Today I chat with Lynn Power.Lynn is a longtime ad agency executive with a love for beauty. She's been fortunate to work on many iconic brands, including the Gillette Venus global marketing launch, Clinique global, L'Oreal Natural Match launch and VIVE relaunch, Nexxus repositioning, Vichy positioning and La Roche-Posay and St. Ives. She has done lots of other categories too including American Express, Hershey's, Campari, Kimberly-Clark, Nestle, T. Rowe Price. . . She loves building teams, reinventing cultures and disruption.Lynn is currently the CEO of MASAMI (Botanical hair products).
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. This series is a platform for women, female-identified, & non-binary individuals to share their professional stories and personal narrative as it relates to their story. This podcast is designed to hold a space for all individuals to learn from their counterparts regardless of age, status, or industry.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with CEO of botanical hair company Masami Lynn Power. Key points addressed where Lynn Dynamic 25 year history as a top level exhibit in New York City's elite ad agencies and her new endeavor at Masami, an organic and Vegan hair care line with a devout backing and responsible and ethical ingredients and ethos. Stay tuned for my informative talk with Lynn Power.
[00:00:32] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series contains interviews I conduct with women. Female identified and non binary individuals regarding their professional stories and personal narrative. This podcast is designed to hold a space for all individuals to learn from their counterparts regardless of age status for industry. We aim to contribute to the evolving global dialog surrounding underrepresented figures in all industries across the USA and abroad. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as Vegan life, fasting and roundtable topics. They can be found via our Web site. Patricia Kathleen .COM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.
[00:01:29] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia, today. I am so excited to be sitting down with Lynn Power.
[00:01:34] Lynn is the CEO of Masami, which is a botanical hair product company. You can find out more about her and the company at w w w dot. Love Masami dot com. That is l o v e m a. S a. Am I dot com. Welcome, Lynn.
[00:01:51] Well, thank you. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:53] Absolutely. I'm excited to kind of climb through your personal background as well as Masami, the company. I actually really like a lot of the direction that it's headed and it has a lot of very similar constituents to the work that we do. Patricia, Kathleen Podcast's, in regards to responsibility towards the Earth and everything that it's doing for everyone listening. I will read a brief bio on Lynn before I start peppering her with questions. But prior to that, a quick road map for today's podcast. For those of you that are new, it's following the same trajectory. The four core constituents that all of them in podcast series. This one do cover. So we will first look at Lynn, academic background and early professional life. Then we'll turn towards and packing Masumi. We'll get into logistics about who, what, when, where, why, how founders', how long it's been around all of those things, what it is, the products. And then we'll turn to the ethos and some of the philosophy that this particular company actually enumerates on quite beautifully and has a lot to say about that. Our third point, we'll reach in two Lynn's goals and plans for the next one to three years and both with Mussomeli and maybe personally. And how this to kind of intertwine. We'll wrap everything up with advice that she has regarding her success, her legacy, what she's done with her professional life and her current work. But prior to that, as promised, a quick bio on Lynn. Lynn is a longtime ad agency executive with a love for beauty. She's been fortunate enough to work on many iconic brands, including the Gillette, Venus Global Marketing Launch, Clinique Global L'Oreal Natural Match Launch and Veev Relaunch Nexus Repositioning, Vicha Positioning and Larocque Laroque Post say. I'm probably not saying what is right. I'll let Lin correct me in a second. And St. Ives. She has done lots of other categories too, including American Express, Hershey's, Campari, Kimberly Clark Ness, Nazli T. Rowe Price. She loves building TMD and reinventing cultures and disruption, which I love that you can contact her at her current position and find more about the website again at w w w dot love Masami dot com. So Lynn, I. You've had an amazing career you've worked with. There's not a personal life that hasn't heard of one of these brands and the ad agency. One can only imagine the kind of wealth that you've developed. And I am hoping that you can prior to unpacking less of me, I'm hoping you can kind of walk us through an understanding or summary of your academic background and professional life prior to go into Masami.
[00:04:32] Yeah, sure. So unlike my children today who are 19 and 17 and are kind of now having to figure out what they're wanting to do and figure out their majors very early.
[00:04:47] I had no idea.
