Start Right Here! Podcast

This is part 2 of an interview with the amazing Kim-Van Dang, the former beauty director of Instyle turned serial beauty entrepreneur. In this episode, Kim and I chat about how her love of fragrance helped her build profitable beauty businesses.

Kim could see the writing on the wall before she decided to leave In Style. The internet and its impact on print publishing was going to change things significantly. So she began thinking about her next gig. She realized that she often gave free advice to CEOs about products, from naming to strategy and distribution, and it helped them make millions while she got a chicken salad lunch. That gave her the idea to launch KVDNYC, a 360-degree branding agency with an editorial edge. She worked with all the big brands: Estee Lauder, L'Oreal, P&G but was more gratifying was working with startup founders like Francesco Clark of Clark Botanicals to bring their brands to market. But then the 2008 recession hit and the phone stopped ringing.

But it was a package from the perfumer Francis Kurkdijan that set her off into new areas of business with her new husband, Anthony, fragrance distribution. She shares how she got the Maison Francis Kurdjian line into Bergdorf and Neiman-Marcus during a challenging recession. Other brands came calling too like Cire Trudon and Coqui Coqui among others. Then came her retail store, Havens in Sag Harbor, NY.

But her love of fragrance also inspired Kim to create an eponymous home line that has just launched in Bergdorf Goodman, Van Dang Fragrances.Find out what inspired the line, what makes it unique and its cosmic appeal.

Other stores that carry the line will include:

The Conservatory Hudson Yards

Marissa Collections in Naples, FL

Tesoro, Beverly Hills

The Paris Market, Savannah

Follow Kim on Instagram:@kvdnyc, @ilovehavens @vandangfragrances

Stay tuned for a 2-part Master Class on having a stellar beauty career. In this episode, I am joined by Kim-Van Dang, the former beauty director of In Style, who talks to me about her impressive editorial career and how it led to her becoming a serial entrepreneur. I call her the CEO of many things, and you'll find out why.

In this first episode, Kim shares her love of magazines and her determination to land a summer job at a publication. After being turned down for several positions, she landed a job at the LA Bureau of WWD/W. She shares how she made herself an invaluable team member and found opportunities to expand her role. After graduating college, she landed a job at the Orange County Register. Kim talks about how learning to be a hard news reporter added to her skills toolkit.

She shares how the Fairchild Publication job that didn't pan out resulted in her pivot to beauty at WWD. Learn how her job there led to stints at Good Housekeeping and In Style.

And she'll share how fragrance has been an essential throughline in her life, starting with that first bottle of Jean Naté. And one of her new favorites, Strange Love perfumes' Fall into Stars.

In part 2, you'll learn about her pivot into entrepreneurship and the three amazing businesses she is running. Preview her companies here:

https://www.ilovehavens.com/

https://vandangfragrances.com/

Follow Kim on Instagram: @kimvandangnyc @ilovehavens @vandangfragrances

In this episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with Jolorie Williams, the General Manager of Revlon. In her role, she proudly oversees the Multicultural Division, which includes Cream of Nature products and Contract Services. Jolorie loves working in haircare and even has some mannequin heads in her home where she tries out the latest products in the pipeline.

Her first job was in a non-beauty role at Bristol-Myers Squib. But at the time, they also owned Clairol, and when a position opened in their Professional Beauty Division, she landed it and never looked back. When she started, her job was in "ethnic haircare," and she loves how consumers demand has helped the category evolve.

Jolorie also held pivotal roles at L'Oréal, working in Multicultural Haircare and Lancome, overseeing makeup marketing. Then she moved over to the Estee Lauder brand, Origins, which exposed her to how a brand with freestanding retail stores operates. But there is something about haircare that Jolorie loves, so when the opportunity to join Revlon presented itself, she joined their Professional Division before she took on her recent role. She is serving her multicultural audience with passion and purpose.

Jolorie's a proud FAMU graduate with a C-Suite position. We talked about the importance of her HBCU education and how she uses her role to impact the next generation.

Plus, Jolorie offers five tips on succeeding on the corporate side of beauty. Make sure you stay until the end, so you don't miss them!

You may know Trae Bodge from her more than 1,000 television appearances as an intelligent shopping expert. But, Trae has deep roots in beauty. You can say that she was practically born into the business because her mother owned a shop in her small Massachusetts town where they sold creams, soaps, and other products.

Trae initially wanted to be an artist but found a way to use those talents in beauty with a custom-blending company called Visage Beaute.

