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Shine On Success
Shine on Success is a dynamic, story-driven podcast where extraordinary entrepreneurs, visionary leaders, and resilient change-makers share their journeys to success, revealing both the challenges and the strategies that led to their breakthroughs. Each episode offers a unique blend of inspiring personal stories, practical business insights, and actionable advice, allowing our guests to connect with an engaged, growth-oriented audience ready to be motivated and uplifted. By joining us, you’ll not only have the opportunity to showcase your expertise and inspire listeners but also to be part of a powerful platform that celebrates ambition, innovation, and the courage to turn dreams into reality.
Shine On Success
From a Spark to a Flame: A Journey of Scent, Strength, and Success
In this inspiring episode, we welcome Georgia Vanderville, the dynamic founder of Shorties Candle Company. Georgia's journey from crafting a simple gift to building an award-winning brand is filled with resilience, creativity, and an unwavering mission to bring joy and belonging through her beautifully scented candles. From overcoming personal adversity to empowering women entrepreneurs globally, Georgia shares how her passion for fragrance turned into a beacon of hope for many.
Discover how a childhood challenge sparked a lifelong mission, how she transformed obstacles into opportunities, and why she believes that scent has the power to transform our emotions and lives. Tune in to hear her insights on leadership, the impact of fragrance, and the importance of pushing through adversity to light up the world in your own unique way.
Connect with Georgia here:
Website: https://www.shortiescandles.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georgiavanderville/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/georgia.vanderville/
Connect with Dionne Malush
- Instagram: @dionnerealtyonepgh
- LinkedIN: /in/dionnemalush
- Website: www.dionnemalush.com
- Facebook: /dmalush
- LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/dionnemalush
Before we dive into Georgia's story, I'd love to know how many of you are here are driven by a passion that lights up your day, just like the perfect fragrance, what inspires you to create, whether it's in business, art or life. Today, we have the pleasure of hearing from someone who has not only brightened rooms with her beautiful candles but has also lit the path for countless women entrepreneurs, lit the path for countless women entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:Please join me in welcoming Georgia Vanderbilt, the founder of Shorty's Candle Company, an award-winning entrepreneur, business best-selling author and a true champion for women in business. Georgia's journey is nothing short of inspiring, and I know you're going to love what she has to share. So welcome, Georgia. It's so nice to meet you. I'm happy to have you on here.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to hear and to be on here.
Speaker 1:So thank you so much. I'm very excited. Oh, me too. So let's get started. My very first question that I always like to ask is what is one thing you would like people to know about you? Probably my mission.
Speaker 2:I think my mission and my mission is to set people's lives to create happiness. One huge thing for me is that I absolutely love when I know that people feel like they belong. I want people to feel like they belong. That matters to me.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is a beautiful way to start. So let's talk a little bit about your career. It's been diverse and impactful. What inspired you to start Shorty's Candle Company back in 2002?, and how did your travels influence your vision for the company?
Speaker 2:Well, we started out of a gift for a boy. I met this boy. I needed to make him a gift for Christmas and all of a sudden I was making candles. And then I actually thought well, when I was 15, we lived in this really, really old house. I didn't have a lot of money, we didn't grow up with much and we lived in this house that probably should have been torn down 20 years before we lived in it. And one day I flooded the bathtub and this horrendous smell came out of the carpet. It was awful, and at 15, I'm tearing up the carpet, I'm trying everything I can to make this house stop smelling. And I went to work one day. I worked at a pizza restaurant and I asked everyone there. I said what should I do? I can't get rid of this smell.
Speaker 2:It's a horrid and they said go get a scented candle, and at 15, with no money. I walked from my house half a mile to the bus stop, rode the bus all the way into town, spent my hard earned money on this candle, took the bus all the way back, walked all the way back up to my house and I went in my room and I lit this candle and four hours later it smelled like nothing.
Speaker 2:There was no smell that came out of this candle and it broke my heart. I felt like I put so much passion into this and nothing happened. When I was 21,. I met this boy and I did make him this candle. It created this smell that blew me away. It did everything I'd wanted it to do when I was 15. And I realized that I just invented scented candles. There were other people in their own path, that had invented scented candles, but I didn't find it.
Speaker 2:I had never found one of those and I truthfully believed that I created something new. I had to go out to the world and when I went down and we started setting up these craft shows down at Farmer's Market and then doing some Christmas craft shows, people were shocked by how good they smelled and I knew we had to keep going. And the stories they would tell us about what they would do for them and how they'd help them relax or help them find happiness and they would just smile from ear to ear when they were coming in to find a candle with us and we had to keep going it created this feeling inside of people that I couldn't let go of. I couldn't let that fade away. I had to create more.
