412 - Marketing Secrets from a VIRAL Beauty Brand | Laney Crowell

0:00A lot of women in my audience have dreams and aspirations of starting their own business, but they feel overwhelmed and afraid because they don't want to fail. So for anyone watching right now if there were Three things or two things or one thing that you've witnessed in your journey and meeting so many other women that keep them stuck From either starting or growing their company. What do you think those would be? Well, I think you have to get very comfortable with failure I mean, I talk to my girls. I have a six-year-old and a four-year-old about this all the time I feel every day many times a day It's about grit.

0:37It's about being so comfortable with that grit I think if you're, but that comes from practice, right? You have to practice failing. I think the other thing is knowing your market. If you know your market really well, it makes it a lot less scary because you know what's happening out there. You know that these are the players, this is my competition, this is the white space. And so it makes it more comfortable to take that leap. At least that's how it felt for me. Yes. So, you know, I think self-doubt and imposter syndrome are related here. And those things, I cannot tell you how often I hear about that on social and emails from folks in my community.

1:18Have you faced that in your journey? I certainly did. And how do you deal with it? Does it still come up now at each stage of your growth? I mean, of course. I think for me, the light bulb went off when I realized that men don't feel that way. Tell me more. And you look around yourself and you realize just how there are so many, there's a meme that went out that was like a light bulb for me that was like, feel as confident as a not very smart white man. And I was like, oh, that's the vibe. Like they are so comfortable and they are so sure that they deserve it. Yeah. There's no question in their mind.

2:05I have this other like very strange, but thing that works for me. I think about all of the boxes that come to my house and how I am so sure that I will always have boxes coming to my house, Amazon, online orders, influencer boxes, that I have no fear around there being a lack of things coming in boxes to my house. I know this sounds so strange. I find what works for you. Whatever that thing is that you have no doubt about, think about that and what that feeling is because that's the feeling of abundance. That's the feeling of confidence and trust, right? Because it all comes down to trust. I think I posted it yesterday and I had so many people messaging where it's like the opposite of anxiety is not calm, it's trust.

2:55When you are so sure that it's going to happen, then you feel confident and sure that You can go and do anything, right? Yeah. And I think my riff on that would be trust that it will all work out. Like even if it doesn't work out immediately or the way that you think it should or your mind or, you know, for me, I'll talk about like my mind or, you know, the personality based Marie or the ego based Marie thinks it should go this particular way. And if that particular way doesn't work out, it's going to work out another way that might even be better or so different that my mind is so small it couldn't have predicted that.

3:35Totally. Right. You think about, well, I think about where I am today. And when I had been dreaming about say, it was nowhere near as big as we are today. So it's like, well, why make sure you're dreaming big enough. Yeah. Right. It's like trust, but trust even that it could be even bigger than you think your biggest dream is. So you and I first started out in the magazine world. And that was something I was like, oh my God. And you were there probably a little bit after I was. I feel I was still there when it, there was no kind of real hint yet that it was going downtown because the internet was still so new and Mademoiselle was still a thing.

4:15And that's where I worked. I loved Mademoiselle. I know. And I was like, it was so proud and I felt so good to be there. But I'm curious to hear from you. what if any mindset shifts that you had to go through or develop to go from being an employee to an entrepreneur? So I'll just share like in my own experience, when I was working for other people, I felt like I kept failing and I took it really hard. I thought that I was a failure because I didn't yet realize I wasn't really built to work for other people, but I hadn't made that connection yet. All I knew was that I would always be so happy.

4:54Like I started working when I was nine babysitting and then working at Carvel. Like I've never stopped. It's been like 40 years of just hitting whatever I can do. And I remember just going into work every day and like having my paycheck be determined by someone and how I spent my time be determined by someone. I was like, I can't do this. I can't do this. Like I felt like I was dying. Trapped. Yes. suffocating, dying a slow death. So for me, I didn't really have to make so much of mindset shifts, but it was like a realization. So I'm just curious what your experience of that journey was like, because you did work for some incredible companies and then you're like, okay, I'm ready to build my own thing.

