The Messy Truth with Allison Webb

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Science of Scaling. Today, we'll be breaking down the messy truth. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Alison Webb into EO Fire Studios. Ali is the founder of Drybar, New York Times bestselling author, canopy president, co-founder of Squeeze, Brightside, and Beckett Plus Quill. She is currently writing her second book, The Messy Truth, and resides in LA with her two sons. And today, Foundation, we'll talk about the messy truth, finding the balance between work and personal life.

0:41We'll talk about the importance of being open to feedback when building a team. We'll talk about taking risks, following your passion, admitting vulnerability, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Allie and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower in business is a must listen.

1:13Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Is this your year? Visit thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability. It's a month to month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at thrivetimeshow.com. Allie, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, thanks for having me. And gosh, you know, I think that there is a common misconception in the kind of entrepreneurial world we live in that's like, you know, you have to really kill yourself to be successful.

2:03And while I definitely participated in that, while I was growing Drybar, I, on the other side of that, I, I no longer see it that way. You know, I think that there is a way to work smarter, not harder, and still be able to have a life and enjoy your life. Whereas, you know, I think there's this kind of mentality of you have to really like, you know, kill yourself and drill yourself into the ground in order to be successful. And I just don't subscribe to that anymore. But at the end of the day, the world can still be a little messy. Entrepreneurship can still be a little messy. And I want to talk about the messy truth.

2:42So what does that phrase mean to you? You know, there's just two sides of this coin of success and pursuing success. And, you know, kind of to the point I was just making, I think we give up so much of ourselves when we're building something and for the right reasons, you know, because we love it and we have so much ambition and drive and I'm incredibly driven, you know, it's such a blessing and a curse. But with, with being driven, you know, your, your life tends to move at a million miles an hour and, you know, don't stop and, you know, enjoy the journey. And I, you know, I was very guilty of that for most of my life.

3:21And, you know, my life as a result kind of broke down in a lot of different areas. And, you know, the kind of impetus of this book, you know, being the messy truth of it all, because it can be, you know, success and all of that can be so great. But then, you know, are you taking care of yourself and your personal life, which I, you know, really wasn't. And I had a hard time balancing all of the millions of things that came my way on a daily basis, you know, from running and growing a massive business to, you know, a family and raising teenage boys and a marriage that was falling apart. I mean, you name it, it was, it was really messy.

4:03And I think a lot of that is because I didn't stop and like assess what was happening in my life. I was just, you know, avoiding and running and moving forward. Well, speaking of that messiness, you believe that we need to find a balance between work and personal life, which is of course easier said than done. So I would love to hear how you figured out at least the process of moving in that direction. Yeah, well, I certainly haven't figured it out. And I'm not even, I don't even think it exists. You know, I mean, the second chapter of my book is called Balance is Bullshit. And it's, you know, it's because I think there's this unrealistic expectation.

4:44And of course, I can only speak from my experience and being a woman and trying to be a great mom and trying to be a great leader. You know, there's this kind of misconception that we can do it all, you know, and I just don't think we can do it all in one day, you know, and I think that's what I've largely learned is like there's, you know, there's days where, you know, you're so on and you get a lot done and feel really productive and, but you miss your kid's game, you know, or vice versa, you make it to the game, but then you miss an important meeting. You know, it's just, it's hard to make it all work on any given day.

5:18You know, and I think we need to kind of give ourselves permission to like let ourselves off the hook a little bit that you don't have to do it all, all the time, that it's okay if you're excelling in one area on one day and not the next day. And one thing that you do believe in is the importance of being open to feedback. Now, this can especially be when you're building a team to really learn how to do it the right way from others who have been there, done that, and from, of course, your own mistakes. So let's talk about how you did this back in the early days of Drybar, the mistakes you made, how you improved every step of the way.

5:54someone said that to me early on in my career that you know feedback is a gift and while it it hurts a lot in the moment no matter what kind of feedback you're getting it's uh it's always worth looking at and i think early on in my career i was pretty defensive with feedback and as i grew you know i realized that you know there's there there's always room to improve and if you're listening to what's you know what people are telling you it's incredibly incredibly helpful You know, it's an interest. It's interesting, though, because, you know, I also don't believe by like decision by committee. You know, it's like not every you can't have everybody weighing in on everything.

