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Speaker 1: episode and we need your questions.
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Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 1: And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: Have you ever been to a dry bar?
Speaker 3: I just I just thought i'd start this conversation as
Speaker 3: simply as possible.
Speaker 1: You don't mean a bar that isn't serving alcohol.
Speaker 2: No, but if there were, I would like that. But
Speaker 2: those are.
Speaker 1: Called coffee shops, Joe, No, I have in fact been
Speaker 1: to a dry bar. I remember when dry bars first
Speaker 1: became a thing, and it was the sort of novel
Speaker 1: concept that you could go someplace and have your hair
Speaker 1: blow dried by a professional, sometimes while having a drink,
Speaker 1: or like watching silly movies on TV. And it was
Speaker 1: it was different to how it had worked historically, because
Speaker 1: normally you would, you know, maybe you would go to
Speaker 1: your local hair salon to get a blow dry, or
Speaker 1: often you would just have a blow dry after getting
Speaker 1: your hair cut or something like that. But it became
Speaker 1: this really big thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, And I remember, Okay, so I will say
Speaker 3: I have never you've never been. I assume I have
Speaker 3: never gotten I think, a proper blowout, but you know,
Speaker 3: I've gotten my hair done for TV, and so I
Speaker 3: guess that's the closest gutten. But also I just sort
Speaker 3: of remember when they started popping up, and it felt
Speaker 3: like one of those businesses and business models that sort
Speaker 3: of defined the twenty tens maybe or defined a certain era.
Speaker 3: And this sort of idea of the fusion of brick
Speaker 3: and mortar with booking on an app and the proliferation
Speaker 3: of new times of stores like that felt like a
Speaker 3: big part of the twenty tens economy.
Speaker 1: Stores which were providing a service and also an experience
Speaker 1: because I remember the experiential portion of it was a
Speaker 1: big part of the offering. So again, you could go
Speaker 1: get your hair blow dried for forty or sixty minutes
Speaker 1: or however long it takes, and you could have a
Speaker 1: cocktail while you did it, and a lot.
Speaker 2: Of these they did do it. You could have a cocktail.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my gosh, yes, that was a big like
Speaker 1: part of it. And a lot of the stores, well,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of one in particular because it is going
Speaker 1: to be the topic of this podcast. The original dry
Speaker 1: bar offered. You know, they would have movie screens like
Speaker 1: the TVs built in and you could watch like rom
Speaker 1: coms from the early two thousands. It was great.
Speaker 3: The experience economy, You're right, that was like such a
Speaker 3: big part of the story where that was such a
Speaker 3: big part of what people talked about people wanting to
Speaker 3: have high quality experiences something above maybe some of the
Speaker 3: old dingy physical retail physical service locations of the past.
Speaker 3: I do think that it really sort of redefined a category.
Speaker 3: And I'm interested, you know, like obviously that exploded during
Speaker 3: a specific era in time, the rise of smartphones, low
Speaker 3: interest rates, so vcs investing in fast growing concepts, of
Speaker 3: various sort digital and physical, loose labor markets and the
Speaker 3: ability to hire lots of people fast and so like.
Speaker 3: Thinking about those business conditions, modern business conditions, how they've changed,
Speaker 3: Lessons learned from that period of course sort of a
Speaker 3: go go era for fundraising and so forth. I think
Speaker 3: there's still more to.
Speaker 1: Learn, absolutely. I mean things have changed, as you just mentioned,
Speaker 1: but I think the desire for services slash experiences is
Speaker 1: something that we still hear about today.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm excited. We really do have literally the perfect
Speaker 3: guest to talk about all of these things. We are
Speaker 3: going to be speaking with Ali Webb. She was the
Speaker 3: founder of Drybar, also author of the New York Times
Speaker 3: best selling book The Messy Truth How I Sold My
Speaker 3: Business for millions but Almost Lost Myself amazing title, and
Speaker 3: she's also gone on to found more businesses, including a
Speaker 3: franchise chain of massage therapy location. So it sort of
Speaker 3: sounds like Drybar for massages. So, Alie, thank you so
Speaker 3: much for coming on. Odd lots thrilled to have you here.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks for having me, and I love your conversation
Speaker 4: about Drybar.
Speaker 5: You guys really nailed it.
Speaker 2: The title of your book is so good. How did
Speaker 2: you almost lose yourself?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, if you know, the book really goes
Speaker 4: into a lot of it, but it was a long
Speaker 4: story but more or less, you know, building a business
Speaker 4: over the last ten years, which is an incredible journey,
Speaker 4: and we definitely kind of you know, capture lightning in
Speaker 4: a bottle and it was intoxicating and exhilarating and amazing.
Speaker 4: But you know, and a lot of my personal life
Speaker 4: in the background kind of fell apart. You know, there
Speaker 4: was divorce and rehab and depression and you name it.
Speaker 4: And so it was you know, a lot of like
Speaker 4: navigating real life stuff alongside growing this you know, massive,
Speaker 4: amazing business. And you know, it's kind of like if
Speaker 4: like a business book met a memoir and had a baby.
Speaker 4: That's kind of what this book feels like to me anyways,
Speaker 4: because it's really the coming together of the stories of
Speaker 4: all the things that I learned and lessons and takeaways
Speaker 4: from building a business as someone who didn't go to
Speaker 4: college and doesn't have a you know, fancy business degree,
Speaker 4: but then also like you know, the underpinnings of it
Speaker 4: all and how it's you lose yourself. And if you
Speaker 4: ask any entrepreneur, they will tell you the same thing.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, you get so invested in this
Speaker 4: thing that's like a baby to you, and you kind
Speaker 4: of easily lose sight of a lot of other things
Speaker 4: personally in your life and yourself, and you know, and
Speaker 4: the response to it has been overwhelmingly positive and just
Speaker 4: helped so many women and people are just relating to
Speaker 4: it and like, oh my god, that's me. And I
Speaker 4: felt like I was reading about me and that's my story,
Speaker 4: which is fascinating to me that to put out stuff
Speaker 4: that I don't think people talk about enough in such
Speaker 4: a public content, and then for people to relate so
Speaker 4: heavily to it has been, I mean, such a joy
Speaker 4: and privilege for me.
Speaker 1: I should say, first of all, thank you for coming
Speaker 1: up with this idea, because it has been enormously helpful
Speaker 1: in my own life as someone who has like fairly untamable,
Speaker 1: very thick hair that gets super poofy in the summer especially.
Speaker 1: And nowadays we take the concept of dry bars, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's gone beyond the brand, right you think about dry bar,
Speaker 1: you think about a hair salon that is exclusively operating
Speaker 1: like drop in blow drys basically, So it really became
Speaker 1: a thing. But back when you founded the company, this
Speaker 1: was obviously a new and novel concept. Maybe just to
Speaker 1: begin with, could you talk about the business opportunity as
Speaker 1: you saw it back then, Like what was the gap
Speaker 1: in the market that you were able to identify?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you know, I shouldn't say that.
