Self-Funded Success: How Rodial Scaled to 35 Countries Without External Investment

It was such a difficult time in my life because this is my first serious job. And to my eyes, I failed. I wasn't able to keep it. And then also I knew that I didn't want to find another job in banking. I knew that I needed to change. So for me, that was the shock that I needed to decide that I'm done with banking. This is not the world for me. And I decided to start my own business. That's how I started Rodial.

Hello, everybody. We're talking with Maria Hatzastafanas today. Hello, Maria. Did I say that name right?

Absolutely. You're one of the few people who pronounce my name right. So I'm very appreciative of that. Thank you.

What a dramatic impact you've made on business. And you know, there's going to be a lot of excitement now for people to get behind the scenes with you and get to know you personally and find out there's a real person that made this phenomenal thing happen. And so thanks for being with us and thanks for taking the time to share. And so hopefully we're not going to get stray into any areas that we shouldn't. But it sounds like you've got a lot of successful stories to share and adventures along the highway. So congratulations on building over $100 million global beauty empire. Now over. No telling how many stores. I show 10,000 stores, 35 countries. It's probably more than that by now, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a little bit above that. But thank you for the introduction. I hope to share some stories with your listeners. I don't know if all of are successful because we need to share our failures as well. But thank you for the beautiful introduction.

Everybody loves us. The more they hear about how we ran into a brick wall and how we made, you know, we fell into a big hole we didn't see coming or we did something stupid that we shouldn't. We found out later it was stupid. You know, you never make these mistakes on purpose, but a lot of times you make mistakes. The quicker you can accept responsibility for those things, the quicker you can get the lesson and move on. Because that's just part, you know, there' just part of being out there and finding out what we're all doing is finding out what works for us and what we enjoy doing and what we can be great at. And so, Maria, the thing for people to know, you start with an idea of doing something great and you moved into, I guess we should say the name of your companies and your Products Rodile and Nip and Fab. Is that correct?

Yes, it's Rodial and Nip and Fam. So we got that right. Yes.

And congratulations on being the British version of what we know as Shark Tanks, the Dragon's Den and writing. You got three internationally acclaimed books and so you've done a lot of different things. You're an industry leader and advisor and you served on the British Fashion Council. All of these have got to be very educational and enlightening. You know people hear about this, this type thing. So tell us, what is your life like? Just a quick behind the scenes what is your life like right now? And then we're going to talk about how you got there. What it, what is a, a week or a month in your life right now?

First of all, what I want to say is everything you went through, I've achieved over 30 years. I don't want people to think that that's what the expectation when you start the business, you do all those things on the side, TV shows and books. My day looks like the following. I like to wake up quite early, 6.30am, take some time to myself, usually hit the gym. It helps me to center for the day. The first hour of the day I write to I want to do my focused thinking, think of what I want to achieve for the day. I get all that in writing. I start shooting emails to my team and then I make my way to the office where I do my meetings. I help with any challenges, I'm there. I'm a firefighter so I'm there to take down fires. And then at the end of the day I come back home. I live in London, in Notting Hill. I'm married, I have two kids, they're 20 and 22. They're studying in the US right now and I take some time to myself. Sometimes I have to go out and attend a dinner company related function or I stay at home and I watch a DVD and go to sleep very early. And that's a typical day in my.

Life when you get into. Let's just talk about how you got launched into this. Was this. Did you have big visions, big dreams? Did you know what were you thinking about as a young girl coming up and what exposures you think that you might have had that connected with you? Let's just say that that stuck in your mind.

So was born and raised in Greece. My parents are teachers, they're retired now so I was never into a business or entrepreneurial environment. I studied English literature again unrelated to beauty and business. But While I was studying, I did the part time job at Seventeen magazine as a beauty writer, which was my first introduction to beauty. Back in the day. There was nothing really exciting. It was a basic cleanser, a moisturizer and a serum. And at that point I thought, there must be something more interesting that we can do with beauty. This is very boring and very basic. But at the time, I wasn't ready to start the business, so I moved to New York. I studied, I continued my studies. I did an MBA at Columbia and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. So all my classmates were taking jobs in consulting and banking. So I thought, let me try the world of banking. It sounds exciting. You definitely make a lot of money. So I got an offer from Salomon Brothers, a Wall street company. And that job brought me to the European headquarters in London. So that's brought me to London. So here I am in London, banking, starting off my career. And within a couple of years I started really losing my passion and enthusiasm. And those overnighters and those late nights hit me hard. So I started being a very bad employee, really not being on with my project, not staying as late as I should. And then not surprisingly, one day I was called into the boardroom and I got fired. And I mean, you know, how old were you now? I was in my mid-20s.

