Meet The Woman Who Makes $50M Selling Eyelashes With Ann McFerran Of Glamnetic

and you have to make custom ads you know it's not like it's not the same thing as organic but literally it was just a video shot on my phone of just me being like hi like no music basically like very home shot and that uh those did really well and I was editing all the videos myself things just started snowballing because the ad started doing well like you welcome to the my wife quarter job podcast today I'm thrilled to have Ann McFerrin on the show now Anne is the founder of glamnetic a company that makes magnetic eyelashes now and grew her magnetic eyelash brand to over 50 million dollars in revenue and yes she started this in her bedroom in just a year and was doing seven figures per month and today we're gonna learn exactly how she did it so welcome to show Anne how you doing hi thanks for having me Steve all those stories are true uh my wife spends a lot of money on eyelashes it's pretty ridiculous let's say eyelashes are one of the most expensive Beauty I mean they're both the most desirable thing but also one of the most expensive parts of like the entire face just because it it's very tedious to do um you know typically people go in for lash extensions like you said with a lash check and then they spend like hundreds of dollars and they have the like literally lay there for an hour and a half it's really not pleasant and then your lashes and your natural lashes end up falling off with it so we really tried to figure out a solution um and strip lashes are the other thing that you can do but it's like glue is really really difficult to work with so that's why I was like there there's a gap here in the market for easy to apply strip lashes but um that are not necessarily glued on so what's funny is like with with my eye my wife like after a while they start falling out right and all of a sudden they're like patchy there's like this huge gap and she's got to like do a comb over yeah anyway and uh thank you for putting on your eyelashes your eyes look beautiful today and uh what's funny I was actually gonna pick up some glamnetics to surprise you with them but my wife thought that was a little creepy so I didn't do it uh anyway how did you come up with the idea was it out of your own personal need or did you find like a gap in yeah it was a combination of both because so I've been wearing last Lottery since I was 17 like 16 and um because I was the only Asian person in school so everyone's eyes was like super big and I was like I want my eyes to look like that and really like the only beauty product that would do that was lashes um but they were really difficult to apply was the problem um but I learned or I taught myself how to do it and then literally every single day like I won't you will not see me without lashes on um it was kind of an insecurity of mine to like just not have lashes on and then um basically fast forwarding you know I'm I have a lot of friends who are interested in wearing lashes and I always have to like help them apply theirs because they wouldn't know like for an event for anything and I was like this is really problematic why do people not understand how to do this um around the same time there's this like wave of awareness around um magnetic lashes so the the type that would but they were the original like first prototype which was the type that sandwiched your Lashes in between two layers of magnets so it was like the top layer had like three magnets in the bottom layer had three magnets like maybe three magnets Max like not more than that maybe like two and I bought them and tried them and they just I literally could not get them on for the life of me I was like there's no way this is working but I really like the idea of magnetic instead of glue like I'm like okay there's like we're going somewhere you know away from glue at least this is the only like invention that I see like out away from glue so I was like how do we make this better and so um I started I I guess something clicked in my head where I was like What if I take Glam magnetic like Glam lashes and make them magnetic so turn them into Glam magnetic lashes that's actually where the name glamnetic came from um and I just took basically a full strip of lashes that were like super full and fluffy and then I told I just started contacting factories and I was like you guys need to glue like five magnets on it you you would not see um magnetic lashes out there with more than three magnets at the time so five was like a lot right like people were like the factories I asked they're like really five like that's a lot um and I would get all these samples back that look so wonky the glue's not even dry like falling off and I got basically hundreds of samples from different factories and maybe two you know at the end of that one that took like a lot of months um two came back and they were actually like high quality so um I I started moving forward with that and I was like instead of having a or sandwiching effect I need to figure out something else and um I had seen a couple brands do magnetic liner but they were not done well like it was in a plot form it was in like this sort of pot form and you had to dip a brush and then like try to apply it and then it would be sad but I understand exactly what you're talking about it was a really weak cold so I was like this is not working so then I just sort of went back to the drawing table and I was like um ideally as a consumer I would love to have a liquid a liquid version of that um and so then I just again started figuring out like so I mean I taught myself sourcing um product sourcing and then I just asked a bunch of factories to try to make this um and that's sort of How We Came Upon the final prototype and it just took took a year took over a year um I was doing it part time while I was also painting like at night I was communicating overseas so I was just staying up late super late at night like communicating um on WhatsApp yeah you know I have to ask so uh you're Asian and how did you not end up as like a scientist an engineer lawyer or doctor I'm an engineer I had to give up that part of my career like five years ago but it was tough you know funny part was they actually almost I knew I talked yet okay yeah I went to UC UC or um uh psychobiology which is like a pre-med degree that would like you know then you take you go into oh it was uh yeah it was basically pre-med so I I graduated and I was like uh this is not for me I'm much more of a creative you know I was like left-handed my mom was sort of like an artist and I love painting so I thought uh my calling was being an artist I took like a couple art classes at UCLA and the classes at UCLA are insane because the professors there you know had to showing at like the Hammer Museum and all this stuff and so I was thinking oh my God like this is my calling because I just had so much fun in the classes and also like really excelled there um and I just had a really like natural gift towards Visual Arts um and then I sold one of my first commissions like before I even graduated like for like five thousand dollars and I thought like this is it you know like La is it for art and I'm in the right place and why not try and so I gave it a good try for you know four to five years and your parents were cool with that um they were they were supportive they were just saying you know as long as you can pay the bills and you can pay off your student loans and all this stuff because I paid college 100 um which I did I got a part-time job at like a laser removal Clinic while I was also doing that you know so I was doing a bunch of stuff and then um you know it kind of took off when I realized like a format that like people loved and so I started doing paint like pet commissions because everyone like wants their dog painted so I just had a bunch of them lined up but then I was like literally at home all day paintings and my back started to hurt and I was like I'm slaving away you know and then how did you become an artist to A business person though it doesn't like what is the path there yeah so it kind of started was realizing that that it's kind of a real sure like we talk to anybody all day unless I had somebody up over at the studio my studio AKA my bedroom um and so I was like I'm just like literally sitting at home all day that's the only way I could be productive was like being in front of a painting or a canvas and I was like this is really lonely and I don't see myself doing this for like another 40 years and if I don't see like a long-term path and also a way that I can accumulate like money at a faster rate this is this is not sustainable um and then I started meeting a lot of people that were doing e-commerce um because they were my clients buying my paintings so I was like and I started talking to them and I was like the lifestyle that they had was amazing they like you know can take meetings from home sometimes like everything's kind of virtual and um you see like consistent Revenue coming in on a daily basis and I thought about it too because one of the things I loved about being an artist was um being able to create something and then making people emotional and you know affecting their lives in a way and I wanted to figure out how I can do that on a math scale I can't do it just literally like eight hours of painting like one by one I can affect thousands of people if I'm creating a product putting my creativity into it and then Mass producing it infinitely um so to me it just seemed a no-brainer that that was the that was the business that I needed to put my effort because I could put my effort in time to anything and potentially do well so why not do it do it to something that had better Roi and long-term scalability and like long-term lasting effects affecting more people I was like it just it was no then I came up with that idea and I was like I could not sleep I like had to well let's talk about the early years so you mentioned it took you a year to get manufactured where did you find your suppliers did you like look on Alibaba or did you fly to China how did you do it yeah um I mean I went I just Googled honestly like suppliers lashes magnetic lashes up in particular um and yeah Alibaba popped up and I looked on there and I was like oh there's like so many suppliers on here and um every one of them did not have what I wanted so the only way that I could do it was I needed to find a supplier that can do magnetic and also do um like strip like Glam lashes and so I would find those suppliers and figure out I'll be like okay you guys mix this method with this method were you a designer or did you just kind of verbally tell them like this is what I'm trying to do can you guys make a prototype yeah I would draw I would provide them with a drawing because I was an artist too so oh yeah that's right okay yeah yeah it's hard to just like literally take the Lash put the put the magnet on it and um just make sure and then it needed to have a magnet like case that had you know so designing the case was also important um and so yeah when we came out with it like it just blew people away I think because it just wasn't on the market what was preventing the existing magnetic lash makers from just putting more magnets on or is there a lot more to it um I it's just they just didn't think about it they just didn't I don't know why I was thinking that I was like this is so obvious to me but to them obvious I mean it wasn't because it's they're not selling right like I really come from the perspective as a consumer as a lifelong consumer and an expert in my own right of lashes and then um also like being younger I think I think a lot of these Founders were a little older um and so I was like understanding Trends I think a lot better and um I'm in La so it's just like you kind of just understand that a lot more and then all my friends are using it so I got a lot of different feedback from them that was really helpful presumably you didn't have much money when you first started this so what was like your first order like what was the minimum order quantity yeah um it was like 100 oh that's it okay yeah it was like a very small amount per and we did like five we did five styles okay so and yeah they all started with the letter L um but they were bigger so I was I was I was sort of going towards what I liked uh which was like more glamful lashes and then later on I real I did realize that people prefer natural so then I started launching more natural stuff but um yeah initially