Lynne McNelis of fave4: Five Things Anyone Can Do To Have Fabulous Hair

Hydration starts from within! Drink lots of water for your skin and hair.

Pay attention to your scalp. Give yourself head massages in the shower. This promotes circulation while helping to exfoliate and lift any dead skin cells or any possible build up.

Watch tutorials. Don’t get stuck in your styling ways. Experiment and add a new style to your repertoire every few months. It helps keep your hair exciting, and people will notice!

As part of our series about “Five Things Anyone Can Do To Have Fabulous Hair”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lynne McNelis, founder of fave4, a hair care and lifestyle brand based in Texas. Lynne got her start in corporate America working on major beauty brands and has years of experience in product development. She loves helping women feel confident with salon-quality hair products that are affordable, clean and suited for all hair types.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I have been prepping for this career my entire life. I slept in pink sponge rollers for nearly half my youth! Having good hair has always been a priority for me…my mom made taking care of her hair a focus, so I did too. I feel like I was inventing my own “hair hacks” before they were cool. I danced and cheered all the way into college so having good hair was a must. Right after I graduated college, I was working part-time in New Orleans, LA and struggling with the late summer humidity. I went into a Trade Secrets store (which was popular in the mall back then) and the saleswoman recommended a Bed Head product called Control Freak Shampoo to help me control my hair in high humidity. I instantly fell in love with it. It had the funniest name, most entertaining descriptors on the front and back of the bottle, the yummiest smell and the prettiest color. It truly appealed to all my senses! A few weeks later I started looking for a job on Monster.com. I found one in Dallas working for a corporate salon group called Toni&Guy. It looked really interesting, and I was hopeful, so I booked a flight and showed up for an interview a few days later. As I stood there in the lobby waiting for someone to come get me for my interview, I saw the very shampoo I had fallen in love with a few weeks before. This salon company also made this shampoo. I was tickled. Needless to say, I got a great job at an amazing company that paved the way for my dream career.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

When I became a new mom, so many things in my world changed including the amount of time I could allocate to getting ready each day. Who knew that hair drying could be a luxury? During this time, we saw a gap in the marketplace, and we capitalized on it by creating our Air Dry Cream. We were one of the first brands to use the exact phrase “Air Dry Cream” to describe a styling product. It was designed to help hair air dry with less frizz and more control to enhance your natural texture. It’s definitely a miracle product and should be a staple on everyone’s bathroom counter. That experience and this product has made a positive impact on my personal and professional life since.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

I changed my perspective right around age 30. Hitting that 30-year mark propelled my confidence. I finally felt like I was reaching adulthood and the opinions I held mattered. I was able to take the experiences I had throughout the beginning of my career and put those learnings into my projects on a daily basis. I’m actually a very timid person, so expressing confidence has been really hard for me. I remember at that age I stopped always agreeing immediately with things, but rather started challenging myself and those around me to truly think things through and take them one step further. Instead of doing something that’s good, it was more about how can we make this better and great! I know lots of women struggle with this, but we have to remember that you don’t know until you try!

In your experience what were the most effective ways for your business to generate leads and sales? Can you share a story or give an example?

The rise of social media certainly helped us. When we first started building the fave4 brand, social platforms like Instagram and Pinterest really started to gain momentum. This allowed us to reach people that never would have seen our products, brand or story in more traditional methods like trade publications or magazines. We made so many friends and met so many hairdressers and salons across the country through social media. It truly brought us all together because we shared the same passion for hair. It has been a powerful and helpful tool.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Yes! Kyara Mascolo was certainly my “work mom”. She played a major role in developing who I am professionally. She was the creator of Bed Head among many other amazing brands in hair, skin and cosmetics. She is a perfectionist and she taught me to never settle and always challenge everything…in a good way. Some of my greatest memories were traveling to Europe together to research beauty trends and look for new ideas. I also loved that there was never a dull moment in our office. It wasn’t out of the norm for random celebrities to pop in for a visit and stock up on hair products. Kyara loved to say that rule breakers were the rule makers! She is a true visionary and never made things just because that’s what she thought people wanted, but rather made products that people didn’t even know they wanted and needed yet! It’s one thing to follow trends, but another to set them.

Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?