[00:04:50] And I actually was a double major of criminal justice and English. And I was thinking for a hot minute that I was going to go into law school. But then I was like, oh, that's just boring. I can't do that. So then I decided I wanted to go into the FBI and I went through the whole application process and it was nineteen eighty nine. And there was a hiring freeze. It was a recession. And I got kind of a form letter back saying thanks but no thanks. You know, you've kind of you've made the you've made the list supposedly, but we're not hiring. So check back in in six months kind of thing. I was living at home at my parents' house, so I was like, that's just not going to work. So I met a recruiter who sent me on an interview for advertising and she said, this is what you're gonna do. And I was like, oh, I hadn't really thought about it. It was interesting, but I didn't go to school for it at all. I've never taken up advertising or marketing class and set me on an interview. And I was a really good typist. And so they hired me as a receptionist. And from there, I just love the culture, the creativity. And I kind of was able to just work my way up and I just I just really enjoyed it. So, you know, I went from a small agency in Chicago to a bigger agency in Chicago. And then I met my my boyfriend now husband at the time we moved to New York. And then, you know, I was able to at least stretch stretch my wings at the New York shops. And I worked at several of the of the large funds all the way up until. My last job at J. Walter Thompson, I was CEO of the New York office.
[00:06:32] Wow, amazing. It does. So it is for everyone listening. You know, I have this very Hollywood version of the advertising agency.
[00:06:40] I must say, like, my internal knowledge is probably limited to what I've seen on, like, Mad Men or something.
[00:06:46] But I'm wondering, is it is it is it is New York City really the kind of the nexus of advertising its kind of perceived? You know, I think among a lot of lay people as like this heart, this heart throb heart center of the advertising world, would you concur with that?
[00:07:02] Yeah, I absolutely would. And I think if you're really serious about the business, you just can't beat the experience you get at a New York agency. So you don't have to do it forever. I thought I was going to do it for two years maybe. And then I ended up being in New York for 25 years. You are kind of just grabs you and doesn't let go, you know, and you just have to go with it.
[00:07:25] It's amazing the time period that you were in as well. I mean, and it's probably it's probably my age. I'm forty three.
[00:07:31] But, you know, that time period and advertising, it went through almost a diabolical, like up and down. I feel like the 80s, the 90s and the 90s in particular, you know, it was a disconnect, a reconnect. It is particularly because the society itself was like having these schizophrenic breaks with health and things like that that were so pushed, you know, in the advertising industry. But like fat free, sugar free additives, this that preservatives, like all these different things that were kind of chronicled in a lot of different caveats in society. But I imagine it would have been a really wild ride to be involved in during that time period. Would you? Do you think you feel that way now or looking back, do you think now the advent of social media really shook things up? It was the OTS that really changed things?
[00:08:17] No, it was definitely an interesting industry to be in for sure. It's changed massively. I mean, there's so many things that have changed about it since I started. You know, primarily the the way that the industry was was monetized was through people and hours. And clients just don't pay the kind of fees anymore. So you don't have the ability to put the people in the hours and all that stuff. So there's a lot of there's there's a huge sort of seismic shift happening and things being much more accountable, things being working, obviously digital and more analytical, you know, so creativity has become more analytical. But I was definitely very much in still felt like the Madmen era, looking back where I didn't you know, I grew up with two brothers. I'm very comfortable around men. So I wasn't sort of as overtly aware at the time of of the sort of sexism. I mean, I knew it was there. But looking back, of course, I go, oh, my God, I can't believe that happens, you know, because today you wouldn't you wouldn't allow those some of those things to happen. But, you know, at the time when you're in it and you're kind of looking around and there aren't many other women, you just sort of try to do what you can do to to, you know, prove yourself. And I'm lucky that I never had any sexual assault or any, you know, any anything other than, you know, sort of verbal and verbal dressing down kind of things happen.
[00:10:03] I'm wondering, as a female who climbed through the ranks, did you know of any others? Were you friends with other women or women identified or non binary individuals that were also hitting like this successful stride of climbing that corporate ladder?
[00:10:19] Or were you all alone? It was changed throughout the years. You know, there was a time when I was in one of the agencies I worked at, I was pretty much the top woman there. And I will say, unfortunately, a lot of the female bosses I had in my early years were really bad bosses. It's almost like they felt they had to operate like men and be these tyrants. And it actually helps form my leadership style because I didn't want to be like that. I was like, wow, if that's how you think you have to behave to get people in line, that is not good. So, you know, it's almost like when you're raising kids and they do the opposite of what you tell them, you know, it's like I had a lot of role models that were really bad, actually. And I kind of decided when I got to senior enough point that I don't want to emulate this very rough, rough male swagger, arrogance, you know, that's not at all who I am. And if people don't like it and I don't get promoted anymore, well, then fine.
[00:11:37] That's just the way it is. But I think I was lucky that.
