Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan
Building Your Brand Brick by Brick with Highbrow Hippie’s Kadi Lee
Tue, 22 Apr 2025
On today’s episode, Meghan sits down with Kadi Lee, co-founder of Highbrow Hippie and the go-to colorist for some of Hollywood’s biggest names. What began as a blog has since grown into a brick-and-mortar salon and a thoughtfully crafted product line, all built with heart and the utmost attention to detail. The pair discuss what it means to grow something from the ground up, how to lead with your values, and why staying connected to your community is the ultimate marker of success. Follow Meghan @Meghan and Kadi @highbrowhippie on Instagram. Stay up to date with us @LemonadaMedia on X, Facebook, and Instagram. For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors. Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our shows and get bonus content. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Main Theme: “Crabbuckit” words and music by Kevin Deron Brereton (c) Universal Songs of Polygram Int., Inc. on behalf of Universal Music Publishing Canada (BMI) / 100% interest for the Territory.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who is Kadi Lee and what is Highbrow Hippie?
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.
And for today's guest, brick by brick is literal. Katie Lee is the co-owner of the hair salon Highbrow Hippie in Venice, California. She's also a go-to colorist for a lot of names you'd be familiar with. And she's recently launched a product line that sold out not once, but twice. Look, it's clear that Highbrow Hippie is on a serious roll.
And I wanted to talk to Katie, who's also a dear friend, about what it's like to continually iterate and build on your brand. Her business started as a blog. Then she opened a brick and mortar. And now she's selling products that people can't get enough of. Let's get into her story. There she is. Hi. Disregard the state of my hair right now. I'm so excited I'm seeing you next week.
I should have a baseball cap on, really. I mean, there's a lot going on, my friend. A lot indeed, but all good stuff. And even more of the reason that it's exciting to talk to other female founders right now about their journey, their experience, their All the twists and turns that come with the choice to be a female entrepreneur and especially one of color and what that means.
So let's start when we first met. What year was that?
Oh, it was 2020. It was 2020. Yeah.
It was very much 2020.
But as all good things, a lot of good things in my life, the origin starts with Serge Normand.
Oh, does it ever. Serge Normand, leading hairstylist in the industry. And you know him because you worked at his salon in LA way back when. Yeah. And man, he and I became friends after he did my hair for my wedding. Yeah. So my family had just moved to California. We were staying in our friend's home. And because it was the pandemic, I kept ordering boxed hair dye.
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Chapter 2: How did Kadi Lee start her career as a colorist?
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...
a lot of feelings.
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?
Okay.
Well, you just said it. I was like, oh, my God. Okay. Perhaps. Stay on track. Perhaps. We'll save this for a glass of wine on Sunday after all this.
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.
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.
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.
Okay. Well, so you've always been fearless and just getting right to the point, my Leo sister. Yeah. Okay. So how did those go?
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Kadi face opening a salon during the pandemic?
Well, especially because you were doing hair at 11 is when you realize in Connecticut, there weren't a lot of people there that could do your hair, your texture of hair. So you started experimenting on your own. I can't imagine what that was like. It kind of reminds me of when I was at Northwestern and I moved into Kappa, our sorority there. I don't even think they made plug-in
Flat irons at the time, they couldn't, if they did, I didn't know where they were because I had the little stove with the flat iron that would go in, have a paper towel on the side. I mean, there's probably half the people listening to this going, what is she talking about? Or you'd pull it out, it would have the little scorch marks. And I remember most of the girls in the sorority...
Who were not black. I said, what's that smell? Is hair burning? And it was just what you would do to figure out how to grapple with this texture of hair. Were you using things like that back then or is that what you were doing in college?
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...
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.
But also, this is before, I mean, U11 in Connecticut, this is before the World Wide Web. Yeah. It's not like you were Googling different ways to do your hair and your hair texture. Where were you finding inspiration for that?
