How I Built 5 Multi-Million Dollar Companies: Marcia Kilgore

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApZZxvw0muo

quick one the D of CEO live my live show my live Reincarnation of this podcast is coming on tour and it's coming to a city near you there's a link in the description below put your email address in and I will email you when tickets go on sale can't wait to see you you know when you have that kind of experience early you grow up very fast and you know what's important and you prioritize so another deep question all these deep questions yeah okay so did you feel like a bit of a fraud no no I totally thought I knew what I was doing people don't do that they when you're 20 people came back Madonna and um Thurman and [Music] Oprah Marcia Kilgore I can't actually believe what you're about to hear I can't actually believe that one human being could have achieved that many successful business exits back toback she's built companies like soap and Glory like Bliss Beauty which he's building at the moment and these companies have sold for tens and hundreds of millions they've made hundreds of millions in annual revenue and the remarkable thing is she's not just done it once she's not just done it twice not three times not four times she's done it five times and I sat here with her trying to figure out why her what was it about Marcia that made her achieve such tremendous things in her life and I think we finally got there I think we finally found the answer and is it something that you can replicate a lot of it is and I think that's what makes this podcast today so interesting so without further Ado I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the dire of a CEO I hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself there is so much that makes you unique so much and sometimes I think and I think I'm guilty of this to some degree too we don't always see ourselves as being unique because we're inside of our minds and we're you know we're behaving in the way that feels natural to us but when I look at your your story and the decisions you've made since you were very very young it's so clear to me that there's something so different about many things that are so different about you and I want to kind of get to the root of that what is the foundation of that difference what was it what was The Cauldron the experience

that created the person you went on to become for the following you know wow that's starting with a very very deep question isn't it it is yeah yeah I mean I think that um I grew up in a a very small town um and a and a small city in Canada that time was you know relatively simple and I always had a hunger to learn more and read more and find out more and kind of knew that I didn't really fit in in a small city um so very early on I kind of started to think well what can I do and how can I get out of here but I didn't have much guidance so my father died early and my mom was not necessarily someone who would help me you know look at universities for instance or say hey you should really your grades are really great why don't you study and do this or that CU she had never done it herself so she um no one really in my family guided me and at that point there weren't really University counselors or anyone doing that job in in high schools at least in in Canada so I think for me uh I realized quite early probably when I was a teenager that I just needed more stimulation and I needed more than what was there just to you know feel fulfilled and and keep my curiosity going those teenage years you have a lot of experiences and apparently what happens during your teenage years because your brain is forming in a very different way and it's starting to sort of solidify right um those kinds of experience really stick with you through your whole life and I remember having several part-time jobs when I was a teenager um all you know simultaneously while going to high school and never really finding a job where I thought that the person in charge of the business was doing it well so I worked at a gym for instance and I always thought they could do it so much better if they were just doing this that and the other thing I taught aerobics classes and I thought aerobics was so boring the way it was done and tried to do it you know in a very different way so it was more fun for the people who came and just always trying to improve the experience because I was in quite a mediocre setting lovely setting but you know very average very uh you know middle Canada um and so that was probably a bit of the a bit of the stimulation on that point though that

that sort of philosophy or even the thought that you could make something better that's that's a point of difference a lot of people don't have where did where did that come from in you so early that if something isn't good enough that you had the power within yourself to do something about it because I think most people will go through life just accepting things as they are that would be just terribly depressing wouldn't it I guess if you can conect conect the dots and see your way to something that might be more elevating for your mind and then for others or make something a little bit more fun um you can go deep into the childhood stuff right uh and and just think about I mean there were situations in my childhood and it happens to a lot of people so I'm might you know by no means unique in this respect but where for instance and this would probably be more girls than boys but at some point in every girl's existence in school you become the unpopular one how you feel maybe so much an outsider when suddenly you're out and how painful that can be I think probably in my experience when I was suddenly not cool anymore probably was really painful for me because I also feel things quite acutely so trying also to think well if other people feel left out how can you make them feel like they're more a part of something and so most of the businesses that I create are are very Democratic um Bliss even which was my spa that I created in in New York I mean we had everybody coming in from like mad and um Thurman and Oprah right but then the 12-year-old kids who had chronic acne and you know their moms would bring them in to have facials we treated everybody exactly the same way um I think one of my favorite memories from that was when I was actually giving a facial to one of these 12-year-old kids that her mom had brought her from Boston and um Thurman was in the locker room at the same time and helped her open her locker so she comes into my treatment room and goes oh my Thurman just helped me unlock my Locker it was so cute because you know everybody was the same and that makes me feel great I think probably some of that experience as a child not feeling equal being left out maybe a little bit we we after my father passed away we were not necessarily poor

or you know but not certainly not comfortable in any way shape or form um at one point we moved back to a small town and we kind of lived on the wrong side of the tracks if there was a wrong side of the tracks we lived on the wrong side of the tracks in this very small town where my mother's family was from so you kind of felt like you weren't quite as good as everyone else but that wasn't fair and so very likely the idea of this democratization of the good stuff is probably comes from that but I'm sure you could grab any therapist anywhere and they would give you a different version of it the passing of your father seems to be quite a PO point you you seem to refer to it as like before and after how life was somewhat different and um after your father passed away um the requirement for you to develop like a real sense of Independence seems to sort of really come through I think I read that you got you had three part-time jobs at one point yeah yeah well I had to I mean my mother was a secretary so she didn't have a you know huge income I at the time I was probably 11 right so I didn't ask her hey do we have any money in the bank you don't really ask those kinds of questions after the the death of uh of your parent um but I assumed just from the way that my mother you know acted that we weren't exactly stable or you know financially well off so being I think the youngest but yet potentially the most responsible of the three um sisters I kind of felt like I had to help and maybe help in order for her to feel better herself have you ever watched Jim Carrey he he actually talks about I mean of course you've watched Jim Carrey but there's an interview that he gives where he talks about his mother actually suffered from tremendous depression and he learned to be funny because he wanted her to laugh and he wanted to see her feel good and I know there is something about okay I'm going to have a paper wrote and I'm going to you know be a personal trainer or teach aerobics and I'm going to work as a waitress even though I'm not necessarily old enough to serve alcohol in this establishment whatever it was I would just do it because I want I wanted to to take the stress off of her I didn't want her to think if I wanted you know a car

or whatever it was that she was going to have to pay for it because I knew it was already quite stressful for her to just pay the rent so I think you know you just do whatever is expected of you and and was fine right it's great gives it's a skill it's like a gift in a way you can look at it and just think well I developed that skill from 10,000 hours a practice maybe over a year or two and uh it was never hard for me to work again you mentioned the gym though personal training oh yeah so when I moved to New York it's a long story but I then moved to New York when I was 18 after um my 12th grade and I got accepted to Columbia University and I was supposed to go but I didn't have any money and my sister who lived in New York said I'll help you out with your tuition but then she had a little snafu with her income that year it was like a tax thing or whatever you know again no big deal and so I was in New York and I had no no money to go to university and it was too late because I was Canadian to get a foreign student loan so I decided to use the only skill that I had when I was and I know you can tell this about me but I was a bodybuilder I know it's kind of hard to see now but I was I was like a middleweight bodyb building Champion when I was a teenager you know between the three part-time jobs I would then go to the gym at night and you know where did that come from because that's that is a that takes a degree of dare I say it dedication to say the least yeah it was it was random I think it was again my sister started dating this guy whose brother owned a bodybuilding gym and he said to me hey you should come down to the gym because I was a long-distance Runner and you know just to kind of let off steam I think I just love to always go running and so he said oh you should come down Miss Canada at the time like Miss Canada lightweight or featherweight or whatever she she worked out there and so she put me through the paces and gave me a routine and all this kind of stuff and I just went because it was something do but even then though a lot of people go to the gym they train whatever two days three days a week for you to have gone from just walking in the door to becoming a like a junior bodybuilding Champion or something you know I suppose again if you like had a therapist come

in and say oh why would you do that it probably to give some kind of semblance control and the ability to achieve something you know to my life which at the time I'm a teenager in a high school in the Melissa schatan school was not so hard for me yeah so what else am I going to do sense of like purpose I guess and yeah and and to have that discipline you also have control right so if you can control your body then you could probably control other things and if you can achieve things with seeing how far you can take it then you know it just adds to I guess the the challenge you like a bit of a challenge I do I love challenge I also really love working out and I'm I'm I would go to the gym every single day and I I I you know what it was I had um I sat here with a entrepreneur and she um is very well known she's got millions of followers online for B for basically being a bodybuilder she describes herself as a bodybuilder she doesn't you know she's um very lean bodybuilder let's say but um and she told me that when she was in school she was outcasted a little bit and she would eat her like lunch in the the toilets her name's Chrissy cheller um and her go her going to the gym was in some respects an escape from all of that it was like her way of yeah I think it gave her Control building herself back just yeah if you think about physically what's happening right she's building herself back up yeah yeah and when you start talking about sort of being excluded from the the cool kids and stuff and then that your bodybuilding became a big sort of you know feature in your life at that age I wondered if there was a link or um because it is is an extreme thing it's requires a level of persistence and a and an okayness with being uncomfortable physically uncomfortable that you know what the gym was also full of adults and I think I was a young adult so I probably had more of a mindset of an adult early I'm not I'm not like the most intelligent human being on you know on the Earth but I'm probably slightly more intellectual than most of the people that I was in school with so I found my friends in a an environment where there were people working out and being healthy and just older and so I think that probably had something to do with it too you had

people to talk to there that you could kind of connect to versus the teenagers who maybe were going through their teenage things I'd say also and I've had this conversation with you know if you've experienced a death in your family early or if you've had a parent or a sibling who's uh you know chronically ill or handicapped you see life in a very different way right so if your father dies when you're 11 and you're in a high school with a group of girls and they're all very catty and you just think really you're not going there is not interesting to be part of that kind of crowd you don't want to talk about those kinds of things they're not important and you know it because you've been through something profound very early on so it's hard to connect to people who haven't like you know when you have that kind of experience early you grow up very fast and you know what's important and you prioritize so it's hard to find anyone to relate to if you have a bunch of teenagers who haven't right are you saying that you didn't fit in you didn't think fitted into that I I don't have any friends from high school do you yeah okay so did you fit in no yeah so yeah it probably didn't fit in I mean didn't feel like an outcast in any way shape or form but I had not much to talk to them about right what they were what they wanted to talk about at that time just wasn't that interesting to me so whether or not I was fitting in or not I just didn't have the same interests I guess um you know as as the other kids who were maybe able to grow up at a normal Pace because of you know their normal existence so take me back then so you you get the place at Colombia yeah I got a place at Columbia and then it didn't work out that year and I thought oh maybe I'll save up and I'll go next year but I have to here I am in New York I have $300 right and my mom for I was the third of three girls and the two uh older ones were a bit of a handful right so she gave me for my grade 12 graduation present like a backpack that was also suitcase and I was I was actually the really disciplined helpful one but I think she had just had it like by then she'd been through the death of my dad and then my my older sister who had moved away quite early and then my middle sister who you know was um I

wouldn't say complicated but she'd been in a couple of car accidents like it was exhausting for my mother so by the time I was done High School I think she was just like see you and I don't blame her right single mom three girls you must be like up to here so she gave me this back and I moved and I actually moved in with my sister who was living in New York and um and I needed to work because I had to you know it was like well here I am I'm not going back to Saskatchewan and so I had to figure out what to do and the only skill I had at the time was like the body and so I got a a gym membership at this place called Better Bodies which was on 19th Street between 5ifth and 6th and and it was the place where kind of everybody who was anybody you know back then like bodybuilding had started to kind of be a thing you know everybody was talking about Arnold I think Pumping Iron had kind of maybe just come out I this was way before Arnold was a governor and um and so I went to the gym and John CLA V vanam worked out there and his wife gladus Portuguese who was also this famous bodybuilder and then all the kind of cool film directors and fashion designers what everybody went to this gym however they were quite new to it I had been like bodybuilding by then for three years or four years maybe even and so I looked great right and so did jeanclaude and so did glattus the rest of them not yet so I would have people come to me and I'm 18 right and say Hey I want to you know I want to look like you because I wasn't really bulky I looked like an Olympic Athlete and so they wanted how I looked yeah yeah and so I charged them $5 or $20 an hour and do personal training which you know back then for an 18-year-old it was a CU minimum wage was probably 350 so I thought oh this is amazing and so I became a personal trainer to you know a lot of kind of celebs and they would then send me to their friend and refer me to this person or that person and so it started out that way but I kind of realized working in the gym for 15 bucks an hour was not going to pay my rent and or anything else and probably was not that sustainable over the long term and I had no business skills as such but I knew what good good service was like cuz with common sense you know

how you want to be treated and you know how you would want to show up and how you want to treat your customer and how you try to make sure that they enjoy their experience so that they have you back now personal training is one of those things where most people who need a personal trainer hate exercise otherwise you wouldn't really need a personal trainer so there was a lot of thought that went into like the I would I guess you talk about it now as like a loyalty mechanic oh yeah yeah like loyal yeah how can I get them to make sure they don't cancel right because they hate this otherwise I wouldn't be coming yeah I have to make sure that this whole experience they just looking forward to it so that every you know Tuesday and Thursday or whatever I'm showing up and making my 40 bucks otherwise I wouldn't be able to pay my rent um so I think the early seeds of how do you get someone to come back and and how do you give service that so above and and beyond that there's nobody else who will try this hard it was planted what did you learn about loyalty and customer attention you got to always be pleasant right I mean you have to be patient you have to be totally absolutely focused on your customer right so it was about them it was not about me and I think there are a lot of people who slip into friend mode right or start to kind of talk about their problems it's like no one is paying you to listen to your problems so whether you are a personal trainer or giving a facial or waxing somebody's legs or or whatever it is nobody wants to hear about your stuff that's not why they're paying right you're there to focus on them and no one gets enough attention maybe some people get enough attention but most people don't get enough attention they don't have someone who really listens to them right all rushing around all the time so even to just be there doing whatever it is you're doing taking them through their Paces running them up flights of stairs I mean I took people jogging right around Manhattan wow nine times a day I was fit you went on to start Bliss yes so tell me from running around Manhattan nine times a day running upstairs and what in the summer especially my skin got quite bad and it had never been great you know through my teenage years everybody has a little bit of you know

