Kadi Lee
Appearances
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Gosh, I mean, so we've known each other now, cannot believe it, going on almost 30 years now. Wow. Met at Spelman. Met at Spelman College. Micah was an outgoing senior. I was a freshman. We worked in the same store at BCBG in Lenox Mall in Atlanta.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And honestly... Atlanta, late 90s, early 2000s, like we were having the time. I mean, it was we had so much fun. Spelman is obviously a very special place. I was born in Jamaica and then immigrated to Connecticut when I was around 11. Micah is born and raised in Atlanta, so we have very different backgrounds.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
But when you get to Spelman, at the time, it was a really special, safe space for me because I'd never been around so many smart, beautiful Black women before. And to spend four years out of your life not having to worry about being judged for anything else but just your pure merit was the most freeing place on the planet. I mean, plus we were fly, plus we were cute.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
We just had a great time. And people often think because it's, you know, an HBCU, all Black women that, you know, oh, is that like the only people that you guys spend your time with? But weirdly enough, we all came from like private white high schools. Yeah. And the fact that I went to Spelman and now, you know, known for like my blonde highlights is like, like no one's even surprised.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
College was like when we entered like the Flatiron era. But when I was in Connecticut, oh my gosh, my mom, A, did not have a lot of time to help me with any of this. So, you know, she's a housekeeper, still is, and was just busy trying to keep us afloat. So I was really, I've always been very self-sufficient, left to handle and figure things out on my own. So...
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Whether it be putting my hair in braids or, you know, just learning my texture. And I experimented with everything. I've worn my hair in every single hairstyle you could ever imagine on the planet.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Well, there's a town next, I grew up in Westport, Connecticut, which anyone that's familiar with Connecticut is like, wow.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Not really. Not really. No. I mean, my brother and I were two of maybe four Black children in the entire school system. So, and then immigrants, like, we were it. That was it. But quickly, obviously, lost the accents. And, you know, now I sound like a freaking Connecticut newscaster, but... When I'm back in Jamaica, I'm back.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
There was a town next to Westport called Norwalk that had a bit more of a diverse community. And I started working as soon as I could have an after-school job. And I met a few girls that lived in Norwalk and then discovered there was a salon there that had these hairdressers that knew how to do my hair. So I think just learning... just by watching. But I never thought it would be a career.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Like I got to Spelman, I had fun doing it, like just playing with hair and then realized that I could like make money doing it. It became like the side hustle in the dorm. And I mean, to this day, my friends from Spelman will comment on some photos that I'll post on Instagram and be like, we cannot believe this is your job because you literally used to go to the pharmacy and just do color on us.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
They think it's the wildest, greatest manifestation of just your natural talent. I just always knew how to do it.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
I mean, I was an English major, so I maybe wanted to be a writer. I worked in PR briefly. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I lost my job after the self-recession of 2000 when people were just getting laid off left and right after I was done with Spelman. And I ended up back at my mom's house in Connecticut.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And, you know, like all good Jamaican mothers, she's like, well, you're not staying here, so... She's like, what's the plan? Yeah, literally figure something out. And so my mom had this friend, Miss Lindsay, who used to take care of us, this older Jamaican woman who immigrated to Connecticut and was like a janitor in our school system.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And Miss Lindsay took money that she had saved and she gave it to me for my train fare to go to New York City and enroll in beauty school.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
So I started a beauty school in New York and I was at Aveda. And the minute I started, I just knew I was where I should be. It felt like home. It felt completely natural. I could do it with my eyes closed.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
At that point, not entrepreneurial. There was a job fair and all the top salons came to recruit. And one of the salons was Frederick Fakai, which at the time in, you know, early 2000s was the salon. And I remember being like, oh, great. Amazing. I'll just be a colorist at Fakai. Yeah.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
You know, not really realizing that they'll hire anyone to be an assistant or to shampoo, but like you're not a colorist right away. Like, you don't, I think about what I knew back then, which was absolutely nothing about color and like the gall that I had to like be like, yeah, I'm going to be a colorist. And the first day showing up and them handing me my shampoo apron. Yeah.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And like, you're making your like $4 an hour. But for color, it was, you know, I always painted. I love art. And it always felt like, okay, this is a canvas. And it felt really freeing to me. And I just, I loved every bit of it. And not ever thinking that there would be a roadblock because I was Black, because there weren't any Black colorists. But it never even crossed my mind.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
that it would be an issue. When did it start to cross your mind then? When I showed up at Frederick Fakai and saw that there were no Black people that were actually colorists there. There were a couple of Black assistants. And I was like, well, does anyone ever get promoted to be a colorist? And they were like, maybe.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Then you start really doing some research in the industry and you're like, it actually just doesn't exist anymore. but I don't know if like I was going through life naively. I just never think until this day, I still think that anything is off limits for me. Like that's what I feel like doing. Great. I'm going to do it. And I knew obviously that I had the artistic ability.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
I knew that I had the intelligence, but when you realize and get into the real world that like, there is no one else that looks like you, you're like, huh? Did it ever create any anxiety for you, though? Yeah, that anxiety was there, but I had such wonderful mentors. You know, the color director, Constance Hartnett, her and I really... Yeah, we bonded and...
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
I think she never saw, you know, me as like a Black colorist. I was just like her amazing assistant, you know, who showed up every day, never missed a day of work and had the talent. So she was appalled when I told her I wanted to transfer to California. Because in her mind, New York was just it. Her clients were just the most sophisticated women on the planet.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
We're talking like Nan Kempner and Sigourney Weaver and Meryl and all these women that I'm learning literally how to do color corrections on. And I just one day was like, I'm cold. And I want to live in sunny California. And Frederica, I had like an outpost there. And I was like, to Cali I go. I love that you were just like, I'm cold.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Well, first, I was working with Serge, our mutual friend. Yes. And when his LA outpost closed, I found myself wanting to... only work, if I couldn't find anyone as elegant as Serge, then I had to only work for myself.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah. And the answer was there wasn't anyone as elegant as Serge. And as the time was ticking by, it just became clearer that there was a need for it. There was a huge white space in just how people approached the salon experience and how they had become something that was honestly untenable for me to work in.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Too big, too loud. I don't know. I don't know if you find the older you get. I just need quiet. I need peace and quiet. Peace and quiet does not really equate to a salon environment. So we started with...
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
that as our driver of how could we create a physical space that feels good when you're in it, that actually, you know, regulates your nervous system instead of having you like be completely hopped up on overdrive when you're walking out. Could the music be better? Could the just approach to the business be better? And that's where we started from. And I think we really just hit it on the nail.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
When we opened Highbrow Hippie, I can like confidently say there was nothing like it in the country.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Maybe it's essential. I feel really lucky, but I also know that I created that luck because none of this was overnight. You know, this was all brick by brick.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah. I mean, Micah and I were chatting one day and we're like, what would it be? And she had a boyfriend who used to call her a bourgeois bohemian. And then we were like, people will never know how to spell that. They'll butcher it. And then I was like, I love the name Highbrow. And then literally at the same time, we both like screamed out Highbrow Hippie. Hippie.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And it's just, we've had the name for so long. Same thing, kept it under wraps. Like it felt like this like big secret that we had that like we just knew was going to be our future. And we're talking 2009, 2008. Oh my gosh. Yeah. But you knew.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah, we always saw Highbrow Hippie as like this multi-dimensional thing. I mean, we never put like any sort of box around what Highbrow Hippie could be. So when the brick and mortar was built, it really was just supposed to be the landing spot for the community because people often launch a product and then try to have the community come to them.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
We were like, we've got this like goldmine of women who are just like, the best women on the planet and who have all built incredible businesses or run incredible businesses or are running or are starting or it's just this collective power of a lot of positivity, but really the record speaks for itself. You know, we have Lila Becker who founded and built Mother Denim.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yes, I feel really lucky. So we knew that we could create any sort of product because we had this community already. And when it was time to create the product, we took the downtime that kind of came with some of the pandemic, and we sent out a survey to our clients. And it was like, what products are you using? Hair, skin, body. What kind of services do you get?
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
What kind of procedures do you get? You know, what do you feel comfortable spending? I mean, we asked every question. It was probably like a 200 question survey. We sent it out. I mean, it was so in-depth and it was just, it was being super nosy. Not everyone answered it, but we had enough of a kind of a... Yeah, a little R&D. Yeah, we did a lot of R&D and it was just to inform ourselves.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
This is what people are thinking. This is what people need. And at that moment in time when we sent it out was when the impact of stress started really showing on people's hair. And so we knew that if we were going to launch a product, it just became really clear that it had to be about hair health and wellness. We've always included wellness.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Literally, our tagline from the very beginning of the blog was beauty, wellness, and conscious living. And we knew the product had to encompass all three of those things, which is why we were very quickly able to hone in on our growth serum and our well-being supplement. And then we worked on it for years.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
You know, I guess it didn't feel like a gamble to me because I joined an accelerator program at the beginning of, oh gosh, I guess last year. Because I, A, raising money. I mean, we're talking about a whole world that I do absolutely nothing about.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And I think that especially knowing the numbers out there for how little Black women raise, whether it be VC or, I mean, the number is so small, it actually is abysmal.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
So I knew that it might be an uphill battle. So if I'm going to do it, I need to actually have the knowledge that I need to be able to execute this. So with the time that I do not have, I signed up for this accelerator, which was... Monday and Tuesday mornings. And I definitely asked the most questions, but you learn really quickly, like there are no stupid questions.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And any opportunity I had, whether they had like the extra office hours or anything that I could get some extra time with these two women, Kelly and Annie, who are just amazing, it was called Dream Ventures. I carved it out and just asked anything, whatever they could teach me. I was like, please just tell me what to do because I also wanted to respect my client's time.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
