Building a brand is hard work, and it doesn’t always go as planned. In fact, it has never been more competitive or required more money to scale a startup in this category. Remi Brixton, the CEO and Founder of Freck Beauty, built a brand from her obsession with freckles. She sits down with Kelly Kovack to share stories about her missteps, and how she turned defeat into a cult community driven brand. 

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Family businesses built from humble beginnings to billion-dollar brands, independent of outside capital, are the very fabric of the American dream. The vision of the founder is bigger than a personal financial windfall. It’s about creating a business that reaches far beyond them, creating a legacy that continues the work in perpetuity. Leaders like this think big and they think beyond the bottom line to the impact the company makes to an industry, a community, and to the team that keeps the dream alive. Michaeline DeJoria joins Kelly Kovack to discuss her journey from the production plant floor to her new role as CEO.

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Historically, the industry has propagated a perception of beauty reflective of unrealistic perfection, and a lack of diversity driving women into a perpetual and elusive search for the solution. However, there's a new type of beauty emerging, where we use these powers for good. Amy Liu, Founder and CEO of Tower 28 discusses with Kelly Kovack how she spent years learning the ropes at other companies, and meeting some amazing mentors along the way. She talks about how that has prepared her to throw her hat into the entrepreneurial ring and find answers to her own sensitive skin issues.

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Clean beauty and sustainability while noble pursuits are inherently rife with misinformation and lacking definition. There may be no perfect answer or solution, but there's plenty of progress. Every individual and business is in a different stage representing the reality that sustainability exists on a spectrum and looks different for each of us. Yet, an argument can be made that we all have a part to play as global citizens. Elsie Rutterford and Dominika Minarovic, co-founders of British beauty brand, BYBI sit down with Kelly Kovack to discuss how the existing system needs a total reconstruction, and how for them the road to sustainability has been a work in progress.

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There's a fine line between collaboration and competition. Conceptually, they can coexist and they're not mutually exclusive.

Strategic alliances can be powerful, but they are also constantly evolving because cooperation has limits, and you have to defend against competitive compromise. Deanna Utroske, a beauty business content specialist, sits down with Kelly Kovack to discuss how she navigates this paradigm, and how she approaches cooperation with an open heart and a generous spirit. 

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The Holy Grail of most brand founders in the beauty industry is an exit to a strategic

player that comes with a big payday. While this remains elusive for most it is a reality for others that fuels future entrepreneurial ventures built on the lessons learned and the freedom to think beyond the confines of funding. These seasoned brand founders have a recipe for success and a passion that keeps them in the game.

The Art of Shaving Founders Myriam and Eric Malka sit down with Kelly to discuss how they are back in the beauty game with a new brand that embodies their less is so much more philosophy and their passion for ingredients.

 

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The most prolific creatives not only have ideas that many would consider to be “out of the box” but they have the ability to execute on them. The most diligent creatives are also builders turning them into real tangible things - they simply can’t help themselves. They commit an insane amount of time to their work without holding back.

Jillian Dempsey the legendary makeup artist, sculptor, painter, entrepreneur and animal activist shares with Kelly how she is constantly searching for innovative approaches and fresh perspectives to beauty.

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We're in a new era of sustainability driven by consumers, governments, and corporations, impelled by the visible effects of pollution on our environment, the impact on the climate, and our food supply. The collective consciousness on sustainability is rising perhaps faster than many expected. The beauty industry's contribution to the current state of our environment is well-documented. And quite frankly, embarrassing. We all participated in some way to the current state of affairs. And now it's our job as an industry to fix it, and really change the system that created the problem.

Stephanie Stahl, CEO and co-founder of Ace of Air joins Kelly to discuss how her and her team deconstructed the beauty paradigm, and are offering consumers the chance to rent product packaging in the name of conserving the planet.

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Divergent needs, competing demands, and diverse personalities are just some of the elements of running a business that have the possibility of creating conflict and chaos.

For entrepreneurs, and especially for co-founders, success requires the ability to navigate and come to terms with these tensions, embracing them and allowing the interdependencies to create richer thinking and better solutions. Dr. Dennis Gross and Carrie Gross are partners in life, and in the business of running Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare. They sit down with Kelly Kovack to discuss how together, they have built the foundation of their dynamic brand and team.

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The value of heritage, history and legacy is sometimes overlooked or viewed as a liability. So much of the current hyper-connected beauty landscape is focused on newer, faster, and better. And sometimes what came before is tossed aside, or dismissed as not relevant. But, Doreen Bloch, the Executive Director of the Make-Up Museum, believes beauty history is a treasure trove of inspiration, just waiting to be discovered. She sits down with Kelly to discuss how she made the idea of documenting, archiving, and paying tribute to thousands of years of beauty a reality.

 

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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices