Hey, I'm Kadeen and I'm Devout and we're the Ellis's.
You may know us from posting funny videos.
With our voice and reading each other publicly as a form of therapy.
Wait, I make you need therapy most days. Wow.
Oh, and one more important thing to mention, we're married.
Yes, sir, we are. We created this podcast to open dialogue about some of li's most taboo topics.
Things most folks don't want to talk about.
Through the lens of a millennial married couple. Dead ass is a term that we say every day. So when we say dead ass, we're actually saying facts one hundred the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We about to take philosof to our whole new level.
Dead ass starts right now.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have the astute pleasure to sit down today.
Who I like a stupid?
You like that?
That's a good word? Yeah.
With Melvin and Monique Rodriguez if you don't know who they are, Melvin and Monique Rodriguez started Mael following Monique's career as a registered nurse for nearly a decade and has created a haircare brand that has become the first in the industry to receive more than one hundred million in investment funding, and since has scaled to a household stable for consumers with textured hair through distribution at countless national retail locations in over eighty five countries around the world.
I got to say this, Monique, you know real MVP.
That's a fact that I got several products under my cabinet as we speak with all of these boys and all this hair and all these textures. Mayel is a household staple for us as well. Y'all help us. Welcome Melvin and Monique Rodriguez the Dead Ass Podcast. Let's start by tell you telling us about your love story here is pretty unique. I make guess everyone's love stories because ours is pretty Yeah, ye, love story. Let's start there.
Well, I guess I'll go first because my version is the truth.
We're gonna We're gonna tell her versions usually are, So.
I guess where do we start.
I'm going to go back to like ninety five. Melbourne and I we have known each other since I.
Was twelve, A long damn time.
He was thirteen five ninety five. That's awesome.
Yeah, a long time, long time ago.
And you know, and actuality. Like when we first met, you know, I thought he was cute.
You know, you know the vibes.
You know the vibe Melvine. I know the vibe because that's what was me too.
She saw me.
I wasn't even paying attention, right, she end up with me later on in life, you know, So I'll get you Melbourne.
It was the way it was.
That's what I'm time to tell you, man.
I was sea sick.
I was Sea sick.
Okay, yeah, So you know when we were back in junior high school, I thought he was cute, but I thought that he was you know, in my version, I thought he was a little arrogant. So we call ourselves, you know, being friends at that time. But we had a fallen out when we were very young. And that falling.
Out how you have a young falling out? What was going on at twelve and thirteen? It was like, you know what, I can't do this. I need to protect my piece.
You know, I told you love.
I felt that he was arrogant, so I had to protect my piece at the young age of twelve. Well, I had to show him. I had to play hard to get what we're from.
When you see when you say things, man. You got to you gotta do things, man. So you know that's yeah, you know what I mean, that's.
What it is. But I think in actuality, the fact of like, because we couldn't be together and he really wanted to be with me, was the reason why we ended up falling out.
Because I was twelve, you know, I didn't.
Have any bans, you know, having boyfriends or anything of that nature. So you know, we ended up not talking for like the entire year of his eighth because he's a year older than me, So his eighth grade year we didn't talk. He went into high school, we went to the same high school, and we saw each other and did not talk to each other all throughout high school.
It wasn't until he all four years, all four years.
You know, I was I was pretty popular in high school, and you know, I.
Think I had to see me again. My version is the truth.
So I had to let him know that I wasn't one of those other girls that he was going to have to really work hard to get me.
And so we didn't talk.
And then, uh, it was the summer of my junior year, going into my senior year, he had graduated. He was getting ready to go to college, and we somehow reconnected, rekindled, and we started off as friends and then we decided that we were going to start dating, and we started dating for a couple of months before I started school.
We ended up breaking up right before I started my senior year in August because he didn't have a cell phone and I was one of those like I needed to be able to get in touch with you, and you know, he's sad. He also showed up late, very late for our first dates, and I ended.
