Joining me on the show today is Ann McFerran, the LA based founder behind Glamnetic - the go-to magnetic lash company.
Glamnetic is committed to providing the highest quality products and experience to customers and finding ways to continually make your beauty routine easier!
Ann launched her brand a year ago from her bedroom and within no time at all was doing 7 figures a month in sales!
In this episode she’s sharing that early hustle with us and what she attributes that success to, a great strategy to get orders when you’re just starting out and why social media and community is so critical to building a brand in 2020.
Please note, this transcript has been copy pasted without the lovely touch of a human editor. Please expect some typos!
Ann: Yes. So my name is Ann McFerran and I'm the founder and CEO of Glamnetic, which is a magnetic ocean liner company. We also now I've just branched out into Nail's.
Doone: I saw, I saw it looks so much fun. Very, very cool, very exciting. We will get to that.
Doone: I want to go first back to the very beginning before you started Glenfiddich and what you were doing in life, what was going on and the light bulb moment that led you to getting started.
Ann: Yeah, it's actually it's been a pretty windy road, I feel like, to get here and definitely not a straight path to success, which I'm pretty sure everybody's been saying that. But I basically was born in Bangkok, Thailand, and I moved here when I was seven. I grew up actually pretty poor and my parents had had a divorce.
Ann: And basically, due to my parents' remarriage, I was able to come to the United States and have a stepdad. That's why my name is McFarren.
Anne: So it obviously doesn't make sense as an Asian, but my dad is Irish and German, my stepdad. And so basically with a divorced parent that everything had a rough kind of childhood but thankfully came to America and was able to. Kind of reconcile all of that, and I felt like I discovered makeup at a really early age because when I was moving here, I looked different from everybody else.
Ann: I came into an all white neighborhood and pretty much was the only Asian kid at the school. And they made fun of me for the way that my eyes looked and I think smaller or whatever.
Ann: Obviously, when you're young and people tell you that, you get pretty self-conscious. So I finally discovered makeup and that was when I also discovered eyelashes. And I remember how it just made me feel like a completely different person. I felt beautiful. I felt confident what seemed like the first time in my life. And that's where my lifelong obsession with lashes started. And I sort of just played with makeup my whole life. And the lashes kind of were the sort of the conduit for me to feel confident about myself.
Ann: So much so that even when I wasn't wearing them, I started feeling comfortable about myself, are like a training tool to feel confident. And I felt like this is the power makeup that people talk about. And that's why I think we're so obsessed with beauty, is because it really makes you go into your best version of yourself because you feel your most confident. And I think this is also where my my slogan came from, like the magnetic glove. It's kind of that concept of, like, your be your most confident self. It changes your aura. It makes you a magnetic person. So over the decade, I tried almost like every last one to think of became an expert in lashes.
But I always found it was pretty weird that it's only beauty products where you actually have to glue it to your face. Very serious. Like, why do you put this toxic glue, glue it on your eyes, the most sensitive part of your face. It's very strange. Anyways, like that's something that had always been thinking about Fastforward I went to college. I actually actually moved you into NorCal in a very small town called Tracy, California, and then moved to so moved kind of a little bit down more to a smaller town called Manteca, California. And literally there's more cows and people there. So I had a very at a very sheltered upbringing. I had to be home by like I actually had to be just like inside by five p.m., my mom would go out like past that. So I had a pretty sheltered life in L.A. and my mom was like one of those, like Asian strict Asian moms that didn't let me go anywhere and was like, OK, you need to always study. So I was very good at school. I was really passionate about the sciences. I love science. So when I got to UCLA, that's naturally what I gravitated towards. So my major at UCLA was psychobiology and I felt like this sort of fed my experimental and analytical mindset and also just being in L.A.
for the first time where I had no curfew, I thought I was a wild, so to speak, and I just went out all the time. I met so many people and completely expanded my horizons about what was acceptable, I guess in the world. My mom would always say, like, be a doctor, do something safe because I'm a first generation college student. And so getting into college for her was a big deal. So obviously she didn't want to she didn't want to sacrifice that. I had a different idea of what work was for me. I couldn't see myself in a medical field, so I started taking art classes in college. I had actually been doing art kind of even before that in my childhood because my mom was actually a really good artist. He was really talented and would paint murals for the neighborhood. But she always told me you can't make much money off of it. But that sort of changed when I went to L.A. and I took art classes and then I started selling my own paintings.
And one of the first paintings I sold was for ten thousand dollars.
And my gosh.
And so I thought I made it, you know, I was like, oh, my God, this is my path. This is my ticket to success. Exactly. I got this. Exactly. So I was like, OK, forget science. Like I love I graduated anyway.
I graduated from college, but right after I finished, I pretty much jumped right into art and making commissions for a bunch of just rich people that I found in L.A. and and on the way there, I met a lot of successful men who had like who had their own businesses that were thriving and they were building their businesses. So I felt like I was around those types of people quite a bit due to the art. In a weird way, I think that's what it was with art. The main thing with art in Los Angeles, you have to be really good at networking. And so I was just always be networking and and obviously trying to sell my art. That was that was the hardest thing because nothing was guaranteed. Since it's all it's all project by project basis, and pretty much I did that for four years and I showed it like the art show, like some big conventions, and I kind of felt a little bit like lost, though, while I was doing it. I didn't feel like I had a lot of guidance in my. A lot of guidance in my career. So I wasn't sure where it was headed. Artist. So, like, I feel like it's definitely one of the hardest things ever to do by yourself, especially if you have no guidance, no mentor or anything. And I felt pretty lonely being in the studio by myself, like all every day. You just had to put in the hours in the studio and I felt like I didn't talk to people literally the entire day and sometimes feel like self quarantine and that feeling.
Right.
So it was like that for multiple years. And basically on the side, I was sort of doing I was sort of discovering like business outside of that, like, how do I start my own business? How do I make money on the side? I got into stock trading. I was doing training, like learning how to trade initially as penny stocks, and then it just kind of like expanded to other things and even crypto sort of like at the height of that, I sort of just and then I would contact like the best people that were like one of the best traders. I contacted him and I was like, let me learn from you. And I was doing that, like while I was also doing art. So it was like multiple things at once and definitely learned to be a lot more strategic with the money, like with investing and also just learning the technical skills of of day trading, I think kind of put me in the mindset of like doing my own business. And I felt like that molded me for like the two years that I did that and the intense amount of stress and roller coaster of emotions that you have to go through while doing that is also, I think, also trained to be and it prepared me for for entrepreneurship later on down the line and also how unstable it was, the most unstable thing ever, especially in the beginning when you're just like you have an account and you blow it up and you're just like, wow, I just lost all my money because I made mistakes, like every single moment. It was like your money was on the line. And if you mess up even for a minute or two, like, you literally could blow up your account. So it was one of those like super high stakes things that I went through that I felt like prepared me emotionally and for how crazy entrepreneurship was going to be. And I sort of like was looking for other things to do. And I I knew that I was always obsessed with lashes. Right. And I felt like, OK.
There is a problem here to be solved, and and I felt like when I started seeing I had seen magnetic flashes come out, just the normal ones, and they were like very thin and plasticky. They had like two magnets, max, on them and.
I was like, this is this is an interesting idea, but it's just not quite there, like it's not it's not something I would ever want to wear. I like to glam beautiful, thick lashes and the sides part of me came came out and I was like, OK, I really want to see if I could make something that I would want to wear where I love thick volume lashes and I want to add more magnets. I want to have five. And I even came out with six magnets. So I sort of began like just through YouTube, literally just from YouTube. Teaching myself everything in product development, just understanding how even part of developing hadrosaurs and all of that stuff, I taught myself all that. And that's sort of where my journey started. I didn't even know if it was something that I was going to fully commit to was just like, I just want to see if I can do it, since I was like, oh, I'm already doing this. I'm doing all these other things on the side. Let me just see. And basically hundreds of samples later, literally hundreds, where some of the magnets were literally falling off the band because they were using like Taqi like super glue and all of the factors just had no idea what they were doing. But I finally was able to get a prototype that actually worked and had five magnets on the band. And it was like a volume main clashes between Flash and it looked absolutely beautiful.
