Julie Chung is in the business of making people happier and their lives easier. It started more than 20 years ago when she graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, and it still applies today as co-founder of T3, the beloved tech-driven brand of hair tools.
Hair is personal, and Chung—who founded the brand with her husband, Kent—delights when customers shower her with the same excitement they would a celebrity. (Myself included.) It wasn’t until discovering the T3 Featherweight Stylemax hair dryer years ago, followed by their line of curling irons and, most recently, the Airebrush that made doing my hair—previously a chore—something I actually looked forward to.
“At the end of the day, it’s about what can I do to make your life easier and more pleasurable—or at least, to more easily understand how to do your hair,” Chung says. “Hair is a crowning glory for women. If your hair feels good, then you can go out and do amazing things with more confidence. It’s so gratifying.”
Chung recalls a fashion designer friend of hers who recently brought the Airebrush on vacation. “Here’s this busy woman who can run a company, do everything, and yet she normally can’t do her hair and needs to pay someone once a week to come and do it,” she says. “And who doesn’t love their stylist, but now she knows how to do her hair thanks to this tool and feels good about it. That kind of feedback means everything.”
T3 started as a passion project, which is a big reason why the brand is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. “Kent had his own job, and I was in medical school, so to think this would turn into a big company…we weren’t thinking that far in advance.”
But it was that passion for hair, technology, and the overall beauty industry that helped Chung see it to fruition. On top of med school—to become an ophthalmologist, which she still practices—she and Kent were staying up all night talking to factories in South Korea and China as well as working on PR plans, design aesthetics, and more. “We’d spend hours on how lightweight it is, or where the handle sits, where the buttons sit,” she says. “But that’s important for any founder, right? You have to know every little thing that makes a product successful in the marketplace.”
And now, you can buy T3 everywhere from Sephora to Nordstrom and even Best Buy. “I still very much cannot believe how far we’ve come and how much people love us,” Chung says. “It’s still sort of this pinch-me situation.”
For Glamour‘s latest edition of Doing the Work, Chung opens up about the specifics to bring T3 to life, why it’s never “just hair,” and the mindset shift if you want to be happier at work.
Glamour: Starting a brand of hair tools is not something that doesn’t come without a lot of thought and planning. Where did this passion come from, and how was T3 born?
Julie Chung: Before I even went to medical school, I was always obsessed with fashion, beauty, skincare, hair care, all of it. I wanted to very much be in that world, but my parents being immigrants and me being the oldest child, [it was implied] I could do it after medical school. So that was sort of set for me. But when I was dating Kent in medical school, he was so tired of hearing about how I couldn’t handle my hair. I was using a $15 drugstore blow dryer, and it just wasn’t working for me. My hair is coarse and thick, really hard to manage. Meanwhile, Kent grew up in the hair industry with his parents being stylists and was really steeped in that. He was coming out of a finance job and said, “Let’s really think about what this industry is doing and why it’s not meeting the needs of an avid beauty consumer.”
Where did you go from there?
He met with engineers and realized there was no innovation, but more importantly [the haircare industry] wasn’t at all concerned about actual problems that real women had. Tools weren’t being marketed to women in a way that women understood. Beauty marketing takes our emotions and meets our needs, but the hair industry wasn’t doing that. So there was a white space. Kent made this incredible dryer that was super lightweight with technology that made my hair dry faster and more importantly, cut down on frizz. He put the prototype in my bathroom; immediately, it was like I had my hair professionally straightened or blown out at the salon. That’s how T3 started.
Your medical background was also essential, I’d imagine.
You’re right. It’s not that different from medicine. Medicine’s about increasing quality of life. It’s about solving problems. I can fix your cornea, and it might look good to me on my microscope, but if you don’t feel like you can read the newspaper, then it’s a fail. There’s a real life person behind that solution that you’re trying to solve. It’s funny how hand in hand it really goes.
What did your parents say at the time?
My parents were worried I was going to drop out of med school. Plus, Kent and I weren’t married yet so there was some risk there too. My parents were like, “You need to get engaged. We need to see some commitment because you’re spending a lot of time with this guy doing this thing.” We knew that it was serious, so we got engaged, got married in 2007, and we’re still married. It’s been a happy ending, but yeah, it was a little risky.
And you’re still a practicing ophthalmologist at UCLA one day a week. How did you decide how to divide your time between jobs?
One thing that people never teach women is that you can’t do everything. You have to prioritize. My family will always come first. I [had] massive infertility problems and was told I was never going to have children. I was still working full time in ophthalmology, so that naturally made me pull back a little bit, which was a blessing in disguise. I don’t think I could have pulled back otherwise. I went to three days a week, and then T3 started growing. Eventually I realized I could make a bigger impact through T3 representing the AAPI community, as well as women, and the overall hair community. I’m used to going to medical conventions and giving talks, but doing interviews like this is still new to me and super exciting.
