The ARTwork of YOU with Lori Gouhin

Ep 78 From Entrepreneur Hardship to Sustainable Success: How Kate Assaraf Built Dip Haircare with Integrity & Intention

• Lori Gouhin • Season 2 • Episode 78

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In this powerful and deeply inspiring episode of The ARTwork of YOU, host Lori Gouhin sits down with Kate Assaraf, the resilient and visionary founder of Dip, a plastic-free, salon-quality haircare brand. Kate shares her journey from the emotional and financial devastation of closing her first business to becoming New Jersey’s 2024 Mompreneur of the Year.

Kate opens up about overcoming shame, imposter syndrome, and the mental health toll of entrepreneurial failure offering a refreshingly honest take on what it means to rebuild a business from rock bottom. She also dives into how her eco-conscious values and passion for high-performance beauty products fueled the creation of Dip.

Whether you’re a wellness-focused entrepreneur, conscious consumer, or a busy mom looking for truly effective sustainable haircare, this episode will leave you inspired and running out to get your hands on Dip for your whole family.


Episode Highlights:

5:00 “Mompreneur” vs. Entrepreneur: Why juggling business and motherhood is a different kind of hustle and why validation still matters.

6:00 Kate shares the painful end of her first business partnership and the emotional toll it took.


8:00 “Passion doesn’t transfer”: Why Kate no longer believes in partnerships and what she learned the hard way.

10:11Reflecting on limiting beliefs: Are you choosing a partner—or avoiding your own growth?

14:00 Faking confidence until it’s real: How consulting helped Kate rebuild her self-belief and fund her next business.


17:30 Starting over: Why Kate chose to create a similar business—and how she did everything better the second time.


19:00 The bold decision to stay off Amazon and say no to influencer hype.
21:00 Supporting refill stores and local economies: Why Kate chose community over scale.


27:45 Entrepreneurial advice: Why outsourcing is smarter than partnering, and how to stay in your zone of genius.


29:11Redefining success: It’s okay not to scale. 




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[00:00:30] Lori Gouhin: Hello my friends. I am so glad that you are here with me today because today we have a very special guest. We have Kate Assaraf. She is the founder and CEO of Dip, sustainable haircare. She is a Forbes columnist and New Jersey's mompreneur of the year 2024. After experiencing an emotional and financial fallout of closing her first business, Kate rebuilt from rock Bottom with a [00:01:00] new mission to create a beauty brand that heals more than just Hair Dip is a plastic-free salon quality haircare line built on integrity, intention, and small business values.

[00:01:13] Lori Gouhin: Welcome to the ARTwork of YOU Kate. I am so glad to have you here today. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your space with me. Absolutely. Let me just start off by first saying I love your product. I was not familiar with it and I must say I was a little skeptical at first. Specifically I think about the conditioner bar.

[00:01:32] Lori Gouhin: I thought, oh, that's not gonna get the knots out for me. But oh my gosh, I love both products and the hair and body oil as well. Really, really great stuff. 

[00:01:41] Kate Assaraf: Thanks so much. Yeah, the conditioner bar was really the whole reason my company existed in the first place because I felt that so many fell short of what I expected a conditioner to do.

[00:01:52] Kate Assaraf: And yeah, that's, it's my magnum opus. I love that thing so much. So thank you for calling that when I was. Specifically. 

[00:01:58] Lori Gouhin: Awesome. Yeah. And you know, I [00:02:00] made my husband try it too. He's like, now what? What am I doing in here? And I'm like, the round one is conditioner, the other one is this, the shampoo. Just use that one.

[00:02:08] Lori Gouhin: But he, he's like, oh, this is really good. I really love it. And I was surprised at how much it really lathers. 

[00:02:14] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. Yeah. I wanted the experience to be the same. So it really felt like the only thing you were getting rid of was the bottle? Yeah. You know, but you're actually with Dip

[00:02:21] Kate Assaraf: if you're buying really expensive salon grade haircare, which a lot of women do, it's like our one indulgence now. The, the Dip bars will save you a lot of money. Like the conditioner bar alone. You'll see even with the two of you using it, it might last more than a year. 

[00:02:36] Lori Gouhin: Wow, that's amazing. And I love that.

[00:02:40] Lori Gouhin: You can also leave it in if you, if you want, I think. And I live close by the beach and I go to the ocean a lot and I love swimming in the ocean and the pool, so I think that's awesome to just take that bar with you.

[00:02:51] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. And it won't melt in the sun.

[00:02:53] Kate Assaraf: I think it'll, it can stay up to like a hundred, 10, 115 degrees before it starts to get softer. But like I made sure [00:03:00] that it won't melt if you take it to the beach. 'cause that was something that really concerned me, like having a conditioner bar that just melt all into your beach bag 

[00:03:07] Lori Gouhin: or, I wasn't even thinking that, but that's great.