When you challenge the status quo, you should expect that not everything will run smoothly! I can confidently say that a lot of what I know now came from learning from my mistakes or from witnessing someone else’s. When things don’t go as planned, you’re really put to the test. You have to start thinking quickly and creatively on how to overcome it. One of the most important work lessons I’ve learned is not to rely on glue-dots to hold anything together that is travelling by truck to Las Vegas in July! You will have a melted mess.

You have been blessed with great success in a career path that many have attempted, but eventually gave up on. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path but know that their dreams might be dashed?

Unfortunately, their dreams will definitely be dashed by someone at some point, but these moments are perfect learning opportunities. Being resilient pays off when you are able to learn from your experiences and when you use them to propel you and your ideas forward. In order to be successful, most ideas need an adjustment, clarification, more research, or more work to bring them to fruition and sometimes it takes someone else to point that out!

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Can you please share “Five Things Anyone Can Do To Have Fabulous Hair”. Please share a story or an example, for each.

1. Hydration starts from within! Drink lots of water for your skin and hair.
2. Pay attention to your scalp. Give yourself head massages in the shower. This promotes circulation while helping to exfoliate and lift any dead skin cells or any possible build up.
3. Watch tutorials. Don’t get stuck in your styling ways. Experiment and add a new style to your repertoire every few months. It helps keep your hair exciting, and people will notice!
4. Use quality products. I can’t express it enough that better products yield better results, BUT you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg for them. Be reasonable and do your research.
5. Get a great cut! Layers, curtain bangs, texture, thinning, etc. will all play an important part in what your hairstyle outcome will be. If you like volume at the roots, you need a cut that helps lift, like layers. If you want to highlight your face, then curtain bangs it is! If you’ve got thick hair that’s hard to manage, then maybe you need it thinned out a bit.

Can you share 3 ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Get a girlfriend group text that builds you up and reminds you that you are funny and a great friend and also beautiful when you don’t feel it! Talk about life and kids and husbands and share beauty tips and great finds on Amazon.
2. Get a nighttime face moisturizer. Even though you may not be able to see the results every day, you know you are doing something great for your skin and face, and it will all be worth it.
3. Find something you love to wear that makes you feel confident and make that your “go-to” for when life gets a little tough. Prayer, daily affirmations & self-care are all super important, but sometimes they can’t help you right in the moment and you might need a little something extra. My go-to is big hoop earrings! Big hoops transform my mood instantly! Maybe yours is painting your nails or wearing faux eyelashes. Just find what your thing is and be ready at any moment to do it!

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I wish I could shout from the rooftops that everyone should be embracing their real selves. Don’t try to force your body, face, hair or fashion style into something it’s not meant to be. We are continuously influenced by what we see on social media and that can be very toxic. You are beautiful just the way you are.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

1. The Golden Rule made a big impression on me ever since I remember reading it in my kindergarten classroom. It’s something I stress to my daughters as well. It’s such a wonderful way to remember to be empathetic and be kind! This mantra crosses my mind daily.
2. “You’ll never do a whole lot until you’re brave enough to try,” Dolly Parton. Wow, this one really hits home for me. I have serious anxiety and I’m always nervous to get out of my comfort zone, and this is a great reminder to get out there and do my thing.
3. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” I heard this quote early in my career, and it really helped me when building teams. Everyone can contribute greatness. Be sure to always give grace and do what you can to help set up yourself and others for success.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you’d like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this. :-)

Oh, I do hope this happens! I would say Sara Blakely because I love her story about creating the Spanx brand. I would also say Jessica Simpson. She is the whole package for me. I love that she has found such amazing success with love and her family and also with her brand. She’s a boss. Jess, can we do lunch?

How can our readers follow you online?

https://www.instagram.com/fave4hair/

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!

About the Interviewer: Jilea Hemmings is a staunch believer in the power of entrepreneurship. A successful career revamping Fortune 500 companies was not enough for her entrepreneurial spirit, so Jilea began focusing her passion in startups. She has successfully built 6 startups to date. Her passion for entrepreneurship continues to flourish with the development of Stretchy Hair Care, focusing on relieving the pain associated with detangling and styling natural black hair. For far too long, people with tender heads have suffered in pain. Until now.