You’ve probably watched enough episodes of “Shark Tank” to know that stories of people who have been able to turn their business ideas into something successful are few and far between. But Beatrice Dixon has been able to defy the odds, building what is now a multi-million dollar wellness business from a dream – literally. Now, she’s sharing the story of how it all came together.
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The Root spoke exclusively with The Honey Pot Company co-founder and CEO Beatrice Dixon about her new memoir, “The Soul Instinct,” and how she learned to trust herself and her ancestors to create the life she wanted.
The interview is the first in our “The Survival Code” series. All month long, we’ll be speaking with Black living legends who are deconstructing the narrative of winning when the systems that are supposed to support us are failing. We’ll take a look at the strategies used by leaders in our community to prove that we succeed because we know how to navigate duress.
Dixon said when she decided to write a book, the idea of sharing her personal story, starting with surviving a car crash while still in the womb, being born prematurely, and spending her first five months in the hospital, wasn’t easy.
“It was weird at first, because I’m a pretty private person. But then, as it flowed, it became like a self-help book to me. It was very cathartic,” she said.
Dixon, who has been at the helm of The Honey Pot Co. since its 2014 launch, writes openly about her unconventional path to success, which included a variety of jobs, from pharmacy technician to cleaning houses for professional athletes to working at a strip club. Throughout the book, she is honest about the struggles she’s faced along the way, including a marriage that ended in divorce and how she dealt with racist trolls who left negative reviews of her products after mentioning wanting her success to inspire young Black girls in a national Target ad. But it was a personal health challenge that led her on a fascinating journey to connect with her past and create a new line of products for the future.
Dixon said she spent months online and in stores searching for relief from a recurring vaginal wellness issue before the answer came to her in the form of a dream of her late grandmother.
“It was beautiful. She had been walking with me, seeing me struggle, and was like, ‘Let me go and get my baby together, she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” she said.
In that dream, Dixon said her grandmother gave her a list of ingredients, with which she experimented in her kitchen until she developed a winning remedy. Once she realized the product worked for her, she made it her mission to share it with the world. With the help of a $21,000 loan from her brother, she continued to work full-time at Whole Foods while selling the plant-based feminine wash she developed in the parking lot.
Since launch, The Honey Pot Co. has expanded its product line and grown to become a nine-figure business, available in more than 33,000 stores across the United States, including Target, Whole Foods, CVS, Walgreens, and Kroger. But while the idea of making multi-million-dollar deals with corporate giants may seem out of reach for some, Dixon says she has never doubted her product or herself.
“I didn’t know anything about business. I didn’t know anything about consumer packaged goods, but the moment I realized that Honey Pot had worked for me was the moment that I was like, ‘This is what I do now,’” she said. “And I don’t know if it was just sheer ignorance, but I never even questioned it, not even for a second.”
Dixon said she poured her heart and soul into building her brand, hoping to help others maintain vaginal wellness and to show other Black women and girls what is possible.
“I think the reason why I had so much confidence is because vaginal wellness is never going to go out of style. You can’t AI that,” she said. “But it was also important for us to be successful because I think it’s important for Black women and young Black girls to be able to see themselves in that.”
Even as the brand continues to grow, Dixon says she’s committed to maintaining her original mission and her family’s legacy.
“There’s a lot of responsibility that we take as a company at every level,” she said. “For me, it’s about never forgetting why we did it, never forgetting the ancestors, never forgetting how we got here.”
Dixon says she hopes people who read “The Soul Instinct” will feel empowered to believe in themselves.
“I want people to see my journey and how I didn’t do things in the traditional way. I want them to understand that there is no table to be invited to,” she said. “The only reason those hypothetical rooms or tables exist is because people perpetuate those stories. My message to anybody reading the book is to just put your head down, do the work, live your life and don’t believe the hype.”
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