952 Kate Assaraf:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP 952 – Host Melinda Wittstock Interviews Kate Assaraf

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Kate Assaraf:

Plastic’s only really been around 120 years, and it’s changed people and animal life like so much and just the, the earth so much. I went on this plastic free journey, and I made all the swaps, and I tried probably 40 different brands, and they just made me angrier and angrier. When I was alone in the shower, I was like, I can solve this problem. I can build a hair care line that gets people excited, and I can make it fun, so it doesn’t like finger waggle you or shame you into buying it. And that’s, that’s what I did. I changed the mood of sustainability. I made it as silly and fun as possible. And I don’t ever really talk about plastic in the marketing.

Melinda Wittstock:

Micro-plastics are in everything, including a lot of what we eat and drink and put on our skin, and now, even in the nucleus of our cells, including human blood and organs, where they can cause damage to our DNA. Research shows these cause inflammation and can lead to diseases like cancer. That’s why Kate Assaraf set out to build a truly plastics-free hair care line that’s good for us, and good for the planet, with luxury quality at affordable prices. Kate shares her journey building the 7-figure DIP Sustainable Hair Care brand—and how she did it without relying on Amazon, big box retailers, or influencers—defying the norms of the beauty industry. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who carved her own path by prioritizing true sustainability, organic word-of-mouth marketing, and authentic human connection, all while staying deeply connected to the refill and plastic-free community she belongs to. Kate Assaraf is the founder and CEO of DIP Sustainable Hair Care, where she’s set the bar, literally, in revolutionizing shampoo and hair conditioner bars. Kate shares how she built her mission-driven company at her own pace, balancing entrepreneurship with motherhood while shaking up traditional marketing in a digitally saturated world. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Kate will be here in a moment, and first:

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Melinda Wittstock:

Kate Assaraf’s journey began with a simple question: could she build something new in beauty without following the same old marketing tactics she’d seen (and felt icky about) for over 20 years in the industry? Driven by curiosity and a desire to do things differently, Kate put herself in the customer’s shoes, hacking the experience of searching for sustainable haircare in an oversaturated, “digitally polluted” world.

Melinda Wittstock:

Turning the beauty rulebook on its head, Kate chose not to use influencers, rejected major online marketplaces like Amazon to stand up for small businesses, and refused to bombard customers with relentless ads and emails. Instead, she focused on treating her customers with genuine respect, building a brand that resonated with a new generation tired of traditional advertising. Kate has proved that it’s possible to reshape not just a brand, but an entire industry’s relationship with its customers—all while creating truly sustainable products that are affordable, get results, and protect the health of humans and the planet.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Kate Assaraf.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Kate, welcome to Wings.

Kate Assaraf:

Hi, thanks for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, I am so intrigued by this idea that you’ve built Dip sustainable hair care into a seven-figure brand without relying on Amazon, big box retailers or even influencers. Like, okay, just a very simple question. How so?

Kate Assaraf:

I, It all started kind of almost funny. Like I wanted to see if that was something that was even possible because I’ve been in marketing for, especially beauty marketing for maybe 20 years and I wanted to know, could I do it? Could I, could I build something without all of the beauty marketing that kind of gave me an ick on the back end? Like is, is it even possible? And so, you know, I, I tried to hack being like being a customer in this like digitally polluted world and what it feels like to be on the customer journey of trying to find sustainable hair care, for example, which is like what I created. But like I, I kind of turned the playbook on its head and was like, okay, everyone’s doing influencers. Like we won’t do any and everyone’s on Amazon. We’re going to make it part of our personality to not be there and take a stance against, you know, how Amazon bulldozes mom and pop shops, and undercuts them. And you know, you, like, you start to realize that there’s this, this new shift in consumers that are so tired of the current state of advertising and the current state of being bombarded and not being able to unsubscribe from emails and not being able just get away from brands and retargeting. Like, what if we didn’t do any of that and tried to treat the customer with more respect is kind of how I built it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh God. I just felt my body sort of relax, you know, I joke that we live in this attention economy, right? It’s brought with it what I call infobesity. Like there’s just so much information and empty calories. It’s not just consumerism, it’s also politics. It’s like, oh my God, make it stop.

Kate Assaraf:

It’s digital slop.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. And yet at the same time, it’s tricky for a business to be discovered and get your message out and connect with people. How do you navigate that? How are you actually finding your customers?