Speaker 4: I wasn't, you know, a business person looking for a
Speaker 4: hole in the marketplace.
Speaker 5: You know, although you know that's great if you are.
Speaker 5: I just wasn't, you know.
Speaker 4: I just felt like there was not a place to
Speaker 4: go get a good blowout at an affordable price.
Speaker 5: And I think I had felt that my.
Speaker 4: Entire life, you know, just as somebody who also has
Speaker 4: hair that's curly and prison and hard to manage. I
Speaker 4: was always kind of frustrated, and as a kid, I
Speaker 4: would go to the hair slump and beg my mom
Speaker 4: to blow out my hair. I mean, I was always
Speaker 4: on the hunt, you know, and I was always into
Speaker 4: my hair as a kid, and you know, so I
Speaker 4: think on some level, subconsciously I wanted something like dry
Speaker 4: bar my whole life, you know. And fast forward to
Speaker 4: becoming a professional hairstylist in my early twenties and then
Speaker 4: spending my life you know, so much of my life
Speaker 4: doing hair and working in salons.
Speaker 5: I think I intuitively, instinctively.
Speaker 4: Knew that there had to be a better way to
Speaker 4: get a blowout, you know, and there was pretty bad
Speaker 4: choices out in the market, which was like the discount change,
Speaker 4: which I'm sure you've been to, or you know, your
Speaker 4: fancy hair salon where they're charging you so much money
Speaker 4: and upselling you on other things, and you know, there
Speaker 4: just wasn't anything like it. But what ultimately led me
Speaker 4: to Drybar was that I started a mobile blowout business.
Speaker 4: And when I was you know, I had been a
Speaker 4: stay at home mom for a couple of years.
Speaker 5: My boys were two and four, and I.
Speaker 4: Started running around La and my niece on like Sarah
Speaker 4: blowdrying my mommy friends really because that was the world
Speaker 4: I was very much in at the time.
Speaker 5: And you know, I posted an ad that said I'll come.
Speaker 4: Over and blow out your hair while you're baby sleeping,
Speaker 4: and it was I would charge forty bucks. And again
Speaker 4: it was it was for me. It was like if
Speaker 4: I don't charge that much money, more people will call me.
Speaker 4: You know. It wasn't a very like sophisticated business plan,
Speaker 4: but that's you know, what I hope.
Speaker 5: For, and sure enough they did.
Speaker 4: And I realized during that because I got so busy
Speaker 4: while I was operating my mobile business, because I was really,
Speaker 4: you know, it was pretty good at what I was doing,
Speaker 4: and because I was only charging.
Speaker 5: Forty bucks, like I was so crazy busy, you know.
Speaker 4: That that's when like the kind of light bulb went
Speaker 4: off for me and was like, wow, you know, at
Speaker 4: the right price point, women will do this a lot,
Speaker 4: you know. And I, because I got so busy and
Speaker 4: I was, you know, came to a crossroads. Am I
Speaker 4: going to expand this thing mobilely or do I open
Speaker 4: a brick and mortar instead of me going to them,
Speaker 4: have them come to me, which is obviously ultimately what
Speaker 4: I decided to do. And I went to my brother
Speaker 4: and asked him to help me with all of this.
Speaker 4: But I just it was such a great learning even
Speaker 4: though I didn't make any money at my mobile business,
Speaker 4: but who cares, because it, you know, informed what would
Speaker 4: become dry bar, you know, because I realized during that time,
Speaker 4: it all really crystallized for me that like, at the
Speaker 4: right price point in a beautiful space, a great blowout
Speaker 4: can be something and affordable luxury that women, do you know,
Speaker 4: once a week, twice a week, whatever it is, and
Speaker 4: we have plenty of clients who don't even watch their
Speaker 4: own hair anymore. I mean, because the price point was right,
Speaker 4: the experience was great, and I realized nobody else was
Speaker 4: doing anything like this, and so it was like a
Speaker 4: prime opportunity that I really felt like I kind of
Speaker 4: of stumbled into.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about growth?
Speaker 3: And when I think about twenty ten's business culture, I
Speaker 3: think of magazine coverers were like this founder just raised
Speaker 3: X million dollars, this founder just had a huge exit.
Speaker 3: This twenty eight year old is now a billionaire.
Speaker 1: And in total addressable market, total.
Speaker 3: Addressable market, this just sort of like money growth culture.
Speaker 3: And you know, obviously as you as you talked about
Speaker 3: there's a sort of presumably you are not the only
Speaker 3: one that there was like a real dark side to
Speaker 3: this and a personal cost, et cetera. But can you
Speaker 3: talk a little bit more about the sort of decision
Speaker 3: to take your idea and make it of you know,
Speaker 3: you raised money and you expanded it became a national
Speaker 3: maybe international brand. Can you talk about that sort of
Speaker 3: like choice to like, Okay, we have to go for this,
Speaker 3: and we have to grow big and we have to
Speaker 3: deliver results.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's certainly a choice, and not everybody wants
Speaker 4: to do that. I mean, you know, but you get
Speaker 4: like a little taste of that, and it's hard to
Speaker 4: walk away from it, you know. And I think we
Speaker 4: all knew that we were onto something really special, and
Speaker 4: it was we did to have to make some hard decisions, like,
Speaker 4: you know, obviously, this is going to change our lives significantly.
Speaker 5: Do we really want to go for this?
Speaker 4: And you know, you know, there was so much demand,
Speaker 4: there was so much request, you know, to open more
Speaker 4: stores and more markets, and you know, and it was
Speaker 4: going to be a whole thing, you know, to really
Speaker 4: go for this and to really grow this thing.
Speaker 5: And we had to really lock arms and decide that that's.
Speaker 4: What we wanted to do because it was going to
Speaker 4: really change our lives, which it did in every conceivable way.
Speaker 4: And you know, and I think I see lots of
Speaker 4: businesses that decide not to do that, you know, to
Speaker 4: grow at a more organic, slower pace. I mean obviously
Speaker 4: for us, maybe not obviously, but for us to grow,
Speaker 4: we were going to have to raise capital because even
Speaker 4: though drive Bar was successful, our first two stores were successful,
Speaker 4: they didn't throw off enough money to grow the way
Speaker 4: we wanted to, or the pace in which not all
Speaker 4: I shouldn't say wanted to, I should say like the
Speaker 4: pace that we needed to, because we knew a lot
Speaker 4: of people were on our tail, and they were, you know,
Speaker 4: there were so many copycats like popping up left and right,
Speaker 4: who humbly were just not nearly as good as we
Speaker 4: were and didn't totally understand what we were doing, but saw,
Speaker 4: you know, an opportunity. It's like you open up a
Speaker 4: salon and throw some chairs in. It's like it's just
Speaker 4: so not that simple. And so, you know, I think
Speaker 4: we felt a little bit of pressure, like if we're
Speaker 4: going to like really go for this, we got to
Speaker 4: like move fast, and in order to move.