So that's sort of like where the. Like research and development started and I went into it pretty deep for about a year and a half of development of development now. And then that's when I was like, OK, like I do I do really want to see if I can make this into a brand. Like I do want to launch this. And I want to quit painting pretty much in a way that was like still doing on the side to make money because it was good money still. And I needed that to invest in inventory and all of this. So that's when I sort of went full throttle and I decide, OK, like I'm going to do this. And I myself, everything in like marketing, photography literally got myself like professional camera equipment and started doing photography and shot like I remember like I asked my friend, I was like, do you have any friends that are models? Like, let me just I want to like, shoot them. Like, she's like, Oh, sure. And she just thought it was like a really fun, like, silly thing that I was doing. And I was like, yeah, I know the brand, but I don't think she actually was think that I was serious I guess. And she's like, it's me, like tiny little brand or whatever. So I was like, OK, yeah, let me just shoot her maybe at your studio. And so she let me borrow her little studio in downtown L.A. and she saw the photos.
She's like, holy crap. She's like, how did she do that? She's like, how do you as I like I tell myself everything from YouTube, all from you to school of YouTube.
I love the school of YouTube.
And so they were impressed. They all was crazy. And that was pretty much the the first image that I shot and the one that went on the homepage banner, silly, like so funny enough, like recently one of my interns that me like, kind of like a video from from Spain of basically the all the first photo that I took, someone painted a mural of it in Spain.
No way. I don't know how I even know how that photo got out in Spain.
And and then in twenty twenty, someone painted a mural of it in some back, like, I don't even know. I was so confused. I was like, how did it even get out? But yeah, they literally use the photo is like inspired to paint the mural. So I thought it was hilarious and so cool too.
That's amazing. Yeah. Wow. Your mom must be so proud of you. Now that's such a such an interesting start of your of your entrepreneurial journey and.
Oh my gosh, obviously, fast forward today to today. It's just absolutely nuts. And I totally want to get into where it is now. But I want to stick with that early, early on hussle when you were getting started with the product development, I always love to ask about the numbers, like, did you invest personal savings?
Did you have to get a loan using the money from the paintings to be able to fund that? And and then what happened next?
Like, how did you actually start selling and being like, I need to find some customers now and get people on board with what I'm doing?
Yeah. So I actually invested my personal money like I didn't really understand how to raise money. You didn't even know that I could and didn't know people anybody would be interested.
It was one I just had heard people about. I think I heard about people raising money, but I was like so intimidated by the concept. And I also was like, I don't. I have money like I don't need to raise money, I had saved up every like I was. That's one thing I give myself credit for was I was really frugal with my spending. I would I would earn a lot and I would just save, like, literally every dollar and try to get like I was also a kind of an influence there on the side for my Instagram account. So I would get free clothes, free food sometimes, and I would and makeup. And so I never had to buy anything, which is which is amazing. You try to use my sort of micro influence, your power to to get whatever I needed without having to pay money because I knew I needed to save the money because money was hard to come by at the time as an artist. But yeah, I pretty much invested that into the inventory. And initially, you don't need a lot of inventory like I started maybe with two hundred units per SKU and I, I only had five screws and yeah. So it was very, very chill. Wasn't that capital intensive at all. I can't, I can't say that for tech like I don't know what that is like, but I'm sure Texas Tech is like capital intensive. But for me it wasn't. And so. And what was the second question launching?
What was your go to market launch? How did you start finding customers to buy your product?
Yeah, so I actually started with a very small Instagram. My initial my other Instagram I had gotten traction on. I have like maybe 40, 50 followers and I had painted this is another weird side note. I actually used to paint murals for like the vlog squad, like David Dobek. And like all of them, they had asked me to I guess I was one of the few artists in L.A. that could do that. And they somehow contacted me, found me. And basically I painted a mural for for David Dobek when he was doing pranks on, like his his assistant, Natalie.
So I was in one of his videos.