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah, that’s a great question. I founded Dip Sustainable Hair Care, and it was built out of frustration with the sustainability community not being like, I couldn’t find plastic free hair care that was like hair care forward and not plastic free forward, right? So, if anyone who takes their hair seriously or goes to a salon kind of understands that or it’s, it’s the plastic free is like not part of Dip’s marketing at all. It’s how great it is and how much it saves you money. And so, I know that there was this consumer fatigue and kind of anger with sustainable influencers, especially kind of telling people to buy less stuff, but then also like hawking every shampoo bar, every version of a swap, like under the sun. And what happens a lot in sustainability anyway, which is a totally different beast than normal, like other consumer goods.

Kate Assaraf:

But, like, what happens is people are so mad that they pay more for a sustainable product only and like to try and do the right thing only to be like, angry that they feel kind of like duped by the marketing. And so, I kind of use that to my advantage. I was like, what, what if we were like, hey, if you see someone online that talks about DIP and is excited and surprised by it and actually goes the extra mile to make a video they haven’t been incentivized to do, so you can like, everything, you can like, trust what people say about DIP because no one’s been told to say nice things. It’s literally organic and all.

Melinda Wittstock:

So that’s the best kind of marketing because honestly, like, your marketing is, is profitable. Right? Like from day one doing that. How did you get that going? Like, how did you start?

Kate Assaraf:

I know what people are pissed about when it comes to sustainability. Like, I don’t know how anyone who’s bought a sustainable product, anyone listening who’s bought a sustainable product has probably experienced that feeling of being like, wow, I wish I didn’t buy this. It’s not as good as advertised. And so, I tried to make my product so good that someone couldn’t help but like, love it and then buy it for people that they knew. I tried to undersell and over deliver in performance when it came to Dip. I know that anyone who is, who has bought shampoo or conditioner bars before. They’re like, I won’t buy another one. I catch people right when they’re like, I’m gonna go back to the bottle. Like, I’m not trying another bar. And then I’m like, here, try Dip. I’ll give you a money back guarantee. Like, try it. And then they try it and they’re like; I can’t believe this. 

Kate Assaraf:

And that kind of enthusiasm and hype is something that like, is contagious. And it’s not really something you can buy as a brand. It’s something that kind of either happens or it doesn’t. And you know, beyond getting like D2C consumers excited about the brand, then I literally, I took a page out of Sarah Blakely’s notebook where she literally went around with her, with her backpack and went to different stores and retailers and talked about her products like with Spanx. And I was like, I’m just gonna do that. I’m gonna call every plastic free refillery or zero waste store in the country and see like, send them bars and see if they love it. And I can promise you that people called me from their towels like after they got out of the shower was like, I cannot believe how good it is.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, you just put in like really like the work that like work pavement, kind of like almost like you’re a door-to-door salesman.

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah, I did that. I did that. I did the no shame. Called people up because no one uses the phone anymore. They’re surprised when you call them, you know. And then the, the community I really wanted to, to be in was the refill community, the, the plastic free community because I am a member of that community, you know, so I refill. I, you know, if someone listening doesn’t know what that is, is like I take my empty laundry jug and bring it to refillery and fill it up with, you know, eco-friendly laundry detergent. I do that with my hand soap in my house.

Kate Assaraf:

I do that with, you know, even snacks. My local refillery has like refill spices so I never buy containers that I don’t need to. And that’s a community I’m part of. And I know was frustrated and wanted and wanted like a better solution for hair care. And so that was the community I targeted at first. And it, it was really fun actually. I really loved that first year.

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s such alignment there of really living your mission because a lot of people have their mission and they kind of slap the logo on their marketing and say we stand for this, but then their actions don’t align, right, so, what got you passionate about, you know, refilling, recycling, environmental sustainability and such? What was the spark in your life that led you there into this really mission driven business?

Kate Assaraf:

So, it’s crazy because my son, he turns 10 this year. And so, 10 years ago when I was pregnant with him, I read this book called Boys Adrift. And it was about how to make, you know, how to raise sons that become productive members of society. My older brother gave it to me. He had two sons. Like it was kind of like a Middle Eastern, it’s very Middle Eastern book for my brother to give me when I’m having sons. And so I went, it talked about like video games and how, you know, they stimulate boys brains and like they’re even, even though they’re not, they’re just in a chair, they still are getting like this primal dopamine hit.

