause on Mondays and Wednesdays creates "space for truly focusing on projects or thinking time," says Lee.

They add, "This allows for our nervous systems to relax, knowing we aren’t expected to jump to attention in being too available to others, and ensures we’re not spreading ourselves too thin by being stretched in too many directions. We’ve built our website to be simpler to navigate and advocate for your rest and reset with our NeuroBeauty Rest Field Guide to get the most out of our products with this intention. This way we can let the website be and remove the performance element as a moving target from our brains."

"Mental health research shows that we heal and recover faster and better in communities, so we’re focused on our local LA folks to influence what this new era of Selfmade will feel and look like," says Lee. That has been a really cool part for our team to collaborate in a way that builds energy rather than depletes. The reason we announced to our community that we are taking a pause is because we want to hold ourselves accountable. It’s so easy to sleep back into working and prioritizing productivity because of the society we live in. It’s been cool to see folks positively reinforce taking rest because it helps normalize this habit for us. This is what behavior change looks like."

At the time of this interview Lee is a bit more than two weeks into having removed themselves from day-to-day operations and "churning," as Lee puts it. Some might call this a "founder mode" mindset, which is common for small upstart brands, featuring founders touching every part of the business.

While some may see such a mindset as critical for brand success, others have criticized founder mode as a recipe for micromanagement and burnout. 

Lee notes, "Not surprisingly, I found out that those with ADHD are more likely to experience burnout than those who don’t have it. The prolonged stress of trying to manage symptoms and simultaneously live up to expectations commonly leads to burnout. So this means that the team gets to learn how to work together differently, more focused on how we can all rest more sustainably while I learn how to actually take rest.

Selfmade has put no timeline on how long it's pause will last. That's by design.

"You know how when you’ve been working hard you go on vacation and it takes a few days to actually start winding down from the high stress level?" asks Lee. "And then you enjoy it for a few days being in the moment and letting go, only to start getting anxious that you only have a few more days to enjoy it before it ends? It makes it so hard to truly reap the benefits of taking physical, emotional, and mental distance from work."

As a result, says Lee, "[W]e’ll collectively check in on an ongoing basis to see where we are in our progress behind the scenes of our big project to determine when we wake up again. I know it sounds a little nuts to not have things planned out, especially as most businesses have their marketing calendar set for anywhere from 2-5 years. But as a founder, I’m interested in the magic of what happens when you don’t plan. Nothing truly is in our control, so what happens when we surrender?"

"[I]t’s been cool to see how our community is supporting our time of rest and naming burnout," says Lee. "From this, I think we’ve hit a nerve our people are generally feeling. So our engagement says, 'hey we see you and how you feel. We feel it too so you're not alone.'"

Lee adds, "[I]f we recognize the societal forces that contribute to burn out, then we have the opportunity to embrace that we have some choice. I recognize that rest in our society is a privilege whereas, from a mental health and human hierarchy of needs, it is a physiological need. In order to feel safety, love, belonging, etc., our physiological needs must be addressed before more complex needs like mental and physical health. And a jar of skin care can’t do that. "

The founder adds, "Slowing down means our community gets a chance to check in on what they need, not what external forces insist we need. Our chief medical adviser and psychiatrist, Dr. Byron Young [MD] has said in a past community panel on rest, 'There’s no catching up on rest. It’s living a lifestyle that allows for enough rest. The societal belief that if you're not working hard enough, pull yourself up by the bootstraps or what can you do for me hustle culture is rooted in elitism and racism.'"

"Constant learning is a value of ours so we’re excited to learn how we will function differently," says Lee. "It’s too early to say what the lessons are or have an inkling of what they may be."

The founder adds, "To fully understand how rest and lower nervous system activation threshold impacts us and the business, we need time to linger in it. To get through the discomfort of not always being “on” to leaning into a state of critical thinking versus in a position of reactivity. This is only the beginning, and by listening to our body and observing our skin, we will be able to enter this new era of Selfmade with a refreshed nervous system and new energy. So stay tuned.'

Lee concludes, "Our e-commerce is still open with our current SKUs that continue to be recognized for their high-performing formulas and rituals. We’re excited for what products come as more tools to address how our mental state and stress manifest on our skin and body. But first, we rest."