[00:11:44] I think the female leadership traits are more effective, ultimately listening, being more transparent, you know, having vulnerability. I think those are things that people actually appreciate. So, you know, I think any women listening out there, you know, those are things you should embrace. You should not shy away from.
[00:12:06] Yeah. Particularly for your industry.
[00:12:08] It's always shocking to me when someone says, you know, that the creative or more discussion oriented or ideas sharing personality doesn't survive in creative endeavors like advertising. I cannot see a doctor, you know, who chain smokes and drinks like a fish. It's just like what does your her expertize isn't being lived out, you know? And I. I wonder when as you climb up through the ranks, you yourself be turned to hiring and things of that nature. What kind of personalities were you kind of bringing on to work with you and under you to kind of facilitate what you're describing here, which is just a more. It sounds to me like a more communicative environment.
[00:12:49] I mean, I was always overtly hiring women and diverse people. I would demand my H.R. teams find those candidates, even though it's harder to find. And, you know, I wouldn't always hire them, but but I made a point of, you know, really trying to lean in heavily and bring in women and bring in people of color. And I heard a guy in a wheelchair. People said to me, you're crazy milk travel. You know, what are we? He was great. No issue. But I think I think you just have to kind of demand that. And then in terms of the traits of the people, I always look for people that are curious, you know, that that are not close minded people that want to learn, people that are not afraid to, you know, learn from above, but also learn from the people under them in the sense of like I get a lot of learning these days from my children and from younger people that I that I work with. And it's really a two way street. So as much as, you know, sometimes they look to me for my experience. I look to them for their know how when it comes to tick tock or. And yet many other things that I don't understand. Right. So I think it really is about that vulnerability of admitting what you don't know. Being open and willing and curious. And I think those traits will get you pretty far.
[00:14:20] Yeah. And cognitive functioning, you know, and studies done. Geriatric communities would back you up on that one. You know, staying curious, which are people you hired and then you're doing yourself, you know, is linked to longevity of the mind of the vital mind and cognition.
[00:14:35] So I think those span all throughout life, not just the advertising industry. I think that's fantastic. I'm wondering with the I like what you said, and I'm hoping to just get you to enumerate a little bit on it, because it you just reverse the power structure that I think most people feel like H.R. and hiring has. You said I would make my H.R. team go out and find those people. And I think that there's a lot of conversation, particularly in female female identified and non binary communities where people say, like, well, I want to hire a woman led company, but I can't find any like I don't know. And it's it's becomes this crutch, you know, not just for these communities, but for people outside of those communities to not say they're not represented. You know, I'm not most familiar with female female identified, non binary and computer engineers, people saying I want to hire more female tech nerds, but they're not out there. They're not, you know, and you switching that dialog and taking that power and saying, no, you go find them to H.R. is such a novel idea.
[00:15:37] I've never heard anyone describe it that way. What what kind of incited you to do that? Were you just determined to have it and you made them go out and find it? Because I could. Eight years is very good at saying. Here you go. This is all we got.
[00:15:49] You know, any industry what I figured out is like sh*t in, sh*t out. Right. So, you know, if you give them a sh*tty brief, they're gonna give you sh*tty candidate. I'm not saying, look, good sh*t, but they'll give you what you ask for. Yeah. And usually it's the same old. Same old. And what I believe in and I'm actually quite good at it. It's one of my superpowers is building teams and I'm really good at identifying talent. And thankfully so I don't have to do everything to bring in people that are great. And I've always hired on potential, not on proven capability, meaning you just have to widen the net a little bit, you know, because if you only hire people for the Campari account that have worked in liquor and, oh, I need somebody who actually worked in brown spirits, you know, that kind of thing. And, oh, I want them to be this kind of education. You're going to find candidates that look exactly alike, that are just like the people that left that job. And a lot of times they do tend to be very, you know, either their. I want to say, you know. Maybe they're white guys. But but but but even beyond that, they tend to go to the same schools. They tend to have some of the same experiences and have worked at similar places. And I've just always believed that you're going to get better creativity when you find people that come from different, completely different walks of life, different industries, different. So I never cared about where I went to school. I literally couldn't care. And so I think once you open up the ability to find candidates that look a little different. And I'd say, you know what? I actually don't want to hire someone for that job that has any lack of experience. I want to bring in somebody that, you know, maybe they've works in event marketing or maybe they've done something in PR or, you know, something related. But but useful. Then you can find those interesting candidates and then, you know. It was a lot easier for the H.R. people because if I if I was hammering away at finding me that same candidate but, you know, find me a black woman who's done it. That's hard. Hanukkah's because she hasn't been given the opportunity to do that job before. Absolutely.
