#133 When Trying CBD is Your Aha Moment (Kerrigan Behrens)

After college Kerrigan Behrens, now Co-Founder and CEO of Sagely Naturals (https://www.sagelynaturals.com/), grabbed a job at UBS because her brother seemed to like banking. Her hobby was creating lists of restaurants from which she advised friends and co-workers like a concierge. Deciding restaurant management would be more fun, Behrens entered business school, eventually landing a stint with Wolfgang Puck and later Taco Bell.  “I loved new experiences, the high and the low,” she says. “But I found myself writing my own job descriptions for restaurants which couldn’t pay me.” Behrens met weekly with a friend from business school (Kaley Nichol) who was thinking about quitting her own banking job. “Then I used CBD,” says Behrens who had long suffered from endometriosis and lower back pain. “I realized I could feel better, not because I took a Vicodin!”  With CBD products hard to find in 2015 she and Nichol quickly launched Sagely Naturals, a collection of CBD, hemp-derived roll-ons and creams, and rose quickly into 15,000 stores across the country (including CVS, Sprouts and Ulta). Then Covid19 hit and Sagely Naturals had to pivot to online.  “Pain, stress, trouble sleeping; every problem was exacerbated during Covid19,” she says. Luckily too, “people were looking for help.”