#251 - Victoria Eisner, Glamsquad - Building The Biggest Beauty Services Marketplace

What's up, Dtcpod? Today we're joined by Victoria Eisner, who is the co founder of Glam Squad. So, for those of you don't know, glam Squad is a really popular beauty services platform that Victoria had started. So, Victoria, why don't you kick us off, tell us a little bit about Glam Squad, what the company was about, and a little bit background about yourself.

Sure. So, Glam Squad is an on demand beauty delivery business. That means we come to your home, your hotel room, wherever you are, to do hair, makeup, and nails. And it's incredibly high quality, convenient service for an affordable price point in the comfort of your own home. You can feel the same way that a celebrity gets ready. You can get ready just like that, too, but for a much better price point. And then, I don't know.

Cool, basically. No. The basic concept is, like, you're at your home and you want to get your hair makeup done. And rather than having to go to a salon, you can order a service and one of your beauty professionals will come to the home, be able to do you up in the home, and then you can kind of go about your evening. And you guys are essentially the marketplace between the service providers and the customers. Is that an accurate representation?

Yeah, that's right. So I thought of the company, it was New Year's Eve, I was getting ready for a party and I was like, Ubering my car, seamlessing my dinner, and I was literally in the shower thinking, my hair is a frizzy mess. I hate doing my hair. It's so annoying. And I wish I could get an appointment at a blowout salon. I actually couldn't get an appointment and I thought, I'm getting everything else delivered to me. Why can't I get this delivered to me? This is so important. I need the help with my hair.

And I thought, for sure this has to exist. So I Googled it and of course it didn't. And I just started building it right then and there. Basically, I wrote the business plan the next day, like in bed, kind of hungover from the party and it was really off to the races. It ended up being quite a fortuitous business model because it's a dual sided marketplace of a large category of people beauty professionals who don't necessarily or didn't necessarily get paid on a very regular schedule or have very predictable workflow so we could utilize their time when they maybe weren't getting the big gigs and the big money and provide them with interim income to make their lives a better place. And then also it increased flexibility in their schedules. Perhaps these stylists didn't enjoy having they didn't enjoy having what we like to call salon drama or what everybody else knows as office politics. And it ended up working out quite well.

And people really enjoy our stylists, really enjoy being their own boss. It's a very selective process to get on the Glam squad team. So we really put quality at the forefront of the brand.

Yeah, I think what you're talking about, about having the inspiration to start the business and being like, oh my God, how doesn't this exist? Let's go for it. I think that is something that most people could probably resonate with because at the surface level, it makes sense, right? You're like, okay, I want to be able to get services done in my home. That's going to be an easier experience than having to go to the salon. In some cases, if there isn't, some people might be all about going to the salon, but others might just want to get their services done in the home. So I think it seems like a very, in hindsight, like an obvious sort of need that the market would kind of be able to support. But I think in any marketplace, the hard part isn't the idea of like, oh, this should exist. The hard part is actually building that marketplace. And in a lot of instances, marketplaces of this sort, these two sided ones, tend to be supply driven.

So what was the motion like in the beginning? Did you have one stylist or how did you start to build the supply side of this marketplace out at the earliest of days?

So that's pretty much one of the first things we did, and I was kind of in charge of it. So we hired a head of hair from Frederick Fakai, but once a week, we basically there wasn't any service to do this, but we didn't airbnb the salon. But we negotiated with a salon owner to utilize his salon, like when he had it closed. So I think every Monday we would go and we had to get a bunch of hair models and get a bunch of stylists who wanted to work for our brand. And we weren't ready to necessarily be public with it yet, so we had a fake name and we posted Craigslist ad. And it was so crazy to organize all of these hair models because you could only get your hair blown out so many times. And then we would audition the stylists and have them come back, and then we would add a layer of training onto them. It was about I think we started off with maybe ten stylists, but you're completely correct that it's totally supply driven because the stylist would get upset if there wasn't enough work for them.