6:33But if you are surrounding yourselves with people who are giving you the truth and not surrounding yourself with yes, people, rather people who are going to shoot straight with you and tell you what they think is working and what's not working, what's good and what's not good. You know, it's just such incredible learning. And, and for more of an example, like in dry bar, you know, if a client wasn't happy about something that was going on, you know, I, I always felt like there's always a client that's going to speak up. There's that one, which is largely me too, when I'm unhappy with something, but then there's a slew of other people who feel the same way, but they're not going to speak up, you know?

7:07So the feedback that you get from one person informs a lot of, you know, a lot of information that you might not be thinking about. So being able to take that feedback in and assess it and take it to heart, I think is incredibly important to success. And Fire Nation, again, it's going to be messy sometimes because that's life. But every step of the way, getting that feedback, learning from your mistakes, learning from other people's mistakes, finding the right mentors, this is all going to help you in that process. And we have a lot to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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9:36Knowledge will not attract money unless it is organized and directed through practical plans of action. Become the next success story. Schedule your free 13-point assessment today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Allie, our listeners are aspiring entrepreneurs, Fire Nation. They are small business owners and overall just awesome people. So what is your advice around taking risks and following your passion? What I have found in my career in mentoring and talking to different people is that not everybody's cut out for entrepreneurship. You have to be okay with losing it all, falling on your face. failing, you know, in order to get to success, which I certainly did lots and lots of times, you know, and made tons of mistakes.

10:26I feel like if there's, you know, what does kind of separate out on, you know, really successful entrepreneurs are, you know, people who just can't, they just can't do anything else, you know? And there's plenty of people who want to, you know, work for somebody and have a little bit more of a predictable schedule in life. But for an entrepreneur or a budding entrepreneur, you know, it's like, if you just can't stop thinking about it, then, you know, you have to do it. And I would say that, like, I think a lot of entrepreneurs get kind of caught in this, like, I have to know everything about what I'm doing.

11:02It has to be perfect before I can start, you know, and then that was, that's never going to be the case. I mean, it's never going to be perfect anyways, but you know, we used to say like, don't let perfect stand in the way of progress, you know, cause you can get really bogged down in this, like, I don't, I can't start my business because I don't know X, Y, and Z, you know, I mean, there's just so much learning that happens while you're on the job. I mean, I'm a perfect example of that as, you know, somebody who didn't go to college and doesn't have a degree and really had like no business in business.

11:32But, you know, I trusted my instincts and I brought in a lot of people who were smarter than me to help me, you know, get this thing off the ground and be so successful, you know? So yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's so many things, but I do think that like, you kind of just got to do it and start and, you know, and, and if you don't just start and figure it out as you go, you know, you know, you never will. Ali, admitting that we're vulnerable can be a challenge. I mean, I know that you struggled with in the past because as entrepreneurs, we just want to have this perfect outward facing ideal. And I've struggled with this in the past as well, because being vulnerable, you know, that means that, hey, like, I'm scared, like, I'm nervous, like, I might have the normal feelings and emotions that a human might have.

12:18And that just is not what an entrepreneur is supposed to be, which, of course, is a fallacy, but it's an attitude a lot of people have. So share some lessons that you've learned around vulnerability in your entrepreneurial career. Yeah, and you're right, I wasn't very vulnerable. I didn't even know what the word vulnerable meant until about five years ago. You know, it's like it wasn't even in my vocabulary. You know, really wasn't until I discovered Brene Brown, which I'm sure you're familiar with, that I was like, oh, my God, I didn't even like understand what this word meant. And I think that I felt this pressure because this was my company and I was the founder and I had to have all the answers and that I had a pretty thick coat of armor around me that was like, oh, you have to know everything and you're the person that everyone's looking to, so you can't show any weakness.

13:11And I think as I've gotten older and wiser and been through a lot more life and heartbreak in a lot of different areas, I've realized that vulnerability is really a superpower and it ingratiates people to you. And if you can show that you don't know all the answers and you can't do everything on your own, I think it allows other people to come in and feel really connected to you. where I think as I made that mistake early in my career of just, you know, kind of feeling like the buck stopped with me and I had to be like, you know, the knower of all the things. Whereas, you know, now I'm much more vulnerable and like, hey, I don't know the answer to that.

