728 Lilly Ghalichi: Founder & CEO of Lilly Lashes

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show.

0:44Kara Goldin:So excited to have my next guest. We have Lily Galici, who is the founder and CEO of Lily Lashes, an incredible company focused on all things lashes, including innovative 3D lash designs, luxe materials and styles for every eye shape and occasion. Yes, there are different eye shapes in case you hadn't thought about that. But you may know Lily from her days as a reality TV star. But behind the glam is a powerhouse entrepreneur. She's also an attorney and multi-brand founder who has built a huge global beauty empire. So since launching Lily Lashes in 2013, she's transformed the lash category with products that deliver inclusivity, quality, and drama, earning a loyal celebrity following and a presence in beauty lovers makeup bags worldwide.

1:40Kara Goldin:So I cannot wait to dive into her journey and hear all about scaling from nothing to something and a big something now. So Lily, thank you so much for joining us. I'm super excited about this. Thank you, Cara. That was the warmest welcome ever. I'm so excited to give you all the tea today. I'm no hold back. This episode of the Cara Golden Show is brought to you by Range Rover Sport. You know that old saying, it's not what you say, it's how you say it? Well, I believe it's also how you show up because in business and in life, you have to lead with presence, power, and adaptability. That's exactly what the Range Rover Sport brings to the table.

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3:22Kara Goldin:Build your Range Rover Sport at RangeRoverSport.com slash US slash sport to configure your Range Rover Sport today. Again, that's RangeRover.com slash US slash sport. Trust me, you'll be glad you did. Awesome. So, okay, so let's start at the beginning. What was the earliest spark that you wanted to create Lily Lashes? I mean, you talked a little bit about you were a practicing attorney before, and you always loved lashes and loved, you know, having lots of them. But it's one thing to like it. It's another thing to start a business around it. So can you talk about that? Of course. And that's such a great question.

4:08I'm so happy you asked that because I didn't set out to start a lash line. I didn't wake up one day and say, you know what? I want to start a prestige lash line. No, I was merely being my authentic self. I was living what made me feel beautiful. And for me, I like glam. I love heavy makeup. I love dramatic lashes. And at the time, I was a lawyer and there were no lash options on the market for me. I would spend so much time cutting, gluing, putting lashes together to make the looks that I wanted. There were either barely there human hair lashes or Halloween plastic, glitter, purple, synthetic lashes.

4:52There was no in between. So I created Lily Lashes originally for myself. I wanted a product that I needed for my everyday looks. I wanted to save money because buying three or four pairs of the human hair lashes was expensive. They were$10 each. Then it would take me 20 minutes to be a scientist and put them together. So originally, I sought out to create something for myself. Then they told me that I had to buy 100 units of each. And, you know, people have minimum order quantities. And I thought to myself, what am I going to do with 100 of each of these styles? So I put up a blog post. I had a blog at the time.

5:33And I went to make a sandwich. This is a true story with my sister in my little condo apartment. And when I came back about an hour or two later, my entire Gmail screen, which I think is 50 emails, was full of women that had seen my blog post. And they were like, yes, I want a pair. There was no price. There was no way to buy. It was just, hey, if you want one of these I've created email me. And so that was my aha moment when I was like, wow, being authentically me, even if other people thought it was outrageous, there's so many other women out there that want to be authentic to themselves and have more glamorous lashes too.

6:15And so I looked at my sister and I said, I'm going to start a lash line. And she's like, you should do it. And I said, I'm going to call it Lily lashes. You know, I was young and it was exciting. And that's how I got started.

6:27Kara Goldin:I love it. So when you describe the brand to someone who has never tried it, how do you describe it? So Lily Lashes is a prestige lash line. You are going to get a product that you can trust. It's of the highest quality. It's of the latest innovation. Our lashes are worn and trusted not only by millions of amazing women around the world, but some of the most famous faces in the world. We're talking about Beyonce, where as I'm on stage, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner. So when our brand is trusted and associated with so many faces that depend on us to be the best, anyone can trust that we're going to be the best.