[00:03:09] Lori Gouhin: That's great to know. I guess you could always put it in a cooler, but you don't need to. So. Perfect. Yeah. 

[00:03:14] Kate Assaraf: That's actually why it's called Dip is so you dip the bar in water and run it down your hair and you're good to go. 

[00:03:20] Lori Gouhin: Perfect, perfect, perfect. Let's talk first about mompreneur of 2024. That's so exciting.

[00:03:28] Lori Gouhin: do you have one child and multiple children? 

[00:03:30] Kate Assaraf: I have two children. They're both boys. One is seven and the other one is nine. It's a really, I don't know. It's a fun gig being, yeah, I have three 

[00:03:39] Lori Gouhin: girls. So You do? Yeah. No boys. Three girls. So how did that all come about? 

[00:03:44] Lori Gouhin: So. 

[00:03:44] Kate Assaraf: I applied on a whim. I had a friend who had won it in 2020. My friend Deanna, she owns good bottle refill shop, and she was actually the first person to expose me to refilling as an option. So you go to her store and you can refill hand soap, laundry soap, [00:04:00] everything's plastic free. And I went to her soft opening as a stranger in 2019 and 

[00:04:05] Kate Assaraf: the whole concept of refilling all of these things that we already had bottles for, blew my mind. And so I saw, I remember her winning in 2020 and I thought, I just saw an advertisement like, oh, you know, shoot your shot for Mompreneur of the year. And so I did. And. Actually when they called me to say like that I won I thought it was a prank call, like I thought, but there was no way.

[00:04:29] Kate Assaraf: There was no way because, I'm very quiet about my business, to be honest, and, and even my social media as a, as a person, I'm, I'm quiet and private. And I, I. Felt so elated that the thing that I was doing and the thing that I was making and the way I was running my business caught the attention of New Jersey Family, which is a big magazine here in, in New Jersey.

[00:04:49] Kate Assaraf: It felt surreal. 

[00:04:50] Lori Gouhin: That's amazing. You know, I always say validation is not necessary. We don't need it. But boy, it sure a nice bonus when it happens. 

[00:04:58] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. And 

[00:04:59] Lori Gouhin: there's something [00:05:00] about 

[00:05:00] Kate Assaraf: being an entrepreneur and a mother. it's a very difficult to be either one of those things. So I almost feel like the term mompreneur kind of diminishes.

[00:05:09] Kate Assaraf: That, but Uhhuh, honestly, it's like being an a regular entrepreneur, except you're interrupted every five to 10 minutes. Absolutely, 

[00:05:17] Lori Gouhin: yes. And you have something always on your mind, right? Because there's always something going on with the kids and always something going on with business too. It's like one of those things you don't, you just don't leave it behind a regular five job.

[00:05:28] Lori Gouhin: Yeah. It's always there. Always present. Yeah. But you know, I wouldn't trade it for the world myself. 

[00:05:33] Kate Assaraf: No, me either. Either, both gigs are wonderful. 

[00:05:36] Lori Gouhin: Good. So tell me about, you had another business that you said that you closed down, and I understand, I've had several businesses. Tell me about what were you doing before and what all happened?

[00:05:47] Lori Gouhin: So I had a similar business and 

[00:05:49] Kate Assaraf: I I ended up, I didn't think I could do it myself, so I partnered up with another group and it ended up being that the partnership was. It just didn't work out is the nicest way to say it. [00:06:00] And what's so crazy is I put so much of my heart and soul. I was like, the face and the and the voice behind that particular brand, and I'd put so much heart and soul into it.

[00:06:09] Kate Assaraf: And it felt like when I had to close it when the partnership ended, I had to close it. It felt like a piece of me was being sawed off, if that made sense. Because I think we put so much pressure on ourselves to be so involved in our business and work is such 

[00:06:24] Kate Assaraf: a large chunk of who you identify as when you're an American people, first thing is what do you do? Yeah. And I, when I started Dip, I decided, I was like, I was never, ever let my business be so important to me. That it felt like a chunk of my body was missing when it went away.

[00:06:42] Kate Assaraf: I don't know whether you had that experience too when you had other businesses closed. 

[00:06:45] Lori Gouhin: I never went into business with a partner, let me, let's talk about that for a minute, because I do have a good friend who also had gone into partnership. And she describes this very similar experience when that partnership dissolved.

[00:06:58] Lori Gouhin: It didn't work out for various [00:07:00] reasons, but when it did dissolve, again, she had devoted so much time, energy, heart, soul, everything. And she, as you was the face of the brand as well and it, it really can. Take a toll on you, like as you describe a a part of your body being gone.

[00:07:16] Lori Gouhin: And I think she describes it in the same way, it just can really take a knock on your confidence as well. Absolutely. That makes it harder to go on. And it's funny you said. You felt like you couldn't do it alone. So you went into partnership. She describes the same thing. 