Kate Assaraf:

And like then they talked about how boys and their fathers like hunt anymore for the most part. And that like takes away some of their exposure to nature and sunlight and all the things they need. And then one of the things that was talked about is it’s this blip in the book was plastics. And the author talked about how, you know, someone had tugged on his sleeve and said that, hey, I think plastics are a problem. And he went down this rabbit hole and discovered that plastic runoff from the Potomac from a factory on the Potomac river was a changing the male fish so that they could lay eggs. And he was like horrified by that. And then, you know, I was reading, I was basically, I was a pregnant person reading this and I was like, that is crazy. How come no one is talking about this? And it’s like this is like 2014.

Kate Assaraf:

So, like now we’re seeing 11 years later, people are talking a lot about plastic and human health and what is happening. But that I learned about it so long ago. And then I felt like a Martian because everywhere I looked was plastic. Like plastic around food, plastic in, you know, just even like littering the landscape. And then, you know, the focus for a long time was accumulation of plastic on the earth. But really like the thing that the bigger horrors, that’s already scary, but the bigger horror story is like what it’s doing to human health. And so, my plastic free journey or my plastic reduction, because no one’s plastic free really plastic possible because it’s in everything possible.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’ve read studies that it’s like in our DNA now. Like it’s everywhere in the fish we eat. I don’t know how to escape it.

Kate Assaraf:

You can’t. And I don’t want people to feel hopeless. I guess we’re all in it together now. Plastic is, that’s our generation’s issue that we’re dealing with. And it crept up on us so fast. Plastic’s only really been around 120 years, and it’s changed people and animal life like so much and just the, the earth so much. But you know, I went on this plastic free journey, and I made all the swaps and I, I couldn’t like, the thing I really couldn’t get wrap my head around was how many different shampoo and conditioner bars I purchased.

Kate Assaraf:

That just left me feeling like angry. Like I tried probably 40 different brands, and they just made me angrier and angrier and like, you know, I was projecting out that I was plastic free. But really when character is what you do when you’re alone. And when I was alone in the shower, I was like back on my bottled brands where no one could see. And honestly I was like, I can solve this problem. I can build a hair care line that gets people excited, and I can make it fun, so it doesn’t like finger waggle you or shame you into buying it. And that’s, that’s what I did. I changed the mood of sustainability. I made it as silly and fun as possible. And I don’t ever really talk about plastic in the marketing.

Melinda Wittstock:

Interesting. And so, tell me about the formulation of it and because there’s, there’s the container side of course. But there’s the actual shampoo itself. I imagine there’s a lot of shampoos that literally like have plastic in them. 

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah, so, so it’s a bar, so it’s a, it’s anhydrous. It’s a solid format. But the formulations from. So, kind of in the beauty industry what happens is once something’s already created, so say shampoo bars and conditioners were already created. In the beauty industry, what someone does is bring a bunch of what they call benchmarks into a lab and have someone reverse engineer bars and at change the marketing ingredients and then like slap your branding on it and call it a day. That’s not the path I took the path I took was, I found the best salon, the salon hair care chemist I knew. Like I’ve been in beauty for a long time. So, I found the one that had been in the beauty industry for 40 years developing stuff behind the scenes for some of the biggest brands out there.

Kate Assaraf:

And I said to him, I said, I want to make the best bars ever and I want to make them work for all hair types so that a family with mixed hair types doesn’t have a bunch of bars like in their shower where they have to figure out who’s is whose and what’s what. And I want so badly for it to be something that keeps people away from plastic and is a gentle reminder every day that they’ve made a change and that they’re, they’re doing, they’re on like that path of reducing plastic. Like I wanted to be uplifting, I wanted to be effective. And like he only, this is like his last project before he retired. So, they were only made for me.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing. I, you know, experiment with all sorts of hair care and I have never thought honestly of a bar 

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah. And that’s actually so exciting because that means that there’s still more, more heads to turn. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, there’s heads to turn. Exactly. That’s a great, that’s a great title for the podcast actually, we’ll call it that. More heads.

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah. And if someone’s out there listening and has tried shampoo and conditioner bars that they love, that’s great, stick with it, you know, but if you’ve tried one that you’ve really, really made you feel like I’m not that excited about this swap, like try Dip. I have a 30-day money back guarantee. Like you don’t have to even worry about it. Like if you don’t like it, you can, well we’ll, we’ll make it right for you. But our return rate is something like .006%. Like most people buy it and stick with it.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing.