acne etc etc but mine I'd never quite solved it and i' bought a lot of products to try and solve it and I actually personally trained somebody who worked at one of the hot you know skincare brands at the time he gave me everything and nothing really worked um um and so I thought one summer in the summer when you're a personal trainer in New York all of your clients generally will go to The Hamptons and so for me that was like two months without income right no one pays you when they're not working out so I thought I can either go to The Hamptons and be captive in somebody's house because you then become kind of like people would drag you to the beach and say oh here's my personal train and you just it was not a good Dynamic for somebody like me who does not it's freedom and I want freedom yeah so I decided I found this skin care uh it was it was like a school and I decided to take this crash course in how to you know fix your own skin and it was actually how to do facials but I was taking it for myself and then I realized I really loved it and then I convinced my very trusting and I am so grateful to them but personal training clients these were you know some a names and they let me name drop they they let me practice on them name like at the time oh yeah I've had yeah yeah yeah yeah but when I very very early on it was more like Paul Simon and Carrie fiser so I mean everybody everybody was anybody kind of came in and and let me do their face and it was a real it was like a real gift to be trusted with people who relied on their faces for their work early stage your own location in manhatt well it started with people coming to my to my apartment oh okay yeah so I would personally train people by running all over Manhattan during the day and then at night I because my sister had some connections with the modeling agent uh modeling industry let's just say she had some um Bookers who had some other models who had terrible skin right and so they would send these models to me because I was known I guess I mean I didn't even have a reputation for knowing what I was doing but and they would come to my apartment in the East Village and literally lie on the floor did you feel like a bit a bit of of a fraud in those early days when you were like no no I

totally thought I knew what I was doing okay yeah because I have worked so hard right so I knew the steps of a facial and I had never had a facial somewhere where it was any different than what I was doing and I knew that I was more you know where a normal facial would take an hour I would spend two and a half on somebody so I knew that if I didn't necessarily have the best technique I was going to try harder sure and so I'd make up for it that way people came back and then they sent me all their friends and then they sent me all their friends and then suddenly you know it was like a social club you couldn't get people out of the house so I'd have to get up at 5:00 a.m. to go do a personal training session with somebody someone would have come over for a facial at 8:00 at night the night before I finished them at 10:30 and then they'd want to chat and it was like I got to get an office because I got to get these people out of here we can't cuz you're kind of stuck in your apartment and it's hard to then get the client to then go when they're in your house there seems to be a theme emerging here which is I mean you've only just told me about two kind of professional Pursuits the personal training and now the the the facial business as it started um but you're re you seem as some as to be someone that's really remarkable at customer experience because the fact that you can't get them out your house um and that your you know these personal training clients are you know letting me do yeah letting me experiment on them with wax and things like that that's like a really underrated thing I mean what we're talking about there is fundamentally like sales sales I guess and Trust yeah yeah which I think is part of sales right like trust is a super important part of being a you know and you and sales you know if you're selling it sounds bad I know doesn't it yeah because I I mean I hate the idea of sales but I love selling yeah but I couldn't sell something if I didn't think it was great right don't ask me to sell something I don't love because I can't do it but if I love something I could sell it to anybody so I guess it's more about aligning your like moral conviction with whatever it is that you are then selling do you do you consider yourself a

salesperson well would I say I'm a salesperson that's a really hard so without the stigma yeah let's remove the stigma well everything is sales right exactly yeah you just have to be look you got to be pleasant right unless you're some kind of Genius that people need to have around the world gets to choose who they're interacting with and so if you want in in any area of your life right if you want to have like great team members in your office you better be pleasant to be around or they're not they're not going to stay if you want to you know meet with an editor or a journalist or who are they going to write about probably the people hey yes everybody's got an interesting story but those who they like are probably going to get a little further than those who are [ __ ] right interesting yeah do you consider yourself a salesperson yeah yeah yeah but without you I have the same allergic reaction to the term where I'm like forcing because we're not we're not forcing things upon people that we don't believe in no you're helping them find what they probably would have bought but find the right one yeah CS is persuasion it's body language it's communication it's the way you know the passion you have for what you was talking about and and it's delivering information in a way that helps somebody make a choice without feeling stressed right because generally I think if you if you are trying to get someone to try something right but you're pushing it in the wrong way that isn't aligning with what they need to hear about it then that is a failed sale yeah yes because actually you should be listening and if they don't think you're objective right and this is one of the things that I think has been most successful with my longest standing clients from my previous company was they knew that I would come there and I would tell them when our work was bad yeah so I would say don't do this it's a waste it's going to waste your money yes but these things here I actually think are going to work really well so the minute I would say but these things here they'd go yes yeah because they felt I was trust right exactly yeah which is sort of number one isn't it it's like worse for us better for you yeah yeah

and if people feel like you're aligned with them doing better which is what you always should be anyway because that's just listening to the customer and giving I mean this so basic right is back to the basics of you listen to them and you give them what they're asking for and that's sales actually so if you they'll tell you any customer will tell you what they want the customers always know what they want though no no definitely not right somebody said to me and and they weren't talking about customers they were talking about buyers at department stores so the people who are employed by department stores to purchase the merchandise that then get sold onto customers and he said buyers department store buyers are experts at yesterday right and to some extent it's true they look at their data from you know before and so of course if you look at the world the percentage of uh people who are Visionary enough to think about something new that people might want it's probably quite a small percentage and all the rest of the people think in a different way and you know provide a lot of value to the world in different ways but there are select few I suppose who think of the new stuff and like that's our job and then of course you have to get people to come with you which is difficult sometimes they don't necessarily see it so you've got to figure out how to describe to them whether that's by pictures or words or however else that's the sales part right yeah I suppose so it's also a lot of psychology I mean there's so many barriers right there I mean have you ever I mean do you read behavioral economics behavioral economics um yes I've read like the psychology of money which I think is pretty much behavioral economics and then i' I did a course on psychology and uh I've most of my books in there are psychology books but there's so many fascinating books like by Dan arieli or Richard tlor or Daniel conman and they they won you know Nobel prizes for the behavioral economics which is the opposite kind of of economics and the theories of Economics don't include human beings and their behavior and their emotions so behavioral economics is all about how the emotions that we have interact with uh you know with economics to create different U outcomes

from buying decisions that would normally be expected people will rationalize things BAS B on what they've done before yeah right so this mental framework around old things so if you're trying to create something new very often you have to relate it to something existing and people can more easily understand what you're talking about because you can say oh it's like this yeah but da d da d da but very often it's hard for people if they don't have a mental framework or a mental model of how something already works yeah you come in with something really radical and disruptive they don't know where to place it no and so it it's really so much easier like with Pewdiepie right we're a buyer Club in England apparently people don't know what a buyer Club is in America everybody knows what a Buyers Club is right because there's uh Sam's Club and there's uh Costco which isn't the same uh in England as it is in America Costco in America has like the highest household income per customer yeah because people just pull up in their Range Rover and buy you know they sell diamonds at Costco right oh but it's always a deal so beauty pie right is kind of like Costco but for luxury cosmetics and skincare and wellness products and so we Source from all these fantastic labs and we get the highest quality stuff and then people can buy it if you're a member of the club you buy it cheaper than wholesale but people in England don't know the concept so you have to think well it's kind of like Netflix right but but then you have to actually pay for your product so it's not really like Netflix so it's kind of like you know you have to you're always doing this mental model so that people can understand it really EAS understanding by comparison yeah yeah yeah so you with bliss you start this business you move into your own location and then talk to talk to me about the the experience of cuz that was your first real kind of like business business employees yes how was that and scaling that business until the point when it was it was acquired for yeah yeah so I mean it was a fantastic experience we started quite small I had a tiny place called let's face it before I had Bliss and I had probably five employees three rooms so

