4 Entrepreneurs, 4 Wild Paths to Success | Business Ballers

Mark and Sarah share fascinating and valuable stories about the incredible journeys of four completely unique entrepreneurs. From a secret billionaire to a guy who had no clue what he wanted to do, to a moonshot success, and finally a rockstar businesswoman that Sarah worked with directly – these stories offer valuable insights and inspiration for every aspiring entrepreneur.

Get the “Start And Grow Your Successful Business” online course now! www.businessballers.com

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Mark Seremet co-founded Take-Two Interactive, the company behind Grand Theft Auto. He’s a tech entrepreneur and former CEO to GLD who knows how to spot a big opportunity, build it, and secure strong exits.

Sarah Hoffmann is a Chief Marketing Officer, CPA and “Founder Whisperer” who’s scaled brands with successful exits at iconic companies like Converse, Nike, Drybar, and GLD, and built her own multi-million dollar consulting firm.

Together, they host the Business Ballers Podcast - real talk on how to start, scale, and win in business. No fluff or BS. Just battle-tested strategies from two people who’ve done it and achieved success.

🎓 Get the “Start And Grow Your Successful Business” online course at www.businessballers.com

Transcript

Sarah (00:01):

What we did at Drybar, we were one of the first brands to really champion what we called our own first party data.

Mark (00:09):

I mean, when you have that parabolic success that can actually kill your business

Sarah (00:13):

One night, she literally cut off her pantyhose.

Mark (00:17):

They absolutely lost control of the cashflow of the company. They nearly went out of business, and I mean by the skin of their teeth. I'm Mark Seremet. I've been an entrepreneur for 40 years now. I've pretty much seen and done everything both good and bad in business. So I'm here to teach other entrepreneurs how to get it right the first time. I co-founded Take-Two, which is the publisher of Grand Theft Auto. That company's now worth 30 plus billion dollars. Additionally, and most recently, I helped GLD go from just the startup to over 50 million in sales in just a few years’ time.

Sarah (01:01):

And my name's Sarah Hoffmann. I'm a reformed CPA turned CMO. My career spans 30 years of building brands that people love. I've helped drive and scale several successful exits, including Converse’s Reinvention and Sale to Nike, the Cult Beauty Star Drybars acquisition at $255 million and started my own million dollar strategy business.

Mark (01:27):

Well, today, Sarah and I are here to talk to you about four entrepreneurs with very unique journeys. You're going to be able to be motivated and educated by their paths. One is a secret billionaire, the second guy couldn't decide what he wanted to do. The third was a moonshot success, A to B, no problems. And the final one was actually someone Sarah worked with, a very successful entrepreneur, and Sarah was in the C team there.

Sarah (01:54):

We personally find it really valuable to listen to different stories, digest it. You'll learn from others painful mistakes, what they did well, and we hope you find some value from it too. So we have some really interesting folks we're going to talk about. And for each of 'em, we're going to share their story. Then we're going to talk about the lessons we learned and then how the business Ballers course could have helped them. So who do you think we should talk about first? They're all such good stories.

Mark (02:23):

Probably we jump in the water with the one with most comedic value, which would be Davey.

Sarah (02:28):

Davey?

Mark (02:29):

Yeah. Okay.

Sarah (02:30):

Okay, let's go

Mark (02:30):

Davie Fogarty. So Davie Fogarty is a super interesting story because he came up with $0 and ultimately is on the Forbes list of the richest people in Australia, net worth of over $500 million. This one did have us laughing our asses off because his journey is winding and moving and it's literally crazy.

Sarah (02:53):

And he's only like 30 years old, right?

Mark (02:56):

Yeah, he's about, yeah, maybe 32 I guess in

Sarah (02:59):

A young

Mark (02:59):

Guy, the young guy, which is super meant

Sarah (03:02):

For a lot.

Mark (03:02):

He starts out in early years and during those early years as a kid, he's not particularly great in school. He always knows that he wants to be rich, so he doesn't really have a dream necessarily being an entrepreneur. He just wants to be rich. So, he goes to college and he started out in mining engineering, and the only reason he picked it was because someone told him he could make a six figure salary when he got out. Turns out he failed out in a year. So now he goes into this period where he is in a crazy journey. So he starts out helping people with Instagram accounts, buying and selling Instagram accounts, just constantly swapping, doing things. And oddly enough, he becomes a personal trainer during this period.