13:55What do you guys think? You know, I mean, I never would have said something like that early on because I was afraid of how I would, you know, be perceived and I was afraid I wouldn't be able, you know, wouldn't look good if I didn't have the answer. And a lot of times I didn't have the answer, you know, but I had to kind of pretend and fake it like I did, which I thought was the way to do things. You know, I thought that like you fake it till you make it. I mean, we've all heard that, you know, but I, you know, as I've grown, I've realized that being more authentic and vulnerable about what's really going on for you and is such a better way to be and, you know, builds a much stronger, more connected team around you versus trying to be this one-woman show like I was early on.

14:39Allie, you're the founder of Drybar. You're a New York Times bestselling author, Canopy president, and more. Tell us why you decided to write your second book, The Messy Truth. With everything that I had learned and the myriad of lessons and the journey of Drybar was just so damn exciting and fun and crazy and exhilarating and all the things that I, you know, I think I always felt like I would at some point, like kind of tell my story of, you know, how I did it. And because, because it became such a love brand and because so many women loved it and all of that. But I think when I, you know, and I spent like a couple of years before it came out, kind of figuring out what the book would look like and be really business heavy.

15:25But then, you know, because my life fell apart in so many different ways over, over the course of building dry bar, you know, I felt like it was important to share that, you know, while you can have this tremendous success on one hand, there's, you know, there's often a lot of other messy going on in the background that, you know, is, is just as much of a part of the journey. And so I felt really compelled to like, tell the full story story versus just putting out a business book. And, And, you know, the book is full of, you know, business lessons and things that, you know, worked and things that didn't and examples of all of that stuff.

16:01But I felt really strongly about, you know, intertwining the personal stuff, too, because it's it's it's just we all go through that. I just don't know that a lot of successful people talk about it. You know, we kind of keep it more about the business. And, you know, and I think having public, somewhat publicly gone through a divorce and I was, you know, a little public with my son, who's now 18, who went through rehab when he was 14 and, and how much shame I felt around that. Because like, I must not be a good mom if I have a kid in rehab, which now I know is not true. But, you know, the opening up about those kinds of things, you know, made the response that I got was like, it really made women and people feel like they weren't alone, you know, because they were going through this too.

16:46and you can have all the success and you can still have that situation, you know? So yeah, you know, I just felt really compelled to like tell the entire story, not just the business side of it. Allie, we talked about balance between work and personal life and how you're not going to achieve that imperfection in any way, shape or form. But of course, it's something you can work towards having a better balance. We talked about being open to feedback. We talked about following your passion, taking risks, being vulnerable. What is your biggest takeaway way that you want our listeners to have from our conversation today?

17:19If I did it, anybody can do it. I think that there's no one way to achieve success and there's no one way to find happiness. There's so many different paths to take. I think it's about finding the right one for you and the right journey and what feels right and best to you. Finding the joy in the journey, it's such a big deal to me that I, you know, that I see people who are both in jobs that they hate and wish that they were, you know, doing what they really loved. And then I see people who are in, you know, entrepreneurs who it's not for them, you know, but I think it's at the end of the day, like finding what you really love and what lights you up and follow that.

18:02And, you know, I, I've always done that. I don't think I could have articulated it when I was younger, but I always followed the joy and what made me happy. And I let that kind of guide me in my life, you know, and it worked out pretty well. Allie, your book, The Messy Truth is now available. What would your call to action for our listeners today be? To go buy the book. But, you know, because there are, if you're an entrepreneur who's in the thick of growing your business and, you know, you feel like there's so much more that you don't know than you know, which is pretty common. You know, I, I believe this book and so much of the feedback I've gotten from this book is that it, it does help shed some light on things that you probably need to hear that maybe no one's told you, you know?

18:52And I, I feel like the book is, um, even so much, somewhat of a guidebook of like, Hey, if you want to be an entrepreneurial entrepreneur, here's what it looks like, you know? So I would, you know, not only read my book, but, you know, read as, read as many books as you can and get as much knowledge as you can as you embark on your own entrepreneurial journey. Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with A-Dubs and JLD today, so keep up the heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Allie, A-L-L-I, in the search bar.

19:26The show notes page will pop right up. And Allie, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

20:03professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode on whether vulnerability is a superpower in business is a must listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Is this your year? Visit thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability. It's a month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at Thrivetimeshow.com.