How I Gifted Taylor Swift and Made $1 Million in 48 Hours

0:00Welcome back to Female Founder World. It's Jasmine. I'm the host of the show and the person behind all things Female Founder World. And it's actually not me that you're hearing from in the episode today. We have a very special guest who is teaching a workshop that is just the most practical, helpful thing you're going to hear today. The story behind her work, I just want you to picture this. Imagine turning on the TV one day and then you see Taylor Swift. She's at her business, Fazit, changed forever. The business went from being a small up-and-coming brand that had been rejected by every investor pretty much that they had approached to doing a million dollars in revenue in 48 hours.

0:53But this was actually no accident. It happened because of her very intentional celebrity marketing strategy that she has been able to build a brand that is now on track to hit 40 million in sales this year. So Elliot is on the show today and she is sharing the exact strategy that she used to get Taylor Swift to wear her brand and wear it in public and also gift other celebrities, the influencer seeding program that she's built and her approach to PR. I hope you find this as helpful as I have. And I want to thank our partners at Adobe Express us for making this episode possible. All right, over to Aliette.

1:37Let's get into the show. Hi, female founder world. I'm Aliette Buddleman, and I am one of the co-founders of Faiz It Beauty. You might've heard me on the podcast last year after Taylor Swift had worn our viral glitter freckles. And I'm back here today to share more information about what in the world has been going on with our brand in the last eight months, and just some tips and tricks that you yourself at home with no team, with no budget, can implement into your company. If you're not familiar with Phased Beauty, my co-founder and I, Nina Labruna, started about two and a half years ago. It was during COVID.

2:10We had launched another skincare brand together, and we wanted to take all of our learnings from that company and apply it to this new brand. We really wanted to revolutionize the format and application of how you first put on skincare. And we developed skincare patches targeting different skin issues. And later on decided we were going to take that satisfactory peel, this new format, and apply it into the cosmetic space. So in April of 2024, we launched the first ever makeup patch, our Glitter Freckle makeup patches. Unfortunately, my production team was delayed. We could not get product into our warehouse in time for Coachella weekend too, which was my whole launch strategy.

2:50So we took some manufacturing samples. It didn't even have our logo on the patch. We didn't have finalized packaging. And we sent to as many friends as possible who we knew were going to Coachella, just begged them for photos and for videos. And the next day we had friends send us a video. We posted it on TikTok, a part of our launch, as well as Instagram Reels. And on Reels, we garnered over, I think, 10 million views on that video and sold out 100 ,000 units before product had even hit our warehouse. And at that moment, we had realized we had finally, after years of being entrepreneurs, have found product market fit.

3:24From that moment, we had all these different scrappy strategies. Again, we had no budget. We had a runway of April to August. And by runway, I mean, that's as much money we had left, or else we would either have to fundraise or shutter the company. So here are some of the strategies that we did in order to keep our company alive. Again, with no budget, just my co-founder Nina and I. So the following month, I remember sitting at home just thinking, okay, what, who can I reach out to about partnerships, about collabs? Maybe I can get my product on a celebrity. And just started going through my head, like, all right, who are the it girls right now who would love to wear FaZe It's glitter freckles?

4:04And Taylor Swift was just finishing up the European leg of her heiress tour. Sabrina Carpenter was opening for her. And I mean, the bedazzled, the tour, like our product screamed Taylor Swift. So I was sitting at home in my office and I just started Googling, okay, who on Taylor's team can I send product to? My background is in fashion. I realized that sending to somebody's, especially a celebrity's publicist or their management team, rarely do you get the product in the hands of the actual celebrity. They're just getting so many messages and I'm really the least of their worries. So I tried to think about members of her team that really would give the product to Taylor herself.

4:44So I just Googled who was Taylor Swift's makeup artist. And if you were a Swifty, you know who it is. But I guess I wasn't a Swifty enough at the time where I thought maybe she worked with five to 10 different people. And lo and behold, she only works with one makeup artist, I think, for the last 15 years, which is Lori Turk. OK, so Lori Turk is now pretty famous because she's Taylor Swift makeup artist. So there's no information about her online. I don't think she's an Instagram page. I couldn't find her email. All the things I would do typically to reach out to somebody like her wasn't working.

5:17So I looked up, okay, maybe Lori Turk herself has an agency that represents her. I found her agency. But if you go to the agency's website, all you get is an info ad email. And I knew nobody checks those emails. Nobody's going to respond to me. So I go on LinkedIn. I look up the agency. I hit people. I see what agents work there. I get their emails and I email them. Hi, I am the co-founder of Faisa Beauty. We sell these viral glitter freckle patches. I would love to send to some of your makeup artists that you represent, such as Lori Turk. Could you send me her address? Five minutes later, they send me an email back saying this is Lori's address.

5:53So we ship her samples to Nashville and that was that. But I know that most likely Taylor Swift was never going to wear my product just because I sent it to her makeup artist. So I thought there has to be other people I can reach and create this FOMO effect for Taylor. Sabrina Carpenter was opening to her. So I used that same strategy I just mentioned and sent my product to all of Sabrina Carpenter's team, hoping that maybe she starts performing with them on one night and Taylor has a little bit of jealousy and was just like, I need to get what's on your face. We also sent all the wives and girlfriends of the Chiefs, the football team.

6:25So I was like, all right, if Taylor's in the VIP box next fall at the game and all the other wags are wearing our glitter freckles and red and gold, Taylor is going to want what they have and support the team that way. So we tried to create this effect of putting phase it all around Taylor. We also had several viral moments on social media over the course of the summer. And then October 7th, Taylor Swift walks into Arrowhead Stadium wearing glitter freckles. Now, I had just come home from the gym and Monday Night Football was already in my house, not because I was watching it, but my husband was watching it.

7:00And a content creator on the FaZeit Beauty account messages us and says, I think Taylor is wearing your product. And it didn't compute with me. I blacked out. I went to my Instagram Explorer page and I open it and everything is Taylor Swift's face zoomed in with glitter freckles. David Portnoy, New York Post, Daily Mail, Chicks in the Office. Everybody was talking about what Taylor Swift was wearing to the game. I look at the TV. I see her strutting into Arrowhead Stadium with my product. I look at my husband, and I am bawling my eyes out. I am wearing red leggings. I'm not matching my leggings to my top.

7:41I have a top knot on. I've just sweated hot yoga. I look disgusting. I have no lighting in my apartment, and my husband decides to take out his phone and start filming me bawling my eyes out. And that emotion really came from not that a celebrity was wearing our product, but I knew that was the catalyst and the momentum that my company, my co-founder, and our entrepreneurial journey needed to get to that next stage of our company. I did not watch the game. I called my co-founder probably 100 times. She wasn't answering because she decided to do group meditation that afternoon and turn off her phone for the first time.

8:15and I was just calling everyone I could who somewhat worked for us saying, all hands on deck at 7 p.m. get to my apartment right now. We have serious work to do. So I decided in those first few minutes, I would post that video of me bawling my eyes out in horrible lighting and I would just put text over it, you know, Taylor Swift, I just can't believe she wore my product to the Chiefs game. I think that video has 30 million views now. And it was the way for customers and people to identify what Taylor Swift was wearing was this female founded small business. And that night I contacted every single journalist who started writing pieces.

8:53It was Vogue, Business Insider, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Elmette, like every publication that possibly existed was writing about this, but nobody knew whose brand it was. so all night I stayed up and contacting these journalists so how do I find these journalists the same LinkedIn tips and tricks I shared earlier type their name in find their email if you haven't yet you need an Apollo plugin to just like sleuth the internet and get anyone's email possible and just wrote to them hi Taylor Swift's wearing our product would really appreciate it if you can tag it in your in your recent article so during this time the first five hours I'm trying to post as much as possible that Taylor Swift is wearing Faiza Beauty glitter freckles.

9:40My co-founder was worrying if we had enough inventory to support the demand that was flooding through our D2C and our Amazon. And we had one subcontractor who occasionally was helping us with social media. Now, looking back, what I would have done differently is I wish I would have had a platform like Adobe Express that could help us be scheduling posts, be reposting, just some type of application other than hiring another person on our team to help take the weight off of us and spreading this message on social media because you can't wait to be posting. When something like this happens, when you have this viral catalyst, you need to be talking about it 24-7 and Adobe Express scheduling would have been the perfect tool for us at that time.

10:22So I'm pretty sure I blacked out for the next three weeks of my life. I didn't sleep and I always tell people I had lucid dreams of Taylor and Travis, but this is what happened next. When I woke up the next morning, I hired a publicist for the first time ever. CBS News found my phone number and was like, can you get into our studio immediately and do an on-air demonstration to our anchor? 48 hours later, I had NBC Peacock pitching me on this documentary they were doing called The Swift Effect. Basically, Taylor Swift's impact on businesses, economies, and people. I didn't really realize how much she had affected our business at that time.

