How This Jewelry Biz Gifted Justin Bieber

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. I am Jasmine. I'm the host of the show. I'm the person behind all things Female Founder World. And today I'm chatting with Lisa Sahakian, the founder of Ian Chums. Welcome. You are now entering Female Founder World with your host, Jasmine Garnsworthy. Hi, I actually forgot to tell you on January 1st, I wrote four goals and one of them was to be on this podcast and you reached out. I feel like it was like that week. No, I'm like the amount of people that tell me stuff like that I don't know if I'm just I don't know feeling it I'm like when people like put it out there I get it totally it's weird yeah it happens a lot it happened like immediately after I wrote it down because I've been listening for a long time and then I was like I want to go on it that's a gold line that's so cool yeah okay amazing wow for people that don't know Ian Charms what are you building Ian Charms is a jewelry and accessories I'd say lifestyle brand.

0:59It started as an accident. And here I am about three and a half years into it. So you started in 2021 and it was really like to make a gift. Yes. How does that turn into a business? So basically for my ex at the time, I wanted to get him like a nice chain. I never really wore jewelry and I definitely didn't know how to make it. I went to 14 carat here in Beverly Hills. anything I could afford was so boring and anything I thought was cool was way out of my budget. Yeah. So I was like, let me see if I can make something. So I got some supplies and made him this necklace. And then with the extra supplies, I made the Instagram account and I was just basically selling them to friends to donate.

1:49So at the time was when the protests were in LA and I couldn't be outside because of autoimmune issues, but I wanted to contribute. So it was just a donation thing at first. These like cute little bracelets that friends would buy from me that were custom and would probably bust open once they got them. Because the first few ones I was like YouTubing how to make a bracelet. And then within two or three weeks, it got picked up by Post Malone stylist. and then it clicked for me like oh that's how you get to celebrities when you have a hundred followers it's through their stylist yeah and that changed the whole game we have a workshop with you that's available for people to watch if you want to log in it's free I'll link it in the show notes and it's all about celebrity marketing and this process that you've figured out as a bootstrapped small business and how you're getting on these incredible celebrities but I want to dive into it in this episode as well but let's just name drop for a minute what is who are some celebs that were your brand like ultimate for me is Bieber like I had cutouts of him in my room as a kid both of them yeah I my like high school most likely to was to never say never because my whole grade like made fun of me for being so obsessed with him so that one's really special Dua Lipa's who blew it up yeah Emma Chamberlain also did a lot for the business Lil Nas X Joe Jonas who else a lot of music charlie xcx okay yeah we're gonna go through your process of how you made all this happen in a minute but let's get back to the beginning you started with like six hundred dollars right yes and you made that money back pretty quickly yeah i remember saying to my boyfriend at the time oh i wonder if i'm gonna break even yeah which was it wasn't even supposed to be really a business thing but i was just like huh i was just curious because it was quickly picking up and within I think it was two days I broke even and then I was like okay I gotta get more stuff yeah like there's still the demand I still want to donate I still didn't think of it as a possible career but I was just like let's just keep it going and you were working in entertainment at the time yes I was working in reality tv development as an assistant I loved it like my dream was essentially to run MTV when I was older I've been saying that since I was a kid but I had been like an assistant for so long in entertainment doing way above my pay grade.

4:14They kept promising me a promotion because I was doing more. This also started because they cut my overtime because of COVID, which is the only money you really make as an assistant. Right. So luckily I asked them, finally, I was like, you have to promote me this next month. month this was beginning of 2021 and luckily they didn't they were like one more month and I was like no so thank god they didn't and someone from that job was at the event yesterday oh really yes oh wow like one of my co-workers like so we're in LA right now it's the day after our content camp that we held in LA so that's so interesting yeah like full just were you like with me now love this okay so you use that first few hundred dollars to get started then you quit your job what was it a few months later?

5:02Feb 2021. Yes it was a few months into it maybe three from when I first made the first one. Talk me through some of those early kind of traction points like where were those customers coming from what were those marketing moments that were really working? After the Post Malone customs that I made which were for the Billboard Awards the next day. My whole family watched the TV. He didn't wear it, which is super normal. They have a hundred pieces out there, which I didn't know at the time. So then I reached out to Dua Lipa stylist. I like loved her style. She's the coolest person ever. I knew her stylist was.

5:43And I had said, Hey, I'd love to make you some custom pieces. I love your work. Let me know if you want anything. And he was like, Oh, can you make stuff for my client at Dua Lipa? Like she would love this. I said, you don't need to add her a hundred percent, like whatever you want. So I made her maybe six or seven custom pieces, sent them over and then just back to back, she was wearing them and it just exploded the brand. Wow. And you get a lot of press around that as well. A lot of press. She was like, because a lot of it was so custom, I made one with like her dog in the pendant. She was doing a story and tagging it.