Yeah. Okay. And so let's just talk about how you got to that point though. You're in Greece, you're not. Are you in Athens or are you in a little. A small town of Greece or something?

I was born in a small island in Greece and then I moved to Athens, the capital of Greece, to study when I was 18.

Yeah, and you go to job with a fairly, very substantial magazine. How did you, how did you get that job?

So when I went to university, I again, I had no interest in studying. All I wanted to do is be and do and make money. And so I wrote. We didn't have email at the time, it was letters. So I wrote a letter to every single magazine. It was the golden time of magazines. I wrote a letter to every single magazine in Greece. And I said, this is what I can do for you. I can bring in new ideas. I have a lot of ways I can connect you with the young generation. So I put together a little pitch of how I could help if I joined the magazine. And so I got a call back from Seventeen. I went, I had a meeting with them and they were like, yeah, sure, if you have ideas, every Monday we have a meeting, come and pitch your ideas and anything we like, we'll give you some work. So that's how it started. It was a freelance job, but for me, at the time, it worked was the dream. I didn't care about studying. All I cared about being in the glamorous world of magazines.

How did you get the idea? What do you think turned you on early to say, I want to move up. I want to have some of the better things in life? And attracted you to that glamorous luxury style of life. What do you think triggered that as a young girl? And then, you know, it woke whatever it was, it woke up this initiative inside of you. It's really good. Young people are listening. The quicker you can wake up your curiosity, your initiative, your drive, what you're really interested in early in life, you can really find out what's inside of you. But all of a sudden, you came up with an email. You sold yourself on. I can handle myself there. I can come up with ideas. I can give them ideas they don't have. And you wrote the letter. But what do you think caused you to be thinking in that direction to get you that attracted you? The normal life in Greece did not attract you.

So I was living in this tiny island. It's very remote, and it's not glamorous at all. My parents are. Were teachers at the time. They're retired now. And we were living a good but very modest life. So since I was a young girl, I was buying the international fashion magazines, Vogue and Bazaar and Elle, and that was my favorite time of the month. Buying the monthly magazines, sitting down, going through them. And from a very young age, I visualized being part of that world. And all I cared about was the minute I hit 18 and I finished high school to move to a big city and start working on a dream and being part of this magical world that I didn't have when I was growing up, but I wanted to be part of.

I hear that same thing, Maria, from people that are multimillionaires now today. But they grew up in the United States with parents, were factory workers, or they were in neighborhoods where maybe they were racially. They didn't see people like themselves in the high profile. But as soon as these shows got on television and they started to see the other side of life, it was television that penetrated a lot of those households and got the light bulbs to start going off. You did it with magazines in your era, it was magazines. The media penetrates. I can't help but get excited. I'm not worried about AI because I believe humans, the creative side, the divine things that God has put in our head and the half side of our brain that is creative is going to be mind blowing. What people are going to come up with in the future. And I'm thinking now about people like you that are young around the world and get exposed to possibilities from the Internet in all of these remote areas that are, you know, where the light bulb has gone on in their mind and they have the chance to be a future Maria. But because, you know, the widespread impact of the Internet now and you know, does a lot of damage, but it also does a lot of good in terms of waking up kids to their possibilities. And so that's why I think your story is going to resonate with a lot of people. That's like, you know, it's a step by step process. Like you, you came in, it's not like in one day, you know, the overnight, you know, it's like it's life folks. You're not going to put a seed in the ground and then have a hundred foot tall oak tree the next day. You know, you're not going to go to the gym and say, I'm going to really work out and then have a great physique. It takes time. But there are people that are on that road. You know, they're starting that right now and I think that they're going to take a lot of inspiration from you of how you figured these things out. You had to start speaking up for Maria and taking charge of what was going to happen to you at a young age. And it sounds like it started with a simple, you were thinking you're looking, what can I do with what I have? I can put an email there. And how did you know how to word that email to where you could get their attention? How did that come to you?

I've always been reading books since I was a young girl. I've read every single how to book and in the market and I've read a lot of books on communication. I also read a lot of books on connection. And one of the key aspects of connection is people want to connect with you because you can offer them something. And I can say today when candidates apply for jobs at Rodial and some people even say, oh, I'd love to learn a lot at Rodial and then move to my next position or start my own company. And I'm like, you never say that. You never say you don't want to be used. So, so always when I make a connection, whether that's trying to get a new job or getting my products out there. I always start with what I have to offer. So that's, that's the piece that I lead with. And I think that's a big piece of my success so far that I always think the value that I can add to the other party. So that's how it started. It's what I can bring on the table. And that attracted attention and got me the job.

And so before you're doing this, first reach out. You are educating yourself, you're reading, you're investigating, you're finding out the lay of the land. Maybe that hap was easier because your parents were teachers. And the idea of education, what you don't know, you can learn. And you know that you can prepare yourself. And so important lesson in there. And so, you know, this is so similar. Maria I heard yesterday, this guy on YouTube a short they were talking about how Bill Gates and Sam Walton, two of the richest of all time, and the Walton family combined is still the richest family in the world beyond musk, you know, if you add them all up. But they said they, they didn't have original idea. They were all cloners. And they went through with how Gates, he, he took things that were out there and he cloned it, improved it. You know, like WordPress turned into Explorer. And, you know, all of those things. Sam Walton said, I never had an original idea in my life, but he said, I've, he said, I, I will tell you that nobody's been and nobody on the planet has been in more retail stores than me. Because he said, I went in and I saw what he did is he cloned, he copied Sears, Roebuck and Kmart. How that, you know, he took those two models and started copying there. But he went in every retail store. They said when he'd go on a family vacation, they'd go through a town if there'd be a store, if there was a store there, they'd pull over the side of the road. He'd run inside and check it out and then get back at the car. And I was thinking in my early days when I was going through a lot of this stuff and trying to change industries and try and move up. There was not a, I really realized there was not a bookstore in Atlanta, Georgia, where I was that I could walk into to the sales and business counter and find a book on sales or marketing or entrepreneur that I hadn't already read, you know, and, you know, it wasn't a goal. But you kind of, if you have that curiosity and you follow kind of opens up new worlds for yourself. And so you get into the magazine and what. How did you make your mark? You know, you made your mark there, but then you started thinking of beyond Greece, and all of a sudden you're in New York at Columbia University. That's a big jump. Athens to New York City. At Columbia University, you rattle it off. I got my MBA at Columbia. You know, that to be able to make that happen and equip yourself for the things that came later, that was a big, bold step and a lot of challenge and a lot of work. How did you make that happen?

So I worked at the magazine for four years as a freelancer, doing mainly beauty and some fashion features. And I love that world. But I felt I was missing substance. I was very much attracted to the world of business, but I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. And it was the time that the MBA degree was getting a lot of traction. It was written about, it was talked about, especially if you wanted to change careers. So for me, having a degree in English literature and then working in the magazine world and wanting to go into business, for me, that was a pure, I'm gonna change careers. I'm gonna study something different. I'm gonna change the direction of my life. So I researched it. I spoke to a lot of people. I visited the U.S. i went. I only went to New York, actually. I only applied in New York to a few universities there because I was so focused to being in New York. It was. I knew something big was waiting for me there, and I visited. There was an institute called the Fulbright Institute, and I met with. There were a lot of American advisors there, and I managed to get a scholarship as well, which enabled me to go and study in the US I didn't have a lot of funds at the time, so it was an effort, and it was something that was leading me to move me to the world of business. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be, but I knew if I would go there, I'd go to New York, study business. I knew that a lot of doors and a lot of ideas and another world was waiting for me there outside Greece.

