startrightherepodcast

Narae Chung, the CEO, and co-founder of Cardon, was aware of the value of skincare early on. She observed the multi-step skincare rituals her mother practiced daily, which she believes were as much self-care as they were beauty steps. By the time she was in her early teens, Narae had a 4-step system of her own. Skincare was part of her life, and culturally, it was more important than makeup. The emphasis was on prevention, creating gentle results, and innovative ingredients. But she never set out to be a beauty entrepreneur.

In this episode, Narae shares how she shifted her focus from electrical engineering to marketing and ultimately to beauty entrepreneurship. After developing an interest in marketing, Narae landed a job at P&G in Korea and worked on three brands that would give her foundational training in beauty. SK-II (Japanese luxury skincare), Gillette (men's grooming), and Olay (drugstore skincare). She shares how each of these positions prepared her for entrepreneurship.

Narae came to the United States to obtain an MBA, but by that time, she also knew she was ready to pursue entrepreneurship. She conducted a focus group with a few of her male classmates and discovered an untapped opportunity, and decided to pursue a moderately priced men's grooming line that incorporated K-Beauty philosophy with her business school roommate. The hero ingredient of the line comes from a cactus named Cardon.

Narae shares how men think about their skincare needs differently, why they made a moisturizing sunscreen the first product, how they have expanded the line to 13 SKUs since launching in 2020, how the pandemic helped them connect with their customers, and why one of her goals is to make every product her customer needs. 

Products mentioned:

Daily SPF Moisturizer

Dark Circle Eye Rescue

Shaving Essentials Set

2-Step System to Fight Hair Loss

Follow Cardon on Instagram

With all that is going on in the world, we all need a bit of self-care. And in order to practice it myself, I wanted to bring you a rebroadcast of my chat with Dixie Lincoln-Nichols, Founder of the Inside Outer Beauty Market. In this episode, Dixie shares her career evolution from her aspirations to become a medical doctor to a science teacher to now a beauty and wellness entrepreneur. Stay tuned to the end for four new tips that will help you shop for toxicant-free products. (Original show notes below)--------------------------------------------

Dixie Lincoln-Nichols learned about natural beauty ingredients at about five-years-old from her grandmother in Trinidad. But accessing that knowledge came much late, following a brief career as a biology teacher. After a diagnosis of uterine fibroids and an encounter with an insensitive doctor, Dixie started exploring ways to heal herself naturally. She saw an opportunity to bring toxicant-free beauty, wellness, and home products to a multicultural audience. She launched Inside Outer Beauty Market a brick-and-mortar store which contains products that have been carefully curated by her and her team. She explains that the marketing of clean beauty has created a perception that it is for an affluent white customer, but points out that the ingredients in many of the products are the same ones her grandmother used. And expresses concerns about the ingredients in beauty products marketed to Black women in particular. Dixie gives us insight into how she sources and tests products and how she uses her background as an educator to teach her customers about toxicant-free beauty and wellness.

We discuss how the mind/body connection factors into beauty and wellness and how she uses her training as a Qi Gong instructor as part of a holistic approach to beauty and wellness.

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Keren Davy, Senior Manager, Clinical and Luxe Skincare at Sephora has beauty in her DNA, she was raised in her mother's hair salon. First had tea parties, later got to work, and eventually obtained her cosmetology license, yet it was a challenge for her to land her first corporate beauty role. So in this episode, Keren and I explore whether there is such a thing as the "right" school when it comes to getting a job at a big beauty brand. And if that is indeed true, what do you do when you don't fit the criteria?

Keren talks candidly about how a lack of knowledge about internships may have hindered her. But the reality is, although Keren was a scholarship student, she had to work, so she made money in two ways: as a bank teller, and putting her cosmetology license to work. She landed a marketing internship during her senior year and she explains how she turned that internship into a full-time job offer after graduation. 

Even with marketing experience, however, beauty brands still weren't interested in her. So Keren returned to school for an MBA. There she got her first taste of skincare, leading a team working on a project for Kiehl's.

But her first position at Johnson & Johnson was working on the Band-Aid and Neosporin brands. But even when she wasn't I'm a beauty role, Keren made her beauty expertise known to her colleagues and was hand-picked for a role in brand management at Aveeno. She shares how she continued to uplevel her skills and the importance of stretch assignments. After being laid off from her role at Aveeno, Keren started a consulting firm with client recommendations from her former colleagues.

For her current role at Sephora, Keren made the decision to move to West Coast. Acclimating to her new role and a new home. Keren shares how important giving herself grace in times of change. She also shares the importance of faith in her career journey. It sustained her as she encountered rejection and disappointment and fueled her as she forged forward, blazing her career path. 

In our Starting Five section, Keren shares some valuable tips on blazing a career in marketing, even if you are an outsider. 

When Shekela Joseph got her first job as a cashier at Sephora, she was excited; however, hair had always been her thing. But her colleagues saw something different, they saw Shekela's face as a canvas, and they wanted to use her as their model time and time again. Along the way, she picked up the skills and moved to a beauty advisor role and was so proficient that she was recruited as a beauty educator for Too Faced Cosmetics.