And obviously, you're just starting out as a business. You're fledgling. You don't really have a whole lot of customers at the beginning, or you don't have the flow at the beginning. So we were basically like, oh, my God, they're leaving. If we don't give them enough work, we better get customers now to give them work, otherwise all our hard work is just totally gone. So a lot of energy went to keeping the stylists happy, and then a lot of energy went to keeping the customers happy. And to keep both people happy was quite challenging and a lot of work.

No, I think that's something that's really important, and it's something that we went through, too. So my business was seated, and we were a marketplace between customers and restaurants, right? And I remember the first restaurants that we had on board, we were like, okay, great. Now we've got these restaurants, right? And now we have to put butts in their seats. And so I remember there would be times where we would be literally paying our own team to go out, like, hey, dinner is on us. Just go out and eat at these restaurants to keep them happy, make sure they know they're getting business. And I think this is probably one of the hardest parts about building a marketplace in the early days, is you convince the supply side that they should be on your platform. You're going to help give them more business. And then you've built this relationship, you built all this excitement, but then you also have to manage the demand, because in the earliest of stages, it's not like you have like, crazy customer demand because you're a brand new service, right? So you need to be able to manage it and make sure that the people who took a bet on you on the supply side in the early days, you're sending them enough business to keep things moving and start that flywheel turning, where then customers start to refer other customers organically.

You can layer in some paid growth and then all of a sudden one day you look up and you're like, okay, this marketplace is kind of actually running itself, right? So I guess the question that I would have in terms of the early stage sort of things is where were you getting your customers? You said you had to go out and you're like, we have these ten stylists on and we've trained up and they're looking for work. So where did you go to customers? Was this cold traffic? Was it like people you knew? Where'd you get them?

It was a little bit of both. Basically it was friends of friends. So we built up this stockpile of stylists and they all started getting very angry, like, so when are we working? And we realized we had to put up or shut up. So I sent an email to 100 friends and Friends of Friends, basically people who I knew had disposable income, who were like high maintenance women, who definitely were beauty girls and probably already got blowouts anyways, who lived in Manhattan. And that's what I looked towards. It was friends and friends of friends. And I built this business for people like me. I knew that if I had this problem that I couldn't coordinate a salon visit.

And it was inconvenient for me. I don't have kids or anything like that. It could have been very easy. But I just always thought getting ready is completely a full time job, especially when you're going from place to place and event to event, especially in big cities. So there were plenty of other people like me. And it still rings true. People always want to look good, and when they look good, they feel good and they get more things done.

Yeah. And I think that when you're thinking about a marketplace, the signal that you were looking for was the fact that you're like, there are people who are already getting blowouts and getting their hair done and services done like this. So the stretch that you're making, it's like you're not teaching them a new behavior or something. And that was something even for us at Seeded in the early days when it was hard to necessarily get the customer demand. We're like, wait a minute, people already go to restaurants. We're not reinventing a new habit for them. It's just slightly different in terms of the booking flow and maybe the process in the restaurant. But because we knew that there was existing demand for those services, it made it easier to be able to drum up the demand side of the marketplace.

Next question I had is just in terms of background, obviously you had the idea and you're like, okay, here's the business plan, I'm going to go start this thing. But what was your background before starting Glam Squad that gave you conviction to know that you'd be able to pull something like this off? And who were some of the first people who'd you start the business with?

So nothing really. I went to law school. I worked for Martha Stewart for a period of time. And I just knew that building a brand was really important. And if I could build I looked up to her and what she had built, and so I thought, if I can build a brand umbrella, you can really put a lot of different things under this umbrella, and people look to the brand as something cool or something that they want. They know that the brand is like an arbiter of taste. And then I didn't really have any kind of beauty background. I don't know if I said this, but I went to law school, I hadn't really not like a business background.

I was working as a holistic nutritionist at the time. I had honestly was a freelancer myself. I realized that it is incredibly difficult for people who are freelancers to not only do the job that they're actually good at or that they actually want to be doing, but also to do the administrative tasks, the operational tasks, getting clients the business development, keeping the flywheel of clients, moving all of that accounting, taxes, whatever it is. All of these other things that are really heavily involved in a business are extremely difficult. And I thought, you know what, I'm really smart and this is really hard for me to do. I can't believe that there are so many other such a large class of professionals doing this other thing that helps people transform in a very quick order, quick, short order. And they must have problems doing it too. This can't be like just a crazy thought of mine.