6:23It was very, it was very quick and then once she had it all the other celebrities and their stylist found me from there it was a lot easier wow yeah the thing I want to call out there is that you you found out who her stylist was it's not like you've had a relationship with this person like it's not through your entertainment job like you found this person on Instagram because they were tagged in one of Dua Leapha's posts right yes and so then you've reached out you've DM'd them you've sent you've offered to give them the product so you've not said hey can I gift Dua Lipa and send it to you you've reached out to them being like this is about you yeah I want them to get the brand and sometimes I do make a custom first for the stylist yeah I want them to get it and not just have it be something that they're getting the box and then putting it over to them.

7:13Like I, I wanted them to be interested in it. He hadn't answered my DM at first, obviously. So I would comment. I had notifications on for any time he'd post. The second he'd post, I'd comment something weird to be like, check your DMs or else or whatever. And finally he looked and I was so stoked. How did the, how did the babies find out about you? So interesting enough, I had tried to reach. I wanted to get on Justin so bad, obviously. And with Drew, his brand, it's the smiley face. Like I thought it was a perfect fit. I kept reaching out to his team, his stylist, their assistants. And they threw Instagram DM.

7:53Yes. And maybe email if I'd found it, probably not. And I kept basically being like, hey, would love to make him stuff like made this custom. And they just kept being like, OK, not biting, like saying, oh, we see this, but we don't need this right now. Then I get a poll, which is like when the stylist wants something for a celebrity, whether it's a trip or something. And they said it's for a confidential client. And I was like, that's weird because that they tell you their clients are well known. So I thought. I bet you it's someone who's switching or trying to switch stylists because that happens and is very taboo.

8:33and they don't they can't say it yet so a few days later they reach out to me over dm i think it was like one of the amazing assistants and they were like hey and they sent me haley's post she was wearing it they were like she's been wearing it the whole trip wow i was stoked and then i said did you get something to justin and they were like not this time around the same thing and then the next day he basically took all of her pieces and then he started wearing them back to back followed the brand and that was so cool because he genuinely took them from her like he wore them the rest of the trip which was just like insane which is also you had that vision from the get-go yeah this is gonna work for him so I knew he would love it like it was which stylists always have their reasons or they're going a certain direction but I was so excited to just get it in front of him because I knew he'd wear it.

9:28That is so cool. What does that do for a brand? So I hear mixed things about when a celebrity wears your stuff, they don't always like post about it or if they don't tag you, what does a celebrity like endorsement like that do for a brand and how do you make the most of it to make sure that you're actually getting sales when that happens? Yeah. So interestingly enough, it's not always who you think is going to make you the sales with celebrities. Bieber does. And he still does because he's like an emblem of the brand at this point because he's worn it so much that people associate the brand with him, luckily.

10:03So when he wears it, he has all these Instagram accounts that are like Justin Bieber closet or Hailey Bieber style where they'll reach out like, oh, is this your necklace? What is it? They'll post and you'll get a lot of people buying that way. Sometimes you gift and you never see it on them. That's been pretty rare for me, but it's definitely happened. huge TikTokers, like the ones that kind of started TikTok, don't push any product for me. It's crazy. They'll wear it all the time. They love it. I'm so glad they do. I was waiting for just like it to come in when I saw them constantly posting it and it just didn't translate.

10:40It could be because their audience is a little too young to afford Ian Charms. It really depends on the celebrity and their fan base. Also, like I had a K-pop Starware one that was psychotic. Like it really is just so dependent on how attached their fans are to them. So interesting. Yeah. You made your first million in sales a couple, no, not even two years into the business, September, 2022. Yeah. That is insane. It was insane. And like it happened when And I was at my I was at my family. I'm from L.A. So I was at my parents house and it was just such a cool moment because I hadn't even really been paying attention.

11:24I knew it was coming. And then I checked and got to say that to my parents. And that was just like so special. That's so awesome. Yeah. You also got a free a free physical store space at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Yes. Literally because you're a cool brand. Yeah. They try to make Midtown cool. So I had to just give like a percentage of revenue, but they were like, you don't have to pay rent. So I had to say yes. That's amazing. Any learnings lessons out of doing a physical store? Retail is its own beast and it needs its own like team. It became a lot for me to manage so many people. And it's also expensive.