And the thing is, the smart move there is a lot of people get stuck on that. They say the opportunities are not here, that I'm interested in, not a lot of people interested in what I'm interested in. It's like, well, get up and go. You know, move. Put yourself in a position. You know, I tell People, you know, sometimes people don't understand the obvious thing. I said, like, if you want to get wet and you're inside your house sitting on the couch and it's raining outside, well, why don't you go outside and get wet? It's raining, go where the water is. You know, it's like there are places in the world where they're doing what you want to do and they're as passionate about it as you are. And so it's up to you to get yourself over there. And so how did you. Fullbite scholarship. You know, you're setting yourself up for success, you're laying the foundation. But what was the best thing that happened to you after you got. How tough was it for you to get an MBA at Columbia?

It was really tough. I was definitely not top of the class. I was just about getting through my classes. It was a tough degree. I didn't enjoy New York life. I didn't have the time to enjoy it because I was studying a lot. But the whole experience, the people I met, the professors I met who taught at the university, everything that I came across, I went, I visited banks, consulting firms. I just realized the world of, of business. And for me, it was an eye opener to see what is out there, what people are doing. And I was fascinated by the energy. It was Wall street, It was late 90s. It was the place to be. So for me, a girl coming from a small island, this was fascinating. And I knew this would be the first step for my new life and my new career.

Tell us again how you got over to London.

So when I graduated from Columbia, I applied for investment banking. I interviewed with a few companies and I got an offer from Salomon Brothers, who moved me over to their European headquarters that are in London. So that's. There's New York and then there's the European headquarters in London. That's where I started.

Now that was after you got your. You got fired in the boardroom, Right.

So I went to London. I worked at Salomon Brothers. I worked for two years and I was fired from Salomon Brothers. That's where I was fired. Yes, yes. That was my first job after, after my mba. And it was, you know what, it was such a difficult time in my life because this is my first serious job. And to my eyes, I failed. I wasn't able to keep it. And then also I knew that I didn't want to find another job in banking. I knew that I needed to change. So for me, that was the shock that I needed to decide that I'm done with banking, this is not the world for me. And I decided to start my own business. That's how I started Rodial.

And the thing is, for a lot of us, I had to change industries too. And I was, you know, I was good at it, but it was just a loser of a business in terms of the, you know, building houses, how much energy you had to put into it, 100 hour work weeks, and you had no control over what the banks were going to do, people getting loans and the economic situation could wipe you out. And being on a roller coaster in construction, it's like a seven year roller coaster, feast or famine. And I didn't know that when I got out of school. You know, I was just born into construction. But I didn't realize you could be great at what you do and still have your legs chopped out from under you because of the industry. And you know, so for me I looked for the industry. What I said, Maria, was what was the industry that did well during the Depression, you know, the Great Depression, what was the best industry? And they said, financial services. And I said, soldiers, I'm going to get, I'm going to get. And then what's the most lucrative part of financial services? I wish someone had said to me hedge funds back then, but nobody did. They said sales and sales management, you know, that type thing. So that's where I went into that. The thing is, a lot of people, you know, you're going to have to change industries, you know, if it's just, if you just can't get yourself excited about the company and the things they're giving you to do, you gotta ask yourself, like, are you gonna keep beating yourself up to do something you don't wanna do? It's hard to be great when you're not fired up about your industry or your company.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's why when I was fired from banking, I thought, this is it. And I never thought, seriously, the last 30 years, I never thought, I'm gonna go back to that. That was it, I was done. I was ready to move on. I started Rodial. And I think that's where for me, that's where the interesting journey starts. When I decided to start a business that I knew a little bit from my days in the magazine world, but I've never run a beauty business. So the hardest thing for me at the beginning is, I mean, I put a beautiful business plan together. Coming from banking, I knew how to do that. And then I went, I pitched to investors to get investment. And I totally failed. I got zero investment. So here I am being fired and not getting investment for my idea. It was another setback. But I thought, you know what? I feel very strongly. I have this idea of creating a beauty brand that would offer targeted treatments to specific skin concerns. So I was very passionate. I saw there was nothing like it in the market. And I had the belief that I was the person that could make it happen. I named the range Rodial, which is derived from the Greek word for pomegranate, which is rovi. So it's. One of the original ingredients was pomegranate ellag tannin, which is an ingredient my grandmother used to use in all her recipes. And it's a massive antioxidant. So that's how the business started. I started from back home, at home, doing everything myself, one woman show, going to the factory, going to the lab. And my first production was 500 pieces. I had the tiny room, I had the cupboard, I had the products in there. And I was calling the stores, I was going to deliver them, deliver products to the stores because I didn't have cash for a courier. And it was all very small scale. Like if you would ask me back in the day When I started 25 years ago, where do you see the company in five years? I would be, I don't know where I see the company next week. Not five years. So it was all. It was all a very small operation. And I was going day by day, hand to mouth, bootstrapping everything. And it started really small. Within three years, I moved into an office. It was again a small office. I had a staff of three. And the first breakthrough came with an anti aging serum we were developing. I get the package from the lab, I get the design from the packaging designer. A beautiful white bottle called anti aging Serum by Rodial. And I said, how are we going to compete in this crazy industry with a product called anti aging serum? So I look into the list of ingredients, and one of the ingredients related to viper venom. So I say, let's call the product Snake serum. My designer was thinking, oh my God, you're going to take us out of business. This is such a bad idea. But we had nothing to lose. It was a risk. We named the serum snake serum. We capitalized on the name. We did a photo shoot with snakes and sent press releases. It got picked up from the press and suddenly we got viral. And it was that first moment of launching a product named snake serum that put Rohdeal in the map. And this is the Only reason we are where we are today because of that risk that I took. So that takes us to the first few years of launching Rodee Allen, how we made our impact.

