Anybody who has gone into business knows you need to have grit and an undying sense of finding opportunities to address a need or create one which you would then sell to others. Suzy Batiz, owner and founder of Poo-Pourri knows exactly what it's like. The 54-year-old entrepreneur went through two bankruptcies before hitting the jackpot.
She came up with two business ventures, one during her teenage years, and another later on after she got married and had kids. The first one was a bridal shop she bought at 19 but tanked because nobody wanted to buy the designs. The second one was an online recruitment business in the late 90s but after the dot-com bubble popped, that too went down the drain. She filed for bankruptcy a second time.
She vowed not only to never take on debt or investors again but also to never start another business. For four years—what she calls her “spiritual sabbatical”—she kept her promise. That changed after a fateful family dinner in 2006 during which someone stunk up the bathroom; her then-brother-in-law wondered aloud if bathroom odor could be trapped.
For nine months, she researched oils and natural ways to fight stink. She mixed concoctions in her kitchen and had anyone using the bathroom in her house test them. Finally, her husband walked out of the bathroom one day with good news. “His famous words were, ‘Oh my god, we’re going to be millionaires,’” Batiz recalls.
Read more of her story on Forbes.
(Image credit: Suzy Batiz/Twitter)