we had a manicurist we had a receptionist we had a couple of other facialists on certain shifts we'd have a massage therapist come in somebody did the laundry that wasn't me that was you know I used to have to take the laundry out on Avenue B I would have to like carry these huge bags of laundry from the facials to a Avenue a and like do the laundry at night which was also really crazy if you think back you could never do this if you were older this is definitely get a 19 20 year-olds gig to be working all day and then going doing laundry on Avenue a in 7th Street in you know all night to get the towels done but um yeah I opened let's face it first and had you know probably five six seven employees and it was great because it was small enough for me to handle had like I had no experience with employees so just understanding the operations of a business and scheduling and I mean I really rate doing it versus learning about it and of course I never learned about it so I never learned how to go structure a business I never ended up in business school um I just did it and then I saw the patterns along the way of what goes wrong when you do this or what you should look out for and and especially a lot of patterns with people I think that you know being able to recognize patterns is a part of either an emotional intelligence or just some it's a type of intelligence that's been very helpful and the older you get the faster you recognize the patterns because you've just been around for longer and you can see also I'm sure you've seen this types of people yeah yeah yeah so you know that type of person and you kind of can almost sus people out after you've spent 10 minutes with them you kind of know what to expect or it's kind of what you're describing earli but like understanding something by comparison so I have the same thing now in business where you and you Des we talking about there as like you've done more experiments when you get older so yeah you can kind of predict the outcome right now that type of person behaves in that type of way when you notice this happening it's probably because of this and it ends like this so you go [ __ ] that exactly that it's like oh no here we go but also I think there's a I mean there's a

beauty of having it happen to you over and over and over again because you realize oh here we go again when this person does that thing and it ends like this oh the last time it ended like this well I hired this person it ended like and it's fine yeah and so you don't panic as much right when you're younger and you lose people who were working for you in your business you think the world is going to end and then you know very often it's just different when you hire somebody else right and and usually uh you the the new person will bring something completely additive to the table yeah and so it's actually a good thing but it takes a long time to get to that point where when someone's quitting you're going great see you it isn't like excruciatingly or or that you lose sleep over it you know I rarely will lose sleep anymore if if uh someone is going because you always also think if they're not really thrilled to be here and and working like at top level then probably they'll be happier somewhere else and and that means more happiness will also come into that spot and when you're young in business the story you tell yourself about what that person quitting means is just deeply illogical and riddled with like fear and emotion yes and it's about you it's it's personal yes instead of it being about them yes and uh but when you get older and you see these good people go and you know come and go you realize that it is what it is it's unavoidable system isn't it yeah it's not it's not a fight you could have ever win no company has ever managed to keep 100% of their employees for a sustained period of time so um so what what how did you get to that point to exiting the business okay so well at Bliss so we we launched Bliss in I think July of 2000 oh sorry 1996 so we opened I had three treatment rooms before that in my little place called let's face it and I opened I think nine treatment rooms and then we put a nap room in in the next place which was cob right and you know back in the '90s we didn't have there wasn't social media there was no way to really get the word out fast unless you had an article in a magazine and because really that really like moved the needle oh my it was a completely different moment now you get a full page in the New York Times right you get traffic to your website for a

day yeah nothing no nothing because it's so spliced up right everything is so temporary back then you got an article in vog and your phone rang for 18 months [ __ ] yeah it was so much easier however you had to be good enough to get an article in Vogue so there were a million people doing what you did but you had to make sure that the experience that you were offering was cool enough beautiful enough desirable that all of your people were trained well that the results were good etc etc and so we were great right we gave great great service can I ask you a question on that do you think service was better back in those days because there was less ability to because what you said there is like you had to to be good enough to get on those very few big big stages whereas these days you can kind of [ __ ] products and [ __ ] people can pay to be seen much easier than they probably could have back then I'm guessing and get an endorsement from a from a Vogue yeah um so is it well it's not sustainable though is it how many times can you pay if actually people don't come back more than once and Word of Mouth then becomes your you know starts to bring tell your business it's still the same it's all the same like today is the same it's just split into different stuff but if you can't keep that customer for more than one two three transactions you might as well go home yeah yeah yeah so you numit yeah you got to figure it out at the beginning like what is going to be so much better how is going to be that much better how are you going to deliver it consistently right make sure that she is never or he is never disappoint or they are never right disappointed and you you have to look at I mean if you look at acronyms right this LTV to CAC stuff which I hate thinking of it that way but cuz it's humans right it's like well how many transactions is this person going to come back for 3 years and be a loyal customer and order stuff from you six times a year or are they going to order once and go H like it has to be pretty compelling where'd you start with h and my recommendation as I think they have a starter box on the website where you can get a sample of all the products you might not like some of the products I don't love all of the products I'm going to be completely honest with you I

don't but the ones that I do love I could now not live without and for me my my starting point was the mix Berry RTD didn't really like mixing protein powders before um so I when they had a a ready to drink drink I went for that and secondly the brand new protein powder which I've talked about a couple of times in this podcast now 100 odd calories in total 26 of your vitamins and nutrients and it tastes like a delicious smoothie one might get from some fast food establishment but without all the crap in it give it a shot I don't think you'll regret it when you look back at why you were successful in that business is it because of that attention to detail oh yeah in Bliss oh my God yes how extreme are you so extreme extreme extreme extreme I mean everything from how you laid on that table to what the sheets smelled like to how you bolstered their knees so that the backs of their heels when they were lying for a facial for 60 Minutes the backs of their heels wouldn't ache because their knees were elevated the right way to the wax that you put on their hands to how much you massage them to the responses that you would give and we trained everybody in terms of the customer says this it's all about them right it's about making them feel good not only you know their face their body whatever you're treating but mentally right it's not about you there are no complaints you don't whine about anything it's all about making them thrilled feel great about themselves look great they should walk out of there feeling like we had literally I think the Testament to it when you think back is crazy loyalty so people would come in for their facials and say they came in on Tuesday night at 7:00 evenings of course were always booked we closed at 10:00 but so you only have like a 6:30 to 8 or 8 to 9:30 or you know you kind of back it out usually an hour and a half for a facial so really there were only two evening slots unless you left work early and then there were three evening slots 10 rooms that means you got 30 people in in the evening other people they want to come in they got to like make an excuse to their boss and come during their day right or take a day off work come for their facial which people actually did but people would

book their spot every month for 2 years right so that they wouldn't miss it and if they had to change they would call and say could you swap me with somebody else because I don't want to miss it or they would have a friend book a different slot and then they would swap with their friend so we had a waiting list of people who just wanted to come in and we were booked every day all day for like probably a year in advance for those those T treatment rooms um but we would keep a waiting list and if we didn't get people in now this is the day no email right okay there was not Emil was email I thought you got no emails one day I was like no there were no emails yeah so you had the phone and you had your computer booking system sure but you couldn't just mass email everybody so we would literally keep a list of people who were waiting for appointments and at the end of each day if we didn't get them in on a cancellation we call every single one and apologize and then tell so at 7:00 somebody would start the story calls we call them the story calls and you would just call whose idea was that me so M my you have clearly very very high standards yes for for detail yeah how do you police that amongst people that might not have the same high standards well they're not my people so you'd fire them well they would probably be better elsewhere where their standards were more aligned with the business that they were working for I mean bureaucratic like well I mean you you hire people and then you see if they can operate in your I mean look if you're the Olympic hockey team and you've got a goalie Who's terrible they can't stay or you're not going to win are you so it's not about firing it's like is this a team member who belongs on this team yeah fire I guess you would say yes you would fire them you would try how uncompromising were you about the standards very uncompromising I mean we also wrote thank you notes right so every person who came in for a treatment whether it was an eyebrow wax or a manicure or a facial or a massage the person who did that treatment had to write a thank you note and it got posted out that night if you weren't uncompromising about those standards those little thank you notes that apologies you know for the waiting

list well then they knew we were still thinking about them right so they thought I have a chance they haven't forgotten about me and we were grateful that they were waiting to come in and pay us money I mean they've giving you a paycheck aren't they do you think you'd be sat here now if you hadn't been uncompromising with the standards in Bliss all those years ago in 1996 thank you know the answer to that question question of course I wouldn't cuz it you know it follows yeah compounds you just know what good looks like and then you know what people respond to and that people want to be treated you know with respect and you know with gratitude right you're a customer you're handing over your hard earned money to somebody they better be grateful and that also keeps you going every day right just there's so much science about gratitude and how just starting your day with thinking wow I'm so lucky right I'm thinking about those things that you're lucky to have I think I've always operated businesses with that idea of I am grateful that people come to me to buy something or they trust me with their face right or they'll get up at 7 o'clock in the morning and pay me $40 to teach them in aerobics class in their living room I mean they could be they could be sponsoring so many other people but they're sponsoring me and isn't that so generous of them if I were to ask you on that um if I were to ask you and this is tough to do in hindsight but I think we're all capable of doing it in that period of your life and that those early moments and really throughout your career what is it about you that made you successful I mean I've picked up on one which is really high standards the other one I've picked up on I picked up on the minute you walk through the door which is you're just a very pleasant human being and I'm like all of these things if you if they compound over like 30 years you're going to get to a really good place but is there anything else within you know some people are Visionaries they are you know whatever is there anything else where you say do you know what that's probably a trait of me that made me successful yeah I I connect the dots okay in new ways so that if that were to be kind of my thing yeah it's about um have you read the book it's called Originals by Adam Grant

yes I'm there yeah yeah so someone gave it to me actually the art teacher and my son school gave it to me and said this sounds like you and I read it and I was like oh you know don't you think you're special yeah yeah and then and then you read a book and you're like nope I'm not special because everybody he's he's got it down like every chapter was like oh yeah this is me oh yes this is me this is me and um he talks about in the book about how uh you become an expert in your area right so you you are very deep in expertise in one particular area but then you're very curious about all this other stuff which is me I scan everything right whether or not I'm really interested in it I got newsletters coming out of my eyeballs and I just kind of scan I'll click on things and sometimes I'll just force myself to read something that I have no interest in at all just because there might be something in there um and and I think from doing that I find new ideas that's what creativity is isn't it yes I think but you have to feed it like top of funnel mid funnel bottom of funnel right and so if you don't have enough top of funnel you dry up at the bottom where you know there's nothing that comes through and then being able to kind of edit a good idea from a mediocre idea right yeah I guess if you come up with a lot so the more you feed the funnel then the more stuff you have to look at and then being able to know which one is the one that is actually going to resonate with enough people that it's actually a business because a lot of people I think can be quite Naval gazing in I have this idea and people will care yeah so I can also be quite brutal with my own ideas and just go who cares like you think about it for a couple of months and then you have to be able to not fall in love with your own idea is kind of like with writing so writers will say a really great writer is like you can't fall in love with your own words you need to be able to go into your writing and just chop it out right just so it's succinct and you like you can't love what you did you have to hate what you did and cut it all down so that just the crispy parts are there and I think it's the same with ideas you can spend a lot of time on stuff that nobody cares about and so you have to be able to

edit so interesting I completely agree and I think about the the successes I've had in my life and it was just a process of like multiple sources for multiple disciplines pull one little dot as you've said from those different disciplines and then when they come together so it could be like cryptocurrencies music and my knowledge of social media and then you come together and you go oh together it makes something new and interesting and valuable as a these three different points of inspiration um I was going to ask you the question when we're talking about that I was like can you teach someone in your experience to be better at thinking of good good ideas oh I think you can provide the uh environment okay right but not everyone's going to be able to do that so there is going to be a cohort of people who just don't think of new ideas and they're probably really good at other things and that's okay because the world needs all of them right um it's like Switzerland like they you know some people are plumbers but they still make 100 Grand a year and everybody's happy so if we put people in the right seats on the bus there's such a position and that of course is management isn't it it's trying to find when someone has talent but not in a particular area you make sure they're doing the right thing um but I think you can you see this a lot in business school not that I've been there but I've sat on a lot of panels with people who are who are entrepreneurs right and they're entrepreneurs because they have done a business plan or they've done a business model they've modeled out what if what you know we can do this this they haven't come up with oh wait just like you said if I can this and this and do it this way or right then I can make this happen they've they've said well I've gone to Harvard and now I'm going to model out this business plan and I think if we do this that that we can make oh look is a profit yeah and so there's two ways to come by it and I guess both are valid and especially these days um the there's so much money in the universe that people will invest in so many things that you could actually get to a a good result by just putting a business plan down yeah having tons of money and having

gone to Harvard which is much easier to get money yes and being Silicon Valley and being a white male all that kind of stuff yeah um so it works yeah yeah is it full of passion yeah I don't know maybe if you're passionate about making money that's a passion it's not my way to do it CU I just have to be passionate about whatever it is I'm making or selling or you know whatever I think I'm improving if it's improving people's existence then I'm passionate about it and there was like so amazing to be at Bliss and have people coming in and walk out the door after their treatment feeling like so happy and you could see it right and they just had such a great time and you thought well I'm responsible for that and what a great thing to do all day and then the same with Pewdiepie right is wow people open up these boxes that they get delivered and it is like it's like a fairy tale and it didn't cost them much so they can treat themselves cuz everybody needs a little lift once in a while and to be able to get this incredibly Deluxe stuff for such a an affordable price you know every time one of those boxes opens up that somebody is just feeling thrilled and that is a reason to like show up in the morning right yeah yeah yeah one of them sounds like a really sustainable fulfilling intrinsically driven Journey and the other one sounds a bit like yeah like you know the pursuit of trying to get rich which is is harder to sustain quite honestly because on the hard days on the hard I was going to say you know it gets excruciatingly difficult yeah so one day there's going to be many days that it it you'd probably quit if you weren't just truly just living foress yeah regardless of remuneration but speaking of money you sell Bliss at some point yeah so in 1999 we had quite a few um interested buyers is that three years after y that's quick we were great yeah I can tell three selling the company 3 years later at you know yeah at my at the age I was was quite hilarious I would have been 30 super young yeah 30 when we sold it uh so I sold 70% to lvmh that's nuts it was nuts you know we had a few different large cosmetic conglomerates kind of circling around yeah um one came in and gave me a big presentation and they had champagne ready and we're talking about how they'd put me in a

studio by myself and I could just be creative you know this you're talking to a girl who does facials and waxes people's legs do I want to go to a studio by myself I mean my favorite thing was knowing I'd look at my list of who was coming in that day and it was like oh I get to see this person this person this that the joy was all the people right so they oh we're going to give you a loft and right and then we had another one who came in and said we want to turn your spa into a spa under this brand name which I thought why why would you buy it if you yeah um and then there was who flew me to Paris on the Concord no he didn't yes he did and took me out for lunch it was it was quite fabulous though I have to admit it was wow and it it was hilarious when I got back to Brooklyn when I flew back from Paris on the Concord and it was the middle of the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn so I'm in a taxi from the airport going back to the spa although it was a holiday day and I was going we had redone the floors and I was going just to make sure that uh everything was dry and move the furniture back into the place so I'm I'm on the subway cuz I couldn't get a taxi to take me all the way in because the West Indian Day Parade was blocking Flatbush Avenue and I was on the subway going towards my prin Street stop and there was coke spilled all over it not Coke but you know like cocaa yeah Coca-Cola spilled all over the seats and drunk people everywhere and I'm standing there going I wonder if I'm the only person on this Subway who was on the Conqueror this morning this morning I thought yeah probably probably all the other people are in their car services it was pretty funny so anyway they were the most interesting they loved the business we were kind of hot at the time they were looking for American Acquisitions I think they had moved Sephora also into America at the time so they thought it would be kind of a good partnership and and you know the price was right and I thought well I've been starving for since I moved to New York right every month it was kind of like do I have enough money to pay the rent BL me yeah and I just thought well is this going to Happ happen again you don't know you don't know if you'll ever

be offered like a a big chunk of change like that so and you 100% own the company at this point yeah yeah so and you hav raise money outside Capital they bought 70% of the business for T tens of millions we'll just say right yes unbelievable yeah I know I mean you could have just stopped there right you could have just stopped there and oh my God I was 30 what what are you going to do I know I'm I'm a hypocrite cuz I yeah yeah you're not going to just stop there while you're going to go like stand at your fridge all day but I mean most people will just land that one big bag in their life if they're lucky if they're extremely lucky and in the minority but then you went again and you created a business called soap Glory which lot of people know in this country yeah it was big so Glory was big really big at the time you know it was um if I was I was reading a lot of newspapers and there was a lot of collaborating going on between kind of designer Brands and you know High Street and I thought wouldn't it be fun just to kind of make a a really great brand um that has we couldn't do at drugstore prices you can't really do high quality like super high quality product and sell it at a at a drugstore price when you're going through the retail food chain because there's all the markups right so you you had to try and make really like I'd say I won't say high quality but good quality products for a price point and make them really fun and I just thought you know what let me try doing something that's using all the puns I'm a bit of a writer so I love to write copy and so it was all about making the products kind of fun and you know good quality for just the right price to kind of you know be mass and I launched in Harvey Nichols and it was actually quite a good success but Harvey Nichols only has nightsbridge and then a few other stores around the country and I knew I wasn't going to be able to make much of a splash just being in Harvey nickels on a few shelves um so boots came to us and said you know would you like to roll out into different boot stores that was really interesting because I thought this is going to be amazing oh my God we're going to go into boots we're gon to make like millions and I remember I think we were in 300 boot stores and you just for some

reason you just think okay if it's in Boots right every brand you see in Boots you think oh they're making a fortune yeah um and I remember we launched and I think that the first week I think we did $300 o yeah and then I couldn't figure out why so I go into my local boots and it's on the bottom shelf uh and so that was they don't reset the shelves for 10 months so you start just thinking oh my God I'm going to be making $300 a week for 10 months until they reset the shelves and I fight my way to the top I need to get back into just the Gap there in that period though when You' you've left Bliss and you're you're not doing anything now you have a lot of money so you don't really need to worry about the Bills or the rent anymore anything like that I I just I'm just intrigued because I've I took a month off okay one month yeah it wasn't enough that's not a long time it wasn't enough it wasn't enough I took six months between my last sale and figuring out what to do next six months was better one month one month so in that one month what are you doing you're doing I went on holiday to the south of France okay so you go on holiday to France then you come back and and you're just straight into it yeah yeah just you know ideas I mean I always have ideas so I'll be walking down the street I'll get an idea so you kind of jot them down and then the ones that keep bubbling up to the surface those are the good ones I love I love this I read about I read I read about you talking about this because I it rang so true to me because we all people like you and um creative people generally will get yeah I don't want to bring myself into I'm trying to be humble here um people will get lots of ideas a lots of the time and the process in which you decide which one to go is and which on should just be disregarded um I find fascinating and I've only been able to understand it um in hindsight why I pick certain ideas and why I just let other ones go but how do you filter out the ones that are worth pissing and the ones aren't okay so there's something I call the so what test okay so you ask yourself so what tell yourself your idea and then ask well so what and if you cannot explain why you would want to do that or why anybody should care in one sentence it's not a good enough idea nice yeah but you

also let them sit for a while right yeah because there's so many you have to the ones that are just sort of average they just they go away right and the good ones kind of stay at the top and you think I've got to do that I've got to do that that's really good I would buy that of course here's the other cheat right I only sell stuff that I would buy so I can't you know it would be difficult for me if I'm trying to create a business centered around something that I don't want or have a need for I don't know if I would be as good at it uh super easy to do beauty pie because I love beauty products I love candles I love supplements I know all the good Labs I've worked with them for 30 years I know where to get the good stuff I'm gonna buy it anyway I would like to buy the high quality stuff I don't want to have to pay retail okay so obvious that one right with fit flop it was I could not find a pair of shoes that actually felt comfortable on my feet and I love you know I love uh fashion I can't believe how many businesses you started and how many of them have done so well it's not that many it is a lot one more I have one more but it's not I can't tell you I'll kill you it's not can't super duper yeah that also oh you forgot about that one yeah but but actually that one is taking a he us because our supplier shut down during Co and so it was yeah well it's still around except our supplier shut down and so we have to reformulate everything so soap and glory is a business that even I know and I'm not you know yeah you're not a Cosmetics guy well you know well because at Christmas at boot oh maybe you'll be you can be a beauty pie beauty guy but no I KN I know the brand it's a very very well-known brand so because we used to take over that week before Christmas at Boots we would literally have hundreds of thousands of those big pink bags that people would be able to buy for a really crazy deal that was also I guess a learning just seeing like how much people love a deal um and every it was almost every year that we would be this sort of Christmas bumper bag I would see women leaving boots with like three on each arm because they were buying them for all of their friends when you think of that business why was it successful and um what was your

what's your sort of emotional meor recollection and memory of that phase of your life um gosh that's a another deep question all of these are deep questions yeah okay so well emotional recollection I mean it was great to be able to build something new it was great to be able to build something that was popular in a different country right so you didn't Do It in America you also could do it in the UK like Ronaldo yeah maybe I'm not so good with the ball but um it was exciting to do something Mass like at Mass Price points because you could reach more people so more people could afford the joy that you were trying to bring through that product uh so that's always really nice because having something that's only affordable well I love high quality things the exclusion uh of people that comes along with a luxury price point I don't like so much right so the idea of luxury for affordable of course is is the also the Holy Grail um so building it was you know building s and Glory was also a real experience in terms of learning how to deal with a a retailer who really had a monopolistic grip on a country right cuz boots was the power you know the all powerful and so that was a real learning curve how big did serent Glory get I think we sold we were selling probably hundred plus million dollars wor the stuff a year through boots [ __ ] that's a lot of money it was not bad it was it was biggish bad it was big big yeah it was big I mean it could could be it could have been bigger could have been bigger could have been bigger it was great for me I don't you know what's the difference between like 50 100 100 week yeah you just it's like a after you can pay your rent and eat and buy as many t-shirts as you need you know your life doesn't change that much right but you want to you want to bring out more and see how much you can do and see if you can offer even yeah better stuff so you sold that business I guess boots yeah in uh 2014 2014 not so long ago it really wasn't no seven years yeah yeah they really wanted it and how did you feel when you when you you know they made the offer you accept the offer did it feel again like the was it was there a loss of orientation in your life no because

oh here we go yeah well at the same time I have fit flop right okay my Footwear brand is also big is yeah about we going to biggish again uh you know 65 countries we sell a lot of shoes could be bigger it could be and it's going to be bigger um and yeah and so I sort of had one thing to still grip on to and to really focus on and to make sure that that quality and and about what kind of product we're going to produce for the next season it's all kind of the same as product development and then rolling it out and trying to learn you know given that feedback loop that you get from from the product that you're launching remarkable um your your partner is also an entrepreneur yes yeah he does now Costa Rican um Echo tourism how how is that working with uh not working with how is it to to have a a partner that's also in in the field of Entrepreneurship because you know what it is I'm going to ask you a question here because I'm super curious maybe you can help me I've always wondered if as an entrepreneur it would make more sense to be with an entrepreneur or someone that just does nothing sits at home just you know yeah nice and simple being there yeah yeah exactly uh well it depends I suppose on your appetite for risk and if you have risk anymore right so if you've already um manage to um you know sell something and you have a little bit of money in the bank than having two people going out there and risking it all is okay because you have something to fall back on I think certainly having a partner who understands what you're going through dayto day and will listen to you you know we talked about being able to see someone uh it's so important to have someone who sees you and who can understand what it might be like for you on a day that's really hard and offer you that kind of support um my husband is great with that like he I couldn't ask for somebody who supports me more and he does the stuff that I you know necessarily don't want to do in terms of that family stuff and we pick up the the uh different um programs I suppose really beautifully together because he'll take care of some stuff and I take care of other stuff and and when you come home are you good at sort of compartmentalizing the work stuff and then like switching off and being

present with family maybe not always I appreciate the honesty I'm not going to tell anybody I don't know if you can be right because sometimes work is really interesting also right so I've got two teenage boys and they sometimes come out of their rooms sometimes not and so sometimes I'll be on social media chatting with customers right giving them advice telling them what to use on their skin it's actually it's quite social as it is social media uh I go home at night because I'm hoping they will come out of their rooms and I can spend time with them but we we have dinner and then they usually go want to you know play video games because all their friends are on video games so if they do come out of their room you know at some point I might be in the middle of something am I really good at just turning that off and saying I am here for you young man not always sometimes but sometimes what I'm doing is actually more interesting than talking about the basketball game that you know the NBA blah blah blah or whatever it is and I'm maybe not the best at switching attention gears but I'm trying and I'm mindful love it yeah yeah do is it something that you you think you want to be better at yes absolutely yes more of that in the moment right really trying to live just that moment there's a great podcast have you ever listened to making sense with Sam Harris yes once or twice I'm a big Sam Harris fan me too yeah so it's you know it is about okay you're here right now and live it and and if you could live every moment over again because you only get one shot he you know how he has those little daily there like a little daily thing that pops up and you can listen to and I he was talking once about how you have one opportunity to live this moment and you have one opportunity to have an interaction with someone that is this interaction like make it good right and just thinking well I can either you know look at this as an opportunity and and a gift or I can be down and negative about it and you just choose so I try as much as possible to to choose even if I have you know cranky teenagers or whatever work thing going on to choose to really be positive about the fact that I'm given the opportunity to live that moment do you ever worry

that um you'll regret being so busy and missing certain things always don't you yeah I do yeah of course yeah especially with the kids M with my parents a lot I think God my parents are getting old and I think I was I'm I'm going at some point I'm going to keep it facts my parents going to die and I'm going to think to myself I wish I would have spent more time with them yeah the deathbed test I literally wrote down the deathbed test in my notes Here I want to ask you about that tell me about the deathbed test oh the deathbed test is like what are you going to on your deathbed think back and go God I wish I would have done more of that or I wish I would have tried this or I wish I tried that and so if you live this actually was something that I think her name was Tina Johnson she was the CEO of sax Fifth Avenue I remember having a meeting with her and she said you know what I just always use the deathbed test it's like I don't want to miss my kids you know this particular event or ceremony right you will kick yourself if you miss the grade five graduation that that is always going to be more important than your conversion rate yeah I wrote an article actually called deathbed thinking which is quite strange when I when I saw that you you had this thing called the death bed test and it was inspired by Bron Brony we who was the palis of n in Australia who interview people as they're about to die yeah and what they wish they would have yeah done with their lives have you seen also on social media going around I think I've seen it on Instagram but you see um some elderly people and they're taking pictures of them with yeah what is your advice right and it's always very simple be nice to everybody obvious stuff yeah yeah but you just think well yeah cuz you got to live with yourself and and it's the deathbed test looking back on it but actually your deathbed test Sam Harris would say is probably taking place every moment of your waking existence right I wish I would have been more polite I wish because if you're not you you have to then live with how you feel about yourself and that is more important than anything so there's there's a mini a micro deathbed test taking place every moment I would argue quick one as a serial entrepreneur that's currently building multiple

projects across multiple Industries everything from the marketing industry to blockchain to consumer goods everything one of the things that has been a lifesaver for me and again a company that I reached out to to evangelize about on this podcast because I'm a loyal customer and they ultimately ended up sponsoring this podcast is fiverr.com f i v err what that site allows me to do is extend my capacity across all of my projects if I'm looking for a graphic designer someone to edit a video someone to do a a website for me it allows me to extend my capacity without hiring people and the quality of Freelancers on Fiverr has been amazing and when the the trust and the service you get is that phenomenal and the services offer offered are that diverse it's a Nob brainer whether you have one member of staff you're a freelancer yourself or a thousand members of Staff Fiverr can be a game changer for you and I'd love you guys to check it out use the link below go to fiverr.com CEO and send me a screenshot if you end up using the service I was looking at a a couple of things that you'd said one of them was about your motto for life which is about choosing yourself and not waiting for anybody to choose you yeah what does that mean well you know you can wait around for someone to tell you that you're the one who can do it or it's your turn or you can just do it yourself right you're the one who is going to tell you that you can do something no one is going to pick you out of a line and say hey go you have to put yourself out there so I remember I have this fantastic friend his name is Emelio Sosa and he actually worked when he was a budding fashion designer and in New York a long time ago and he worked at the front desk at Bliss for a while and it was just his you know like actors would work at a restaurant he was like the cool guy at the front desk at BL and um and he designed a few ranges and you know they weren't always commercially successful but he was just the coolest person around and I remember um I lost touch with him for a little while you know few years because he stopped working at the spa and when I found him again somehow because again this preil right I found him and he came over for dinner and he I said so what are you up to and he said oh I'm designing costumes

for winter marceles and I've been on tour with Selen de and blah blah blah blah blah right and I said amilio like what happened and he said you know what I woke up one day and I just thought I am worthy and that was it right like what that was a moment it moved for him he just had to decide that he was talented and worthy of all of this success and then he had it and I think it's the same for so many people that they just aren't convinced now you might just be born convinced I see some people who are born convinced right and they don't necessarily have the experience or the Merit to back it up and then there's some people who have just worked for it and after you do that much work and you are you know your expertise is at a level where you actually are convinced because you got evidence you've got evidence and then there's when you're on the cusp right where you just have to decide so that you can get more U practice to become that one but at some point you know you're on that fence you got to decide and then you take yourself there so it's really remarkable because when you were describing your different business ventures there was a moment when you described your clients moving to The Hamptons for the summer and like business drops off a little bit and you you said so casually so I decided to go and do a beauty course to find out how I like that moment I think is probably the most pivotal difficult special moment because you made a a a decision in a New Direction yes that is like it sounds so simple the way you just like gloss past it I was thinking that's pretty profound very few everyone gets stuck in what they do yeah it seems and the certainty of this the comfortable certainty of that wherever they are to make just make the decision one day that I'm going to go do a beauty course to find out why acne skin is the way it is and see if I can do something about it is is the for me the pivotal unique thing yeah that's actually you know good observation yeah I was going to stop you on it but you glided I never thought of it that way but you're right it's like almost how dare you I'm like how people don't do that they don't just 20 right they don't they don't well listen from what I've read listened heard Etc that the new skill that everyone's going to

have to have is not to be identified by what you were doing for the last 10 years because there's so many there are so many jobs right so many careers that will just be gone and so we have to train the next genen who's coming up to not think well I'm this labels yeah you have to be ready to say well that doesn't exist anymore I'm going to Pivot or I have to go get retrained and not to have your identity completely wrapped up in what you do right it's more about your ability to morph and learn and so being this lifelong learner is so important when you think about yourself going forward now you know you've got you're working on multiple businesses at the moment beauty pie being your main event I believe yeah um what is it what is it you're playing for now because you know you've got the money you've got the reputation you've got wonderful family what are you playing for now well happiness and stimulation right and how did you get that it's a it's the community I have a small family so we're four and then I don't have I have two sisters and my mom and then extended you know cousins who I don't really connect with that much cuz they're in western Canada um and so for me being able to have this community of people who okay yes they happen a shop from me but they're quite fun and most of our customers are of the same spirit it's like having hundreds of thousands of friends and so they're out there chatting about the latest thing it's just it's like a social club a little bit and we happen to all buy beauty products and be really excited when the next thing is launching so I read a quote once it said like for people who have multiple marriages it's like the first time you marry for love the second time is for money and the third time is for companionship and so I'm probably on companionship but I want to do it really well because it is you know it's a lot of fun to be able to provide this to so many people and that love that you get back from it if you're doing it well is you know quite a nice uh quite a nice feeling to to have every day so is this your Forever business um that's a really great question I don't think I never think of things in you know forever a really big check over

there in the draw it would have to be really big billion dollars not big enough [ __ ] okay okay I mean listen it's just fun right it's fun to create it's fun to create so I don't really think about it as what's the end of this right if I if I find okay actually I've created all the stuff I know how to create and now I can I don't know I'm just chatting with the people but you know how businesses go through different stages where different skill sets are needed I'm not your typical like great operating person I need to find that person I'm not a Performance Marketing person I need to find that person and at some stage you don't need as much of what I do you need more of what they do and so it depends like how much do do they need me um but I I think just keeping that quality very high is is always something that you need a particular personality to be leading so I think that's where it would be hard to replace what I do I think what you've achieved is I mean it speaks for itself it's quite um hard to believe in fact that in one lifetime someone could have so many back-to-back successes um I've had a few flops well yeah I know and I heard you talk about that I heard you say you know the key to success was failure but I've not heard you talk about any failures yet right because I I think I um I I compartmentalize them I learn from them and then I move past them there's no point in wall away um but I do think it's really important and it's funny a lot of people will come to me and ask for mentorship and I'll do my best in the time that I've got available but uh what I really think has been my own Mentor has been failure and and looking at the feedback that you get from that failure and kind of internalizing it and it becoming part of your DNA and I really believe that if you don't fail yourself someone telling you that you might fail is not the same as failing feeling yeah that you know you just have to fail once really hard and you're not going to make that mistake again did you fail once really hard um I don't know how hard is hard you know my my it's sort of like my appetite for risk people say well that's so risky I'm like what so can you think of something when you when you're talking about failure that you think

really hard yeah I mean yeah I mean sure we did at soap and Glory we did a men's range it didn't really sell okay test Yeah well yeah whatever you know was the price wrong was the packaging the wrong color it just didn't fly did men really not use that many Cosmetics that they're going to did they just use their their partner's stuff who knows but it was an AB test it didn't knock the wind out your sales no rarely do does the wind get knocked out of my sales because again when you're I think when you're young and you have a profound loss you take everything with relativity right it's like okay so what so you know people didn't buy soap and Glory men's products but it does it really matter on my deathbed will I even remember that I did that probably not so you can put it into perspective which is so think that do you think your father's passing has helped you put all of the decisions later in your life into perspective and prioritize them differently oh yeah absolutely yes I think uh any kind of uh you know grief or really emotional situation that you go through you become a different person and you can relate to other people who have the same situation or have you know uh a difficult home situation in a a very quick way because they see the world in a similar way that you do that small things don't really matter and so while we're all doing a lot of small things to kind of push the world along every day that they're not really that important in the end people watching this you know there'll be a lot of people that um are in a of you and they'll think you're incredibly awesome right rightfully so and that can be somewhat alienating right because they can see that what you've achieved in your life and because of your awesomeness they'll think you know I can't she's just too far away from me I'm never going to be able to get get to where she is um so what advice would you give to those people that are that want to you know achieve great things in their career in terms of where they should start where they should where their Journey should naturally begin um in order to um achieve great things and become successful subjectively whatever that means to them oh that's a great question I think uh listen I was started very Hands-On right I literally gave

facials nine times a day waxed people's legs and it's the feedback loop and and being open to learning so I'm a real believer of Hands-On training I'm not of course I never had a business school training so I don't know I can't compare and contrast but I know that the confidence that comes with learning and perfecting a skill and being able to do it yourself so that if for instance some member of your team up up and leaves you can take over that and do that um there's a a real confidence in it and that confidence kind of allows you to grow and um and to put more things underneath you and to feel I think more generous with your spirit so just rolling your sleeves up and learning skills as many as you can and looking without defensiveness at the feedback that you're getting from whatever it is that you're doing and then always asking yourself how can I improve this how can I make this even better is this the kind of feedback that I'm trying to get it's a giant AB test right so life is kind of an AV test and if you look at what works and keep doing more of that and less of the other right it's about making like more good decisions than bad and um and being honest with yourself and yeah comes down to something very basic you you treat your customers like you would want to be treated and I don't know if that always floats to the top yeah um for for people in business and and for large corporations it is always being about obsessed with whatever that product is that you're trying to deliver and making sure that you yourself would buy it for the price that you're selling it and feel thrilled and whatever you're doing right you can do it well if you keep those kinds of things in mind amen well listen thank you so much for your time and I've taken so much of it but it's been so inspiring so unbelievably inspiring and I'm so um I understand the audience that listen to this podcast and and what you've um shared today is just going to be of just tremendous tremendous value so thank you so much um you super inspire me I feel like I need to go for a run or something or like I don't know like go find something to improve on but uh um yeah just incredibly incredibly inspiring and you are such a wonderful delightful

bright light so um thank you and it's been a super big pleasure to sit here with you today thank you this is like the Feelgood Society customer experience I've learned I'm trying to make my customer yeah this is very good I applaud you well done thank you so much thanks for having me thanks oh [Music] [Music]

How I Built 5 Multi-Million Dollar Companies: Marcia Kilgore | E99