Meet Lynn Power

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lynn Power. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Lynn with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
I grew up in a family where both of my parents were small business owners. My brothers and I were “latchkey kids” and my parents often worked late and on weekends. As a child, I didn’t really understand why they couldn’t always pick me up from soccer or be at a school function. But as I got older, I appreciated their hard work and dedication to their business. They were very customer oriented and always tried to make their customers happy. As a result, they were able to have a secure and stable business for many years (although their businesses — insurance broker and travel agent — became outdated as the internet took over). Many of the lessons learned through watching them tackle issues, opportunities and more have stuck with me and have fueled my own entrepreneurial spirit.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I spent almost 30 years in advertising. I met my co-founder, James, in 2018 a few months after I left J. Walter Thompson. He had been working on our haircare formulations for almost 10 years. We decided to partner together to launch MASAMI. I had worked on many iconic beauty brands throughout my career (L’Oreal, Clinique, Vichy, NeXXus and more) and James had spent 20 years at Clairol. We wanted to create haircare products that are high performing, clean, good for you and good for the environment. MASAMI was designed to solve the #1 hair issue — hydration — but do it differently. Unlike most other products on the market, MASAMI doesn’t weigh hair down. MASAMi is vegan, cruelty free and works for virtually every hair type & texture. We launched our business at NYFW in Feb 2020. We also launched the Conscious Beauty Collective in 2022 as a way to join forces with other indie beauty brands and help each other grow. We have now done 4 pop-ups (San Francisco, Boston, Rancho Cucamonga, CA and Palm Springs, CA) and will be in Brooklyn in June and in Miami in July.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1) Marketing: My background in advertising and marketing has helped us tremendously. We are very scrappy as a bootstrapped company and we experiment a lot. We’ve done a ton of livestreaming, social selling and are early adopters on many emerging tech platforms. We love partnering with other like-minded brands as an efficient and effective way to grow organically. We do lots of podcasts, events and more. For anyone who doesn’t have a marketing background, you can start with channels you use as a consumer (social media for example) and go deep on those. You also should have the perspective that your content doesn’t need to be perfect (there’s so much out there that anything you don’t love will be yesterday’s news soon enough). Be willing to try things out and see what works for you. 2) Empathy: This is a really important skill for leaders today and one I’ve worked hard to hone. Launching a business during Covid required a lot of empathy — with partners, customers, employees, peers. You never know what someone is dealing with. I also was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in 2021 and had a year of treatment. So I know firsthand what it’s like trying to juggle personal issues with growing your business.
3) Patience: So many things are outside of our control By nature, I’m a bit of a Type A personality, but I’ve had to learn to dial it back, practice patience and know that many things will go wrong. And that’s ok. It’s not easy for someone who is naturally used to controlling my work situation, but applying patience (and rethinking what success looks like) has been very helpful to weather the day-to-day challenges.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
I am always looking for partners to collaborate with. If you’re a clean beauty founder, in the wellness space, or make sustainable/conscious products, let’s connect. I’d also love to connect with spa owners and boutique hotels who are looking to offer their customers high quality clean products from small businesses. And of course, independent stylists and salons love us (we have backbar size products).

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