I went out the gate was sort of like medium to long lash Styles um but because the technology like the uh sort of application methodology was so like innovative I think that's why it sold out so then yeah once that's sold out was when I re re-bought like a bigger do you remember how much you spent like per unit on like that first order yeah yeah it was like around three dollars okay so really small you didn't need a lot of money at all to start this yeah like just for the lashes and then you have to buy the liner separately so it was like yeah but it was it just took some time to scale you know and I mean like you I I wanted to go in because we it's like fully self-funded so like I didn't raise any money um I wanted to go in just being sure that we were going to sell out I don't want to like be stuck with a lot of inventory like put a lot of money out the door so trying to really do it slow and steady I was like there's no rush I you know my goal initially was like I'd be happy with ten thousand dollars a month in Revenue that's how we always start right uh we were happy with 5 000 a month in the very beginning also yeah yeah I was like no be happy yeah that was that was my starting point so we surpassed that the first month and I was like well yeah what's nice about your lashes they don't take up much space I can't even imagine ordering container of lashes right this you're probably ordering in these small packages that were just Airship to you right yeah um and then we used a 3pl um third party fulfillment center and then they basically stored it and then and then they shipped it out for me and it was so funny because I had so very little units because they're used to dealing with yeah of course you know and I'm over here like you guys lost two of them I was like calling the girl every day like the and she was like so annoyed with me probably because I was like calling because I saw like five missing from the the warehouse and I was like where did the five go where did you guys take it like you guys steal it like lashes [Laughter] yeah it was you know when you only have a hundred per lash I was like you gotta it's it's valuable yeah now it's like I can't even I don't think we can even keep track of it yeah okay so walk me through the progression so you order your first 105 Styles and then they'll sell out real quick and then your second order did you order like significantly more yeah like five five hundred okay so it really was a gradual progression a little faster than I suck up a little more and then and immediately use the 3pl or did you first fulfill out of your own bedroom I never fulfilled out of my sure deal with hassle packages I was like I need to focus on scaling this marketing this digitally which I recommend to uh all founders is just start with the 3pl off the bat because they actually save money because you um they have a better shipping rate than if you were to like ship yourself so it's like what's the point how did you find your first three pal like today there's a they're a dime a dozen but it's pretty hard they all look the same right yeah um well so basically I I took a business partner on like basically so Kevin gold um after the first month of sales I had met him and he was like oh I want to help you with like you know all of the back-end stuff infrastructure and um I was like okay cool like I can basically focus on marketing creative product like all the stuff I want to do and then um he had a 3pl he was already working with and the other brand that he owned so he was just like okay let's just use them because we already like using them and they're they're good so we ended up going with chip okay oh monk okay so it's like a mainstream one yeah I've heard of chipmunk uh so in terms of what's nice about your stuff is it's so light like the 3pl really makes sense for you uh would you have done anything different if your items were larger um you still would use the 3pl because I mean you don't wanna oh yeah that's true that's true well how did you decide on your margins so you were getting these you said for like five bucks uh what were they selling for when you first launched thirty dollars that's typical for Lashes like and we had to pay more because of the magnetic component they were all good right right they're all handmade and hand glued so it's like they're more like premium lashes and so yeah just hand gluing everything it just takes so so much time and then like they're going in there and hand making it's not machine made it's like um sort of drugstore brand did you have in mind like certain margins that you were only willing to sell them at necessarily I mean a place at the time um I didn't want to go like there were clumps that were way more expensive than what we were selling out like we were trying to go towards like sort of a lower end but everyone was going like crazy like just because it was such a new product right okay um but also it is a high quality lash and so um and then with factoring and marketing you have to spend so much on marketing you have to like make sure that you do figure out how to get obviously the highest margin possible but also be competitive it's that's a really tough tufting the clock you know like when you're when you're kind of starting a new product you're like where do I like what do I charge for this what like what makes like what moves for you you know um we actually started off at a higher price and then like lowered it okay uh a little later uh how did you guys do quality control yeah so it because they were very minimal like orders we would just have it shipped to my place I would check them each of the boxes but then like once it started getting to like thousands of units it was like a lot harder it was like spot checking we were like okay well so you just put them on like I could see these old Chinese ladies like putting them on okay these are good yeah and I would tell the factory to send me like basically a bunch of uh their QA videos and so they sent me like hundreds of videos of just like them testing out different lashes making sure the magnets are not falling off right all these things that was a like a bigger problem in the beginning now now it's um I have a company that does it overseas right before it even leaves the port