Up, oh, man, yeah, Melvin, what was going on?
Bro?
What was in your mindset?
So he he was.
Extremely late, but I let him know, like I'm not gonna sit around and wait for you. So I ended up leaving going out with my friends to the movies, and he ended up coming to my mom's house looking sad, puppy dog face like where did she go? And my Mom's like she left, she went to the movies with her friends. And it was because he didn't have a cell phone, so I didn't know how to get in touch with him. I didn't know if he was coming, like I was like, I'm not going to play games
and anyway, So we ended up breaking up. We ended up breaking up for a couple of months, and then this was like in August, and then my high school homecoming was in October.
And remember he's a freshman in college.
And I went to the homecoming with my friends because I'm like, I don't have a boyfriend.
I'm gonna kick it with my girlfriends. And guess who shows up at my homecoming?
And guess who shows up with a cell phone.
He had a plan, He had a plan, He had a man. I don't understand that when we have a plan, it don't be on your timeline. It's our plans, understand.
But he knew that I had standards and he had to meet those standards in order for him to get me back. And so from October of my senior year in high school we've been together ever since.
I love that.
That's awesome, awesome, good stuff. Long time. Is there any part of the story, Melvin that you need to go in there and say, you know that wasn't so yeah, all of it, but.
We don't got time.
Correct story.
I sat down and tell the real truth, like going all the way back, you know, when we were shorty seven eighth grade, when they used to stand on the corner, like waiting for brother mail, like real talking, like leaving brother now, like they on the corner, like come on now, I want to get to it. Oh my god. So no, but I would say majority is true what she's saying.
I'm gonna give it to her, you know. And when I came back, you know, like she said, home coming, I had to get that old thing back, you know, and we were candling and everything, and we've been we've been doing it, doing our thing, you know what I'm saying ever since. So you know, I give it that, you know.
That's what good for y'all.
So how many years married?
Now, we've been married for thirteen years. We've been together in twenty three years and two beautiful y'am.
Run around the same time as us. We're thirteen years married. We've been together twenty two it'll.
Yeah, dope, Yeah, yeah, we've been together. Well, we've known each other since elementary school.
Since nineteen.
Know each other since start in college.
Yeah, she's talking me to.
You know, I was out here. I did you know they was waiting on the corner for your boy out like chill babies, listen. I went up.
I went up like Steph Curry with the shot all bucket, old bucket.
Yet we got some similarities, man, but you know, hey, I love that. Yeah. But God, God he aligned and he unified us, man, and so.
We absolutely that's fact.
Absolutely, that's so. That's that's what it is.
And I always feel like I always feel like I want you know, I always give my wife a lot of grief with the stories because it's just funny. But I feel like I got the prize, you know what I'm saying. I feel like I feel like I won. I feel like I got the prize. So well, thank you definitely on the one but the most beautiful union birth as well.
In addition to two beautiful daughters that you guys have and a wealth of love and years under your belt, Mayel tell us about how this came to fruition for you guys.
So as we talk about, you know, the funny parts and you know the the happy moments. You know, Melvine and I have also gone through challenges together. In twenty thirteen, we went through a tragic loss of my son.
When I was eight months pregnant.
I had a high risk pregnancy, wow, and because of that high risk, unfortunately, my son passed away. And that was our third child, Thank you, but it was our third child, and you know, it was very devastating for us both and I remember at that moment really filling down and not really knowing what to do or why this happened to me. And I had to learn to change my narrative of asking God why did this happen to me? And ask him like, what are you trying to show.
Me from this?