Speaker 5: Fast, we need to raise money.
Speaker 4: And so then we raised like our first two or
Speaker 4: three million with friends and family because they were and
Speaker 4: this is also like not super common, but you know,
Speaker 4: friends and family were like practically throwing money at us
Speaker 4: because they saw the writing on the wall that like
Speaker 4: this was a great opportunity, you know. And and so yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean we you know, ultimately came together to make
Speaker 4: this decision that we're going to really go for this
Speaker 4: and grow this thing, and that meant so many other
Speaker 4: things that I at the time I knew nothing about,
Speaker 4: you know, about like how you grow and scale and
Speaker 4: hiring and and all the complexities that go into that.
Speaker 4: But there was a lot of pressure because if we
Speaker 4: were going to do we had to do it now,
Speaker 4: you know, and otherwise we were gonna we were gonna
Speaker 4: fall behind. My brother found an investment banker and we
Speaker 4: went out and did like a formal process in probably
Speaker 4: year like two maybe, and you know, decided to you know,
Speaker 4: to really, like no pun intended blow this thing up.
Speaker 1: Could you sorry, I'm a fan of puns.
Speaker 5: Uh, could you have a lot of that?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Good, excellent. Can you talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the business model itself, because you know, I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the intro like going to a dry bar was a
Speaker 1: nice experience. It wasn't like you're going to a budget
Speaker 1: hair salon and just getting this thing done for the
Speaker 1: cheapest price. But at the same time, the price you
Speaker 1: were charging four blowouts was very reasonable, especially when compared
Speaker 1: to a more higher end salon. So how did you
Speaker 1: actually contain those costs? Like where did the savings actually
Speaker 1: we come from.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, it wasn't easy, and our margins were
Speaker 4: razor thin to your point, because the amount of money
Speaker 4: we spent on the build out, you know, to make
Speaker 4: it look the way it looked and to make it
Speaker 4: feel high end, we just not have the high end
Speaker 4: price tag.
Speaker 5: The name of the game for us was volume. Like
Speaker 5: I'll see there's another ton.
Speaker 1: You we all of these are flying right over Joe's heading.
Speaker 2: No, no, I got I got that one.
Speaker 5: You know, we have in like volume, big hair. So
Speaker 5: anyway we need.
Speaker 2: Closer to God, right, isn't that?
Speaker 5: That's right? That's right, and it is a true statement.
Speaker 5: Don't let anybody tell you different. So we knew that we.
Speaker 4: Needed to do a ton of blowouts to day, and
Speaker 4: like just to give you an example of.
Speaker 5: What I mean by a ton, like we thought in
Speaker 5: our Brentwood.
Speaker 4: Location, which was our first location that had eight chairs,
Speaker 4: we thought, you know, if we do thirty to forty
Speaker 4: blowouts a day, like that's a good business and whatever.
Speaker 4: We completely underestimated the demand and we were doing more
Speaker 4: like eighty ish blowout today, which very quickly turned to
Speaker 4: one hundred blowout today once we were fully staffed, you know,
Speaker 4: So we were open from seven am to like nine pm,
Speaker 4: so you know, you could theoretically do that. So once
Speaker 4: we realized that, you know, we could do so many blowouts,
Speaker 4: were open seven days a week, you know, twelve hours
Speaker 4: a day, that we could we could theoretically do it.
Speaker 4: It really was about volume. We had to get those
Speaker 4: numbers in in order to make the business work, which,
Speaker 4: by the way, didn't always work because, as you might imagine,
Speaker 4: like you know, supply and demand was a real thing,
Speaker 4: and for us, the supply was hairstylusts and it was
Speaker 4: hard to get extremely hard to get great hairstylists in
Speaker 4: and it's just an interesting market. And having been I'm
Speaker 4: a hairstylist myself, it's like our strengths are our weaknesses.
Speaker 4: Like I'm a little flaky, I'm not the most you know,
Speaker 4: I'm usually late to most things, and so our most
Speaker 4: hairstylists not all, but you know, and just getting hair
Speaker 4: stylists who were okay, just doing blowouts all day long,
Speaker 4: you know. Understandably, so many stylists wanted to grow their
Speaker 4: business and do cuts in color, and drybar was more
Speaker 4: like a stuff for them, not like a destination, you know,
Speaker 4: And so that part of it was really hard getting
Speaker 4: and training stylists, you know, to the level of which
Speaker 4: we wanted them to be, you know, all of that.
Speaker 4: So it was a tough business model in terms of
Speaker 4: like getting that to all work. And you know, we
Speaker 4: in some stores and sometimes we did it better than others.
Speaker 4: We had a gajillion different strategies on recruiting and staffing
Speaker 4: and all of that, but the business model, you know,
Speaker 4: only worked if we did x amount of blowouts per
Speaker 4: day per store, you know, which we were, for the
Speaker 4: most part, able to really pull off.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned recruitment and training because I got
Speaker 1: the sense that this was kind of important for the
Speaker 1: business model as well. So talk to us a little
Speaker 1: bit more about how you identified the right hair stylists
Speaker 1: for the business. As you mentioned, it might not be
Speaker 1: that every stylist wants to spend their entire day just
Speaker 1: blow drying hair. And then secondly, how much of the
Speaker 1: labor force was flexible? Was everyone working full time or
Speaker 1: were people coming in and doing it for like three
Speaker 1: or four hours to sort of add on to their
Speaker 1: main job.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: You know, we tried to be as nimble and flexible
Speaker 4: as possible as stylists because of that reason, Like you know,
Speaker 4: it is very labor intensive, and I really always understood that,
Speaker 4: Like you know, some stylists really loved it and would
Speaker 4: and could do like a six seven, eight hour shift.
Speaker 4: Other stylists were like, you know, I can't do this
Speaker 4: for more than a few hours. Like I get it,
Speaker 4: no problem, you know, especially in the early days, I
Speaker 4: was like, I will take whatever you can get.
Speaker 5: If you can only come in and do four.
Speaker 4: Blowouts, fine, you know, Like it was that diet and
Speaker 4: the dyer is not the right word, but it was
Speaker 4: that like crazy and busy that and of course I
Speaker 4: was doing tons of blowouts in those early days to
Speaker 4: accommodate people. I would sit or stand at the first
Speaker 4: chair and blow hair and be able to like manage.
Speaker 5: The front desk. I mean that was those were crazy times.
