Sometimes the best business ideas begin with a problem you can’t seem to solve.
For Jessica Gish, that problem was skincare.
As a wife, mom, hospice nurse, and someone who had struggled to find skincare that worked well for her, Jessica began searching for a reliable source of tallow-based products. When she couldn’t find the consistency she wanted, her husband suggested something that would ultimately change the direction of her year:
Why don’t you make it yourself?
That simple conversation planted the seed for Hearth and Hide Tallow Co., a business Jessica now describes as another way to care for and serve the people around her.
And in less than a year, what began around the family couch has grown faster than Jessica ever imagined.
How Hearth and Hide Tallow Co. Began
The idea for Hearth and Hide came around Christmastime.
Jessica had already been looking for tallow skincare for herself but struggled to find a source that was both consistent and reliable.
While talking about it with her husband and family one evening, her husband encouraged her to try making it herself.
“He was like, ‘Why don’t you just start doing this yourself? You can likely do this really well.'”
The idea stuck.
By January, Hearth and Hide Tallow Co. had officially launched.
Jessica became not only the founder but also the formulator behind the products.
What she couldn’t have predicted was how quickly people would respond.
“We have grown exponentially over the last eight months,” Jessica says. “I would never have imagined that this was going to be on my bingo card this year.”
A Hospice Nurse’s Curiosity About Traditional Skincare
Jessica’s interest in tallow actually began long before she started a business.
Working as a hospice nurse gave her the opportunity to spend time with older generations and hear their stories.
She found herself fascinated by a simple question:
How did people do things before everything became industrialized?
Skincare was one of those things.
Jessica would talk with patients about the products and routines they’d used throughout their lives. One patient who had grown up on a farm mentioned that his mother used to render tallow.
That conversation sparked Jessica’s curiosity.
She began researching traditional skincare practices and learning more about the many ways tallow had historically been used.
Eventually, curiosity turned into experimentation.
And experimentation turned into Hearth and Hide.
When Skincare Becomes Personal
Jessica’s interest in skincare isn’t purely professional.
It’s deeply personal.
She shared that she has dealt with rosacea and remembers periods when her skin was painful, uncomfortable, and a significant source of insecurity.
“There were days when it was hard to get out of the house because I was so embarrassed about how my skin looked.”
She had tried prescription skincare from her dermatologist but found some products uncomfortable on her skin.
Her personal experience using tallow was different.
Jessica says she found it comfortable to use and loved how it felt on her skin. That experience became part of what motivated her to learn more and eventually formulate products of her own.
As her relationship with her skin has changed, so has her confidence.
For Jessica, that’s also an important example she wants to set for her daughters: caring for yourself while learning to love who you are.
What’s Actually In Tallow Skincare?
One of the things Jessica has become passionate about is the process behind the product.
Hearth and Hide specifically uses leaf fat, which comes from the area surrounding a cow’s kidneys.
Before starting this journey, Jessica laughs that she didn’t even realize there were different types of fat.
“I did not know that there were types of fat until I learned this process.”
For her, choosing leaf fat is also connected to a bigger philosophy.
She believes in being a thoughtful steward of available resources and honoring the animal by making mindful use of something that might otherwise be discarded.
And turning that raw ingredient into the finished tallow is anything but quick.
One Batch Can Take 7 to 10 Days
If you picture Jessica simply melting down an ingredient, pouring it into a jar, and calling it tallow, think again.
Her process is intentionally slow.
Jessica begins by breaking down the leaf fat before putting it through multiple rendering and purification steps.
She renders it more than once, performs a clarification process, uses a water purification bath, filters it again, and eventually ends up with what she describes as a “tallow puck.”
From there, the purified tallow can be portioned for the different formulations Hearth and Hide creates.
A single batch can take approximately seven to ten days.
But Jessica doesn’t see the slow process as an inconvenience.
She sees meaning in it.
“It’s a nice, slow process, and it helps me to slow down and reminds me to live and experience things as I’m making it.”
