How skincare entrepreneurs Born To Be Free used a Ledn loan to build the life they wanted

For the founders of Born To Be Free, bitcoin was the beginning of a rethink about how they wanted to live. When their growing skincare business needed capital, a Ledn loan helped them put their bitcoin to work without selling it.

Customer: Born To Be Free

Use case: Business growth and working capital

Location: New York, US

Result: A time-sensitive summer marketing campaign funded without selling additional bitcoin.

For Nadja and John Scavone, finding bitcoin changed more than the way they thought about money. It made the couple start questioning other parts of their lives.

“The first pillar to fall was Bitcoin, the financial system and the fiat monetary system,” John says. “And then right after that we said, ‘Where are we sourcing our food from? Where is this meat we’re eating coming from?’”

Soon, they were asking similar questions about the products they used at home.

Nadja started developing her own tallow-based skincare in 2022. The couple spent two years formulating and testing the products before they felt ready to bring them to market.

Born To Be Free launched in 2024, selling small-batch skincare including soaps, moisturisers, body butters, and Sun Armor.

"We are an all natural, non-toxic, tallow-based skincare line,” says Nadja. “We make everything handmade from scratch with the purest, cleanest ingredients. Everything is sourced locally and regeneratively."

The company is part of a broader ambition for John and Nadja. They want control over how they work, spend their time, and eventually raise a family.

But building that life still needs something conventional: capital.

Credit cards can only take a business so far

Born To Be Free was initially bootstrapped. When they needed funds, they turned to promotional credit-card offers.

“We were able to get credit cards with 0% promotional rates for 12 to 24 months, and that’s how we financed the start of the business without having to sell our Bitcoin,” says John.

It worked, but was not a sustainable source of capital.

“You do enough of that, 20-something credit cards later, and they stop sending you those offers.”

By then, Born To Be Free was profitable and John had an 800 credit score. But when they looked to traditional lenders to help finance the next stage of the company, they struggled to get a business loan.

“With small businesses like ours, it’s nearly impossible to get a business loan. You go to a bank and they don’t want to lend to us. You’re high risk for them.”

“It’s difficult to scale your business and do the things you want to do if you don’t have access to that capital.”

For a young business, that lack of capital can mean more than slower growth. Sometimes opportunities themselves have an expiry date.

A time-sensitive campaign that needed capital

Born To Be Free’s Sun Armor was exactly that kind of opportunity.

The couple wanted to invest in marketing around the summer season, when demand for sunscreen was highest. The previous October, John sold some of their bitcoin at around $65,000 to fund marketing. He regretted it.

This time, waiting for a more favourable bitcoin price was not an option either.

“I didn’t have the luxury of waiting for Bitcoin to go up. I needed that capital then.”

The choice seemed to be waiting, or selling more bitcoin. Then John discovered a third option.

From bitcoin to dollars in hours

John learned about Ledn through Adam O’Brien, founder of Bitcoin Well.

“I became close with Adam and I trusted his opinion,” he says. “He said, ‘These are good people. If you’re going to do it, I would go through them.’”

When John opened an account, the experience surprised him.

“A day later, I opened my account and within hours the money hit my fiat bank account. I posted the Bitcoin as collateral, and the entire user experience was incredible. It was super quick.”

John does not consider himself technical.

“It took me days to get my node running when I first got it, but this was super easy for me to figure out.”

Born To Be Free put the capital towards its summer marketing campaign.

Keeping hold of the asset behind the business

Ledn gave Born To Be Free the cash they needed without selling.

“We love that we can access capital accumulated by holding Bitcoin without selling our Bitcoin,’ says Nadja.

“It eliminates the opportunity cost and difficulty of deciding whether to act now or wait longer. When you own your own business, it's especially important to build a strong foundation, and extra capital helps with that.

“We also love that there is no monthly payment - it eliminates a major potential stressor that other loans dont offer.”

What else could bitcoin help them build next?

John’s experience with Ledn has also changed the way he thinks about what their bitcoin can do.

He points to the way owners of other valuable assets have borrowed against them rather than selling them every time they need liquidity.

“They also give you the chance to refinance, which is the game the wealthy have played for hundreds of years,” he says. “They leverage their real estate, and they don’t necessarily pay back the loan. They keep refinancing.”

For John, being able to borrow against bitcoin opens up the same possibilities.

“Products like Ledn give us, as Bitcoiners, the opportunity to play that same game when nobody else gives us the opportunity.”

From a summer campaign to a bigger life

The Ledn loan funded a specific business need, but Born To Be Free itself is building towards something bigger.

John and Nadja want to create a business that supports the way they want to live rather than scaling at any cost.

Eventually, they hope it will form part of their family life too.

“When the time comes for us to start a family, there’s no better curriculum,” John says. “We plan on homeschooling, and there’s no better curriculum than raising our children and showing them what it’s like to operate a business.”

Their ambitions also extend to the people around them.

“A lot of non-Bitcoiners in our circle, our family and our friends struggle to take that leap of faith, leave their fiat jobs and pursue what they really love,” John says.

“It would be incredible if we could build our business to a level where we can hire our closest friends and family who want to contribute, but are scared to leave their jobs and don’t know where to go.

“And we can say, ‘Hey, we got you.’”

Born To Be Free shows that Bitcoin-backed borrowing can solve an immediate, practical problem.

Their business had an opportunity, but their bank would not finance it. Selling bitcoin would mean giving up an asset they wanted to keep.

Ledn gave them another option.

Turn your bitcoin into capital without selling it

A Ledn bitcoin-backed loan lets you borrow against your bitcoin holdings to access liquidity without selling them.

Whether that liquidity is used for a business, a major purchase, or another opportunity, the principle is the same: your bitcoin can provide access to capital while you retain ownership of the asset, subject to the terms and risks of the loan.

Explore Ledn loans.

Thank you to Efrat Fenigson of You’re The Voice for interviewing John and Nadja. You can watch her full interview here.