April 05, 2023
How to go from high school teacher to soap maker/business owner?
Yes, it's a big facial gap. But I did it, and even if it sometimes pulls a little, what pride, this beauty of the gesture! My path, at the start, is that of many top of the class: general stream, hypokhâgne, khâgne, university, Capes, Agrégation -> prof.
As long as nothing forces you to specialize, you continue down the slide of your success. Until, without realizing it, you find yourself one Friday night having to keep 36 15-year-olds on their toes with a video about El Gordo de Navidad (yes, I was a Spanish teacher. LV2. NOBODY'S priority). You feel a little useless that Friday night.
For 14 years, this feeling became a daily occurrence, and it wore you down. You chose this profession because it aligned with your values of transmission, public service, and culture.
From there, you hatch a plan. You develop skills alongside the job that keeps you alive but also kills you a little. A random example of a skill? Making soap. You're on the lookout for every possible exit. National Education is a gilded cage (not 18-carat fine gold, though, because the salary index has been frozen since Christopher Columbus's first voyage). There's job security. There's July. There's August. And all the school holidays.
Everything to keep you there. But support for mobility, training, and retraining is nonexistent. The state has invested in you, and it doesn't want to see you ANYWHERE but in front of these 36 teenagers who are resistant to any listening comprehension exercise.
One day, with enough antennae, you seize the opportunity. It took me 12 years.
For me, it was the decision to choose entrepreneurship to build my own escape route. Jeremy Emsellem was also on the lookout for a craft project, our planets aligned and we said ✨BINGO!✨ With my extracurricular skills as a soap maker, our vision of healthy and beautiful cosmetics, we founded Ciment.
Since then, I feel aligned with my values, my team, and I'm happy to go to work in the morning. So, yes, sometimes it's tough, entrepreneurship is far from being a bed of roses, but what pride when it hits the ground, legs outstretched!
Solène Lebon