Keep going.

Oh, I forgot where I was going.

No worries. And then how do you think about funding in the early days? Right? Obviously you're going to have customers who are paying for services that you'll be able to pay out to the stylist. But what was it like in terms of setting the market price for these services? Was it the same thing that they normally did? Was this subsidized marketplace at all? Did you guys raise any funding early on? What did that part of the business look like early on?

So we started getting revenue in month three because we built up this team of stylists and they wanted to work. So we started deploying them to customers and also we found out what our pricing was through that process. So initially we sent it out for free and that was like week one, it was free. We did it on a Google Sheet. It was horrible. It wasn't horrible. The service was great. I got it done the first time, and I was like, this is amazing, because after you shower, I like to chill.

I don't like to have to go somewhere. And then you can leave the house, and you're all perfectly put together, as opposed to coming back from a salon appointment. You may sweat on the subway or just be exposed to the elements. You just leave and you're perfect. It's amazing. Sorry, I totally lost track of the question. You got quiet.

Oh, sorry about that. Just in terms of thinking about how you got to pricing and revenue and how you worked that off in the.

Early days, I can go for that. So the first week was completely free the second week, and some people booked and some people didn't. Of this list of 100, the second week, we're like, let's charge. And we did the same again, the Google Sheet. And at this point, we realized maybe we need a system or something. So we charged $25. Again, some people booked, some people didn't. And then we asked all the people who didn't book why they didn't book.

Like, we're like, this is a free blowout. You got to blow out anyways. What's wrong? What's wrong with you? Like, you're crazy. All the people who had booked the first week were like, for free? We're like, Why isn't it still free? We're like, we're a business. We have to make money. And then the people who were reluctant to book at $25, and then we had new people come into the fold, and they were recommended by our original class. We had new people come into the $25 week. A lot of people also didn't book.

We started asking, Why aren't you booking? They're like it's too cheap. It sounds like it's going to be disgusting or horrible. So we knew kind of then I was always thinking, let's just mark it up a little bit above the brick and mortar price. And that's what we ended up doing at the time. Like, a dry bar blowout was 35 or $40, and we charged 50. And so we had, like, $150 week, and that's where it stayed for quite a while. I think now it's at 60. It's really the same service that I dreamed up in the shower.

So it's the same thing, the same ethos of the business. It still exists, but that's where we landed on pricing. It's just a little bit more expensive than the salons. But we also added a 20% tip on top of the fee that automatically went to the Stylist. So the Stylist got that 20% consistently. And at this time, people if you worked in a salon, you might not be getting that consistent level of tips. People might be, I don't know, European or whatever, or just bad tippers or whatever. And that was really their livelihood.

And at that time, also a typical dry bar employee was making like $9 an hour and living on those tips. So that obviously is nothing and it's sad that is considered even a decent wage. So we definitely worked harder to make a better wage for our stylists and give them a really nice piece of the pie. And that was really exciting because it was really creating jobs that were like, you could make a decent income, you could have the freedom that you wanted to, you could do what you loved. And perhaps you didn't have the most amazing business development skills. Perhaps you weren't the most outgoing stylists in town, but maybe your technical skills were incredible and you're really sweet, but maybe you're just not that outgoing. Typically the most successful, typically successful stylists are ones who have really amazing business development skills. Their technical skills are good, but they don't have to be that great.

They're just better at building their book of business.

And another thing that I think is really cool about marketplaces early on is that what you're essentially doing is you're a matchmaker between a supply side and a demand side. And in the early days, like you're saying you could run this thing off almost like a Google sheet or an email list or something like this, where you've got your core group of stylists and then you have a new group of customers who are starting to come in. But if you'll be able to start to see that, okay, there is a marketplace here and there are bookings happening and this is what people want, and then you can actually go and start to productize that match between the supply and demand.

Right?

So early on, what did productizing this in the early days look like? What kind of website did you build? Did you have to build a payment system? Did you have to build something that was like software for the stylists that you had on in terms of building out components of your digital system? What did that look like?

So obviously we did that test run for the pricing and then the stylists were bringing back cash and we were just thinking, this is not what we want to do. This is so stupid. We need a system. We absolutely need a system. So we looked around for salon booking software, so we used something off the shelf, but we rigged it because we needed something that was a bit more customized for us. And then we basically had our app being so first we had like it's like what I like to call like dental floss and tape. When you're doing proof of concept stuff, you can't really invest that heavily into software. And at that time, everything was very code heavy and fancy and took forever and was super duper expensive.

So we didn't want to shell out a big chunk of change for software. So what we did was we kind of scissor and taped it together from an existing system originally when we had a website. And we always knew we wanted the app, so we were building the app simultaneously. But that was kind of like on a payment system or whatever. We were developing it a little bit. It took a little while to develop it. And then in our app, we really used I mean, we said it was proprietary technology, but really the back end system was an off the shelf thing, and we used a bunch of APIs to make it our own. And then now we have a more bespoke system, and it's fancier, and we have like a beauty professionals app.

But the truth of the matter is, I think now, if you're looking to build something, there are so many easy ways around it, or ways you can plug things in or bridge all the gaps, and you don't have to invest that heavily into now. I just think it's so much easier before even getting a scheduling software what did not exist, and mobile payments and stuff like that also did not exist. It was revolutionary that we were taking credit cards for tips for stylists. That was a big deal. And also the stylists really pushed back on that because they were like, what are you talking about? I want my cash. I think it's kind of like pushing a rock uphill, but you find out what you need and you kind of work around it and then build it to your specifications.

Yeah, and just knowing that in the early days, the most important part isn't necessarily the technology. It's more just making sure that on both sides of your marketplace, like, the service that you're presenting checks out. Because I think where a lot of marketplaces go wrong is they'll try to make a big bet, and even at scale, if they're, like, financing the marketplace to grow it and grow it and grow it, they may not have unit economics that actually check out the right way by the time they reach scale. Right. So thinking about the most important thing before you start thinking about productizing, before building software and building all these crazy systems, is like, fundamentally, do I have a supply side where if this marketplace is created, they're going to be happy? Because they're obviously going to be the most important and a demand side whose price and service is going to be competitive. I think for you guys, it makes a lot of sense because, like you're saying these people could, on the supply side, they could be getting extra work. They're making a comparable rate, if not more, to what they're making in the salon as is. And it's kind of like a win win sort of marketplace know, in the case of Uber or something.

And why they've run into so many problems is they're like, okay to run this business. Sure, we can finance and subsidize all these rides all the way up. People feel like it's really cheap, but when rubber meets the road and you have to pay out the drivers, you have to pay the services to run the company and everything else, it's like, okay, what is the real market price of that ride? Is it the same as a taxi? Is it more? Is it less? These are the kind of questions that if you can solve early on, that's just going to add fuel to the fire of the marketplace. So moving on from there, one thing I wanted to talk about was and this is something that you kind of alluded to earlier is, like, how important it is to make sure that your stylists are happy, right? So as you start to scale beyond ten stylists, what does stylist success look like for you? How are you making sure that you're managing all those relationships as you scale so that they're happy and that they stay with you and want to keep providing services with you guys on the platform?

So I think that was probably one of the biggest challenges to do, because it's definitely an artistic stylists are definitely artistic people. They all kind of have different personalities, and they like being themselves, which is amazing. But we were kind of like a tech company, and these are people who are working with their hands. So we're asking them, how come you didn't check your emails and you didn't get the answer, the text messages? And they're like, yeah, because I'm blowing out this person's hair or doing this person's makeup. I'm not in front of a computer waiting for an email to pop up or anything like that. So we had to definitely teach them behaviors of, like, hey, really got to check your emails and stuff like that. We had to really have amazing communication between our customer service teams and the stylists because the logistics can get so crazy, especially on busy seasons or busy days. It's hectic, and just getting from place to place, there can be delays.

It's normal. It's natural. So putting out fires is equally important. And to really cultivate the community, I think we worked hard on not only selecting really incredibly talented stylists, but also developing their skills, giving them continuing education, providing them with really cool experiences, and matching them with really cool we would always have very cool brands come in and give them stuff and have super cool celebrity clients. Maybe they're not getting that type of exposure when they're working. A lot of them worked in very different places. Some of them work Fashion Week, some of them didn't. But to get to work a fashion week was exciting.

Or to get know, go to Paris Hilton's house was really exciting, and you might have been just like a salon at a place in queens or in the valley. Or, you know, we gave them a lot of opportunities, and we also really focused on continuing education and career development and making sure that their skills were the best of the best and that they're getting real support and also having some fun events to really recognize their work and make them feel like they're part of a community. Because I think that was also a really important quality and a really important aspect. Like, everyone kind of likes to feel like they're a part of something. So recognizing employees or the people who work for you is really critical and it's easy to do. It's not a big deal.

Yeah. And I think that having an approach of education and having an approach of really taking the quality control of in your case, your stylist, like, taking that really seriously is very important because at the end of the day, your customer experience and the experiences that your customers are having are like they're out of your hands. Right. You're just the marketplace layer that's facilitating these two relationships. And in your case, it's also a very intimate sort of thing. You have people who are coming into the actual home and doing the hair and touching you. Right. It's a very personal thing.

So really making sure that not only are the stylists educated, but you have a real strict and stringent guidelines for quality control, who's involved, what it takes to become a stylist and be able to provide services on this platform. Something that's obviously going to be of utmost importance. Right?

Yeah. And I mean, we also kind of helped them or increase their levels of professionalism. We had really should I take my shoes off? Which hand? You should shake their hand with how to introduce yourself properly. It's little bells and whistles, little touches, but handling a customer in a really nice way and a really kind of nice, consistent, high end way is a great skill set to have. And also it helps you improve. And then even from going from really having the stylist listen to the client feedback and say, what are you doing tonight? Or Where are you? Is there anything you would change? Is there anything you would change with your style? Then you can get the real feedback and to actually listen to that and not be so to take time to listen to that and to really understand the customer's feedback as opposed to just deer and headlights, it yeah.

And I think another thing there that really jumps out is the fact that you're approaching it from a lens of hospitality. But I'm sure that when you started this, the first thing in your head wasn't like, oh, we're going to tell all our stylists to do this and then have the same procedure around the shoes and then the right questions asked. But as the service starts to become more repeatable and repeatable and as it starts to grow, then you start thinking about all these little touches that can create that brand experience. If. You will. So every time they're getting a Glam Squad stylist that it feels like it's coming from the same brand, right?

Yeah. Well, we thought about all of this stuff from the beginning as the truth of the matter, just because we wanted it to feel luxurious, we wanted it to feel fancy, even though it's like in the comfort of your own home. And this is at a time when it was kind of hard to build a brand. When you're thinking of there wasn't Instagram stories back then. There wasn't things where you can show your experience that just didn't really exist at the outset. So it's a lot harder to promote with a static photo and also what's the meaning behind that? So I think all of those types of things are really important and also just really listening to the customer and really understanding what they want. And also even listening to your stylist, you have to listen to both sides of the marketplace because they would say, like, hey, we want more of this or we want more interaction with each other. We want to be able to feel like there is a community here.

They asked for it next. Something we delivered.

No.

100%. Victoria the next question that I'd have is around markets, right? Because I think one of the hardest things in these types of marketplaces is the fact that once you've done it in New York per se, you're like, okay, we're going to create this marketplace in New York. And then all of a sudden you're growing, growing, growing, and it's like, okay, now I have to open up an entirely new city, right? And it's almost like you're starting all over again. So what was the next city that you opened and what was the process for you guys to open up a new market?

So it was exceedingly difficult to open up a new market. We focused a lot of energy on New York City at first, just because it was so concentrated. You could take the subway walk from spot to spot. We knew people had money there, people wanted luxury experiences. People were always on the go. It was important. Our second city was La. I built out like I went alone and built out La.

