Mazing Lee

The co-founder of Lify Wellness explains why she left a successful career in retail to start afresh with her sibling

A questionnaire and the touch of a button are all it takes to brew a customised cup of tea from Lify Wellness’s smart brewer, which uses an “east-meets-west herbal wisdom” to tailor drinks to each user’s health and well-being.

Here, CEO and co-founder Mazing Lee explains her road to wellness from fashion, working with family, and how she grew the business during her maternity leave.

We have a vision for Lify Wellness to be a wellness technology platform. We started with our smart herbal brewer in 2017, using proprietary technology to deliver herbal drinks from scratch in under 40 seconds. The brewer links to an app that acts like a personal wellness coach: we ask 20 questions about your wellness needs, and we recommend a drink based on guidance from health practitioners, including traditional Chinese medicine [TCM] practitioners and western herbal scientists.

I studied business at Chinese University of Hong Kong and got a management trainee position at [luxury retailer] DFS. In 2013, I joined my sister, Connie Lee, an industrial designer, in the business development and marketing side of her design firm, Contact Design Group. When you switch from a corporate job to a startup, there’s a lot of unlearning and relearning. I was so stressed that I developed hormonal problems; I went to different doctors, but they didn’t have a clue what was going on.

I wanted to find out what was going on in my body, so I pursued a course in TCM public health. I wondered: do people really know what their body needs? That’s when we came up with Lify. We gained investment in Hong Kong and started creating prototypes.

I am grateful to work with my sister. She is very talented; she executes well; she is a can-do person, while I’m more about strategy and planning. Of course, there are disagreements, but we separate our family roles and create boundaries. In recent years, I have given birth to two children, and Connie helped a lot. With my second baby, I realised there needed to be a compromise between breastfeeding and business. I wanted to focus on what we had accomplished so far and push it further. I used each maternity leave to join accelerator programmes, which connected us to US investors and gave us access to mentors outside Hong Kong.

To build a business, you have to have passion for what you do and have a vision. Lify is all about wellness, and we want people to be more mindful about what they drink, how they eat, how they live. I was born and raised in Hong Kong and studied at a government school; most of my schoolmates pursued traditional jobs over entrepreneurship. Being an entrepreneur requires a lot of persistence, which comes from your beliefs, values and support. You need to find people who have similar experiences to share, be open-minded, and tell others about problems you’re facing and the help you need, as in a startup, there aren’t always enough resources.

Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone, but people are key. To make a viable business, you need a lot of energy and to know how to strike a balance between work and personal life.

I am grateful for all our family’s, friends’ and mentors’ support to help us become Lify today.