- (Cashmere Nicole) I remember specifically walking through Target aisles.
I was a teen mom, I had it really hard.
Never really had leftover dollars.
So, going to Target alone was a big deal.
I had to take myself back to that moment of like, "Okay, what would you wanna see?
What would excite you in terms of packaging and branding?"
- (Hallease) Hey everyone.
Welcome back to the series Convos With CEOS, where we have candid conversations with founders
to understand what it takes to get a product in a store like Target.
If you missed the first episode featuring Shontay Lundy of Black Girl Sunscreen, you
can check it out here.
Now, for the second episode, we're gonna be talking to Cashmere Nicole, founder and CEO
of Beauty Bakerie.
While her and I have a fun conversation about finding and keeping a manufacturing partner,
I'm going to attempt -- okay, I'm gonna attempt to give you three different decade looks featuring
Beauty Bakerie products.
Oh, and by the way: I am Hallease a digital storyteller and video producer and on this
channel, I document my Chaotic Good Life.
Subscribe, follow, social media.
(Lo-fi music plays)
- I had zero dollah (laughs) I had nothing.
I remember just taking $20 leftover from my paycheck and $50 leftover from my paycheck
and literally building from zero dollars.
Before I started, it was like the name.
I spent some time on the name and once I had Beauty Bakerie I was ready to plan the first
product.
I wasn't thinking about who the manufacturer would even be.
I'm like, "Oh!
Oh!
Something can be called lip whip, something can be called brownies, something could be
cake pops."
I was gettin' so excited about that part.
Then I had to put the, what I would call the boring stuff in place.
"Ohhh, I gotta actually have structure."
Arriving is what's most important.
You just wanna get there.
- Did you find that you sort of became and unofficial chemist as well?
With your partner, did you find that you were Googling things yourself like, "Okay, what
does this specific?"
- I love that term.
I wouldn't have called it that, but that is exactly what it feels like.
There's a part of you that just feels like you're not as knowledgable as a chemist.
That's not even maybe what you've studied.
In a way, you do start picking at ingredients.
You start asking questions about what belongs, what doesn't belong.
What will this do and what will that not do?
You're on Google constantly trying to learn more.
It's almost like you're trying to take an accelerated chemistry course in a way.
But not officially.
- (Hallease) What were your Google search terms (laughs)?
I guess would be a good way to think about it.
- (Cashmere) My Google search terms were just "cosmetic chemist" "cosmetic manufacturers"
and then just going through every search result.
- (Hallease) What would you say was the chemistry aspect that was hard for getting those products
done?
- (Cashmere) I would say for the lip whip the hardest part was just creating something
that would go on, stay on, but not be drying.
Not create the lines in our lips and mainly at the time, it was making sure my lips didn't
get stuck together (laughs).
- (Hallease) What would you say was the timeline from kickstarting the process and I guess
maybe talking to your first maybe chemist partner to finally figuring out, "Okay, yes:
this is product number one.
We figured it out," you know what I mean?
For sure.
- I don't remember specifics at all, like I said, it's too long.
Hallease, you're showing my age.
Anywhere from six to nine months.
I don't wanna say that there's a time frame because I think then people create their own
kind of suffering internally about sticking to a time frame.
I think that you should spend as much time on it as you feel that you should give the
project.
For me, I remember coming across some that were overseas in different countries and I
remember ...
It's just one of those mental barriers.
For me at the time, I'm, "No, no, no, no, no.
That's bad."
I don't know why I considered that bad at the time.
I don't know why I thought it was too big of a mountain to try and scale or climb.
And it's not.
But at the time, I took that approach because of my own fears and my own experiences.
The negative self-talk that we give ourselves.
For me, because I decided to just dive right in, I didn't know what I didn't know either.
Now after ten years of working with many different manufacturing partners all around the world,
I would say number one: don't be afraid to dive in.
The same way you treat any new relationship is how you treat your business relationships.
You take your time getting to know each other.
You give each other a certain level of respect, timeliness, being consistent.
If there's a meeting and expectation, you're there, you're showing up.
I think that in the course of how we would treat anyone, you start to learn where maybe
they cannot show up for you.
