Inspiring Conversations with Daryl Henderson of ONE11

Today we’d like to introduce you to Daryl Henderson.

Hi Daryl , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
The hardest thing I ever did professionally was put the camera down.

Since the time I was 5 I started taking pictures and fell in love with photography in high school. So I started chasing a dream in the 10th grade. I moved to Los Angeles in 2009 with no connections, a few hundred bucks in my bank account, and one intention, which was to become a globally recognized professional photographer. And then I spent the next decade of my life dedicating everything I had to the craft.

Some of it worked. I photographed Angela Bassett and Busy Philipps. I shot for Nike and Michael Kors. I got published in W Magazine and People Magazine, I built two creative companies before I was thirty five, and I traveled the world and documented indigenous people and peace gatherings in places most people will never see.

And yet I never quite reached the level of commercial success I was reaching for. There was always another rung, and whole lot of disappointment along the way.

Then COVID hit and the entire industry changed underneath all of us. Which is when I finally did the thing I’d been thinking about for years…and I stopped. For a long time I had silently contemplating putting the camera down and the world grinding to a halt gave me the best excuse to actually do it.

That decision wasn’t taken lightly. Something had felt off for a long time, but knowing that and acting on it are two different animals. It was genuinely heartbreaking to consider walking away from the one thing I had built my whole identity around since I was a teenager.

But it needed to be done. I had to leave it behind and see who I was now.

For a while I kept the lights on doing online retouching for Frank & Eileen, an LA based fashion brand, which meant I could work from anywhere. So I did.

I left the country and lived in Nicaragua and Costa Rica for months at a time, in some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever set foot in. It was, honestly, one of the most fruitful and genuinely fun periods of my entire life. Looking back I think I needed the distance more than I needed the answer. You can’t hear much of anything when you’re still standing in the middle of the noise.

In 2024 I came back to LA, and within a few months my best friend Nathan Todaro and I decided we wanted to build something together. We’d talked about it many times but finally said, “Ok, what are we going to do?”

We were both in the middle of a difficult season at the same time. There was burnout. There was the loss of relationships and businesses. We were both in the middle of the kind year that strips away all the noise and leave you asking what actually matters, and turns out some of the best conversations of my life happened in that time.

In our kitchens. On late-night walks. Over tea on an ordinary Thursday night.

And no matter where we started those conversations, we kept landing in the same place. We wanted to live more naturally, more intentionally, more connected to our spiritual practice. Not as an aesthetic, which has become its own industry here in SoCal. As an actual way of life.

We knew we had complementary strengths. I’d spent years inside large brands doing design, marketing and photography, and I’d always wanted to build one of my own. Nathan had owned cafes and restaurants and understood manufacturing and systems in a way I never will. It was a natural fit. We decided that our first product was going to be an ozone infused olive which is something we’d both used before and truly benefited from. Then realizing not many people knew about it we figured we had an idea we could run with.

What we didn’t have yet was a name.

That came from a moment Nathan had sitting with one of his favorite paintings. He looked up, and the time was 11:11.

For those who know, that number carries meaning. It’s a signal of alignment. Of being exactly where you’re supposed to be. That spark became ONE11, and it’s been our north star ever since.

ONE11 is a health and wellness brand built around all-natural skincare. We’ve launched our flagship line of ozone infused products, which are extremely effective and made with a deliberately short list of ingredients. Our commitment is that everything we make is simple, natural, and effective. In a world absolutely full of chemicals and fillers, we found a way to make products that are genuinely beneficial and built from organic, natural ingredients.

What I didn’t see coming…

It’s been two years now, and it has forced us both to learn and grow in more ways than I can count.

Every skill I picked up in fifteen years behind a camera turned out to be exactly what this needed. The design. The brand thinking. The photography. The years of watching how the best companies in the world tell a story about themselves. Put that next to Nathan’s acumen for manufacturing and building systems, and we’ve built something I’m proud of and genuinely believe can stand the test of time.

We’re still new. We’re still growing and we’ve got a great deal left to learn, but that’s the part that keeps us sharp.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to. For a long time I thought putting the camera down meant the dream had failed. That I had somehow failed.

It didn’t. It was life’s way of putting me in training. I just didn’t know what I was training for.

I never once dreamed my experience in photography and design would bring me here, and I’m genuinely excited to see where it goes next. And now I know this is training for whatever that is. So no matter what I’m always focused on growth, learning, and following life’s bread crumbs toward the future.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Someone I was in a relationship with once told me, plainly, that I wasn’t really an entrepreneur.

I’ve thought about that line more times than I’d like to admit. And I understand why she said it, because from the outside there were long stretches where the evidence wasn’t exactly on my side.

I’ve been through bankruptcy. I’ve had months, and honestly some years, where the income was so uncertain and inconsistent that I couldn’t tell you in January what the rest of the month was going to look like, much less the next year. I’ve watched an entire industry change underneath me, and navigated a global pandemic. I’ve been through breakups that rocked my world so completely that everything else went on hold while I put myself back together.

So there were plenty of moments where a reasonable person might have looked at me and concluded the same thing she did.

Here’s how I actually think about it.

Sometimes the road has been smooth. Other times it’s been nearly, if not completely, impassable. And when the road ends you really only have two options. You turn back, or you build a new one.

I have always chosen the second, over and over again, and forged a way forward. Not because I’m braver than anybody else. Mostly because turning back has never once felt like an option I could live with.