Speaker 4: But you know, so we were really flexible in terms
Speaker 4: of what stylists what they wanted to do and how
Speaker 4: many days a week they wanted to work, because we
Speaker 4: knew we had to be in order like to get
Speaker 4: people to like it was like a hodgepodge of stylists
Speaker 4: getting them in and then you know, and then the
Speaker 4: other big challenge, as you might imagine, is like making.
Speaker 5: Sure that those stylists are you know, are really great.
Speaker 5: And that was the other thing, is like, you know,
Speaker 5: there was there was.
Speaker 4: Like a subset of stilists who'd you know, been doing
Speaker 4: this for a long time and they just you know,
Speaker 4: they were great and we didn't need to do a
Speaker 4: lot of training.
Speaker 5: And then there were stylists who were newer out of beauty.
Speaker 4: School and they didn't have a lot of training, and
Speaker 4: so we needed to spend a lot of time with them.
Speaker 5: But we didn't have that time.
Speaker 4: You know, we weren't doing much training, which was getting
Speaker 4: us in trouble, you know, because for me, it was
Speaker 4: obviously really important that the blowouts were top notch amazing.
Speaker 5: We do one thing, and we.
Speaker 4: Better do it really well. So you know, it was
Speaker 4: really stressful to get a stylist in there who wasn't
Speaker 4: at the top of their game, you know. So that
Speaker 4: piece of it was challenging. And I would eventually build
Speaker 4: out a very robust training program, but that wouldn't be
Speaker 4: you know, for years, or would take years, and we
Speaker 4: were always tweaking that. But I felt really strongly about
Speaker 4: a certain like culture that I wanted to have in
Speaker 4: the shops. And so it was like there was stylists
Speaker 4: that were just not the right fit for dry bar.
Speaker 4: They didn't want to just do blowouts. They didn't want
Speaker 4: to be washing their clients hair. They wanted to take
Speaker 4: a break in between every client. And you know, for
Speaker 4: better or worse, it was like you would do, you know,
Speaker 4: a handful of blowouts and then take a break or
Speaker 4: take your lunch or whatever, but you were working the
Speaker 4: whole time. I mean, you were on dry bar and
Speaker 4: so that you know, and that wasn't something that every
Speaker 4: stylist wanted and not the typical culture of hair salons.
Speaker 4: Even as I grew up in hair salons, it was like,
Speaker 4: you know, people would take smoke breaks all the time
Speaker 4: and there was like a more casual nature about it.
Speaker 4: Not always you know, the really really busy salons weren't
Speaker 4: like that. But you know, we were really really busy shop.
Speaker 4: So we you know, we needed that kind of work
Speaker 4: ethic and not and that just wasn't for everybody, which
Speaker 4: was totally okay. And that was so that was something
Speaker 4: that I always would preface with stylists when we were like,
Speaker 4: you know, opening a new store because you know, we
Speaker 4: have one hundred and fifty locations. I'd say the first
Speaker 4: like fifty or so, I went to every single opening
Speaker 4: until I just like physically couldn't anymore. But I used
Speaker 4: to say to the stilust, I would do this like
Speaker 4: kind of raw raw like what we'd call the new hire,
Speaker 4: you know, orientation, where I would sit and like you know,
Speaker 4: basically in a group setting and talk to the silist
Speaker 4: about who I was, why this idea came to be,
Speaker 4: what our core values were.
Speaker 5: And all of that.
Speaker 4: And I would and I would also say, every one
Speaker 4: of you sitting here may not end up staying here
Speaker 4: because this may not be the job for you. You
Speaker 4: may not like this. This is a like very fast
Speaker 4: paced hustle bustle. You've got to like thriving chaos, enjoy
Speaker 4: this that part of it, or it might not be
Speaker 4: the best job for you.
Speaker 5: And that's okay. You know, it doesn't have to be
Speaker 5: for everybody.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: And so that was like, you know, the mentality of
Speaker 5: the shop.
Speaker 4: And we didn't have access to like every single hairstylist
Speaker 4: that there was out there.
Speaker 5: You know, we were pretty picky from.
Speaker 4: Both a you know, a technical styling point and like
Speaker 4: we want you to be a really nice person who
Speaker 4: you know has over the top customer service, because that's
Speaker 4: a huge part of the business model, and it was
Speaker 4: the most challenging part of the whole thing.
Speaker 3: So I mean, what I imagine the challenges that you
Speaker 3: faced early on with hiring and recruiting and retaining talent
Speaker 3: or like this precursor to probably what like hundreds of
Speaker 3: thousands of entrepreneurs across the country these days, particularly in
Speaker 3: the COVID era of hire labor tien are like tearing
Speaker 3: their hairs out, And I have to imagine you know,
Speaker 3: as you said, you couldn't eventually, you couldn't go to
Speaker 3: every opening. Not every new stylist got to hear a
Speaker 3: pep talk from Elieweb. What are the broader lessons that
Speaker 3: you imparted to hiring managers at locations, at drybars or
Speaker 3: some of your newer ventures including Squeeze the I know
Speaker 3: you're not the CEO, but the co founder of the massage,
Speaker 3: Like what do people need to know about identifying talent
Speaker 3: who will be committed to the operation? Like what did
Speaker 3: you learn about how to scale that sort of identification?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we always did these like pre hires
Speaker 4: before anybody even walked in the door. You know, we
Speaker 4: had a team of people who we talked to potential employees,
Speaker 4: you know, just to get what we would call the
Speaker 4: cultural interview piece of it, which was like a pretty
Speaker 4: candid conversation just trying to.
Speaker 5: Get to know somebody.
Speaker 4: And and that was even like in the early early
Speaker 4: days before we opened the first location, I used to
Speaker 4: have hairstylist come over to my house to blow out
Speaker 4: my hair. That was like the job interview, which was
Speaker 4: awesome and not always awesome, but anyways, and part of
Speaker 4: that process, just for me in that very very small scale,
Speaker 4: was you know, getting to know their personality. And it
Speaker 4: kind of goes back to what I was talking about
Speaker 4: that this job isn't for everybody. So as we scaled
Speaker 4: and grew, those culture interviews became essential because you could
Speaker 4: tell very quickly the conversation was like, you know, why
Speaker 4: do you want to do this, and like what do
Speaker 4: you love about this? And for me and for our team,
Speaker 4: what we always like would listen for is for somebody
Speaker 4: who really enjoys being in the service industry, you know,
Speaker 4: like enjoys like making people feel good and that and
Speaker 4: like giving and sharing this amazing talent they.
Speaker 5: Have as a hairstylist with others, you know.