While New York was thriving. And it was so difficult. It was like starting from scratch all over again in a completely different market and also being far away from the team and like a three hour time zone difference. And not that that's like that crazy of a difference, but it makes a difference. And rebuilding all the style, like a whole new set of stylists, a whole new team leader, a whole new just everything. We needed to rebuild everything and we needed to operationally La. Was a lot more challenging because you're driving from place to place and there's a ton of traffic in know, the in between times are different, the zones are different. All of that kind of stuff is much more complicated, I think, especially in a driving city.

And then also parking costs a lot. So sometimes a stylist was going to a fancy hotel and getting saddled with like a $30 parking fee, which kind of takes away a lot of what they're making. And that was not okay. Basically, we had to rebuild it all over again in a different city. It was exceedingly difficult. But I think from that we learned to make processes and kind of like a playbook of how to redo it to implement in our other cities for growth. And that made it a lot easier. And also, instead of launching one category at a time, we launched multiple categories.

We launched hair and makeup at the same time in La. Whereas we launched just hair, then makeup, then nails in New York. And it was a slow progression, a slow and easy progression for when we were ready. We had more of an expectation when you go to a new city, but have people who want it in both cities. So you have to level up your game and also create different processes to make sure you can deliver the same product you do in a different place.

Yeah, I think that's so on point in terms of when you're launching a new market, it's like you're starting all over again, and you really need a playbook to be able to replicate exactly what you did, because you're not going to individually be able to open up every market. At a certain point, when you scale, you're going to bring on other people, other teammates, who are going to need to know exactly what you do, how you build it out, what services are offered, how you recruit your supply, how you recruit your demand, how you launch, how the brand communicates that you've launched a new market. All these different things. Right. So one thing that you mentioned that was really interesting about when you opened up La. Versus New York was that you were launching with multiple services. And I think what's unique about your business in terms of Glam Squad is the fact that it's not a singular service. And I think there's more what you see, like, for example, Uber, right? They have Uber where you get a ride, then Uber Eats, which is a similar service based off generally the same infrastructure.

If you want to send someone a package using Uber, you can order like Uber where they deliver the package for you. So there are all these things based off a core infrastructure. And the core infrastructure that you guys had built on glam Squad was a marketplace between beauty stylists and consumers. And obviously, getting your hair done is one of those things. Getting blowouts is one thing, but there are many different services extend there. So how did you think about launching new services? What was required in terms of launching those as almost like new product lines. Were they just different services that were really easy to layer in on the app? Or was it complicated to manage what services a service provider could administer? What did that kind of look like?

So we still only do three services or three core areas, I guess. I think there's some haircuts or now there's something where you can get like a person from Physique 57 to come to you. But we do hair, makeup and nails. And we didn't do any coloring of hair. And for a long time we didn't do any cuts of hair. So basically no stylist can do two things. It's like a pit crew. So you have to think of the whole concept of the brand is to make getting ready a whole lot easier.

It's the same concept I thought of in the shower, that getting ready was too difficult and I wish there was a better way to do it that I would look better at the end product. So no stylist does two things. A lot of stylists are like I do hair, I do makeup, or I do both. You're like, well, pick one, stay in one lane. Because we want the best of the best in each category to be able to execute in that category. And then also just for client efficiencies, you can get your hair, your makeup and your nails done in an hour, ready to go looking, know all the modalities and you don't have to worry about, oh, well, it's going to take 2 hours because whatever Sally does hair and the makeup. So it was mostly about client efficiencies making getting ready a lot easier. And I think when you launch a different category, it was equally as difficult.

It wasn't as difficult because usually there was more demand for the category, but it was difficult because we just wanted to make it really amazing, really great. So the quality really had to be there. Carrying all the makeup from place to place was a lot heavier than carrying the hair supplies from place to place because there's just more of it. And then also cleaning of the brushes and the nails needed different things, different tools and things could spill. So we always got a specialist in the category to lead the growth of the category. But it was always challenging to put on another category. But it was also very exciting. And it was so exciting to kind of see the vision come to life of being able to have all of these amazing beauty services in the comfort of your own home.

You didn't have to go anywhere, you didn't have to go out of your way, traveling half hour each way to go to an appointment, somebody came to you and it was the ultimate inconvenience.

