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

Hi Michelle, thanks for joining us today. Too often the media represents innovation as something magical that only high-flying tech billionaires and upstarts engage in – but the truth is almost every business owner has to regularly innovate in small and big ways in order for their businesses to survive and thrive. Can you share a story that highlights something innovative you’ve done over the course of your career?

When we started NaturallyCurly, we did it out of our own passion and a sense that people with people with curly hair felt they were less than, ignored by the media, the haircare industry and stylists. One of the places this was very apparent was on the runways during New York Fashion Week. I would go to Fashion Week every year and would go backstage with many of the stylists as they created their looks. But year after year, almost all of the models had stick straight hair, whether in a ponytail, parted down the middle, etc. When I returned from a show, I shared my frustration with a co-worker and she said “We should do our own show at Fashion Week.” It seemed crazy at the time but we moved forward with it, calling it Texture on the Runway. We were able to get some haircare companies on board. Each would bring their own interpretation of texture down the runway. We secured a venue. Many people, including our publicist, told us we would have a hard time getting people to our show in the middle of Fashion Week. But when it came time for the event, even with ice cold weather, we had people lined up around the building and we packed the house. Over the years, the event grew in size and scope. In 2018, right before I sold NaturallyCurly to Essence Ventures, we held it at Gotham Hall. More than 700 influencers packed the house and we had every major beauty publication covering the event as well as VH1, which filmed the event for an episode of Love & Hip Hop.

Michelle, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started my professional career as a journalist and thought that was what I would always be. i loved my job as a newspaper reporter. But my curly hair had other ideas. I moved to Texas to take a job at a newspaper and my hair – which I had always spent hours blow drying staright – rebelled in the hot humid weather. I worked with 2 fellow curlies and we would bitch about our hair. Those bitch sessions became a web site in 1998 which became the hub for the curly hair revolution. We grew the company to several million in annual revenues, and when we sold in 2018, we had several million followers. Over the years, I worked with numerous brands to help them create, launch and market their haircare products. Many are now leaders in the texture industry.

After I sold NaturallyCurly, I began mentoring founders, using my own experience to help them with their strategy. I began mentoring for a consumer product accelerator called SKU. SKU works with brands – food, beverage, beauty, pet, apparel, etc. – to help them scale their businesses. The SKU board asked me to join the leadership team to help the accelerator expand nationally. Over the past 5 years, I have worked with more than 75 brands and recruited several hundred mentors – top leaders at companies including Hershey, Sephora, General Mills, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. It is incredibly energizing and rewarding to work with founders.

I have been able to bring the same creativity that sparked NaturallyCurly to help other founders realize their potential.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

When we started NaturallyCurly in 1998, social media was in its infancy. Google started the same month we did. Getting info and connecting with other people was much more difficult. We had to figure out a lot of things on our own. It took hours to find information. From a business development perspective, it would have been much easier to get off the ground if we had an easier way to reach potential advertisers and to forge partnerships. We could have reached people faster and more creatively had social media platforms like TikTok, FB and Instagram existed.

Of course, because they didn’t exist, we were able to become the curly hair hub in a way that might not have been possible today. So it’s a mixed blessing in a way.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

After I sold NaturallyCurly, I had to figure out who I was. Over the 20 years that I started and built the company, curly hair had become my identity. It was what I was known for. Who was I if I wasn’t one of the leaders in the curly hair industry? It was a challenging time for me. Although I was happy about the sale of the company, I felt a huge hole in my life. So many people in my world knew me as the founder of NaturallyCurly.

I started consulting, working with haircare brands who were developing haircare brands. But I missed having a team. My next chapter fell into my lap when I began mentoring for SKU, the leading consumer-product accelerator. I was mentoring and loved working with founders. I told a friend that if I could mentor full time, it would be my dream job. Several months later, the board came to see if I would want to join the leadership team to grow the accelerator beyond Austin. I’ve been CMO at SKU for five years and it’s been an incredibly rewarding job that blends a lot of the things I love most – mentoring, marketing, business development and writing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.michellebreyer.com/
• Instagram: curlymichelle62
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rmichellebreyer/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-breyer-8939b01/

Image Credits
Brio Cooney