EDGE with Brandon White
EDGE gives business owners the edge to win in your business and your life with science-based tools and unscripted conversations with guests who share their playbook and lessons learned. All so you can achieve your peak performance, wealth and happiness.
Mary joins the show again and shares her experience with patenting her CosmoGlo light, her approach, how she won a lawsuit, how she protects other IP through trademarks and copyright and lots of advice for fellow business owners with intellectual property to protect.
Listen to episode 365 on EDGE to hear Mary's full founder story along with tons of tips she drops for fellow entrepreneurs.
About Mary Harcourt
Mary is the Founder and CEO of CosmoGlo that makes the industry changing CosmoGlo light for beauty salons.
Mary grew up on the East Coast and was born with an adventurous soul. Between drives to New York and Atlantic City, hiking up waterfalls in Pennsylvania, and going to find the nearest beach, Mary lived life with an exploration mindset from the start.
At a young age, Mary dove into hard work and typically held multiple jobs at the same time. She would keep one job for living expenses, and one for the fun things. Once she discovered her love for travel, Mary got really serious about it.
Over the course of a few years, taking months off at a time, Mary spent all her spare time traveling. She visited 64 countries and hopes to add more!
After settling down in Los Angeles, Mary bought a salon and grew her business over 5+ years into the area’s leading eyelash extension spa. She ran a fully staffed, fully booked, 5-star Yelp-reviewed salon.
With lots of lashing/client time on her hands, she imagined what the perfect light for lashing would look like, what it needed to do, and how to get away from lights made for other industries.
There was not a light made for lashing, and she’d tried everything: makeup lights, photography lights, Ikea lamps... nothing fixed the issues she’d had as a lash artist. She knew that if she was frustrated and struggling, everyone around her must be too.
Mary tried to imagine what that process of building her perfect lash light would be like, thinking to herself, 'I don't come from a manufacturing background. I don't even know what the word means!' Learning that manufacturing is "the skill and process of making things," grew her curiosity and her explorative mind and personality traits took over… Maybe I COULD do this!
Mary knew this lighting idea would innovate the entire industry, and that is exactly what she did. Starting with prototypes in her salon, tweaking them, adding upgrades and changes along the way, it was exciting to see this idea come out of her head and into reality. But... how would she ever find the time to launch her light project while working full time, managing a staff, and taking clients?