Speaker 4: And and just like the way people would show up
Speaker 4: on calls like prepared and ready and you know, answer
Speaker 4: and questions with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm about
Speaker 4: the brand, you know, on the contrary, as you would imagine,
Speaker 4: you know, the stylists who were you know, really quiet,
Speaker 4: really self spoken, didn't get the sense that this was
Speaker 4: like something they're really excited about or loved. And it
Speaker 4: might sound it feels like it sounds simple coming out
Speaker 4: of my mouth, but it is that like basic, like
Speaker 4: I really want to do this and be a part
Speaker 4: of this brand, and I love this company and I
Speaker 4: love hair and I love styling and making women feel great.
Speaker 4: Like that's like the first barrier to entry for us
Speaker 4: is like making sure that that at least that piece.
Speaker 5: Is there and you're going to show up and be
Speaker 5: kind and nice.
Speaker 4: You know, that is an you know, an intangible that
Speaker 4: you that you must simply have in order to be successful.
Speaker 4: So if you don't even have that, there's no point
Speaker 4: in going any further, you know. And like I said,
Speaker 4: as we grew, there was a team that was instructed
Speaker 4: to really listen for this kind of stuff and make
Speaker 4: sure that we were bringing in the right personalities as
Speaker 4: well as great hairstylists.
Speaker 1: So you talked a little bit about the grind and
Speaker 1: how intensive this whole process of building a business actually was,
Speaker 1: and of course, you know that's a big portion of
Speaker 1: what your book is actually about, this idea of losing
Speaker 1: yourself in your business your baby. I'm curious though, like
Speaker 1: it sounds tough and you're sort of like working and
Speaker 1: working until you get presumably to like the big payoff
Speaker 1: of some sort. And I always wonder with new startups,
Speaker 1: like how much money are you able to take off
Speaker 1: the table in the beginning, Like how do you balance
Speaker 1: building the business and investing in it versus rewarding yourself
Speaker 1: for the hardware that you're actually doing well.
Speaker 4: I love this question because I think it's such an
Speaker 4: important thing to point out that people. You know, it's
Speaker 4: a tricky one because I know that there's obviously, you know,
Speaker 4: people want to ultimately make money and they want to
Speaker 4: be successful, and that largely looks like making money.
Speaker 5: I get that, and I feel that too.
Speaker 4: I mean, just like anybody else, I really like making money,
Speaker 4: and I like money and nice things, but money wasn't
Speaker 4: the big driver for me in this business. And I
Speaker 4: feel like it feels to me like a mistake that
Speaker 4: a lot of entrepreneurs make, is like they're only looking
Speaker 4: at the money and the opportunity to make money, sell
Speaker 4: a company, whatever, versus doing something that they just really love,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: And I feel so strongly about this.
Speaker 4: And if you look at like some of the most
Speaker 4: successful companies and are in the last couple decades, like
Speaker 4: you know, and you hear the founder's story, it has
Speaker 4: always started from some sort of personal necessity, something that
Speaker 4: they felt like in their heart of hearts, that they
Speaker 4: could make better and do better.
Speaker 5: And the reward is it working and.
Speaker 4: The success of the company being you know, being felt
Speaker 4: and growing this thing, and the excitement and the adrenaline
Speaker 4: that you get from building something that people love, you know,
Speaker 4: and then and then you know, providing all these jobs
Speaker 4: and all this opportunity and all of that, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, for me, that was really.
Speaker 4: What I loved a lot more than like, oh, we're
Speaker 4: going to build this thing to sell it.
Speaker 5: It was never ever that conversation for us, you know.
Speaker 4: I think I started to realize after a couple of
Speaker 4: years in this thing, like you know, having never had
Speaker 4: any experience in like M and A and going public
Speaker 4: and all of that stuff that I you know, I
Speaker 4: didn't even know that that happened in the world.
Speaker 5: Like, you know, I was so naive back then.
Speaker 4: And as I started to like pay more attention to that,
Speaker 4: and I was, you know, starting to become friends with
Speaker 4: more founders, and I was starting to be in these
Speaker 4: rooms where people were talking about buying and selling companies,
Speaker 4: I was like, oh my god, that might be us
Speaker 4: one day, you know, And that was like an exciting
Speaker 4: like part of it. I mean, obviously, we sold it
Speaker 4: ten years after we built it, and you know, I
Speaker 4: would say in a year like after we had raised
Speaker 4: a bunch of money, obviously everything changed and you know,
Speaker 4: ultimately we raised seventy five million, and that now you
Speaker 4: have investors, and now you have that's that is what
Speaker 4: they're thinking about, and that you know, is good for
Speaker 4: them to be thinking about and moving the business in
Speaker 4: the right direction. But all of that was so new
Speaker 4: to me when I started. I Mean, this whole thing
Speaker 4: was really just started out of like a passion to
Speaker 4: like find my purpose in my life and to do
Speaker 4: something that I really loved to do, and I loved it.
Speaker 4: I mean I loved building that business and I loved
Speaker 4: every second of it. I was in that shop seven
Speaker 4: days a week. I mean I couldn't get enough of it.
Speaker 4: And that is so, I mean, so much more valuable
Speaker 4: than any dollar amount to have that, Like, I love
Speaker 4: what I'm doing and what I get to do every day,
Speaker 4: you know. So you know, again, once I realized like, oh,
Speaker 4: we might actually be able to sell this thing, like
Speaker 4: oh we're going to actually be able to make a
Speaker 4: lot of money, like that was really awesome, but just
Speaker 4: not you know what. I went into this thing thinking,
Speaker 4: I want.
Speaker 3: To ask you a question about fundraising. I have heard
Speaker 3: that vcs or investors don't still necessarily have a great
Speaker 3: grasp of the business model of rapid growth physical locations.
Speaker 3: And so there's sort of like investors who sort of
Speaker 3: like understand physical operation, and then there's vcs who probably
Speaker 3: often think in uh, you know, the idiom of software
Speaker 3: and five people in a room growing to something that
Speaker 3: a billion people can use, and that a lot of
Speaker 3: these sort of like modern concepts of physical growth locations,
Speaker 3: whether it's like a dry bar or a kava or
Speaker 3: something like that sort of exist in this middle space
Speaker 3: and investors don't have a great understanding of it. Was
Speaker 3: that the case for you when you first went out
Speaker 3: trying to explain to them your vision? And do you
Speaker 3: think investors these days like feel like they have a
Speaker 3: better handle on these types of startups?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, it's such as it feels the wild
Speaker 4: West right now, you know. I mean, I think retail
Speaker 4: is so like tough right now that I you know,
Speaker 4: I don't blame in you know, vcs and all these guys.
Speaker 4: It's like it's like you just don't know. It's so
Speaker 4: hard to predict what's going to happen right now. So
Speaker 4: it's such a funky time. And I actually had this.