[00:18:06] I'm wondering, how did you. Do you have any. I'll leave this point alone. I promise. I know this is my third question to her, but I'm so taken with it, I.
[00:18:14] Do you have any, like, tricks that you developed, even subconsciously in order to help you? I mean, this superpower of, you know, super hero power, a building super tenuous, is like everybody wants that. You know, that's the key to success. People build industries just to try to take a taste of it. And so I'm wondering, did you personally ever develop this kind of technique or specific thing that you did when you went looking to build these super teams that enabled you to do that you can share?
[00:18:47] You know, I wish I did. I wish I could say, oh, it's just this, you know, do one one, two, three. And you're you're there. But I think a lot of it is intuition. And part of it is building that muscle of knowing what works. And what I would say is one thing I did. That is a very tactical, tangible thing anyone can do. And I've done my pretty much my whole career, but much more aggressively in my later years of my career. I would meet with. Anywhere between three and five new people that I didn't know a week, and sometimes it would be for a job, but a lot of times it wasn't. It was just I got introduced to this person from somebody else and they sound interesting. And let's grab a coffee. And I think when you do that, you can start to your brain creates these like neural networks where you can connect the dots. And I go, oh, the thing that person did was so interesting. I would love to have that skill set. And in my team, I find somebody who's got some of that, you know what I mean? And you just start to build these bridges and start to become inspired by by all these different. But I think I think a lot of that came from meeting all these different people all the time. And I would meet people outside my industry and I would just meet interesting people. And, you know, I think people started to kind of know like if they reached out to me on LinkedIn, chances are I'm going, oh, sure, I'll meet with you, you know. Now, I can get a little crazy, obviously. Yeah. You got to protect your own schedule somewhat. But no. But I think, you know, it's not that hard to carve out a few hours a week. And, you know, sometimes nothing would come from it. But a lot of times it would either be like, oh, I actually know somebody who could help you and what you're trying to do or you just inspired me to give me a great idea on something that I'm working on. Or it just there's a lot of serendipity, but it kind of forces the serendipity. You know what I mean?
[00:20:46] Yeah, absolutely. And I like it. And it was I think it was a lot trickier to do that back in the day, you know, without social media and things like that.
[00:20:54] You kind of had to do this seven degrees of Kevin Bacon thing and, you know, so said what's going on there? And I'm curious, I want to start looking at unpacking Masami and and all of the cool things that that company is doing. Is that your sole endeavor at this moment is serving as their CEO or do you run any other side gigs or consulting firms, anything like that?
[00:21:17] Yeah, I wish I could say it was my sole endeavor because I love it. It's my baby, but I probably spend about 90 percent of my time doing that.
[00:21:26] I still do a little consulting because I had started a brand consulting firm after I left J. Walter Thompson. It's called the HMS Beagle. So we work almost exclusively with startups and helping them get their kind of foundation and narrative and go to market plan.
[00:21:39] So I still do a little bit of that because I need like everyone else, you got to pay the bills. And on Masami, we when I met my partner. So my co-founder. So he and I basically are the co-founders of friends. We decided to do this together, but we decided to self-funded, you know. So we haven't taken investment money. I mean, my husband is basically our lead investor. I could say that, but. So, you know, it literally is our baby. And every every dollar we get back, we're putting back into the business. So tell us. A little strapped. Yeah. Super bootstrapped. But this is where, you know, I am lucky because I've built a team that is pretty committed to the business that is all kind of equity based. So they're all sort of partners in the company. And I could not do it without them. Or sure.
[00:22:42] Let's get into it. I want to know. So you were a CO felt you were a founder.
[00:22:46] How many other founders were there and when was it launched?
[00:22:52] So it's just James and I were the two founders of the company. James is my partner. He had been working on these hair care formulations for almost 10 years. When I met him, he's he's a bit of a nutty professor in the best way possible. I say that with love. He worked at Clairol for about 20 years and worked on a bunch of other Pudi brands. And he was the guy, the Uber producer, that would book a lot of the models and would be the one that would get yelled at when he had to color their hair and colored back and it would be fried. So he just started to feel like there's got to be a product out there that's not going to, you know, that's going to actually hydrate and help their hair. And also not have all the toxins that the products on the market have. So he started doing research into formulations. And our product is really inspired by his husband, Mozza. Hence, the name Masami Massa is Japanese. He's from northeast Japan.
