It’s not always easy being an “It Girl,” but Les Alfred, host of She’s So Lucky podcast, and Kayla Greaves, beauty expert, reporter and consultant, never promised it would be. Instead, the two creators are forging their own paths based on resilience. Les originally launched her podcast, formerly Balanced Black Girl, from her bedroom in Seattle after creating fitness content elsewhere online.
Last year, she left her corporate job to scale the Dear Media-hosted series, which she rebranded earlier this year. Meanwhile, Kayla has worked as a journalist and editor, including for InStyle as Executive Beauty Editor. In 2023, she left the company to focus on consulting, hosting and speaking engagements.
Despite launching media careers from different pathways, the two New York-based women have forged a friendship where they can discuss their ambitions and challenges.
Both women are part of xoNecole’s It Girl 100 Class of 2025, recognized in the Viral Voices category for the impact they’ve made through storytelling, creativity, and authenticity. Together, they represent what it means to build an "It Girl" brand with integrity and depth. In the spirit of SheaMoisture’s "Yes, And" ethos, Les and Kayla embody the freedom to be multi-layered as women evolving boldly into every version of themselves.
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity
On Forging Their Own Paths
Les Alfred: Being a Jane of all trades is incredibly challenging. And one of the challenges I've faced is that the scope of what podcasters now need to do has increased so much. When I first interviewed you in 2019, I was still very new at it, but I remember being on a Skype call with you from my bedroom in Seattle. That was how I ran the show. And that was good enough. That is absolutely not good enough these days. The scope and the quality keeps increasing, but the resources that you have don't necessarily increase in order to remain competitive.
I get asked so many questions from people who want to get into podcasts and they want to get started. Most of the time, I'm just like, 'I don't have tips for you.' Because, one, I don't know what it's like to start in this current environment. Two, I know what it takes to contend and be consistent in this environment. The barrier of entry is a lot higher in terms of having something of quality than it was before.
On Balancing Ambition and Rest
Kayla Greaves: I've had to make a very clear effort to slow down and just not take on as much. Yes, you're running a business, but you're also living your life. I had one of those days yesterday. I just laid down and listened to white noise for hours because I just needed my brain to just be clear. I called a friend. I cried.
I'm starting over again today. The sun is out. It's a new day. And that's just sometimes what you have to do. You can't show up for your audience or for other people, if you can't show for yourself. I think that creativity comes from a place of living your life and having genuine experiences, and then sharing those experiences through your art.
"I had to give myself permission to let myself grow publicly in ways that I'd already done personally."
Courtesy
On Evolving Through Growth and Rebranding
Les: I didn't create Balanced Black Girl until 2018, but I started blogging and creating content and doing things under the Balanced brand in 2014. I was 24 years old at the time. Now, I'm 36. The things that were important to me, the perspective that I had and the stories I wanted to tell were entirely different. I think I had to give myself permission to let myself grow publicly in ways that I'd already done personally. The show isn't really about wellness anymore. And that shift started happening a couple of years ago.
When we started expanding into more lifestyle topics, more self-help topics [and] talking about entrepreneurship, the audience responded really well. That was when the show really started to grow and take off. And that was what got so much more engagement than the episodes back in 2020 when I was doing hour-long deep dives on gut health.
Rebranding the show was something I've been thinking about for a long time. When I was finally like, 'Oh, I need to do this,' honestly, was the 2024 presidential election. I was like, these people are about to be in here acting crazy. I do not feel safe with my business name being what it is. I don't want to be targeted for any BS. We saw what they did to the Fearless Fund.
"You have to balance your integrity with your income."
Courtesy
On Integrity Over Income
Kayla: I have many other interests aside from beauty. I'm growing and I'm changing as a person. I'm not the same person I was when I started at InStyle in 2019 before the pandemic rocked everybody's world. I don't think reviewing every single lipstick that comes out is exciting or interesting, because everybody does it now, and everybody feels like they're qualified to speak on things that they're not qualified to speak on. I'm currently in that pain point of growth.
