Ep 44: How Marcia Kilgore Built Bliss, Soap & Glory, FitFlop & Beauty Pie: Lessons from a Serial Entrepreneur

0:11Today I'm joined by Marcia Kilgore, the serial entrepreneur behind not just one but multiple iconic brands across beauty, fashion and beyond beauty and beauty. businesses all while challenging industry norms whilst making luxury more accessible. So let's find out why she's a lady who launched. Well firstly thanks so much for being here. I am so so excited to sit and talk to you. There is so much I want to unpack and I think what is what I find so so interesting about you is the kind of, you're a bit of a unicorn. You're a bit of a unicorn in the way that you've managed to do something that others hope to do several times.

0:59A few times. Yes. A few times. Yeah, but we'll go several because I feel like I'm, this is me really putting on a pedestal because I find it so, so inspiring. So I've got so many questions to ask you. But I like to start each episode in the same way And that is kind of life before the business, life before the brands, because I really feel like that is so instrumental in shaping us in business and beyond. So talk to me about growing up. What was life like growing up in Canada? Well, I grew up in a first I grew up in between two cities in Canada. And that was really in the 70s where life was pretty simple.

1:44And, you know, in Canada, it's super cold in the winter. You have snow up to your eyeballs. And then you have, you know, beautiful summers. You had two television channels. Both were sort of Canadian-made. Lots of comedians, great comedians actually came out of Canada, probably because they were so bored. There was nothing else to do but laugh at everything. But it was pretty difficult as a child with a lot of curiosity to fill my brain with information or things that inspired me. So I grew up in Calgary, and then when my father died, I was about 11, and my mother, who was from Saskatchewan, which was a neighboring province to Alberta, where Calgary is, decided to move back to Saskatchewan because her family was there.

2:28And it was just easier for her to have people around that were supportive. Takes a village. so I spent my teenage years in Saskatoon and a tiny little town called Outlook which was where I was born at 2 ,000 people and just finished high school there sort of struggling to find my crowd simply because I think a lot of people weren't necessarily that curious about getting out into the world and seeing what else was out there and I absolutely was. that's that is such a sort of tricky period of time and I think a lot of us find ourselves in that position you know I grew up in a relatively small town in Essex we're close to London but still it was like a lot of my friends from home or friends I went to school with are still sort of in that same routine and it's almost like conforming to and for them it works and they absolutely love that but it's the norm is you do this and you might get a job in the city and you take the train there and then it's about settling down and then that sort of takes over and I think if you've got that burning desire to break free from that a little bit and that creative drive takes over it can be quite isolating quite lonely as much as it's like you're full of excitement to find your people when your current people don't have those same goals and that same ambition as you.

3:56It's quite a lonely period of time until you find your tribe. Yes, and when you're a teenager, it's difficult to find other people like you if you're dissatisfied, I suppose, with the status quo. And teenage girls are also really tough. So I wasn't necessarily one of the popular teenage girls in my school and I wasn't really interested in being one of those types of teenage girls. Yes. So it is hard to find people when you are thinking about bigger things than the clicks and the, you know, the sort of cattiness. And that happens with all teenage girls. It's just that. Oh, it does. It's hormones and it's not a judgment statement.

4:35It's just what happens as you go through this natural development. But I think I skipped it. and then I just couldn't find the people who were on the same wavelength, I suppose, just didn't want to talk about that teenage girl kind of stuff. So I've always had a lot of friends who were much older than me. You know, I'd always relate more to the 30-year-old when I was, you know, 14 than the other 14-year-old. And do you think that's because you felt mature? I just had finished that stage already in my thought processes and it wasn't interesting. So I was just trying to find what was interesting.

5:05It was usually 15 years ahead in terms of, I guess, intellectual development. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. As I said, I'm so, so interested in your story. And you've disrupted everything from spas to shoes to skincare and everything in between. Still going. And I love it. I love it. Disrupting is what we should say. What do you think it was that first sparked your entrepreneurial drive, do you think? Well, there's a lot of things. When they study entrepreneurs who are serial, usually it's some kind of trauma in their childhood that makes them insecure about being able to pay the rent. Right.

5:46Yeah, it's like that basic, right? Yeah. And so my father died when I was quite young, and he was quite young. And I do remember also when my parents, you know, when I was eight, I remember my parents worrying a lot about paying the bills. And I remember standing in the kitchen once thinking, when I grow up, I am never going to spend time worrying about my electric bill. And it was really like, this is such a waste of life. How is this unfolding in front of me? But I was, you know, eight. But I could already see that that was not the way that I wanted to live when I grew up. So I'm sure that a lot of that insecurity, the financial insecurity, and then having a parent and the loss of a parent, it's studied, right?

6:31This happens. If you look at a lot of people like me, you will find that they've lost a parent very early. So it's kind of textbook. But it does give you a kind of drive where you think no one is ever going to do it for me. I need to do it for myself. and then when you finish doing it you sort of have to go do it again yeah and it's not even it's sort of this weird innate urge to like okay I've got I put some money in the bank but it might all run out so I've got to go do it again um and at the same time I'm a really honest person so I can't sell anything that I don't want so I can't just go oh let me just go invent blah blah blah, blah, and just try and hawk it.

7:14I have to find something that I think, well, this will really improve a lot of lives. It will help people to love this because I love it. And so I've been quite selfish in what I create for a business because the best things are born that way. Yes. Stuff that you can't find and that you really actually would buy yourself. And I think if you're super honest with yourself, like there's nothing out there like this and there is a real need for it and I would pay for it right and I would pay for it every month or every three months or however often this thing is used then and you're like brutally honest with yourself about that then you will have something that other people will want to yeah yeah yes that's so so true having grown up in Canada and then eventually landing in New York and London yeah how do you think those environments I suppose shape your business instincts and like sense of possibility because I know there's been different places that I've lived and I did a short stint in Los Angeles and it sort of was cut short because I found out I was pregnant and I just wanted to be home basically in a nutshell um but that time there really kind of it felt like the land of possibility to me and it felt for me so different to London the way that I think everybody everyone's little black book is open and it's not so much of a little black book it's like oh I've got dinner tonight oh you want to do this you should come along to this or you should meet that person let me connect you and it's quite a kind of it's something that I've always believed but I don't find and I'd be interested to hear your side on that I don't find it happens so much in London I I don't feel like everybody's just open with that.

8:55So how have those sort of different places and those different environments shaped you? Well, that's a really long, probably complicated answer, but let me give it a go. We've got time. We've got time, girl. Okay, well, I mean, let's just skip Canada, right, because I was so young when I was there and there was nothing to be connected to. So it wasn't like there were parties or dinner parties or interesting things going on that people would either invite you to or not because it was like the skating rink, right, in the winter. And you would just like go and skate to kill time or you were going to school.

9:30I actually was a bodybuilder, believe it or not. And I know you can see the Rock Hard abs right now, but they were there at one point. I was so bored when I was a teenager and my sister started dating this guy whose brother owned a gym and they took me to the gym and like Miss Canada Middleweight Bodybuilding was there and she said like, I'll teach you. so I killed about three years of spare time after school from 15 to 18 training as a bodybuilder oh my gosh and that was kind of my tribe right it was like okay I finished school I'm gonna go to the gym and work out for three hours and yeah but the discipline that comes with that yes it was great it was and then you know I actually did competitions I actually like flexed and everything I'm always so fascinated.

10:16Yeah, I wish it was. It's all under this fat. There's zero fat from this animal girl. All that muscle is still underneath this. But it was really good discipline. You had to do. When you were doing competitions, you had to diet for six months, like egg whites and cod and broccoli. and so as a teenager to be able to kind of get into that and like really strip it all back and and go to school and not cry I used to cry sometimes in the morning over my six egg whites but it was a really good challenge to see like could I do this could I get down to like 10 % body fat yeah and you know compete with all these people and in that sort of there's a lot to be about those years in your life like you say 15 to 18 yeah to be that committed and that disciplined is i mean that's a lot of willpower for those kind for that age right that's that's incredible i guess so like for me i guess i don't know because it's me yeah you weren't well i know well yeah i mean you might have been somewhere where it was more interesting you had things to do like there really was not like saskatoon saskatchewan is not a place full of options for activities so and even television was not you know two channels no internet right so you found something to do it was like somewhere to go every day and if we maybe it was a little bit difficult but i don't shy away from difficult problems or tasks i find them kind of fun and challenging that see that's where it is though that's where it is yeah it's like oh let's see how you can kind of tackle this and and then it was like oh here's my community I can go and everybody's got they're doing something so I spent a lot of time doing that and then when I graduated from high school my sister was living in New York and she said hey she was a bit lonely because she was working there and no family around she had a few friends but no family and she said hey if you can get accepted to Columbia University I will pay for your tuition and I thought well actually it was a little bit before I graduated from high school because I remember I had to write the SATs which were not really a thing for Canadians because nobody from Canada then really went to the U.S.