[00:23:55] And Masami also means truly beautiful, by the way, in Japanese. So that was another serendipitous moment when we found that out. Yes. But, James, you would go home with Mozza. And he was always amazed at how young massas family looked and how healthy. And, you know, the Japanese have the lungs. Life expectancy in the world. And so James started doing some digging into their diet and saw that they were consuming this ocean botanical comic copy that comes right out of their bay pretty much every day.
[00:24:22] But they would also grind it up and put it in their skin care in their haircare and began playing around with that as potentially the answer for hydration, which it was.
[00:24:33] But by the time I met James, he had the products about eighty, eighty, eighty five percent done.
[00:24:40] And he just didn't know what else to do. He's not a marketer. He's not a brand guy. And he. Yes. So we met and he was kind of taking me through everything. I was super skeptical. Because as someone who's done a lot of marketing. I usually have a product that's kind of sh*t. And you have to make it sound great. And I'm just I'm not used to having a product that's absolutely amazing already, you know? And so we did a little more tweaking to the formula to just clean it up a little bit more.
[00:25:12] We follow EU standards, which are much stricter than the US in terms of what goes in in the US market.
[00:25:18] People don't realize about 90 percent of the products on the market have toxic stuff in them. So, you know, people don't think it's much about the hair care.
[00:25:27] I think it's a little more there's more awareness and skin care casino. It's absorbing into your skin. But the reality is your scalp is actually one of the most absorbent areas of your body. And when you shampoo, when you're rubbing it in your head and it's got sulfates, impairments of phthalates, that's not very that's not very good. So part of what we wanted to do is, is create a product without that. But one of the reasons why it's it's so it's so disruptive is that most hair care products that are clean as we are are actually not very good performing products. Right.
[00:26:06] Yeah. And this in line is the dichotomy. And I spoke to you earlier about this, and I have another podcast.
[00:26:13] I'm tempting you on exploring Vegan worlds. And, you know, here Vegan they think of food. And if there's clothing designers that are sustainability, environmental impacts, there's all different angles and conversations with the Vegan empire. And this is one of the ones that they talk a lot about Vegan products. You know, people assume a couple of things. One that is naturally non toxics, which isn't always true. And also there tends to be on the plus side, there tends to be more of a conversation about what exactly the the Vegan conversation furthers responsibility and things like that. You know, they're supposed to be more of a packaging and things like that. And I'm curious how I looked at the philosophy. And I want to kind of climb into the institute and the studies about getting back into the environmental impact with Masami. Can you kind of speak to is it James who kind of led this research part institute to the product is actually James's husband, Mozza.
[00:27:18] So when we launched the brand and one of the things that was really important to us is to have a mission and a purpose and not just sell product. And we just are very big believers that when you take from the earth, you have to get back. It's just as simple as that. And so the area in northeast Japan where we get our my Cabu and we get it from a local family owned seaweed company, we've actually gone and visited them and saw their facility and really were very impressed with how they manage everything.
[00:27:51] Anyway, where were we get that? We they were devastated by the tsunami back in 2011. That still has not they feel that they haven't fully recovered from, believe it or not. So we were against serendipity, fortunate to find a guy named Kazoo Yoshino who moved from Tokyo. He was an I.T. director. And when the tsunami hit, he felt this calling to move up to Atsushi, this little tiny town, and it was facing flat. The town was pretty much flat.
[00:28:27] And he decided to go up there and help in his way of helping as he dives into the bay and he documents what's going on there with the growth with the ocean botanicals. And he was the one that figured out probably now would have been about two or three years ago that there was a huge sea urchin problem. The sea urchins had been washed into the bay and we're applying and we're basically eating all of the stuff that the people there relied on and had thrown the ecosystem completely out of balance. So anyway, we decided to form the Masami Institute, where we can donate part of our sales to help his research so that he's just got more resources to continue to do what he's been doing. And a lot of it is educating people. So the way he saw the sea urchins problem is he had people eat the sea urchins. So, you know, we're the top of the food chain. And it was like, wait a minute, you know, they're eating all of our good stuff. We should just eat them. And so he created a magazine and had all these sea urchin recipes because apparently in that region, people would eat sea urchins like on Christmas Day. It was like a delicacy. You know, it wasn't something they did all the time.
[00:29:44] And he really helped change it and get it basically get that whole bay back on track. So that's been really interesting. So, you know, in a perfect world, we'd like to not just fund his research, but but also move beyond that little tiny area of Japan that we're focused on. But one thing at a time. You know, our feeling was let's start where we can make an impact and then we'll move out from there.