Speaker 5: Thought not not long ago, like I wonder, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, part of the success of Drybar, I think
Speaker 4: was when we started it, we only wanted to raise
Speaker 4: like ten or fifteen million that first round, and you know,
Speaker 4: we ended up raising twenty five million because we went
Speaker 4: with private equity. We never went down the venture capital
Speaker 4: and they wanted to put in more as they do.
Speaker 5: And I think it was again.
Speaker 4: A very different time, and retail was very sleepy at
Speaker 4: that time, you know, in two thousand and nine when
Speaker 4: we when we first started Drybar, and then dry Bar
Speaker 4: you know, resonated and took off and we raised the
Speaker 4: first like three million with friends and family, which got
Speaker 4: us like to a couple of stores. But the buzz
Speaker 4: was there, and the pr was there, and women were
Speaker 4: like telling O their friends, and so we had that
Speaker 4: in our corner. And so by the time we were
Speaker 4: in these rooms with these private equity guys, granted you
Speaker 4: can picture the scene. It's like me and my big
Speaker 4: personality and then these guys in suits and they're.
Speaker 5: Like, what are you doing. You're blowing women's hair?
Speaker 4: Is you know, like and talk about puns and the
Speaker 4: ridiculous jokes so annoying, but they didn't quite get it yet,
Speaker 4: but they're.
Speaker 5: Like, you know, my wife's been talking about this thing,
Speaker 5: or my daughter's you know.
Speaker 4: There was that kind of general like in the air,
Speaker 4: we've heard about this and it seems to be getting
Speaker 4: a lot of attention, and you know, and then of
Speaker 4: course there were really conversations of like are you going
Speaker 4: to do nails and makeup too? Because you can and
Speaker 4: you're doing one hundred women a day, and why don't
Speaker 4: you do this, which of course, and I had to say, no,
Speaker 4: we do one thing, we do it really well. And
Speaker 4: that turned off a lot of investors who didn't want
Speaker 4: to get involved in drive Bart, which was like, no problem,
Speaker 4: but not the right fit, you know, So there was
Speaker 4: a lot of trepidation of how do you scale the
Speaker 4: thing when they didn't really understand it to begin with,
Speaker 4: you know, like and again back to our initial projections
Speaker 4: of doing like thirty to forty blowouts a day, when
Speaker 4: obviously we far outseated that, but.
Speaker 5: That was like we were in La and.
Speaker 4: Our second location, which is a franchise, was in Dallas,
Speaker 4: which obviously makes a lot of sense, but there was
Speaker 4: still a lot of like, how, you know, how we
Speaker 4: proved the concept? You know, how is this something that
Speaker 4: really works far and wide across the country. And then
Speaker 4: there was still kind of a question mark for a
Speaker 4: lot of people, my brother included, you know, who was
Speaker 4: always like, we got to prove the concept, We got
Speaker 4: to prove the concept. And I was like, I just
Speaker 4: think it works where women have hair, like real hair,
Speaker 4: this will work, and that, you know was.
Speaker 5: My very bullish and maybe naive idea.
Speaker 4: But we kept going and we knew we knew we
Speaker 4: had something really special and magical, and so we kept
Speaker 4: going until we found the right partner and they really
Speaker 4: understood our vision and didn't want to change it and
Speaker 4: wanted to, like you know, really lock arms with us
Speaker 4: and partner with us, which was Castanea, which is now
Speaker 4: known as Strung.
Speaker 5: And so yeah, that's not all went down.
Speaker 1: So I want to move on and talk about your
Speaker 1: new business, Squeeze, which I've seen described as sort of
Speaker 1: the dry bar for massages, and so I guess my
Speaker 1: first question is listening to you describe again like the
Speaker 1: grind of starting another business, why are you putting yourself
Speaker 1: through all of this again? And then secondly, how much
Speaker 1: overlap is there in terms of the business model between
Speaker 1: you know, Squeeze offering massages and the dry bar offering blowouts.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I am not in the grind,
Speaker 4: thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I'm fair enough.
Speaker 4: Because yeah, it's a great question, like no thanks, And
Speaker 4: it's funny when my brother this is really my brother's idea,
Speaker 4: and when he as you know, a bald dude who
Speaker 4: never got blowouts, his frustration in the market place was
Speaker 4: around massage because as someone who went to you know,
Speaker 4: the local chain which you know who I'm talking about,
Speaker 4: you know, and had a pretty bad experience from having
Speaker 4: to call every location to book and the decor was
Speaker 4: like eh, and the massage is very hit or missed,
Speaker 4: and the whole process was just so clunky. You know
Speaker 4: that he was so frustrated that there wasn't a great
Speaker 4: place for him to go for massage as someone who
Speaker 4: liked to get like a weekly massage, even though the
Speaker 4: price point.
Speaker 5: Was was good at you know, at a local chain.
Speaker 4: And then if, of course, if you went to a spa,
Speaker 4: you know, it was the same conundrum that you had
Speaker 4: a drive Bar. The spa would be really expensive, just
Speaker 4: like a high end hair salon was really expensive for
Speaker 4: blow up. So the similarities and the problem was pretty
Speaker 4: much the same. And so when we were like in
Speaker 4: the last couple of years of Drivebar, Michael really wanted
Speaker 4: to start this. Obviously, we didn't have a bandwidth for it,
Speaker 4: and I, to your question, did not want to go
Speaker 4: back into like the early stages of building a business.
Speaker 5: So I was like, Nope, not doing that.
Speaker 4: But you know, then we went to Brittany Driscoll, who's
Speaker 4: the CEO and our co founder and who ran marketing
Speaker 4: at dry Bar for several years, and she was on
Speaker 4: her way out of Drybar was like going to explore
Speaker 4: new opportunities, and we said, hey, you know, we have
Speaker 4: this idea for a massage concept because for the reasons
Speaker 4: I just mentioned, you know, we wanted something different and
Speaker 4: better that didn't exist, you know, which is always my
Speaker 4: advice to entrepreneurs is like, you do not have to
Speaker 4: reinvent the wheel. Like obviously we did not invent blowouts
Speaker 4: or massages. We've just created a much better experience and
Speaker 4: price point and a million other details around them that
Speaker 4: nobody's paying close attention to. And the big differentiator of Squeeze, though,
Speaker 4: is that there's an app that you even though it's
Speaker 4: a brick and mortar and you go in for a
Speaker 4: physical massage, there's an app that you book all your
Speaker 4: preferences on from like if you like a litter elotion
Speaker 4: and the type of music in this if you know,
Speaker 4: there's a very like intuitive body that you you know,
Speaker 4: press on like I like a lot of you know,
Speaker 4: pressure here but not here. And so by the time
Speaker 4: you walk into Squeeze, the therapist already knows all of
Speaker 4: this stuff because you've had to have you know, gone
Speaker 4: through the app and really filled out all your information
Speaker 4: and that that was a big undertaking. It took us
Speaker 4: over a year to build out this app that you
Speaker 4: know had all these bells and whistles. That was super
Speaker 4: intuitive and nobody else has this and it is the
Speaker 4: biggest differentiator of Squeeze. Not to mention, it's the same
Speaker 4: founding team as Drybar. My ex husband Cam did. All
Speaker 4: the creative are the same architect who built dry Bars.