12:25unless they had parents who were American and Canadian and there was a reason for them to go to the U.S. but otherwise you wouldn't think of it there wasn't you know now if you're in high school and you're a bright student there's going to be like coaching there's going to be here's all the things you have to you're going to study you got the tutors well then it was like nothing yeah right you do you you do you so I somehow looked up or found out where to write this SAT and wrote the SAT without knowing that you were supposed to study for it or prepare or there were any study guides or whatever managed to do okay and then got accepted to Columbia but I so went to New York and I again didn't have much help so I didn't realize I needed a student visa I didn't think so my sister was going to pay the tuition but then she had little financial difficulties that year, some tax things that she wasn't expecting because she hadn't, I don't know, paid every month.

13:17And so I was sort of in New York. I had 300 bucks and I had to do something because I couldn't go to school because she didn't have the money. And it was too late for me to apply for a student loan because I was Canadian. So they were only giving out at that point the student loans for the Americans. Right. Because I was too late. So I was kind of stranded in New York. Yeah. was 300 bucks and a really great body yeah like if you're gonna be stuck you know like a pair of tights and whatever so I got a cheap membership at this gym and there were all these um sort of celebrities directors film producers actors actresses Jean-Claude Van Damme his wife Gladys Portuguese and so I worked out there and people would approach me and say can you make my body look like your body and so yeah even men I wasn't really bulky I was like an Olympic athlete look kind of looking so they wanted me to train them and I said okay fine$35 an hour and they were like all right and you know like back in the 90s that was good yeah yeah so I had a few personal training clients and then they would get you know suggest me to somebody else and somebody else and somebody else and I thought okay this is all right I can do this and I will just save up until I have enough money to pay for my own tuition.

14:36But like$34 an hour isn't that much when tuition even back then was like$2 ,000 a semester per course at NYU or whatever it was. So I ended up doing a lot of personal training for a couple of years until I realized, I mean, it was pretty exhausting because you'd have to be up at like 4 o 'clock in the morning to get to your first client by 5.30 because they had to be in Wall Street by 7.30. And then you had a giant break in the middle of the day. And then you had to be up until like 10 o 'clock at night. And you were taking the subway all over the place with weights. And like, I mean, it was hardcore.

15:10I'm glad I was 19 and 21. I was doing that because it was super tiring. But I realized at one point, because my skin got very bad because it was sweaty. And, you know, New York's quite humid. And you didn't get time to go home and wash your face. And I'd always had really oily skin. And so it got, you know, pretty acne-y. Yes. And one summer, instead of going out to the Hamptons, where if you are a personal trainer and you go to the Hamptons with one of your clients, you are trapped in their house as their toy. Right. So you think it's going to be fabulous. Because it sounds quite glamorous. It sounds glamorous when you're 20, but you're basically, you know, a hostage.

15:51Yes. Yeah. You're a hostage in their house and they want to show you. Well, it's like a service-based job. and you're at their service to a degree. You're at their service. You're 20. You look pretty good. They like to show you off, but only when they want to take you out and show, here's my personal trainer. So it just wasn't, you would think this is a great thing to do for the summer. It wasn't. I learned after about a week and then I thought, what can I do this summer? And my skin was terrible. So I took a crash course in how to do facials at this skincare school. And that's kind of how it all started.

16:23Oh my gosh. I love that. And then it was like, wait, I can do facials instead of running around town with weights in a backpack at four o 'clock in the morning and 10 o 'clock at night. And maybe some of this I could do in one location. And it's not physically totally exhausting because I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up, you know, eight personal training sessions a day. It was just tough. You're such a problem solver, aren't you? God, who else is going to do it? You are like, as you're speaking, all I hear is problem solver. I had skin and I think like it's it's almost so well it rings true to what you said earlier no one was going to solve my problems for me but also that it's something that you're passionate about and it's something that you feel yes should be fixed that should be fixed yeah right and it kind of it keeps coming back to that so you're now stumbled upon this new career yeah and you've got a treatment room and a treatment room yes and we're still in new york at this point yes spring street and what was that lafayette east river savings bank building it looked like an old you know when you see movies about um private detectives and they have a room and they have the door and the door is like uh translucent glass and then there's a number on it and it says blah blah agency i had a door like that and just like one little room in this building um above subway in soho so when does product come into play ah that was probably about well okay a couple of stories there of course in fixing my own face and in doing facials and this again that many years ago i can't even count because it was so long ago but that many years ago there wasn't much you know like products in terms of skincare and technology and ingredients were so minimal.

18:21Everybody got excited when glycolic acid came out. Like that was a thing. Like as if anybody cares, right? Glycolic acid is so, you clean toilets with it, actually the strong form of it. But it was such a big deal then to know that you could use this form of acid watered down to exfoliate your face. And it was like a miracle. Now, if you look at what you can get now in terms of skincare ingredients, you go to a trade show, there will literally be 2 ,000 booths with people from all over the place showing their different peptides and stem cells and growth factors. And I mean, it's just such a different game now.

18:57Yeah. So it was really nascent at that time in terms of what you could get for product, you know, cleansing creams versus they did have papaya and pineapple enzymes and things like that. Little glycolic acid, not much else. And I would use what was available from other brands for facials in my studio for my clients and always be looking for new cool stuff because you should. And it makes it more fun to do your job if you have cool stuff that really works. And so for the first three years in my little studio that was like the private detective office, I just used whatever I could buy. And then I moved to a larger office because I needed to, I had a waiting list.

19:37So I wanted to train other people and then get them coming in for, you know, diffuse it a little bit because it was getting quite bad. That's what happens when you're service-based, right? everybody wants you but then you're only one person with one diary yes yes your own availability so you have to kind of yeah you got to train the team and make sure everyone's working the way you would exactly which actually was pretty it wasn't easy but if you are again disciplined about it and you choose the right people and you train them in your method and you make sure that you've got the process for that methodology and everybody's using the same product and the experience is the same and the music is great and you know it's those details yes you're great in that environment and that experience yeah so everybody was happy and you know I could say hello to everybody who came in for a treatment whether I could do their treatment or not I could or I could look at their face and advise if they wanted me to and then put them on the table with somebody else so there was an amount of scale that you could kind of reach even with four treatment rooms and so that was really fun actually that little place it was called let's face it i love i love a pun um and it was where people started to come in so again there was no internet right back then so we had booking on computers no no tiktok no instagram no there was no way that anyone could find you unless you're written about in a magazine or a newspaper yes and somehow it got quite lucky or i don't know maybe i deserved it who knows they say luck is you know from a lot of practice you is what they say.

21:11But we would get a lot of write-ups in magazines because it was a cool facial place. And prior to that, and actually one of the reasons I got inspired to do facials in a very different way and make it really friendly and fun and modern was because I had saved up enough money to start going to NYU part-time because of the Columbia thing not working out. And I lived downtown in the East Village because I had a really cheap apartment. And NYU was actually on my way to the facial studio. So I could go in the evening and take a couple of classes. And I remember taking economics, which I was a disaster at.

21:51It was actually the first thing I ever took that I was a disaster at because the science of economics typically does not, it doesn't bring the human into it. Right. So they'll tell you, well, if the price goes up, the demand will drop. And it's like, well, not always. Yeah, it's not always. Like sometimes if something's too cheap, nobody wants it. It depends what crowd you're working in. Exactly. And I think I just did not understand that real basic economics where the human was removed. The human emotion was totally removed from economics. And so I really didn't do that well in it. And I remember having to study very, very hard for the final exam.

