A very old biography! Written on the 21st July 1998 – a very long time ago. It brought a smile to my face remembering how I was back then. And so much has happened since.
CHERYL GILBERT – Founder, Creator and CEO
From the very early age of 4 Cheryl wanted to be a nurse just like Florence Nightingale and began mixing her aunt’s expensive French perfumes and adding flowers to them to make ‘medicines’ to heal people.
She left school at 18 and studied biology at Sydney Technical College but became bored with too much time between lectures and began looking for work as a laboratory assistant. She was offered a position with the Bank of New South Wales and thought she would only be there temporarily. After 2 ½ years of banking and learning many useful accounting tools Cheryl was accepted by the Royal North Shore Hospital to study nursing. This was her dream come true but she was constantly getting into trouble for spending more time nurturing and massaging the patients than emptying bins and tidying up. Her nursing career was cut short when she gave birth to her first child. When her daughter was 16 months old Cheryl completed a Secretarial Diploma and worked part-time in a major advertising agency which offered hours more suitable to a young mother. Cheryl was to carry the regret of not completing her nursing diploma for many years.
Years past and Cheryl’s experience included working in banks, executive secretarial positions, personnel, selling computer training and giving birth to two more children.
The completion of a pathology paramedic course led her to managing other paramedics and couriers and visiting many doctors. This satisfied to some degree her yearning to return to nursing but she became disillusioned with management, office politics and the high staff turnover. Finally she decided to make things happen for herself. After selling her car to allow a breather between mortgage payments and with three children at home to support on her own she opened a shop in Beecroft, Sydney where she specialised in a recent found passion – aromatherapy. Cheryl had finally found her niche. A very successful enterprise, Cheryl found herself making aromatherapy blends for her customers who came from all over Sydney. The demand led her to eventually decide to manufacture her own products. Searching for all the right ingredients to satisfy her perfectionist streak would take two years. Cheryl eventually left the retail industry to concentrate on manufacturing her essential oil blends, massage blends, essential oil incense, aftershave and her very popular pure essential oil perfumes.
Balanced Essentials is now based in Brookvale, Sydney where even the office has the same meticulous creative flair as the product. The original one room office now encompasses a whole floor.
Cheryl Gilbert’s vision is to extend her product range and grow the corporate office to expand overseas and to continue providing people with the best in innovative natural products with emphasis on healing themselves through an alternative approach which also includes using crystals to energise and activate her products. This in itself is a unique approach which has combined ancient methods to produce a profound effect in all her products.