In this role, Shekela traveled to more than a dozen stores in the NY metro area, teaching her team about new products and techniques. She moved from the boutique brand to luxury beauty as a Runway Makeup artist for Burberry Beauty. Always willing to up-level her skills, Shekela talks about how she became a Business Manager at Saks Fifth Avenue for Decorté Beauty, a Japanese skincare brand, which has been well-known in Asia for more than 50 years. She shares what it is like to recruit, hire and develop her team and how she encourages them to meet their sales goals.

Shekela talks about the impact Covid-19 has had on how she does business, particularly when it comes to virtual events and Zoom consultations and the challenges that come with them. 

She shares how she thinks beauty companies need to advance their efforts in creating a more equitable industry, noting that while there have been great strides, more needs to be done. 

Beauty wasn't on Dorian Morris' mind as a career but she got a taste of the industry early when she worked with the fragrance buyer at Robinson-May. But she didn't think about it again until she'd already worked as a planner at Macy's, obtained an MBA from Harvard Business School, and done a stint working in brand management at CPG behemoth General Mills. Dorian chats with us about how she found similarities between working in food and beauty when she landed a job at Kendo, the brand incubator for Sephora, and why the scrappy environment allowed her to thrive. She points out that her next job, at Sundial Brands, where she was responsible for relaunching the Madame CJ Walker Beauty Culture brand was even scrappier. Dorian shares how a short stint at CoverGirl helped her realize that she does better in smaller environments that huge brands. After quitting that job, Dorian started exploring her next act and founded Undefined Beauty Inc. She shares why she took the leap and launched her company at the Indie Beauty Exo two years ago, why she wants to make quality CBD beauty and wellness products that are affordable, the challenges of working in the CBD space, why her supply change is built on conscious capitalism and why adaptogens are her next move. Dorian shares invaluable advice to new entrepreneurs and so much more on this episode. 

Plus, find out about the special discount code available for our listeners. You might want to use it to get the newest offerings: Glow Bars, adaptogen-based (CBD) chocolate bars designed for creativity, pleasure or sleep. 

Kim Roxie spent hours studying the piano, but although she didn't make music her career, she has called on that discipline in her work as a beauty entrepreneur. Kim founded Lamik Beauty, a clean beauty brand for women of color, and opened her first store in Houston, TX, shortly after graduating from college. With the odds stacked against her, Kim relied on her ability to connect with women, her belief in a new category of beauty, and her faith to succeed. But then her dream expanded and decided that reaching more women required her to change her business model from brick and mortar to e-commerce, incorporate technology, and learn a new way of business. Find out how Kim relied on her crazy faith to build Lamik and chart its new path. 

On this episode, I chat with the amazing Tia Williams, the only other Black woman to be a staffer in Elle magazine's beauty department in its early years. We discuss the massive collection of magazines she started at age nine, her obsession with Kevyn Aucoin and other legendary makeup artists, and how she'd obsess over makeup in the drug store. 

We talk about how she landed positions at some of the most prestigious print magazines, started one of the first successful beauty blogs for Black women, Shake Your Beauty, and her transition to a more corporate role and the learning curve involved in that. 

Tia is more than a beauty editor, she's also a novelist and we'll discuss what she's learned about being an author. And how excited she is about actress Gabrielle Union turning her 2016 novel, "The Perfect Find" into a Netflix film. And we've got more to look forward to with her next book due out in 2021.

Learn all of this and more.

On this podcast, it is important to hear perspectives on getting your start from individuals at different stages of their careers in beauty. On this episode, Corynne chats with Kourtney Pope, a social media and influencer market professional who has successfully made the pivot from fashion to beauty early in her career. 

Corynne and Kourtney discuss how she landed her first internship, how she has strategically used networking to advance her career, why Oprah is the reason she'll never choose between fashion and beauty. The differences between working in fashion and beauty. How her time at a fashion startup, Eloquii differed from a corporate role at L'Oréal. Why your 20s is the best time to explore different career paths. And why she is back in the world of startups as she consults with the relatively new beauty, wellness, and lifestyle platform, Drk Beauty , and the platform's initiative to give away hours of free therapy to women of color.

On the latest episode, Corynne L. Corbett chats with Regina Gwynn, CEO of TresseNoire, a virtual beauty coach designed to provide custom haircare solutions for women with textured hair. They discuss how Regina moved from a job in product development at Macy's to management consultant after she received her MBA, to ultimately, entrepreneurship. Regina shares the valuable lessons learned in corporate America that she still uses today. 

Regina details the challenges she faced in building a tech-enabled solution focused on natural hair and why she and her co-founder decided to pivot away from offering on-demand services.

They discuss how the beauty industry is responding to the Black Lives Matter protests and whether we are seeing performative allyship. Regina also notes that racial capitalism—the financial and economic infrastructures that prevent Black entrepreneurs from securing funding—needs to be addressed before we see real change.

Regina shares why she and her co-founders created Black Women Talk Tech and why it is important for every founder to have some tech knowledge. And her belief that the next billion-dollar valued idea will come from a Black woman.