[00:07:31] Kate Assaraf: Mm-hmm. 

[00:07:31] Lori Gouhin: I wonder what that's about.

[00:07:32] Lori Gouhin: I think a lot of times with women I don't think that you see it as much with men that they feel that they can't do it alone. What do you think that's about? I. Maybe 

[00:07:41] Kate Assaraf: we all have an unhealthy dose of IM imposter syndrome. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Maybe we're trained as we grow up to think that, women are more social and wanna do things together.

[00:07:54] Kate Assaraf: Where maybe boys are raised to, be fully confident and autonomous. I don't know which [00:08:00] one it is or whether. I had a lot of self-doubt starting a business. Starting a business is scary. Yeah. Like it's a scary thing. And I thought that I could find another person that would fill in the things that I didn't think were My best skills. And it turned out is I think you just cannot share your passion. I think that's the lesson I learned. Like you, if you're very passionate about something, you cannot expect someone else to be. 

[00:08:23] Kate Assaraf: Passion doesn't transfer. Yeah. It's something that. I learned very quickly is that I would've been so much better off finding an employee or finding, someone else like that didn't, wasn't part of the big picture to have in the business in a different kind of capacity instead of partner and it's a cautionary tale.

[00:08:42] Kate Assaraf: A lot of us have this tale where we partnered with the wrong person and then you can't really tell any of the details of what happened, right? Mm-hmm.I had a partnership. It didn't work out. It killed the business. And then after the aftermath of that, where I can start is really like the, it's like the b, c, e, right?

[00:08:59] Kate Assaraf: Like I, [00:09:00] I had to spatula myself off the ground. It was like financially had nothing I don't know how to explain the toll it takes on you the amount of shame of publicly closing a business that all your friends have rooted for you and friends of friends. And then it gets to be actual, like stranger customers root for you.

[00:09:16] Kate Assaraf: And then the shame of just having zero explanation and closing that down and looking like a failure, even though the failure might not have been the business. The failure was the partnership. Yeah, it. The shame is crippling, and I don't think I have ever experienced shame. In that way, I think I would've rather peed my pants on stage than gone through like the business shame that I felt I was experiencing.

[00:09:40] Lori Gouhin: I love that you really bring up a lot of important things. The first one being that your passion can't be transferred. I've never really heard it put that way before, but you're exactly right. It's to bring it back to moms. It's no one's going to love your kids the way that you do.

[00:09:52] Lori Gouhin: That can't be transferred totally. People might love your kids, but not the way that. The mom is going to love the kids. Absolutely. And yeah. And business [00:10:00] the same way. And it does make sense, for those of listeners, 'cause I have a lot of entrepreneur listeners that are thinking of starting a business to really give it some thought as to why you are choosing a partner.

[00:10:11] Lori Gouhin: Is it because of your own limiting beliefs? Is it because of it's a shared passion that might be, an okay way to go, but really reflect on what your reasons are. And I would say never do it because of limiting beliefs that'll work through them first. 

[00:10:24] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. I would say it was the most expensive MBAI could have ever gotten.

[00:10:28] Kate Assaraf: Just the lesson in business. It was one of those things where it's just ugh. Had only I known had I only been this person today that I was, then I. But that's the point of growth. 

[00:10:37] Lori Gouhin: Yeah, absolutely. And it gets us somehow miraculously to right where we're supposed to be, even if we can't see it at the time.

[00:10:43] Lori Gouhin: Often we're too close to see it. But the other thing that you brought up was shame. And I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago and one of the speakers at the conference, she she lives in the palisade, so she experienced those fires out in California and the majority of her speech was about [00:11:00] the fires.

[00:11:00] Lori Gouhin: But she had also been miss. Canada, she's from Canada, so she was a pageant person. And at the end of her speech, which was really riveting, she brought up shame and she brought up shame attached to not just things that are failures, but also shame around things that are supposed to be successes.

[00:11:19] Lori Gouhin: Yeah. And I think she was alluding maybe to some of the pageant stuff and some other things. She was also a TV personality. But yeah, shame is a real thing. you can tell someone all day long, right? There's nothing to be ashamed of, but it is something we so internalize and it's, I'd say, one of the hardest things to get out of.

[00:11:37] Lori Gouhin: I, I a hundred 

[00:11:38] Kate Assaraf: percent agree and I could not imagine the kind of shame and. Depression, I felt until I went through it. I don't think I actually really understood mental health. I don't think I, I understood the concept. I didn't really understand until I went through it. So I did seven months of a business breakup and I was so sick.

[00:11:57] Kate Assaraf: Like I was, I'm five foot eight, I went down to [00:12:00] 118 pounds. I started to lose my vision. I lost a lot of my hair from stress, and then I came out the other side. And I didn't even look like myself. I couldn't, I had lost like all confidence. I had lost all, I didn't lose a passion for hair, I loved hair.