I knew I'd probably be doing a friends and family raise because luckily I have clients with the means to be a part of a friends and family raise. And I knew the amount that we needed could probably be accomplished in a friends and family raise. And it was. And it was, yeah. So you still want to be respectful of people's time and their energy and that you're taking this really seriously.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
But I knew we were onto something when I did the accelerator and I won.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah, I was the top business out of all 25. And I mean, someone caught it on camera when they said my name. I just burst into tears because... It is just so unlikely, you know, but in my pitch, in my pitch contest, when I said the words, the world does not need another shampoo and conditioner, literally, I could have heard an amen from the crowd.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Like people were over it, you know, they wanted a real solution. And then with the statistic that like 80% of women are going to experience some sort of hair loss in their lifetime. Yeah. It also just kind of took the Band-Aid off. People were looking around. I asked everyone to raise their hands if they'd experienced any. And everyone's kind of peeking around.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And then the hands are slowly going up. And it felt like they were safe to finally admit it. And which we knew there was a market because, you know, look at Nutrafol.com. They literally just sold to Unilever for a billion dollars. So there is a market for this, but never one that was created by salon experts.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Sure, there were some doctor-created products, physician-approved products, but we had the direct connection to the consumer, and I just knew. Yeah, and you live and breathe hair health. Yes. It's always been my thing.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
You know, there are good times and bad times. That's life. And that's life. Yeah. I think that our biggest strength is that her and I are always on the same page when it We know that we want to build a company and we actually also know that we want to sell the company eventually because we both have such varied interests and curiosity about the world and life.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
We want to have another chapter in our lives. And because that's always been the goal, when we find ourselves having a moment of friction, we come back to the goal. Yeah. And we come back to our dedication to that goal and to each other.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Oh, it was 2020. It was 2020. Yeah.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yes.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Oh, gosh, I want to kind of go back to my English major roots. I want to get some writing done. I'd like to live in another country, perhaps my native land of Jamaica. Maybe I'll try a stint in Europe. I'm just a really naturally curious person. And I was not blessed with kids. I'm still holding out hope I might be a stepmom or, you know, one day. But for right now, I'm just super aunt.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
I mean, our kids love Auntie Katie.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
You do.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Have the kids. And I don't know. I feel like with the freedom that that gives me, I should be able to just live a completely new chapter. And, you know, perhaps it's with this new love of mine. Yeah.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
But as all good things, a lot of good things in my life, the origin starts with Serge Normand.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
I mean, listen, there are a lot of predators out there and predator is a strong word, but there are, there's a lot of ways for entrepreneurs to really waste a lot of money and a lot of time. And we definitely had some people who bill themselves as quote unquote experts and we didn't need them anymore.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Along the way, and certainly not for the amount of money that we paid, for the duration that we paid. But we were able to spot it and, you know, pivot from there. It's really just keeping your wits about yourself and not getting too comfortable. We also always... have our bottom line in mind. We are very responsible fiscally.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And the reason why we were even able to get a small business loan to put into the product company where we didn't have to raise so much money is because we were able to, with our small, mighty team in our atelier during the pandemic, still managed to net well over a million dollars in profit. That's outstanding. Yeah.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
So we were able to literally provide the numbers to the bank and, you know, very few people also get approved for those loans. So we are able to be fiscally responsible, which then created freedom and opportunity for us.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yes.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yes. I feel really lucky, but I also know that I created that luck.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah, I hope it's like the one thing that our team sees that like hard work can really open up a lot of opportunities in your life. Because none of this was overnight. You know, this was all brick by brick. But because we always just stuck to our goals. Vision of excellence. I mean, every little detail that we do, even at the Atelier, is so well thought out.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
We serve everything with a linen napkin underneath it. You sure do. Everything is beautiful. Yeah, everything is beautiful. Everything should be beautiful. And I just feel that if you really stick to what your core morals and, like, essence is... you're never going to lose. So I don't know, Micah and I, we always feel like, of course we're here.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
We have a lot of self-belief in ourselves because the world is hard enough being a Black woman. So we definitely lift each other up. We lift this business up. We're not going to ever have any negative self-talk. It's hard enough.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah, but I mean, I look at what's coming up for you and it all makes complete sense because nobody entertains like Megan, okay? Okay. You know, everything is just beautiful and intentional and thoughtful. And that's why you're not going to lose either. Thank you.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
It's so vivid in my memory, too. You know, so much was happening that day with... LA in general and the city and the protests. And I mean, I remember meeting you guys and A, you were so warm and both you and H like wrapped us up in these big bear hugs. And I was like, I don't even know these people and I'm not a hugger, but let's do it, you know, because I think everyone was just so...