5:36Well, I was laughing to myself about this the other day because I was thinking about how there must be so many people along the way that look at what I'm doing now. and they're like, huh, didn't see that happening. Like she kind of was a fuck up and she was kind of like, you know, always, I was always in trouble. There were many jobs where it was not my worth, my work ethic was not there. There was times where I just honestly had an attitude. So I look back on that and I'm like, well, what was that? Like, why was I honestly kind of being defiant and, you know, rebelling a little bit. And I think it's because I was always meant to be an entrepreneur.

6:19I think that's where I feel the most comfortable. I feel my mom was in the foreign service. And so we moved every three years growing up and my parents did not have like particularly great, sorry, mom, dad, they did not have particularly great emotional vocabularies. So there wasn't like this, Hey, we're moving to a new country. You're not going to know anyone. We're going to put you in a school where you don't even speak the language. Let's talk about it. No, no. It was like, Hey, this is what's happening. Yeah. And that was also culture back then, right? And so that was really what formed my personality.

6:51And so I am way more comfortable being on my own and leading what I need to do. And so being in a place with bosses was hard for me. Yeah. So it feels like you were always an entrepreneur and similar, even though they were different experiences, is like I definitely, even though I tried to put on my game face and all of my jobs, you know, I was certainly like, I was like, I can't do this. I can't, you know, I was like faking it, you know, and dying a slow death inside. So when did the idea for Say come to you? Like, when was that dream born and how did that manifest? What is the vision? Did you keep hearing voices?

7:30Did you see other entrepreneurs? I'm like, I can do that. I think I can do that. Like, what did that, how'd that unfold for you? Yeah. So I had left Estee Lauder and I'd been there for five years. So I'd been there for a long time, which in, in some ways is not that long in a corporate culture. But for me, given the fact that it was so not a perfect fit was a really long time for me to be there. Like I saw my old boss the other day who I adore and I learned so much from, and she was like, I couldn't believe you made it that long actually, because I was so ready to do and build and I want to work.

8:05I work very quickly. And those are all the antithesis of how that world is. Yeah. So I'd left and I had left with this kind of amorphous idea of beauty being bigger and better. I wanted it to be really, truly serving the consumer because I'm the consumer. So I was sitting there being like, wait, none of this is adding up to me. I'm the consumer. I want products that are good for my skin. I have acne prone skin. I have sensitive skin, but no one's talking about ingredients. No one's talking about the fact that I'm putting makeup on my skin. That's making my acne worse. Like, doesn't that feel weird to you?

8:45I mean, this is a product for us. Shouldn't it be serving us and what our needs and health and everything are, you know, that's what we want. And so that was one aspect of it. I also have been a lifelong environmentalist. I grew up, I was born in Colorado. My parents were outdoorsmen. I'm very passionate about our planet. And no one was talking about that in the industry that we make 129 billion units of plastic are made every year in the beauty industry. so it was this again it was like nebulous at this point it was like all these kind of like touch points that I knew were connected but I didn't know how they were connected um I also didn't get why beauty images didn't make me feel good when I would look at people I'd be like oh well I don't have that skin that doesn't look like me so I I left and this was a around the time of like D2C companies started.

9:52So this was Casper, Allbirds, Glossier. They were, they were coming and there was other beauty founders that I was starting to meet. So I did have expanders that were there again, all these kinds of things moving around. But the aha moment, I had started a blog to have a conversation about this. The aha moment that happened on Prince street was I was going out to dinner and I went to go look for some makeup to put on. And I went into the beauty closet and it was like kind of like one of these credentials. It was under a TV and I opened the cabinet doors and every single bin was overflowing except for the makeup bin.

10:30And it was so visual. Like I can still see my, the carpet as I was walking across the carpet to open it. Like when you were saying like, was it a moment? It was a moment. I, in that moment, it was like I just saw the whole market. I saw very visually what the white space was. And so Instagram stories had just launched and I went to dinner. After dinner, I was walking home through Washington Square Park and I started just typing on my phone and asking my community on Instagram questions of like, well, what would you create if you could create something? What does work? What brands are you buying?