Kate Assaraf:

I mean it’s doing everything it’s supposed to because like I love hair care but like I love the idea like for the conditioner bar especially will for most people will replace a full year of conditioner and I used to buy conditioner, an Oribe gold less tube every month. So that’s in non-recyclable plastic, black plastic. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful hair care. But my $32 bar saves me personally over $500 a year. So even if you don’t care about plastic, like everyone cares about saving money. Especially now.

Melinda Wittstock:

Especially now, like, because how can we like afford life? 

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like everything is really expensive. And you think, really, do I really need all these things?

Kate Assaraf:

And the first cuts to come are things like that are luxuries that feel like, like guilty pleasures. A little bit like luxury hair care. Like people, you know, moms especially, I can see them being like, hey, groceries are getting higher. Like, maybe I’ll go for a cheaper hair care. Like, this is silly, this indulgence, you know, but now you don’t really have to make that choice. Someone, you know, can switch from a really high-end shampoo and conditioner and use Dip and it’s like, gives the same results.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. That’s really exciting and inspiring. I mean, not only the sustainability piece, but the fact, it’s just refreshing to hear a business owner say, I’m going to save you money. Because in a way by saying that you, to make your business grow to seven figures and beyond, you have to sell a lot. Right?

Kate Assaraf:

You have to sell a lot.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, right, right. And so, you’re kind of in the seven-figure area now. What does it take to really grow this? It’s growing. It sounds like very much, you know, not only pounding the pavement going to all these stores. Right. But you know, through word of mouth. Right. So, so, so what’s the pace of growth? And, and how do you see yourself navigating that?

Kate Assaraf:

Sure. I purposely make the pace slow and steady. So many business owners I know that have chased hypergrowth and you know, exponential growth, they end up really losing their purpose behind the business. And not everyone, but a lot of the ones that I talk to, they miss the slower days. Do you know what I mean? They miss kind of like the, the early stages where they were in that, that you know, 1 to 5 million and not in like the 20 to 50 million. Like it’s not, it’s a different business when you, when you go into like that next tier of revenue.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Kate Assaraf, CEO and Founder of Dip Sustainable Hair Care.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Kate Assaraf:

But for me, like, what’s really beautiful is I have this business, I have employees, my products are made in America. I have my own factory now. And we hired three people this year. At a time when AI is like having businesses cut corners and reduce headcount left and right, you know, we’re building it in a slow, steady way that feels good and allows our employees to Breathe. They’re like, no one’s on. On an unforgiving hamster wheel in. We call it Dip land in, like, our universe. And as a business owner, that’s like a big source of pride beyond, like, big growth that I can project out to other people.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, it’s kind of. It’s very new and refreshing, but it’s also sort of old. It used to be before the kind of mid-70s, it used to be that businesses really, as their benchmarks, it wasn’t just growth or shareholder value. It was also about their impact on communities, the environment, you know, jobs. I mean, they’re measured in so many ways beyond just that kind of Milton Friedman, you know, totally growth for growth sake. So, it’s kind of like it feels like a time where we can reinvent business in that way. And I almost think that just looking around at what’s going on in the world, that’s going to become necessary anyway. Right?

Kate Assaraf:

I think so too. I think we’re seeing, like, you know, I think we’re seeing a consumer kind of aversion to huge growth companies. 

Melinda Wittstock:

I don’t want to be the product in a kind of surveillance capitalism thing, right.

Kate Assaraf:

Yes, it’s exactly that. It’s, it’s, it’s crazy. And so, you know what’s funny about so I am. I’m in a category. I have more than 200 competitors. And what’s so funny is this whole. It’s relatively new in the past few years where you can go into a competitor’s library and look at all of their ads and then use AI to make ads that look just like theirs. 

Kate Assaraf:

It’s pretty horrible. Like, if you just think about how much mental capital it takes to create an ad and make it effective and make it cool and all these things, and then someone else, your competitor, just come in, scrape it and. And regurgitate it with their own logo. Like, that’s crazy to me. And that’s really one of the core reasons now we haven’t dabbled in ads because we’re like, why don’t we just hand our competitors over everything on a silver platter? And I think the byproduct of all that is seeing every company having the same freaking ads. Like, what is that going to be?

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. So how do you even differentiate? The businesses, I think, that are really going to stand out are the ones that have true human connection, right? Because the more we go AI, the more it’s just going to be refreshing to talk to a huma being like, yeah.