Well, you know, so many people disappear on the stage before that, where they go out to get funding, they make their presentation. And I'm sure you are a very attractive young lady with a very attractive business plan because, you know you're coming out of Goldman Sachs, so they couldn't poke holes in that. But for some reason, you could not get off the ground. You couldn't get any funding. And then you went to a stage where you're having to sell this stuff yourself. That had to be. What were you telling yourself while you went through that? Because there are a lot of people going through that stage right now, and they need to keep on going. But how did you keep your. How did you survive? And do you remember when the first even small sale happened? Cause sometimes one sale can keep you in business.

That's the secret, Larry. It's all about celebrating the small wins. So I may not have received investment, but the first order in a store was a miracle. So let's celebrate that. The next a press article that comes up talking positively about our products, that's another thing to celebrate. A positive email, a comment from someone who's used the product and transformed the skin. So it's all about celebrating those big wins, getting into from store one to two stores. These are all messages from the universe that tell us you're doing something right. So you just have to cling on those and move on. And I've always been a person that I saw the glass half full rather than half empty. So. And I had that passion. And I was also very stubborn in a good way. I said, I'm not gonna give up. I'm gonna make it happen. So keep on doing this. And every day is a new day. Every day is a clean slate. Whatever happened the day before will start again. We build on what we did yesterday, and that's how I did it day by day.

Well, you know, the thing is that this is why I wanted to tap into what you were thinking, what you were doing when you were 17. You know, you were in school, you're reading, you know, you were reaching out, you were solving, you were moving forward. You were getting little successes, being proactive. And in our. I've got a community based off winning that is centered around learning how to celebrate small successes. Because if you think about the long term, I want to be super successful. Million dollar this, billion dollar that. You know, you get lost in the weeds, but if you say, focus on the next step, and then when you get a success, you celebrate it and realize that's one step forward. I got to climb a big stall, you know, a staircase, but, you know, I got one step behind. I'm a little closer. And that's learning. That's a skill where you teach yourself.

Absolutely. And I get that a lot on social media. A lot of people ask me, so I want to start this. Start a business or start this big project, and I don't even know where to start. And I give them the example outside my business. When I decided to write my first book, I never really sat down and say, let's take three to six months out of my life to write the book. I took my phone, I started putting some notes. Then the next day, I put a few more. I put an anecdote, then I put a quote. And slowly. But at first, it all happened by starting something. Putting the first step and everything I've done in my life, the. The biggest projects that I would never have imagined. It was all about, as you say, taking that first step, celebrating it. And I finished the book. It was a big success. It's called how to Be an Overnight Success, which you cannot be an overnight success, but that's. It's. It's a catchy title. And from the first page, I say, it took me 18 years to be where I am today. There's nothing like an overnight success. But I feel people want the overnight success now. So I felt I needed to talk about it and say, you need to knit hard, to work hard, but it takes a very long time for you to be a success, just not overnight.