I don't think I have always been in environments where I've been encouraged to branch out on my own ideas. I finished Ina Garten’s memoir maybe a month ago. She kept repeating this quote in her book. She said, ‘What goes in early, goes in deep.’ Now that I'm on my own and I don't have the resources of a traditional media company, which is what I have become accustomed to, sometimes it's difficult for me to be like, 'Okay, just go ahead with the thing.'
I think, Les, just the other day, you reposted somebody saying that they let go of a five-figure deal and then got double the next day because it just didn't feel aligned for them. Those are the things that happen. I have to find a balance of, 'Okay, how do I keep myself afloat?' And that may mean I may not be balling out of control just yet, but I'm okay for now. I can buy myself nice things every once in a while, but you have to balance your integrity with your income.
Les: There are just certain lines that I'm not willing to cross. Especially when I created more wellness content, one of those lines was I will not promote any sort of weight loss product. All of these GLP-1s all want to advertise on my podcast. I actually have nothing against those types of products, but I don't ever want someone to look at what I'm putting into the world and think that I'm saying that they need to feel a certain way about their bodies.
Even if the money is great, that's not for me to say, and that's not the type of message that I want to put out here. Or, I had another kind of brand deal come through that would have required me to divulge things about my personal life that I just don't really want my audience knowing about me, and bringing them along on journeys that I just find personal and I want to keep offline. I don’t want to be known for dragging my mess all over the internet for a buck.
I don't want to be known for being an influencer. I would love to be 1,000% in on my podcast, scale it, have it grow to be a media empire where I'm producing and putting out other bodies of work. For now, until that other side of the business really picks up and gets to the point where I want it to be, I kind of need to play the influencer game a little bit to live in this expensive city. But I'm gonna do it on my terms. It's a constant compromise that I'm coming to with myself.
"You can never make a big vision come to fruition if you're sitting and you're waiting for somebody else to tell you exactly what to do."
Courtesy
On Mutual Admiration and Friendship
Les: Something that I really admire about you in having known you for the past couple of years is you don't wait for a roadmap. You jump in, you roll up your sleeves, and you do it. You can never make a big vision come to fruition if you're sitting and you're waiting for somebody else to tell you exactly what to do.
Kayla: Well, first of all, I want to say thank you for saying that, because that means so much to me, and it's very affirming. That's exactly how I feel about you. I remember, even at your first live show, you're like, ‘Oh my god, I'm so stressed. I don't know what I'm doing.’ And, the shit sold out. And, you know, and now, like, you see the growth of the podcast. And you have nearly 61,000 subscribers on YouTube. I just checked recently.
I talk a lot about people that really just need to not say anything on the internet, because it's so frustrating as somebody who grew up as a traditional journalist. You want people to fact check and ask thoughtful questions and have good conversations. I've never said that about you. I've always loved your podcast. And I've sent a lot of your episodes to friends when they're going through specific things that you're talking about.
This season has been a little bit slower to me, so you've been a constant source of inspiration, and it's just been such a pleasure to see your podcast grow despite the challenges you've had. I know it's not easy, but you continue to grow and continue to push through, and I really admire that as somebody who sat and cried yesterday and listened to white noise.
And this is why I tell you all the time, you really do inspire me. I love you a lot.
Les: Oh my gosh, I love you a lot. I'm so glad that the podcast brought us together.
Tap into the full It Girl 100 Class of 2025 and meet all the women changing game this year and beyond. See the full list here.
Featured image courtesy
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Credit: Darnell Brown
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In that way, Courtney isn’t just changing how we care for our hair; she’s paying it forward, crafting a legacy her daughters and future generations of Black women after them get to inherit.
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After starting The Mane Choice in 2013 with just $500, Courtney worked tirelessly to build a hair empire that would go on to surpass $100 million in sales in only six years. She later sold the brand in 2019 for an undisclosed amount, cementing her place among the Black women entrepreneurs who have turned purpose and vision into industry-defining impact.
“Everything that we do is a stepping stone,” Courtney says in the video. “So how do I take what I’ve done as a nurse and turn it into what I’m doing?”
