Mielle Organics: Monique Rodriguez

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2023

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For Monique Rodriguez, hair care was a hobby; she never thought she could build a business. In fact, after high school, Monique followed her mother’s advice to find a solid, recession-proof career, and she went into nursing. However, Monique realized it was not for her, and she pursued side gigs selling everything from Mary Kay to cable subscriptions. But when a devastating loss turned Monique’s world upside down, she found joy in her hobby. What started as Monique’s homegrown haircare experiments posted on Instagram eventually became Mielle Organics, a line of products made for textured hair with natural and organic ingredients. Educating herself through internet research, going to trade shows and conferences, and learning from some big mistakes, Monique and her husband Melvin turned her hobby into a massive global haircare and beauty brand.

This episode was produced by Casey Herman, with music by Ramtin Arablouei

Edited by Andrea Bruce, with research help from Alex Cheng.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.5	One year ago, a white man came to a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
0:13.7	He just walked around and shot all the black people.
0:16.2	How do you make sense of something, this terrible?
0:18.9	When you're a kid.
0:20.4	I think it was all my fault.
0:23.2	Listen now to the latest series from NPR's Embedded Podcast.
0:29.8	Hey, it's Guy here and before we start the show, I want to share something I heard recently
0:33.2	from Stephen Colbert.
0:35.0	It's about learning from failure.
0:37.1	He told me an incredible story from way back when he was doing improv in Chicago and how
0:42.2	he broke on stage one night, which he initially thought was the worst thing ever, but it actually
0:48.3	changed his life and his approach to comedy forever.
0:52.5	To hear my conversation with Stephen Colbert and other incredible creative people, listen
0:56.9	to my other podcast, The Great Creators.
0:59.5	Just search for the great creators with GuyRaz wherever you listen to podcasts.
1:04.3	And now on to today's show.
1:14.6	We don't really have a good understanding of how to run a business, so we were literally
1:19.2	spending and not monitoring what was going out.
1:24.2	We had to learn the hard way and it really humbled us.
1:28.6	Top line was great.
	...

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