Women Entrepreneurs: Lia Van Note, Kristina Holman and Michelle Ducworth

Creating a business from scratch is a worthy accomplishment, but creating a legacy with and for family adds new chapters to a story that spans generations. This month, we feature entrepreneurs who are inspired by the pure joy of adding to their family’s story in a way that also makes a difference for their communities.

Lia Van Note and Kristina Holman

Sisters Lia Van Note and Kristina Holman are building their dream. These purveyors of whimsy, as they say, opened Page and Post last fall, filling the West Greenville store with things they love.

“We had always wanted to do a store somewhat like this, but it was never something that we took seriously,” Van Note says. “We always enjoyed paper goods as well, and we'd always talked about how fun it would be to have a store that was a collection of things that we liked.”

The sisters worked in different fields for years – Van Note in hospitality and restaurants and Holman in billing and finance.

More Women Entrepreneurs: Susan Dubose and Pam Salustro

“We have had some retail experience over the years, but we made career beds in other fields, and then COVID hit,” Van Note says. “Very common for a lot of people, I think – we were in each other's COVID circles, of course, and we started talking about which direction our industries were going and how it wasn't so pleasant anymore. We bounced it around a little bit and we started working on it. It took us about two years, and we were looking for just the right location.”

When the spot came open next to The Village Grind, it was, in Van Note’s words, “go time.” The pair pushed ahead with their dream, even though Van Note was pregnant and the timing was a challenge.

“Kristina had to pull a lot of weight to get the place open,” Van Note says. “It was really chaotic at the start, but it's been really awesome.”

Holman says they each fulfill roles that play to their strengths.

“As far as the actual doing business hours kind of thing, we just split it right down the middle,” Holman says. “We're not big enough yet to have other employees. I work three days, and she works three days, and we have a day or so when we have a meeting and kind of go over things we haven't talked about on the phone. We're kind of always in constant contact, but we were prior to this anyway, so that's not abnormal. I was in health care, in administration and loved an Excel spreadsheet. Lia did have some extensive experience with merchandising, so she's really taken the lead on that.”

They choose the inventory together.

“There's really nothing that both of us aren't touching,” Holman says. “But we've just naturally fallen into where our talents lie.”

Page and Post operates with a focus on the store’s impact on creators, customers, the community and the environment.

“It was really important to us that each item we selected met certain qualifications to be in our store,” Van Note says. “We tell customers that we vet our makers, and it's true. We kind of have a set of specifications that are important to us, that were important to us when we opened. Even now when we're choosing vendors or wholesalers, we go through the checklist and make sure that they meet at least a couple of the items. It includes things like being hyperlocal – so people that are in the Greenville area, even in our neighborhood in the West Village area – women-owned, minority-owned, queer-owned. We also focus a lot on the eco-friendliness and sustainability.”

“We both live in West Greenville,” Holman says. “And we really wanted to be good neighbors and hopefully start up something with community service and getting everyone involved and being very inclusive, because we really care about the area and want to invest around us as well.”

Learn more at pageandpost.com.

Michelle Ducworth

Michelle Ducworth tends 7,000 lavender plants in a labor of love that is as rich and deep as the farmland she brings to life each summer. She has made Twin Creeks Lavender Farm in Williamston a destination for families and a living tribute to her father, who inspired her love of the land.

“It's a family farm that's been in my family for over 100 years,” Ducworth says. “The land and the home have been passed down on the homestead for four generations. My father was an emergency room physician, but we also farmed cattle when I was young. My mom, a stay-at-home mom, was always running my brother and I off to horseback or baseball or all the other activities that kids are doing. A lot of our youth was being normal kids and helping on the farm, and so when my dad passed away in 2015, I felt closest to him when I was on the farm. I just really felt like I got this strong calling to put it back to work.”

At the time, Ducworth was working in a long-term career as a surgical device representative, and she wanted a way to revive the farm without the 24-hours-day responsibility of a cattle operation.

“You can't quit one job until you're making money at another, you know, so I started looking into different perennial plants,” she says.

Ducworth considered a more general herb farm, but ultimately decided to focus on lavender, a versatile plant that can be used in cooking, bath products and much more.

“The funny thing is, lavender was on the rise when I wanted to plant it, but I prayed a lot about the direction,” she says. “I'm pretty tenacious, and if I get something in my mind, I normally do it. But there was a whole lot of investment upfront, and I just really prayed about it and said Lord, if this isn't what I’m meant to do, put a boulder in my way. And everything that had to be done – just every door opened up perfectly.”

The result is a fragrant, colorful patch of peace that is a destination.

“I absolutely love what I do,” she says. “I loved being a rep but this is a different kind of love. It's the hardest work I've ever done and it's a labor of love at times. There are many days where I have to say, find your grit, girl.”

Sometimes, inspiration and encouragement come from dragonflies that Ducworth associates with her father’s presence.

“My dad and I had this thing about dragonflies,” she says. “One day, the family, we were out fishing together and a dragonfly landed on my dad's finger, and I was standing beside him. He said, ‘Put your finger out,’ and I put it out to his and he transferred the dragonfly over to me. And it just sat there for a minute, and it never happened again. If I'm on the tractor bush hogging between the rows of the lavender, sometimes a dragonfly will fly beside me kind of like a wing man. In my mind, I like to hope that's dad checking in and saying, ‘hey.’ I do feel his presence there.”

Ducworth is growing seven varieties of lavender, three of which are culinary. Because she grows it organically, there is a lot of weeding and mowing. She credits her seasonal team with keeping things going during the busy growing season. That includes her mother, who is always ready to lend a hand. The farm opens for its “you pick” operations in May. Throughout the summer, families flock to bring home bundles of the fragrant herb, along with the products Ducworth produces from it, including soaps, linen sprays, candles, essential oil and much more. She has turned her beloved land into a place that others can now cherish as well.

“It's nice to have a place in the country where it can be – it's God's country – for people, for anyone who's having a bad day to just kind of stare at the skies or enjoy all the nature sounds and smell the lavender and unplug for a little bit,” she says.

Learn more at twincreekslavender.com.

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Women in Business: Lia Van Note, Kristina Holman and Michelle Ducworth