22:29And I paid my own like hard-earned$35 an hour money for this$2 ,000 course. So I really wanted to do well to get the credits. And so I'd study and study and study while working like, you know, nine hours a day and like sweating and running people up and down stairs of their apartments, etc. And I went for a facial. I'd saved up$45 to take myself as a treat for a facial at this place on the Upper East Side that was quite famous. And this was before I did facials. Okay. And I had quite bad skin. So this was supposed to be like my gift to myself. I had like$45 for me at that time was a lot of money.

23:09of course yeah i think i even walked uptown to not pay for the subway so i walked four miles uptown to go to this place so i could save like the two bucks so i could get the facial and i go in i lie down it's a romanian lady i'm not going to name the place because i think it still exists but you know i'll just protect the non-innocent okay um and i lie down and she puts the magnifying glass over my face and she leans over me and she goes oh what a pity oh my god Oh, yeah. I'm like, well, this is a treat. Oh, God. That is so awful. It was so awful. And then she actually went out and got Mr. So-and-so, another guy not to be named, probably dead now.

23:51Because that was a long time ago and he was really cranky and old. And he came in and he was like, oh, shame. I was like, oh, that is absolutely awful. Okay, listen, I'm here for a good time. I've also worked really hard for this. This was a treat to myself. Yes. And I remember. So I did then, but on my way home, I was like, screw it. I'm going to pay the two bucks for the subway or whatever it was. I went to the 59th Street subway. I remember it rolling in in front of me and looking at my blotchy face in the, you know, because it was stainless steel subway. And it rolls in in front of me. I have my blotchy face.

24:24And I remember looking at my face and thinking, if I have had a facial place like that and people like me came in, I would never make them feel bad about themselves. And that's when I decided to do facials. because there were a lot of people like me who had problems with their skin because there wasn't the science right it was either like benzoyl peroxide or accutane if you didn't want to do one of those or what a pity yeah or what a pity and then they would steam your face and put and sell you a bunch of stuff none of which worked and it was like well that's actually a pity I just blew even more of my cash that's sort of like cream on cream off yeah that yeah yeah come on Exactly.

25:04So I think that was really when you go back to like the environment that inspired. Yeah. Usually whatever inspires a business for me is some moment of insight that there are other people like me who are very disappointed in the current experience. Yes. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And that was the first one. Yeah. That was the first one. I mean, that is every reason to build a business. Yeah. To make people feel good. Absolutely. People were going for facials. People wanted to be treated and have a moment away from the grind, whatever the grind is. And when they go in for that, they're obviously looking to feel good.

25:43And particularly when you're going in, not even just for a pamper or for a nice experience, but you're going in because of an insecurity. And, you know, everybody knows that, like, period of time where I've, through my school years, I was always really lucky. And then something happened after baby's fever where I had sort of adult acne for a period of time. Yeah, hormones. Yes. absolutely that that and it knocked me sideways and it's kind of it becomes that like burying your head and not wanting to see anybody and that the way that it makes you feel is terrible and when you're going to hope to fix that and somebody makes you oh feel even worse I mean how basic psychology 101 right if I wanted if I wanted an insult they were paying me myself exactly thank you appreciate that could be free um i want to talk about you obviously living in that service space world and performing and doing incredibly well and having that kind of ambition to provide a service that makes people feel incredible and really does problem solve again when i wanted to sort of dig into when bliss was born right so it was after i had my one room studio expanded to the three room studio plus a little manicure thing plus a little waxing closet and that was let's face it and let's face it grew and grew and grew best name in the world it was not bad bliss kind of better you always have to upgrade you always have to raise your own game but yeah but i did think like what do i want it to be called we're gonna do so i had this three room studio plus the waxing closet and a little manicure place and it was so booked i mean and again this back in back then you had an answering machine have you ever seen an answering machine okay it was an answering machine with a tape like you didn't have digital answering machines it actually had this tape and we would get in in the morning me and the receptionist betty and the tape would be like always to the end because so many people i called and left messages because they wanted to book appointments and it was we were already 18 months out for every single one and it was kind of getting to the point where people were so they were getting angry that they'd call and we'd say yeah you can come in in like 2043 it wasn't that bad but we were probably then like 1994 and people would be booking appointments for 1997.

28:06Wow and and also like that's to a point that works because everybody wants something that they can't have right yeah but not that point but yeah you kind of reach like if you can't get in for six months then people just like they give up right yeah and then you kind of weirdly you get anger and then instead of it being great people are just angry about it who do they think they are yeah yeah and you're not it was just most people would come uh for their treatment and then they would book every month for the next 18 months which is normal because there's you know if you know you're free on a tuesday night at seven o 'clock that's when you want your facial and yeah you're just gonna book it and then you'll cancel it if you can't make it but most people wouldn't cancel they would swap with a friend.

28:47So there was never an open one unless somebody was, you know, sick or something like that, in which case we would fill it from our waiting list, but it was few and far between. And I thought, you know what, we need more rooms. You could kind of see that it was going so well that it would go badly. Kind of like, you know, when everybody wears a particular clothing item and then because everybody's worn it so much, nobody ever wants to see it again. It was kind of the same thing. I could feel it myself. This is so good. It is just going to collapse if we don't expand. So in the same building that we were in, which was on Prince Street and Broadway by that point, there was an art gallery by a very famous gallerist named Leo Castelli.

29:32And he wasn't retiring. He was like the guy in the art world. He had this beautiful gallery with 6 ,000 square feet. He was upstairs from where we were. And the landlord, who's still the landlord in that building um because i have a beauty power office in that building now um she said hey why don't you take leo costelli's gallery because you could build out you know 12 treatment rooms or whatever and so i signed a lease for that no still at that point i'm just thinking how do i build a spa with 12 treatment rooms i didn't have the money to do it but i knew that i could make the money by the time i'd have to pay off the contractors right so it's quite hand-to-mouth mouth oh my god yeah totally hand to mouth I mean I wasn't a business person I didn't go to business school I didn't know about loans I didn't know you could get investors I didn't know but you saw an opportunity yeah so I think it would have been very different but you spend the money very carefully when it's you don't have any which is I think the best discipline it's like if you have too much money it's a terrible thing yeah yeah because you don't have the discipline of like What does it teach you?

30:41Yeah, nothing. It's nothing, right? So I would be literally doing facials all day and then going to Home Depot in Queens in my tiny car to get shelves for the new construction because it was cheaper than asking the contractor to put shelves up. Yeah. I had the drill gun. I had the… I love it. Yeah. I love it. And it was amazing because you just realize you can kind of learn how to do anything. Now it's even easier. Everything's on YouTube, right? so if you don't know how to do something you're just like how do i watch a video we're all an expert yeah um but then it was like okay here's a drill gun but so you're asking some guy in home depot in queens at three o 'clock in the morning because they were open all night like how do i make sure that these shelves stay up if there's heavy things on them so you kind of did everything which was great now i forgot what the question was what are we even talking about well you're You're saying that you were then expanded, so you take the lease.

31:36You're now in the 12 rooms. Yes, and we had, again, an article. So we opened. We had an article then in Vogue about how great it was. And then we were booked for 18 months again. So it was like, oh, my God. It took me two years after that to build another floor because I spent all the money, right? I was still sort of paying it off. And you're booked, but like construction, then I think it was about$375 ,000 worth of construction that we did. Wow. And that's like 1996. And I didn't have it. I was like, yeah. You know, I had enough. I was not making nothing, but I was making what you would make if you had a three-room facial studio, right?

32:17And we didn't charge a lot. And so every cent I had went to the contractor. Got to do business. Yeah, who was really great, actually. His name was Marvin, I remember. And he was like, well, I can probably stall these guys for, like, the fact that he was even doing this job, when he knew that I didn't actually have the money, but I would get it. It was kind of cool. The trust he had to do it. Yeah, it was kind of cool. Yeah. And so we managed to. We got this fantastic article in Vogue. Thank you, Vogue. And they wrote about us. The phone rang off the hook. We actually had to take the ringer off the phone because it was a spa, you know?

32:51And you can't have, like, phones ringing all the time. So we took the ring off, and we just had it flashing. And it was just, like, phone booking, phone booking, phone booking. And then we were booked for 18 months, and I had to start saving again. Wow. Yeah, so that was really, you know, right place, right time, right idea. Because there was nothing that was modern in the spa world. Everything was like old school, Eastern European, hit you with twigs, steam your face, shame you. And we were coming in with like, hey, come in for a triple oxygen facial and a hot milk pedicure. And everybody was like, what?

33:21Yes. So, yeah, it was super fun. I met so many people also. It was like a social club, that place. It was like everybody came, right? you name it they came in and we did not favor anybody over anybody else so if Hillary Clinton called she had to go in the waiting list like anybody else love it although sometimes for people who were kind of high high high profile we'd come in early like I'd come in at 7 30 in the morning if they would because it opened at nine so if they'd come in early I would come in early to accommodate somebody who didn't necessarily want to be around crowds like if you had like you know Uma Thurman or somebody like that you probably didn't want her in the locker room with everybody else yes yes so you might accommodate that but you'd never cancel somebody normal just because Calvin Klein wanted to come in yes yeah it was all everybody was equal I love that it was great that is so so important yeah so then this is now flying yeah and then you decide I'm not going to use these other products we can use, we can produce our own products yes, well I still need a lot of other products because we you know how it is, production of formulations is complicated and especially when you're using them for treatments you need stuff that actually does very specific things so I did use a lot of professional products from a lot of different brands and we mixed and matched and created our own treatments but then I suppose Bliss became that takeaway that you could feel like you've got this whitelist, everybody wants into this club.

34:51You want a piece of it so you can buy the product. But you want a piece at home. Yes. But that's kind of genius. When you've got a wait list like you do, and not everyone can be involved, but people want it to be accessible, then they can take a slice of that home. Well, in 1996, again, no websites, right? There were no websites. You had the internet by then because you could search for packaging suppliers, but it was very like business to business. Right. So I could search for contract manufacturers I could search for packaging supplies, but there was nothing like, you know, you can't go online.

35:24Back then, it was mail-order catalog. And so after the article in Vogue, it was actually about a particular cream that we sold. And then we had one about the spa. But the cream, people started calling to buy this cream from this one article. And they were still calling after like four or five months. And I would say that that article basically was like the house that built Bliss. It was like the article that we made enough money on to pay off the contractor by November when we opened in July. And from that, we must have shipped out, I don't know, 10 ,000, 20 ,000 jars of that cream. Wow. Now, interestingly, people would then call us.

36:06And of course, no email, right? It was like so much fun. And they'd call and say, what else do you have? I love this cream. What else do you have? so I decided just out of the blue to create a mailer catalog that was the bliss out catalog and so we I had a one client who came from facials who was a still life photographer very talented um he decided he would do the still life photography I had one client who was an illustrator so anything that we actually didn't have a physical sample of because it wasn't produced yet she would draw it and then we would like have it ready by the time the catalog came in and was mailed out.

36:43And then I wrote the copy for it because, like, who can't? I was like, pfft. I'll do that. Yeah. I'm like, anybody can write copy. And so we created this really cute little catalog called Bliss Out. And it went out from Bliss. And we gave it to all of our clients. And then we also got mailing lists. And we sent it to everybody who had ordered from us this cream from Vogue. And we created this enormous mail-in catalog business all about beauty products. It had beauty products, but it also would have, like, one of my clients was a woman named Temple St. Clair Carr. She put earrings. She was bought by Tiffany at one point, but we took a pair of her$500 earrings and, like, put those in the catalog.

37:20And then Kate Spade, God rest her soul, we put a Kate Spade bag in the catalog. She did a special bag for us that was, like, a messenger bag. Yeah, because it was, like, Bliss was so hot. We had all the hot people coming in, right? Like, you're a tastemaker. Yeah, and all the tastemakers came to us. so and they all had facials so i could ask anybody like hey we're doing a catalog it wasn't so back then it wasn't like oh brands were not so precious yeah and bliss was so hot i had like thomas keller from the french laundry come and ask if i would open a bliss at the front at the french laundry which is that amazing restaurant in napa valley um so we were like the hottest thing out there anybody would do anything for us so we had this catalog it was beauty products and then like random other things that I liked.

38:09And so we sent it out. They had no idea how to send out a big mailer catalog. And we sent out probably like 100 ,000 copies. It wasn't small. Oh, my goodness. And that also then built this product business. But again, it was just sort of fun. It was like, why not? Let's do it. People want to see what we have. Let's send it out there. And let's make a catalog that's super fun, you know, like fun to read. It was, again, you're like really young. you won't remember some of these references, but there was a catalog in the 90s called Jay Peterman, which if you've ever watched Seinfeld, Elaine, the character, works for Jay Peterman on Seinfeld.

38:46But Jay Peterman was an actual catalog, and they had the world's best copywriter. And they actually hand-drew everything in the catalog, and then they write this narrative paragraph about each product that kind of had nothing to do with the product. It just made you want the product it was so magical and I got very inspired by that catalog somehow was on the mailing list for it so I tried to write copy that was kind of like the Jay Peterman catalog copy like a similar tone of voice yeah but a little bit cheekier I guess you would say like a little edgier it was very you know dreamy uh you know world traveler snobby man got it and mine was sort of more like playful yeah edgy girl you know yeah yeah so it did very well we grew that business I remember the first day like in 1999 the first day that we did a hundred thousand dollars in a day from the catalog just because the mixture of the products was so great and we had built up the clientele it was like a nice business being such a people brand from the get-go and having that face time with people literally and then the product spider you've had like the best focus group from the off which is a kind of incredible thing to have and now you see like fast forward to 2025 you see people doing that in terms of building a community and that's now an online community but you kind of had that in the flesh and the bare bones of it that then yeah grew which is kind of incredible and it's I guess it's without knowing it at the time it's a strategy that now people use but in a completely different way yeah I think it's very different though I think um online communities are very different than in person chatting with somebody especially but now it sort of has to be that because the world has moved in that way I suppose yes yes I'm always shocked that if um people never think to pick up the phone and call a customer it's like um just call them and ask them yeah right instead of hypothesizing or saying well we had 10 000 people in this community and like 47 of them said this you know community there's that pack mentality where something happens in community and people like dive on it yeah and one person can say something and it kind of yeah it turns into like this huge thing and then people believe it and it's like actually that might not really be what they're thinking but it might be what they want to portray in the community and also people are very anonymous out there yeah so they can act very differently and hide behind quite a lot now yeah you can be really rude out there I think you'd be really rude at those streets and hide behind something and it's something that you it doesn't affect you pass the person in the flesh yeah you would never you would never yeah exactly it gives you a level of security now for for the bad um I want to talk about for me what sets you apart from other entrepreneurs I've spoken to is the success that you've had multiple times as I said at the start that I felt like I feel like you're somewhat of a unicorn and you've built and exited companies with bliss and then soap and glory which to me is just incredible what what are the common traits and principles that have sort of guided each brand's growth because with bliss it really feels that you're front and center you're there you're on the ground you it's sort of scaling in front of your eyes and with bliss it didn't seem well for me listening and on being on the outside and tell me if I'm wrong it's sort of everything evolved and it was happening sort of in real time rather than it being such a considered strategy it was kind of happening and sort of snowballing and people were getting it people were buying what you were selling yeah soap and glory was that kind of the same premise talk me through soap and glory well soap and glory so I after I sold bliss um the investors the second set of investors that we sold bliss to LVMH in 1999 the majority of it and I kept part of it because I still wanted to be involved and we made a deal that I would be involved for at least five years.

43:10And then September 11th happened. And LVMH really changed their strategy to eliminate any non-core business. And their core business really was Louis Vuitton handbags, which are made of canvas covered in plastic and so very high margin business. And that's what they wanted to focus on because everything else was super difficult financially for them at the time. So they decided to divest of their shares in Bliss to W Hotel Group, which isn't a bad thing because W Hotel Group. It was Starwood Hotel Group, and we were going to be the spa that went into all the W Hotels. Right. And, you know, okay, good idea.

43:48If you're at a W Hotel and you can go to a Bliss, you know, great. The person that was then brought in from the W Hotel Group and put in a place as sort of the CEO of Bliss was not as experienced as I was in running a business of that sort. Right. However, was not also at the time open to suggestion, let's say. And so it was sort of uncomfortable for me. After a while, I felt like I was the professor. I'd have to make these long diatribes about why, how they were doing it was not going to work. And I spent more time every day trying to teach him why and back up my point of view. It was convincing.