Sarah (03:50):

Oh man

Mark (03:51):

It’s a hilarious story. He is got six cell phones, cell phones ringing all the time. He is trading, trading, trading. Builds his way up to like $50,000, decides to bet it all on one Instagram account that he has a buyer for. Turns out the whole thing's a scam loses all of his money, and this is a rinse and repeat cycle for this guy many, many times. So he's starting a business failing, selling herbs, failing, and it just goes on and on.

Sarah (04:15):

And didn't you tell me at one point he even got in the restaurant business and started making Vietnamese rolls?

Mark (04:21):

Yeah, exactly. At one point he accumulates a hundred thousand dollars and decides he's putting all the chips on the table to have a Vietnamese roll business, which he knows nothing about. And of course, this one tanks too, again, hits the bottom. So, he then gets into this period where he's super, super depressed. He's drinking a lot, so he has a lot of personal struggle at that point, and he's really feeling it, and ultimately his father helps him out of that depression and gets him back on that path and motivates him again. So he interestingly finds those comfort blankets, the heavy blankets, and decides to try to market that and it's successful. So he starts building up some cash, building up some cash, and ultimately invents the Oodie, which is basically a giant blanket slash hoodie and it rockets to the moon and the rest is history, and the guy really hit it big.

Sarah (05:17):

Wow. That is quite an incredible story. A lot of lessons. 

Mark (05:22):

There are a lot to unpack for us.

Sarah (05:24):

Yeah, I have to say first you have to give him some snaps for being right in the front and center of social media before it was a big thing and making that into something.

Mark (05:35):

And he actually also acquired a lot of skills. So he mentioned he was able to take his own photographs, he could write copy, he could create a site. He really was a jack of all trades, which was pretty impressive.

Sarah (05:47):

Obviously he tested and tried a lot of different things without really going through the process in the right way.

Mark (05:55):

Right. He didn't approach it properly, but he did a lot of testing. I mean, I think he did a lot of testing. It cost him a lot of pain in both financially and also of course emotionally. And it was a rough time.

Sarah (06:09):

He seems pretty relatable, like a lot of people going through things where he hit rock bottom, but found a way to pick themselves back up.

Mark (06:17):

I really like that about his story because he's very humble and he comes across as super genuine, and it's nice to see that. I love that. For me, when I see an entrepreneur that's made it or anybody that's made it and they still have humility and decency, it's personal favorite.

Sarah (06:32):

Did he mention he lost it all so many times? Did he still keep self-financing this or how did he keep going to the next deal?

Mark (06:40):

So it appears that I couldn't find anything about him raising any capital. And clearly in the early journey, he was definitely self-financing everything. So I'm not certain if he ever raised any money or not from investors. It's not public if it's the case, but I think would've been our course would've been a big helper.

Sarah (07:00):

Yeah, no, let's talk about that. I mean, I think there's quite a few things, tools and insights that we have in the business ballers course that

Mark (07:09):

I think we could really help

Sarah (07:09):

Would've helped early on being first with just how to vet an idea and figure out if it's a viable one.

Mark (07:19):

So many people out there either don't have an idea, which we help them to uncover ideas or they may have an idea, but they might be too invested into that initially and they need to vet it. They need to vet it properly to make sure that it's actually a good opportunity and they're not going to open the second Vietnamese roll shop.

Sarah (07:39):

Yeah, I mean it's their market potential for your idea on top of if the idea is a good one or not.

Mark (07:44):

Exactly. Also, he could have clearly benefited from our financial planning. Risk management definitely had a rough time with risk management

Sarah (07:54):

And just that importance of having an actual plan. How do you get from A to B? So all that upfront piece you're talking about. But then how do you go to market? How do you actually get into these things so you don't just launch it and they fall down? You can keep 'em and grow 'em as sustainable businesses.

Mark (08:11):

Agreed. I mean for everybody else, for everybody out there though, this guy is really a lesson that anyone can do it. He admits it himself that he is certainly not the smartest guy on the block, but he was able to be very, very successful. If you're in a dump right now, maybe you're in a ditch. He's been there. I've been there. You've been there.

Sarah (08:30):

So

Mark (08:31):

It's a really good story because it's a human story where this guy comes from nothing and drives up to be one of the richest people in Australia. It's fantastic. I'd like to meet him. Davie, you're out there. Call the business ballers.

Sarah (08:45):

Let's move on to our next entrepreneur. This is actually a woman who I greatly admire, Sarah Blakely, and her story is really relatable. She found herself unhappy, working for another company, found a real life problem to solve, no fancy degree, just grit and determination, built an idea into a billion-dollar empire.