Speaker 1:I love that because I love candles so much, I constantly have them burning. I have them sitting on my desk at work, like I love them. So I'm going to be having shorties candles coming up next because I'm going to be ordering online. Hopefully we can do that.
Speaker 2:So thank you for sharing that story.
Speaker 1:I love that at a young age you realize a need for something.
Speaker 2:And I always say that about today's entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:If you find something and you can make it better, you can make a lot of money by doing it. You by doing it, you don't have to invent it from the beginning, but you take something that's existing and make it better. It sounds like you did that, and I cannot wait to try your candles. So let's talk about one other thing that you do, which is empowering women. So you've done so much to help women globally. What challenges have you seen women face the most, and how do you believe we can best support the next generation of women in business?
Speaker 2:That is a great question as well. You are really good at this. In everything, in every single person that I have met, we have this place inside of us, myself included, that holds all of our past belief and ideas and thoughts and those come up for us, no matter how much we believe that they don't. They do and a lot of times those thoughts and those beliefs are a little roadblock, like just a little block in front of us. And when we can find that block and we can tear it down or not tear it down, but we can see it, understand it and then let it go, just almost dissolve this belief that we've carried with us, once we recognize that we even have it, that's when we can go. Wait a second.
Speaker 2:That's the thing that's stopping me and I found that many, many women they are able to. Once they understand that they do have that block, then they can start looking for it. And once they start looking for and there's tons of little tiny things, you know I want to make that phone call, but I can't, but that's because of a block. I want to send that email, I can't, but that's because of a block. I wanted to spend that money and I know we needed to, but I can't. That's because of a block and so, little by little, as we go through each block, one at a time, and it takes a long time, it takes years. But when we can go through those blocks and we can look at them and we can dissolve them, then we can create a new, open movement for ourselves and let ourselves move into this new path, new direction, and we can get there.
Speaker 1:I've had those blocks myself. Me too. I still have them and I work on them all the time, because you don't think you have them and then something comes up and you realize that it's still there. But I love that you are doing this. It's amazing, and I know that your company's mission is scenting people's lives to create happiness.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:How do you believe fragrance influences our emotions?
Speaker 2:I was driving this afternoon, actually, and I had so many things on my plate. Everything was just resting on my shoulders. It felt like, and I ended up I was in my car and I didn't have any candles around. But there's these different pattern interrupts that we can create and I ended up I was in my car and I didn't have any candles around. But there's these different pattern interrupts that we can create and I ended up putting on this song, champion, by Carrie Underwood, and I instantly was able to change how. I really realized how strong fragrance was.
Speaker 2:For us was my son. He was in third grade and I picked him up from school. He was making, he just got in trouble at school and when his teacher told me what had happened in school, I all of a sudden felt like I was on the chopping block. I was the one in trouble, I was the one that had made a mistake and it really felt like it was internal to me. The driving home. I just was yelling at him and he was yelling back and he had a different point of view and we were just in this awful, tormented argument with each other and we pulled up to the house and he was about to lose every single electronic piece that had ever existed in our home. And I'm walking inside in this mad hurry to get to his things before he did.
Speaker 2:And I walked inside and my husband had lit a candle while I was gone and this smell hit me right as I walked in the front door and it stopped me dead in my tracks and I went. Oh, I'm so sorry, buddy, I love you. I understand that today was hard for you. Let's just sit down and talk. And I call those moments our fragrance flips, because it stops us in our tracks and it says you can do something different. Just because you're driving north doesn't mean you have to continue in that direction. You can go east for a little bit and then, when you go north again, you'll end up in a better place. And that's what fragrance does for us, and it did that for me. In that moment it stops us like a good song, it changes us and it says oh yeah, let's do it different.
Speaker 1:What a great explanation. And for me, I can tell you my for my own self candles bring back so many memories and my dad passed away 11 and a half months ago and he smoked a pipe and he always had these amazing fragrance pipes, you know, like cherry scented and champagne, and it smelled so good. So sometimes when I'm walking past the candle I'll have that whiff of the pipe and I even have a candle called Santa's pipes, because if you know anything about me, you know I love Christmas so much and I actually still burn Christmas candles in the middle of summer because I, you know, my mind and my senses really are shifted by the smell of Christmas Right, and the kindness that we have during that time. I wish that I could bottle the kindness and make myself my own fragrance of it. I love the idea of it, but sometimes when I smell it brings back that memory of my dad that is so important, or even, when I was younger, some of the things that we always had candles burning in our house and it's just such a great memory for me. So I love what you're saying because it resonates with me personally. I love the memory of your dad. Yeah, I miss him so much.