Speaker 5: Everything is.
Speaker 4: It's the same team and it is the dry Bar
Speaker 4: of massage because it's it's exactly the same thinking as
Speaker 4: Dry Bar. It's like this is not being done well,
Speaker 4: We're going to go do it much better, you know.
Speaker 4: And if you if you read the reviews on Squeeze,
Speaker 4: they're all like they're literally all five stars. I mean,
Speaker 4: we've had such great experience, and so much of that
Speaker 4: comes from the learning from drive Bar, you know, especially
Speaker 4: Brittany having you know, lived this world with us for
Speaker 4: many years and you know, we knew what was working,
Speaker 4: what wasn't working, And to date, I think we've we're
Speaker 4: doing it completely franchise model where Drivebar was a little both,
Speaker 4: but we've sold over eighty locations across the country, so
Speaker 4: you'll start seeing them popping up all over the place
Speaker 4: in the next year or so.
Speaker 3: Speaking of those locations, that actually fits right into what
Speaker 3: I was going to ask next. You mentioned sort of
Speaker 3: generally Drybar you saw as being successful anywhere that women
Speaker 3: have hair, which is everywhere. But you must have thought,
Speaker 3: you know, specific about the types of locations, whether they're
Speaker 3: in high end malls or busy areas, that are really
Speaker 3: optimal for opening a location. These days, obviously there's all
Speaker 3: kinds of questions about what is even the future of
Speaker 3: offices and where and how are people going to work?
Speaker 3: What have you like seen in terms of our Where
Speaker 3: is your thinking in terms of selecting locations in the
Speaker 3: year twenty twenty three where you feel confident that it'll
Speaker 3: work at a time in which I think it's still
Speaker 3: very up in the ear even where people are going
Speaker 3: to be working.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's such a good question, and I you know,
Speaker 4: I think we're trying to figure that out right now too.
Speaker 4: I mean to go back in time a little bit.
Speaker 4: I mean with dry Bar, which I still kind of
Speaker 4: feel and I do just for the record, far be
Speaker 4: it for me to predict the future. But I really
Speaker 4: believe the pendulum is going to swing back to experiences.
Speaker 4: You know, I think people are desperately hungry for being
Speaker 4: out in the world with other people again and having experiences.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I think it's just taking a minute to get back
Speaker 5: to it.
Speaker 4: That said, with Drybar, it was like we realize very
Speaker 4: quickly that being like in you know, a woman's like
Speaker 4: daily routine, you know, like being near a grocery store,
Speaker 4: being near you know, her workout, or where she liked
Speaker 4: to shop and where she liked to have lunch or
Speaker 4: you know, we knew the importance of being in that
Speaker 4: mix of like your daily use and that was always
Speaker 4: the guiding light of where we put a drybar, like
Speaker 4: near and you know, in the right area.
Speaker 5: Which, by the way, can be really tricky.
Speaker 4: I mean we certainly experienced this the hard way that
Speaker 4: you could move. You could open a store in the
Speaker 4: right like mile radius, but if you were in the
Speaker 4: wrong shopping center on the wrong side of the street,
Speaker 4: that was, you would never know unless you were unless
Speaker 4: you tapped local knowledge to know that, Like it's really
Speaker 4: hard to park there, and nobody likes to go there
Speaker 4: because of the way the shopping center. Who knows you know,
Speaker 4: it's like from an out you know, when an outside,
Speaker 4: big corporate company comes in and it looks really pretty
Speaker 4: and the other stores are good, You're like, yeah, this looks.
Speaker 5: Great, you know.
Speaker 4: But unless you get that local knowledge, which again we
Speaker 4: have been burned on that before, you don't really understand
Speaker 4: the neighborhood and how it functions, you know, and how
Speaker 4: women really use it. So it's it's an important but
Speaker 4: small and often overlook nuance when you're when you're looking
Speaker 4: at real estate to make sure that you really understand,
Speaker 4: like where do people park?
Speaker 5: Is parking a total pain? You know? Is it? Is
Speaker 5: it easy to park? Is the is the location easy
Speaker 5: to access if you're in.
Speaker 4: A mall, which you know malls are such a dying
Speaker 4: dinosaur anyways as well, But you know all those factors,
Speaker 4: like we opened in Fashion Island mall in Orange County.
Speaker 1: So I've been to that one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know then that we are strategically placed
Speaker 4: near the parking lot.
Speaker 5: You know, it would not make sense for us to
Speaker 5: be like deep in the mall.
Speaker 4: For like you if you're like, oh, I'm popping in,
Speaker 4: I have to go over to Fashion Island, which is
Speaker 4: already could be a pain, which how is how busy
Speaker 4: that place is, you know, but like at least we're
Speaker 4: at the very tip, you know, we're near the Barnes
Speaker 4: and Noble. I don't know if that's still there where
Speaker 4: you're like, oh, I can just park and run into
Speaker 4: dry Bar, you know, and there's an old sail right there,
Speaker 4: and there's a whole foods and you know. So all
Speaker 4: of that was very strategic and how we always thought
Speaker 4: about our locations making it as easy as possible for
Speaker 4: women to access us, you know, and then for her
Speaker 4: to be able to do two or three other things.
Speaker 4: So dry Bar seamlessly fits into her day, which you
Speaker 4: know is similar thinking for Squeeze and you know, in
Speaker 4: any location, I mean any kind of business that we open,
Speaker 4: And it's tricky like when you're going into like New
Speaker 4: York City because it's obviously a different animal than like
Speaker 4: the suburbs. But even still, are we near a subway?
Speaker 4: Can like a bunch of women walk to us. Are
Speaker 4: we near where they're going for other stuff? And sometimes
Speaker 4: it's like we always said, we didn't we couldn't afford
Speaker 4: to be on Maine and Maine, but we could be
Speaker 4: on the little side street off Main Street, so we
Speaker 4: could afford the rent but still be close enough where
Speaker 4: she can easily pop over.
Speaker 1: What's been the biggest I guess noticeable difference between doing
Speaker 1: Squeeze in the current environment versus Dry Bar, you know,
Speaker 1: ten or twenty years ago, Like what has most markedly
Speaker 1: changed for you?
Speaker 4: I think the biggest thing is like is costs and
Speaker 4: like getting stuff, you know, for lack of a better word,
Speaker 4: to our stores, you know, real estate deals seem harder.
Speaker 4: The construction prices are so much higher than we were
Speaker 4: than they were when we started Dry Bar.