One thing I want to talk about is growth, right? Growth on both the supply side and the demand side. So what were the practices that you guys used to grow your stylist base as well as your user base. Were you doing stuff with referrals, or was it just paid growth? Or how did you think about growth on both sides after you had an initial amount of scale where you're like, this marketplace is working now. We need to really grow it up.

So at the beginning, we had insane word of mouth. So we had a chance, you're going to book in 14 days. So it was like, incredibly high that you'll book within two weeks, and most people would book within a week of each other. And we had some heavy duty clients. So for growth, a lot of it initially was word of mouth. We did not do a lot of paid growth. We did not do a lot of paid ads. Instagram was not the Instagram of today.

It wasn't something that people had their eyes glued to. They were just like, oh, here's one artistic photo. Let me post it. Bloggers were just coming up in the world of, are they like editors? So it was definitely a different climate back then. But for growth, a lot of it was word of mouth. A lot of it was kind of guerrilla marketing and events. It's a very emotional service, so we make you look amazing. And we tried to connect with a lot of things in the community, every kind of charity event.

We basically were everywhere that we could possibly be to facilitate growth, because we kind of needed to educate people how it worked. And so, I don't know. We went to every business and did, like, a makeover takeover. We would go in at lunchtime to so many businesses and glam people up and literally sit and download the app on everybody's phone and give them a credit to book again. And everyone would come out of lunch being so happy. Then we would book the same business for their holiday parties or as a perk for their customer. I mean, not their customers, but as a perk for their employees. And then we would do just, like, every event.

We were at Coachella, we were at the Super Bowl, we were at the Oscars, we were at your grandma's bake sale. We were literally at every event that had women at it, from every financial conference to every mom's event to every wedding event. I also developed a huge wedding category, which was really exciting because and all of these things were big parts of our growth, especially because and we did a lot of referrals, a lot of gifting. It makes the perfect gift. I remember early on, we got something from the App Store. It was like the perfect Mother's Day gift. And our app was listed. So referrals are really important.

I think you really need to build that in. And I think also gifting is really important. You need to make that a big part of it. Word of mouth. And I think people really focus so heavily on paid search today, which obviously it's scalable, but I think there's a level of stickiness. Like, I get so many ads a day. I watch so many ads a day. I'm inundated with ads from my email to my Google search to just everywhere I look.

That a lot of them I don't care about or pay attention to, or it doesn't really matter. And you have such a high, you have to pay so much to get for a click these days, so sometimes it's not worth the cost of acquiring the customer. And I know that that's the case in a lot of CPG brands. It's very expensive to acquire the customer, and once they have them, how repeatable is the product? So ours is kind of like you also would naturally share it with your friends. It's fun to get a group glam glam together. It's fun to if you're at a bachelorette party or if you're at someone's wedding and it's like your mom is seeing you get your hair done, or all the bridesmaids get their hair done, they're wondering, what's that? Let me book it, put it on my iPad. So we had extremely strong word of mouth and a very high net promoter score. People talked about us a lot, and we were buzzworthy, and that was part of the joy of building the business, was creating a lot of momentum in that way.

Of course, we did a lot of crazy publicity stunts. We did campaigns, we wrapped Ubers. We did fashion weeks. We did everything we could possibly do to be everywhere that our customer was. We did every boutique fitness class. That was cool. We did deals with women's shopping, like Nordstrom's and Intermix and things like that. Anywhere that our customer was, we were there too.

And there was no way you couldn't see us, you could not avoid us. That was how we did it.

Yeah. And I think what's really cool is thinking about that initial use case you were talking about. It's like, we're here to help you get ready easier. And then once you've nailed that down and you've proven out that that can work for anything, that someone's getting ready for really dialing in and becoming specific, like, okay, we're going to help these people get ready for their conference. We're going to help these people get ready for Fashion Week. We're going to be here at Coachella, where friends are getting ready to go out to a music festival. So now you've gone from just generic, our service is working, to this, to really dialing in to the use cases. The other thing that really jumped out that I think is really important about is the difference between brand exposure in terms of people seeing your brand and actually using your service or trying your product.

