"I don't want an assistant" to hiring three Divers

Item: Oceans Talent
Author: Mary Berry

Oceans Divers hired

Industry

CPG

Company size

SMB

Role

Executive assistants

Published

July 1, 2024

Meet Mary Berry, Founder & CEO at Cosmos Labs

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A true entrepreneur from the beginning of time - the girl who sold lemonade at garage sales to the founder of Texas Beauty Labs (now The Goodkind Co.) - Mary Berry is the Founder and CEO of Cosmos Labs, a contract manufacturing lab in the beauty industry dedicated to premium skincare, bodycare, haircare, and deodorants for its clients.

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Mary started Texas Beauty Labs in 2007, fresh out of college. What started in her garage with homemade sugar scrubs and cocktail lip balms soon grew to become the leading product & services partner for clean beauty brands and clean beauty creators. In 2019, Mary sold Texas Beauty Labs. Just 3 years and a day later, Mary started Cosmos Labs.

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Throughout this time, Mary struggled to keep up with all the demands on her own. Her inbox was overflowing. She thought she needed an assistant. So between 2016 and 2018, she hired 4 executive assistants and account managers. However, having hired assistant after assistant, she came to realize that they were adding more work to her plate - “what should I do next?”, “how do I do this?”.

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Not only was Mary’s inbox still full, but she also had to think and plan for her assistants. It didn’t work, and she ultimately quit having an assistant altogether. Once Cosmos Labs started to grow, the same problem reappeared. Mary was tired of losing business because she was buried in emails - she needed to sort this out.

I didn’t want an assistant. I had assistants in the past who ended up creating more work for me, waiting for me to assign them a task. My Oceans Diver is the complete opposite. She's amazing, proactive, and highly capable, I can't live without her now. She's a ray of sunshine, always with a positive word!

Mary Berry

Founder & CEO

80,000. That's how many emails Mary had in her inbox before she knew it was time to try a different method. Hitting reset by archiving all emails, hiring an inbox cleaning service, or downloading yet another email app wasn’t going to work this time.

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In late 2023, she reached out to her good friend, a fellow founder, who suggested that she try out Oceans to find an assistant who could help her handle her inbox chaos.

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But she had already tried assistants in the past, and they had never worked out, so she was deeply skeptical.

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Mary was also not keen on the idea of outsourcing, she was concerned about whether employees were being treated well. Her friend insisted Oceans was different, so she took the call.

Finding the right match: Tanuli Shenanya, EA+

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Not long after, Mary signed on with Oceans both for herself, and her business partner Ashley who was drowning in work.

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Ashley matched with a Diver early on who was beyond fantastic. Soon after, in January 2024, Mary was introduced to Tanuli Shenanya!

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With Tanuli by Mary’s side, everything changed. Tanuli streamlined operations and was able to help Mary the way she needed. From the get-go, Tanuli picked up on things that needed to change. She was a force in her own right.

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Mary finally allowed herself to archive emails and make room for more productive communications that were organized in a way so she was not feeling overwhelmed. Tanuli helped create a system to track clients' information so it would make Mary’s meetings seamless.

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Aside from this, Tanuli has been an integral part of helping Mary sustain throughout the chaos of her schedule - she has made it a point to implement wellness activities and focus time in her calendar so she is doing something other than meetings. Tanuli also incorporates positive affirmations in her messages to Mary to keep things light and easy-going.

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Since Tanuli jumped on board, Cosmos Labs has greatly benefitted from her improvements and new systems, and Mary is ecstatic. Signing with Oceans and getting Tanuli on board, along with Ashely’s Diver, has helped the whole team and also showed that with a little bit of help - you can do anything you set your mind to. Tanuli has helped Mary in ways that she did not even know she needed. So much so that the team at Cosmos Labs has hired 1 more Diver which makes it 3 in total!

Mary Berry

Founder & CEO

Cosmos Labs