Credit: Darnell Brown
Today, that full circle is the gift that gives, and Black history is still being written, not just by women like Courtney, but by the little Black girls watching, learning, and asking questions that open new doors. Watch & Sea Beauty marks a return for the entrepreneur that reflects purpose, growth, resilience, and trust built over time.
From generation to generation, the way we love and care for our hair tells a bigger story: one of healing, innovation, and what we now have the freedom to choose for ourselves. Courtney’s contributions to Black hair and beauty are truly unmatched, not simply because of what she’s built, but because of what she’s shifted our hair stories: the narrative, the standard, and the future.
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Featured image by Darnell Brown
A Black girl ushering in her era of straight hair was an unspoken but understood tradition, a legacy shaped by women who learned that relaxers were the key to manageability and beauty, as society had defined it.
Though relaxers were a product of their time, the memories many of us share from that era of creamy-white, no-lye formulas also carry a collective trauma. It was one endured in the name of beauty standards we didn’t question until we did. It’s an experience that Courtney Adeleye, founder and CEO of Watch & Sea Beauty, knows all too well. And one that ultimately shaped her path into the hair care space.
In xoNecole’s Generation to Generation, created in partnership with Target, Courtney reflects on her hair journey alongside her daughter during a BTS video from their mother-daughter photoshoot. As she is seen applying product to her daughter’s braids, she begins talking about her experience with perms before going natural. Her daughter pauses and asks a simple yet revealing question: “What’s a relaxer?”
Credit: Darnell Brown
Courtney explains that it’s a chemical process that makes Black hair “pretty much permanently straight.” She then recalls getting her first relaxer at 13, a moment that remains vivid in her memory decades later. “My head was on fire,” she says in the video. “It’s nothing I remember in a good way. It’s something I’m like, ‘This can’t be.’” Their exchange is as striking as it is revelatory.
Unlike generations before her, Courtney’s daughter will never have to know relaxers as the rite of passage that once felt inevitable for so many Black girls. Thanks to entrepreneurs like Courtney, natural hair is no longer treated as the exception but upheld as the standard. As something to be celebrated, nurtured, and protected.
Generation to generation, her work helps ensure that Black girls can grow up with hair journeys rooted in appreciation, care, and choice, instead of one etched in pain, trauma, or assimilation.
In that way, Courtney isn’t just changing how we care for our hair; she’s paying it forward, crafting a legacy her daughters and future generations of Black women after them get to inherit.
That legacy didn’t begin with hair. Courtney credits her own mother, a nurse like she once was, for being the blueprint for what entrepreneurship could look like. “I got a chance to see my mother take a sheet of paper, cut it up in little rectangles, take that to a printing shop, and turn it into a card game,” she tells her daughter in a different scene. Those early lessons planted the seeds for what would later become The Mane Choice, a hair care brand born from her desire to create safer, healthier alternatives for Black hair that didn't compromise on performance.
After starting The Mane Choice in 2013 with just $500, Courtney worked tirelessly to build a hair empire that would go on to surpass $100 million in sales in only six years. She later sold the brand in 2019 for an undisclosed amount, cementing her place among the Black women entrepreneurs who have turned purpose and vision into industry-defining impact.
“Everything that we do is a stepping stone,” Courtney says in the video. “So how do I take what I’ve done as a nurse and turn it into what I’m doing?”
Credit: Darnell Brown
Today, that full circle is the gift that gives, and Black history is still being written, not just by women like Courtney, but by the little Black girls watching, learning, and asking questions that open new doors. Watch & Sea Beauty marks a return for the entrepreneur that reflects purpose, growth, resilience, and trust built over time.
From generation to generation, the way we love and care for our hair tells a bigger story: one of healing, innovation, and what we now have the freedom to choose for ourselves. Courtney’s contributions to Black hair and beauty are truly unmatched, not simply because of what she’s built, but because of what she’s shifted our hair stories: the narrative, the standard, and the future.
Her work is the legacy that lives in what we make possible for the women who come next.
Featured image by Darnell Brown