[00:12:14] Kate Assaraf: But then I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, how could I ever start a haircare brand? I have no hair left. It was like, it was one of those where it was like, I felt like everything I'd ever loved had been like ripped from me and I felt angry and. I don't know how to explain how it, it really felt.

[00:12:29] Kate Assaraf: But now looking back I almost, it's almost like laughable that I felt that way. Like now that I'm on the outside of myself and I can hover over what hap like how I was feeling, I'm the feel that intensity of how I felt doesn't make sense to me, and I Because you come through the other side finally.

[00:12:45] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. And I've readjusted this business to not mean it's, this business means a lot to me. I love my business, but I am not. In love with my business. 

[00:12:53] Lori Gouhin: Yeah, that makes sense. And let's talk for a minute about those feelings because it, they can come from all different reasons.

[00:12:59] Lori Gouhin: Maybe people [00:13:00] going through divorce and a breakup that way, or people losing a business and they really are at rock bottom and it affects their health, it affects their confidence, their courage. Or maybe they haven't gone through anything significant like that, but a lot of people grow up in a situation where they've never been celebrated, and so they're just.

[00:13:20] Lori Gouhin: Low confidence, imposter, all the things really their whole life. But they wanna make changes and they wanna start something. So how were you able to go from quote unquote, like a rock bottom kind of place to, to really just garner your strength and your courage again, to not only just start another business, but start a similar business?

[00:13:38] Lori Gouhin: I had to, 

[00:13:40] Kate Assaraf: Fake confidence a lot. So in the beginning I just took consulting jobs and I saved everything I. Could from the consulting jobs and then put it aside as I was as I was building Dip on the side. That's really what I did. I had to fake the confidence. I, even though I felt empty inside when I say empty, like beyond empty, like [00:14:00] it's just, I felt I was a phony for going and consulting because my business, the optics of it was that it had failed, but the reality was is I had worn so many hats for that business and learned so much with it closing that I pretty much could look at any other thing and identify problem solutions really fast.

[00:14:18] Kate Assaraf: And so I let myself trick myself into thinking that was some sort of superpower at the time. So I could, I think it's a superpower. I don't, I dunno. So I could like, scrape enough, scrape enough in the pan to get myself, some confidence to wear. And and yeah, so I. I consulted, I saved my husband had also lost his job during that time.

[00:14:39] Kate Assaraf: Ugh. And so the two of us were just like, we have to make something work. We either have to both find jobs now, or we have to, pare down everything we're spending. Just put everything on hold. Let's not let the kids know how bad things are. Even though they could tell I was like a zombie walking around my house.

[00:14:57] Kate Assaraf: It was insane. And. Let's [00:15:00] just build, we did it once. We could do it again. Let's do it. And so we did we tried really hard to not let the kids know. So we would wake up at four or four 30 in the morning work, then they would wake up, then we'd get them to school and then, we were able to work during that time.

[00:15:13] Kate Assaraf: And then after they went to bed, we'd work again. And it was a lot. 

[00:15:18] Lori Gouhin: It was a lot. I can totally relate to that because we went through a similar losing everything time back in 2008, 2009. My gosh. And at the time I was homeschooling our kids, so they're around and we had a a little one who's a toddler and middle school.

[00:15:33] Lori Gouhin: And elementary school and. It was like everything I could do to shelter my kids from knowing that, and some people might disagree with that because they say, they. Whatever. You shouldn't shelter them. They should know what's going on, but I did not wanna give them any stress. As children.

[00:15:50] Lori Gouhin: And so you, it's just such a heavy weight to bear because you're dealing with your own stress and then the stress of keeping it from your kids. I can so relate to that and I'm sure a lot of [00:16:00] people listening can as well. And that's something I don't really hear people talk about much. 

[00:16:04] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. Life will hand them enough stress, if while they're little you can keep their nervous systems intact, like that's.

[00:16:10] Kate Assaraf: That, that was very important to me. I don't know what kind of upbringing you had, but my upbringing was like full of divorce and stress and all those things, and they let me know what was going on 

[00:16:19] Lori Gouhin: all the time. So I exactly the same. Plus I grew up Catholic, which I think has a lot to do with shame and guilt.

[00:16:25] Lori Gouhin: Oh yeah. But yeah, no, same kind of thing. So yeah, I guess that makes sense that I would wanna do the opposite. Yeah. With my kids and you as well. 

[00:16:36] Kate Assaraf: Who knows what's right. We won't find out until our kids have kids and they're like, no we're gonna let them know everything that's going on. And it might just be like one of those pendulum swing things.

[00:16:44] Lori Gouhin: Yeah. You never know. You're exactly right. I can say I have two adult children now. Actually three adult children. My youngest is in college, but they're beautiful people and they seem super well adjusted if I do say so, but so I think it's a good. As long as you can keep a balance.