12:04We built out the store to look like a teen bedroom. There was a bed in the store. People would walk by Midtown and be like, what is this place? but I had to pay for the build out. I paid all my employees. So you have to have a manager. So it was a lot of like managing. It was really good for brand awareness. It was really good to be in New York. We threw some parties that like were iconic. People always talk about them. Luckily, Rockefeller Center let me do my thing, which was so important because it's not their typical type of business. And they were like, we'll let you be you. And we're hoping to bring like younger people up here yeah I think that kind of like speaks to this brand tone that you have that is super it's very you like it's very irreverent it's yeah it's very cool it's very specific and it feels hyper niche even though it's you're speaking to a lot of people you also translate that really well into your social media content can you talk a little bit about like why that's working and how you've crafted this distinctive tone for yourself I think it's a I think this is a thing like it's you.

13:12So it's so funny you say that. I was thinking about that driving here, too. I couldn't do that. People would be like, who is she trying to be? So people will say, who's like the Ian Charms customer? Like who's the whatever they call it for their brand? It's you and Justin. And I was like, it's me and some of these and these people that like are I'm gifting to that align with the brand, which essentially is like confident, funny, doesn't take anything too seriously and isn't really about following trends is doing their own thing. And because I never made jewelry before, it actually really helped me because I was just thinking, what would I want to wear and then try to make it?

13:52So the Instagram was what really created like an audience that related to me. So I just almost did what I did on my personal, but moved it to Ian charms and I'm obsessed with reality TV and pop culture. So I took my old job and just put it in the format of jewelry. So it was just like very authentically fun, not following the triple, the like typical brand guidelines, which now I think brands are loosening up a bit, but at the time jewelry was like little tiny dainty gold pieces on a silk thing. It just so wasn't my vibe. And so I felt this gap in the market and just stepped right into it. Yeah.

14:38Really interesting. A million in sales is a lot of pieces of jewelry. How are you making all of this and so quickly figuring out this production piece? So funny enough, I was designing all of the pieces. So once we started doing drops, We did a drop every Friday for the first like year and a half, which is insane. There'd be multiple pieces per drop. I was the only one designing them. I would do the design. I would pack or someone on my team would pack the beads to make, let's say, 50 of them, 100. My mom would bead them. Oh, thanks, mom. Seriously. And it like gave her something to do. It's that's been a huge part.

15:20She wants you to win. Totally. Give her some extra money. Like it's also like my family was just then my dad got diagnosed with an illness and it was just a time that we really needed like levity. And my mom like to this day is just like your business like got us through that time, which is so nice. Like it just was like this unifying thing. She was making them. She only just moved to Florida. My family moved like this year or so. So for the first three years, like it was all my mom. And then now I have a team of separate beaters. Wow. That's crazy. I want to talk a little bit about team. What does that look like for you now?

16:03So that totally changes all the time. Right now there's three people full time. I have like my lawyer on retainer because I get sued all the time. My accountant. And then it's a bunch of like consultants or part time workers. at when I had the New York store I had almost around 10 employees at that time total which then I fall into just being a manager yeah so that's like kind of the spot I'm at now is trying to find a way to be still creative and have the right perfect team yeah and we're going to talk about that in just a second but something that I want to ask you a little bit more about is how, first of all, you talked about being sued.

16:47So let's just cover that for a second, because I think that's really important when people are dealing with celebrity gifting and posting photos. You've learned some hard lessons, save everybody else the lesson. Okay, business besties, I want to just pause for a second. I've got Natalie here on the Female Founder World team. And I want to ask, Nat, are you ready for the holidays? Honestly, no. And I feel like it's coming up so quickly. It's coming up so quickly and that's why I wanted to take a second to chat about this season's presenting sponsor, Vistaprint. It's honestly the best place to start holiday shopping and right now Vistaprint is giving all female Founderboard listeners an early holiday gift, up to 50 % off holiday cards, wall calendars and more.

17:30Oh wow, 50 % is a pretty good deal. How do you even have time though for all this holiday shopping? I know, honestly, like I'm usually pretty disorganized, but I've been quite on it this year. And we've also been sending out these really cute thank you packs to different founders who have been on the podcast, speakers who have been at the events. We've printed really cute, like little fleece blankets. We have embroidered caps and also stuff for my family as well, because you know, everyone's going to be wearing the female founder world merch. Oh, of course. You got to bring the family into it.

18:02And I personally love a branded tote bag, but I also didn't know that they did embroidery. That's pretty cool. The embroidered caps are particularly cute. Oh, I love that. Highly recommend. So everyone go and get your holiday shopping buttoned up with up to 50 % off custom holiday cards, wall calendars, and more at vistaprint.com. Use the code HOLIDAY50 at checkout. Okay, let's get back into the show. The biggest one I'll say is get your LLC and everything to yourself. Yeah. Don't wait. Think of verbal agreements. Yeah. And then from there, it's been about this paparazzi photos. That's someone's property.

18:43Yeah. Even when the Kardashians post themselves, they have to pay for those photos, which is crazy to me. But I had posted these photos of Bieber leaving Nobu in the very beginning. In two years into it, Backgrid, which is an agency that represents these photographers sued me for$60 ,000. I was just served at my door. And it was the scariest thing. Now I feel so unfortunately prepared when these things come up because I've learned so much throughout the process. But that's something comes up all the time. Recently, I got sued for posting the cover of a magazine where someone was wearing the piece.

19:25Wow. Luckily, I was like, that doesn't make sense. They wouldn't own the photo. Yeah. Reached out to the magazine and they cleared it up within the day. Wow. And the photographer didn't even know his agents were like sent out doing this. Wanted$20 ,000. It's it is probably the times when I feel like I want to quit. Yeah. And I think that I just want to double down on this and get really clear, because you cannot post an image that is like on Getty or Splash or any of these image agencies, even if they are posted by Allure or Vogue or whatever, they've paid to use it. You cannot screenshot it. You cannot post it on your social media without paying for it yourself.

20:07Otherwise, you can get these really big finds. And I think a lot of people are, oh, I'm really small. It doesn't matter. They won't come for me. They will come for you. It's AI. They're searching the internet and like they don't care i was crying to the first lawyer on the phone being like how can you do this like my mom makes these at the kitchen table totally but they don't care they don't care okay so a really important lesson aside the next thing i want to ask you about is like protecting yourself from copycats you make a product that like looks like it could be something that other people will copy and put on amazon and like maybe make it really cheaply how do you protect yourself from that?

20:46So this was something in the beginning I realized really quickly I needed to solve because it started happening immediately. And I was getting most of, I was getting all of my pieces, like individual beads online. I realized like, how do I build moats around this castle? And for me, it was custom beads. And also the people that make my custom beads most of them never made beads before they maybe worked with ceramics or glass and i had found their other work and then said your work's amazing can you make me a smiley out of that and then shove a hole through it yeah so it's so amazing i still work with people from all over the world some of the ceramic pieces are hand painted by like this tiny family in peru and that's just awesome and no one can copy it and it makes it so special yeah and it also makes them a time capsule because once things sell out, I tend to not restock unless it's like a classic.

21:45And so those pieces only like a certain amount of people have and people can try to dupe it, but it's clear as day to me if it's different. Yeah, totally. Something that you spoke about in our workshop that we did with the Female Founder World group chat was how you have ADD and the way that's impacted the way that you run the business. You mentioned before a little bit about how you try and maintain your creativity while still running a functioning company. And like you now have people that you need to manage, which is a totally different job from being the creative and the visionary, but is a huge part of it.

22:18And until you can have a COO or something, you have to figure out a way to make that work. How have you blended all of these things and figured out a way that's working for you now? It's definitely what I have the hardest time with. If it's a daily thing that I'm adjusting. When were you diagnosed with ADD? I was diagnosed about a year and a half ago. I kept saying to my therapist, I'm so overwhelmed and I don't know how to explain to you where to start. And I kept saying that specific thing. And then she had sent me to a psychiatrist. She was like, she did the test with me. It was inattentive ADHD, which I was like, I don't have ADHD.

22:55I did well in school. I don't have a lot of energy, if anything, like I don't have enough. And then there are different types of ADHD. So I learned about inattentive and it was, it still is like daily mind blowing because things I would beat myself up for totally normal and just learning. I always say I didn't sign up for this whenever I realized I have to manage people or figure out taxes or whatever. I get so frustrated and I'm sitting in a spreadsheet. Yeah. Like I'm like, I just wanted to make jewelry. Like how did I end up here? But But you have to have both and you have to just make systems for yourself and your team to make that as easy as possible.

23:35Yeah. Yeah. So how did you figure out the systems? So basically I had hired someone named Steph Diedrich, who used to work in YouTube fashion. OK. Who what he does essentially is completely can organize your company. I had realized if I'm sick or if something happens, I need to take a break. This will grind a bit to a halt. Like I'm clearly a bit of a bottleneck. And I was noticing when I'd get sick, like it would just make a little bit of a difference. So I'd hired him. He came on beginning of this year. Everything is in a spreadsheet. It's so organized. I don't have to ask my team 50 different questions.