7:15And so that's really what we pride ourselves on. There's so many lash lines out there and there's so many lines that maybe make styles that look exactly like ours since they're so popular. But what you'll get with the real Lily lashes is I think a quality and a product that you can trust that you're not going to get anywhere else. And the analogy I love to give is a car. You know, there is a car and then there's a Ferrari or there is a handbag and then there's a Birkin. And when you're getting that Ferrari or that Birkin, you're getting a quality that you just expect that you can trust, that it's going to be the best in every way.

7:54And that's what Lily Lashes are to the lash.

7:56Kara Goldin:This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey, everyone. Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business. Not the highlight reel. the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice-to-have, it's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time.

8:40Kara Goldin:That's why AT &T Business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. So starting in beauty is risky. You had not done a consumer product before. You had an amazing journey as an attorney. But what gave you the confidence to really launch Lily Lashes? Outside of your sister saying you should go do it, you know, it's one thing for a family member to say, oh, Lily, you can do anything.

9:30Kara Goldin:Then all of a sudden, the rubber hits the road and you have to get your product out there to consumers. But what gave you the confidence to know that, gosh, this might make it? So it's very scary. Let me start with that. Even if you're the most confident person, the most educated person, you're financially backed, whatever it may be, which I was not financially backed. I was not any of those things. It's still scary because you have these thoughts of maybe embarrassment. You have these thoughts of it's going to be too hard. I can't do it. You know, I don't know enough. I'm not experienced enough.

10:05I'm not old enough. I'm very lucky and I'm going to give the credit to my mom. I had a mom that I remember my earliest memory, maybe in second or third grade. Let's say I had a quiz that day. My mom would tell me that I was the smartest person. And if anyone can make a hundred in this test or quiz, you can do it. And my mom, who was a stay-at-home mom, you know, her and my dad were immigrants, struggling, holding, you know, my dad had multiple jobs. He had three jobs a day. So it's not like they had experience that they were so successful, but she just instilled this confidence in me that if anyone could do it, I could.

10:46And so in that moment, I just believed in myself. And I tried to remind myself throughout the journey when people would tell me, this is a stupid idea. you don't know what you're doing this is never gonna work I just tried to remind myself that it was authentic to who I was and it is what I loved and I think when you're that passionate about something it will give you the confidence to keep going where did you sell your product

11:14Kara Goldin:first like what was the first retailer that took in the product so my first retailer was my blog You had to email me and then you had to PayPal me because that was the only way. And I would mail you the lash without a box. So they shipped me 100 units in one box, but they were just on trays. And so that's how the customers would get my lashes. And these girls were so excited, like YouTubers opening it. Then I started my own website. and the first like major retailer because I was just a little girl from Texas like I didn't know what I was doing believe it or not was Sephora and they filled out the contact us form at the bottom of our website and they were like hi it's Sephora we want to carry these lashes and you know I had never done retail outreach I never even thought like oh my little lash brand could be in Sephora.

12:14And then the next thing I know, a month later, Target filled out the contact me. Nordstrom filled out the contact me. I mean, it was wild. We were in retailer after retailer, and every single one of them came from the contact me link at the bottom of our website. That is so wild.

12:33Kara Goldin:So did you, I would imagine you were using Instagram back in 2013, and you were, Were you teaching people how to put them on? Were in addition, what were you doing in order to kind of get the word out and make people want to buy? So there was no video on Instagram at this time. It was just photos. There weren't even stories. And so I would just post my daily glam looks. And that's sort of how I got attention as like one of the first influencers on Instagram is I would do my hair and makeup every day. and I would take a photo, like have my own photo shoot and post it. And I gained a lot of attention that way.

13:15Most of it making fun of me, if you want me to be honest, like why does this girl take pictures of herself every day? There was no selfie concept then, but that's what I did. I did my makeup every day the way that I love to do it. I used the lashes, I took a photo, and then I posted it on Instagram saying which style I was wearing. And what really catapulted me was not that. I was selling lashes, yes. But suddenly, Kylie Jenner saw my posts on Instagram. And all these really famous faces and famous makeup artists started to DM me and be like, hey, because we were always sold out on the website.

13:56You know, my client is Jennifer Lopez. I'm doing, you know, her residency. We need 100 pairs of Hollywood. Or a celebrity would DM me themselves and say, I want Miami and it's sold out. How can I get Miami? And so it was really the celebrities on Instagram that started to wear my lashes, tag my lashes, or we would just repurpose their photo and tag the lashes. That celebrity sort of clientele is what catapulted us.

