Cliona Nagle is a designer, trained coach, positive psychologist, sleep hacker, and now CBD entrepreneur! She is the founder of plus120 - a platform that sells the best CBD across Europe which she set up after stumbling into the CBD world with crazy sleep issues! Her work focuses now on helping to get the word out about CBD in Ireland. She’s passionate about all things sleep, CBD, and changing many of the stigmas around CBD that are still very prevalent.

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I spent around 20 years working in Tech as a Product Designer. I loved the field and the constant learning and growing field but had a serious case of imposter syndrome, that I struggled with. As a designer, there is no clear “right” or “wrong” way to do things, sometimes people like what you do and it works and other times they don’t, for no reason.

What inspired you to start your business?

Coming up to my 40th birthday, I just made a decision to make the leap - now or never. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just knew I wanted to do something meaningful with my life and to make some sort of impact.

I made several wrong choices before finding something I felt was the right path for me.  I totally stumbled into the world of CBD by accident and as a researcher at heart, the more I read, the more I realised I stumbled into something amazing.

Where is your business based?
We are based in Dublin, Ireland but ship all over. 

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

The very first step I took was to talk to some of my potential target customers, people who had bought CBD in the past and understood what problems they were having when purchasing CBD. This gave me a good understanding of the market and some of the problems people are facing when buying CBD currently so I could navigate around this. 

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

The best thing that's worked for us has been to focus ourselves as a       local business. I continuously work on our local SEO so that we are being found in Google and the more people who buy from us locally, the more local recommendations we get. It’s a slow consistent process but one that works for us. 

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

Working in CBD, or cannabis as an Industry has huge challenges - mainly stigmas still exist and there are huge legal and regulatory challenges. Probably the biggest hurdle we came up against so far was Shopify shutting down our e-Commerce store because of its rules against selling CBD with their bank. We had to immediately try to locate another bank that would allow us to process our payments through them. 

You can look at it two ways within CBD - you are either in an extremely difficult industry with many hurdles to overcome or else you have an important job to do to re-educate people in an Industry that's rife with mis-information.

How do you stay focused?

Staying focused and doing deep work is something I am continuously working on with so many distractions in today's world and always so much to do!

One thing I am working towards is getting some systems in place that work for me. They are not overly rigid systems, just something that reminds me to do the same important things every week - write a blog on Mondays, social media planning on Wednesdays, deep learning work on Fridays etc. It took me a long time to learn this and I daresay I learned the hard way that I can be very distractible without some rules in place for me!

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

I try not to spend too much time looking at the competition, it just distracts me and frankly annoys me. When you spend so much time reading and researching ingredients and have spent time figuring out exactly what works and why it’s hard to watch a lot of the competition with cheap products with great marketing behind them. 

I like to consider myself as being different from the competition as a company that is purpose-driven and stays close to its core values.  

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

It’s very old school but word of mouth is still by far the best marketing strategy for us. There’s so much varying of quality of CBD out there so when people try ours and know it works, there’s nothing like that personal recommendation that helps customers trust us. 

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

Give yourself permission to make bad decisions. It’s easy to go down the wrong path but you always know when you have - that teeny voice that's popped up out of nowhere asking you if you’re really that into this? That’s the one. 

I’ve just spent the past 6 months setting up a new business but having taken some time off over xmas to think about this, I have decided not to launch it. 

I’ve wasted a lot of time but if I’m not 110% committed to it, I’m not going to do it. Simple as. No apologies. 

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

App - TikTok. There is some amazing content on here. I’ve learned such useful tips! 

Blog - I’ve swapped my addiction from reading the news to reading medium articles. Equally as addictive but I’m learning more and it doesn’t have crazy Covid anxiety attached to it!

Book - The Artist's Way. There’s nothing like learning the ability to daily journal to uncover some of the thoughts at the deeper unconscious level.

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
I focus a lot on SEO so some of the SEO tools like askthepublic, ubersuggest, SEMrush are invaluable to me to know what to write about. Before launching a business, I did not realise how SEO should play a part in the everyday running of a business.

Who is your business role model? Why?
Janet Murray is very inspiring to me. Her consistency in showing up creating content week in/ week out and always at such huge quality is hugely admirable. I envy her ability to show up no matter what. 

How do you balance work and life?
I have learned to work with my body and not against it. I’m great in the mornings, ok in the afternoons and rubbish in the evenings. All my deep work gets done in the mornings, afternoons I focus on my son, and evenings I am good for nothing!

What’s your favorite way to decompress?
A good boxset! (Bosch was great - FYI).

What do you have planned for the next six months?
I’m starting 2022 with a list of 10 high-impact areas. It’s great to have a plan in place and know what to do as soon as I hit the desk every morning. Some of these involve adding new products to the website including finding some great sleep gummies! 

How can our readers connect with you?

 www.plus120.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plus120_/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thecbdacademy