Speaker 5: Not always, but we could often go into a shopping.
Speaker 4: Center that had a hair full service hair salon because
Speaker 4: we would explain to them, listen, we're coming in and
Speaker 4: we're not going to take your lunch. Like, we're not
Speaker 4: doing cotton color, We're just doing blowouts. And if you're
Speaker 4: really smart, you'll leverage us, you know, and we'll send
Speaker 4: you clients, and they'll send us clients.
Speaker 5: You know, And a lot did and really got it.
Speaker 5: But you know, some landlords and some you know, tenants,
Speaker 5: if there was already a hair.
Speaker 4: Salon, which there usually was in most shopping centers, could
Speaker 4: easily block.
Speaker 5: Us from coming and the same. You know, it's true
Speaker 5: of Squeeze.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of massage concepts in a lot of places,
Speaker 4: albeit some of them aren't great, you know, but they're there,
Speaker 4: so that impedes us from coming there as well.
Speaker 5: So that is, you know, just a.
Speaker 4: Challenge that you know, anybody deals with you or if
Speaker 4: you're going into any kind of business that already exists.
Speaker 5: Which it did for Drybar as well as Squeeze.
Speaker 4: But you know, so you just have to get a
Speaker 4: little more creative with where you're going.
Speaker 3: I was gonna wrap it right there, but just real quickly.
Speaker 3: So do tenants of shopping centers and malls do they
Speaker 3: have stipulations frequently about the types of competitors or adjacent
Speaker 3: companies that can move in.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I'd never thought about that before.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, they totally do.
Speaker 4: I mean, and it definitely is not like one rule
Speaker 4: that it changes in my experience, it changes from center
Speaker 4: to center. And but yeah, I mean, especially when you
Speaker 4: think of like less probably in a mall, but and
Speaker 4: I don't have a ton of experience with malls, but
Speaker 4: in like a strip center shopping mall, they will have
Speaker 4: in there A lot of those tenants in their leases
Speaker 4: will have something that says you cannot another air slon
Speaker 4: cannot open in here.
Speaker 2: Makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: Ellie Webb, the author of the new book The Messy
Speaker 3: Truth How I sold my business for millions but almost
Speaker 3: lost myself. Thank you so much for coming on, odd Lass.
Speaker 2: That was great.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me. It was a fun conversation. I'ven't
Speaker 4: talked about this stuff in a long time.
Speaker 2: So awesome. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was great.
Speaker 2: That was really fun.
Speaker 3: Tracy, First of all, I mean, it's obvious when she
Speaker 3: says it, but like for example, at the end, it
Speaker 3: hadn't occurred to me that such things would be in
Speaker 3: a leases. That Okay, if you're going to open up
Speaker 3: a nail salon or a sneaker snore, a sneaker.
Speaker 1: Store, or a hit sneaker stores, sneaker snores, sneaker snores.
Speaker 3: Or a karate studio or whatever you see in strip malls,
Speaker 3: that you have some stipulation like you can't just open
Speaker 3: another one next door.
Speaker 2: But it makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. I think also for shopping malls, I
Speaker 1: think like the owner of the shopping mall wants differentiation
Speaker 1: and like variety, right, so they try to build that
Speaker 1: into a lot of their leases. No, that was really interesting.
Speaker 1: So it seems like Ali really kind of hit a
Speaker 1: sweet spot at that time period, where like she was
Speaker 1: offering a service rather than a good, and at a
Speaker 1: time when you know, brick and mortar retail was experiencing
Speaker 1: a downturn. We had that episode recently on dead malls
Speaker 1: and commercial real estate and in two thousand and nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was really the era of the dead mall in
Speaker 1: competition from online shopping and things like that. So she
Speaker 1: was able to identify something that people would still pay
Speaker 1: for and have to go to to receive in person.
Speaker 1: And then secondly, I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: I found really interesting was the idea of having that
Speaker 1: flexible workforce. Yeah, and you know, offering stylists the chance
Speaker 1: to come in for two or four hours versus a
Speaker 1: full time position. So it feels like she also tapped
Speaker 1: into that sort of upswell of I guess gig work,
Speaker 1: which was also just beginning at that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, Like I said, you know, it really felt like
Speaker 3: they sort of nailed a huge aspect of what I
Speaker 3: think of is that even though I have never been
Speaker 3: in a dry bar, my intuition sense of it. I
Speaker 3: guess it's strong enough that I associated one of those
Speaker 3: like defining brands of the twenty tens economy. So many
Speaker 3: interesting details. I mean, just in you mentioned that aspect
Speaker 3: of the labor force, and I feel like what Ali
Speaker 3: was dealing with early on, it's probably so many people
Speaker 3: are dealing with in the last few years ago. Now,
Speaker 3: how do you hire people that are going to maintain
Speaker 3: the quality that you expect for your outward facing quality,
Speaker 3: that are going to stick around, that are going to
Speaker 3: maintain the brand, Like it felt like she had to
Speaker 3: deal with a lot of those things, like from the
Speaker 3: beginning in a way in which many business operators probably
Speaker 3: never really struggled with that up until maybe year twenty
Speaker 3: twenty or twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and it'll be interesting to see her sort of
Speaker 1: replicate it in the massage market as well, like where
Speaker 1: do you get all the excuses from?
Speaker 3: I also really like that point, and maybe we should
Speaker 3: do an episode on this at some point, like the
Speaker 3: art of location selections for a brand, you know, and
Speaker 3: the idea of like yeah, when she said it makes
Speaker 3: ton of sense, like if the ideas you're going to
Speaker 3: be a convenient stop for women to get a blowout.
Speaker 3: Then you want to be on the perimeter of the mall,
Speaker 3: not the inside of the mall. If you're at the
Speaker 3: inside of the mall, it obviates the whole thing. But
Speaker 3: you know, in the idea of like proximity to parking,
Speaker 3: I think our friend who've had on, Patrick McKenzie, has
Speaker 3: talked about this a couple of times with banks that
Speaker 3: like that is a big thing in terms of you
Speaker 3: can have two locations that look very similar, but if
Speaker 3: one is not on the right corner and the right way,
Speaker 3: it's going to fail. And so maybe we sh do an
Speaker 3: episode on how it would talk to it like a
Speaker 3: commercial real estate broker about finding good locations.
Speaker 1: Oh, that would be so interesting. Yeah, and then we
Speaker 1: should go to strip malls and like observe in real
Speaker 1: life totally. I would do that. Okay, shall we leave
Speaker 1: it there.
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 1: This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart.
Speaker 3: Follow our guest Ellieweb on Instagram. She's at Ellie Webb
Speaker 3: and check out her new book, The Messy Truth How
Speaker 3: He sold My business for millions but almost lost myself.
Speaker 3: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, Dashel Bennett
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