How I started Sif Sniffs

Buckle up, it’s a bit of a wild ride.

When I was younger, I was always drawn to perfumes. I remember being entranced by the idea of creating my own unique scents, often by spraying already existing body sprays into the box fan in the window of my bedroom while bored on summer vacation and seeing what the different combinations resulted in. 

But life happens. First, I worked as a telemarketer, then in general sales. After going through my Saturn return, I ended up becoming a licensed therapist. 

I remember applying for what felt like the perfect job for me: a therapist specifically dealing with adolescents, after spending most of my degree specializing in this area (you can swear and be sarcastic, and I have yet to find a way to turn that part of my personality off). My potential boss asked me the standard interview question: “What’s your perfect job?”

“Besides this? Probably a perfumer in Grasse, France.” Why Grasse? It’s the capital of perfumery, and I didn’t know I could do perfumery and still live in America. 

“Well, that’s a different answer.” I was hired. I asked my boss what she thought of that answer, and she liked that I was honest. 

So if I thought working with teens was the absolute tits, how did I ultimately end up starting a perfume company?

Well, that involves what I would now call a cult. Although I certainly didn’t call it that while I was in it, nor do I think any of the people still in it would call it one. 

I had been working with a religious teacher once per week for over two years when she wanted to book an Airbnb with her other students and perform a ritual. After having one successful weekend, she decided to take the show on the road. Our first ritual was in North Carolina. 

Visiting North Carolina during hurricane season is not advisable.

Instead of spending our time in the ocean or sunning ourselves on the beach, we played with a variety of oracle and Tarot cards and performed rituals familiar to our host. It seemed that every single card I would pull connected, according to my teacher, to all of the gods of Asgard wanting me to quit my job. Between the pressure from the teacher, the encouragement from the other students, and feeling like I would be letting my deities down (religious guilt is not exclusive to the Abrahamic traditions), I drove back to Connecticut and told my boss I would be quitting at the end of the year. 

But when I did quit, I didn’t really have much to do. I got a puppy, named Bennett, the cutest fluff to have ever fluffed. That kept me busy for a while. Then, I embarked on a project to declutter and organize my house. I made nearly daily trips to Goodwill, dropping off everything from bedding to books to broomsticks (well, maybe not the last one). One thing I couldn’t part with was my rather extensive collection of essential oils. 

“You should start a perfume company,” my teacher would tell me week after week when I brought it up. But see, I didn’t want to create something that would directly compete with Bee (who is now my podcast co-host). I also didn’t know a ton about perfumery, but I knew for absolute certain that it was more than just mixing some essential oils together and praying to the gods that it didn’t smell like trash. 

My teacher often used my progress, or lack of progress, as a manipulative carrot. She would tell me that I wasn’t making progress and holding everyone else in the group back (this is where it gets culty). She even did it once in front of the other members. Everyone else had their own company, why was I being so difficult? Why couldn’t I just accept the process?

So Sif Sniffs was born. 

It took about two months from my agreeing to start the company to my leaving the group, and to be honest, Sif Sniffs is one of the major reasons why I left. It allowed me to see that I was hemorrhaging money, mainly directly on classes with my teacher, but also on all the other expenses (I have an embroidered cloak that I wore for approximately five minutes, which cost me about $150) associated with my participation. 

As many former cult members experience, I originally wanted nothing to do with anything related to the group, including my perfume company. However, by then I had already started to have a few (as I refer to them) Sniffies- fans of what I make. I kept thinking about them as I trudged along. 

Now, over a year after leaving the group, I’m glad I stayed with perfume. I do have to tell people that I started the company because my cult leader wanted me to, but we already established that I am honest.