That mindset captures much of what Hearth and Hide is about.
Creating Something Through Trial and Error
Not every batch worked perfectly when Jessica started.
But rather than viewing those attempts as failures, she treated them as experiments.
If something didn’t work, she adjusted.
Then she tried again.
That willingness to troubleshoot has become one of her favorite parts of building the company.
Surprisingly, she says the hardest parts haven’t necessarily involved formulating the products.
They’ve involved things many small business owners can probably relate to:
Canva and social media.
The hands-on work, on the other hand, feels natural.
“I love it all.”
Jessica also hopes her daughters are watching what happens behind the scenes—not just the successes, but the experiments that don’t work, too.
She wants them to see patience, grit, determination, and what it looks like to keep going when something doesn’t turn out perfectly the first time.
Why the Name Hearth and Hide?
Even the name feels connected to Jessica’s larger vision.
“Hearth” evokes the warmth and gathering place of a home, while “hide” connects naturally to the skin and the traditional roots behind the products.
That sense of warmth comes up again and again when Jessica talks about the business.
For her, opening a jar of tallow isn’t supposed to feel like another complicated step in an endless routine.
She hopes it creates an opportunity to slow down.
To care for yourself.
To be present.
And ultimately, to spend more of your life focused on the people who matter most.
A Business Built Around Family and Faith
When asked about her “why,” Jessica doesn’t hesitate.
“My why is really my family and my faith.”
Hearth and Hide has given her another way to serve people outside of her work as a hospice nurse.
She describes creating the products as one of the ways she shows love.
“I love when people open a jar of tallow and they get to experience it and they get a minute to slow down and be with their people that they love the most.”
That philosophy is also why she isn’t solely focused on how large the company can become.
For Jessica, business success means something different.
Redefining What Success Looks Like
Ask Jessica what success means, and you won’t hear a revenue goal or number of products sold.
“Success looks like doing the right thing, showing up for the people that matter most, and being present when you’re called upon.”
She wants Hearth and Hide to be known for integrity.
For consistency.
For honesty and transparency.
And for continuing to try, even when she doesn’t get everything right the first time.
“I may not always get it right, but I’ll always try again.”
It’s a refreshingly human definition of entrepreneurship—and one that reflects how Jessica approaches both her business and her life.
A Legacy That Feels Like a Warm Hug
Perhaps the best description of Hearth and Hide came when Jessica was asked what kind of legacy she hopes to leave.
Her answer had little to do with skincare.
“I hope it leaves a legacy of love and caring.”
Then she put it even more simply:
“I want my mark on this world to look like a warm hug and embrace.”
She wants to be a soft place for her daughters to land, and she believes some of that same love finds its way into the products she creates.
That’s what she hopes people feel when they experience Hearth and Hide.
Not perfection.
Care.
What’s Next for Hearth and Hide Tallow Co.?
Considering how much Hearth and Hide has grown in its first eight months, you might expect Jessica to have the next five years mapped out.
She doesn’t.
And she’s okay with that.
Jessica is intentionally learning to trust the process, follow her faith, and live wholeheartedly in the season she’s currently experiencing.
A year from now, she’d love for more people to know the Hearth and Hide name and experience the products for themselves.
She also dreams of eventually having a larger facility where the company could manufacture more days each week.
And perhaps, one day, Hearth and Hide could become her full-time focus.
But she’s not rushing there.
For a business built around a slow, intentional process, that seems fitting.
More Than a Jar of Tallow
Hearth and Hide Tallow Co. may have started because Jessica couldn’t find the skincare product she was looking for.
But somewhere along the way, it became much more.
It became an opportunity to learn.
A way to serve.
An example for her daughters.
A creative outlet alongside her work as a hospice nurse.
And another way to put her values of family, faith, integrity, and intentional living into practice.
Maybe that’s what makes Jessica’s story so compelling.
She didn’t set out with a grand plan to build a skincare company.
She saw a need, listened when someone she trusted encouraged her to take a chance, and started creating.
One slow batch at a time.
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