A family operated business can be a great thing.  Our next guest shares his experiences of how he was able to work with his family to bring a unique and helpful product to the masses – with the help of those close to him of course.

Please introduce yourself to our readers…

Thanks for inviting me to talk! My name is Will von Bernuth. I have varied experience, including the video game industry and the internet world.

You are working on something pretty cool. Care to share a little bit about that?

I’m one of the co-founders of the sun care / skin care company Block Island Organics. My wife and sister are the other two co-founders. We are a skin care company with a sun care focus. Our philosophy is skin care really is all about sun care since it’s estimated the sun causes up to 90% of all skin aging and damage.

The company started out of my sister’s former spa on Block Island, Rhode Island. We began with a line of sunscreens and this year expanded to include an organic cleanser and an organic night cream. Our philosophy is skin care should be simple – sun protection during the day, a gentle wash at night to remove build up and a moisturizer after the wash to replenish nutrients. We’re working on one other daily moisturizer with SPF that will fit nicely into this.

What made you decide to follow that path?

I went to business school and after that worked in the video game industry for a bit. This is something I’d wanted to do for a while – sort of a childhood fantasy. After a while though I began thinking about building my own business. It just so happened that my sister had an eco spa and was having trouble finding sunscreens she liked to offer clients. She began to work on the business and asked if I’d join her. I didn’t expect to go from video games to sun care, but I was an avid user (and still am) of sunscreen. I started by using it every day after shaving.

Have you taken any outside funding?

We’ve self-funded and received some family funding. For the most part, we are bootstrapped. It makes it tough, particularly with sunscreen which has a lot of regulations around its production, testing, bottling and labeling. That said, we like the way we are building our company. It’s allowed us to be our own decision makers. There’s always a chance we could try to raise money down the line but for the time being, we like it this way.

Do you have any partners?

My sister and my wife.  We’re also mostly women-owned. It can be difficult working with family members, we’ve definitely had our disputes, but it’s also rewarding. We’re building something together that will benefit us all. Plus, there’s a level of trust built in. We still have official documents like ownership and operating agreements and the trust adds another layer to that.

What outcome do you hope to achieve?

We want to build a long-term sustainable company. Hopefully one that can support not only us but also a group of employees.

What is your company culture like?

Well, it’s pretty collegial. Given our size we don’t have a lot of process or people to go through. That will necessarily change as we grow but we hope to always keep up that family atmosphere. One where people want to come to work and where they feel comfortable.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what 3 things would you bring?

I’ve seen this question before but never really thought about. Am I allowed to bring another person? I think people are inherently social and the isolation would drive me nuts. So I’d bring along a friend – probably my wife (love you honey) – to make it more bearable. If not that then some other communication device so I wouldn’t feel so alone.

As for two other things, I should say sunscreen! Seriously, I would want sunscreen. Sunburn hurts and sun exposure causes things like skin cancer. But I’ll put that one aside for the sake of fun.

Maybe a golf club? I love playing golf. I’m not sure why. No one else in my family plays and I never played until a friend introduced me to it in college. Now, I can’t get enough. So a golf club to work on my swing.

How about a keyboard as my third thing? I’m trying to teach myself to play piano at the moment. It’s slow going but if I had all that time to sit around I think I could become pretty good at it.

Thanks for sharing Will! You can find him on Twitter and Instagram.