How an Immigrant Built Million-Dollar Businesses With Purpose

I had to be coming to do very fast. My husband and I went into an IVF process. We became pregnant, unfortunately, recently we had a stow birth, and my daughter came to me in my dream, and she said, "You're not ready to be with me, Mom.

Do what you love and enjoy." Elizabeth's skillings is a resilient, disciplined, purpose-driven entrepreneur, and the founder of Sweet Sabons. Drawing from her journey of military service and entrepreneurship, she creates hand-crafted experiences

while inspiring others to lead with resilience, embrace accountability, and transform life's challenges into purpose-driven success. I want my company to recognize various responders. You know, and then I thought about it.

I'm like, "Our moms are our first responders."

I talked to a lot of veterans on the show. I talked to a lot of people who've been in the service. One thing that I hear from a lot of them

“is that the transition back to civilian life is a little...”

They weren't mentally prepared. Physically, we can get through anything, but mentally, they didn't know how to understand and incorporate what a militant life is. You know, I've given all that I can to have the business up,

and it's not desperation, it's in desire. I want to do this. It spans the globe. Like a super-highest coal. Into their pelvis.

Ready. Ready. In the day, half old is going to reinvent from the wall. It's not over. Until I win!

The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. It's a secret. Yeah, it's awesome, though. It's amazing.

It's sensational, too. Open. She come over with the lead years ago. In the boxes, not on the planet. You can live your dreams.

“Welcome back everybody to another episode”

of the Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host for today, Jason Tyler, and I am with Elizabeth Skilling's of Sweet Savance Inc. Now, what you guys don't know, and what I know, is that Elizabeth brought us some treats to the studio.

Some of her confectionaries that she works on in her company, and I can tell you as sort of a testimonial they are fire. So good. I just had some before I was show started, but Elizabeth, for the audience out there that doesn't know you,

give me kind of just give me a quick breakdown on who is Elizabeth Skilling's. Elizabeth Skilling's is a child that had to grow up quickly. Mm. I had to become an adult very fast.

I had a dream to go into the military. Went into the military when I was 28. Unfortunately, I got injured. We, my husband and I went into an IVF process. We became pregnant.

“Unfortunately, recently, we had a stoperoth.”

And my daughter came to me in my dream, and she said, "You're not ready to be with me, Mom. Do what you love and enjoy."

And I've never made chocolates in my life.

I've never even created anything to prepare what I'm doing now. Basically, I just grabbed chocolate and started making it. No experience, nothing. It just kind of came to you. It came to me and it's the weirdest thing.

I don't know if anything I've ever thought has happened to you, but I sat there and just started making chocolate. And I'm like, "You know what? I'm in the military." We're gone about a lot. Mm.

First responders. If you call 911, you get taken to, you know, police station. Everyone's whatever the case may be. But you don't get a chance to touch base with them. After and say, "Thank you for saving my child."

Mm. Thank you for saving my mom, my dad, whomever.

And I want my company to recognize the first responders.

And that includes military. Right now, you may have a cousin overseas fighting, or an aunt fighting overseas mom. You know, and then I thought about it. I'm like, "Our moms are our first responders."

Mm. They sit there and they take care of us. They guide us. So I set up a subscription for the hardest part of our month. These are one of these like, oh, to be able to subscribe.

Every month, I'm ascending that box of chocolates. And make sure I take care of all these women, these little teenagers. And make sure. Because you know them chocolate cravings are coming in heavy wrong times. Oh, yeah, especially if you're pregnant too, don't forget about that.

And my women at Metapost, I get cravings. It is confirmed. My mom would get the chocolate cravings. Those chocolates, that if there's, you guys can't see this. But offset, I've stolen a box of chocolates.

She brought us those are going straight to my mom.

Yeah. There you go. But you mentioned that you dreamed of going into the military. And I think, like, I don't want to let that go understated because not a lot of kids growing up have that dream.

Where did that come from for you? It came from being raised by a single mother. Mm. I was 11 years old and my brother was born. And my mom actually left my father because he beat her when he was drunk.

So she chose my life over her relationship to an abusive man. One day she just walked out with the clothes on her back and said,

“"My baby's life is more important than what you think you have to offer."”

So I sat there and realized this woman is strong. This woman will stop. And I learned at a young age to be an adult because one day my mom and I were walking across the street.

And I ran to the edge of the sidewalk.

My right foot hit the ground. And all of a sudden I hear a tire screeching behind me. A truck hit my mom walking across the street. Turn around. I look down.

She's on the ground face down. And you can imagine a dark dark red pool of blood pouring out of her mouth. I thought she was dead. Mm. And you can imagine, like, a scary movie.

Just like that dark red blood. And she actually lifts her head. And she's like, "I'm okay, Mama. I'm okay. You're fine."

And I go beating on the guys window.

He was trying to make a red light.

Mm. And didn't. Went around the car. I was waiting for me in my mom. And after that, luckily the guy stayed there.

They be flighting my mom. They sent me to school. I didn't pay attention to nothing. Mm. How could you?

Yeah, no. And my whole shirt was soaking wet with tears. And the deputy came and took me to the hospital. And I did not recognize my mom.

