We were lucky to catch up with Joshua Neumann recently and have shared our conversation below.

Joshua, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I was in another career and loved it for 10 years. The beginning of the 11th year, I fell out of love with it and knew it was time for a change. Sitting on my couch one evening, I was thinking about what I would want to do and I looked down at my hand and was twirling a lip balm and thought to myself: “I’ve always loved lip balm and I’ve never found one that I thought worked that well.” Shortly after I came up with a name for it and thought I had a good idea. My Mother happened to call me that same evening and at the end of our conversation I told her about my idea. She soon cut me off and told me I’d be good at whatever I choose to do and that she had to go. At that point I was a little upset with my mom for not validating my idea (I’ve matured since then:). The very next morning, my phone began to ring. I looked at it and it was 6AM exactly and it was my mother calling. I quickly answered and asked her if everything was ok (not normal for her to call so early). She began to tell me that she had been awake since 3am and was waiting to call me as she awoke from the most vivid dream she had ever had. In the dream, I was a young child and I got into a verbal argument with my sister and said some very mean things to her (as she was describing this, I thought my sister probably deserved what I said:). For my punishment, my mother made me write “The Law of Kindness is on my lips” 50 times on a piece of paper. She said I was sitting at the only desk in the middle of an old schoolhouse writing those sentences. She said she was standing behind me watching me and every time I wrote a new sentence, the words “Kind” and “Lips” elevated off the page towards her. She then told me that if I am going to start a lip balm company, that the name should be Kind Lips. I knew in that moment that she was absolutely right (mothers’ always are somehow). After the call ended, I took a deep breath and said to myself that now I have to figure out how to actually make lip balm and the journey began!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Kind Lips is a lip balm company. We are committed to using the highest quality ingredients available for our products. Equally, if not more important, our message is that each tube is a reminder to be kind to yourself and those around you. Our mission is to end bullying and we put our $ where our lips are and donate 20% of our profits to anti-bullying organizations. We also started a school program where we use lip balm as a behavior modification tool to speak kind words.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When the idea for Kind Lips first came about, I knew that each tube was to serve as a reminder/opportunity that I could speak kind words to the people near me when I applied it. Whenever I spoke about that brand, that was the backbone of our company’s message. One day in 2020, I realized that I didnt like looking at myself in the mirror. I realized that I was trying to be kind to everyone around me, but I was not practicing being kind to myself. I knew in that moment that to be the authentic leader of this company that I strive to be, I had to learn to accept and love myself. So in 2020 our message pivoted and really began to focus on each tube being a reminder to be kind to ourselves. I’ve learned that the more kind I am to myself, the more sincere the kindness is that I share with others.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I felt such a strong calling that Kind Lips was what I was supposed to be doing, That I decided to walk away from a lucrative career to pursue selling lip balm full time. I had and still have no idea what I am doing in this industry and am loving it at the same time. Jan 1st of 2019 began my full-time career with Kind Lips and during that year, we could only get boutiques to put our products in their stores. I was happy to be making progress with the number of locations Kind Lips was in until covid hit and boutiques were not able to stay open. The hardship of the doors closing to the retail shops we were in forced me to work even harder to get access into grocery and other stores where consumers could find us and we could stay in business. I never want to go through something like that again and also am so thankful for that fiery season that created so much momentum for Kind Lips.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kindlips.com
• Instagram: @kindlips
• Facebook: kind lips