11:07Like just peppering them with all these questions. And it was in that conversation that people said, you should start something and here's what it should be. And that's where the name of the brand comes from. It's from that conversation of them saying, you should make this and here's what it should be. So that's why we say, you say it, we create it. I love it. What was the hardest part for you of starting Say? So, and during that conversation that I was walking through Washington Square Park, I was pregnant. And so I was with my first daughter, Isabella, and I really didn't know what was going to come with that.

11:43I didn't know what it meant to have a baby. I didn't know what it meant to be a mom. So I was like, I'm not going to start anything until I have Isabella and kind of it all settles. I found my journal the other day and I have an entry that says today is my due date Isabella's doesn't I didn't know her name at that point but I was like baby doesn't seem to be coming I'd wound down all my consulting clients so I had nothing to do and so I said I think I'm going to start a business plan for that idea that I had and so it was on her due date that I started typing it all out of like, this is what it would look like.

12:27This is like actually putting pen to paper. Yeah. And then it wasn't until three months after that, because I, I had Isabella, it rocked my world. I had kind of an identity crisis in that moment because I am so strong in who I am and I am super independent. And all of a sudden you have a baby who needs you. And And so it took me a minute. And then it was just pedal to the metal. And I just started like putting the pieces together. And I know your question was, what was the hardest part? It was all hard. Yeah. It was all hard. I want to highlight something because my audience know this. I talk to you guys about this all the time.

13:10Writing it down is key to making it real. You know, there's great studies about this. I talk about this and everything is figureoutable, that every single human being is 42 % more likely to achieve their goals if they simply write them down. And I always think that there's something magical in that. Like we have, all of us, we have these incredible notions of possibilities and whether it's for a business or for a product line or for some change that we want to make in our lives, you know, it is. It can be like these beautiful possibilities that are a little nebulous and a little maybe disconnected and we're not sure, but there is magic when we start writing things.

13:45I love that. I totally agree. It's like there is this speeding up, this quickening, this reality. Like we were just talking, you know, you and I are both out East and we didn't get to hang out. It was like, we haven't been in our house in a while because it's a renovation. Like we would all be idiots to start a renovation, just running around with a sledgehammer. Without a plan, without a plan, without a blueprint, without actually writing down some details about what we want for me, in my case, my dream house to look like. And we weren't building it from scratch. We were taking something that already existed, like most of us do, our lives.

14:21Or if you've been in business for a while, you have a business and it's okay to renovate it. And part of that is writing down. So I just wanted to highlight that because I have to say, just as an aside, and we'll go back to questions. Every freaking time I walk into a Sephora, every time I see Say, Like your brand fills my heart with so much joy. I just, you are such a magical, and I'm like, I know her. She's amazing. And I also want to just highlight and acknowledge and appreciate and love on you for, I think it's a really special gift. There's a speed. You said you work really fast. And like when you were at Estee Lauder that they were like, you know, things do not happen fast here.

15:00It's very, very slow. But that's a super magical gift. When was the year that you started, say? Speed is a super magical gift. We launched at the end of 2019. End of 2019. So let me ask you this. When you wrote down in your journal, you're like, hey, this is the day. Did you have Say Yet as the name? No. No. I didn't. I more just had all of those ideas. Yes. I put them all onto paper. I made a list, speaking of writing down, which I still have, of all of the people that I had heard them mention the word fundraising because I had never raised money before. I didn't even know what a convertible note was.

15:38I didn't know what a safe was. I didn't know how to raise money. I knew nothing. Yeah, which most of our audience doesn't know those words either. I knew zero. And so first of all, I would start making the business plan for the company. But the hardest part was learning an entirely new skill, which is fundraising. Yes. And so I wrote down on a list like all the people that I knew and who I'd heard of. The first was Unilever because I'd heard their, at the time, CEOs speak about their values, which were very aligned with my values and with Say's values. The next was Gwyneth Paltrow because I had been at a party once and someone I had heard said that they knew her.

16:19And I think I remembered that person. I mean, this was like a distant list of people. Like it was not like, oh. These are my friends. These were just like anyone that your mind. I didn't have founder friends. Yes. You had no founder friends. I didn't have founder friends. And so that was from scratch. And that, I always say, was the hardest. Even though it was all hard, I always say that was the hardest part for me because I came from big beauty. I wanted this to be a big brand. I am very competitive in the sense that when I do something, I want to be number one. And so I knew I needed to raise money.

16:57This was not like a bootstrappy kind of thing. Yeah. And so I started that list and I wrote down, I think, 75 people and I kept adding to that. So every time I'd meet with someone, which by the way, I think it's important to note, it took me a lot of time to get the guts up to do this. I would meet with someone and I would say, could you please introduce me to someone you think would be a good fit? That was very hard for me to do. And to be a good fit, that would be a good fit for? To raise money from. To raise money from. Okay. So a possible investor. Yes. Great. Like, you know, it was all no's.

17:33It was all no's. No, no, no, no, no. I was a first time founder. I was trying to raise money mainly from men who didn't really understand the importance of clean makeup. Yep. So I got a lot of no's. And then I had a woman, her name is Christina White. and I had been introduced to her through Emily Weiss who started Glossier and it was just kind of a random connection that Emily thought would be interesting for me and she ended up really helping me get that confidence of saying I need you know thank you for your time can you now introduce me to someone else that you think would be a good fit and so then I just kept adding to that list and adding, adding, adding.

18:18And then, you know, my mantra was like, you just have to keep going until you get there. There is no option of stopping. That's awesome. It's so good. So you've shared, it's not personal, it's business is BS, that it's all personal. Say more, please. The creative director at Estee Lauder once said this to me, because I remember, you know, working on some designs with him and everyone was criticizing it and it was hard for me. And he said, you know, everyone says, Oh, it's just business. He's like, that's not true. He's like, this is your creative work. Of course it hurts. Yeah. And so I just, I don't like advice like that where it's like, Oh, it's, it's not personal because I'm, I'm a sensitive being.

19:10I think a lot of people are sensitive. And I, and I think being sensitive is my superpower. Agreed. I, I'm not going to say names, but I had someone who is, is quite well known try and poach some team members for me and I called them out on it. And the response was, Oh, it's just business. Yeah. I was like, Oh hell no. Like if you want to see Jersey Marie come out, you know what I mean? And shake the shit out of somebody. He's like, that's one way to do it is to come try and poach some people. So I think you and I are aligned on that. And, you know, sure, there is a way to say, hey, this is going to be a business discussion, or I'd like to talk about this.

19:47And this might be sensitive or whatever. But it's like, don't be a f***ing asshole and think that you're not going to run into people or that it's not going to hurt or they're not going to have an emotional reaction to, yeah, it's just business. It's like, oh, hell no, it's not. So I just wanted to hear your take on it because I think it's really important to get. And I think it's important. And I know it's been for me to make alliances with people that I want to collab with who have that same philosophy, who know that we're human and we have emotions and things hurt so that if there's a disappointment coming or we're going to take a left turn, there's a way to handle that.

20:22So you preserve someone's dignity and their integrity and you take care of their heart while perhaps sharing some challenging information. Well, because there's power in being honest, right? Yes. Because by saying, oh, it's just business, you're just not being honest. You're just saying like, I don't care. But really what you're saying is I don't care that it hurts your feelings. That's right. I don't care that that is rude or that I'm doing something unethical. Yes. And that's one thing that I always go back to is integrity. Yes. Yes. So I also love you have the same way of doing business. And I've seen that you've written about like that you called out gossiping on your team and done a little.

21:01Because we do, we've done that in our team because we're human, right? We're all humans. And you get any group of humans together. We get our families together. You know, you get a group of friends together. And it's just part of our nature that perhaps we can slip into a little politicking, gossiping, this, that, or the other. I'm curious if there's - It wasn't just gossiping. It was just any bad behavior. It was just like, let's be better. Yes. And so we actually talk about that at Say We Have the Say Way and it's a code of conduct. that we created together. And every offsite, we remind ourselves of it.

21:36And so we review it and it's like, here's who we want to be. We all want to be better. We want to go to work someplace that we look forward to going to work to every day. We want to enjoy being with our teammates. Yes. And I think we achieve it. I think we really do. Yes. But you have to work for that. That's right. And it's a work in progress because I think the world changes, humans change, For us, we've always had a distributed company, so I've always run a virtual team. My vision, when I started my business like 23 years ago, my image in my mind was never of having actually a physical location.

22:13So we're here now at our studio where we do production, which I was sharing about, but 99.9 % of the time, we're not together in person. And so I just wanted to acknowledge and appreciate you for that because I feel like it's so important. It's such a great leadership quality. And to be able to create it together. so that your team doesn't feel like it's like top down, like this is what Lainey wants. It's like, no, this is what we all want. It's what we all want. And I think I've had to apologize before. Yes. I've made mistakes. Oh my God. And you can just apologize for it. Yeah. So let's talk marketing and brand building.

22:46So I think that your new product drops are so good. I always feel like I feel your heart in them. They're always very personal and creative. How involved are you in creating those campaigns, any lessons that you've learned about things that work or don't work just from an ROI perspective or anything you want to share on that? Because I think it's fascinating. So the thing that I'm best at is marketing, which is storytelling. To me, they are the same thing. If you look at my career, it's always been storytelling. When I was at magazines, it was storytelling. When I went to digital, it was storytelling.

23:20As a blogger, it was storytelling. It's always been storytelling. To me, that is where power comes from. That's where desire comes from. And for me, brand is a marriage of desire and purpose. And so when we are marketing a new launch, we ask ourselves, what would make us want to buy this? What would make me go to a store and spend my money that I worked for to get that product? It has to be compelling, right? You have to have a real reason for being. And so we, you know, we, we try so many different things. We are not scared to fail. We fail hopefully fast and hopefully cheaply. Um, but we're not scared to fail and we try all sorts of different things.

24:08And, um, we have some things oftentimes it's the, one of the random ideas that we had, we have a call every Monday, it's an hour and a half and it's a creative marketing call and there's no agenda. It is us getting on a Zoom and just brainstorming and thinking and saying, oh, I saw this. I thought this was really interesting across all industries. We try not to look at beauty too much because then it just becomes an echo chamber. So really looking outside of beauty and saying, this was really compelling. This is what made me double click. That's really the purpose of that call. What made you double click?

24:42What made you buy something? What made you watch a full video? Okay. Let's talk more about that. Oh, that's so interesting. What if we did something like that? We just did something that I don't know. I'd have to ask my team how much it costs, but let's say a couple hundred dollars. We had these flyers printed and the language on the flyer was inspired by, I think a real life, like smear campaign on someone that had like ghosted, like someone had gone on a date and the guy had ghosted her. And so they plastered all over the city. Like this guy ruined my life and put his phone number on it. And it was so funny.

25:17And we did that for one of our launches. We said like this product ruined my life. And we put a phone number with me leaving, I had a message on there about talking about the launch. Yes. Because it's a couple hundred dollars. Of course it like took some of our time, which is also money, but like, you know, we put them all over the city and the tick tock of it going up on a light post got millions of views. And so like that to me is where marketing genius lies. Yes. Is in like the random ideas that come from desire that then you execute in a cost-effective smart way because we're still a very lean team.

25:59Yes. Lean. And so one of my favorite phrases, I live my life by phrases because with an ADHD brain and ideas for days, you know, and a real propensity to like have a basically an appetite bigger than my stomach for everything. Simplify to Amplify is something that keeps not only me sane, but keeps kind of the spaciousness that I need in my life to be joyful and creative. And I love that. And then something that we've done on the team too, like I'm very, very inspired. We were talking about this on when I saw you guys for your husband's birthday party, like Like dance, movement, and music, my life.