yeah same here we have someone actually inspect every single piece it's actually pretty reasonable uh before they're even yeah do you have multiple factories or are you still using the original ones that you started with no no yeah now we have completely shifted um we're like way more advanced with like the factories that we're working with there's like a bigger criteria like for quality and then um we have somebody go and inspect the factory before we even work with them they do a full audit report it's like yeah and then we have six different factories we're talking to nice um in case like one of them doesn't come through for something we have you know we have it somewhere else and yeah and then we have the QA company that gets a whole thing it's a whole it's become a whole yeah do you ever have to go over there or no um I could never because it was coveted like they were shut down that's right it's still shut down it's crazy it is actually yeah I wanted to go check out the factories but we actually um we just hired somebody to go over there who could actually go into the country okay so we hired and then we would have her call from the factory we'd meet the like owner and stuff like that all right let's talk about the interesting stuff how did you generate sales like your first sales how did you generate those yeah it was very like a Gorilla Marketing marketing we were literally I mean it was just me on the team when I say we but initially um I just dm'd like every customer that was following us on Instagram um and I just I would be like hey um how are you thanks for following us uh uh you know and then I would ask them if they've ever heard of magnetic glasses if they've ever tried magnetic lashes a lot of them that would be like yes I've heard of it never tried it but or yes I have tried it but yours looks different um and and I would just hear what people had to say about the product and then I would um just ask them if they'd like to try it I would like I'll give you a 20 off discount code with like a custom discount code and I would like make their like whatever their name was I would make that and Shopify how did you start that initial Instagram account was it about glamnetics or was it your own personal account no it was uh it was a different it was actually a McAllen initial initial like I basically wanted to get traffic so I had made a meme account okay so it was like good to get traffic and then I started switching the content over so like our initial a few thousand were like from that and then I switched it over memes for like Fashion Beauty or um it was no yeah it was for beauty it was for beauty like and so you were dming everybody interesting what was your hit rate oh it was pretty high really I guess a attractive female demoning people would probably work better than like a dude doing it right well I mean they don't know who's DMV they I just said that I will I would say I was the founder so they would be like excited okay got it um but or I would act like I wasn't the founder because it makes us look bigger if I'm not it's like they're not the founder right right but I would yeah I would just talk to them about the product and like try to understand what they're looking for and then help guide them I was sort of like a personal shopper I guess for my own products and but I was literally like on DMS the entire day like eight hours a day like wow just damning like every single because it was just endless you know so um that was enough to sell out your first batch the dming strategy um yeah that's impressive okay I'll tell you a story about mine uh like when I first started selling if someone abandoned their cart like I would stalk people and as soon as they abandoned their cart for like 15 minutes I would call them on the phone because I already got their number and they'd be like wait wait what's going on here why are you calling me I'm like oh I just noticed that you know you didn't finish your transaction is there anything I can help you with and if I got them on the phone willing to talk to me I closed them like 90 of the time oh wow I can see why your strategy works you care like you care about them and that you have their best interests at heart and so trust building trust is like really important um and so I think it was a you were able to do that if you're like having a one-on-one conversation I'd send voicemail most sometimes like just to make it feel like it was real you know yeah so I just I also it was a way for me to understand like what the customer wanted so I would figure out like oh I would get feedback on a purchase and they'd be like oh I had to trim them and so we started pre-trimming the lashes because that was a big problem because people were like I don't know how to trim these they're like they're magnetic so they're thinking that they can't trim them because they're they have magnets on them okay okay let me pre-trim them so we were like the first pre-cut lashes and then I started adding more magnets um so we were the first six magnet lash um brand and then like yeah it just got a little you know each time more dialed in on in terms of what the customer needed right okay and then that took you so far maybe like your first and second batch when did you start doing less uh less intensive methods to Market yeah we started basically you know I hired like a uh I hired someone from upwork to help with like Facebook ads okay so you started running Facebook ads right away were you profitable like were you making money at that point before you started running ads or um yeah we were yeah we were initially but then obviously we as we started hiring people became a lot more like very expensive and then marketing as well like spending spending all the all the money on ad spend on Facebook was just really like a lot you know was that your first person that you hired someone from upwork to run your Facebook ads yes that was that that was like literally our first like real employee okay wow okay so you just found someone on upwork and then I don't know if you remember this but were you trying to just break even were you trying to make money like what was your what was your goal with the ads I mean we didn't we didn't know what we were doing like the the ad buyer knew more he had more