She initially started working for the brand in Massachusetts and later moved to the counter at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. When the brand was sold to Revlon, Trae actively campaigned for a job at Kiehl's, then privately owned. As part of a collaborative team at their 3rd Avenue store in NYC, she created a position overseeing their catalog sales. While there, she banded her savings together with a former colleague at Visage and another friend to form Three Custom Color. They not only custom-blended shades, but they also recreated shopper's favorite discontinued shades in their NYC retail store/lab.

After leaving that business, Trae thought she would end up at a big cosmetic company in product development or another role, but wearing too many hats made her hard to place, so she stuck out on her own and began writing more.

She landed her first corporate job at RetailMeNot and began doing television appearances, which morphed into a new career. After being laid off, Trae started making appearances on behalf of several clients.

She's noticed an uptick in bookings since the social reckoning and sees that as a good thing, and has also adjusted to doing segments in her home. But doing television isn't easy; Trae shares the secrets to booing and delivering segments, and here's a hint, there's no such thing as winging it!

Because she knows that others interested in television could benefit from her expertise, she has partnered with a colleague on One Take Media.

And best of all, Trae shares five tips on perfecting your pivot.

Check out all of this and more on this episode.

And Follow Trae Bodge on all social platforms @truetrae!

Makeup department heads, beauty entrepreneurs, and twin sisters Denise and Janice Tunnell have carved out an impressive career behind the scenes in the film in television industries for more than 20 years. From "Hustle &n Flow" to "The Notebook" to "HBO's "Boycott" to now Netflix's "Sweet Magnolias," to name a few. This week's episode discusses how they made the career shift from accountants to makeup artists and later found their way to film and television.

We discuss how these Baltimore natives acquired their skills and moonlit at first in the beauty industry, what caused them to leap full-time careers in makeup, and how they knew they found their niche when it came to film and television.

We also discuss the hurdles that might exist in getting into the union, the importance of creating relationships in the industry, and the particular challenges facing Black talent (hair and makeup) and Black actors in getting hired and their hair and makeup needs met. And their thoughts about the panel on hair and makeup diversity held by Devon Franklin.

Find out how they started their beauty line 14 years ago and why their podcast, Beauty Talk, is of particular importance to them and the beauty industry.

If you are a young person interested in fashion and beauty, who majored in journalism, this episode featuring Janell M. Hickman-Kirby will give you some guidance on how to build a career that works for you. Janell, a graduate of Hampton University, began her career as an intern in the fashion closet at Women's Wear Daily. She explains how she made the most of that internship and how it led to a role in public relations at Victoria's Secret. She worked on the fashion shows, managed the samples, coordinated the schedules of the brand's top models, and so much more.

You'll learn why Janell chose to leave there to take a role in the fashion department at Essence and how her interests in beauty began. She shares how being a part of a small style team at Ebony gave her growth opportunities. Janell also explains how another stint in or at the HL Group added to her wheelhouse.

She shares why taking a job at the Gilt Group and learning e-commerce contributes to what she does now. She was determined to maintain her editorial contacts while working there and managed to amass amazing bylines as a result.

Janell explains her current roles and why generating sales are at the heart of what she does. And she shares why she started Beauty + Le Budget, a platform that helps freelancers budget better and be honest about their spending and goals.

That's just the tip of the iceberg of our discussion, which also touches on mental health, why you shouldn't tell yourself 'no,' and so much more!

Ginger King, President of Grace Kingdom Beauty, a cosmetic development and manufacturing company grew up in beauty. Her mother was the first woman to open a Shiseido boutique in Taiwan. Yet, even though she loved makeup and secretly wanted to be a makeup artist as a teen, she never thought that she would have a career in beauty. But her science background opened the door in ways she could never imagine.

After college, she landed her first job, at a company that processed pineapples. But she also took a part-time job at the Estee Lauder counter. At the latter, she learned first-hand about the wants and needs of the consumer. And she was able to solve a big problem at her day job by applying the knowledge she learned about how self-tanners work. Emboldened, she moved from Northern California to South California and knocked on doors until she got hired at a contract manufacturer.

From there she had roles in-house at companies like Joico and Avon. She also sold cosmetic raw materials before deciding to become an entrepreneur herself. She started a skincare brand with a partner but was inundated with requests from other entrepreneurs as well as companies who wanted her help. Her focus on clean and vegan ingredients is important to her. Ginger likens creating a beauty brand to having a baby. Each trimester is dedicated to a specific area of development and it is best not to rush it. And she created her line, Fan Love Beauty, to demonstrate that she could walk her talk.

