" I understand very well my own strengths. But I also understand very well my own weaknesses," with Anika Goodwin, MD, OpulenceMD Beauty

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I am a board-certified ophthalmologist with over 15 years of experience and 10,000 surgical procedures to my credit.  I am passionate about vision and eye health.  I believe that XSUI quality eye here should be a privilege and everyone enjoys.  I am happily married, and I have two beautiful daughters.  If someone had asked me five years ago where I saw myself in the year 2020, I would definitely not have said that I see myself as an entrepreneur!

What inspired you to start your business?

I have always loved beauty and glamour.  My time was limited while I was in training, but I always made time to add that extra touch to make myself feel confident and beautiful.  About four years ago, I discovered individual eyelash extensions.  I was in love!  They gave me that finished look that I loved and allowed me to achieve it in a fraction of the time. 

As my schedule became busier while developing my first company EyemergencyMD, I found it more and more difficult to make it to my touch up appointments consistently.  This left me looking anything but pulled together.  I needed another solution.  One that I could do on my own time with the few spare minutes that I had.  I discovered magnetic lashes extensions and liner and the rest is history.  Not only was this option a huge timesaver, but it was also much healthier for my own natural lashes.  Once I allowed my individual lash extensions to fall off, I discovered that prolonged use had left my natural lashes thin, frail, short, and unhealthy.  Though magnetic lashes were very good, I knew that there were some aspects that I could improve upon with my knowledge of the eye and visual system.  OpulenceMD Beauty was born.

Where is your business based?

Both EyemergencyMD and OpulenceMD beauty are home-based businesses.  Neither has a brick and mortar location.  The central command station for both lies within my home in North Carolina.  This has been a godsend as it has allowed me to spend more quality time with my spouse and children.

How did you start your business?  What were the first steps you took?

The growth of telemedicine as a viable clinical tool drove me to consider how this tool could be used to increase access to high-quality eye care.  In this day and time, believe it or not, there are states with counties that have absolutely no eye care providers within their borders.  That fact blew my mind.  The number of people going blind due to preventable causes was too high and, I feel, directly correlated to that statistic.  Because I am an ophthalmologist, people would often message me with questions and photos of their eyes or the eyes of their relatives. 

Many times, I could offer a viable diagnosis and treatment recommendation to them simply based on the information within the message and photos.  The light bulb went off in my head.  Surely there was a use case for telemedicine within ophthalmology as well.  I made it my goal to set out and find it.

OpulenceMD Beauty was born out of my own personal need.  In bouncing the idea off other busy professional women like myself, I realized that the need was great and as yet unmet in the market in the particular way that I would offer it.  I used my knowledge of the eye and experience with lash extensions of all types to create a lash that I knew would be comfortable and well tolerated by people with even the most sensitive eyes.  Time spent on market research and prototypes finally led me to the current product which has received rave reviews since its introduction to the market on February 14, 2020.  I could not be prouder of my offering and the solution it provides for today’s busy woman.

No matter what type of business you may be building, the first steps are quite similar.  It involves researching your concept, coming up with a name as well as your intended audience for this concept, and creating the legal entity under which you will provide your product or service.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

Social media hands down.  In this day and age, you must have a strong presence on social media in order to get your message or product in front of as many eyes as possible.  Although I am not a person who needs to be in front of the camera, I have found that putting my face on my brand, given my experience and credentials, has also helped me to gain traction and market recognition.  Working with influencers has also been pivotal in raising awareness for my beauty brand in particular. 

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

Being a female founder and CEO is a challenge, especially when trying to raise capital.  It can be difficult to get the people holding the purse strings (typically men) to take you seriously.  A technology-heavy company like EYEmergencyMD needs capital to survive.  You can only bootstrap a tech company for so long. 

Getting venture capitalists to infuse funds has been extraordinarily hard.  I decided to forgo venture capital and began to focus on engaging fellow ophthalmologists.  It was the best decision I could have made.  When the company needed advocates to soften our debut into the market, there was no better advocate then other ophthalmologists who understand the need we were meeting and the full scope of our offering. 

How do you stay focused?

Focus has never been a real issue for me.  As a matter of fact, the opposite is more of a problem for me.  Relaxing and winding down.  Taking a break from work.  Those are the things that I struggle with.  I am naturally a very intense person.  Perhaps even a bit OCD.  I honestly believe that this trait has allowed me to be successful in medicine, which is not an easy road to travel, and as CEO of two companies.  I am working more on stepping away and allowing myself some downtime and showing myself some grace. 