Now I see those hard seasons as stepping stones. Every one of them taught me something I’m using right now in building ONE11, and I don’t think I’d have any of it if the road had stayed smooth. That doesn’t mean it stopped being hard. It doesn’t mean I don’t have doubts, because I absolutely do, and I have them regularly. What changed is that I don’t freak out about them the way I used to.

Once you’ve been through enough of it you start to notice a pattern. You’re still here. You’re still okay. You’re still alive. Maybe a little bruised and worse for the wear….but hopefully wiser, and better prepared for whatever shows up next.

That’s not the same as everything working out. It’s just knowing you’ll still be standing either way.

Which, it turns out, is most of what you actually need to start something.

We’ve been impressed with ONE11, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
ONE11 is a natural skincare and wellness brand, and we make two things.

The first is ozone infused olive oil, which is where we started. Organic olive oil saturated with activated oxygen, and depending on the blend, one botanical. Our Pure Radiance blend is made with lavender. There’s a frankincense as well as a palo santo blend for something a little more grounding, and an unscented version for people who want nothing on their skin but the oil itself.

The second is our Wildcraft line, built on grass-fed beef tallow. There’s a whipped tallow cream for face and body, and a beeswax balm scented with sandalwood for the spots that need something heavier.

Tallow is what people used for many generations before the petrochemical era arrived and convinced everybody they needed a twelve step routine. It’s naturally rich in vitamins A, D, E, K and B1, and it’s remarkably close in structure to what your own skin produces, which is part of why it absorbs the way it does.

And the ozone oil runs through the tallow products too. It’s the thread that ties the whole brand together.

I think what really sets us apart is what we leave out.

Walk down any skincare aisle. Pick up one of the products and read the back of the bottles. You’ll find twenty, thirty, sometimes forty ingredients in a single product, most of which nobody can pronounce and a good number of which are there to stabilize, thicken, preserve, or fragrance the handful of things actually doing the work.

The entire category is built on addition. More actives, more complexes, more steps in your routine.

Our most complicated product has six ingredients in it. The oils have two or three. Every single one of them is in there because it’s doing a job, and there are no fillers anywhere in the line. Ever. That’s a promise.

We went the other direction on purpose. Everything we make is minimally processed, and the guiding idea is that less is more. No fillers. No additives. Nothing in the bottle that isn’t earning its place.

That sounds simple and it made manufacturing considerably harder. When you strip a formula down that far, you can’t hide behind anything. The raw material has to be right, the process has to be right, and there’s no additive to cover for you if it isn’t.

Neither of us came from a beauty or cosmetics background. I think that’s part of why the brand looks and feels the way it does.

I spent about fifteen years as a professional photographer and creative director, working with brands like Nike and Michael Kors, learning from the inside how the best companies in the world build a story about themselves. My business partner Nathan Todaro is an actor and entrepreneur who has owned cafes and restaurants and understands manufacturing, sourcing and systems in a way I never will.

What I’m most proud of…

It’s not the products, honestly. They are good but what I’m most proud of is building a brand that reflects our mutual values and dreams.

Furthermore, I’m most proud that we built this during what was, for both of us, one of the hardest years either of us had been through. We could very easily have made something fast, or designed backwards from a market gap.

We didn’t. We made the thing we actually wanted to use in our own bathrooms, and we’ve held the ingredient standard even at the moments when loosening it would have been cheaper and easier.

I use it every day. So does Nathan. That’s a low bar in theory and a surprisingly rare one in practice.

What I’d want your readers to know.

We’re a young brand. We’re a little two years in, we’re still learning constantly, and we’ve got a long way to go. I’d rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise.

But we know exactly what we’re doing and why. In a world absolutely full of chemicals, fillers and marketing dressed up as science, we found a way to make something simple, natural and effective, and we’re not planning to complicate it as we grow.

You can find us at one11life.com or on Amazon, and if you have questions about what’s in it or how it’s made, ask us.
That’s a conversation we’re always glad to have.

Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
A cherished memory, and one that happens to be relevant to my story happened when I was five years old.

I’m five years old, walking a boardwalk over a swamp in central Florida with my parents. Mom has her Minolta X-700 slung over her shoulder, because she was a photography enthusiast long before I was. Up ahead there’s a wooden railing, and beyond it the murky water with layers of algae and greenery right at the edge. All around us are lush tropical plants, giant elephant ears and banana leaves mixed in with palm trees big and small.

About twenty feet out, floating almost perfectly still, I see a pair of eyes and a stretch of scaly skin.

An alligator.

I get excited and start reaching up for my mom, and then for her camera. I want to see it closer. I want to take a picture. And she could have easily said no, but she didn’t. She handed it over and then had to help me hold it steady, because with the telephoto lens on the front it was far too heavy for a five year old.

I can still see that image today. Not the alligator itself so much as the way the world looked once it was inside that frame. Everything else disappeared and there was just the one thing I was looking at, held still, made to matter.

That was it for me. From that day on I was obsessed.

My parents eventually got me a point and shoot that I toted around everywhere for years, and I started studying photography properly in high school. Forty years later I’m still chasing whatever it was I saw through that viewfinder.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.one11life.com
• Instagram: @dhendersoncreative / @one11.life
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhendersoncreative/

Image Credits
Daryl Henderson / dhendersoncreative