Ep 269 | Sara Happ

Written By Yasmin Nouri

Leaving Corporate, Disrupting the Beauty Industry From Her Kitchen & Turning Top Celebrities Into Raving Fans

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Sara Happ is the founder of Sara Happ Inc., a beauty company that creates luxury lip products and is best known for launching the first-to-market lip exfoliator called the Lip Scrub.

While lip scrubs are a no-brainer for all the beauty gurus out there, it wasn’t always this way. Sara began experimenting with the "lip scrub" recipe while working for ESPN, where the freezing Connecticut winters left her lips chapped. Seeing that there was a massive hole in the market, Sara drained all $10,000 from her savings account, started formulating her lip scrubs with sugars and edible essential oils bought from Whole Foods, and created the first batches of her new invention in her own kitchen. She was doing all of this as a side hustle until one day in 2006, her products were featured in People Magazine, and she came home to thousands of orders. That’s when Sara realized that she was on to something that would completely change the trajectory of her life.

In this week’s episode, Sara talks to us about how she managed moments of adversity over the past two decades of running her company, how she made a complete pivot from her stable corporate job at ESPN to creating her infamous lip scrub. She dives deeper into the early vision for the brand, how she creatively got it into the hands of celebrities like Reese Witherspoon in the very early days when she was still making it out of her kitchen, and what it was like to have her website crash while getting thousands of orders. Sara also shares how she managed the competitors that came into the space and what she did to build momentum for the brand despite more players entering the market. She also opens up about how she dealt with burnout, the challenges and lessons that COVID brought into her life, the eventual sale of the company in 2023, and so much more. 

Show Notes:

  • Managing low moments and adversity. [03:35]

  • Influence of Sara’s upbringing. [07:05]

  • Breakthrough moment and ESPN lessons. [08:59]

  • Origin of the lip scrub idea. [11:48]

  • Sara’s early vision for the brand. [15:05]

  • The initial steps in creating the first product. [16:10]

  • Introducing the product to the market. [18:25]

  • Reese Witherspoon trying the product and gaining attention. [22:40]

  • The biggest inflection point for the company that brought in thousands of orders. [24:04]

  • Leaving her job to focus on the brand. [24:58]

  • Finding the initial lab and noticing gender dynamics in the corporate realm. [28:58]

  • Proving doubters wrong fueled Sara. [31:12]

  • Creating the next best-selling product, Lip Slip. [32:58]

  • Why Sara maintained concentration solely on lip products. [39:14]

  • Handling competitors in 2012. [41:31]

  • Sara’s advice for entrepreneurs seeking momentum. [45:36]

  • Dealing with burnout and advice to her younger self. [48:26]

  • Journey through COVID and selling the company in 2023. [51:05]

  • Embracing the founder role and controlling her time. [58:26]

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Ep 270 | Michelle Shapiro
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Ep 268 | Sabeena Ladha