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Just needed like this exhale of, okay, like it's going to be okay, but what now?
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
It felt like such whiplash, and it felt like, gosh, we cannot get a break, you know? Oh, I understand. Yeah, we just said, you know, what else do we have to do? And it felt like we had just conquered this big mountain, my co-founder and I, Micah, and... I just remember when we'd made the decision to close, when it just started feeling so unsafe.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
I mean, I literally am in a touch point business, you know, like I'm in very close contact with people. And I just remember feeling scared for my own, obviously, health and safety, but then just... The numbers running through my mind of rent and my team, how are they going to pay their bills? And then my clients, like, will they still be here when we, you know, if and when we reopen?
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And when is that going to be? And it just felt... Like we're entering the unknown and it was really frightening. I mean, there's a photo that a team member took of me when everything was just starting to happen and my head is just literally in my hands.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And yeah, my heart breaks when I look at it because it just, I think is every founder who has just poured their everything into launching something and then being like, Not really sure what's next. Yeah. So it was, though it was a low time, about, I want to say two months had then gone by before I met you.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
So in that two month period, we had, like we always do, because we figure things out, especially as Black women, we We had been mixing home color kits for clients. I mean, I was going around.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
their fences or leaving at their door at nighttime and just scurrying away like a little mouse. But we did enough sales in just a few months to pay our rent on time, make sure our team had some sort of money coming towards them. I had a few clients who asked how they could help. Some paid for their services a year in advance so that I could write a check to every team member.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
So all of this happened. It was incredible.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah, that was, I mean, it's obvious. I am a Black woman and most of my clients, many of my clients are not. And then there's this conversation that's taking place in the world at large that I is not taking place in real time in the salon. And now we have to come together again and talk about that big elephant in the room.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And as we geared to reopen, I had clients calling, texting, emailing in tears, wanting, I think a lot of them were dealing with feelings they'd never felt before, feelings thoughts that they never had to think about before, whether that be guilt, whether it be just, wow, I've never had to really step back and say that Katie's existence may be very different than mine.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And now here, I'm asking her to take care of me once again, when really we should be taking care of her.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
You know, my body was stealing itself for heaviness. We worked for like 42 days straight, no days off. That's how booked we were when we reopened. Whoa. Yeah. So imagine just the physical toll of that. But the emotional toll of 42 days straight of...
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah, you know, it was hard. I definitely felt that was probably one of the loneliest periods of my life. At the time I was single. So then coming home felt like a relief, but then also like What now?
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Yeah. I mean, by the way, lots of wine consumption during that time. True. Fact. You know, just sitting down with a glass trying to let each day – go, leaving it in the past. And, you know, you're actually touching people. So it's like an energy exchange. And, you know, everyone knows I'm like the least woo woo person out there. But after that period, I really believe in it.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Because I would go home some days and be completely and utterly depleted. You know, and other days, people really tried to pour back into me. So it just was like this big opening, I think, for everybody. And then Micah and I had the I don't know if it was grand or silly at the time idea to have these patio chats because the patio is really the center of our Venice Atelier at Highbrow Hippie.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And, you know, it's where services are performed. Clients can lounge out there. And the patio was so off limits when we were closed that before we reopened, we decided to go on Instagram Live and have a patio chat about race in America. Yeah.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
You know, for us, it felt great. For us, it was a release, throwing another Leo into the mix. So is my business partner. She's a Leo. So we don't know how to do things halfway. Like we are doing them with our full heart and our full heads, you know, and really talking about subjects that we were never afraid to talk about, you know, within our own community or within our own safe spaces.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
But it was also a continuation of this conversation that we had started on MLK Day before the pandemic happened, we decided to have a salon chat in a true sense of the word because Because we always saw Highbrow Hippie as a real salon, an old school salon where ideas were exchanged, etc. And it was always going to be a safe space of an exchange of ideas.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
So we decided before the pandemic happened that we are going to talk about race and feminism and intersectionality. And we invited clients of all walks of life. I mean, every religion, every color, and everyone sat next to someone they didn't know. And we just went for it. We wanted to really dive into, are you looking at how things affect you if they don't directly affect you?
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
We had probably one of the most emotional dinners I've been a part of. And people still to this day talk about that patio chat. So that was the original patio chat.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
And then George Floyd happened and the pandemic happened and we're like, okay, I guess this is going virtual to the point where we ended up having a reunion online the next MLK Day of the original patio chat invitees and everyone was in tears. Couldn't believe it that they were like, you guys are talking about this stuff way before anyone else was.
Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
I think about what I knew back then, which was absolutely nothing about color and the gall that I had to be like, yeah, I'm going to be a colorist. And the first day showing up and them handing me my shampoo apron.