Mark (09:09):

She also, I think you mentioned to me, didn't she fail out of a business school or

Sarah (09:14):

She failed her LSATs a couple times. LSATs, and she didn't have a business degree either.

Mark (09:19):

So no education in business.

Sarah (09:22):

No education in business. And so, she started out as a salesperson for a fax machine company and found it monotonous, couldn't use her creativity. And then for the women in our audience, you'll relate, especially back then when she was starting, when everybody was still dressing in corporate attire, how comfortable it was, and you had to wear pantyhose and all the stuff that came with dressing up as a woman one night she literally cut off her pantyhose, and that's a prototype, a quick prototype of her idea, which was more comfortable shapewear for women. She had a problem getting people to support her, finding a supplier, retailers to take on the product. So with $5,000 in the bank, she essentially bootstrapped this thing, went on to build a real prototype, came up with an awesome brand and name around it, which is Spanx. That's what today and into a billion-dollar empire.

Mark (10:22):

Yeah, I mean like Davie, she also self-finance the business, and we talk a lot about that. The more you can go down that road without having to take any money, the more powerful your position becomes in time.

Sarah (10:36):

She was successful in building around that idea for shapewear, like solving that real life problem, not straying into other product lines until later on, but really built up something. And now you see even in the market, other brands like Kim Kardashian Skims and things like that, trying to kind of knock it off and do it in their way, but Spanx still stands as that valuable brand that really cracked into that part of the market.

Mark (11:05):

I was kind of curious. I went to the site just to see if suddenly I would see something for or something to make you look better. Nothing there. So they seem to stay right in their lane and really do it well.

Sarah (11:16):

Yeah, no, definitely. And the other thing that I think is really great about her story is she was really upfront about giving back in terms of empowering women to be entrepreneurs. She was, I would say the first really successful female entrepreneur.

Mark (11:36):

You have a chance to meet her.

Sarah (11:37):

I did. It actually was a

Sarah (11:39):

Unbelievable experience. I had the chance to go to her office and spend some time with her, and it was really life changing because you expect to meet this big powerful woman, which she is, but she's actually very down to earth, very relatable. How she shows up in the media and on her social pages, for example, as a businesswoman, a mom, a wife, is exactly how she was in real life.

Mark (12:04):

Yeah, I love that. That's also tying back to Davie after the success, enjoying the success, which is always good to do, but remaining humble and a decent person is like, you have to admire it.

Sarah (12:15):

Yeah, no, definitely. We talked about a few lessons there. You can take from her story, probably a few things the business ballers course could help her with, but as you said, out of the gate, she's pretty much a moonshot and those don't come along very often.

Mark (12:30):

No. If there's anywhere we might've been able to help, it's probably downstream in the e-commerce part of her business or something. It's one of these fantastic stories where literally it's bootstrapped to exit and it's hard to really see where there were mistakes made, at least with what's publicly available. So on her side, I think maybe that's where we could have helped her. But

Sarah (12:51):

Yeah, no, I definitely think, I mean, I'm somebody who shops the brand and follows it. I definitely think our bread and butter of e-commerce marketing definitely could have helped her if you fast forward and started it in current day. I think a lot of those tools and insights we create on how to acquire customers, how to keep them, how to manage your e-comm business day to day. She probably could have built up that DTC part of her business. Her numbers aren't publicly available, so I just, again, watching from a consumer and shopping the brand versus some of the wholesale retail she's in, I think potentially she could have benefited from that part of the course.

Mark (13:36):

Definitely our Q4 tips.

Sarah (13:38):

Yeah, a hundred percent would've been helpful. Her

Mark (13:43):

Actually that brings me to my favorite story of the four people that we're talking about today.

Sarah (13:47):

Alright,

Mark (13:48):

Of all of the entrepreneurial stories and journeys that I have heard, the most impressive to me is a guy by the name of Chuck Feeney, also known as the secret billionaire. Chuck Feeney actually grew a multi multibillion dollar empire and gave all of his money away. He died broke at the age of 92 in 2023. Yeah, it's a super impressive and inspirational story of someone really, really giving back and caring.

Sarah (14:18):

So how did he do that? Where did he get started?