Kate Assaraf:

And to that end, as one of our pledges to our customers is that we do human customer service. You are never thrown into an AI hell loop with Dip. For me, like, every time I order something from somewhere and then I, I get stuck in the AI chatbot thing, I lose my mind because I’m like, oh, this here goes half a day because I can’t get what I need.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, supposed to be efficient, and it’s actually less efficient.

Kate Assaraf:

But I actually don’t know if, like, the motivation is efficiency. I almost think the motivation is to distance yourself from the customer, so it makes it impossible for people to have any complaints. And I think that actually makes people so much angrier. You know, it’s kind of like it’s becoming like this, like, fresher boiler of, like, people that are just angrier all the time because they can’t, like, be made whole by these companies that treat them like, you know, a nothing.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s really true. I think it’s really interesting this, this opportunity, I think, for women in particular, who tend to be not always the case, but tend to be much more motivated by mission and business. Like, we tend to be more likely to go into business because not only do we see a problem that we can fix, but we kind of want to change the world or we want to do something like, around our lives, like balancing motherhood and business.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so, women can really change the face of business. And I see what you’re doing as being part of that. I see more and more women doing that. And in sort of like, it’s like this quiet revolution kind of under the surface is.

Kate Assaraf:

It feels that way. We’re just kind of bubbling. We’re bubbling for now. But I think at some point that old way of being the old new way of doing business, right, which is like, chuck tons of money at Meta. Chuck tons of money at TikTok, chuck tons of money on like fake customers, like fake UGC and influencers. Like that is going to run its course and I think it’s already tapering down in consumer.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think so like as you think even of advertising on, on, on Facebook or Instagram, I mean, you know, the big portion of your ad budget is being shown to bots. Like, I think totally it’s a scam and you don’t really have much transparency and they’re taking all your money. And then your, your point about the AI and how your content, your ads, your intellectual property can be so easily basically stolen So, this makes perfect sense. But it, it makes it harder. Like, so say for instance, if your business had investor. I, I’m assuming that you don’t have any venture capital or anything.

Kate Assaraf:

No.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because if you did, you’d be under so much pressure to be delivering those, hitting those metrics, results, whatever, growth, all of that.

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah, yeah. And I’m a little bit, you know, I’m a little bit counterculture in that way where like, I don’t want, I’m kind of a lone wolf. Like, I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do and how to do it. And I know my customers inside and out and what they want and what they need and how often they need to be emailed, which is not very often because the products last a very long time. And like, I know all of those things. Like it’s. And so, you know, the idea that I could market them into purchasing more doesn’t work. I’ve actually, it’s because sustainability is so different.

Kate Assaraf:

Right. Like, I don’t need to sell the same person like 50 shampoo and conditioner bars because they’re very slow to consume. What I want to do is impress them so much that they tell all their friends and that’s, that’s how it’s been working. Like, I, it’s been a really amazing thing and, and the way we run our company is so it’s with a lot of respect to the customer. Like, I don’t, it’s. I, as a customer of other brands, I feel sometimes disrespected by their marketing teams. Like they want, they, they want to. Like, I almost feel like you buy something and then you like a week later you’re like covered in barnacles, like, and tattoos of that company.

Kate Assaraf:

There are so many touch points that they hit you with. They hit you with, like, you know, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, email. And then, like, now they can get into. If you’re streaming something, then they’re reaching back out to you there. And then, like, Klaviyo can send you something in the mail, and you’re like, God, leave me alone. You know?

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. So, I get the whole sort of organic growth. There are all kinds of different ways that you can grow, you know, you know, presumably other area. Or do. Do you have thoughts of going beyond hair care into doing this with other sort of aspects of the whole beauty business?

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s like, yeah, so we have a few other SKUs that are out there. Like, we have a body or dry body oil that you can use on your body, and your hair is, like, really beautiful. We have a face wash. We have a body wash. But for the most part, like, my core problem that I was trying to solve was this bar dilemma. And it’s.

Kate Assaraf:

I’m not a hair stylist, but I’ve always been just so into hair. I love seeing a choice someone made with their hair, whether it’s bold or traditional or, like, long, short, you know, vibrant in braids, whatever it is, like, Mohawk. Like, don’t even get me started on Mohawks.

Kate Assaraf:

I love seeing one out in the world. I love that, like, the mullet has come back. Like, there’s so many cool things about hair and personality, and I just, you know, I want to focus on the thing that gets me excited, because I think once you start branching out into the things that don’t get you so excited, then you start to, like, lose the twinkle in your eye of your own business, you know?