[00:16:59] Lori Gouhin: I don't [00:17:00] wanna, shelter them from everything. And of course they need to know how things are on a certain level. But again, when you're going through so much stress, especially financial stress I don't think it's right to burden the children personally. Totally. 

[00:17:12] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. Yeah. I also love that you had got like a twinkle in your eye when you were talking about your children.

[00:17:16] Kate Assaraf: It's just so nice to 

[00:17:18] Lori Gouhin: I can't help it. Yeah, they're great girls. I'm very blessed with a beautiful family. My husband and I have been married for 32 years. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's all good. But all right, so you have the courage now suddenly you're like, all right, nose to the grindstone, really, with your husband.

[00:17:33] Lori Gouhin: And what makes you decide to start a similar company to the one before? Was there any concern around that or any? There 

[00:17:40] Kate Assaraf: was. I fought for the right to make sure that I could so I had to start from scratch. I had to do everything new. Everything. I couldn't salvage anything from the other business is fine.

[00:17:49] Kate Assaraf: I said every, I did everything from scratch and I was like, you know what? If it's your second rodeo, you've gotta do it better. Everything has to be better. And so I redid, all of [00:18:00] the research because information always changes. Yeah, I took everything I learned from that first business that made me like, a sharper knife.

[00:18:07] Kate Assaraf: And I went and I. Just went into Dip knowing exactly who my customer was and who they weren't. Exactly who's not being reached in the market and who, and what motivated people to make sustainable choices versus what made people just not care at all and all of that. That kind of, I. Learnings. All the learnings I got from that first business really shaped how I run this one.

[00:18:31] Kate Assaraf: And I run this business so differently and it is so freeing to run it differently and in my own way without any kind of. Expectations of growth or expectations of just I'm not trying to be the biggest haircare brand in the world, like I don't need that. What I really love is just making a difference in with this certain set of customers that seem to really identify with what I'm trying to do.

[00:18:56] Lori Gouhin: I love that and. I love that I, something that I read about [00:19:00] you is that you're not on Amazon and you're not sending things out to influencers. And again, like you said, you're not. Concerned with being the biggest or the ba, the whatever, the most wealthy brand. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:19:13] Lori Gouhin: Because in today's economy, I'm sure you got a lot of pushback from SoCo maybe experts telling you really need to be on Amazon, or you really need to have Oh, yeah. Some kind of social media plan with influencers, but and again, staying true to your values and you mentioned freedom.

[00:19:28] Lori Gouhin: And to me, freedom is like my biggest core value. And when you s. I think the freedom comes automatically when you stick to those values, which you clearly are doing. So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. 

[00:19:39] Kate Assaraf: First of all, Amazon is one of these things that is, it's an amazing it's a godsend for a lot of people that are.

[00:19:46] Kate Assaraf: In rural areas where they don't have stores there it's totally transformed shopping for so many people. But there's always a dark side to what, some light, right? There's usually there is. And the dark side is that it's destroyed [00:20:00] the mom and pop stores in neighborhoods across America.

[00:20:03] Kate Assaraf: It's even starting to take, destroy the targets and the Walmarts and, but that's even, and the big box. But my primary focus is the refill store owners. Specifically the people that do all of the homework for you on what's good in the plastic-free community? What's worth purchasing? They, 'cause what I learned from my first brand is, was about refillers, like Deanna from Good Bottle Refill Shop.

[00:20:24] Kate Assaraf: She opened the first Refiller I'd ever walked into and now I've been in probably 150 refillers around the country. And what these people that own Refillers are doing is they are tasked with educating communities about. Which plastic free items are great and what, ingredients they should or shouldn't have in their household for the safety of their families.

[00:20:46] Kate Assaraf: And in a world of just digital abundance where you're getting bombarded with ads and bombarded with, I don't know, all sorts of just information fake, like cherry picked science and all sorts of stuff out there, the refill [00:21:00] store owners are very grounded in truth and safety and ingredient knowledge. And I want.

[00:21:06] Kate Assaraf: If I put my products on Amazon instead of in a Refiller, like they would lose all of their Dip sales. I love having my products on a shelf where the store owners have vetted them, made sure that they're worthy of their shelves and have tried, we Dip has maybe over 200 competitors. These store owners have tried them all and have chosen to stock Dip, and that is very important to me.

[00:21:30] Kate Assaraf: So it's like mutually beneficial for me to send people to their stores and also for them to stock it. 

[00:21:36] Lori Gouhin: I love that. I can totally relate. One of our first businesses was we had a retail sporting goods store. We sold mountain bikes, road bikes, skateboards and snowboards. We lived in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, and so as a mom and pop store owner for 10 years, and I could, we got out of that business at around the 10 year mark because it was so hard to compete at that time with the big box stores.