44:39Yeah, which was like, this is not a good use of my time. I am very experienced and, you know. And this has been your baby to labour the point. It was very successful under my watch. Yes. Therefore, one might think, hey, let's take this advice for free. And let's run with it because, like, free. She kind of knows how this works. One would think that this would be a thought process, but it's often not. And people have lots of ego and often think they can just come in and they're smarter, better, just whatever. More qualified or however they see fit. Even if they're 22 years old and just came out of Harvard.

45:17And I get that there's smart people at Harvard, but it doesn't mean they know your business. And said person has gone on to do fantastic things in a totally different area. Yeah. And it was a very smart person, but not at that. It didn't do. Yes. But I couldn't waste five years at that. So I love cosmetics. I love actually making people feel good. Right. It's like, how can we I think as I think as a kid, when I was a teenager, I was left out. Because I was sort of the odd bird out in that I just didn't fit in. But I did. Of course, you want to fit in. um so i've always done things where people are included and i want people to fit in and feel like welcome yeah so whatever brand it is yeah it's my it's the it's the culture right so bliss was that it was like hey come in it's fun here everybody's the same we treat everybody the same whether you're uh you know working as an assistant in some company around the corner or you're uma thurman you're waiting for your appointment whoever you are you're you gotta to wait yeah we treat everyone equally and i thought that was really important i wanted everyone to feel welcome and um kind of involved and happy and entertained and like a brand should be entertaining yeah uh you have to make it something that they feel like they want to talk about even if it's a product that they're buying and so i i was out of bliss so i did my five years and then i had to leave just for my own mental sanity um and and then i thought well what can i do i had one little child at the time.

46:52We were living in London because we had opened a Bliss here. And I thought, let me just do a product range because actually somebody from Estee Lauder at the time had advised me. He said, never do a service business. And of course, I was in the middle of a service business. He was like, forget it. Just go to products. It's way easier. It's way better. Blah, blah, blah. And of course, at the time, I had Bliss products. We had launched Bliss products and a couple of other product ranges that were more skincare-y at the time. So I then knew the product industry as well. And so I thought, you know what, let me just create something that's sort of on trend here in England.

47:30What was the vibe at that time? H &M had started to do collaborations. It was just then where they were doing high-end stuff for low-end prices. And I thought with Soap and Glory, I thought, let me do really amazing formulas with really great design. they weren't expensive formulas right they were but they were created with such care and attention that the they felt expensive bringing that premium to the high street yeah yeah and at least there was a premium feel you would not have stem cells or peptides or any expensive ingredients in there but when you would use it it smelled amazing it felt amazing so and you could afford it and it was all fun so you'd walk in it was like a wall of pink all the products were named funny things you'd have in your bag people gave them as gifts it was so distinctive it was it was it's and and that that's one thing that i really feel about soap and glory it's so distinctive and there's lots of brands that have kind of copied it yes yeah i was gonna say sure use it as heavy inspired but yeah yeah there's a lot of brands that have actually taken that that soap that soap and glory thing yeah and I think that's one thing that I really when I think about you and the brands that you have built fit flop let's you know yeah they like they are so they're so clear on what they are and the concept and they're so kind of innovative and like to me I'm like how like I love it I love the pivots and I love the the strands of you how do we go from from blitz from bodybuilder to bliss to soap and glory to fit flop well you see the bodybuilder thing in the fit flop right no no no now i know the story that makes perfect sense but you're the different avenue stream i just love it i love it so much honestly i really really do there's just a lot out there right there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff if you connect the dots in a different way yeah if you're curious and you're not just thinking about what you do but you think about what everybody else is doing right and there's a great book actually by trying to remember it's by adam grant called originals where he actually analyzes entrepreneurs that have done several businesses yes um and he you know it's sort of chapter after chapter about i found this was the same about all of them this was the same about all of them this was the same about all of them etc and one thing that he says is most of them are experts in a field right so whether it's skincare i'm an expert in skincare i'm relatively at that point was an expert in exercise science um so these are my two expertises but i also will read anything right so i will read about ball bearings you know like if that's in front of me i'll read it i'll read any newsletter that comes my way i'm like just because you don't know what piece of information from some other random thing is going to give you an idea it's how you can add the dots yeah but yeah if people are just connecting the dots here well those dots have been connected already so to come up with a new idea you have to think about well like fifth up was i had bought first of all i was so busy with soap and glory and i thought i was going to get back in shape and i had a small child and i thought i always thought this i was probably i don't know 35 my goal was I'm going to get back into the shape that I was in when I was a bodybuilder right ha fat chance I have a job soap and glory is taking over the world I'm never going to get time to exercise the only time I have to like do anything good for my body is when I'm walking my kid to school right and it was two commute yeah the commute to like his little Montessori thing and I remember buying this pair of and a mulemeister really beautiful flats looking comfortable, right, at Barney's for 600 bucks or whatever they were.

51:25And I grabbed my kid and we were walking to Montessori school and they wouldn't stay on my feet. Literally, however I adjusted them, my feet were coming out the back. And it was like, okay, there has got to be a way that we can make a shoe that is good for your body, that is comfortable, and you can actually walk a period of time in this was of course before it was okay to wear like trainers with your suit and whatever like people and i started to just think about how footwear could be the next beauty product right people are often so uncomfortable because their shoes are killing them right it ruins your day oh your whole day you go out in a bad pair of shoes in it for an evening and it's like it messes up your whole evening and i just thought there's got to be a way that we can kind of work around this that we can get some cute shoes that actually are good for your body when you walk in them and knowing about what i knew from bodybuilding right there were you know people would say oh wait the shoes but you can't put weights in shoes because it wrecks your knees right or you know do this to the shoe do that and i knew everything about physiology and anatomy i didn't know anything about shoes yet so it was like okay how can i learn about shoes and put it together physiology and anatomy because people weren't doing that then i even spoke to many universities and maybe nike was making like runners right with the yeah but people weren't measuring the biomechanics of how a shoe affects your body so i didn't even know the word biomechanics when i was interviewing shoe designers to help me design their shoe they just said i i would explain what i wanted the shoe to do while you walked in it and they would look at me like with their eyes kind of like, I'm just a shoe designer.

53:12I draw shoes. And it took actually a university, a dean of the University of Swansea, randomly had invented intense pulse light laser hair removal, came to me to try and help create some post-treatment products. And then at the end of our meeting, I said, could you help me? I'm trying to find someone, Like, maybe, you know, I'm trying to find someone who can help me design a shoe that does X, Y and Z for your body, aligns your spine, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, oh, you need to come up to Swansea and speak with our biomechanics department. I was like, OK, biomechanics. That's what I need.

53:49I need a biomechanist. I didn't know the word. Right. Yeah. So then I spent the next like six months looking for it because I went to Swansea. That's another story. They didn't know how to make something. They knew how to measure something. Right. So I had to look for someone. To like collectively find the right team to bring. Oh, yeah. No one knew. I mean, this is like a total idea out of nowhere. It was complete innovation. Yeah. You got to find someone who is like, but how do we do it? How do we do it? And then finally, someone who was working on packaging for Soap & Glory Christmas products emailed me and said, I think I found a biomechanics department at London South Bank University.

54:24Why don't you go talk to them? This is a great thing. You'll love this because you're a woman. So I show up. And we have, you know, I talked to, I made them sign an NDA. And I talked to the guys in the biomechanics department. And then there was a guy named Pat Fox. Since no longer there, so I can tell you this story. I think he's in Australia. He'll never hear this. Fabulous. Right. And we signed the NDA, blah, blah, blah. And then he takes me to the cafeteria where we can talk about the idea and commercialization, how they're going to maybe help build a product for me or help at least build a prototype.

