As a part of Cheddar News' celebration of Women's History Month, entrepreneur Jennifer Walsh talked about her extensive experience in the beauty business.

As a part of Cheddar News' celebration of Women's History Month, entrepreneur Jennifer Walsh stopped by to talk about her extensive experience in the beauty business. Walsh made a name for herself as the creator of Beauty Bar in 1998, the first omni-channel beauty brand in the U.S. (Think Sephora or Ulta Beauty but long before those became retail mainstays). Now she's focused on educating and creating immersive nature experiences based on her innovative product displays and interior designs. "I always say create trends, don't follow them," she said. "That's where the excitement really is." 

Wake Up With Cheddar

Beauty Entrepreneur Jennifer Walsh Says 'Create Trends, Don't Follow Them'

Alright switching gears, everyone, if you didn't know March is women's history month. The annual declared month highlights the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society and our next guest is a true visionary of the beauty and wellness space, jennifer Walsh created beauty bar, which is the first on the channel beauty brand in the US this by changing the way that people shop for beauty and wellness, she allowed consumers to experience niche and independent beauty products both in person and online. So joining us now discusses jennifer Walsh, uh such a pleasure to have you here, jennifer, thank you so much for joining us. So tell us a little about your first beauty business beauty bar, which was pre Sephora and Ulta, so how did the company really laid down the foundation for a brick and mortar beauty stores, thank you for asking baker, good to good to be with you. I'm so thrilled to talk about this because it was such an interesting time to have an idea that was not really thought about before and to kind of create something from passion and intuition to say I'm gonna do this store concept and then grow into a website and then became a weekly tv show as well and I really didn't You know what I was doing, because I really didn't have a lot of mentors back in the mid-90s to be honest. So again, it was going through intuition and just saying I'm gonna grow this and see how it turns out and just kind of felt following my gut and there's a huge white space at the time and I love beauty and I loved wellness and it was a real business of passion following your gut obviously is the most important part here. But besides that, what were some of the hardest parts about growing and scaling this business? Because I'm sure it was probably very scary at certain points for you, That's a great point, It was so scary, I grew it very slow, so it was a very gradual growth. Um I think I waited maybe three years to hire my very first employee, my family worked with me in the very first three years and then it grew very quickly and I scaled rather um rather fast after that, but I had a great, great team around me To help me grow at that point. So around 12 years later, that's when I sold the business, but it was that, that real like strategic planning of how I'm going to move from one place to another and where I'm going to open new locations and also the website was a massive business for the brand as well, we know selling a business never easy because again, you went through so much to get it to where it's at, so when you decided to sell it, where you mentally prepared for this, tell us sort of the steps you went through to sort of prepare for this moment. Okay, that's a great question too because I don't think anyone ever teaches how to mentally prepare for sale and um amazon ultimately, uh sold or bought the business, I should say through a company called Quincy, but it's a long story short, but I wasn't prepared mentally and it was something that I grew from scratch and had a lot of team members and a lot of variables involved. So it was hard, it was a very hard time to sell a company and have to kind of release all the my team members and it was, it was a very hard time. But I'm thankful that I had so many great people around me and family members that kind of like help me walk through that time because again, no one really tells you how to step through these transitional times in business jennifer. Obviously we have a lot of viewers who maybe want to start their own business here. What advice do you have for them to sort of navigate this and also what challenges are unique to women, business leaders and entrepreneurs that you had to overcome. Yes. Stand up for what you really believe in and what you know, you love and you really understand the landscape. I know I was told no over and over and over again. Early in my career, everything I've ever done, I've always been told no. So that always like led me to keep going further. So I always say find great mentors around you, find people that have done what you might want to do or in that kind of landscape and ask them questions. Um like myself, I'm always open to talking to young people are looking to start because I always say risk is what you take to encounter possibilities and sometimes that risk is really large, but as an entrepreneur that's kind of that risk is where you kind of get those drivers to keep going forward and to create newness, I always say create trends, don't follow them, and that's where the excitement really is, jennifer, such a pleasure to have you here, congratulations on all your success, jennifer Walsh of acre lab and institute joining us here on wake up with chatter Chloe, let's go to you, thank you.