And and then after that, it was like Jeff, who is like also in the Blogspot, asked me to do a prank on David's. It painted a mural in David's room. And then and then it was Dirty Dom, who is also part of the blogspot. And then it was Sam and Colby who they have a big YouTube channel. So I was able to leverage, like a lot of, I guess, the those jobs to go out to get me started in terms of like having traction. They would shout out my accountant and I would gain a lot of followers. And and from there, I sort of push those followers into my Glenfiddich account, which was a baby account I had just started. And so I just kept promoting like, oh, I'm going to start a brand and start a brand and sort of just like kind of hype that up. And it still was a small account. It wasn't it wasn't a big audience in any by any means. Right. But I found that if I started Demming, every single person that followed the account and there wasn't that many. But I d.m. those people and give them an offer on the product that they would use the code. So that's what I did in the beginning. I literally D.M. like before the first month, IDM, every single person that followed the account just manually. I spent all day doing that on top of actually taking photos of all of the product shots. Like every post was created by me. Like I would I would I would set it up. I would take the photos, and then I would face to them and and I would do that, like for every single photo, even like the quote unquote user generated content was like, are you content? They were my friends. I would come over people that girls I would find. I was like, oh my God, you're pretty.
Like, you want to come over like like I'll put you at Lightbody and I would say, yes.
And I would you I would start shooting videos with them and. It's pretty funny, I put makeup on all of them and I would do a photo shoot with them, and so that's how I got all of the content in the beginning, because obviously no one was wearing it organically.
Like, I didn't really start gifting until, like, maybe half, second or third weekend.
And then I got my first intern, who I met really randomly at a party. And she was just like I told her. But my I told her my idea and what the concept of our lashes. And and then she was like, oh, wow, that's so cool. She's like, what can I be your intern? Like I said, it's like I need experience interning at a startup. And I was I mean, it's not really I said it's not really a startup. It's just me in my room in Koreatown is like, yeah, that's fine.
Like it's any experience. It's appreciated as is so good.
And so she would come over every day, help me you help me do the sales and I would give her a commission really. Like every else you made.
Oh my gosh.
Genius, that's so cool. Yeah.
It was a whole thing and and yeah she, she stayed with me for, for a while like thankfully because I was like, I don't have any money. I'm sorry to pay here right now, but eventually, you know, it started snowballing and I so she who was like my first intern, she stayed for like a couple of months, then she had to go back home and then I finally. Oh yeah. And then Kevin, I met Kevin, who is not my business partner. He came in like a month, a month into the business, and he saw what I was doing and he felt like. Oh, wow, this actually can go somewhere and he believes in me enough to be like, OK, I want to be business partners with you. And that's sort of when he sort of helped me, I guess, build infrastructure around the brand just in terms of like the financing side, the finance and the ops. It was a part of the business. I wasn't thinking as deeply about. I was thinking more about, obviously, the creative, the marketing, the product inventory and all of that. And then obviously, as you get larger, that's something that's very important to deal with. But yes. So then he came in as a business partner and then I actually hired my first official employee six months into a club that I actually started before.
Please, please stay forever.
Yeah, it was actually it was actually the hardest thing to hire a person employee, because I was I mean, the job requirement was coming to my house in Cape Town. The small little house is literally a backhouse in front of a bigger house. And it was because she was cheap at the time and that's where it stayed as an artist. And they would just have to work with me in my room. And literally there was a desk right next to my bed. You would just have to sit like next to each other and we literally wouldn't have any room to move because it was so small.
Oh, my gosh, that's crazy. I literally found two perspective.
The first the first person that I thought would be my first employee, first day in I trained her and all of these things that I was doing customer service at the time I was doing I was doing everything I was saying, the Instagram, the marketing, the the emails, legit, everything. And so I sort of on boarded her and there was so many things on board and I felt like, OK, at the end of the day my mouth was so tired from talking. And then the next day I get a text where she's like, oh, like this isn't going to work for me. And I was like, Oh. I went through all of that for you to say that, OK, I was pretty disappointed. I was like, OK, I guess I guess she doesn't want to work in, like, a really small, tight room with me, like being the person responsible for everything else. I understand. OK. And then the second employee came in and he seemed promising. I was like, oh my God, he's so good. Like, I really like him and. Basically, four days in, he told me he was going to take another job and I just felt so like kind of defeated, like, why is it that terrible, like working with me? Like, I was like, why is this terrible? And I was hiring is really, really hard. Finding the perfect, perfect person is really hard. And then I asked my friend, like, can you give me a referral? Because I am having a hard time finding somebody. And that's when my friend Banyo, the same girl that had given me the the studio to shoot. And she was like, oh yeah. My my friend Stephanie Villa, who's also YouTube or her best friend's girlfriend, is looking for a job. I was like, OK, she's like, yeah, she's like straight out of college. She's she's, she's been looking for something. So I said, I told her this is a great opportunity to hype you up. And I was like, oh, awesome. OK, great. So that's when I met Mya and she was my first official and she stayed.
