How Jaime Cross Used Research, Social Media To Take MIG Living From Farmer's Markets To 8-Figures - Forbes

MIG Living started as a dream – literally.

"I had a dream in which I saw a roadmap for our business," Jaime Cross, founder of MIG Living, said. "Fast forward to today, and I can close my eyes and still see this whole vision playback as if it were a movie."

The dream came to her in 2010, and now, a decade later, her business, which aims to dominate in the "natural home health and self" space, has taken off. Cross started by selling her handmade, clean beauty and wellness products at farmer's markets and now has taken it to an eight figure online business.

"I spent the first year after I had the dream studying chemistry, naturopathic healing [and] medicine and herbal alchemy," she said. "Within a year of my research, we developed our own product formulation and took it to the streets of Denver & Colorado Springs for local retailers and customers to try."

MIG grew quickly on a local level. She took the local success as a positive sign and continued to move forward thinking about how she could cater to her client base by using farmer's markets to gain proof of concept.

"I knew I needed to dig deeper and ask myself, 'What do people really want? How can I serve them? How can I solve their problems?'" she said.

Customers' top desire, she found, was to solve any skin issues.

Cross conducted more research after hearing from customers, which she said helped her to understand how the body is designed to heal itself naturally.

"Our whole foundation is about creating products that are sourced from nature and that can solve our bodies' most innate problems," she said.

After she hit her peak four years into farmer's markets, she took a deep dive into digital marketing. It took her a year to crack what she calls the "digital marketing code" before she saw the clear success of her efforts.

"I managed to grow our company to almost eight figures in two years," she said.

And her growth has continued in spite of the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 18 million people worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins data.

"We have grown 200% since the onset of the pandemic," Cross said.

"Part of what I believe makes a successful company is assessing products in the marketplace and answering those problems with solutions in a way that creates a powerful story and speaks to the heart and soul of the market," she explained. "We did this during the pandemic by pivoting our marketing and our social messaging to be very educational."

MIG Living began to educate customers on why soap is more powerful than other forms of sanitation including sanitizer or cleansing wipes — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends hand washing with soap and water, with the use of hand sanitizer as a back up in case the former option isn't available.

As they shared educational resources on the topic, the company's soaps started to gain popularity. But they took it beyond hand washing.

"We provided a solution to customers' cracked and bleeding hands from over-washing by showcasing our water-less, farm-fresh beeswax-based lotion," Cross said. "Customers were seeing true transformation in their skin, and were given a solution for skin cleansing and dehydration in wake of the pandemic."

Social media has been instrumental to Cross' success with MIG Living.

"We also use social media to tell stories and draw people into the everyday, ongoing story of building and growing a business," she explained. "As the founder & CEO of the company, I'm also very involved in being the 'storyteller.'"

They leverage social media to tell stories because it's a good sales method, Cross said. "When you combine a powerful strategy with a powerful story, and language that speaks to the heart and soul, sales will continue to increase."

But the MIG philosophy goes beyond sales: Cross explained that MIG Living is building a community.

"From the beginning, it was never just about the bottom line; it was about how we can help others. Our movement can be summed up into two words: 'building people,'" she said.