It's almost like there's a massive gap. But once someone actually uses your services, uses the product, or tries a new product, all of a sudden it's like light bulb goes off. It's like, okay, I know what that is. And in your case you said you had really strong organic numbers. So clearly the metric for you guys was all about how do we get a Glam Squad stylist to do someone's appointment? Because once they do it, that person's going to be like, I know what this is and I can come back to it. And I think that's something that's so important because growing a brand is not just about all the clicks you're getting. Yes, you have to get clicks. You have to drive awareness, you have to be there.

But getting someone to really take the jump on trying something new because most people are creatures of habit and really getting them to try it and be like, okay, that's it. And I think what you had mentioned about we literally went to offices and made people download the app and made them experience it so they would be able to be like, okay, I can come back to this. I know what this is. And it's not just me seeing a subway ad, which is obviously a nice thing, but when you experience something it's totally different.

Yeah, I think when you experience something it's just a lot stickier and you want to build that emotional element with your customer. You want to have them rely on you and make their part of their life better. And honestly we had a huge level of addiction and I think we still do, of just customers who were completely addicted. And I meet people every day, even to this day, who are like, oh my God, that's you. Oh my God. I did it this many times a week. I love it. But I had one story of a girl who it was very early days and she had like a shampoo brand.

It was like a natural shampoo for pregnant women and I was like, oh my God, can we partner with you? It ended up not being like a partnership. We did, but I was just like, oh perfect, something in the shower and I love this shampoo, let's do it. She did not want to have anything to do with me. She was like, no, she had never tried Glam Squad. She thought we were too lame for her and her shampoo. So anyhow, we sent her a free one. She was like, I don't know, we can do a deal. I was like, okay, thanks so much.

Here's a free one, just try it on the house. Tell me what you think. Literally, she got super hooked. But a couple months later I was building out the I was, I was starting from scratch in La. I was building up the service and this girl begs me to have lunch and she takes me to a very fancy place for lunch and I'm just kind of like, wow, she's so nice now she basically hunted me down. She wind and dined me. And then she was like, I'm speaking at a conference this week. I need a glam squad.

I was like, what? We haven't even background checked the beauty professionals yet. Like, you can't get one. She's like, what are you talking about? She was so forceful that I was like, okay, fine, I'll make an exception for you, but in a good way. So I think if you can make your product have that addictive quality or have a level of emotional stickiness, that's really important. And what you're getting people hooked on is the feeling of having something that you can't achieve on your own. You can't achieve that level of makeup on your own. You can't achieve that level of hair on your own. And maybe if you could, it would take hours, but chances are you can't.

And chances are you feel a whole lot better when you have it done. And you don't have to even move a muscle. You just roll out of the shower, like, slap on a robe and go for it. So I think that feeling was really addictive.

Yeah. And I think that's a great kind of barometer in an anecdotal sense. It's like, how do you make a business that people care about and that if it's not there, they're going to be upset? Right? So even having those anecdotes are probably really encouraging when you're building your business, because those are the types of signals, even in an anecdotal sense, that you want to be seeing to make sure your service is actually needed and wanted, and not just like another throwaway sort of service that no one needs. So anyway, as we wrap up here, just wanted to see where we can find you online. Where can our audience find you? Are you on Twitter? LinkedIn? Where can they find more about you and Glam Squad?

You can find more, I guess. I don't know what to say for this, but I'm on Instagram. The real Victoria Gloria. I'm also on you can follow Glam Squad at Glam Squad on instagram. You can also follow me on LinkedIn Victoria Eisner, and you can also, I guess, follow book on the app. If you want, you can use my code and get $20 off. Let me see what the code is.

I think it's V. What's your code? Let's find it. It's.

V eisner is my code. So book with that. Get 20.

All right. DTC Pod. You heard it here first. No, I think thank you for coming on. It's been really fun to hear about how you built the business. I know it's something that I don't necessarily use as a guy, but I have had Glam Squad come to my house to do my girlfriend and her friends, and they've done it in my own home. So it's just really cool to see how these sort of businesses that have reaches across so many markets and so many cities, how they're built. So anyway, congrats on everything.

Loved hearing the story and thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Bye.