24:15Oh, where's this in production? Like I don't need to micromanage. I let them do their thing. They update the spreadsheets and then I can check it on my own time. If I'm working at one in the morning, I don't want to be texting my employees. Like I'll let them sleep. It's so easy that now everything is so organized because before it was all in my brain. And once I realized that it was terrifying. Yeah. So he basically created for you like trackers and dashboards for gifting, for production, for all of these pieces so that you know where your team is at any time, you can jump in and you can check it.

24:51And I'm going to, I'm going to link to this person in the show notes. Yeah. And also just another thing that was helpful is I, we don't plan ahead. I'd love to, I can't. Everything's so timely. Everything's last minute. It's part of what makes it feel very like of the day. If I'm dropping something, like it's chaos. Like it still is to some extent. He would create a checklist for each product. So It was like, oh, here's this. Did you shoot content for TikTok with it? Did you make the page on the website? Like everything that just was in my head got written out. And he like learned to speak my language and make it easy for me to understand.

25:31And it's changed my whole business. Was it expensive doing this? It was expensive, I think, considering. But Steph says it's all your money back. Yeah. And he's serious. Yeah. It was supposed to be about a month. It took about three or four because he was like, we're going to. This is what I'm promising. There's a lot in your brain. A million percent. I made that money back. Yeah. Without a question. Yeah. I've recommended him to so many people. Yeah. He completely changed the brand. What else has been helping you as you've been figuring out how to be a founder, manage your ADD, work to your strengths?

26:07I think it's just hard balancing it all. It's just chaos all the time. it's the most fun thing in the world. I'm so lucky. And it's like my baby and it's hard. I didn't do anything in business before. I consider myself a big thinker, creative person, and I have to learn this as I go and totally make mistakes. And it's scary, but the amount of growth as a person and just obviously as a business is so rewarding. And I could never work for someone else again. Neither could I at this point. You hired an ADD coach in last year, 2023. What do they do? Who is that? Do you recommend it? Definitely recommend it.

26:53Obviously, if you have ADHD, maybe it would help otherwise. But essentially, it's really important, I feel, as a business owner to have routines to try to keep everything as calm as possible because nothing's ever calm. She helped me set up systems for my personal life and for the business. Yeah. And I tried using different planners and I just kept all my information was on my phone. It was in a notebook. It was in the planner. And we just all got it in one place and created routines that I found ways to stick to. Yes. And it totally changed just like my happiness. How did you find routines? I have no routine.

27:31It's the thing. It's almost like working out where you're like, oh, it, you feel so good after just do it. Basically I have this little chart that I mark off if I do my morning and my night routine, that was something we had to add into place because I was like, it's still not happening. I need the dopamine hit of taking it off a hundred percent, which is part of HD is like craving that dopamine and productivity. So, you know, I do a morning routine that helps me ease into my day because before it was peel my eyes open, which, hey, sometimes I still do this. Yeah. My phone's on. Business is starting.

28:05I'm texting the team. I'm figuring out what to do. Yeah. I have no moments to myself. I go to my workout. I'm just thinking about business the whole time. Like it's really just adjusted the pace that like my mind goes and it actually makes the business run way smoother. That's really interesting. The last thing I want to talk to you about is partnerships and retail. You have some pretty big stockist now? Yes. Name drop. So Selfridge is one of our biggest, I think are the first to ever reach out to us. Nordstrom's. We were in Fred Siegel before they just closed RIP. We're in a lot of stores in Seoul, like in Asia.

28:45It's very popular for guys to dress stylish. Yeah. So it's very popular in Asia. And then we're in like a tiny store in Venice. I like wanted to get into an LA store because people always ask like him in town, like, how can I get something? So that I've been really lucky where it's all been inbound. Amazing. I'm trying to like now start doing outbound. Yeah. And it's just for a long time, it was our bread and butter for sure. Like it was maybe 50 % of the business for probably two years. Now it's more on DTC. Yeah. But it's a great thing to constantly have running. And if it's organized, it's awesome.

29:28What about partnerships? You've collaborated with a few big brands as well. Can you talk me through what those were and like how you structure those to work for you? Yes. So one of my favorites this year is I did a sunglasses collaboration with Lispex. Very cool. So sick. What did you do? Like a little chain? So this is the thing. I thought when they hit me up, oh, they're going want me to like bead on do like that or like just do one chain and they'll sell it we did a full line of 12 different pairs of glasses each of them designed by me we also did limited edition chains they let me run wild for the shoot I got to plan everything which was the first time I like had a budget to really do that.