experience and um so he was sort of like teaching me like how everything worked he had ran um for some other companies as well in the past and you have to make custom like ads you know it's not like it's not the same thing as organic it's not the same thing as like a tick tock or reels it's like you have to make custom things so I'm like literally over here like shooting like talking to the camera being like hey like this is how you know I'm like explaining the product yeah so I was like I guess I'll introduce myself in front of the camera so it's like hi I'm Ann about I'm the founder and CEO of glamnatic um if do you struggle with lashes because magnetic lashes you know basically and I'm over here like showing them you know you just apply the magnetic eyeliner and then you magnetize the lashes and that's how you apply our lashes and people would freak out like I don't know like I believe it yeah but literally it was a it was just a video shot on my phone of just me being like hi like barely any music in the background like no music basically yeah like very home shot and that uh those did really well um and I was editing all the videos myself initially and then I hired a video editor again on upwork and so it was just um and then he was just asking me for like a bunch of assets and he would run them and then um and then yeah things just started snowballing because the ad started doing well like he was able to keep like putting spend behind his ads yeah your product is perfect it it's half the population needs it I have the student in my course that sells these inserts that let you wear high heels longer and that killed in Facebook ads is doing something similar to what you're doing just coming on just telling what the benefits are yours is much more visual too it's amazing what is it it's high oh it's this thing that you [Laughter] it's just something you add to your shoe so you can wear high heels longer without being painful oh spread I can't believe I know all this stuff preheels is a spray but yeah preheels is another friend actually who started that company yeah there's a bunch of them now but yeah yeah I mean it's like you just figure out problems yeah that's cool and then okay so you started with Facebook ads and were you still doing the damning at that time or or were you just yeah okay well this is good it's good so let's just keep um I started actually um getting interns um like At first ingenious tell me about that actually okay um and my and then I met this girl at UCLA as well and she was looking for an internship and I was like okay like you can help me with this and then we just you know started building like a whole team of girls that were just helping like DM sales and they they will have schedules that they would come on and like do it and I would train them um and and then yeah and then while ads are being ran and then it just and then I'm working on product like I'm thinking future and like I'm trying to figure out like how can we continue to scale how do we continue to improve the products because each time we do a reorder we can improve the product and fix it you know um and so it's getting all the feedback from the DM girls and being like okay what else can we fix um after a certain point you run out of things to fix you're like okay well I think this is pretty good um yeah but yeah so that's sort of how I was thinking and then and then and then customer service was a whole nother thing like I was doing customer service and I was like I need to hire someone else to do this because it's getting crazy um and I want to be able to I feel bad personally and so I would literally like voice memo like the customer or myself and run to the post office myself to like ship stuff out like I'm like okay I'm sorry I'm fixing like I'm I'm going to fix your defective eyeliner you know like just all these things and I was freaking out like personally a lot if like there was a like a defect of anything I would be like oh shoot sure yeah and so it was stressful that part was stressful because I was like I don't really want to feel like so much emotion from just like customer service um and so then we we started hiring out for that like I just want to know the order of your hiring so you hired someone to do Facebook ads but that was sounds like that was a contractor your first employees were like interns it sounds like from from school yeah and then you went to customer service to offload that and presumably that was probably enough to take you to like a couple million bucks a year or or more so we started yeah it was like it was a weird snowballing effect so we launched July 2019 and then end of July like July 31st so basically August and then um like we just doubled it like started doubling our Revenue every single month um like mostly Facebook or it was Facebook and Instagram like running Facebook and Instagram um I like the talking videos yeah um of just me and so then my face was like running everywhere and then people were like recognizing me as like the glamor is that right okay um and then yeah and then basically like that Black Friday was when we started doing like major major numbers like seven figures and then um seven figures a month and then and then yeah January and then after the stimulus check it hit it's just yeah tripled I think everyone felt that um so I wouldn't say it was like a hundred percent you know just I mean obviously we did really good at marketing and but I think like every brand went up 3x just that year from like the stimulus checks hitting yeah it was glorious yeah okay I taught because that was our first year it just really blew up I mean that combination of the product being amazing and just the marketing really hitting and then literally through these freaking talking videos yeah it's amazing like your voice got a little higher when you did that too all right so were you doing like email like how much of your business was repeat business yeah so yeah and that was a whole nother thing I was doing also emails emails on social media so I was like and then I was like I need to figure I need to hire someone because it's getting crazy so I'm like also trying to like edit the graphics so and then I hired my first employee her name was MIA she was like our first like real actual