Female Founders: Kim Baker of GLAMAZON Beauty On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
More women should become founders because I feel we bring calm to any storm, we are Great at multitasking, and we tend to have great communication skills when it comes to simply listening and allowing someone to feel heard! Along with being intuitive and when we set our mind to our goals we usually will succeed at whatever we set out to do!
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kim Baker.
Kim Baker is a former model with the prestigious Wilhelmina model agency where she helped pioneer and shape the plus size model industry! Kim transitioned her career path to beauty as a renowned makeup artist and created a skin conscious beauty brand Glamazon Beauty!
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I am a former model who went on a spiritual journey after being indicted in a case, centered around my much older then boyfriend! It took me two years to clear my name while I was facing up to 65 years in federal prison. “Once I cleared my name, I still had to do community service but what I discovered from doing community service is I truly enjoy empowering women through beauty and building confidence and self esteem.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
Yes dodging covid and trying to pivot through this pandemic. I have had to try to be really creative with marketing so I have appeared on morning shows such as GMA.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The funniest mistake I made was thinking that you put up a website and then you’re in business. I never knew about about testing or retargeting ads and now that I do I am a much wiser business woman! Silly me I thought you launch a site you’re in business that is the farthest thing from the truth!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
The person who really stepped up to the table and surprise the heck out of me was my youngest daughter Natasha she had watch me her entire life on tv sets, music videos, photoshoot and developing the brand and when she started with Glamazon Beauty she was a pure power house at developing content and social media. It was as if she went to school for media and marketing and while she did attend and graduate from Rutgers I am still dumb founded about her knack for social media and videography!
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
I have to be honest I feel that women owned companies are currently the fastest growing group and I don’t feel anything can hold us back if you refused to be held back. I think my journey is proof of that I am a black single woman born and raised in Newark new jersey but I knew if I could survive being raised by a single mom abandoned by my father who happens to have been my mothers ex husband and a college professor! I could survive and win at anything! So I’m sorry! More work still needs to be done but I say within ourselves! When you bring something to the table and it is viable an investor knows a good investment and the objective is to make money!
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
I can only speak as an individual, I already know this government doesn’t hand out without putting its hand out. So, I chose to start out by selling to my community to help get the word out and using the women in my community as a sounding board as to if I had a viable business and when women started ordering online, I knew I had a great product!
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
More women should become founders because I feel we bring calm to any storm, we are Great at multitasking, and we tend to have great communication skills when it comes to simply listening and allowing someone to feel heard! Along with being intuitive and when we set our mind to our goals we usually will succeed at whatever we set out to do!
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
The women are poor negotiators, women are less ambitious than men, being mothers will slow us down! Well I say wrong, wrong and more wrong. I am one of the best negotiators and I don’t know what it’s like to be a man so I negotiate from a place of knowing my worth and the value of what I bring to the table! Ambitious is an understatement for me. I have so much drive that every day I wake up at 4:30 to start my day to get ahead of myself and as far as being a mother, my children are the reason I Ieft modeling and corporate America to pursue my independence in this market place!
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
I don’t think everyone is cut out to be a founder. Can you master yourself to become a founder? Absolutely! A founder or entrepreneurs are not sleepers, we’re thinking and doers ! I knew from elementary school that I would someday found my own beauty company! If you don’t like work, self-discipline or stress go get a job! Being a founder encompasses a lot of these qualities, especially being honest with yourself.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
I wish I had known to join a founder’s group! I wish I knew that a website doesn’t mean you’re up and running, I am happy I knew to do a focus group. I wish I knew to jump on Instagram from the beginning but who knew? LOL I wish I knew that Social media like facebook would be such a powerhouse but now that I do know I will do even better! When we know better, we do better!
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
Yes I like to do things for strangers. I occasionally will pay for groceries for the elderly or help someone in need but I always buy Christmas toys for single parents. It is a personal joy that I like to do hoping to bring some holiday cheer and be pleasing to God!
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
My dream is to organize a dinner with people of different races and backgrounds and have everyone explain their culture and tradition and try to get people to see we the human race have all want the same things in life I will never understand how you can not like someone for their race that sounds more like a issue with God than an individual and all of our arms are way too short to box with God !
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would love to sit down with Jay-Z and Beyonce, Meek Mill and Labron and Savannah James! First of all I would love for Savannah to shoot for us but I would love to speak to Jay about the beauty industry and Prison reform! Two very different spectrums but I am familiar with both oh so well! There are a lot of people doing time for things they are not guilty of, especially if it was an election year! Trust me Jay would know exactly what I mean.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Founders: Kim Baker of GLAMAZON Beauty On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.