The Corporate Grind is Over What's the Story? Gail Francombe Launched the School of Natural Skincare

In the morning, as she waited to catch the train on her commute to work Gail Francombe realized her success did not make her content. Gail was in her mid-20s when she realized this, and had spent the majority of her career working her way up the London ladder. Gail was very proud of her job, but her corporate success included long hours, and long travel times.

"All I can remember thinking is: 'There must be more to life than this. In that instant I realized that I had to take a step forward," she says.

Fast forward a few hours, Gail quit her job and booked a flight for New Zealand to enroll in an internship that is sustainable and long-term. For the first occasion in her career, Gail decided to follow her instincts and intuition, instead of settling on a work-sleep-commute.

In the blink of an eye, Gail was immersed in an intensive six-month program that focused on all aspects of circular living -- she studied permaculture design, learned to live off the land, and became more familiar with organic farming.

Gail's unique journey to entrepreneurship has laid the groundwork for her global business success. Today, more than a decade after her first venture, Gail Francombe is the Director who founded the School of Natural Skincare which is a multi-award winning online academy that assists students create high-performance natural beauty products. With the help of this website , Gail has helped over 12,000 students in more than 130 countries start their own skincare ventures -starting from personal journeys to flourishing business start-ups.

Collectively, she's encouraging thousands of entrepreneurs to embark on a similar journey that is full of health, radiance and joy -- all naturally! This is how she got there:

Creating her rare niche

Gail's love for natural skincare blossomed shortly when she relocated from New Zealand. After learning about the healing properties of herbal medicines She realized that she could utilize these ingredients for the formulation of skincare products made from natural ingredients.

The first product she created was a therapeutic salve with calendula oils -- though it was a basic remedy, this product captured her imagination and was the start of her successful story.

Towards the end of her visit to New Zealand, Gail decided to take another leap into faith. She was so impressed by her experiences, that it caused major changes in her. Gail realized that she did not intend to return to her previous life in London So she began brainstorming how she could take her love of skincare to the next step. Once she had honed her craft, she developed a small collection of locally-sourced, free of preservatives skincare products. She began selling them at local market and craft market.

The early years were when Gail often found herself explaining the formulation and ingredients of her products with great detail for her clients.

Then she realized that the public was interested in not only purchasing natural or organic products, as well as making these products for themselves. By identifying her gap in the market, Gail started a natural skincare revolution.

"The timing was just right. There was a growing interest in organic products, yet there wasn't very much information regarding the subject," she explains. "This was long before the advent of online courses or online education even really existed and I set out to merge my knowledge of teaching and my love of skincare. This led to me teaching live classes ."

In May 2010, Gail ran her first successful in-person workshop. Students came from all over the UK as well as Europe -- she even had one student travel from the Philippines to join an in-person class. It was an exciting experience for Gail, as she discovered that there was a global market for her skincare courses. This was the point at which she knew she needed to make her classes available online in order in order to increase her reach.

Making the transition ahead

Gail embarked on her journey to create courses long before the accessible days of education online, but she was aware of the benefits of building an online classroom way ahead of the pack.

"Back back then, it was really hard to build online courses because platforms like these weren't available. I would spend nights and hours trying to understand all the backend stuff and it was extremely time consuming because the tools that are available today didn't ."

Despite this, Gail didn't give up. She focused on building her online presence through three primary ways: developing a website and blog in addition to launching an email marketing campaign. She translated her experience of delivering engaging live courses into online tutorialsand offered tasters via her sales funnels.

Three funnels are the crucial to Gail's success in The School of Natural Skincare. She advises new course creators to hone in the most effective selling and marketing techniques rather than trying to master all of them.

"When you're just starting on your own, it's really hard to master every marketing or social media channel. If you attempt to cover yourself too wide it's unlikely that you'll achieve success in any single field -- you're bound feel exhausted which isn't a great place to grow a business," she says.

"I think it's a good idea to do some experiments to develop a mastery of the areas of. There's a lot of pressure nowadays to do everything at once, but you need to be able to balance your overall health ."

Using as a solution

The numerous accessible features have allowed Gail to keep her work-life balanced and to fully maximize her sales funnels.

"I was extremely glad to discover the course creator's journey that all its readily available functions make the process much simpler," she says. "For instance, we provide the option of a trial for each course set up on this platform. It has proven to be a very efficient way to whet the appetite of people. Through our trials for free, we can then communicate with potential clients more by offering them a special offer for our diploma programs. ."

The author continues: "We also have a skincare formulation challenge set up that is in conjunction with our marketing emails. We send emails directing our clients to the areas where we have interactive features set up, which encourages greater engagement ."

Since mastering this model, Gail has garnered over 250,000 active email subscribers, on top of a 2020-2021 annual revenue of PS1.2m ($1.8m). Gail believes this could not have been possible without 's platform.

Teaching personal values as the foundation

In the course of teaching her online curriculum, Gail's primary objective is to ensure that her techniques authentic. In order to accomplish this, she put herself in her students in their shoes.

"A lot of participants in my classes don't come from a science background -- they're completely new to natural skincare, exactly like me when I lived when I was in New Zealand," she declares. "The initial thing I do is help them identify their personal beliefs and values, and then what is important for them. After we've identified the foundation and we're ready to proceed to the product formulation ."

Gail prides herself on teaching her students scientific and technical modules in an understandable easy to comprehend manner.

All of her courses are self-paced, and she offers a flexible 18-month window to allow her students to move through the modules in chronological order. She ensures that she keeps her students active with stunning PDF lessons, lively video demonstrations, helpful Q&As, as well as useful quizzes and assignments. Perhaps most importantly, she employs a team comprising cosmetic researchers who review their students' work and provide them with feedback.

"In the particular field that I teach, it's quite difficult for someone only beginning to get professional advice and direction. This is why I hire a number of cosmetic scientists that are specialists in formulation of products. I would like my classes to be an affordable and accessible way for people to kickstart their passion ."

Identifying room for improvements

Throughout her course creation journey, Gail has learned numerous useful lessons on her own. Her most important lesson is to always prioritize listening to her students - their experiences are what make hers worthwhile.

"I am never going to be averse to asking my students, 'What isn't explained well enough? What's confusing? What section needs more explanatory resources?' I've always been attentive to my audience through feedback questionnaires and forms because they're the most valuable material of the entire ."

Despite her worldwide success, Gail sees her business as an ever-changing entity that always has room for improvement.

"I've been doing this for 12 years, and have discovered that I am able to continuously improve things along the way. It's not enough to create my first curriculum only to expect it to stay the same forever. I've come up with various versions where I'll be adding things, eliminate things I'll change the materials, I'll update the branding My courses are living, growing entities," she says.

She adds:

"If you're apprehensive about having the right structure and format starting from scratch this will stop you from doing anything. I encourage you to start at a place that is meaningful, then continue to build upon it."

Gail's top films

  Uploading content in a seamless fashion  

Gail offers a variety of trial and course bundles that are part of the School of Natural Skincare, which are all possible thanks to's unique media library. Utilizing the Bulk Uploader feature, she is able to effortlessly move and drop PDFs, video and audio content to arrange her lessons as needed.

  Easy course creator  

Gail's brand came alive by the use of's extremely customizable course builder. By accessing her syllabus and creating her course templates, she's been able to design a website for courses which is in harmony with her overall brand -- and refresh it at any time!