[00:30:13] Cool. Can you speak to given, you know, your advertising and marketing career prior to coming on with Masami, I'm wondering, how have you kind of sculpted it's got this beautiful narrative that you've just kind of walked over with us with the environment and sustainability. And if you take you give back. And how has that played into the rhetoric that you try to communicate with marketing or packaging or any of those endeavors that you've looked at?
[00:30:42] Have you allowed that that dialog to carry through or pushed it through?
[00:30:47] I think there's a place for where you tell that story and then there's a place where people just want to know, does it work, you know?
[00:30:54] Yeah. Like, is it going to actually work? Does it hydrate my hair and all that stuff? So beauty's funny that way. I think that's why a lot of beauty brands have that way without having to have any purpose or give back because people are just, you know, want to just know that it's going to perform. Mm hmm. So, yeah. So I think as we've developed our content strategy and narrative, we've figured out when and where it was. World Ocean Day on yesterday, on the 8th. So that's a great place where we could kind of reinforce that message. And, you know, we try to do that regularly. I mean, my biggest challenge on us being a pro ocean brand is our plastic because we're in plastic bottles. You know that the hard part about being in hair care is that you're in the shower. So you have a limited number of aerials that you can work with. And glass is usually the go to for beauty brands. Right? Can't really be in glass bottles in the shower.
[00:31:51] So we are actually creating a large size, refillable, sustainable bottle that's beautiful.
[00:31:58] That will go in the shower that you can refill with cardboard packages. And I'm excited about that because I feel like that will help us. Yeah. And mitigate ah ah. Plastic issue.
[00:32:12] I've come to that myself. I dabble in depends on my ambition for the month.
[00:32:17] But I dabble in making I make all of our own hand soaps and I've dabbled in shampoos and conditioners. They don't work well. So I kind of quit. But I did get into the idea that I didn't want to keep filling plastic containers. Even reusing plastic, regardless of how safe, doesn't rub me overly well.
[00:32:35] And I came into this glass thing exactly that, you know, and a lot of metals, rust like there isn't a great solution there. So I really like the idea of this one. I think it's groundbreaking.
[00:32:47] I hope it is. I mean, we ended up because of exactly what you're saying. We looked at all different kinds of materials. And, you know, there's bamboo material. It gets moldy. There's there's just different issues. And so we ended up doing a ceramic bottle, which people say to me, and it can still break Mike. I know, but it's not going to have little shards of pain that you're gonna step on. It's going to break into chunks that you can just pick up and throw out and we'll send you a new you know what I mean? Yeah, it's a great idea. So I'm hoping I'm hoping that it sticks. I've had a fair amount of interest so far for preorder, but we're gonna try to get that thing made it out the next time. I hope for five months. It's hard to say with Kobe going on because timelines for a supply chain are all kind of out of whack right now. But anyway, supply chain is out of whack.
[00:33:32] However, I wonder, has interest peaked? You know, health has had Vegan community for any reason.
[00:33:38] Vegan by default, Vegan because of a montera has peaked, you know, over the past three months. Naturally, when you have a pandemic, breaking out makes everyone kind of requestion their own personal health all the way down to, you know, I think a lot of people started with food and things like that. It's just a natural dialog. And then very quickly got into, you know, I myself took and I've I've I've I fancy myself incredibly healthy and have had, like, new analysis and lenses applied to areas that I hadn't thought about with nail polish, you know. Yeah. Things that I should have been thinking about. But I imagine it has spiked for you. Have you guys been able to kind of at least have some chartable measure as to interest since the pandemic has taken hold?
[00:34:21] I mean, yes, but the tricky thing for us is we launched in February. It's sort of like we don't really have a benchmark because we launched at New York Fashion Week a couple weeks right before everything was shut down.
[00:34:35] And we had a you know, in March, it was very up and down. There were two weeks where it was crickets. And I was like, oh, sh*t. Now then. But then business would pick up again. And I. I do think what you're saying is true, though. The conversations and searching.
[00:34:52] Or solutions that are less toxic, that are clean beauty, that are blue beauty, I think are all happening right now and obviously we are a brand that fits all that. But on top of that, we actually work. So to me, that's like our Holy Grail is.
[00:35:08] Yeah, that's the thing with it, at least with shampoo. And mind you, I'm not a mixologist and I don't pretend to be a chemist, but it's kind of an issue for anyone that's tried to go that route due to toxins or any other thing.
