In our Ask A Founder series this fall, we follow 10 female founders on their entrepreneurial journey. Thousands of women have experienced our Selfmade virtual business coaching program, led by Brit + Co founder Brit Morin and sponsored Office Depot OfficeMax. Here, we ask Selfmade alum Kinsey Egan-McGee, founder of Claim Your Roots, a virtual hair care platform for women with textured hair, about staying organized, avoiding burnout, and celebrating the small wins with her co-founder and sister Brenna.
How would you describe your brand in five words? Empowering, fun, authentic, educational, inclusive.
What mood do you want your brand to evoke? We want our customers to feel safe, welcome, and valued from the content, conversations, and visuals that we use to evoke our brand’s vibe.
What was your aha moment before starting your business? It was a slow realization throughout our own hair journeys and the first few months of the pandemic. We saw that people were really struggling with salons being closed to take on their hair care 100 percent. The need in our community to inform and individualize hair education has always been apparent but, until the pandemic, we didn’t see that we were the right people to start a platform like this.
What were you doing before you started the business? I had worked in event staffing and management and non-profit work. My co-founder and sister Brenna was and is still a practicing mental health therapist with her own telehealth practice specializing in motherhood and postpartum experiences. Our backgrounds in community building, establishing rapport with females in vulnerable situations, and creating experiences allowed us to envision what this platform could be.
What’s one thing you wish you knew as an entrepreneur? I wish I would’ve known how scrappy you need to be in business to make decisions, test things out, pivot, and make do with what you have. Also, I wish I would’ve taken just one business class and explored different career options earlier in life.
How do you balance the practical with the creative parts of your business? I’ve learned throughout my time working on the business how much I really enjoy learning. I love systems and automations, but I’ve also enjoyed crafting our branding and social media presence. The best way for me to balance practical with creative is to know when to step away from a task I’m struggling or having “analysis paralysis” with so I can put energy toward other tasks in the meantime.
How do you celebrate the small wins? It’s special to share this business with my sister, Brenna, and our immediate family can celebrate with a dinner out or something small.
What is the most powerful thing you do in your day? I try to mentally check in and be honest with myself about how I’m feeling. Whether it’s inside or outside of the business, I try to weigh the importance, immediacy, and level of detail something should be dealt with, so I don’t burn out.
What do you do on your breaks? I really enjoy listening to podcasts of interviews with successful entrepreneurs when I’m taking a walk on breaks. I almost always find something useful, inspiring, or comparable in their business that I can apply to my own. I love How I Built This by Guy Raz and CEO School by Suneera Madhani.
What is your go-to productivity hack? I have pretty extensive to-do lists that I have broken down by months and weeks. I’ve loved crossing things off my agenda since elementary school, but I also realized as an adult that it’s great to have a list of completed items that you can reference. You just have to be honest with yourself, whether a task has actually been completed or not. I make sure to record meetings with our stylists so I can be present and not fixated on taking notes. I also always write down questions/talking points to prepare for a meeting with someone. This way I feel organized and that we have some action items to go over. Lastly, almost all of the tools that I use are digital and cloud-based so I can access them from all of my devices.
Fill in the blank:Female empowerment/kind peoplegive me all the feels.
What do you do to officially *end* your workday? I realized how important it is to turn off the sound and close my laptop at the end of every day. Sometimes I’ll even put something on top of my laptop.
What has receiving the Office Depot OfficeMax scholarship to Selfmade done to help you grow your business? When I first joined Selfmade, I was in the beginning stages of organizing my ideas and putting them into action in my business. It was the first community of people I’d opened up with about the business idea back when I was still afraid someone would steal it. The value I’ve gotten from being a part of this community is immeasurable. I’ve found a group of people to help motivate and hold me accountable. Not only have I felt comfortable to create, fail, and improve in my business, but I’ve even learned lessons that apply to my everyday life as well.
How have Office Depot OfficeMax services/products helped you accomplish more in your business? They allowed me to get some pieces of office furniture to make my home office space more comfortable. Also, it was great to have thank you cards made with our logo to show our appreciation for donors and our newly hired stylists. Office Depot allowed us to add that more personal touch to our business early on.
What does the word “self-made” mean to you? I have a hard time with the idea of being entirely “self-made” because I know there are people who make opportunities and space for others in the world. I’ve been very fortunate to belong to a family, network, and community that champion us starting this business and we’ve encountered so many kind people willing to give us advice and help along the way. Although, I do believe our work ethic and effort spent crafting our vision for this company should be attributed to us.
Thanks Kinsey! Staying organized and engaged keeps the business wheels turning. Office Depot OfficeMax can help you reach your goals, big and small, with signs, posters & banners to promote your business, to marketing materials to keep your customers informed, to a full suite of business services & solutions to help you grow your business.