And for any listeners interested in following in her path, Ginger breaks down the differences between being a cosmetic chemist, a product development executive, and working at a contract manufacturer so that anyone interested in these areas can make an informed decision.

Hear all of this in more on this week's episode!

This week, it is my pleasure to welcome Stephanae McCoy, founder of Bold Blind Beauty to the Start Right Here podcast. Today, we are going to talk about how the beauty industry interacts with the blind. Is there an intersection? What grade would Stephanae give the industry? What is it like navigating websites when she needs to shop for beauty? Stephanae also dispels some of the myths about the blind community, the companies in beauty and fashion who have been getting it right, and what steps need to be for us to become authentic allies that want complete inclusion.

Along the way, you will learn that Stephanae was working at Deloitte and was married with three children when she became blind. She candidly shares the adjustments she had to make. You will learn that blindness is not a monolith and that many blind people do have residual sight.

Stephanae started her site, Bold Blind Beauty after she was asked to do a makeup workshop for blind women. At the time that she was doing her research, there weren't many resources. The site expands knowledge about living with blindness and demonstrates that living can be done boldly.

She shares how Covid-19 impacted her as a blind woman unable to drive. Stephanae had to rely on websites and found that many have the technology to better communicate with the blind community but do not use alt text correctly. She also explains why audio captioning is important.

Here are the fashion and beauty companies that earn high marks with Stephanae:

Beauty: Dr. Jart, Whamisa, Bioderma, Herbal Essence's Bio-Renew line, Cleanlogic, L'Occitane, and Too Faced Cosmetics

Fashion: Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, and Aerie

Plus, the product Stephane raved about in the Fast Track round:

Colorstreet Nails

This week, Maisie Dunbar, President of the Maisie Dunbar Beauty Brands and Bluffajo Cosmetics, joins the podcast to discuss changing careers, building a clientele, embracing entrepreneurship, and empowering underserved communities with new skills during our chat, and so much more.

Maisie explains that she always received compliments on her nails from her colleagues when she worked in IT at British Telecom and later the FDA. Still, she never thought about pursuing a career in beauty until a friend mentioned that she had enrolled in nail school Maisie followed suit and discovered that although she was great at doing her own nails, she really was terrible at doing It for others and vowed to master the skill.

Her first job in beauty was doing nails at a barbershop, and a few months later, when she moved to a popular DMV hair salon, she decided to pursue her dream full-time. This was a risky decision that forced her to find clients. So she took a script and started recruiting at the bus stop, offering free manicures. She reasoned, if she were always busy, people would want to try her services. It worked. Soon Maisie was so popular that she needed help, and she made a connection with a local nail school to get an assistant. This started a tradition of her offering a training program that prepared students for the workplace.

Once Maisie was an entrepreneur, she began expanding her services, first offering massage therapy and later skincare services. She also became licensed in these areas so she could walk her talk. As her business grew, she realized that her team couldn't give excellent service if they were never served themselves, so she exposed them to the best in class beauty experiences. Later, she learned makeup artistry and cosmetic ingredients so that she could apply those skills to her own line, Bluffajo Cosmetics.

Maisie explains that although her eponymous salon and spa were an award-winning venture, she wanted to pivot her business because legacy creation became important. She also wanted to establish better beauty training programs on the African continent and her native country of Liberia and explore distribution options for her makeup line.

She also explains why she always believes in leading by example and becoming a trainer and influencer for two of the biggest companies, Seche and CND.

For Amber Makupson, founder of Meraki Organics, the creation of her line and entrepreneurship came due to her quest for a healthier lifestyle when she became pregnant with her daughter. That path led her to change her diet and look closely at what she was applying to her hair and skin. It also led Amber to enroll in a program to become an aesthetician.

Economic realities, however, caused her to be realistic about building a clientele full-time. Instead, she decided to keep her career in marketing as she built up her business. Amber's dual-path continued as she developed Meraki, a line of hair care products infused with crystals that work for all hair types. In fact, it was her full-time gig that helped her fund the line. She points out that often she has to defend her decision to continue to work, often because many people mistakenly believe that entrepreneurial success mirrors what they see on television.

The reality is different. Amber made and marketed the products from her home. But demand for her line continues to increase, with large orders and inventory that sold out quickly. This resulted in Amber finding a manufacturing partner that can scale up production as her business grows.

Amber also shares how not seeing images that looked like herself caused her to create an inclusive line. How Ayurveda factors into her botanical ingredient choices and the purpose of her crystals in her product. Learn all that and more on this week's episode.