[00:35:23] You know, I flip over free trade, great like sounding shampoos. And the ingredient list is like ninety thousand. And I'm a, you know, masters educated woman and I don't know what half of them are. It's just it's it's lunacy to think that it's still out there like that and not being vilified. So yours working is clean enough. You know, like there's amazing being Vegan it working, like having all of these things. The new ceramic thing, it sounds it sounds amazing. Have you guys projected. I know it's. This is like asking someone about another child when you're in labor. People like how could you ask that? But right now, because, you know, Cauvin has just thrown everyone through an incredible whirlwind. But have you kind of looked at your next one to three year projections as to where you guys would like to be even considering the pandemic and the change that that's happened? And if so, where do you where do you see your sights for your goals for the future?
[00:36:22] Yeah, I mean, I think we're pretty good about doing the rigorous, you know, business metrics. So we have got five year projections.
[00:36:31] I think part of it for us is expanding our footprint and really developing some Ceylan partnerships here in the US. But also launching some more products were we're very much into the Japanese simplicity had space, meaning we're not going to launch another shampoo.
[00:36:49] We're not going to be a brand that has five variants of shampoos are one variant works for virtually everyone. And when it when you get the hydration, you get shine, you get manageability to get volume. It works for color treated hair like you don't need another version of our shampoo. But we are going to launch things like a hair mast, you know, a beard bomb because our products are gender neutral. So I really want to lean into that a little bit more. Yeah. We've got some stuff in the pipeline there, so I would love to get those out. We were gonna try to get them out this year again, but I don't think that's going to happen now. So next year. But and then we'd love to to to go international, you know. I think right now, you know, the priority is to really nail the US. Yeah. But I, I think our products we tested on every ethnicity, every hair type, you know, multiple types of Asian hair.
[00:37:44] And we just got such great response across the board that I do think the audience is much wider than just here and it is gender neutral.
[00:37:53] So we actually I'm I'm surprised we the orders we got today were all men. Yeah. Again, like, we actually have about 40 percent of our sales are men.
[00:38:03] Good. You.
[00:38:05] I think that men's products smell. I think they're discussing they remind me of something that we should have left behind with the thirties, I guess like lime in it or something. That just terrifies me. It's always so daunting.
[00:38:16] Why does it always have to smell like Drakkar from the 80s or something? It's just this awful smell to your shampoos that have been marketed to men should be taken out and given a strong lecture or two. Am I a pain? In my humble opinion?
[00:38:29] I would agree with you. I'm wondering, given everything that you're doing. Well, first of all, can people purchase it? Can we can they have a website? Can they pre order?
[00:38:41] All in all, our full line is is for sale. The ceramic bottle right now is on. I fund women, but we're about to. We're gonna slide that over to our site for pre purchase. But, yeah, everything is for sale. And we're also on Amazon.
[00:38:57] Yes. Excellent.
[00:38:59] And final question before I wrap up and ask you my final final question, which is on your site, you wouldn't be answering to my community if I didn't say, you know, I hit your Web site.
[00:39:11] I do a lot of research for these these chats I have. And I always pull up those pictures. I whites, our team, our story. Who are you? Yeah. Give me. Give me. And I did notice and I told you before we started, I said, why are you the only woman with four men on there? And that's rhetorical. You know, this is how it happens. A lot of industries. But you had some interesting news. So can you kind of speak to your executive staff and what your team looks like right now?
[00:39:38] Yeah. That is not been updated. As I said to you, I was literally just having that conversation with myself this morning thinking, oh, my God, you know, we don't have the right outward reality of our team. So, yeah, I have three other three other people that need to be on there that that are all women that are that are really haw haw, haw, haw to the team.
[00:40:00] One heads up our digital marketing. One heads up our content strategy and one heads up our PR.
[00:40:06] So I am going to be updating that to reflect the full team, which I'm excited about. And we work with, you know, when I hire.
[00:40:18] Editors and photographers and things like that, we're always trying to look for, again, diverse, diverse people, we.
[00:40:26] We do try to make a point of of casting a wide net and finding finding those people to kind of help us when we need help.
[00:40:35] Whether that's, you know, I've got two different women who are people of color, once a designer who's helped us quite a bit, actually. And the other one's an editor who did our brand video for us. So I don't put those people on our website.
[00:40:48] But that's just part of, again, you know, the the magic of finding finding those talent.