Speaker 1:It's almost been a year and I'm like freaking out because I don't want the year to end, because in the year people understand more when you're different. But as you pass the year and they're like it's always. You know, in there some people think, well, it's been over a year. Right, where it's still under a year, you have some grace. I'll still have some grace afterwards because it's been a year. It feels so long since I last seen him. But things like candles and smells, and you know his cologne and the fragrance it means a world to me and I love that you're doing this. So thank you for sharing that. As someone who's both passionate about fragrance and successful in business, how do you maintain the balance between creativity and the demands of running a business?
Speaker 2:Creativity comes in and helps you run your business. About 10 years ago I ended up finding this beautiful exercise and I've done it every single morning for about 10 years now and it's meditation and that has been the biggest key for me. And I thought at first, oh well, my meditation, because I heard about this, this meditation thing, and I thought, oh okay, my writing, because I write so much, I write an incredible amount, and that I felt like, oh, you know, I could say, oh, my meditation is my writing. But once I started doing meditation, I realized that my meditation isn't my writing. My writing is my writing. My fishing is my fishing.
Speaker 2:My riding my bike is my riding my bike, my running is my running, but my meditation is my meditation. And I realized that it gave me this place to go and experience something new. And when I got to experience something new, I got to become the something new, which then was the creativity. It's where all the creativity started to develop. It was born in those moments of silence or even in a guided meditation that took me through an adventure to come and experience something new. But to me, that creativity and that balance of running a business, it all comes together and marries together inside of meditation.
Speaker 1:Wow, I've never heard anyone say it like that, and I have not been really consistent in meditation, but I do love it. So so many people talk about it on this show, though, so I need to really get myself back into the swing of it, but I do love it. So so many people talk about it on the show, though, so I need to really get myself back into the swing of it. I do realize the benefits of it and I do need that space. I spent the last 11 months filling my calendar with so many things that, to be honest with you, georgia, I can't even think straight. I feel anxiety every single day from so much stuff, and I look at my calendar. Tomorrow there's I have so many meetings on Tuesdays that I've made myself their self made meetings, trainings, classes, learning something new, like getting started to get a feeling about Tuesdays, like Tuesdays are starting not to become my favorite day.
Speaker 1:And all, but I don't have a balance between that right now. So either I'm so mentally exhausted or I'm filled with so much stuff that I can't even think straight. So that's what I'm kind of going through and I do feel like I'm putting that in place of the grief of my father dying, but I don't know how else to do it. But you know, meditation is that is a key to that, and I feel what you're saying.
Speaker 2:I truly do 30 seconds in the morning time and you can get silent and just connect to the moment you're in, right here and right now.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be 30 minutes, it doesn't have to be even five minutes, but 30 seconds to just be quiet. Just sit up in your bed before you even get out of bed and then if you do the Mel Robbins 3-2-1 countdown, that's cool, but you can do it after your 30 seconds. Sit up for 30 seconds and be okay with that 30 seconds and you can even do things like I love you, tell yourself that you love her, because that right there is letting her know that all of her decisions and all of her forward movement are important, are valuable and appreciated, and she can feel good. It's almost like there's two different personalities. There's this like outer body you, and then there's the inner body you, and when your inner body you knows how much you appreciate her, then she connects with the outer body you even stronger and it just creates a bond between you two and she's here to support you and you're here to support her and that connection can be made in that morning meditation.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to ask you this is an important question how do you name your scents?
Speaker 2:One of my biggest things is I'm not a big fan of let me. How do I think about this? A long time ago we had a candle fragrance called chocolate, called hot fudge brownie, and I thought, wow, that smells amazing. And it was such a good fragrance and we stole it as hot fudge brownie. And one day I was looking at it and it was such a good fragrance but it was coming up on the chopping block and it just didn't sell as good as it could. And I looked at it and I said, you know, let's just try something, please, let's just try something. And my husband said, okay, fine, but we changed it from hot fudge brownie to chocolate fudge brownie and it instantly skyrocketed and failed. And not only the few people who had tried it before got to experience it. Now, everybody got to experience it because they could find it.
Speaker 2:And I realized the importance of naming something. If you name something obscure, no one is going to know what that smell is. More likely, try something they'll understand the scent of, instead of something they don't. If something is a strawberry, instead of calling it red fields, just simply call it strawberry, and that's been my experience. But that's also part of our brand If your brand is something more obscure, you know if you, then you might want to name it something that's on brand for you, but for us our brand is really being specific with what the smell is, and those products that have a more specific name and are clear seem to sell better for us. That's a big part of our naming system.