54:58And he goes, who's behind this? Couldn't possibly be me. but you get that a lot right and i was like oh you know i said i you know i really i can't say it's just wild it's okay but i like i managed to get the ip out of them for five thousand dollars but i still went you know if we ever sell i'm i've got dr dave and darren in my will so i will not forget dr dave and darren when this comes you know into a big number but it was it's just you always underestimate it and it's just like it was like come on man i'm on my third one by now like yeah this is water for ducks back i know how this works but that was okay it was okay it was kind of great i guess he maybe he didn't know what to look for so i don't know what and do you know what sometimes he's not the person that you need to get it right you know no no no as long as you give me that prototype i mean the first prototype looked like a big It was like a big black lump of coal, but it was foam.

56:06And they told me they actually made shoes. So I waited like three months for that prototype because they're like, no, we have a shoe creation department. And so I'm like, okay, I can wait. You guys make the shoe, right? They show up. It's literally a rectangle of black foam with ropes to tie it onto the foot. I'm like, look, I don't care what that does for the body. No one is wearing that. That's so cute. They wouldn't even wear that thing inside their own house. so then I had to but it worked when we like who is buying this yeah nobody was buying that but the technology was in it and the technology was doing what we needed it to do because they electrode up your entire body and then they can see if it's doing what it's supposed to do as you walk even if it was ropes tied onto your foot so now it's the job to make it cute well I had to then find a footwear manufacturer right but you can't take this to like one of the big once they'll just steal it that happens yeah so in the like annals of my mind i have remembered going out to trobridge is that a place trobridge i think so um and having a meeting with a contract manufacturer back then who was making a product called sexy mother pucker for soap and glory which was a lip plumper and them giving me their corporate history for like an hour and a half which you don't do in North America.

57:23Like you go and you're like, hey, we want to make lip gloss. And they're like, great, we make lip gloss. When you come to England, they're like, here's our. Have a cup of tea. Yes, and here's our corporate history. And I remember being like, oh my God. Okay, cool, can we do this with us? Yes, can we just get there? And I remember at one point they said, well, we are this company and we have a sister company that sources shoes from Asia for M &S. And I remember I was like, wait, wait, I know someone who makes shoes. I know someone. And I was like, okay, they make shoes. And so I reached out to them and I was like, do you think you could help me make a shoe?

57:54And then I used to actually have a graphic designer who I'd been working with for Soap & Glory. They did the original packaging for Soap & Glory. They were so talented. They could do anything. So I was like, can you draw me a really cool little athletic flip-flop with a chunky sole? Right? And so she gave me a whole bunch of drawings. They were really cute. And then I sent it to the guy at this. We NDA'd with this guy who worked for this sister company of the lip gloss people. And he created the first one. and like we sold millions of pairs. I just like, it's, Fit Flop is such a household name that it's, it's just incredible that, I mean, I know everything is born from somewhere, but that was your brainchild because your shoes were annoying you taking your son to nursery.

58:41Yeah. You know, like it's, I just love it. I love it. And what I love about you is the way that you continue you to disrupt industries like it's it's a skill set like it's your you know like everyone's born to find their thing like and it goes back to you being in Canada and you need to find your tribe or you kind of are not just finding you're creating and you're oh if it's not there exactly that make it you gotta make it goes back to that and you're doing it time and time again I mean normally when we do these interviews we're like okay and that's when that was born and that's a great okay now we're in beauty pie season yes because guess what girl you've done it again um of all the brands you've you know you have built for me beauty pie and fit flop are the ones that really feel you know beauty pies i'm reading notes here often described as a revolution um now this isn't just a brand of product it's a model yeah and the beauty pie model you're building that model out which at the time is a bold move in quite a traditional market yes so tell me where this idea was then born and i'm quite interested in how you kind of test and validate that idea before going all in that wasn't possible normally and and i love jim collins if you've ever read any jim collins books he's like the master of uh business kind of research and books and he always one of my favorite quotes from him is you should always fire a bullet before you fire a cannonball like don't put your life savings into something just put a small amount and see if it works if you can but some things you can't and beauty pie was one of those ones where it wasn't my life savings but there was a substantial initial investment because if i would there were a lot of risks this one was probably the riskiest one i mean okay fit flop you had to make 30 000 shoes right so we had to make i had to buy 30 000 shoes as a minimum order quantity to launch fit flop because it's a big mrq it's decent size mrq and shoes are not cheap and especially triple density mid-soils and you're making the molds etc etc but it was you know like maybe a million dollars which isn't beauty pie was a lot more that you had to put a lot more in and like leap off a cliff simply because of the disruptive nature of it right and the fact that the whole idea is that we are sourcing from the same luxury quality factories that all of the premium luxury skincare cosmetics brands hair care fragrance candles all of them use um i knew from my many lives in the beauty industry and of course this one came out of a need again right i had sold soap and glory when you're when you're the owner of a brand uh all of these labs from around the world are trying to get you to manufacture with them especially when you're the owner of a big brand who's doing volume so soap and glory did a lot of volume everybody would send me boxes of their product all the time and how much volume are we talking like soap and glory was probably doing like 100 million pounds yeah i mean it was volume um and then at christmas my god well that's big christmas bags those crashed the boots website yeah yeah so i knew it was big when we crashed i have a i you know i have a baby toiletry brand yes i know it's beautiful i know that it's hard to change the christmas gifting model yes we did yeah and they kept wanting to it was funny because i remember having this conversation with um ken i can't remember his last name which is terrible he's at tesco now um but he always wanted ken ken he always wanted to do more and i was like no ken this is as big as it gets at christmas if you do more you're just going to be stuck with like you do too much people don't want it anymore you always have to have it sell out if it sells out and there's none left by five day six and seven that's good the last thing you want is for it to be hanging around day you know because it's a seven day thing that christmas bag we don't eat there on the third of jan yeah but they just want always more and more and i know when to say like that's enough we should be happy with this right you want it to last 10 more years do this you blow it out too much more it's gonna last two more years Which one?

1:03:12Ten years of this or two years of this? And people just don't get it. There is a balance where you don't get too greedy. Be really happy that this is crashing your website every Christmas and people are rushing into the stores to get this thing. Oh, yeah. So I had sold it. Boots actually bought it. Soap and Glory. And they really wanted to do something very different with it. And they were our biggest vendor. And there was a lot of pressure from them because they were our biggest retailer. And, you know, it's a machine over there. and they really don't care about the individual brands, even if it is a$100 million brand.

1:03:44They just want to do what they want to do and apply their boots thing to it. And after a while, that's not very fun. And I'm not that kind of, I like to go build stuff. I don't want to spend my time arguing with buyers in Nottingham. So it's not inspiring. No offense. I mean, they do, you know what I mean? I'm sure you do. So I just thought, let me just do something different. And when I had Soap & Glory, like literally boxes, it's like Christmas every day. Boxes would arrive from Switzerland. Boxes of product derived from Italy. Boxes would arrive from Japan, from all these third-party labs that produce, you know, for the deluxe brands.

1:04:22Because they would want you to use some of their products for Soap & Glory. Because you start with a chassis from one of these places, and then you can custom make it. Sometimes some of the stuff they have is just amazing. Like we all, all the best eyeshadow crayons are from the same lab in Italy. they sell them to all the premium brands it's the same eyeshadow crayon maybe in a different pack but it's the same exact thing so i can buy it right and so they send stuff all the time so my bathroom was always full of stuff of course i sold soap and glory so i wasn't getting the stuff anymore i also and the stuff is like basically free uh but in premium cosmetics The markup, so eyeshadow pencil that might cost three pounds from the lab, finished in its beautiful packaging, is going to sell for$36, right?

1:05:13That's premium cosmetics. So the nice stuff, you're just getting milked if you're a customer. But you need it because by the time you pay your salespeople and you're this and you're that and you're that, right? And then Boots takes a huge amount of the margin. And so the customer pays so much more than they have to. I knew this, right? But there was kind of no way around it. And for skincare, my God, like premium skincare, you know,$100 cream or 100-pound cream is like five, maybe costs eight to make. It's so crazy, isn't it? It's crazy. And when you know, you just shop in a completely different way.

1:05:55You totally do. But the$8 cream, the one that costs$100, is way better than the one that costs$20. Because the one that costs$20, it probably costs$1.50 to make and there's nothing in it. So it's – but you're still just getting raked over the coals. And I remember I knew this, of course. I still had some leftover stuff. I would still actually use some of the soap and glow. Skincare was really good. So I would still buy that. But rarely would I buy a really high performance product because I was like, I just can't do it. And I was actually on my way to Shenzhen to do a Fit Flop collection with the team.

