Name: Mielle Organics founder suffered a health tragedy at age 33 and years later scored a $100 million investment
Uploaded: 2024-06-05
Duration: 5 min 50 s
Description: On the latest episode of Executive Exchange, Mielle CEO Monique Rodriguez sits down with host Ruth Umoh to discuss how her company started with the tragedy that sparked her entrepreneurial journey.

On the latest episode of Executive Exchange, Mielle CEO Monique Rodriguez sits down with host Ruth Umoh to discuss how her company started with the tragedy that sparked her entrepreneurial journey.

Mielle Organics founder suffered a health tragedy at age 33 and years later scored a $100 million investment

Leadership

Mielle CEO Monique Rodriguez sits down with host Ruth Umoh to discuss how her company started with the tragedy that sparked her journey.

Mielle Organics founder suffered a health tragedy at age 33 and scored a $100 million investment

Monique Rodriguez. Thank you so much for Jordan Fortune Executive Exchange. We're delighted to have you. You are the mastermind behind my L Hair care products. Talk to us about your founding story. Walk us through that. What was the catalyst behind launching the line? Yeah. Well, thank you. That's very a huge compliment. Um So I started the brand in 2014 and I've always, I love the hair care space. I've always been very passionate about the beauty industry. When I was younger, I would ask my mom to take me to like different model calls so I can like model for other hair care companies. But she quickly told me like, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, I went to all of these model calls. No one ever selected me to be on the face or the cover of any hair care brand in hindsight. Now, I know why. So my mom, she encouraged me to go the nursing route. She always encouraged me to go to school and I became a nurse at the young age of 22 I started as a labor and delivery nurse, but I quickly knew that this was not something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life, you know, but I did it for 8.5 years. And for it took for me to go through a very tragic loss with the loss of my son in 2013 when I was eight months pregnant. But I chose to channel that pain into purpose. And I looked at social media as a creative outlet for me to express myself and to go back to that thing that was always there, that passion, that was always there and that was hair care. So I started on Instagram posting tutorials and talking about different ways that I style my hair. And what I saw was that there were so many women that were also suffering the same challenges. And so I saw a void in the industry of a lack of relatability as you know, a a consumer myself, there were a slew of products on the show. But I felt that as a consumer, these brands were just talking at me and not having conversations to really and my hair struggles. And so I said that with my science background being a nurse, I was already educating women on you know, their bodies and the health of their bodies. So I can take that same science and educational approach and help women and educate them on how to navigate their hair journey. And so a couple of months later, I went in the lab with, you know, um local chemists that I found online and we started to create together what I was like making at home. The concoctions I wanted to actually bring it to fruition. And so I started with one product which is our almond oil we launched. And you know, the rest is history from there. We'll soon delve into your entrepreneurial joy specifically, but you mentioned the personal strategy in a pain that you really managed to turn into purpose. Talk to us about that. Yeah. So of course, when you go through like traumatic life experiences, you know, it was very high risk for my life as well. And I realized that once I came out of that number one, the only thing that got me through that was my faith in God because I couldn't turn to my family. I had two girls that, you know, I still had to be strong for my husband couldn't get me through that. My mom couldn't get me through that. Nothing could get me through other than like leaning on God and knowing that, you know, I went through this pain because there was something bigger and there was a bigger purpose. And I feel that, you know, I've always had the entrepreneurial bug, but I was too afraid to like step out on faith to do that. And I realized that for all of these years that I was working as a nurse, I was living my mom's dream. I wasn't living for my dream. And I felt that God always had something in me because even when I worked as a nurse, my mom would tell me find a good job because I would bounce all around from hospital to hospital because I was always looking for happiness. And she would tell me like, you need to sit still because you're not gonna have a pension. And I was like 20 something years old. I'm like, I'm not worried about a pension. Like I, I wanna find somewhere that I'm happy but it wasn't that, you know, I was looking for happiness. The happiness was not in my nursing career. The happiness was gonna be fulfillment and fulfillment would come from actually walking in your purpose. And I felt that, you know, working as a nurse, it wasn't something that was fulfilling for me. And when I went through the loss of my son, I realized that I had to live life that was meaningful and purposeful because you only get one shot at life. So you go through the unfortunate loss of your son. And then from there, I'm assuming you took a break from working as a registered nurse in RN. No, I had to go right back to work back to work. And so so you were doing that full time and then Maya was the side hustle or how did you balance the two? Yeah. So Maya was actually like a side hustle or a side hobby because yes, I went back to work shortly after I gave birth and going back to work at a place where, you know, you're not really invested in and, you know, postpartum depression is very real and I had to deal with that and, and also going through a loss. So I was dealing with a lot of different emotions at that time and I knew that as a nurse, you know, I'm dealing with patients, I'm dealing with life and death. And at that time, I was working as a home health nurse. So it was just me and the patient. And when you're working as a home health nurse, you have to be fully invested, you have to be fully coherent, you have to know exactly what you're doing. And I started to realize that my mind was not there as I would go to patients home. You know, I was always a very friendly, bubbly nurse, you know, had great personality with my patients. And I have a great sense of self-awareness and I realized that I was not giving them the best of me. And, you know, as I was taking my mind off of what I was going through with my son, I was at home, you know, using my, it wasn't my at that time, but using that as a creative outlet. But my mind every time I would go to work, my mind was on that. And so I had to make the conscious choice to leave my nursing career. You know, six months after I started my e, even though he wasn't making any money, it was a risk that I knew I had to take because I didn't want to risk anyone's life working as a nurse.