And I knew number one was to develop my relationship and to have a closer relationship with God, which before that, you know, I really didn't have that close of a relationship. And you know, I realized that once I deepened my relationship with God, God revealed to me a vision to go on social media and talk about something that I've always been passionate about ever since I was a little girl,
and that was hair care in the beauty space. And that was a creative outlet for me to take my mind off of what I was going through at the time with my son. And Melvin was super supportive because we were both going through this together and he would always come to me like when he would see that I was down, and you know, have my moments in the bathroom he would tell me like, go pick up your your plan and work on your plan, or go
talk about here on social media. So he would always encourage me because he saw that it was bringing me joy, and that joy and that painful situation ultimately led me to my purpose and what you see here today. So you know, Mayel came from a place of pain, and you know it has blossomed into something that has been so beautiful and so purposeful because I chose to channel that and to really do something that was bigger than me.
Because Mayel is not just about hair product. It's really about serving the community and ultimately bringing people to God's kingdom. And so that's what as I look back, I really understand, even though you'll never understand why you go through things like that, but I do see that God had a bigger purpose from that painful situation and that's how Mayel was birth.
Wow, how'd you come up with the name.
So the name is actually a combination of my kids' names. So I have Mia, and I have Mia Gabrielle and then Mackenzie Aril. So they're my l's because they both had E L L E at the end of their middle names.
It's very nice. Did you ever see ma L becoming what it is today? I know you said it was coming to you as I guess, like a form of therapy, right in a sense, when you were dealing with the loss of your son. So was the goal for you to eventually end up on shelves and you know, to be where you are today or was it just kind of something that kind of spiraled out of control in the best way for you?
Yeah, I think it's a combination of both. Because I knew that, you know, whatever I did, I was going to be successful because I'm a hard worker, even when I worked as a nurse. You know, I knew that I would be successful working as a nurse because that's just the type of determination that I have, you know, coming from the nursing my nursing background into this business world. It was totally foreign to me. I had no experience running or operating a business. Neither one of us did.
So it was kind of like on the job training, learning as we as we did it, and of course we made a lot of mistakes, went through a lot of challenges, but I knew that my ultimate goal was to make it to be bigger than larger than life. I just didn't know that it would happen in ten short years.
You know.
We took off literally after launching the brand a year, you know, we entered into Solid Beauty a year later, and I was really just focused on how do I serve my community, how do I help women that look like me?
How do I add value? How do I build community?
And I always tell people when you focus on, how do you overserve people that are underserved? Because in the multicultural hair care space, I felt that there was a void and the community wasn't being served how I thought they should have been served. And because I slowly focused on, you know, just community building and staying engaged and being trust a trusted, reliable source, that community grew very fast
and in spiral. To your point, it spiraled out of you know, it just spiraled into something that was great, which is the company that we've built here today.
So I would say it's a combination of both.
And you know, it's been been truly a blessing just to see everything unfold because we've done something that hasn't been done in less than ten years, and you know, we're truly happy to have done it together.
Yeah, man, less than ten years.
It's crazy.
That is amazing, and it's less than ten years. I have a question, how were you able to pivot so seamlessly from a romantic relationship into a business relationship. We get this question so many times from couples. How do you guys work together and still remain romantic partners?
Yeah, because Deval and I have struggled sometimes all the years with as we build our businesses and our brands. You know, sometimes he doesn't know when to clock out, like you know, usually within a duo, there's one person who might be like the you know, work ethic through the roof, it never clocks out, and then you have
the person that's just like babe, you know. So knowing each other's strengths and weaknesses, how have you guys been able to navigate that space from going romantically into business. That's a good question, babe.
When you think about the merits, you think about the covenant keeping God at the center of that. So the love life the business life number one. That's us. We've developed that. So we obviously love and are in love with each other, but we understand that what success persecution is to follow, so we align and rebuke to those negative weapons that try to form against our union, the covenant that we made together for God first and foremost.