“The only way I recognized my mom was her speaking to me.”

She said, "Hey, Mama." And my mom was bruised from head to toe. She had broken arm, broken discs, and her back bruised from head to toe. When I tell you I didn't recognize my mom, she was swollen everywhere. Just colored everywhere.

And she was alive. Mm. When she stopped rolling her head, went back and smashed into the ground. So her teeth actually went up into her nose. Mm.

It was for an 11-year-old. If you couldn't imagine, it was traumatizing. But I knew at that point, I had to raise my brother. It was an infant, baby. New, more than baby.

And my mom back to home. So I learned how to change a diaper. I learned how to give a baby a bottle every two, four hours. You know, go to school, come back, wash clothes, wash everything. You know, and help my mom into the shower.

And so all of that was taught. She showed me how strong she was. And I knew I had to be strong for her. Mm. So that's where I get my strength from.

And that's how I carry my business. Mm. And so you place value on that strength of character. Yes. One, I want to say thank you for sharing.

Because, and I think this is unanimous among anyone that comes on the show. Or on any of the shows here at Inside Success, your testimony is important. It shows not only that you were able to go through something and come out clean on the other side, but that anybody else that's going out there and that's going to see this. That is struggling with something.

You know that you can make it through it through hearing your testimony.

“So I think that's super, super important.”

Now, I want to touch on, you know, your time in the military. I talked to a lot of veterans on the show. Talk to a lot of people who've been in the service. And one thing that I hear from a lot of them is that the transition back to civilian life is a little. It's truly difficult.

It's a little rocky. Talk to me a little bit about that. So my experience, I went at at the age of 28. I had civilian for about 10 years. I started working at 18.

I had civilian knowledge on the quote on quote structure of the civilian world. And had to operate and work and structure or lack thereof. Yeah, lack thereof, absolutely. And I was, I can't really say which corporation then the less. But it was a major nonprofit organization where you receive your mail.

And it's a, and it was very interesting working for that company. I learned a lot of things. It's almost like a snake eating itself. And I'm walking.

So basically, yeah, I went into the age of 28 and I had knowledge.

“These 18 year old children, honestly, that just left mom and dad and just graduated high school.”

I had no experience on living. They just got done having their mouth wiped off with a napkin by mom or dad, you know. So I'm over here. I'm going to don't. I know what's what I'm married at that point.

And it was difficult because I had to learn to wipe the slate clean with what I knew. And the mother figure that I knew I was the leader that I was and to wipe that all away. And be reconditioned or a reprogram. They got to break you down to be back up exactly exactly what it is. So I had to, you know, about my tongue do what I was told.

I ended up being a mother figure to most 18 year old girls. Some of the young men, you know, they attracted to me because I was like a mother figure. They're like, hey, I'm just down because of this drill sergeant. And I'm like, guess what, they're going to do it tomorrow. But what are we going to do it?

We're going to do it again. We're not going to stop. We're going to get through this and just keep going. You know, I made sure to push when they were down. When they were lagging, pulled them along.

You got to keep going no matter what you cannot stop.

I want to take a second here to just kind of point out.

How many, how many service members do you think wouldn't have made it through? Had you not been around for them? There's a large number. And there is a few that actually couldn't make it. They had to be discharged and couldn't even push forth through because they weren't mentally prepared.

Physically, we can get through anything.

“But mentally, they did not understand and incorporate what a militant life is.”

The structure battle keep going. You know, life order, but it could be hundreds, maybe. I don't know because I don't know what effect I imposed upon them. The reason that I ask is because just in this short conversation with you, I can tell that you definitely had that effect on. I was probably a large number of them.

And so I just want to make sure that that's no small thing. Now, again, we were talking about the transition out. And you got to essentially live an adult life. You're still in the military. Oh, you're still in.

Oh, okay. You know what, man, scrap the whole interview. I've been the California Army National Guard. God, you guys. And I'll be possibly medically discharged here shortly.

I sustained a minuscule tear. Oppa, if it was removed and I'm pending three spinal surgeries. God, you guys. Make it look good. I wouldn't have had it not been for maybe the bandage on the knee.

I probably wouldn't have known. Yep.

“So where does the, where does your chocolate business fit in?”

You're balancing a lot here. Where does your business fit in now? Basically it fits in where I lost left off my major turmoil. I had a soapworth on August 8th, 2025. I was five months pregnant.

My husband and I had gone through IVF. I had done a gender reveal party on our anniversary July 4th. And so we were excited. We were ready. We had our room.

We had our name. Our name is Carabella. And I got sick. I started just violently, you know, growing up and other issues started occurring.

And I waited a few days because I thought that was food poisoning. I was like, this is not normal.

And so I went into the hospital and I was in critical liver failure.

I didn't even know how I got there. But what I found out is they told me I have help. H-E-L-O-P is a severe case of preclampsia, which I had never heard of. I'd heard of Eclampsia and preclampsia,

but never heard of help. And basically my blood pressure had become uncontrollable. And they had tried so many things. I had been hospitalized for about nine days at that point. And they told my husband, right now,

if she goes into the ICU and you don't deliver your daughter, because that was the way to fix help. I had to deliver the baby, which meant delivering the placenta.

