Meet Meredith Martin

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

Meredith, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
I developed my confidence and self esteem through sports. I’m not a gifted athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I remember playing some kind of softball or soccer game in middle school and my gym teacher yelling “Meskin, you’re pathetic. (Meskin was my last name before I got married.) There began my life long hatred of team sports and balls.

I always did like solo sports though. Growing up in Colorado, I was able to ski every weekend. When I went to college at University of Colorado I met a guy who was a telemark skier. I had really wanted to learn how to telemark, and he said he’d teach me. On my first day he said we were going to ski until I got it, or I gave up and cried.

I didn’t cry. That was pretty much the first time I remember pushing myself really hard to learn something new. Later, when I moved to Oregon, I got into ski touring and mountaineering. Being a good backcountry skier also helped me get selected to serve on an elite mountain rescue team, which has been both challenging and rewarding.

My other obsession became windsurfing. When I first saw people zipping across the water on surfboards powered by the wind, I knew I had to do it. That was such a tough sport to learn. I wasn’t at all familiar with water when I started, and had no experience with sailing, surfing or even swimming. I didn’t even know what a wetsuit was! Back then, most ladies had a boyfriend or husband that windsurfed and wanted to teach them how, but I didn’t. So I started learning with some of those ladies, but they all kind of dropped out. I ended up just going out in the water alone, day after day, month after month, and figuring it out. I fell off approximately 10000 times. I had to be rescued from the shipping channel twice. But 25 years later, it’s still my favorite sport and I’m pretty good at it. Being proficient enough to windsurf in 40+mph winds on big waves has given me so much confidence. I met my husband windsurfing, and most of my friends.

If you do something enough, you will learn it. Other people may learn faster, but you can’t compare yourself to anyone. Don’t even look around! There will always be people that are better, there will always be people who are worse. And there are a lot of people who won’t even try.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I have always been concerned about the environment and the amount of garbage we humans create. I was tired of all the plastic bottles that laundry detergent, dish soap, shampoo and conditioner etc come in. But I was surrounded by plastic even in my shower because I have the worst hair ever, so I was constantly buying products that I thought would help.

One day I started wondering if shampoo and conditioner was available in bar form. In fact, that did exist and when I tried one I thought it was pretty cool. I was looking for a new career and decided I wanted to be involved in reducing plastic waste by making and selling my own brand of shampoo bars. I started researching how to make them, and learning about ingredients. My husband happens to be a chemical and environmental engineer so he helped me with the spreadsheets, ingredient ratios, and lab work.

After years of trial and error I had a shampoo and conditioner bar that did everything I hoped. StarBars clean, detangle and smooth hair, and they also make it stronger and less prone to breakage. I honestly couldn’t believe the difference.

It’s been hard convincing people to switch from the bottled hair products they’ve been using their whole life to bars. I guess shampoo and conditioner bars seem like a weird hippy product, good for camping and travel. But actually I put in all the quality ingredients that you would find in bottled shampoo, minus the silicone, emulsifiers, stabilizers, sulfates and pearlescents. And each bar comes in a beautiful, fully recyclable cardboard box designed by a local artist.

I hope people will switch to shampoo and conditioner bars. I envision a day where it’s not the norm to see rows of plastic bottles in stores, and instead we all consider more sustainable packaging.

I plan to keep expanding the line of StarBars into more products like lotion bars and facial bars.

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. Be at the right place at the right time: You can’t be the last into a market when it is already saturated. You have to be on the upward curve. That said, you can’t be too early either. Right now I’m manufacturing and selling a product that is still on the verge of becoming mainstream. It’s been a little hard to get people to try something so radically different than what they’ve been told to use their whole life.

2. Have the ability to pivot/read the market: When I started a commercial greenhouse selling basil in 2004, I thought I would specialize in interesting varieties of basil since there was plenty of plain Italian basil out there. I grew regular green Italian Genovese basil plus lemon, lime, cinnamon, opal and Thai basil. It turned out the bestseller was…. Italian! I got rid of all the specialty basils and crushed it selling plain green basil.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.star-bars.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/starbarsshampoo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StarBarsShampoo

Image Credits
Silvia Flores