[00:21:59] Lori Gouhin: Because [00:22:00] Walmart and Target were starting to be able to sell the accessories. Retail for cheaper than we could buy them wholesale. Yeah. And so you start to see the writing on the wall, but there's nothing that. Can be that mom and pop. You go in and have conversations with people, you have community with people.

[00:22:16] Lori Gouhin: You make lifelong friends. Yeah. You don't get that on Amazon. Nobody's having a conversation with you explaining the difference between this or that, or helping you decide what's maybe the best product for you. 

[00:22:26] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. And people, it's a lost art shopping in small stores, I say, go into a small store once, and that's like a cool experience, but go in there the second time.

[00:22:35] Kate Assaraf: The feeling of having the store owner remember you is so nice, and remembering what you bought and knowing a little bit about you. Like I, I know even this is not a good example, but even the liquor store down the street, if I go and buy a bottle of wine, he'll always ask what's the occasion like, where are you going this time?

[00:22:53] Kate Assaraf: And he knows the other people in count. It's just. I should have used the bookstore as an express. No, that's all good. 

[00:22:59] Lori Gouhin: I love it. I love [00:23:00] it. I love a good cocktail and glass of wine myself. 

[00:23:03] Kate Assaraf: That's all good. But no it's just an amazing, it's an amazing fiber of a community and people don't even think about every time you shop, decide to shop on Amazon instead of in your community your money goes to Amazon, which doesn't pay you.

[00:23:17] Kate Assaraf: It's fair share of taxes, but if you keep, if you shop in your own town, your money gets recirculated through the libraries, the police departments, fire departments, EMTs, like all of stuff is your money then works for you. 

[00:23:30] Lori Gouhin: Yeah. As an artist I'm always encouraging people to buy from a local artisan.

[00:23:36] Lori Gouhin: I do sell online of course as well, but, not mass produce. I only sell original work. I don't even sell prints, which might may or may not change. But for now, as long as I've been an artist, I've chosen only to do original work. And I think it's so important to, to celebrate and support local artists, whether that's an artist in making shampoo and conditioner or an artisan like me making paintings.

[00:23:57] Lori Gouhin: It's so important. And I think [00:24:00] sometimes it does get lost with all of the. Noise that's out there. And as you said, you're constantly being bombarded with ads. Sometimes I feel like social media is just one, one big ad. You're just scrolling and it's everybody talking at you trying to sell you something.

[00:24:15] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. It's very much that. And so while every other brand goes digital, I just want analog. And I would, I. I think, I just think it's a nicer experience to shop in a store. 

[00:24:26] Lori Gouhin: I definitely agree and I think that I hope that the tide will turn, not that I want Amazon to not be in business or anything like that, but I hope that the tide and I think it will as more and more people search for and seek out community and connection with others.

[00:24:42] Lori Gouhin: Just all the online meetings. I know we're having one right now. But there is a real pull to go back to in-person stuff, in-person work and person networking. And in-person buying. Yeah. And I, 

[00:24:54] Kate Assaraf: I don't work in an office anymore. I'm working out of my home, but I remember how fun it [00:25:00] was to go to an office be part of something bigger than myself, there, there's something so lost about, now we're making transactions online. And you're like siloed and you're sitting or just idle somewhere shopping instead of going out and just experiencing the tactile feel of just being around the merchandise before you buy it.

[00:25:20] Lori Gouhin: Yeah. No, I totally agree. So what do you think's next on the horizon? Do you feel like, is there anything you wanna expand within the Dip product line or anything else? I 

[00:25:31] Kate Assaraf: don't know. I'm not on a, a. Search for growth. I'm gonna search for just kind of transformation and getting more people aware of, that shampoo, conditioner bars can be amazing and they can save you a lot of money.

[00:25:45] Kate Assaraf: That's, that's like a big deal for me because I think we're just, the economy, we're going into people. Especially women feel guilty for indulging in like 60, $70 shampoo conditioner. Like it's almost like it feels icky now to spend that much [00:26:00] money on, on, bottled shampoo conditioner for not just for the plastic, just the economics of it.

[00:26:05] Kate Assaraf: But I, I hope people start to make a shift over to find more plastic free items. And whether that's Dip or not, it doesn't matter. But if someone finds, listens to this and finds their local refiller and. Starts to think twice about the way they shop. That's kind of the bigger picture for me.

[00:26:21] Kate Assaraf: Beyond a shampoo conditioner, I don't like, I could talk about hair all day and I haven't really done much talking about hair right now, but it is like very, it's very much I don't know if I could figure out a plastic free way to do really good hairspray, that might be the next thing. 

[00:26:36] Lori Gouhin: Oh, but I wonder you, could you put it in glass or no, with the aerosol?