employee the other people were sort of like like you know like overseas yeah like the interns are part-time and some of them are volunteer so it was like okay first real employee like and so I think she was probably confused she showed up she thought I was like oh glad that HQ you know and it's literally my bedroom oh get out of town okay so your first hire was working out of your bedroom yeah it was literally like right before Black Friday I hired her remember and then um and then I remember her helping me with like all the assets and stuff because she like wasn't editor she knew how to use Photoshop and stuff so she was like I was teaching her how to edit like Photoshop stuff now she's a video editor full-time but before yeah she was like doing everything she was doing that and she was helping me with customer service and I was like teaching her how to do all this stuff but yeah it was very disheartening because the first three people that I had hired uh before her they quit like in like the second day or like oh maybe a weekend and then he's like oh sorry I took another job somewhere else just because it was like first of all I couldn't offer that much pay just because I like we were just starting off and then um also like they were coming into my house and it was like which is kind of yeah they're just like this is weird like well it's dangerous too for you I would think it was like a Koreatown back house of a house okay this is great by the way I love it I love these stories okay [Music] business time and he was just like judging me he was like ill and I was like well how did you get Mia to stay then uh where did you find her um where did she stay well I found her it's on oh yeah the other people I found on Craigslist I think that was a problem but I found her on yeah I found her like through a friend so she was a friend of a friend okay referral nice yeah and my friend was like oh you know Mia's just graduating she's looking for a job like to get just experience and stuff and because it was a referral I think she felt a little bit more like comfortable obviously coming into my house and stuff um but then eventually we did get an office like maybe two months later okay but it was fun I love that little back house my upstairs it was like a back House of a Koreatown house um right and it was a two-story back house so it was actually a big bigger back house and then um I would live downstairs and then upstairs there is like a living room small living room and I turned that into like my photo shoot Studio so that's cool I would do photo shoots with her in there and like my I would teach my roommate how to also help us take photos and then we just it was very slap Dash you know what I mean like we were all yeah trying to figure it out um I can just imagine interviewing for that job hey why don't you come to my little Korean Outhouse over here all right well let's talk about let's talk about scaling uh so you got to like it sounds like 10 million dollars that way and then now you're at 50 plus you'll probably have an incredible Black Friday this year too uh walk me through like the infrastructure you had to put in place because it's very uncomfortable to grow quickly right past year your past year and a half has been really tough because of the iOS updates like I don't think any brand out there is like doing great in fact I think most brands are probably going to file for bankruptcy very scary um but yeah it's it's like even just to survive and stay at the same level is really hard as like you are doing the year that the stimulus checks hit just because that year was just an anomaly um and yeah after the iOS updates ads just didn't perform as well as they used to it's way more expensive now to acquire customers I think brands are now finally facing the reality of what it's like to really run a brand and how difficult it is the employee expectations and expectations for salary are not adjusted to that just because they're like oh inflation so therefore like shouldn't we get paid more you know what I mean but yeah but in reality like everyone's doing worse so it's just like a really weird time right now but yeah I mean have you guys shifted over to like Google Google probably doesn't work I mean shift I mean even that it's like I think every every platform is hard um right now it used to be way easier like literally 10 times easier like that's how different it is um just because overnight of this update it's crazy like you would never expect that to just take the toll that it did but Apple literally single-handedly wiped out I feel like a bunch of small businesses and I don't think I mean it's like the best it's literally the best marketing tactic of all time because they're like oh we care about your privacy but actually which is why I know a bunch of small businesses and yeah so I mean yeah this year we just kind of shifted like the last year and a half we shifted our strategy towards retail oh nice okay that has its own headaches too right yes it's much more intensive logistically yes um but running ads it's very it's very hard to be profitable on running ads in fact you can expect to lose money now running ads it's it's actually right and then make up for it on the back end like selling multiple items or something like that back in um like in terms of upsells upsells are just once you have that customer like you sell other stuff now too right so just because you're losing money on the front end getting that customer like the lifetime value that customer hopefully is much higher than what you paid for them right yes um it's so the problem with a lot of customers nowadays as well is like they're not necessarily loyal to a brand like from the first purchase so you got to get them to come maybe three four times and then that's when they become more loyal but like the first purchase people are always like just trying stuff out or whatever you know so it's really hard to get like super brand loyalty unless you get them on the third third fourth time but I would say like typical repurchase rate for most companies is like maybe like we're we're above average for that we're above average for for what it what are you at actually I'll tell you what mine is yeah we're like I mean it depends on the cohort right so like I