Episode 012 – Making Skincare Accessible for All with Protea

Today on The Heart-led Brand Podcast, we’re chatting with Mackenzie Jorns of Protea!

Protea™ is a female founded skincare movement on a mission to propel skincare confidence through holistic products and a revolutionary esthetician-match service, connecting you with skincare professionals based on your unique skin’s needs and their specialities.

Their founder, Mackenzie Jorns, knows how difficult it can be to find a specialized and thorough esthetician who will ask the right questions and give the right advice. Fair-skinned but the daughter of an African American, Jorns’ biracial skin has a unique composition that was often overlooked, as were all of her siblings. Her and her family's unique experience was her inspiration to start Protea’s Skin Support Consultation Platform, which offers a variety of licensed, specialized, experienced and vetted skintechs that not only ask the right questions but are unaffiliated with brands and independent from skincare lines. Promising a bespoke skincare strategy for the skin of all people, from light skin to dark skin and everyone in between.

Episode Highlights:

How a Lyme disease diagnosis led to Mackenzie’s passion for skincare and dream of making quality skincare advice accessible and inclusive for everyone:

”Knowing that I wanted to do this really came from my journey with Lyme disease. I was diagnosed as a freshman second semester in college and I was just like losing a ton of weight. I'm getting these like night sweats fevers tons of fevers the flu like symptoms… Like this is not normal. After many misdiagnoses finally got the diagnosis of Lyme disease and with that came needing a whole lifestyle change. You’ve got to get rid of all your skincare products and you have to start with a more holistic more natural organic approach to what you're putting on your body since your skin's your largest organ. And so I did a deep dive into skincare because I could not find somebody to help me. This was back in 2014, 2015. And so then I started doing a ton of research, became the kind of go to gal in my friend circle. I actually started also making like little jars of body butter and selling it in college.

And then fast forward to COVID, everybody's getting into skincare. Everybody's asking me for advice and like, ‘Hey, I'm helping friends of friends. I should monetize this.’ And so with my tech background, I built just a simple booking website, just a 1-1 situation and people would book.

I had just left on maternity leave when COVID started. So by the time I went back, I had a three month old and 40 clients. It's like, okay, I can't continue to keep this up with my newborn and I was at an executive level at another startup and it was just too much. So I tried to find something where I could send my clients to virtually and nothing existed.

And so two years later, I'm like, all right, nothing still exists that's totally product agnostic. Meaning a consultation where you can go and be 100% confident that somebody's not going to recommend products just because they get a kickback or because they're affiliated with a brand. I have to build this!”

Why she chose to invest in PR for their launch:

“What I noticed was tech startups putting a ton of money into the technology, but needing to then change the technology fast. So I wanted to take a different approach because I don't have a ton of followers off the bat or anything like that. I said, ‘Okay. How can I increase brand awareness, but then save money on the technical side?’

So that's what I did. Saved money on the technical side and hired a PR team who are absolutely amazing. They worked with us until the summer to kind of get the word out. Not enough people, in my opinion, talk about where they actually put their startup funds. They want to make it seem like it's all organic, but a lot of companies use PR and that's okay. So that's what we did, we used PR because I didn't have those natural contacts myself. And they helped get our foot in the door and get the word out there more that we were a solution because right now we really do have like a two pronged business case where we need to educate people that we even exist and then educate people on what is an esthetician. And as you can probably tell, I'm very wordy. So it’s been helpful having a lovely PR team who is straight to the point and hits all of those spots that I'm maybe not the greatest at.”

How Protea has prioritized giving back in through their business:

“I used to volunteer at a low barrier women's shelter and I would get donated skincare products and bring them to this shelter. And so seeing the women use the products and seeing their just demeanors completely changed when they could go through the self care ritual of getting ready for bed at night when we would have bathroom time and just everybody would be chatting and it just opened everybody up. It was absolutely fascinating.

And so I knew in the back of my head, I always wanted to do something that gave back that way. So to me, it was a non negotiable. We were going to do the buy one, donate one model always. So if you don't go into the business knowing that, I would just think long and hard about why you're in business?

What can you do to facilitate helping somebody else, right? So if you're an e commerce business, maybe you don't have the margins to do a buy one, donate one. That's totally fine. I was talking actually to another founder of a boutique yesterday. She's very environmentally savvy, loves giving back. And so for every 10 items that are bought, they plant a tree. And so just kind of thinking creatively and it doesn't have to be a one to one. It can be whatever your business is comfortable doing, but just making it a priority. And sticking with it.

I say to our team a lot of the time, it's not hard to be a good business. You can try a giving back campaign and like, maybe it doesn't work. That's okay. Just keep trying until you hit the right thing. That's the best part about business is iterate, iterate, iterate.”

Mackenzie’s hope for the future of skincare and Protea:

“So overall industry wise, I hope that we get better about greenwashing. I hope that we get better about what we put on our packaging, marketing and we stop kind of taking advantage of the consumer based on trendy language. I really hope that that we do that and put people over profit.

For Protea and the future Protea, our plan is to start moving into more wellness. So having a place that you can go to for nutritionists or even a virtual yoga session, just so that we can help the whole person feel more confident in their skin. And I chose to start with estheticians because that's the least known. So if we can crack the code with that, then everything else will fall into place. So building out this platform that really just helps people. Be totally their whole person, their whole self, and feel confident in their skin.”

Follow Protea on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Tiktok⁠⁠⁠

Website: ⁠https://bookprotea.com/