1:06:33Forgot my moisturizer. In China in October, November, December, they often don't heat the hotels or the factories. You wear like a puffer jacket and you're just a bit cold. And that's kind of how it is. And I was going for two weeks to Shenzhen. And then I was going to go to Cosmoproft Asia for a week and in Hong Kong. and I had forgotten my moisturizer. So I forgot my toiletries. Got to Hong Kong, went into a duty-free shop, went over to the, I'm not telling you which aisle, but it was like a brand that I sort of know and trust Asian. Right. You know, good quality. And I had a friend who used to work at it and used to give me free stuff.

1:07:08And so I knew one particular cream was, I liked it. And I went to buy it and it was like$250. And I didn't have cream. I could afford it if I wanted to pay for it. and I was like I can't I'm sorry I can't do it I can't pay$250 for a product that costs five I know that it didn't cost more than$10 and I went without moisturizer for a couple of weeks because I thought I'm not buying that and then I thought why should anybody be buying this what this is total racket yeah this is supposed to be empowering women and what are we doing we're not empowering women we're like picking their pockets this is not all right and then I got invited to So one of the big labs in Italy, which mainly makes cosmetics, they have this open day for all the brands.

1:07:56And it happens around Cosmoprof Bologna, which is like April, I think, May of every year. And they'll invite you if you have a brand. And it's sort of like a buffet. You go, you sit in a room, and then they bring you these boxes of all the beautiful formulas that they've been working on that year. And when you look at the hallway, it's like your brand and then the next brand. You see all the brands. If you walk through Selfridges, it would be the same thing. right laura mercier tom ford blah blah blah blah blah they're just little signs outside each cubicle and then you're in one of them and they're showing everybody the same stuff right and so they were really kind i think they knew like well she finished that one but she's i'm sure she's gonna start another one so let's invite her right so they were kind enough to invite me to this like beauty event and i left with this bag of stuff you know free stuff like the swag it's not the swag it's the samples and then i was in the milan train station walked through a sephora saw basically everything that was in my bag that had been pre-launched by like Marc Jacobs Beauty or like whoever.

1:08:54And I just thought the street value of the cosmetics in this bag over my shoulder is like$5 ,000. And then I thought, how great would it be if I could bring all my friends to the beauty event? They would love it. And then I thought, can you imagine if we could set something up so we can get this stuff stick it in a warehouse and all the women who love and men lots of men actually a beauty pie who love good skincare love great makeup and love could just shop out of the warehouse and not have to worry about paying these crazy you know retailer mark when they're getting the same thing yeah so it's all about getting a bigger piece of the beauty pie so good it's just so like it's genius and it goes back to that like opening up your little black book and you know knowing the people telling you know connecting people and saying this is i know these people they make it but you know yeah what you do in a human level but bringing that to everybody the mainstream yeah it's just like and how that wasn't thought of before is kind of mind-blowing well so we were a little worried because you know if if this lab for instance is selling us the same product that is selling to brand x and brand x does x hundred thousand units of it a year we didn't know if they'd want to manufacture for us if we were going to list this product at a third or a quarter of the price right and so we didn't tell anybody what we were doing until the day before it came out of Vogue.

1:10:37So we had to, because you know, what if they said no? By that point, we had placed purchase orders with them. They had delivered. We were actually a good customer and we had a warehouse full and right. So I literally took that train back out the day before the Vogue article came out and took the owner of the factory and his marketing people and the president and blah, blah, blah, through a presentation about why this was the future. It was 70 pages of a PowerPoint. I don't really do PowerPoint. But I remember thinking, I've got to walk these guys through it, like, spoon by spoon by spoon, right?

1:11:14Because they're going to freak out. They are going to freak out because, you know, Estee Lauder has this product, and they're selling it for$49, and I'm going to sell it for$14. Yeah. Right? and I'm going to show everybody how that 14 is broken down into like us our you know our costs of operating the business yeah and that's totally the antithesis not in beauty in beauty exactly that so I remember presenting it and at the end I was like and you know the final reveal and there was a little shell shock right one woman freak did a little freaking out because she was like oh my god we've charged you less for this product than we charged Bobby Brown because I think we placed a slightly larger order.

1:12:01Right. So she was, you know, having a small panic attack. And the gentleman who owns the place, who's sort of an icon in the industry, said wow, I thought you were just going to come in and show us purple packaging. Because he said, most people come in and they're like, oh, look at this packaging. Isn't it great? And that's their thing, right? And then the other guy, there was one other guy who actually hugged me which was very interesting because he was like French and he got so excited he was like hugging me. I didn't expect that from these very strict you know, but he was excited. He was like, we've never seen anything new for like 40 years but this is actually a new way to distribute cosmetics.

1:12:45This is a completely new concept. So that was a relief. Then I sent my then CEO on the road to do all the other smaller labs that weren't quite as important as that one. with my PowerPoint. I mean, instantly, like, as a consumer and as a marketer's dream over here, you like to feel like you know the industry secrets. Yeah, of course. And you love to feel like, you know, well, that's the same factory that make this. And you like to feel like you're getting a deal. A deal, but also the inside scoop. Of course, of course. And the sort of like, it's genius to bring that to everybody. It's kind of the thing that you know that gets shared in a group chat.

1:13:27And that's where you really see that this landed on social media. Because people love a dupe or they love a kind of... A thing they can't have. A thing they couldn't normally get to. Absolutely that. And there was really no reason except for setting up the infrastructure of it that no one had done it before, you know? and I never I actually didn't when you broke down the name and you're getting a piece of the beauty bigger piece of the beauty pie it's yeah it's just genius and we are we used to say like other brands cut you out we cut you in right I just love it everything about it I love it all makes sense though it's like so obvious when you look at it it's like it's so obvious and before I I mean I could talk to you all day long I could talk to you all day long it could get too long before i move no never i've loved every second of this before i move on to a rocket round i want to ask you building brands and selling certain brands and because you've done it multiple times and you've your story looks different beauty pies still yours as is fit flop you sold bliss and you sold soap and glory the feelings because I sit down with a lot of founders and some people might be starting out their journey you know I've sitting down I've sat down with lots of different people that from Jo Malone who has sold and you know sold her name and yeah that's a tough one when you say your name which is a tough one and built again and you know I love to look at kind of the different stages and different routes that female founders take.

1:15:12For you, you've kind of done a little bit of everything and had a bite at kind of all those cherries, which I love. Where is that difference to you, knowing that it's time to sort of exit a brand and sort of know that you've built something and that now is the ceiling for you and you've taken it to where you think you can, but actually keeping hold of something and staying there. How do you define that And how do you know when the time is right? I'm pretty stoic about difficult times and can generally put up with quite a lot when something seems to either be really repetitive and not necessarily mentally intriguing.

1:16:00So sometimes things just are more of the same. Right. And so for me, if it's not interesting anymore because it's just more of the same and I feel like, wait, I've laid down the foundation here. People can follow it. If there's not that many additional places to go with it, I could tend to get a little bit bored after a while. And then I would think, you know what? I've laid down the blueprint here. People can do this. I don't need to be the one doing this. And you feel a little bit like you're not in this as much as you once were. um yeah it's not even like i'm 100 right i want everything to be great i want it if i'm still even there at all i'm gonna make it great but when i start to think well the skill set that i have is not required here anymore right which is a special skill set it's building it right and refining it and identifying it and making people love it um and the enthusiasm that is a bit contagious that makes other people want and love it and all of that if we're sort of beyond that and it's you know the only way we're gonna grow it right now is to launch another three products and you know anyone can do that i will have taught my team i'm all about like let's build a process and i'll show you how to do this and and then if they can do it themselves you know i could hold on to it but if there's not that much that I can do to help then I can get a little bored because I'd love to see also the people who are in the business grow and learn to do those things and if they can like I don't need to be doing it it's a great mindset to have because lots of people would say but that's my baby and I've bought that and the thought of walking away I don't think I could ever do that so I think it's it's it's a really refreshing mindset to have like I've taught everybody everything I know and this skill set is actually better lent going again yeah in your case yeah which I love yeah I think I'm more like a like zero to 200 million dollar person and then it's like I don't know the corporate stuff and the politics and the all that i'm like oh no way man tapping out it's not my it's not my game i love it honestly it's so everything you've built and continue to build is so so inspiring it really really really is thank you very much i do my best but sometimes sometimes you don't have time to sit and actually because you're so in it and you're in the doing and you're in the building that you don't have time to sit back and say bloody hell like no because it's not a big deal yeah but it is maybe to other people but it's like okay i'm running a camera really well with lighting i don't know how to do that and we're very thankful yes cameras and the light yes we are we should and it's like we should really say this yeah that's a thing i'm not i'm just good at my thing yeah but it's it's like you probably don't think it's a big deal to be running cameras right your thing some of us can live go through life and not have found the thing that you know yeah that and But it's curiosity.