Speaker 1:I love that. So it just makes sense. It's simple. It's kind of like search engines, right? They're going to search for strawberry, not red fields of what red fields of what right. So I like that. So it sounds like you put a lot of time into this. It's been what? 22 years since you started 22 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and our candles make sense, so that's good, that's really good.
Speaker 1:So there's a rumor going around that you were named one of the most influential women of the Sierra Nevadas. Is that correct? Yes, so what does leadership mean to you?
Speaker 2:Leadership means to me slowing down to understand what other people are going through and being able to walk them through that so they feel like they belong in the movement that you are heading in, and it's being able to take people with you on this path that you're heading into in a positive manner.
Speaker 1:It's so simple. So tell me about the community. How do you, what do you do to make a positive impact in your community?
Speaker 2:We do several different things. We do a trash cleanup every year and we go out into the community and clean up trash anywhere. We actually call it small business Saturday, get that clean. But it's six months after small business Saturday, because that Saturday is usually pretty cold and it's way too busy to be able to give it any attention. But if we do it six months after, then we can go out and we can get companies anywhere across the world they can pick up trash for their own community. And sometimes it's kind of hard.
Speaker 2:As a community leader, you know we do things like we'll go into the school and we'll adopt the classroom and we'll buy the products that that classroom needs. We coach different organizations, we work with our team and we're always taking our team out to do different events and we really support our local area here. But I think when we go a little bit more global and when we invite business owners because business owners are the people who have the people, if that makes sense or same thing with, like an influencer Influencers are the people who have the people. So if we can talk to the business owners or the influencers or whomever it is who has the people, and those people really appreciate what that business owner or the influencer brings to their lives, and then we can come out and we can say, hey, we have this movement like cleaning up trash in your area. Then it helps all those different companies in their own area get back in their own. And I think that's what helps build our community is when we can include other people in a bigger format.
Speaker 1:So the reason I started this podcast is I wanted to talk about people pushing through adversity and getting to the other side. Have you read the book Thinking Grow Rich?
Speaker 2:I have, but it's been a long time now.
Speaker 1:So that's one of my favorite parts of it the fact that we can have control of our own minds and we get to decide what's going to happen, right. A lot of people don't understand that to the degree that I do, because I study it all the time, but what we do understand is that people that push through adversity and get to the other side come out so much stronger, and usually what's on the other side is amazing. So can you talk to me about a time in your life where you pushed through adversity and got to the other side of it?
Speaker 2:Wow, yes, I can.
Speaker 1:I figured.
Speaker 2:In 2014,. In 2014, it was actually May 31st of 2014. I was, our company was just crumbling and it was almost nothing and we lost our last employee and I had no idea what we were gonna do. There was no way that I could continue to do it all and I went to hire a lady. I put out a listing on Craigslist and she replied to it and she came over. It was 5.30 in the morning. She came over and she's sitting in my garage and we were in my garage at this point in time and we're sitting there. We're face to face and I asked her a question and she's responding to my question and as I'm looking at this woman, my brain did like a flip-flop inside of my head. It just started twisting and it was. It wasn't painful, but it was scary. And I don't know what a deja vu inside of your head feels like, but I know that when I was in ninth grade, I asked somebody do you know what this feeling is? And they said, yes, that's a deja vu. So that's the only thing I can relate it to. But it was like a two minute long deja vu, like it just kept going and going and going and going. It just kept. By the time it was over, I couldn't remember anything that she had said or anything that we talked about. I knew what she was there for. I just looked at her and I said thank you so much for coming in, I'll be back with you. And she left.
Speaker 2:I went inside the house and I tapped my husband on the shoulder and I said honey, honey, something just happened to my brain and I'm really scared. And he said it's okay, you're just tired, come back. And he pulled me down into him and I fell asleep and when I woke up, this then went up and I woke up to tears and I walked across the house and I walked to the nursery and there were two cribs and I was really shocked because I all of a sudden realized I had two children and I had forgotten one of them. And we went through the day and it was, that was a Saturday, and it was really scary because there were things like I couldn't remember where things were in the kitchen or what to do with everything or how to make things, and so we just went through the day and I thought, okay, well, and I started learning. You know, the different things came back quite quickly. You know, you look, oh, this is where the cups are, this is where the plates are. Okay, okay, I can do that. And then we went.
