Podcast: This Trait Is Helping One Beauty Entrepreneur Build Something Rare Thanks to this founder, beauty is becoming more useful.
By Linda Lacina
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How Success Happens is a podcast featuring polar explorers, authors, ultra marathoners, artists and more to better understand what connects dreaming and doing. Linda Lacina, Entrepreneur.com's managing editor, guides these chats so anyone can understand the traits that underpin achievement and what fuels the decisions to push us forward. Listen below or click here to read more shownotes.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. and raised in South America's Guyana until age 7, Karen Young has the type of practical mentality that's more common in immigrant communities: Don't take things for granted, don't seek out the frivolous.
This explains why, as a child, she'd dream up a street-sweeping business, based on a machine of her own design. But it doesn't necessarily explain why Young decided to work for Estée Lauder and later found Oui Shave, a beauty company that describes itself as providing "all-natural, quality shaving products for women, by women."
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Yet, for Young, the connection is simple. She often noticed that beauty conversations either didn't address the practical problems women had with existing products or promoted a sort of fantasy world most didn't recognize.
To solve this problem, she developed a single-blade razor that ensures a rash-free shave. But in doing so, she'd need to convince someone to manufacture it, someone to sell it, and women -- who thought rashes were part of the shaving process -- that they needed it.
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Young approached each of these challenges methodically, adapting her strategies as she learned more about her market and her company's needs. The approach helped Oui Shave grow 300 percent in 2016 alone and snag retailers such as Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters.
In our latest episode of podcast series How Success Happens, she'll explain the importance of switching strategies in persistence -- and how to see a "no' as a "not yet.' She'll also share why a sense of humor -- and the occasional kickboxing class -- is essential to understanding the new approach to pampering.
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