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. And so, are you US-only, or do you have plans to expand in other countries?

Kate Assaraf:

No, we’re USA only. We’re made here. Except for the accessories. Those are made overseas. But I don’t have. I don’t need to be like, the Globo brand of shampoo and conditioner bars. I just, you know, I. I love to be a brand that people trust and love and gift and share and talk about.

Kate Assaraf:

Those things are really, really important to me. And if, you know, the revenue was lateral every month, we’d be in, like, a nice spot. I know it’s like not a traditional business owner answer to be like, what, you know, what’s next? Like, what, how do you want to grow? And it’s like, I think the pace we’re growing at is so beautiful and so real that I’m comfortable kind of keeping on this course.

Melinda Wittstock:

So as someone who goes back and forth between Canada and the United States, it would be nice.

Kate Assaraf:

It would be.

Melinda Wittstock:

You got a good market here in Canada. I mean, don’t forget.

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah. Well, right now, right now, what’s happening with, you know, consumers in Canada, they’re prioritizing Canadian brands, and I totally get that. So, there’s some really awesome Canadian brands in my category. But if you did want to purchase Dip with and avoid the duties. We are, you know, we’re registered in Canada. But the place I tell everyone to shop is this place called Milieu Market. 

Kate Assaraf:

Julia is her name. She owns a refillery, I think, in Manitoba. And her, you know, she’s just a very cool, eco-friendly person who has now opened, I believe, a second location in Canada. And she’s just very true to the cause. And so, anyone who’s in Canada listening, like, please shop at Milieu Market. She’s dominating right now with the Dip sales.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m in Vancouver right now in British Columbia, you know, otherwise I’m in Santa Monica. And it’s so interesting how, just how seriously people take recycling and refilling here. Just culturally, like, it’s just, yeah, done deal.

Kate Assaraf:

You know, so beautiful there. Like, why wouldn’t you want to protect the place that you live?

Melinda Wittstock:

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there’s like a real discipline around it and like, people take it seriously. 

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah. I used to live in Santa Monica, and I didn’t find it to be the same as, like, how people were in Canada with sustainability, which is not at all.

Melinda Wittstock:

No.

Kate Assaraf:

Right. Isn’t that crazy? It’s wild to me.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like, people sort of recycle. But then you see, like that it’s not actually being recycled. The whole, the system around it isn’t really working like how it’s been supposed to do, you know.

Kate Assaraf:

Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, when you started your business, did you bootstrap it? Did you have any kind of completely bootstrapped?

Kate Assaraf:

I completely bootstrapped. I, you know, everything’s done pretty much in house. The first 18 months I, you know, worked with the chemist and then my husband and I designed the logo together and we made the packaging. My, you know, we did it all together, did all the proof, so literally everything. So it was, it was lots. We had two little kids at the time. They’re still little, but they’re littler at that time. And we worked from like 9pm after they went to bed till sometimes 2, 3 in the morning.

Kate Assaraf:

And then we’d wake up the next day and try and be parents again and then complete that cycle. So, we’d pull a lot of like almost all-nighters to make it work while we had little kids.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. How old are your kids now?

Kate Assaraf:

They’re seven and nine. Almost ten.

Melinda Wittstock:

I found that entrepreneurship made me a better mom. Being a mom made me a better entrepreneur

Kate Assaraf:

Me too. And, and sometimes, sometimes you fall like in the build phase especially. It’s, it’s so hard to do both. Right. Because you have to be like dedicated to both things and there’s only one of you. Like I, I would say the first few years of life, it’s very mom intensive. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, and so things that had to slip… like, like the…

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah. The house totally slipped.

Melinda Wittstock:

The house just the, the social life too wasn’t great, you know, period.

Kate Assaraf:

No. But when your kids are really little, your social life is inside the four walls you’re in anyway. So yeah, it’s not easy, but I don’t want like if anyone’s listening and has like little kids, it is possible, you know, I don’t want you to put off your, your unscratchable itch. Like don’t, don’t avoid scratching it because you have kids, sometimes it makes you better.

Melinda Wittstock:

It does make you better. Like I look back in that period, where like I’m just missing a lot of cultural references, like movies like, wait, wait, what happened? 

Kate Assaraf:

That’s so funny. Yeah, I think we were all in a fog when our kids were little.