That's the honest God truth. And you know, as we think about how do we balance those things, it's really how you all prioritize your lives. So for us, it's God, family, then work right and so and so we live and stand on those principles, you know, as best we can. It's not you know, always going to be you know, go perfect and what have you. But but we have that alignment. We we have that that you know, call it that north star goal in mind, that that keeps us in check. And so and so what we do is,
you know, we we try to keep work work. Now granted it's not always you know, gonna be that way, but we try to. We try to fight to keep it that way. We try to hold ourselves accountable if I'm if I'm at home, if I'm in the bed, I'll pull my lab about she gets on me and vice versas. We so we do those things and have done it. But I think it's it's it's really the
respect that we have for each other's talents and gifts. Right, So Moni has her own you know, set of skill sets such as I do, and we respect that and we're aligned to it. But outside of the business, we're a husband and wife and as well as parents. So so we had to, you know, understand that if we were going to do this, we have to agree to a set of call it boundaries to adhere to so that the marriage doesn't get left behind the family, the kids don't get left beside, and that ties into who
we are. See, we're not we're not money driven. We never been money driven. We're purpose driven. We're mission driven. You know. We feel as though we've been blessed and put in position for purpose and not profit. Right, that's how we think, that's how we operate. And so it's really the mindset, right, the mindset and aligning uh to to you know, those particular goals that you gotta, you gotta, you gotta continue to stay on it. And most importantly,
prayer for one another. Right, Prayer is the foundation of all things in all our lives. And so we we do that whether we do it together or we do it for each other our families when we're not together.
But we do that because, I mean, the fact of the matter is we know life, life be life, in life has its issues and trials and tribulations, so you constantly try to have to have that fight for your you know, fight for your blessing, fight for your union, right because outside your household, we know the challenges that I mean, first of all, we don't know what's to come. We wake up in the morning, we have no idea what the day will be, but we try to prepare ourselves for what's to come.
Oh, for sure, that was a great answer, Melvin thinking. I mean, I think that we see a lot of similarities even with the way that we conduct you know, are just our life, you know, God, family, you always have to question what are we doing it for? Right when you go back to that purpose driven approach, that really really helps to keep things grounded. And that's important
for us too as business partners as well. So Mayel now today ten very very short years, but I'm sure long in a sense for you guys, what made you decide to interrut Proctor and gamble with the future of Mayel And what plans do you have with Proctor for the future?
Now, why in the world will we do that? Why would we? Why would we do that? But why in the world? No, No, because we're black. Oh yeah, because because we will become a sellout.
Why would we do that? No, that's last, folks, And I never I never want. I don't want this conversation to become that. But I will say this. I went to school for business. The first rule of business was that you create a business to sell it. That was the first rule that they told us in business class at Hofts University. Was like if and it was an entrepreneurial class, if you're going to start a business, do not start a business to say, I'm gonna give this
to my grandkids' grandkids. The reason why is because business is changed, industries changed. You always create a business with the idea to sell it. So I know why you did it because that was always you know, and I understand and I respect why. But I would love for you guys to tell.
The audience, give them clarity. We know, we know, we don't understand.
But it is important that you tell the audience why you guys went and did that with Procter and Gamble.
I'll say this, in order for us as as African Americans or within our black communities to get something we've never had, we got to do something we've never done, and we got to work to normalize things we've never done.
As we think about not yielding being rich, but creating wealth, and not just on a month side, but creating wealth, and the thinking the mind set in order for us to do those things right, we have to accept the challenge because if they were able to do it, why not me, right, And so it's that mindset that that Monique and I have been aligned to for a very
very long time. And so as the brand had began to grow and the momentum was just so extraordinary, you know, we got to a point where, if you go back to our inception, right twenty fourteen started from the garage, humble beginnings. Right started from the idea, started from the pain. Good thing. Good things come out of pain, the pain, the trial, the tribulation. Oh but God kept us. God gave Monique the vision. I supported that vision, and that
vision was elevated. Elevation creates expansion, expansion, and so we want to increase. We asked God to enlarge our territory right, and he blessed us exceedingly abundling above who can imagine or think. So it happened. So from the garage, to a small facility three thousand square feet. From there to a building a one hundred. Now we have one hundred
thousand plus square for the warehousing right now. Increase and so as the brand continue to grow by year six, year seven, we're like, wow, we've done some extraordinary things. But you know something. We know what we know, but we also know we don't know. And we know that we're trying to tell this story. We know that we're trying to normalize black excellence. We know that we're trying to normalize and shift the thinking, the thinking to your
point about creating businesses to a path to an exit. Right. But we need help showing this right, We need help scaling this and so we made the decision to take on a private equity partner called Berkshire Partners right back in twenty one. And so we did that, which was a historical nine figure, non controlling standalone partnership. So what does that mean. That means that.