She said, thank God.
And she's actually super talented at design and video editing. So that was such a huge help for us especially. We were starting to run ads for the first time and just actually having any videos at all on our Instagram. So that helped tremendously and having her there. She also learned how to do like emails, email, marketing. And so we sort of figured it out together, like everything every step of the way. And at the same time, our revenue was like doubling month over month.
So we actually hit our first, like a million dollars a month at month six when Mia joined.
Oh my gosh, out of your apartment.
I really thought I would say, like, OK, maybe now we can get an office. Maybe now we can upgrade. The hustle has been has been here, but we can move.
Yeah, it was so silly. I was like, I don't even understand. It didn't make sense. I was like, how I don't understand how we're doing so well. And I'm like literally out of my little tiny rinky dink apartment. And so we actually did get our first office. I actually didn't like being in an office. I, I don't know.
I just I just felt like it was very distracting to be around a lot of other people. And I felt like what I was in my apartment, I could just focus like really, really well. But yeah, we're basically we started hiring like our second and third employee. And then we had all of a sudden three people in the office. I hired them pretty quickly right after me. So it was like maybe two weeks I was there and then back to back, I had two employees join. One was for customer service and the other one was for social media. And so then you could focus on my content creation.
And it was just crazy because I was in an office and was like a really small room. And then everyone would just like throw questions at me left and right.
And we were like, I don't know the answer either.
No. I mean, I did know all the answers, but that's why they would ask me. So I would be like, OK, now you guys figure it out because I can't sit here and literally answer every single one of your guys questions. And so people management was like a whole thing that I had to learn really, really quickly, because I was just like, this is overwhelming. I can't even get my work done. And that's how I felt about an office is like it's too it was too accessible, especially since we only have one office. I didn't have my own. I felt like I was be too accessible and well, I guess two week, two months later, covid happened. So he went back out of the office, back into our apartment. So I then I was like, OK, now I'm back to where I was. And actually this is I actually prefer this great as I go. I did I get more work done this way. And basically virtually we grew up. Oh my God, we grew so quickly, virtually. We have like thirty five people now on the team. What. Oh my gosh. And that was in the span of I mean since March it was March. We had three employees and now we have thirty five.
That's so crazy. I'm, I'm so curious to really understand what you think is what you think was driving that significant growth, because of course the DMS would have started to get that early kind of traction and people buying. But obviously at some point something else kicks in and something else is working in a really great way for you. What do you attribute that success to?
Yeah, so we we dialed in on like just marketing and all sorts of ways. So a lot of it was like influencer marketing. We started really having a lot of deals, the huge converters for us. I mean the first year we did. Oh my God. This one you do. Or she did like. It was like 30 X what we paid her, and I didn't expect that from influencer marketing, but I think it's it's definitely dependent on who you pick and who is the right audience for you just depends on who your niche market is.
And we sort of really figured out who our audience was and basically the messaging behind the product. And then that's when we also started running ads. And I was like it was like a founder first sort of ad where it's like I'm the one talking about my own product. Like there's not a lot of founders that go on and just say, hey, I'm the founder and this is my product and this is why it works.
And this is what this is why you need it. Like, I think just me being super transparent from the beginning, even on all of our socials, like I am like on stories every single day, like doing a tutorial on the lash.
I'm talking to the customers like every day because I used to do the customer service. So I understood the customer really well. And I would even text some of them because I was like, Oleksiy, like, I'm trying to get up and try to correspond with you faster. Here's my phone number, like text me. And I think just being, like, really transparent and casual about the whole thing. And because we were small, it allowed us to really understand the customer and really hone in on the messaging in a big way. And and that's when it allowed all our marketing channels to thrive. Like emails, like emails is a huge revenue driver for us. Seems like the ads huge and also like influencer marketing.
But we definitely didn't just use one channel was like literally every single, every single channel that we could find.