Maybe you have questions about the chemistry of something and they're not able to get you
an answer.
Or maybe they're able to give you an answer but not in the timeline you would've liked.
You have to determine for you if that works for you.
One thing that I think is very important is to really not bring bias into your relationships.
Make no assumptions whatsoever.
Don't say because they're a chemist they know more than me.
Don't say because it's a partner in China that you shouldn't extend them respect because
maybe the community is skincare, or beauty community may not extend that level of respect.
You're talking to other humans who have poured into their work.
Poured into their art.
One thing I like to tell a lot of people is we are diverse across the board.
If someone says to me, "Well, do you work with anyone in China?"
Absolutely, I have a diverse supply chain.
That is diversity.
You don't stop at one point when it comes to diversity.
- (Hallease) There's definitely something to, I feel, not knowing a lot about a certain
topic or a certain thing.
I've worked with other creators in the past who, yeah, didn't go to film school like I
do, don't know cinematography, lighting, all this stuff.
But then they come up and then they're like, "I think this would be kinda cool."
And it's like, "Oh!
I hadn't even thought of that," and I have been making videos for 12 years now (laughs).
You know what I mean?
- (Cashmere) Yeah!
- (Hallease) and because you had the idea, I know the technical way to make that happen,
but I didn't have the original thought, if that makes sense.
- (Cashmere) Creativity that another perspective brings.
- (Hallease) Yeah, for sure.
- (Cashmere) That's beautiful.
You have to first eliminate the idea that the first step you take is wrong.
Too often, it's our own heads stopping us.
There's literally no reason you can't start today.
A person will be like, "But where?
What's the first step I should take?"
But if I tell you the first step to take, You're gonna want me to tell you the second
step.
That's why this whole journey, as big as it is and as public as it is, it's still very
private.
It's about what I've told myself.
That is why Beauty Bakerie is still here.
Yes, you can listen to videos like this, interviews like this, and read stories of other people,
but don't attribute, yet again, more credibility to my journey and my walk than your own.
Yours is just as important.
You just take that first step.
Maybe it's making your Instagram page.
Maybe it's reaching out to manufacturers.
Maybe it's learning.
I did a lot of learning.
I read a lot of blogs, watched a lot of YouTube videos.
Tried to understand what marketing meant.
Because at one point I was every single role by myself.
Right.
I didn't know I would ever grow to have a team.
You don't know these things will happen.
You're just chippin' away at it and one day you're like, "Oh my god.
I have too much work.
I guess I need an employee.
How do I hire an employee?
I don't know how to hire an employee."
And you're just going through the motion.
I thinks sometimes when people say, "Well, I don't know where to begin."
I think they're already inviting that anxiety, that they're already supposed to be somewhere.
They were already supposed to know where to begin.
No.
No one knew where to begin.
- How long were you working full time before you and having Beauty Bakerie on the side
before you were finally able to officially make that transition?
- So, it took off 4.5 years in.
Literally within three to four months of it taking off is when I left my day job for good
and never went back.
It took off and that whole period of three to four months, you're gettin' all these orders
in.
At first you think you can pack 'em all yourself.
And you start realizing you need some help.
So, my 10-year-old, my daughter was 10 years old at the time.
She was helping me.
And I was trying to do as many orders as I could when I got off work.
Before long, you can't keep up with those orders.
I started to notice I was calling off of my day job.
It started to weigh on just my whole spirit.
It's like you're not being fair to their project.
You're not necessarily being fair to your own.
Take it like a woman.
Just go ahead and resign and if you are wrong, then you'll look for another job.
And it'll be hard, but there's no way to juggle the weight of all these orders and the expectations
of the day job.
I remember when I went ahead and resigned, one of my friends was like, "Uh-uh-uh."
You know, this thing that we as black people tell each other like, "Girl.
Whatchu doin' quittin' your day job?
We don't do that.
That's just something we don't do.
It's not time."
But I was like, "Yes, it's gotta be time."
And he was like, "Are you sure?"
And I was like, "Yes."
He was like, "Uh-uh, you need to keep both."
And I was like, "I've already tried."