And the thing is, at your life and in my life, we're doing the same thing we did back when we had nothing, which is we're doing the next thing. Like, right now, you've got things on your calendar you're going to do today. You've got things in your business you've got to figure out. You've got things. I don't know what to do about this. I'm getting information. I got to go check that. And it's like, that's the way it is your entire life, folks. You're gonna be figuring stuff out. And the thing you gotta do is the next step. Everybody knows the next step. There's one step, you know, like, you had to get in another store. You had to get a new product. You had to get. Everybody's got a next step. Like, knock that next Small next step out and then you can move on.

I mean, even now that the business is a lot bigger, we've been around, We've celebrated our 25th year anniversary of human months ago. Even now there's a lot of challenges. The beauty business is extremely competitive. It's, it's the most difficult it's ever been. The barriers to entry in beauty have gone down a lot. So anyone can start a beauty brand very quickly. So we have different, I have different types of challenges, I have different types of problems I have to face. How do I scale my business? So the, the problems, the challenges, the ways to move forward and the questions, they never stop, they just change along the way. But you're always reinventing yourself, you're always coming up with the next step. So I never really felt I figured it out. There's always something new you need to figure out, right?

Yeah, life is changing. I mean, it's like they say, if you have three kids, all three kids grow up in different families. It's the same family, but it's different. The first child, the second child, the third child, even if they're twins, they have different experiences. And so to go, that's how you evolve to where Joe was telling me, the producer was telling me that your name. If you go into ChatGPT and say successful female entrepreneurs in the world, you're in chat, CHAT knows who you are. Chad will come up with Maria. How about that? And you know, like, you know, that's how you get there, by doing it one step at a time, figuring it out, continuing to move, giving it time for your efforts to compound and multiply. But it was like, and people get tired of me, maybe they get tired of hearing about this. But Jeff Bezos started in his garage wrapping and shipping things that people had ordered. And he was, he had one, his right hand man was in there. They're wrapping things up and they're taking it to the FedEx. And that's how he started in the beginning. And so now Jeff Bezos, he's one of the richest men in the world. But there's a process. And Bezos is doing the same thing today he did back then, which is solving problems so he can continue to move forward. And he's realistic like I'm sure you are. That Bezos has said, he said, I see a future down the road where there is no Amazon. You know, there's something else. And so he doesn't take it for granted. He's not arrogant. You know, it's like he realizes they've got to stay competitive, they've got to evolve. And you know, that's how you get to the top folks. You do it one step at a time. And so I, you know, what a fantastic kickoff, Maria, to getting into the stories that you have. And what I'd like to do is wrap up this part that I'm going to make for the public part of a podcast and then we'll wrap this up and I'll get a final word from you. But then I'm going to come immediately back and go do, and get into some of the details. I saved this for my behind closed doors senior group on my winners community because they're the people who actually will do what you tell them to do and the serious people. And so I want to get into all of that, how you're writing the book, how you got on television, how you, you know, won all of these awards. And so it's going to be fun. But how would we wrap up this portion? What would you say to wrap up this part of the broadcast?

I would say that getting investment is the best and the worst thing that can happen to you. I've always prioritized profitability over revenue. And being independent for me is a luxury and it is the way forward. It's very hard these days to get investment for a new business or get another round of financing. So for me, don't get discouraged. Just keep on working hard, keep on being passionate and if you need to stay independent for a long time, for me, this is a blessing in disguise.

Yes. Because you not only had this success, but so much of it was self funded. Is that right?

A hundred percent self funded. Still don't have any external investment.

100% self funded. So you've got the success, but you've got the independence. That is a. It's probably worth as much to you as all the other benefits, you know, so fantastic.

I mean, for me, it's a blessing in disguise that I didn't get funding. I tried, I couldn't. But then I turned this challenge into an opportunity and it's the best thing that ever happened to me. I have full control of my business. I can make all the decisions. It does come with a lot of headaches as well. But in this day and age, the funding is hard to get. Don't get discouraged and just keep on working hard and being the owner of your business. That's my advice to everyone.

All right, thanks so much, Maria. That was really incredible. I know we've got a lot of people fired up about moving forward in their business. So thank you very much. Much.

Thank you for having me, Larry.