Melinda Wittstock:

So you are, are like not on Amazon, these Big Box kind of, you’re like avoiding all of that. Consumers are incredible. Increasingly. Like, you see all this boycott energy…

Kate Assaraf:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

…Around those companies now as well. Like people purposely making decisions about where they want to shop, who they want to be aligned with, whose values do they share. And so entrepreneurs, you know, I remember getting advice from somebody a long time ago. It’s kind of not just what you stand for, but what you stand against and being brave enough to say that. So how do you like navigate that, especially in like a social media world of, you know, you get all these haters, you get all these, you know, how do you, how do you deal with all that?

Kate Assaraf:

Our social media is the thing that we stand against is plastic and you know, Amazon not paying their fair share of taxes. Like those are the things and, and protecting our oceans, like, and our lakes, those are the things we really stand against. And we let all of the other issues that are, we, we don’t touch them. And it’s not fear-based; it’s more of an inclusion thing because I’ve noticed that everyone is so divisive on so many topics, you know, and it’s, it’s very, very difficult to navigate that. But the thing that, that, the thing that we can show is that like, hey, you know, we, we support all these causes. They actually put my money where my causes are.

Kate Assaraf:

So, like we donate. We’re now on track to donate $50,000 total to Surfrider over the past two years. And they send people to Congress to fight plastic laws. Right. To make the actual changes. We, you know, we just recently supported a group during, like for trans individuals during Pride in Staten Island. And then we also supported a group that was that, you know, they rehabilitate people who have been in prison and come out and then they need personal care while they’re in this home to kind of get back on their feet. And so, some of those things are a little bit bipartisan.

Kate Assaraf:

I am very, very much, you know, where there’s help and where we need to help, like, Dip will be there. And I think the human experience isn’t kind of divided into two different political parties. I think we’re all kind of very much. I don’t know. I think there needs to be. Especially when it comes to the environment, we need everyone we can get in the mix.

Kate Assaraf:

So, I try not to do any, like, super divisive social media posts, and that is really tricky because I do have my opinions on a lot of things that are personal.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Because that could be hard to navigate.

Kate Assaraf:

You know, it’s very difficult.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Because there’s things you want to say, but personally. But then you think, okay, well, wait a minute. Like, I have. In my case, I have a podcast platform that’s all about empowerment and empowering content creators to be able to own their own data, own their own content stuff. But it spans the entire, like, all views. Do you know what I mean?

Kate Assaraf:

Totally. I mean, there’s.

Melinda Wittstock:

And then there’s my. My views. Right. So, like, I want to pose my views on everybody else, but on the other hand, I kind of do, you.

Kate Assaraf:

It’s timely this year because I’m Iranian, so my dad is in Iran, and my siblings were born. Some of them were born and raised in Iran. But now we’re all over here, except my dad is still in Iran. And, you know, I converted to Judaism, so I have, like, this whole other side, and those are both hot topics right now. And the takeaway I project out on these hot topics is that I am so excited that I have the freedom to talk about hair and use hair. I wouldn’t be able to do that had I been born overseas. It’s a real privilege to be here and to be able to celebrate hair. As an Iranian woman, that is very, very cool. And so that’s kind of how I navigate that right now. And for some people, that might be shallow, and for other people it might be considered deep. 

Kate Assaraf:

I don’t know. It’s really a litmus test for the listener on how they. How they feel about those things, you know?

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. Well, your story and everything you’re doing, Kate, is so inspiring, and I want to make sure everyone knows how to find your amazing hair care.

Kate Assaraf:

Sure. So, the name of the brand is Dip. You can find it on Dipalready.com and our social handles are at Dip already. But what I would like you to do is if you are intrigued at all and you’re listening, just go onto Dipalready.com, click on the store locator, and see if there’s a place local to you that has it. Because something that’s very important to me is getting people back into stores and using their, you know, their purchasing power to support stores, really making a difference and keeping your money in your town, working for you, your libraries, your teachers, instead of sending it off to, like, the Amazon gods, like, keep the money circulating where you live. And so, if you can, if you can do that and even shop in state, most places will ship to you. I’ll also ship to you directly from the website. But that’s something that’s really important for people to remember, like to go out their front door and find the places close to them that are really being the change.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Kate Assaraf:

Thank you so much for having me. It was really nice, and I appreciate the questions you asked me today. They’re. They’re really amazing.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Kate Assaraf is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Dip Sustainable Hair Care, building a 7-figure beauty brand without Amazon, big-box retailers, or influencer gimmicks.

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

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