Don't know how, don't know why, don't understand it.

Nonetheless, my husband said,

“"I can't walk out of this hospital empty handed."”

And I was ready to give my life her. That was my baby. Like, that's my girl. You know, I got to hold her after. She had blonde eyelashes blonde hair.

She was 21 inches long. That was my baby and I, but, you know, my husband and I made a choice. And he had, I chose to stick around, because he said we could try again.

And we will. Once I get through this hurdle. But that was where everything came from. She came to me after my depression, my major depression, and November.

Don't make it like you're not ready to be with me, Mom. Do what you love, do what you enjoy. And her voice was a 30 year old. I can't explain it. Not making it up promise.

But, you know, she came to me. And I knew it was her. And your voice was mature.

“And the number of age that came to me was 30.”

And that wasn't the first time.

My first miscarriage. I've had several through RIVF. The first miscarriage. I was in a lucid sleep where, you know, my eyes were closed when I was waking up.

And, you know, it was black. And then I saw in white letters heartbeat. Called a doctor. My appointments at 8. I'm like, hey, I want to get the heartbeat checked.

Like, well, we don't really do that. You know, on this appointment, we do like a scan or whatever the case may be. But there was no heartbeat to be verified. So, and they're like, well, you can have it done. If you have a reason for it, or if you feel something.

And I said, yeah, I do. Um, by 5 p.m. that night, I'm in the emergency room.

Getting a DNC, basically.

It's a procedure where they take everything out from your uterus. And, you know, scrape out anything. Retaining to childbirth. Because there was no heartbeat. And they were fearing.

I would go septic because they didn't know how long the baby had been in me with no heartbeat. But, um, maybe I have abilities. No idea. But, you know, Hispanic culture, we believe in that. You know, I'm Puerto Rican and Italian.

And it's all about family. It's all about friends and welcoming. And that's another thing that I brought into my chocolate world is its flavor. It's about flavor. You know, I don't do the normal chocolate business where they pour the chocolate

in the molds, they dump it out, they fill it, and they fill it back up with chocolate. No. I make sure every single bite that you got, you have the ingredient of. So I pour the ingredients. She ain't lying, you know.

I've tried the chocolate. I have had the chocolate. It is what she says. Yeah, every single bite. I make sure that you get that bite of that flavor you chose.

And, you know, I have white dark milk chocolate. I don't do the fancy artsy stuff because a lot of people are allergic to the dyes of them. Red, 40, you know, blue. Oh, that's, that's so huge because I'm.

“I think and any number of people will probably be able to gravitate towards that.”

Like the, the ingredients that we get in our food, especially in this country are. Not, not exactly. Not exactly. It's, that's an extra stuff. It's not exactly designed for human consumption.

I'm not. Red, 40 being one of them. So just, just you being able to say that in your business is already a testament to the fact that you care about your product. Oh, of course. And it's funny because my military background goes into my ingredients.

Okay. We went through COVID. And we bought the, you know, everybody was like, oh, let's buy storage. Like free-stride fruit. This or that.

Well, I looked on those labels free-stride bananas, free-stride. Raspberry, that's all that's in them. They're just free-stride. And so I'm like, okay, these are going to be my ingredients. So it's those containers that you can buy military stock.

And I grind them up fresh every time I get an order. Throw them in and you get that only that fruit with that chocolate. Hmm. And it shows. It shows.

Now, a lot of our viewers and as we kind of wind down here, a lot of our viewers,

what advice do you have for somebody out there who's looking to start a business and that wants to serve a community or serve a group of people? What would be your advice to them?

First, figure out what you want.

That might be the hardest thing.

“If you don't know what you want to do, you need to figure that out first.”

Because the only person that's going to create your business is you. Your structure will be yours. You can't rely on anybody unless you go in as a co-owner or a partnership. Or even a franchiser. Yeah.

Like going in by an already operational business.

Correct. Yeah. So know what you want.

“The next step would be try not to incorporate your personal finances.”

However, if you're so passionate, I find that impossible. You know, I've given all that I can to have the business up and it's not in desperation. It's in desire. I want to do this.

I know that this company is going to thrive.

I plan on becoming a huge franchise where I'm going to be next to, you know, golden embs or whatever. You know, I want you to drive up.

“You know, got the munchies or whatever the case may be.”

You know, wife wants, you know, chocolate because she's pregnant. And she's sending you all to go get some chocolate. You know where to get it. I will be open and we're going to drive through and you're going to just be happy. You're going to have a sweet day after that.

And that's it. A drive through place for sweets. Why have we not thought of this yet? How does this not already exist? And there we go.

Well, Elizabeth, one thing that I do want to say is it has been a pleasure having you on the show. And guys, if you're still tuned in at this point of the episode, I want to make sure that you guys check out Elizabeth's episode of Operation CEO, dropping shortly after this podcast episode airs. So make sure you guys check that out to get a deeper dive into her story

into the success of her business and what she has coming for you guys in the future. Again, it has been my pleasure having you on the show. So thank you so much for being here. And this has been another episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast. Catch you guys in the next one.