1:19:11You have to fill the well. People get a bit lazy about filling the well. And if you read, right, you read, you watch things, you think about things, you read stuff you don't care about. You constantly click on that one more link, click on one more link, click on one more link, read one more thing, read one more thing. There will always be. You'll find your thing. And I was actually watching something the other day, and it was, I can't remember the guy that was talking, but I was so drawn into him and he really sparked something in me and it actually said, I was talking to him and I was telling my daughter and he was saying people really look for their thing and one thing they ask for advice on, I think he's a life coach, he says, what's my thing, what's my thing, I don't know what it is yet, how do I know I'm trying everything and I'm enjoying this but what is my thing?

1:19:57And actually sometimes you could have identified it so much earlier than you think and actually your thing is the thing that comes easy to you that's hard to most yeah it's your venn diagram right exactly what you're interested in but actually the thing that is easy to you yeah but hard to most as long as it that's as long as you can make a living out of it yes but also it's and it sparks that joy yeah because man when it gets hard if you don't love it it's not worth it yes yeah when you're in the trenches you need to love it there's a lot of trenches i want to do our rocket round now which is essentially quick fire okay um which is quite good at this for most females i've discovered since this podcast but if you can give quick fire answers that's what we're looking for all right um first question is what do you believe are the non-negotiables for launching a business oh don't buy it if you no sorry oh don't sell it if you wouldn't buy it yourself.

1:20:58Love it. There you go. When did you first realize that you truly launched? What was the moment that you thought that this is really happening? Well, there was a time when Calvin Klein came for a facial with me and it was a bliss and someone slipped a note under my door because that's how we identified. We told all the facialists when their next client was there by slipping a note under the door. Right, okay. And so I was, you know, finishing up a facial and someone slipped a note under my door that said, Calvin Klein is waiting for you. That felt like a bit of a launch. That's a huge moment. I was like 26 and Calvin Klein is waiting for me.

1:21:35Incredible. Yeah, that will do it. It was good. It was good. What's the first thing you do when you wake up and the last thing you do before you go to bed? First thing I do, I do a meditation. Actually, four days a week, I slap LED masks all over like hands, neck, face. Love it. And then I put meditation in my ears and I sit up and I do a morning meditation for gratitude and love and all of that kind of stuff, which makes me in a good mood for the rest of the day. So I always feel like everything is possible. And that has become a real habit and really helps so much because you will come across stuff that you're dealing with.

1:22:10And wait, this isn't very quick for. Next. No, no, I love it. Last thing I do in the evening. What is the last thing I do? Well, moisturize, of course. There we go. Yeah. True to form. Really, I take my Swiss anti-aging collagen youth balm cream and slather it all over my face and neck. And that's why your skin looks the way it does, girl. What's a skill you'd love to learn? Ooh, skydiving. Ooh. Yeah. Love that. Yeah. What's one thing that you wish someone had told you before you started your business? Any one of them.

1:22:45You know it best. that that i mean so simple but such brilliant advice yeah go with your gut you know it best gut instinct is actually data that you can't verbalize that's what that's the answer it's not you know it best is that gut instinct is data that you can't yet verbalize so i'm not going to tell you more because this is don't elaborate you that was the best soundbite ever that's that's yeah that is a nugget right there um what would be a dream collab for your brand which one good question i love this um for a flip flop what what what speaks to you the most you know you're we're seeing these like mega brand collabs now and it's either like brand to brand or like yeah i would love to do i'd actually love to put the fit flop eye cushion in flip-flop in Uniqlo.

1:23:43Because Uniqlo is for everybody, right? They have so much good stuff. Everybody's wearing Uniqlo with Laura Piano. You mix and match. Everybody is low and high. But their stuff is so good. Our shoes are so good. I would love to be able to bring what was the lowly flip-flop with our ergonomics, which is the eye cushion, and give it to the entire world. and it would, through Uniqlo, you could do that. Yeah, and I could see the branding as well working. Yeah, love it. And if you could choose one female figure as a mentor, past or present, who would it be? Oh, God. I really like Jacinta Arden. Right.

1:24:29She was the Prime Minister of New Zealand because she was a hard ass with a heart. Ooh. That we love. Yeah. Hard ass with a heart. Yeah, she was a hard ass with a heart. Love it. And every episode, I ask our guests to leave sort of one tangible piece of advice that a listener, perhaps looking to emulate the journey that you've had or has taken something and thought, do you know what, that is exactly what I want to do. How do I do it? And normally I sort of make it specific to if you're a founder of a clothing brand, And like people have left how to sort of cut a pair of trousers or how, or how, however that might look.

1:25:15But throughout your journey, if there's one sort of tangible piece of advice that you could leave to a lady looking to launch, what would that be? Oh, okay. Read everything. Listen to every podcast. Do your own homework. It's all available. All the advice is available. You know, Guy Ross started it, ready? he like kick-started it with how I built this he's interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs your podcast interviews hundreds of entrepreneurs the advice is there you just have to listen to it and absorb it and believe it yeah it's available to you and it's free and you just have to carve the time don't you to well it's prioritizing exactly that yeah there is no free lunch um the road less traveled said it beautifully which is if you take this path guess what you can't do this there's not going to be like binge watching of netflix every night if you actually want to learn stuff you should be listening to podcasts and reading books about business and you can't do both you can't have everything um but you can have what you want if you prioritize it yeah and take those resources there are so many free resources you're so right yeah and lastly I we talk about ladies looking to launch but if we're thinking of ladies who lunch yes how do you spend your lunch hour every day this I love to know this question it's so it's so it can be so niche and so varied but what does a sort of typical lunch hour look like to you where where are you yeah and what are you eating there is no typical lunch hour that we know um yeah because i'll either be in a foreign country or i might be at my home office or i might be in the office in london i might be at fifth i might be at bb pie i generally will have a liquid lunch but not the type that everybody thinks is fun oh damn i was like really yeah generally i mean generally i will like blend up a bunch of supplements into a smoothie and just either go for a walk with my weighted vest and like burn off steam or i'll be at my desk reading stuff well yeah multitasking yeah multitasking i'm not one of those good people who sits down with a knife and fork and choose i know you're supposed to and takes the time i know it's really hard i'm either one or the other like are we okay let's just stop and have lunch or I mean it just depends isn't it it's so varied or we've got to work through this and that's how a day looks yeah lunch is not a concept that I really pay that much attention to um it's it just slows you down it's like I'll kind of go from breakfast to dinner and there's some kind of fuel in the middle of it yeah but it's not an but you multi-tell so you're getting your supplements in you're trying to have the yeah get all the benefits at once yeah it's I always would have I mean I think I probably had like a proper lunch during a weekday five times yeah yeah yeah in my life um if i had to go out with a journalist or if i was meeting a supplier or something like that but then like the afternoon is gone if you actually get lunch yeah yeah it's done like done well you've missed everything else yeah and you're kind of then you have to digest and digestion is like so tiring so it's not um lunch on the go yeah lunch on the go there we go I like it thank you so much I have loved this conversation I really really have it's been so nice to talk to you and when you're so in the doing you don't often have time to sit back and sort of take stock but genuinely it's so so inspiring so thank you for sharing everything with us thank you very much for having me it's been great

1:29:05don't forget to follow us on Apple and Spotify or wherever you get your podcast to make sure that you don't miss out because next time I'm going to be talking to another incredible lady who launched if like me you're a watcher then please follow us on YouTube and don't forget to like and subscribe