- (Hallease) I always tell everybody, you're never gonna feel completely ready for it.
It's always just gonna feel like, there's just truly not enough hours in the day.
You can account for every hour.
Figure out your landing strip financially.
How much truly, in so few words, which is hard to say, but quantify your life and the
cost of it (laughing) and figure out how long you can go, you know, before hopefully another
big break or something.
You know.
So, yeah.
It's hard.
There's no easy way to do it.
Yeah.
- (Cashmere) No.
And a part of it, too, is about I think being decisive and reserving confidence for that
decision.
Because every decision we make, we can walk back on.
We can find a reason we shouldn't have done it.
But just like a mother knows what the baby needs when the baby needs to eat, whether
the baby's about to cry or not, moms know the baby needs to eat.
You know when your brand needs to eat.
And you know that if you don't hire more staff and you keep trying to do this by yourself,
pretty soon people are gonna start wanting refunds, 'cause its' taking you too long to
get the orders out.
They're gonna start charging back, so now baby ain't eating, right?
So, now you know.
Okay, something's breaking and I'm busy all day long.
Maybe I need a second pair of hands, a second brain, someone else contributing their brain
power to this.
Those are all indicators once you've become overwhelmed and ... You know, we have this
work culture in America where we think that we can keep adding more and more on the plate
and that's not necessarily okay all the time.
I get it.
There's times we need to put our heads down, roll up our sleeves, turn off the phones,
get off the internet, get off of social media and grind.
But then there's times when you say, "I've put in the grind and I'm still walking up
the down escalator.
I need help."
And that's a good indicator.
- Can you tell me about the moment that you realized that Beauty Bakerie got Target.
I don't even know where I was.
I just remember being extremely excited, mainly 'cause I'm a creator, to dive into what the
product line would look like.
I'm like, "Okay, time to plan out what they're gonna get because it needs to look different.
It needs to be exclusive and it needs to be cute, cute, cute, cute, cute."
I remember specifically walking through Target aisles.
You know, I was a teen mom.
I had it really hard.
Never really had leftover dollars.
So, going to Target alone was a big deal.
I didn't go to Target.
Target was expensive for me.
So, I had to take myself back to that moment of, "Okay, what would you wanna see?
What would excite you in terms of packaging and branding."
But yeah, I remember when finding out the first thing that I wanted to do was begin
to plan what it would look like.
Because I'm always thinking about that customer experience.
How should they feel?
What do you want them to see?
What is the emotion you want to elicit out of them when they see it?
I didn't even wait.
I think Target told us when it would all be online and it was supposed to be like the
17th or something of that month.
But some of the customers started tagging us well before the 17th.
They're like, "It's here, it's here."
I'm like, "Where's mine, where's mine?"
I mean, I got all pretty.
I went up there.
I'm like taking pictures by it.
It was just like, I could not believe it and I think.
I just couldn't believe it.
I almost didn't want to leave the store.
I was just circling that aisle like a shark.
I just wanna be around, like there's something.
I have every product.
I have 10 of all of those products because I had to approve them, right?
I was working on them, putting them on.
But I'm like, "Oh, I wanna buy something."
Like, you have it already.
So, I bought it.
I don't know.
It's just a crazy feeling, right?
To see your own ideas manifest into something physical like that.
That's literally something that started in here.
So, hopefully your viewers know that what starts in here can become this thing that's
real and tangible.
That people all around the world can touch and feel and experience, if you just don't
mix that idea with negative.
- It was so much fun talking to Cashmere.
Remember, the whole point of this series is to give you different perspectives of entrepreneurship.
In the comments below, let me know what resonated with you about our conversation.
As the Adobe Creative Resident for 2021 to 2022, my continued learning for this episode
is the College + Target Creative Jam.
An event where currently enrolled college students can register a team and demonstrate
their talents to the creative community.
You'll meet the Target design team, get your mission, and submit your solution for a chance
to win prizes.
Check it out in the description box.
The fun begins on August 18th.
Remember if you're new here, consider subscribing because we've got a few more episodes to go.
Again, I am Hallease, endeavoring to persevere as always.
And I'll see you in the next one.
(Lo-fi music plays)