We started finding it basically was just like a gradual, gradual steps in, like maximizing it and like optimizing it so that you can get Max, our ally and revenue from it. And I feel like I've also like because I'm like just that's my personality is like very obsessed with optimization. So that I mean, that's the reason why I was like into the product in the first place was like, I want to optimize my life. Like, I love efficiency. I just love. Yeah, I just I love being efficient. I feel like that's that's one of my things. I like like to work smarter, not harder. And I tell my team that I think about the relative amount of work to relative amount of reward that you get.
And in the beginning, I think my team also wasn't able to think strategically about anything because they were just busy and learning and just doing a lot of the girls that came in.
Actually, it was their first real job and like anything marketing related and I sort of taught them from the ground up. So like one of the girls, Kelly, she had worked at like a a travel agency. And she came in and I was like, you're going to do social.
She was my second employee.
And and I think she had a hard time in the beginning, like understanding like what to do and then sort of just like being like really patient and being like really like working with her like very closely and monitoring everything that she does from the beginning, making sure she's making mistakes and catching all those mistakes if she makes it. It was like super important in her growth and learning. And now she's like killing it at social media. Like in the beginning it was like really rough.
And I was like, and now she's like doing social media and she's doing email marketing and she's also helping with ads. So it's like now she's doing multiple things. So I feel like if you really focus on. On the people that work for you and help them grow like they are, they're going to help you grow. Yeah, I just feel like when you get really big, though, especially as a CEO, you don't you're you're not that hands on with your employees anymore. But I feel like that's super, super important for their growth. Like even like she's never had any experience coming in. And I just I didn't even interview her. I literally was just like, hey, do you have another friend? I have I have Spaniard's. You have to look at us just like, oh, yeah, I can look for a job because I was hired. I didn't even really interview her. I just thought, OK, let's just join. And that's kind of like the mindset. I was like, I'm just going to work with her because I believe in her. Like, if you believe in people from the beginning, they're going to help you out. And I feel like all of our employees now have just helped us really scale. Like having this many people is actually really important. And I'm glad, like I hire that many people because they all really helped us scale. I wouldn't be able to do it by myself. The amount of content that's necessary, I mean, just on social is absolutely insane. Like, I feel like you have to be so good at content and I feel like we've gotten so good at content like. Just like the psychology behind all of the posts that we post, the ads that we post, like everything is all like a bee tested and we try like hundreds and content like every week.
It's crazy, isn't it, the amount that you have to produce an output. And I also think there's something to be said about hiring young talent who are really hungry to, like, actually get into something and and who haven't been, like, molded yet and, you know, like disheartened by working in, like, some corporate job that they hated.
And they learnt these rules six years ago and they're still following those practices. I think even if I think back to myself, like my first job was just so awesome because they too gave me that, like, push to be like, hey, can you be this person?
And I was like, yeah, I can be the person, the social media. I'll be there.
Yeah, I feel like I feel like everything is like it's not rocket science. Like none of the stuff in branding is is like rocket science. Collectively, it might look like rocket science. Right. But if you actually break it down like customer service, rocket science, social media, it's not rocket science. It's just like it's just learning like psychology in a way and understanding the customer and understanding what content's going to do well and testing it like it's just literally testing. It's it's like some logical thinking required, plus some creativity thrown in. But it's not like I feel like everyone can figure it out.
Yeah. And definitely just showing up and making sure that you post a million times a day and making sure that you do the same tomorrow and the same the day after that.
And then you'll look back in a year's time and be like, well, I have an amazing business as you do. Where is the business today and what does the future look like for you guys?
Yeah, today, I mean, I think we've gotten to the point in within hiring where now, like everyone has their own KPIs and goals that they're able to meet.
And I set them like every month, like, oh, I want this goal for every single person. I set a goal. And then we do like progress on it. Like weekly, like, OK, like how how are you pacing on that goal.
And so this way they can take charge of their own personal growth because if you don't give goals and they're not going to grow. So where am I at that point now where I can give that like I think two months ago, which is so crazy because it's so soon how fast we've grown like this in six months, like we probably it's like six months for us is like was like a two years time for like normal businesses, but. Yeah, basically two months ago, they weren't there and then now they are because because of the amount of dislike, work and learning that they've done and I always push them like, what are the what are the two things you learned this week? Like, I push them to, like, always learn new things. And so, yeah, we're there right now where where I can set goals and they can they can basically strive and understand how to get there on their own without my oversight, because before I was a heavy, heavy, heavy oversight and I was very overwhelmed. I was like, this is I had like twenty two direct reports. And I was just like, this is this is too much. It's a very flat company. Like we don't have managers, it's just pretty flat.
