From Broke to $100 Million at 27?!

2019, you were in LA, you were living a back house. And how much money were you making?

Around $60,000.

What'd you do last year in revenue?

Glamnetic.

Glamnetic. Glamnetic.

Glamnetic. Glamnetic. 50 million.

I sat down with Glamnetic founder Anne McFerrin to talk about how she went from a poor immigrant in Thailand to owning a business that has hundreds of employees and has done collabs with some of the biggest celebrities and done more than $100 million in sales in the last two years. How many also stores are you in?

1400.

In all 1400 stores. She's going to tell us exactly how her childhood insec. The pain she went through, and the risk she took made her who she is today, as well as tell us exactly how she turned her life around and how you can do the exact same thing. I wanted to start from the beginning. You have an incredible superhero story. I think it'd be interesting, actually. Just tell me about your. Your childhood.

I was born in Bangkok, Thailand. So we were raised, like, pretty poor. My dad had a drinking problem. He was like his alcohol and a chain smoker and came home drunk every single night. And one of the nights, one of the nights he came home, he was really, really drunk. My mom had been waiting for him for a really long time. Me and my sister were in the other room. I still, like, literally, this is the state of my memory. Even though I was maybe five years old at the time, I still remember it. He came in and then he just. I don't know, they were arguing and then he, like, hit her in the face. And it was really, really, really scary for me and my sister to go through because that was happening, like, consistently. Basically, my mom just called it quits at some point because he was also going out, like, hooking up prostitutes. I don't know, there's like a lot of the stuff going on. Flash forward. My mom told me, you pick either your mom or dad to live with. Like, we're gonna have, like, custody. And I didn't understand what that meant. I picked my mom because my dad never liked me and he's abusive towards me and like, my sister. And so I picked my mom. And then she obviously had my dad as a default. And so then basically my mom takes me to my great grandfather's house. And this was like, really, really old house in, like, the bad side of Thailand. And I just remember it was like a really stormy night and then she just left. Like, I fell asleep and then she left. And the next morning, woke up and she just wasn't there. The place that she left me at was my great grandfather's place, but he was a veteran, and so he had lost his hearing and was also mute. He was a veteran in the Thai army. My great grandmother, literally right before I was born, she suffered a fall. She fell on the bathroom floor. It's severed her spine in a way that completely vegetableized her. She couldn't talk, couldn't walk, couldn't eat, doing anything herself. She could move her eyes and had brain functioning, but she had no ability to move or do anything.

She was alive in here.

Yes.

But couldn't move this. Yes.

I was in this environment of just like my sister and my dad disappeared overnight. My mom is gone. Like, I have no idea what's happening.

What's incredible is just what you've been able to accomplish through all of that. But I think it's really brave to share the origin story because everybody sees where you are now. You could push that under the rug, but you choose to share sort of the hardship, which many people don't.

Yeah, I try. I don't think about it too much. Cause I'm like, oh, now I'm here and I'm really happy. Fast forward. My mom calls me and is like, I'm picking you up. And I was like, who's this? You know? Cause I like, I, like, forgot I had even a mom, a sister, like, all of that. And then she brought me to the US And I remember, like, crossing over, like, and seeing the Golden Gate Bridge and like, feeling the cool air because it's so humid and hot in Thailand. And I'm like, feeling how different that was. I was like, my whole life has just changed. I learned English so quick, like in a year.

Do you think that was a lot of your drive for what you did is that you don't want to go back to that basin with.

Definitely. When I first started school in America, I was like, the only Asian person. And so I felt really insecure because that people would come up to me and be like, touching my hair and being like, whoa, your hair is black. Like, oh, why are your eyes like that? They were just genuinely curious. But for me, I'm like, I came from Thailand where everyone looked like me, and then I came into an all white.

You're an introvert sort of. You don't really have this social anxiety.

Because of my upbringing. And then all of a sudden, all these people are like, touching me. So like, yeah, no, get out of Here.

So that's when you started getting into.

Into makeup and a little bit of art, like, transformation, right? Like, figuring out just do different things with my eyes or whatever. And so one of the things that really helped me, like, widen my eyes and make me look, like, more wide awake and stuff, was lashes. I was like, oh, these white girls have, like, such big, bright eyes. Like, how do I get it to look like that? And obviously now I'm, like, really proud of my Asian heritage and proud of my differences. But it's just initially when you're growing up, you're like, I'm trying to fit in. Started wearing lashes. Literally, like, 14, like, really, really, really young. I knew how to do makeup, become a pro makeup artist before anyone else started wearing makeup. Makes sense. That's why I'm so good at doing makeup.

No kidding. Yeah.

I tried all the different lash brands throughout the years. Obviously, initially, it was hard to glue on lashes too. And then I realized that a lot of people don't know how to apply lashes because all my friends around me were always like, you always have lashes on. Like, how do you do it? And I always had to apply it for them. So I'm like, I need to create something that makes it easier so people don't have to ask me anymore. That was when hearing about magnetic lashes. When I tried applying it, it just didn't work.

I think this is yours.

I couldn't even get it to clip on, and so I was like, this is the right idea, but it just. It's not working. So let me try to, like, iterate on this, make it way better. And so that's when I sort of got into product development and, like, understanding how to develop product, because I did a lot of research on, like, YouTube. Everything that was free on the Internet, I was, like, learning from.

So from where Ann started to where she's at today got me thinking about creating generational wealth. Really hard to do. I can relate because I came from a family of immigrants, too, and I'm probably the first one to have gotten rich or had financial success. But what's really important with it is not just getting it, but keeping it. It's protecting the house. I don't know about you, but sometimes I wake up at night thinking, this could all go away, too. That's probably why I actually got life insurance when I was 25. I was first in finance, and it really overwhelmed me, just the idea of the process of how to do it all. And so when I found our sponsor Ethos, I was really excited because they make it extremely easy to get life insurance, a thing that nobody really thinks you need, but you might just need. So you answer a few health questions online from them, and in three to ten clicks, you can get a quote. I didn't realize that it could be so inexpensive and uncomplicated, like two coffees a month or less. And you protect your family and the house. So if you want to get your own free personalized quote, you can click the link below and you can make sure that you protect your family right alongside mine. Let's talk some. Some specifics on the business. How many SKUs do you sell? How many different products?

Oh, I mean, at this point, 300 to 500. In that range. I lost count.

300, 500. That's a lot. You started off with one, which was one type of magnetic lash. How much did you spend on that?

Maybe, like, 1500.

1500 bucks to get started. Lots of different samples. You're basically sending away to other people's product lines to see what you like from it.

No, this is from the manufacturer.

How'd you get to the manufacturer? How do you even know to do something like that?

YouTube, actually, it's true. There's not really, like, lash creators out here, lash manufacturers, so you got to go abroad. So, like, a lot of it is Asia. So just hit up, like, a bunch of suppliers over there and told them exactly what I wanted. And so I would just want to take your normal lash glue some magnets on. Like, it shouldn't be that hard. Right. But it was all over the place. Like, some of them were, like, falling off and sliding off.

So quality control. Super hard.

There were only, like, a few factories who at the time could do it properly and using the right glue, I sort of kept working with them. We launched with five SKUs, five lashes, and then we had a magnetic eyeliner. So it was like, basically just like, those, but six products and then a couple, like, accessories. I only carried, like, 100 units of each product.

What did it cost you per unit, and what did you sell it for?

I mean, at the time, I think it was like, $4. Yeah, it was more on the expensive side because we're ordering less.

Yeah. So $4 that it cost, and you probably sold it for, what, 15, 20.

25, $30 for one lash.

Okay, perfect. Yeah. So those margins don't suck. That's awesome.

But you have to spend a lot on marketing, right? So that's where the margins become nothing. After I launched, we made, like, $1,000 a month, first day and the way that we got sales was I started like a Instagram page. At first it was a meme page that I grew to like 10k or something like that.

That's such a good hack. Yeah.

And then I switched over the account name to Glamnetic because I was just like, I need to get some audience somehow. And then, you know, like six people bought because I was like teasing it up for like a good month.

Yeah.

And then they were returning as well. I found an ad buyer on Upwork and that was like the first time we ever started running Facebook Instagram ads. I never knew how to do it, but he knew how to do it and he was just like asking me for content. And so I would film all these ads. Hi, I'm Anne, founder CEO of Glamnetic. And it's so funny because those ads started to scale up because people were like, oh, my God, the founder is behind the brand. She's like being out there about who she is. Cause a lot of founders were not doing that at the time. And I think people like the transparency. And I would literally demo the product live. Live. That's like you see on TikTok now. But TikTok wasn't a thing back then. I would send it to our ad buyer and then he would run it. And then he was like, whoa, these are doing good. Like really good roas. And then basically we just kept scaling those ads. Before you knew it, by the end of the year, we had spent $30 million.

Whoa. Before. Just like that grips up on you, really?

It was wild. The first month we did maybe like $10,000. It kept doubling every month. 20,000, 40,000. It's like the growth curve everybody wants, literally.

Yeah. So you're doing a bunch of sales online, you've got hundreds of SKUs, but then you kind of move into IRL. What happened there?