Well, there's a town next, I grew up in Westport, Connecticut, which anyone that's familiar with Connecticut is like, wow.
Is there an immigrant community there at all?
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.
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Chapter 4: How did community support help Highbrow Hippie survive COVID-19 closures?
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.
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.
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.
Oh, wow. Wow.
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.
Did you ever think that you would start your own business? Did you think you would have a chair at a salon? Was that the ultimate goal? Or did you always feel entrepreneurial in what you were really sort of striving for?
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 5: What role does race and social conversation play at Highbrow Hippie?
quietly yeah you know i had secured as ever as a name in 2022 and then as everything started to evolve last year and bringing in a partner the size that it was and it was just so interesting because you remember i said i like american revere as an umbrella yeah and then to be able to have verticals beneath it yeah maybe have the orchard really small
But when that's not feasible, suddenly it became this word salad. I didn't love that so much. I said, okay, well, let's go back to the thing that I've always loved. Let's use the name that I had protected for a reason that had been sort of under wraps. And then we were able to focus in the quiet and put our heads down and build on something that no one was sniffing around to even see about.
It was just really, really helpful to have that quiet period, which you would know after spending so many years working on something, building it. And the pivots that you have to take with it, look at you now. I mean, the name Highbrow Hippie is no longer just a blog and a hair salon. It's a product line, too.
You have a hair supplement and a hair serum that you just launched late last year, and it's already been named Best Hair Serum Best. by Oprah Daily.
How on earth did you go from getting your financing together, creating the business, having this incredible clientele, the most loyal people who've been with you from the beginning, from high profile to everything in between, to then saying in the midst of still being a startup in those first five years, we're going to start something else too.
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.
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.
I've got Kristen Davis, who actually just had a birthday yesterday. Oh, she did?
Yeah, she did. I wish her a happy birthday. I will. And Julia, who's like championed you for so long, Julia Roberts.
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Chapter 6: How did Kadi and Micah decide to evolve from a blog to a brick-and-mortar salon?
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.
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.
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.
Yeah. And so much of that raise came from the fact that people feel so confident in their belief about you and your work ethic. And I think that's a piece that is such a common thread through how you show up in the salon, how you show up in those chats that you created. It's all about really just your ethos and, of course, having a really strong business partner as well.
What has it been like to have a friend that's your business partner?
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.
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.
And to be really aligned in that. I mean, it's great that you know, well, one of our other really good friends, Vicky Tsai, I think has been a mentor for both of us, certainly in what she created with Tatcha from her parents' garage to also selling to Unilever for...
quite a hefty sum but the level of dedication work ethic and her thoughtfulness and her approach is what I think is so key but I remember very early on when I was talking about starting a business she had said to me okay well Meg you need a reverse engineer who do you want to sell to and
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Chapter 7: What was Kadi’s personal background and early experiences with hair?
And when you have that level of business savvy right out of the gate. You're looking at it through such a different lens. So let's imagine and assume when you sell.
Yes.
Because you will. Yes. And it will be a great day of celebration. What would you do in your next chapter?
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.
I mean, our kids love Auntie Katie.
It's their favorite when they run out in their cars like, Katie!
You do.
I know. That's okay. We're the kids. We're the kids.
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.
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Chapter 8: How did mentorship shape Kadi’s journey in the hair industry?
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.
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.
Right. So by instilling confidence in the people that were going to invest in you, it gave you freedom, which I think as an entrepreneur, part of it too, is you've always kept a really tight team.
Yes.
And even when you have a cap table and you have investors, I think all the investors that you've brought on, they are so emotionally invested in you as well as financially invested in you. So you don't have people breathing down your neck, which I think can happen quite a bit, certainly in private equity.
But you have people that either have big businesses or big voices or platforms that in whatever way they can help you. support you in this growth and in this chapter.
Yes.
We show up for you.
Yes. I feel really lucky, but I also know that I created that luck.
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