[00:26:41] Kate Assaraf: I think you can. I think you can. It's just. My opinion is if another brand has already solved the problem, then I wouldn't chase the problem also, yeah, 

[00:26:49] Lori Gouhin: that totally 

[00:26:50] Kate Assaraf: makes 

[00:26:50] Lori Gouhin: sense. Yeah. 

[00:26:51] Kate Assaraf: But I do the hair and body dry oils are relatively new. They launch in November and I'm waiting for this first summer for people to experience what it's like to [00:27:00] put like oil on their legs and have it immediately dry.

[00:27:03] Kate Assaraf: So you could just put on shorts and get in your car. Yeah. No, 

[00:27:06] Lori Gouhin: I love the product and I love the glass packaging. All the packaging is really nice. I'm a sucker for packaging. But yeah, it's all really nice and I was shocked when I read that it does last six months. I thought. No way.

[00:27:18] Lori Gouhin: Like a bar of soap or something. Yeah. But pleasantly surprised. 

[00:27:22] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. Wait, you can call me in a year. You'll probably still have some conditioner left, which is crazy. Wow. 

[00:27:27] Lori Gouhin: That is amazing. That is crazy. And so how about if we maybe give the listeners some tips as I said, a lot of people are budding entrepreneurs or maybe they're, they already have a business up and running and they're trying to maybe, be more in line with their values like you are, or maybe they are trying to grow a little bit, but what kind of.

[00:27:45] Lori Gouhin: Strategies or tips do you have on what you think really helped you this second go around? Okay. The second go around, 

[00:27:52] Kate Assaraf: the thing that I learned the most was that it is. Is way better to hire someone to help you [00:28:00] with something that you're not confident about than to make that person the other half. So that's number one.

[00:28:06] Lori Gouhin: Yes, 

[00:28:06] Kate Assaraf: It's, for me. For example I'll use a simple thing like email marketing. It takes me, so it took me so long to learn, but once I hired someone to do it, it was set up and it was fast and it's efficient. It was like, what did I, why did I bother working? Hard to try and make these beautiful emails when someone else can do it like that.

[00:28:24] Kate Assaraf: That's their expertise. That's the whole point of specializing in something, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Like I wouldn't go to a GP for heart surgery, so it's the same thing in business. You have to remember, like you don't need to be good at everything. So I think that's the second thing is you don't really need to be good at everything.

[00:28:40] Kate Assaraf: You can find someone else who's really great. And that might seem so obvious, but I think what happens, and especially with a lot of the women entrepreneurs I know, they try and learn everything and tackle everything and think I can do this. I can learn, and you probably could. But why? But why? Yeah, but why?

[00:28:56] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. 

[00:28:56] Lori Gouhin: No, exactly. That's why I have a podcast editor. I did not wanna [00:29:00] take the time to learn editing, and it actually prevented me from starting my show for so long because I was like, oh, I don't know how to do the intro music. What the heck? Somebody else knows how to do that. 

[00:29:09] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. And so that makes so much more sense.

[00:29:11] Kate Assaraf: Imagine how far behind you'd be if you were still editing yourself. It just doesn't make any sense. And so the last thing I would say is just. It's okay to not want to have a super big business. Like I think we're also trained as Americans to want to be like a household, like I don't wanna be Sarah Blakely.

[00:29:32] Kate Assaraf: Like I don't want, I don't wanna be forced on my face on TikTok all the time, or giving hot takes. You don't have to do that. You can actually have a really nice business where you can like keep some of your privacy. You don't have to expose your kids to all of this external noise all the time, and you don't have to listen to anyone's advice.

[00:29:53] Kate Assaraf: Like you really don't, especially mine. Yeah, no, I love 

[00:29:56] Lori Gouhin: that. And it's, this is going to be such a nice follow up to my [00:30:00] episode that actually released today, and I talk about that in goals. And sometimes you're chasing these dreams that aren't even your own because they may be look good on paper or they sound good, or it's something somebody told you should be doing.

[00:30:13] Lori Gouhin: And the reality is when you strip all that away, maybe you. You actually want a simpler life. Maybe you don't wanna scale a business or, you just want something more simplified and that's okay. And it shouldn't be looked down upon as that you're not hustling enough or whatever. As you mentioned earlier, staying true to your values. 

[00:30:31] Kate Assaraf: I just wanna live with and spend time with my family and my kids, and. The nice thing about it is I get to talk about hair all the time, and I like, so tell me 

[00:30:40] Lori Gouhin: about hair. What, like what is your infatuation with hair like, was that since you were little?

[00:30:44] Lori Gouhin: Are you Yeah. Cosmetology school. No, I 

[00:30:47] Kate Assaraf: never went to cos cosmetology school actually. I studied economics and math, but I've always just, my whole life been fascinated by hair. I love it. If I was gonna live my life again, I would probably go to cosmetology school. But I've had every kind of hair, I've had [00:31:00] long hair, short hair, blonde hair.