14:28Kara Goldin:So when you think about those early days, what was the first point when you, I mean, it sounds like you started getting traction from a lot of different areas, right? I always view it as like, you know, a timeline, right? From when you launched in 2013 to now, maybe you've got five or six major places in that timeline where it started spiking. What was that first point when you said, you know, I think I actually have a business here, that it's really happening. It's not just a spike. It's actually a spike that's going to lead to a lot of other things. So when I launched 3D Lashes, and it was the first of the kind, and I just gave it this crazy name, 3D Lashes, you know, but it kind of broke social media.

15:22Massive. All these people were like, what is a 3D lash? Like whether it was positive or negative, like I need a 3D lash or how ridiculous, who wants a 3D lash? We got so much social traction and we sold out in minutes, minutes. And so I couldn't make them fast enough. They would make, you know, a couple hundred and I was paying to airship them because they were coming from Asia, which was so expensive. But as soon as they would have like another 200, I'm like, ship them, ship them. and we already had pre-orders to fulfill. And I mean, we couldn't keep them in stock. It took us a good six months to get enough inventory because the problem was Asia didn't know how to make up.

16:06It was the first of its kind. And so only one little factory I had been working with that developed it with me, they were hiring new people and training them. But every single lash to this day is made by hand. And so it was a very tedious process, but that was my first, like, wow, we are changing the lash world right now. That's amazing.

16:32Kara Goldin:So in terms of your audience, obviously you have tons of celebrities and, you know, regular consumers, but did you focus on the consumer market as compared to lash artists? Or how did you think about those two markets? And how do you think about them today? That's a great question. I honestly, in the beginning, it was very glam girl focused. Because that's who I was. Those were my original styles. They were very dramatic. That's what I needed that didn't exist. And so it was really the other glam girls, which are mostly major, you know, celebrities or artists, and then their makeup artists that we were tailoring to.

17:19We were doing collaborations with a lot of big artists, we were making specific styles that maybe their celebrity client needed. And it wasn't until later in the evolution of the brand that we say, wait a minute, women everywhere want to feel beautiful in our lashes. And maybe they're not as dramatic as me, maybe they don't want to have a full face of makeup. Maybe they're going to a PTO meeting. Maybe they're going to a board meeting or maybe they're just a more natural girl that likes a little bit of lip gloss, a little bit of blush, but she still wants her lash style. So I would say in the early years of the brand, our focus was really celebrities and celebrity makeup artists.

17:59But it evolved to what it is today, which is our focus is the everyday woman across the world because that's who makes our brand great, right? There's only so many celebrities. There's only so many makeup artists, but there's, what, three billion women in the world? And so that's who we focus on and speak to now, trying to make a style for every ethnicity, every eye shape, every occasion. Definitely.

18:28Kara Goldin:So you were not only an attorney, but you also were part of a reality TV show. How do you think that that's helped you to build the brand? Or maybe it's actually hurt in some ways where you've had to explain to people that you're not just a celebrity or reality TV star, you actually have a business and multiple businesses. And you've done a lot of incredible things. But I'd love to hear sort of your, was it a good thing that you did it? Was it, were you sort of like, how do you think? You know, I go back and Matt, myself, I'm going to throw out there that it was a good thing because undeniably, it gave me visibility.

19:14Being on Bravo gives you a platform. It gives you visibility to an audience that but for me being on that show would have never knew that I existed. And I was authentically myself on that show too, which was this over the top glamazon. So I think the following I gained from that show on social media were women or beauty boys that loved me for my glam, for my hair, for my makeup. And so when I released Lily Lashes, they were also my customers. It's the same sector of people. So I'm going to throw out there that it helped me. But the reason that I quit the show, you know, after only one season and one day of the second season is I also saw that it was kind of hurting my journey as an entrepreneur in the sense that it's very emotionally tolling.

20:07It's very time consuming. I mean, you're signing up for entertainment. You are being paid to be an entertainer and classy isn't entertaining. You know, business isn't entertaining. Professional isn't entertaining. They want the drama. And so I realize that I can either stay in this drama-filled world of entertainment, or if this is truly my passion, I need to be authentic to myself and quit and focus on being a professional.