Now I don't want to cut you off, but I think it's important that you really tell people why that's important because people remember our biggest podcast was selling Grandma's House, and it was typically the same thing when you live in grandma's house. It was like, this is an heirloom, this is something you shouldn't sell. But it's like, hey, if you sell it, so you can scale it. And now it's when we sell grandma's house and we buy three four more properties, Now we have more properties. It's
pretty much the same exact thing. When you take on a partner. Now you can scale your business so you can grow, but it's still yours. Continue. I just wanted to make that clear to the order.
No, no, absolutely, because the point is this, in order for us to get some things that we never had, we got to come to agreement to doing things we've never done. And so we knew we had great momentum. We knew we had great opportunity to do something special. But we also knew this, we need to help. The Bible tells us what you have, not because your asks not.
That's not Monique and n I.
We are student. We are students of this life. We are students of this blessing of life. And so and so we made the decision to do this. Raise our hand right, and we reached out for help to help us scale, to help us scale, and we understood that we had leverage because We built a profitable, sustainable.
From the ground up business. From the ground up. These are the things that people don't understand. As a business owner, you built it from the ground up, so you had leverage to then bringing a partner scale it and still have ownership these And this is what I try to explain to my wife. When people get upset at us, or get upset at you for selling out for example, you can't then get upset at them for not understanding business. You have a responsibility to empathize and then teach. Like
you said, we're doing. You guys are doing something that's never been done before in the beauty industry. Of course, you're gonna have naysayers and detractors because they've never seen it. Anytime you break a glass, yep this and they say it because they've never seen this. Years from now, history will tell the story of Mayel and everyone will say this is the blueprint. I want to applaud you. I just want to before you continue. I do want to
applaud you as a couple who came from tragedy. My wife and I have lost a child in uter row, so we know what that's like. I watched my wife have to struggle to get back to who she was. To watch you as a man say you know what, in this moment, I'm going to support my wife and whatever she wants to do because it will help.
He's the pain.
I think it's something that's part of the story that needs to be told often. You didn't wake up one morning and say, you know what, I want to be a millionaire, so I'm gonna do haircare products. No, you needed a distraction from real life because, like Melvin said, life be life in so through that distraction, now you have a supportive partner who's not saying we'll get over it already. He's saying, Yo, I got you, babe, go do it. And now the two of y'all create an
empire yep, and scale it. I think this is amazing.
You're pretty much mental health protection and therapy and try to get through it.
Which is why I'm excited to have you guys on because we talk about this all the time on Dead Ass podcast. But there needs to be other stories so people realize we're not the anomaly. You guys aren't the anomaly. Anybody can do it if you just first be a servant to God and listen to God's words and when he gives you a vision follower. So I just I appreciate y'all. Your story is amazing to me. Y'all are the blueprint. Kadeen and I stay purpose driven, yes, but
we're also entrepreneurs and we want to create wealth. I don't want to pass just the house. I don't want to pass an idea to my kids. I want to pass wealth and be able to say to my sons, hey, you want to start something, Daddy got you. You don't better go to the bank, come to mom and dad. You know we got you. So I really want to uplaud you guys.
