“If you’re looking to start a brand, have both a rational and an emotive reason to exist,” Taylor Frankel, the 21-year old cofounder of Nudestix told us in the latest episode of our CF Office Hours podcast. Even though she’s young, it’s clear that Taylor knows a thing or two about branding. After all, her company, which she founded with her mom and sister at age 17, is already sold nationwide at Sephora, loved by celebrities including Alessia Cara to Nicola Peltz, and is expanding into the Middle East this year. Millennials, Frankel told us, are “Not going to change our lifestyle for a brand—we want a brand to change their products for us.” Wanting to get more advice from this teen beauty mogul, College Fashionista Founder Amy Levin caught up with Taylor for our latest episode of CF Office Hours to find how she decided to make the difficult decision of taking a sabbatical from Ryerson University to pursue Nudestix full-time.
Working with her sister Ally and mother Jenny, a beauty entrepreneur herself who worked for MAC right out of college and went on to create Cover FX, Taylor keeps a tight-knit crew of strong women around her to help keep her company’s ethos in mind. “Surround yourself with people who are as passionate as you are, who want to build your brand as much as you do, and are also babe bosses themselves,” said Taylor to her company’s employees. To put it even more bluntly, she says to “Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.”
Beyond cultivating an empowering beauty business, Taylor’s secret weapon to running Nudestix is one you’ve probably heard before: Always stay hyper-organized. “Since I travel a ton and need to be ‘on’ most of the time,” explained Taylor, “ I like to write things down in my notebook, or [take] notes on my phone. I try to avoid stress by planning. I’ve been taught that when running a business, it’s 80% planning and 20% execution.”
Want to hear even more career advice from Taylor? Listen in to our convo with with the college-age wunderkind on iTunes, and then leave a comment below on what you want to hear next on CF Office Hours!
What career advice do you want us to tackle on the next episode of CF Office Hours? Tell us in the comments!