don't know if you guys look at that like cohort data so it really depends on the cohort because like retention for Black Friday customers is way lower than oh yeah of course yes yes so it's it's kind of hard to just say a general number yeah so we and then we don't even look at cohort data I mean we look at it for Black Friday and stuff and we just know that that's not like typical because they're just in for the sale and then out um yeah cool I mean it's pretty amazing what you've done uh and I love hearing stories of like how crazy it was like I remember like when we first started out like there was a customer that was local we do weddings and she ordered last minute so I literally drove it out to her wedding I mean these are the things that you do in the beginning right like the hustle stuff that people don't hear about fun part of I literally would go back anytime and relive it again just because it was it was so intense and but yeah it's so fun like I remember I had an emergency situation where I was like I literally had to order um I had to order stuff from from my factory like unboxed like like unpackaged because it would take them an additional 12 days to package it and I was like I don't have that time we need it now and so I literally just invited a bunch of my friends over for like and like for pizza I'm like can you guys help me package these boxes and we literally just had a pizza party and then just we're like packaging these boxes together and it was so funny like it was so fun though but like I would never forget that day you know I mean like we ended up saying until like 2 A.M to like package these boxes and I was like thank God I have cool friends who are like down to help me and be there for me whenever I needed them so I was like really grateful for that it's like no to listeners If Anne calls you over for dinner you better be ready to pack boxes they're so used to it right now like the other day like this past weekend I had to film I was trying to film a new series on Tick Tock where it was like asking strangers to test the strength of our press on nails and I was like having cars run over or press on nails like different car sales like having to borrow different friends for different their cars I was like hey like can I use your Tesla today can I use your whatever like but you stay in the car and drive it I will just you just need to run over this nail they're like what hahaha no that's cool that's so it sounds like you've expanded the product line you're doing nails lashes liner and all that stuff which is probably helping the top line as well yeah it was really cool let me ask you this uh there's a lot of people listening to this who want to probably start a business and they probably don't like their jobs uh some of them are probably pretty bad lawyers and whatnot so what what advice would you tell these people given your experiences yeah it's def definitely like one of those things where you have to be a hundred percent all in on it like and just feel sort of like that map like passion that motivation I I definitely remember like I felt this crazy crazy like passion for it when I when I had first started I literally was like I can't like I can't eat sleep breathe like without thinking about this um and and I I know that a lot of people are kind of on the fence they're like I'm not sure if I really like I'm into this idea or am I not like I don't really know if you're feeling that way like you should try to find an idea where you feel like sort of that same way because otherwise if you don't believe in it full like wholeheartedly it's really gonna be hard to kind of stay motivated and like pushing this product because if you don't believe in the product like no one will you have to be the biggest Ambassador for it you have to be the one that's like the most vocal about it like all of my friends and everybody who follows me knows I like shout about glamitic every single day and it's it's a marathon not a Sprint as well although I definitely much treated like I treated it like a Sprint the first year and a half and you sort of have to the first year of starting a business is like the most intense it requires no it's like having a newborn child right it's like it just requires way more effort than you ever think that it would require and they'll just be having the willingness to I didn't realize you were a mom no I'm not a mom I'm not a mom okay so you're one of those types of people that say oh it's like having a kid you have kids and just right I'm sure you can so I didn't mean to make money I'm kidding with you yeah um yeah so I think I think just making sure you really tap into that part of yourself and like really like to do some soul searching before like you start that hey this is something I'm really like willing to commit like through hard times through the good times and I think also timing is just important as well it's I mean it's really hard to time it I think we got in at a really good time you know starting starting the brand um I mean starting it in an economic downturn could be a good thing but it's just figuring out ways out besides doing ads like if you can really kill it on organic and you understand content marketing really well that's where you're gonna have an advantage right now just because honestly ads are not doing well so the only thing that you can really do is try to push things through organic and meaning trying to go viral on reels and Tick Tock so really understanding how to do that I think for your brand is going to be a big big win because also that's how like retailers are gonna spot you you know if you go viral organically on Tick Tock um and stuff like that for your product that's how like these all these retailers are going to see you in like reach out and like want to work with you like Ulta sauce and they like wanted to reach out to work with us which we didn't have to reach out which was great and it started sort of the snowball effect of us working with Sephora and like you know and now they're like fighting for us to like get exclusives and stuff like that so I think it's just um yeah it's like one of those things you just kind of have to make sure you're 100 in it um and focused and once you have that that passion like everything else follows I