Bella Hadid On Breaking Into The Business World
By Gabby Shacknai
It’s a seemingly perfect Saturday morning in Los Angeles: the sun is shining bright, there’s not a cloud in the sky, and Bella Hadid is preparing to take the stage at Create & Cultivate’s 2022 Conference. The supermodel and Kin Euphorics cofounder has been anxiously awaiting this moment since she was announced as the female-entrepreneurial-event’s keynote speaker 10 days earlier—but less 24 hours after the Supreme Court delivered its shocking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, she’s feeling a whole new level of pressure.
Hadid had already taken to Instagram, within hours of the news coming down, to make clear her feelings on the matter. “Everyone deserves access to the care that they need, and generations have fought for the right to abortion,” she wrote. “We won’t let that end with us.” But she knew that her objections to the overturn of Roe would not live in a social media vacuum, that they were instead entirely linked to her newfound role as a business leader and entrepreneur.
“I woke up this morning and realized I’m so lucky because I just have the most badass partner ever, and this is why I’m proud to be with Kin,” says Hadid, who was named cofounder of the functional beverage brand last September. “We understand what it takes to be able to run a business but also the way that you have to use your voice for the right reasons.”
Advocacy has been an important part of Kin and its identity from the beginning, so its founder and CEO, Jen Batchelor, didn’t hesitate to take a stand on abortion rights. “We cannot stand when people are robbed of opportunities to make choices for themselves, so it’s natural for us,” she explains. “At the end of the day, we can’t hide behind the shield of a pretty brand; we have to also be the humans behind it.”
In fact, it’s this kind of passion and empathy that initially attracted Hadid to the brand—first as a customer, then as a cofounder. “I’ve had Lyme Disease my whole life, and I’ve always had ADHD and all kinds of immune problems, and I just wanted to find something that would allow me work the way that I do and still be able to enjoy myself at the same time,” the model recalls. Along the way, she tried Kin and immediately knew she’d found something special. “It was kismet, and I knew I had to meet the genius behind it and learn about what she was doing.”
Although Kin launched four years before Hadid got involved, she and Batchelor felt that ‘cofounder’ was the most appropriate title for the model’s new role. “Everyone kind of looks at partnerships like these as pure marketing, but that really wasn’t it,” Batchelor says. “I not only saw the love and the passion that Bella had for these ingredients and the category at large but also how she was incorporating these things in her life, so it was a lightbulb moment for me.” Although she had been running the company on her own for years, she recognized that it would take the help of someone like Hadid to bring it to its full potential. “So, cofounder was the perfect title because we literally reset who the brand is, what we stand to build, and what we have left to do in the world,” Batchelor adds.
Hadid was excited to play such a big part in Kin from the moment she joined, but more than anything, she came hungry to learn. “I’ve been asking questions my whole life and always want to open my mind to new things, but Jen has taught me a lot of about entrepreneurship from a much deeper level,” she explains. “I’m such a hands-on person that I told Jen from the beginning that I wanted to be on every call with her and do anything she needs.”
As anyone who’s picked up a magazine in the last five years can attest to, though, Hadid has another job too—one that requires her to travel around the world for photo shoots and fashion shows, report to set at ungodly call times, and spend hours in the hair and makeup chair. Those in the model’s orbit regularly wonder how she manages to find time for it all, let alone a second career on top of it. But Hadid insists that her duties at Kin have only enhanced her modeling career, and vice versa. “I think they really do coincide,” she says. “Even being on set, having Kin there opens a conversation about anxiety, mental health, and brain care. The fashion industry is super closed off, and it’s really a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of business where everyone is seemingly okay, but underneath it all, they’re really not.”
Ultimately, Hadid wants to help people—whether that’s by introducing a new functional beverage into their lives or fighting for reproductive freedom—and with Kin, and Batchelor, by her side, she’s never felt more empowered to do exactly that.
Photo Source: Create & Cultivate