[00:31:02] Kate Assaraf: Black hair purple. I had a purple beehive when I lived in Manhattan. Oh, wow. I had micro braids like Bo Derek with extensions. I've had literally every kind of. Silver hair. I had my hair done. Silver and editorial style for a magazine once. I've just love hair and I think hair says so much about someone, especially when you see someone with a really expressive haircut, like blunt bangs or I don't know, like that when they, someone decides to go really platinum with dark roots or when you see really beautiful type four like in hair and twists.

[00:31:35] Kate Assaraf: I just love. That you can wear jeans and a white t-shirt every day and your hair is really the statement. 

[00:31:40] Lori Gouhin: I love that. Yeah, absolutely. You do have beautiful hair, so thank you. No doubt. From your product back now.

[00:31:48] Lori Gouhin: Is there anything that I haven't touched on that you wanted to share or that you think would be valuable? 

[00:31:54] Kate Assaraf: One last thing about Dip what? Yeah, absolutely. The whole point of it being out is the shampoo [00:32:00] is made so that you don't have to choose between your workout and a good hair day.

[00:32:03] Kate Assaraf: It's gentle enough so you, if you're like training for a marathon or if you are someone who you know, does yoga or Pilates, like you can use the shampoo every day and not worry about whether your hair like can take another shower. 'cause everyone's worried about. Getting rid of all the natural oils. It doesn't strip your hair.

[00:32:19] Kate Assaraf: And the conditioner can replace 12, 12 tubes or a year of very expensive haircare. So for me, the conditioner bar, you buy it once and it will replace for me $500 worth of just conditioner, which is like so nice to not have to buy those things anymore. Yeah. It can also replace like leave-in conditioners and detanglers.

[00:32:40] Kate Assaraf: And so if you ever go swimming or to the pool. The Dip conditioner, even if you don't want it as your main conditioner, the Dip conditioner bar is like the best thing to detangle your hair or your child's hair if you have children like girls with long hair. It, I get so many emails from parents that they're like, this is the best because they just put it, it doesn't get in their eyes.

[00:32:59] Kate Assaraf: 'cause you [00:33:00] can control where it goes. That's important. And they can brush through and they don't have to rinse it out. 

[00:33:05] Lori Gouhin: Yeah. I can attest to the detangling for myself. Absolutely. And I have pretty long hair and it just combed right through. Yeah 

[00:33:11] Kate Assaraf: and between a parent and yet like a little girl like that can either be a nice bonding time of the day or it could be the most stressful time of the day.

[00:33:20] Lori Gouhin: My youngest has really curly hair, long curly hair, and yeah, when she was little, last thing she wanted after a shower or a bath was for me to comb her hair. 

[00:33:30] Kate Assaraf: Yeah. 

[00:33:30] Lori Gouhin: And so that's, I get 

[00:33:31] Kate Assaraf: so many, I get so many emails. It's mostly from dads that are like, oh my God, I've been. Detangling my daughter's hair forever, and I wish I found this sooner.

[00:33:40] Lori Gouhin: I love it. And where do you see what did you call it? The refill. The refill stores. Refill stores, okay. Where do you see that going? What are like some of the, because I'm not even familiar, I'm gonna have to look now in my Myrtle Beach.

[00:33:51] Lori Gouhin: I'm in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, so I'm going to have to look and see what's here, what, where do you see that going? What are some of the top businesses and where are your [00:34:00] products so that people know? Are there specific stores or are they all independently owned? They're all independently owned.

[00:34:05] Lori Gouhin: I know you're in surf shops, right? I. And in surf shops 

[00:34:08] Kate Assaraf: and in hair salons. So those three lanes are, are pretty good enough for me. It's exactly where our customer shops, so it's, that's where I wanna want it to be. And I love that they're independently owned. A lot of them have their own vibe when you walk in.

[00:34:19] Kate Assaraf: It's true to that neighborhood and I think it's very cool. But yeah, if you go to our store locator on dipalready.com, you can see the store that's closest to you. And if there isn't one, we've reduced our shipping costs. So it's, we make it affordable to ship to you, but we truly want you to find this store or salon closest to you.

[00:34:39] Lori Gouhin: I love that. I love that. And so tell the listeners where they can find you. Again, mention your website, we'll put it all in the show notes as well, but, and your social media handles. Sure. So You 

[00:34:48] Kate Assaraf: can find the products@dipalready.com. And remember the store locator you can find at Dip already on TikTok and Instagram.

[00:34:56] Kate Assaraf: And then I'm Kate Assaraf. You can find me on [00:35:00] LinkedIn. 

[00:35:00] Lori Gouhin: I love it. Well, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. I learned a lot and I know our listeners did as well. And again, a great product. I cannot recommend it enough. 

[00:35:09] Kate Assaraf: Thank you so much. That means the world to me.