10:57In 48 hours, we did over seven figures in sales. Our website trafficked and our sales went up by 3 ,500%. I think I had every single media outlet writing about us, contacting us. It was insane. The Ares tour was starting in North America two weeks after this had happened. Halloween was around the corner. There was so much demand for our product. And for the first time, we really They just had to get our team as tight as possible to handle and take all this opportunity that was just being thrown at us. I had Fortune 500 companies. I had NFL teams reaching out, different sports leagues of, you know, the largest beauty brand contacting us to do a collab.

11:44And it was just three of us on the team at this time. The headlines we were seeing in the next week to weeks after this was overnight sensation brand. And Taylor Swift changed this brand in the matter of just wearing their product on national TV. Now, if that was the case, my company wouldn't be where it's at today. It's a bit of a combination of strategy, but also luck, right? There was a timing that we had built this foundation of a team. We finally could afford a 3PL, which is basically a warehouse. We were not packing orders ourselves in our apartments anymore. We had a few team members that we could count on, even if they were subcontractors, if we needed extra resources from them.

12:28But going back to why I was bawling my eyes out when I saw Taylor Swift wear the product was I knew this was the catalyst that we needed. I knew this was our time to take this moment. We all know how quickly the media cycle moves. It was my biggest fear that I would wake up the next day and it would be yesterday's news. So we had to use this to leverage every single opportunity possible. That next morning, I hired a publicist, but I also called a female founder that I respected so much and asked her, am I missing something? Like, this is my strategy right now. Would you go about this a different way?

13:02And she had said to hire a publicist. Like, that was the first thing I did this morning. And she's like, OK, second thing you do is leverage this happening right now. Don't wait for tomorrow. Don't wait for next week. Like, think about what you want the most from your company and go ask for it. For us, that was launching into mass retail. We had been having a few of these fringe conversations with retailers. They were one foot in, one foot out. You know, they really couldn't make a decision on us. And I finally got to call them. And some of them called me saying, OK, we're ready. We'll make this happen as quickly as possible.

13:33What do you need from us? The first few weeks was all of the press demand. It was leveraging the relationships to get into the retailers we wanted to and to be able to mingle and network with some of these mentors, advisors, other founders that would give us some of their time for the first time ever. We did a massive collab with Elf Cosmetics. I got on the phone with them and it was really just an intro call chatting about what we thought there was this intersection between beauty and sports and that we had so many female fans wearing our products and that women had never had this type of merch that they could feel elevated while showing team spirit at the same time.

14:13And I remember on the call with their executives were like, we have chills, like we have the same hypothesis. And in the next few months, we were able to make this collab around March Madness and really targeting, you know, college basketball fans. And it was a take on Warpaint, Eye Black. Without the Taylor Swift moment, that would have never happened. I had football leagues and Fortune 500 companies reaching out in every single retailer under the sun. I had over 25 private equity conversations, people begging us to sell us our company. VCs finally reaching out for the first time ever. And this is what I always say in these types of conversations and what I hand wrote to Taylor Swift was, you opened so many doors for us.

14:56You gave these two female founders a voice. You chose to wear a product that was a small business, minority owned, and you have given us leverage and opened the doors to conversations we weren't having before. And for us, it's really been about not letting the catalyst of Taylor Swift define our company and it end at Taylor Swift. It was about innovating. I remember a mentor that I respect so much saying to me, well, what's next? what's beyond the glitter freckle. There will be dupes. There will be counterfeits. You need to keep moving forward. You need to develop that next thing. And over the last eight months, that's exactly what we've been doing.

15:39We are launching the first ever eyeshadow and eyeliner patches coming out in the next few weeks. I think this is the first time I'm saying that out loud here. And we are launching at Walmart on August 1st with a game day side cap. We are closing our first deal on a sports license. Everything that we had on our manifestation for 2025 is now coming to fruition. It's largely thanks to Taylor Swift, but it's also about our grit, our strategy, and a little mix of luck. If you want to hear the nitty gritty of our strategy of how we got into Taylor Swift's hands, you can tune into the female founder workshop that I will be hosting, and it is all brought to you by Adobe Express.