like I would say that like emotion leads everything you know so having that emotion is really important going into it because then otherwise you're just not going to put your 100 you're going to make excuses otherwise you're not truly feeling it that's what that personally for me that's what it is if I'm like going into something and I'm not 100 like passionate about it I'm just gonna make excuses to like not do it yep actually every successful business I ever started was during a downturn actually I think I think it's good to start a business during the downturn things are cheaper yeah yeah labor should be cheaper and uh yeah I I hear you on the passion in that first year I remember we'd stayed up nights and weekends just working but it was fun like I didn't mind it at all I would come home working a 10 hour day and then I would sew for two hours we had an embroidery oh my God yeah it's like when you have a lot of something I literally was like I could keep doing this forever like that's what I felt like it was like for the first time I felt like a sense of purpose you know and I I never really felt that even in painting I was like I was good at it but I was just like I just didn't feel like this was necessarily my purpose for some reason but here I was like for some reason I feel like it is I just feel like I'm making more of an impact I feel like because I get so many comments from people after they use their product they're like you changed my life like I can finally apply lashes like or you know they're allergic to eyelash blue and they were never able to use lash glue now they can use my product um or people who have alopecia like there's just a lot of like life-changing moments that people would message me about and I would be like wow this is amazing like that was one of the best parts of I think being an Ecom founder and getting those messages back it just felt like you're doing something good you know did you quit all together to start your thing like did you have any source of income before you started your business um I mean I mean I basically started I mean it took a long time to complete everything I would I would do it some like here and there if I really needed the money and stuff but um I was just like I'm all in you know right but you had a backup plan yeah I always I mean I always thought I was gonna be I literally blew up my account multiple times um trading like I was also doing day trading and stuff like that emotional rollercoaster because I was day trading for like a year and a half like a pretty long time and I was trying to take it really serious all in it as well I don't know how to not go all in on stuff that I like I'm really into so I started like finding day traders in California that um could could teach me that were really good and I met up with them and I would like go to their like I would meet up with them like 5 a.m and like figure out how to trade and stuff like that it was just really grueling though I ended up blowing my account like a couple times and I day traded for a year too I I couldn't sleep at night because I would wake up and Mark it open and just like that market open it determines like your whole mood for the day so stressful like you're just like literally a mess you know like my sleep patterns were messed up I was like this is literally affecting my health you know like it just really it's really bad so that's what I wanted to get away from as well uh on top of the art I was like everything is just sort of like a roller coaster um so I'm like I need to really figure out how to like get stability here and building a brand really is sort of that it's like you were building that foundation and then it's like it's low and steady but it's it's really freaking hard but it's so worth it in my opinion I I wouldn't do anything else uh just last question Doug walk me through your day to day now uh is are things much better now yeah I have offloaded I mean we have like 90 employees now so wow nice yeah it's a lot I mean we share a back end with because my business partner has like another brand and so we share the sort of like Ops infrastructure with them so then it's sort of like you know we're each paying for half and so it just makes everything like a lot more efficient so yeah a lot of those tasks are offloaded now I don't do customer service anymore a social media team we have we also have like leadership team so like ahead of every department and that's just how tremendously like basically I'm sort of overseeing strategy on like social and and like steering product in the right direction coming up with new product ideas and then sort of helping them through the development phase of it but I'm not like in the weeds anymore on it on much I'm still very much in the weeds and social though I am now like basically taking over social and shoot and trying to shoot because it's very hard to go viral on Twitter it's really hard to like it used to be easy it's harder now really hard now like be smart enough about content so like I basically have to take over that job now and I realized that I just had to really do that because I was trying to figure out who to get in this position it's just it's way too hard I would say unless you just are paying someone like 200k a year they're like be really good at that yeah um otherwise yeah so that's that's what I've been doing I'm like literally editing the videos myself and everything um so but I do like being in the Weeds on things like I like I like being on the ground um I think it's fun and you I feel like if I'm making sure that whatever I'm doing on the ground is like effective and having like a big Roi then it's worth it for me to do that I mean you're a creative person so that's what you should be focusing your efforts on exactly if you want to see more amazing interviews with successful entrepreneurs then check out this next interview right here I think you'll enjoy it and you'll definitely be inspired

Channel: MyWifeQuitHerJob Ecommerce Channel

Views: 21,214

Keywords: ecommerce business, magnetic lashes, e commerce, glamnetic, ann mcferran, ecommerce business ideas, startup stories, founder story, my wife quit her job

Id: OFoiBK5R8D4

Length: 50min 54sec (3054 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 25 2023