Speaker 2:Sunday came and I went to church and I'd been interpreting for my deaf friend for four years I'd been an ASL interpreter and it took me almost an hour to get there because I had to figure out how to drive my car and I had to map out how to get to church and I had a lot to do and I finally got there. I got in front of her and I sat down and I remembered one sign sorry, and everything else was gone and I realized that I had to go to the hospital. So we went to the hospital and we did test after test, after test after test and there was nothing that they could do for me and I had to rebuild. And I rebuilt and rebuilt and I learned and that was actually shortly after I learned how to spend money on myself. I spent $99 on myself on this little program to learn about me and it was the best $99 I've ever spent because I had so much growth I had to go through, but I had put this cap on myself that I could not break without that moment and I was able to move past that.
Speaker 2:It took years. It took years and it's been a lot, but it's okay because it's great. It's great I can actually say. I can look back and say I'm grateful for that moment now because of where I am now. So what exactly?
Speaker 1:was it?
Speaker 2:What caused it? They gave me a diagnosis that I said I didn't agree with and I still don't agree with. But I ended up at a conference down in LA one day and at the conference I walked out of the conference to go to the bathroom and I ended up. I never, ever, ever told anybody this story, but I was. I talked to this guy at a coffee stand and he ended up being a nutritionist and I told him what was happening to me and I told him I'd gone gluten-free because I'd ended up at a hospital and they told me to go gluten-free. So I told him that.
Speaker 2:I said it's really weird, though, because I still have these episodes and they last for like about five days, and I just have to sit on my couch for five days with my two and three-year-old trying to figure out why. And I said but at the end of the five days, the one thing I don't want is sugar. Sugar is absolutely horrendous, it's awful. And he said do you want to know what that is? I said, sure. He said that's your body's way of telling you what's causing the problem. And I quit eating sugar and I stopped having all of the episodes. I've had two, very, very, very tiny, tiny episodes since then, and I mean maybe like two seconds or four seconds, like maybe what someone else would call a deja vu.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Wow, that's quite a story. And you hear, you are standing today building a company still after you're going through the worst of times, but you put yourself back on the saddle. You did it again. You're doing it, you're living it. Keep going, don't quit. That's the key. You have to keep going because the alternative is just it's not good. You have good, you know you have to push through adversity, everyone. It's hard, we all have stuff, everyone does, no matter who you are, and life is a rollercoaster ride. You know there's big highs and big lows, and then there's a nice happy medium.
Speaker 2:I mean you get to the other side and you go. I can do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you got through that. Right, you pushed through that.
Speaker 2:So tell me a little bit before we wrap up about your personal life or something that you love to do. I love to snowboard. Actually, snowboarding is one of my most favorite things to do. It's one of those things that I'll go and I'll do on my own, and it's just an amazing adventure.
Speaker 1:I love snowmobiling. It's like actually driving fast in the middle of the forest. I love that. It's so much fun, and I haven't done it for a couple of years. We just don't have as much snow as we used to here, which I'm okay with now.
Speaker 2:As I get older, I'm okay, without having snow.
Speaker 1:So is there anything else, before we wrap up, that you would like to share with us, a little bit about how our listeners can get a hold of you and how they can order shorty's candles.
Speaker 2:Very cool, well, I have a question for you real quick. Can I ask you? Of course, what is what is your favorite fragrance?
Speaker 1:oh, I have to say something with vanilla in a vanilla and cinnamon in fact I just got this one yesterday called cinnamon buns and it smells so good. It's cinnamon, nutmeg, butter, clove and vanilla, so it has all of my favorites in it. So I love the smell of clove at the holidays because of the ham and my parents every Christmas Eve my mom, dad and me would make the ham and we'd put all the cloves in. So that smell and the cinnamon and the vanilla and yeah, that's my favorite.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. Well, we have an incredible cinnamon vanilla. I'm going to have to send it to you. You're going to really love it. All right, wait, because I'm going to order, so you can just throw it in that order with my stuff.
Speaker 1:So that way you don't have to send it twice. I really appreciate it, and thank you for being on with me, and thank you for sharing your journey, your insights and passion with us today. It's clear that your dedication to creating happiness, whether through scent or empowering others, is truly making a difference in the world. So one thing I know for sure if we've helped one person with this podcast, this podcast is a success, and people like Georgia being on the show make me so excited, because I feel like I'm connecting with people all over the world, that six months ago I didn't have the kind of relationship that I'm building today. So thank you for being on here, thank you for doing what you do, thank you for pushing for diversity, because without people like us, the world would be pretty boring, so I'm thankful for it.
Speaker 2:So thank you very much, thank you for having me, and you guys can always visit us online at shortycandlescom. Perfect.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Georgia.