And then they all report to me. So now it's gotten a little bit better where they can all take charge of their own projects and that doesn't have to happen anymore.
And so I feel very good about it because I just feel like everyone's growing, that I feel like I'm doing my job properly because I feel like that's my job as a CEO, like not only like the foresight in the company and like where we're going, but also like our employees growing like and they are. And then also something that I've been spending a heavy amount of time on and have been since the company started its product development. Like now we have a product development team.
Before it was just me. And now I built a team and I spent about three hours a day with them Monday through Friday in the evenings. And sometimes I'll go on until 10:00 p.m. like we literally started five thirty to go on to it is actually insane. Just because I really care that much about the product, I really care that much about what what the customer gets in their hands. We have a very ambitious pipeline next year. We want to really expand the category as well as like some other some other parts of the face. Like makeup wise, I don't want to say what it is, but we have two really big collabs. Next year. We are trying to push for even more. We want to do what a collab like every two months actually, and three new category launches. So. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, we're very ambitious. So I push them very hard.
I am like, OK, guys like where we we need more.
We need more. What more can I get from you?
I really love the what you guys did with the colored the colored like eyeliner with the lashes over the top. That's so cool. Oh yeah. Thank you. Very amazing. What advice do you have for women who have a big idea.
I think just just take the first step and you're going to be there before you know it, because I think that was the hardest thing, was just taking the first step, like diving into the source and the product development. That was scary because it's so foreign. But, you know, like the Internet, the Internet, they're like, it's there for you. I'm like, you know how it was 20 years ago. So you have an advantage. You have no excuses. I feel like in twenty twenty because all of the resources are there for you. Like even if you don't have a friend who knows it, like the Internet knows it. So but it just, it's just having that drive and, and wherewithal to do it. I think that's, that's the hardest part is just like do I have a motivation? Do you have to ask yourself that first? Because you have to have like a lot of motivation. I feel like if you want to get into a business and actually start it and make sure and work, because you have to work every single day to make sure that you're meeting, you're going to meet your goals, because if you stop working even one of the days. I think ever since I went into research and development.
I've worked 10 hour days every day, like nonstop now, not as there hasn't been a single day that I haven't put in 10 hours.
So it just you just have to have you just have to have that. If you especially in today's market, with everything being so ultra competitive and saturated to stand out, I think that's what it takes. But getting that that first step in like. Seeing like results, I feel like it's very motivating and then you keep going, you can keep getting motivated from those results. It's like a snowball effect. It's like a really, really small snowball in the beginning. But you just have to take every step. It's going to be really hard to start that start that snowball to actually start rolling. And once it starts rolling, then you're going to work even harder and work even harder and work even harder. That's kind of like what happened with me was like I was like, oh, I was starting to see like that. Actually, what I'm doing is making an impact on people like I I loved I remember like even from the early days, like the first month, people would be like, wow, this is the first time I've been able to apply lashes like I feel beautiful like this to you. And that made me feel so good. And I like I like loved that so much. And it kept me going, not even just like feeling like, oh, I'm getting a lot of sales like, oh no.
It's actually I love I love making people feel good about themselves because I knew, I knew that feeling when I was younger and I felt self-conscious about myself with that feeling of like, wow, I'm actually I'm actually beautiful, you know? So I was really happy to kind of give people that same feeling. And so for anyone starting, like try to understand, like, what your wife is and like why you want to do it. And also, like, are you willing to make sacrifices for it and like maybe not see your friends for months and just, you know, like it's definitely it's definitely like a lot of sacrifice. But I think now it's a lot easier because you don't have the temptation of, like, do I go out, do I travel, do I do all these things? Is that you have nothing else to do?
So I stay inside.
I want to do it. Everyone should knuckle down now. Now's the time to launch your business or your side hustle or your project. Exactly.
That's a really nice segue into the six quick questions part of the episode. Question number one is what is your why? Which I guess you've already answered.