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

I cannot say that I really focus on this.  Before COVID-19, EyemergencyMD was the only acute care offering in the ophthalmology space.  We had no competitors.  Since COVID has made telemedicine more prominent in all specialties of medicine, there are now a few newcomers to the market.  However, EyemergencyMD has been around for two years and has created the protocols and set the standards by which other companies will now try to establish themselves. 

My brand, OpulenceMD Beauty, is just inherently very different from all of the competitors in the market.  One of the tag lines for OpulenceMD Beauty is:  Not just the trend, the standard.  These are not just words.  We take this to heart.  OMDB is the only magnetic lash brand that is created by a woman or who has worn every type of lash extension, a woman who is an eye surgeon with over 15 years of experience in over 10,000 surgical procedures performed, a woman who is a busy wife and mother but also a business badass, and the only brand of magnetic lashes that puts the safety of your vision and your eye health at the center of everything that we do.  We are different simply because we ARE different.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

Hiring a marketing team.  It is commonplace in medicine to find sub-specialists in all the different medical specialties.  This means, that particular physician has additional training in a certain area that makes them more proficient and somewhat of a subject matter expert in that particular topic.  I have brought that same hierarchy to my businesses.  I understand very well my own strengths.  But I also understand very well my own weaknesses.  In the places that I am weak, I have found it important to look to others who have that as their strength.  If everyone is working within their circle of brilliance, there is no choice but for the magic to happen.  To get there, one has to put their ego aside and focus on what is best for the brand and the business.

What is your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

Do it scared.  Follow your dream.  What are you waiting for?  There will never be the right time.  There will never be a great time.  The only way to fulfill your desire to be your own boss, to create an amazing side hustle, and to follow your dream is to get started.  I do not know what I am doing is no longer a valid excuse.  I am trained to be an eye surgeon.  Not an entrepreneur.  There are so many resources out there.  But first, you must want it enough to work for it.

What is your favorite app, blog, and book?  Why?

Favorite app:  Shopify!  That cha-ching sound gets me every time, lol!

Favorite blog:  The Mature Momma Life with Dr. San.  She makes this journey called motherhood hilarious!

Favorite book: Their Eyes Were Watching God, because Zora Neal Hurston is amazing.  Business book is Positioning:  The Battle for Your Mind because sales is ALL about psychology and if you don’t understand that you will not be as successful as you could be.

What is your favorite business tool or resource and why?

Masterminds, no question about it.  There is something about bringing together that many brilliant minds and utilizing that brain trust to solve problems in your business.  Also, being able to watch other people identifying problems, creating workarounds and solutions, and scaling a company are the best education you could possibly get.  It is like getting years’ worth of education in a matter of months.  The financial investment can be steep, but the payoff is tremendous if you lean in and do the work. 

Who is your business role model and why?

Janice Howroyd Bryant.  I had the privilege of hearing her speak in June of 2019.  It was transformational to say the least.  There should be no question about why she is the first African American female to own and run a billion-dollar business.  She is the epitome of or intelligence, grace, and grind.  She is a dedicated family woman and handles that role equally as well as her CEO hat.  She hails from a very small town in North Carolina and remains very connected to her community despite her amazing success.  She IS every woman! 

How do you balance work and life?

I do not.  I prioritize.  On my day in the operating room, taking excellent care of my patient is my priority.  However, if one of my children wakes up with a fever, my priorities must shift, and my child’s well-being then takes precedence over the patient to have surgery that day.  There is no balance.  There is ordering of your priorities on a daily and ongoing basis that results in harmony between work and life.  It is fluid and needs to be reassessed not just daily, but multiple times per day. 

What is your favorite way to decompress?

Relaxing next to the ocean with a good book or good music.  No phone, no tablet, no laptop.  Not worrying about what is happening in the business and just truly relishing the moment.  That is like heaven for me! 

What do you have planned for the next six months?

Growth!  Since launching both companies, I am in full in scale mode.  I want to perfect my systems and processes so that my businesses could run if I fell off the earth tomorrow.   Good leaders understand the need to make your company capable of running without you instead of collapsing if you aren’t there.  With the recent pandemic, this is an important consideration for any business, along with succession planning.

How can our readers connect with you?

Please message me or follow me @dranikamd and @opulentlashlife.