20:38Kara Goldin:Yeah, definitely. So scaling from niche to global takes a ton of strategy, and you have four brands. Is that correct? I do. I do. Lily Lashes is my first baby. But once you get the formula down, I tell young people this all the time when I speak, you just have to learn the formula. And you're going to fail a lot. I've done a lot of things that didn't work out. Lily Lashes actually wasn't my first brand. I had a swimsuit line, which it was amazing. But I learned a lot from that about what didn't work in consumer goods. And once you figure out the recipe, it's very easy to replicate in your other areas of passion.

21:22you know, whether it's fashion or skincare. And so I do have other brands. I have a hairline. It's supplements, you know, gummies, hair vitamins, hair care, shampoos, conditioners, dry shampoos. I have a skincare line for body, which I developed when I was pregnant. So it's like stretch mark creams, body butters. And so all my brands, whatever they may be, I always stay true to that formula of it being a product that's authentic to something I need and I can't find. And so that's why I just keep rolling them out. I love it.

22:02Kara Goldin:And so how do you think that your story and the fact that it started with you trying to solve a problem for yourself has really helped to really grow the brand the way, grow the brands, I should say, the way that it has. Because I'm such a big believer in starting with a problem, right? Starting with a need. It's like one thing for people to say, I want to go be an entrepreneur. But if you don't have the vision to see the problem in front of you and really the solve for it, then I think it's just, it's probably not going to work, right? Because if you can't speak to it authentically, I think the consumer is way too smart.

22:48Kara Goldin:I mean, gone are the days where you can just hire a celebrity, pay them millions of dollars to come and represent your brand if it doesn't actually fit within their lifestyle. And I think that the founder stories are so much more powerful when you are solving a problem, you're sharing the story with them, as you've done with Lashes and your other brands, but then it resonates with people, right? And I think they're like, oh, why didn't I do that, right? So can you talk about that, like what the power of the founder story is? That is such a wonderful question because I think that power is new to maybe the last 10 to 15 years.

23:34You know, brands used to be founded or owned or ran by, we didn't know. We just saw the celebrity that endorsed it. We related to that celebrity and that was it. But social media has really connected the world and it provides so much information. So a brand now, we know everything about it. We know who the founder is. We know why they started the brand. And I don't believe my lash line would be as successful as it is today if, for example, it were founded by a man that didn't wear makeup. How can he authentically have spread the word and shown the world and had the passion to create these styles that I needed for myself?

24:17He couldn't have. It just isn't possible. If you truly have a need for something and you create it and you use it to fulfill your need every single day and you love it and you need it, then that's what people are going to relate to. They're going to see that authenticity. And you're not unique. You're not one of one. I always say that. I mean, we are unique in so many ways, but your problems are not unique when I say you're not. So whatever your problem may be, there's millions of other people out there that have the same problem. So if you can create a product to solve your problem, whether it's your, you know, dry skin, or you want dramatic lashes, then people are going to relate to that.

25:08And when you share that story across social media, especially if you have a platform, like I was so lucky to have, millions of people are going to relate to that. And that's very authentic. And I think that's what makes brands succeed. And all the brands that jump on the bandwagon, like, Oh, wow, look at this lash line. It's doing so great. We need to start a lash line. And it's just a board deciding this and saying, Okay, well, it looks like their best sellers based on the back end of Amazon are these four styles. So let's copy those four styles. That brand may have like a one hit wonder when they copy your styles, but they're not going to succeed in the long run because they don't have the passion to evolve.

25:52You know, Lily Lashes just made the world's first self-adhesive lashes. No glue, no magnets. You peel them off and you stick them on in seconds. Well, why did we create that? Because I'm a mom now and I don't have time anymore. I used to get ready for two hours every morning. I have 10 minutes if I'm lucky. Taking a shower is like a win for the day. So I needed a better solution. I needed an alternative because I still wanted to get lashes on. I just didn't have time to glue them anymore. And so our brand keeps evolving because we have behind it a founder that is a real user and that is passionate about creating new products as I evolve in life that need to evolve with me.

26:41And I think that that's what's missing from brands that don't have a good founder story.