Yeah. So it was crazy because actually 2020, Ulta reached out. They were like, we're actually looking for a innovative lash brand in our premium endcap that actually works. And we've tried a lot of magnetic lashes. Your guys brand is the only one that like actually works and is high quality. So we love, we would love to bring you into ulta. And we're like, holy crap. I'm like three people on a team right now. There's no way. Thankfully, my business partner is like, so amazing, like getting the infrastructure in place and stuff. And so he helped really, like, bring in the right people to help us.

How many ULTA stores are you in?

1400 in all.

1400 stores of a multi billion dollar company. That's wild. And then there's somewhere else that you got in and I think you should show us. Should we go check it out?

Yeah, let's go.

Okay. Maybe we'll get kicked out. I don't know if we're allowed. Are we going to look at. That's your face. Yes.

Are you looking for anything?

Oh, no, this is just her company.

This one, Magnetic.

Oh my God.

I sell them all day long. They're the best.

Do you really?

I absolutely love them. They're the only ones that are natural and those are the only magnetic ones that truly work that look natural. I saw them all day long.

Yeah.

Yay. I love them.

That one's for you.

I want to give one to you.

Yes.

I love. They're so beautiful. I'm Anne, the founder of Magnetic. Thanks. Take care.

So I just got kicked out but I think it's about time for us to go like sit down and talk some tactics.

Okay, let's do it.

Let's do that. So now we're going to get into. You did all this. How the fuck did you do it? You grew incredibly fast. If you had to pick like one reason why you think you grew that fast, what is it?

I think get incredibly good at performance marketing ads like Facebook, Instagram, now TikTok, Google. Like just get really, really good at performance ads.

Yeah. You guys spent something like $30 million and ads over the course of the life of the business. Right.

Just in the first year signing.

People don't understand is as long as you are making more than you are spending, you can do ads all day long. Especially a product like of yours where you can fulfill really quickly and ship product out same day. Right?

Yes. It will definitely eat into your margins heavily and you'll probably be making way, way less profit, too little to no profit. But you're hoping that the LTV of the customer is longer so the next time that they return, you're going to make your money back then.

The other thing that I think's interesting is when you talk about growth, you do a ton of what feels like native user generated content and you get a lot of people that do it back for you. What's the secret there? To not have a shitty ad that nobody wants to watch.

If it's convincing, if it's passionate, if you think it's real and it's genuine and it's not rehearsed. So if someone's truly excited about something, you can actually feel it through the camera like this person is not lost and they're not trying to sell me something. They actually genuinely love it and are obsessed with it. You want that essence to come through in the video so that it's going to get pushed out to viewers and they're going to notice it too.

What about entrepreneurs just starting out right now in a beauty business? What should they do? Do you have like one or three things that you're like, oh, here are like the first couple steps you should take.

Be really good at content creation as a founder, because it's really important to be founder facing and especially, especially if you're in beauty, you have to be transparent. They want to understand why this product is going to be important for them and how it's going to change their lives. Like, what value does it provide, what does it solve in their lives? And if you can communicate that and be transparent as the founder, people relate to that on a deep level. Don't doubt yourself. I think that a lot of people go into something thinking, oh my gosh, like, I'm not sure what I'm doing. I have no idea. A lot of people don't know what the fuck they're doing. Like, nobody knows what they're doing when they go into something. Nobody has the perfect blueprint to figure out how to do something. And a lot of people go into things without a mentor. So if you are doubting yourself, understand that we have the Internet and you can literally Google anything and find all the answers you want.

So I think it's a real life hack being able to run a business from a phone. I've run mine that way for 10 years.

Ish.

But God, it wasn't easy to start. What tips do you have for people that want to run a $50 million business from their phone?

You have to make sure you set up the proper infrastructure. So just making sure you hire the teams and hire the right people to basically run everything and, and then you're sort of overseeing what they're doing. The right people in the right seats is the most important thing in a company.

You know, everyone says hire good people. If you look at my management team today, I mean, if we were in an alternate universe and I hadn't started the company, it would be an honor to work for any of these people. I think if you build a company that has kind of those values rather than just saying, oh, I want to hire best person I can find or whatever, if you hold yourself to that standard, then I think you'll build a pretty strong company.

What tech or systems do you use? Like, if you had a rapid fire, some of the ones you're like, God, we couldn't live our lives without that. What would that be?

I think Slack. Definitely use that. 247 Shopify. Shopify has been one of the most clutch things. I think Instagram and TikTok a way to reach the customers.

I think it's about time that we seal the deal, by the way.

What's that?

Sealing the deal is a little path between me and you where you subscribe to our YouTube channel. Because our deal is that we give a bunch of free content to all of y', all. But you got one job, and that's signing up. And since we got about 600,000 of you on there, I guess a bunch of us are sealing the deal. Cheers. Thank you. Join this. Appreciate you.

Thanks for having me.