But if you want to quickly recap it, yeah, it's just like making people's lives more efficient and making them feel beautiful and having beauty be successful, because a lot of the girls who have tried or are getting into the game that it's their first time ever applying lashes, which is insane. So we're really converting people into lashes from having not worn it ever before. And there's so many people actually who've never worn lashes before. And I was like shocked by it because I was like, you guys haven't discovered the power of lashes this entire time. It is incredible.
I don't think I would be able to do it. But I'm sure with your product, you know, it would be easy enough. But I'm so uncoordinated with with my hands in this region of my face. Question number two is what's been the number one marketing moment that made your business, pop?
I think like when I learned to become absolutely obsessed with optimizing every aspect of the business in the same way that I became obsessed with optimizing beauty. So, like, obviously, I think there's so many channels and there's so many possible ways to advertise and get your product out there. But I think the harder it's easy to to enter, it's hard to be good at it. So becoming obsessed with like understanding. How a channel works and why it works and then actually executing it is the hardest part and optimizing and continuing to make it better, making the returns better on the channel. I think once somebody becomes obsessed with it, then they're going to figure it out.
Yeah, going to start seeing results. Yeah, question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading? What are you listening to? Yeah, I would say YouTube.
Like I said earlier, it's just I feel like you can learn everything and anything from YouTube. I mean, even like leisurely watching random stuff about like not even just about business. Like you learned so much because I feel like people are great teachers, like people who create YouTube videos. They're amazing teachers. And obviously they have incentives to be so and so. I feel like everyone should watch YouTube and learn like Google everything that you want to learn, because it's all in there.
It is all in there. It's just so crazy what you can learn through random stuff. So it's so awesome. Question number four is how do you win the day and keep yourself feeling happy and motivated and successful with your and PM rituals.
So I have to have my eight hours of sleep despite working from like I work like nine a.m. to literally like midnight, sometimes two a.m. And if I don't get my eight hours of sleep, then I'm not like I can't do all of that, but I don't really it sounds really bad, but I don't really have a morning routine.
I sort of just get like literally right when I get out of bed, I start working immediately, but I enjoy it.
I really enjoy it. So it does seem like it's a lot of work. I don't actually I don't drink any caffeine. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Yeah.
My employees are like how? Like you're a robot.
How do they think I'm bionic? They've seen me on caffeine and they're like, please do not drink caffeine, drink caffeine. I can't handle you.
Yeah. Because I already have like a baseline level of just like a lot of energy and I feel like caffeine like messes that up and it makes me feel like I get anything. I get a crash, I get groggy after I, I drink caffeine.
So I just, I don't even touch that. And I fast until like noon. I don't eat, I'll just drink water until noon and then I'll have my first meal there. But I'm working literally from like the time I wake up in the morning to the time I sleep, like it's nonstop.
Hard work of question number five is if you only had a thousand dollars left in your business bank account, where would you spend it?
Yeah, I would I would say sense tick tock right now is actually one of the most the fastest growing platforms and probably like underutilized I would gift take talkers because the take talkers that are actually willing to get gifting have a lot higher followers than somebody like for example, like a three hundred K follower. Tick tock would not accept a gifting on Instagram. It's kind of like this weird. It's in that space right now at the time where it's not quite that you can't quite monetize tick tock, but the traffic in the and the conversions there. So I would definitely gift a bunch of big tech talkers.
That's so interesting. Really, really interesting insight. I love that. Yeah. Last question. Question number six is how do you deal with failure? And it can be around a personal experience or just your general mindset and approach?
Yeah, I don't really feel like I like that word doesn't exist in my mind, like failure, like I failed. I never, ever said that in my life. I don't think I think I'm such a resilient person. So I, I would say, like, if I were to say failure was when I lost tens of thousands of dollars in a single trade when I was trading.
And that would be like, OK, that's an actual sale.
But it's like you laugh at it and then you move on and then you basically work harder to promote yourself for making the same mistake again, because that's pretty painful to go through. And I feel like I've sort of put that same mindset in business is just like, OK, it's more of just like. Pivoting and kind of. Going with the flow. Because life just presents you with with random things you have to deal with, and if they don't work out, then it's fine, you move on to the next thing. It's just how you define it, I think, in your head.
Absolutely. Wow. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast today. I have absolutely loved listening to your story. It is just such a whirlwind and I'm so happy for you. That all sounds incredible. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me.