What do your parents say now?
My parents are happy for me and very supportive. Originally my mom was like, “Business companies so unstable, so unpredictable.” Now she’s like, “Oh, you need to be an entrepreneur!” Her tune has changed. [Laughs] They see how my medical background aligns with what I’m doing and the psychology of it, as well as the rigor of the scientific technical side.
What do you wish consumers realized about hair tools?
There’s a lot more to a hair tool than hot air, and we’ve learned this over 20 years. It’s the way in which the heat is controlled, so hair looks healthier, is shinier, and the style lasts. You can sell women a promise that looks really cool on TikTok, but ultimately it’s got to be super easy to use and it’s got to work. That’s how our company started. I had a problem, and we set out to fix it. It’s no different today. The hair tools category is not as crowded as beauty, but hair is way more complicated. It’s really understanding your customer and tweaking that technology to fit her needs.
What is the best quality in a boss?
Someone who really listens to you. A boss who really listens is teachable. It also means you have a more open mind if you’re actively listening.
What’s the worst quality in a boss, aside from someone who doesn’t listen?
Someone with a huge ego who is inflexible. And someone who isn’t a team player.
What is your favorite part of the job?
Interacting with women and solving their hair problems. I love the creative process. I love the product photo shoots, working on the package design, all of it. And I really love the technical part, because my other world is technical.
What are you a perfectionist about?
I was going to be funny and say “my bangs” because they have to fall exactly [right], but in all seriousness, I am always pushing myself to make our products better and better.
What is the most misunderstood thing about what you do?
That it’s just hair. That’s how my parents used to see it. “It’s just hair. Your job as a doctor is so much more important. You’re saving vision.” I would strongly disagree. The psychology of hair is so huge. Nine out of 10 women will tell you they don’t know what to do with their hair. To improve that part of a woman’s life and to overcome the psychology of, “I don’t get my hair,” is everything.
What’s the best piece of money advice you’ve ever received?
To not be obsessed with it. To hold it loosely. To stop thinking numbers, because numbers ultimately will hinder your creativity. The money will come if you do things that you’re passionate about. I really believe that you need to give it away. We are huge in philanthropy, including women’s health initiatives and children through World Vision.
How do you deal with disappointment?
I think there’s a purpose in everything; there’s learnings. So I allow myself to be disappointed but not for long. I’ll step aside and say, “What can I learn from this? How can I grow from this?” What I really want to say is, “You know what? Everything sucks. Life sucks. This sucks.” But it doesn’t. There’s so many wonderful things that I have. So I write it down, tabulate it in my head, and try to remind myself of my blessings.
What advice do you wish you could give your younger self?
To not care so much what other people think. Just do what you are passionate about and don’t listen to the naysayers. It’s okay if not everyone agrees with what you want to do, what you want to be. I don’t know if I would’ve gone into medicine had I cared so much of what my parents think. It might’ve been disappointing that I didn’t go to FIDM, but look at the perspective it’s given me, and being a physician ultimately ended up being a huge gift that has helped me in my business.
Finish this sentence: People would be happier at work if…
They stopped calling it work.
What should they call it?
A mission. If you see what you do as missional, then it changes the way you view things. If your mindset is, “I want to do this work so I can make this money,” that’s only going to last you so long. You really have to change your perspective in what it is that you’re doing. That’s why I don’t consider my job as “just hair.” When you see it as something more, you’re more creative. You’re happier. It took a while to get here, and I did do a lot of complaining along the way, but I did it.
Shop T3 Hair Tools
T3 SinglePass Curl 1.25” Ceramic Long Barrel Curling and Wave Iron
Sephora
Amazon
T3 Airebrush Duo
Nordstrom
T3 Fit Compact Professional Hair Dryer
Ulta
Nordstrom
T3 SinglePass Compact
Sephora
Nordstrom
Amazon
Don’t let the size of this cutie fool you. It packs some serious styling power. Because it’s smaller, it obviously takes a bit longer to run through your whole head, but the strong heat (there’s only one setting) helps keep it efficient, so you don’t have to run it over every section twice. It also comes with a heat-resistant cap, so you can actually throw it in your bag or luggage without worrying it’ll melt or burn all your other stuff. —L.S.
Jessica Radloff is the Glamour senior West Coast editor and author of the NYT best-selling book The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series.
The post T3 Hair Tools Co-Founder Julie Chung Has the Career Advice No One Else Will Tell You appeared first on Glamour.