[00:40:55] Yeah. And your legacy. It sounds like from your entire career history of what you did in the past. I must say from a bird's eye point of view of looking in and being married to an original Silicon Valley computer nerd and having looked at that industry for the past 20 years from the outside, it's safe to judging distance, is what I like to say. Overly judgmental right here. And I do love your site.
[00:41:19] So they did amazing work. You know, these women, I think it's it's it speaks the esthetic of a stereotypical esthetic of like a Japanese, you know, this simplicity and all of that, which actually sounds like is a lot of the narrative throughout what you're doing. You're not launching, you know, five different shampoos. You've got this one like that clarity from an art historical point of view, which is what I have my master's degree. And that seems very true as well. So it's comforting. It's very interesting to kind of receive that wash over as well. So we're at the final point. My question, my favorite question, they're all my favorites. But if I had to pick one, this would be her. And wondering if you walked up to someone in such safe social distance tomorrow or they walked up Dan Rather and it was a woman or a female identified or not binary individual, pretty much anyone but a straight standard white man. And they said to you, hey, Lynn, you know, I'm so glad to run into you. I've I have this amazing thing I'm doing this 20 year career climbing up the ranks and the ladders in the ad agency. You know, I the epicenter of that world. And I've just left it. I'm endeavoring on this new startup. And I'm so excited with the top three pieces of advice you would give that individual knowing what you know now.
[00:42:38] Yeah, I would say build a network, find a support system for yourself.
[00:42:46] You know, that's been really helpful. I'm a I'm part of several female founder groups and, you know, just having other women to talk to about the journey that stress sometimes what happens in my personal life, my teenage casino, all that stuff is is is very helpful. So that's the first thing I would say. The second thing is build your team, which we talked about earlier. But I think the peace around that that I would just reinforce to people that are looking to start a business is it's obvious that you need help. But a lot of people, a lot of women, I shouldn't say, a lot of people, a lot of women think that they need to figure everything out themselves first and then bring in the help. And I would just challenge that and say, I understand what you love to do and what you don't love to do.
[00:43:40] And if it's if there's stuff that you don't love to do, don't feel like you need to get it and understand it and master it, find somebody else to do it. And just like, don't be afraid to acknowledge that you don't want I don't love spreadsheets and numbers and I'm going to bring in somebody and they're going to manage that. Like, that's not a weakness. That's actually really good because you can focus on the things that that you're really good at. And then the third thing I would say is find a mentor, which is a little different than than, you know, you're just getting your network. Find signed several mentors, not just one. And don't wait till once presented to you, you know, go out and find people that you think you know, will help you will inspire you that you can learn from, that have done something that you want to do. And I've had people reach out to me on LinkedIn and say, hey, would you mentor me? I just need an hour. A month. And I'm like, yes, of course. And that's that's it's rewarding for me. It's rewarding for them. And you'll be surprised how generous people can be, I think.
[00:44:46] Absolutely. I love those. I will say that in 200 episodes plus doing this, you're the first person to talk. And your advice, your three advice about your team, about building the team. And I love that because I think it's everything for success.
[00:45:02] Very few people are just the solo producer of their ideas and how quickly we grow.
[00:45:07] And also, you are in company with well over 90 percent of women who say women don't outsource enough. This whole got to do it all. And a lot of people have argued that it's built baked into, you know, the stereo gender roles that we're given in this society where he had to be wife, mother, you know, entrepreneur, like all of these things, you're just expected to do all these things, whereas them stereotypically the male gender has been very, very good about outsourcing, you know, about very, very happy to get a housekeeper. You know, when they don't feel like they clean their house adequately and women assign value to being able to do it themselves in areas that actually deplete businesses. And I would argue even their own livelihoods and happiness in their personal lives. Yeah. So I have no one build a network and a support system. Number two, my favorite, build your team. You do not need to know everything and do everything before you hire out for it. Rather, focus in on what you're good at and what brings you the most success and happiness. And number three, find several mentors and don't wait for one to be presented to you. And those they're very actionable items to it's all very like get to work. Get going. Like, I love that.
[00:46:17] Yep. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for speaking with us.
[00:46:20] Lynn, we're out of time today, but I really appreciate your candor and your advice and you sharing a little bit of your wonderful history and your current endeavors with me. I love it.
[00:46:32] Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.
[00:46:34] Absolutely. For everyone listening. We've been speaking with Lynn Power. You can find out more about Masami, her company on w w w dot love, Masami dot com. I myself am going to be jumping on and grabbing some for certain.
[00:46:48] Thank you for giving me your time today. And until we speak again next time, remember to always bet on yourself. Slainte.