And this is dope, super inspiring to super inspiring. All right, y'all, I think this is a good spot to take a quick break. We're going to hear some words from Mayel and get back to conversation with Melvin and Monique. Stick around, all right, and now we're back. We're back. So we've heard so much about your story, about Mael's inception and where you are today. Let's talk about what's going to happen in the future. You now have that much bigger
of a team behind you. Guys. Where are your passions leading you to now, what what can we expect for the future of my own.
Knowing what we've accomplished for us, we like to say that we're just getting started. You know, the best is yet to come, you know, as we approach our ten year anniversary. You know, we have so much in store that's coming down the pipeline with amazing partnerships, you know, amazing activations.
I don't want to talk about you know everything.
I want you guys to stay soon and follow us, to be surprised and delighted on the amazing thing that Mayo's has coming down the pipeline. And more importantly for us, it's also focused on, you know, our philanthropic initiatives as a part of the partnership. What we didn't get a chance to mention was the commitment that P and G made to us to show how committed they are to our passion. And that's the community that has gotten us
to where we are today. So it was very important that when we set up the table and negotiated with them, it wasn't just about Okay, how can we create generational wealth for our families, but how can we create generational wealth for our communities? And how can you help advance black and brown communities with education and more importantly, mental health. We realized that a huge part of our success is the mindset shift.
We had to shift our mindset.
You know, growing up, we came from an environment of survival. We were not taught to follow dreams and pursue dreams. It was you have to survive, not thrive. And we want to be able to shift the mindset of our community to show our community that you can be successful. We can change that narrative that we can be black, we can be successful, we can build great companies, and we can have successful exists and you know, pass that down to generations, so the next generation doesn't have to
grow up thinking they have to survive. They can have the freedom and flexibility to do whatever it is that they want to do. And so in order to have that, you have to shift your mindset. And so for us, mental health is extremely important because we started with our neighborhood that we're from, the high school that we came from.
We know that those kids are in an environment where they're not they don't have the ability to dream big, and so to go back to that school to create programs to help shift their mindset to make sure that these kids are mentally sound so they can see two people that walk the same halls as them, to do what we've accomplished, and to show that we're tangible, you
can touch, you can fill us with relatable people. And this is what we were able to do because we shifted our thinking and we want support that back into the community that supported us. So the goal is to expand that program to multiple high schools across the United States and continue on building up, you know, our youth, making sure that they're mentally sound.
Wow.
So P ANDNG didn't only invest in the company, they invested in your idea of bringing a better mental health initiative to the community, which to me, I think is dope. I think that's amazing. Yeah, because me and Coady always talk about how our blackness should not only be defined by the amount of struggle we've occured in life, and the minute you remove yourself from that and start to thrive, that's when people want to call you a sellout. So
it's like, I'm only black if I'm struggling. The minute I'm no longer struggling, now now I'm gonna sell out. I agree with you changing that mindset from a young age is the way you build future leaders.
That's what's what I'm gonna tell you all this for your listeners. M change your mind, change your life, walk with Christ and watch what he would do on your life.
I love that, love that. Thank y'all so much for your time today. I hope you had a great time chatting with us, and I hope our listeners have more insight into my l and all of your efforts. Just to round things out, how can people connect with your efforts? I know we have some things going on in schools, but is there anywhere specific that they can go to to get more information about what's available to them in their community or specific areas.
Yes, so of course they can follow us at Mayel Organics on all social media platforms, and then we have Mayo Dot Cares and then Melvin and I social media mizes at Exquisite Mode and Melvin's is the Melvin Rodriguez All right.
Continue to protect yourselves, protect each other, protect your family, protect your brand, protect your community. We love you guys. You know where to follow Mayel and their story emine Y Podcast. What'll see y'all soon.
Appreciate y'all chirst, take Care. Dead Ass is a production of iHeartMedia podcast network and its produced by Donor, Opinia and Triple Follow the podcast on social media at dead ass, the podcasts, and Never miss a Thing