Mark (14:21):

So his early years were pretty interesting because he actually grew up during the Great Depression family had no money, in fact, no one in their family had ever even graduated from college. So he was kind of forced to go into the service. He went into the Air Force and came out and on a GI Bill, he was actually able to attend Cornell. So he got a fantastic education there. His early entrepreneurial desire was born then and he was literally selling sandwiches to the guys in the dorms and had a whole assembly line process to get it done with some of his friends and started making money. He ultimately in 1960, started with Robert Miller, the duty-free shoppers DFS. It was incredibly successful and it was at a time when duty-free shopping was just really starting to get its gears going, and they took massive advantage of it and made absolute fortunes of money.

Sarah (15:18):

So they do that.

Mark (15:19):

So he really used a lot of his connections in the service. For example, they were selling cars to guys in Japan or whatever, and then sending the cars for of them. So when they landed in the United States, the cars would be there. They were selling perfumes, they were selling alcohol, just all of these goods, and they were expert marketers. It was actually super impressive.

Sarah (15:42):

Yeah, I know you were telling me about how they even went as far to start giving tours and then having the tour bus stop at the duty free store,

Mark (15:52):

Basically

Sarah (15:52):

That local marketing that is such a hot thing today.

Mark (15:56):

Yeah, it was really powerful. They went were just amazing. So that's a good example of actually having the tour buses stop, drop the people off and all of the people were expertly trained on upselling and communicating with their customers, and they just kept expanding it internationally, more products, et cetera, and also really pioneering being in the airports. And that was a big turn of events. It was also super, super expensive for them to do, but they bet big on it and they won with it.

Sarah (16:28):

How did they finance all that and all that expansion?

Mark (16:32):

So interestingly, I think this is the one, the blip on the radar for them actually was at a point where they absolutely lost control of the cashflow of the company. So even though they were doing incredibly well, they nearly went out of business and I mean by the skin of their teeth survived.

Sarah (16:51):

Wow. They come back,

Mark (16:53):

They brought a guy in by the name of Alan Parker, who I think became a minority partner in their business, and Alan was a master finance accounting guy and really righted the ship, so put in a lot of controls, measurements, et cetera, so they could make better business decisions, which they kept applying throughout the course of the business and just phenomenally had unbelievable cashflow and success.

Sarah (17:21):

That's incredible. I mean, big lesson there, right? About knowing your numbers and being able to manage the financials, and that's the number one thing we teach in the business ballers course. If you don't know your financial statements, your cashflow, what's coming in and out, what's your cash ratio, your debt ratio, ebitda, you need our course. Chuck could have used our course.

Mark (17:44):

He could have. I mean, when you have that parabolic success that can actually kill your business. So you can end up in a situation where you lose control of customer service, you can't get the units out, your cash is evaporating, you don't realize it. So it can really bring the organization down. But the point of his story, or the piece of his story that I love the most is literally this guy wore a $15 watch, flew economy, stayed in the, not a crappy hotel, but in the most smallest rooms or whatever, and he just lived a very humble lifestyle and he wanted more to use his wealth to help other people. In the end, he gives away over 8 billion in wealth. So it's helping so many people, science, even Bill Clinton brought the guy in problems in Ireland and I mean really had a powerful impact on the world. Beautiful story.

Sarah (18:44):

Yeah, definitely. So we talked about clearly he could have benefited from some of our financial course, it sounds like too, with the rapid growth they had in expanding into all these other areas. How do you address that too, because it's really easy to quickly get over your skis and like you were talking about, making sure you keep a handle on your customer service, your inventory, all those operational aspects when your business really takes off.

Mark (19:14):

Indeed. And just like Sarah, they do one thing and they do it really, really well. They're the best in the world at it, and I think that's another reason for success. We talk about that It's very easy for a company to start getting into product expansion, starting to test new advertisements, et cetera, and they lose focus on what's the bread and butter, what's paying the bills. Suddenly everything's disorganized and now they're in a firefight trying to save their business.

Sarah (19:44):

And that really comes through in the course too because we focus so much on that importance of being efficient with your marketing, and that's directly tied to having a tight product assortment when you start. How do you acquire customers efficiently? I mean, we all know acquiring customers is expensive and you want to be able to keep them and keep them coming back, and those lessons as well as going, finding new people really tie in here too.

Mark (20:14):

Okay, so Sarah, the final entrepreneur that we're going to talk about, I'm excited again to hear this story. I think everyone else will be as well because this woman you actually had an opportunity to work with as her chief marketing officer. So this is the type of insight that's pretty rare because you were in the room with her making key strategic decisions and building this brand, building this business. Let's talk a little bit about Allie Webb.

Sarah (20:40):

Yeah, I'm really excited to share about Allie and Drybar. I had incredible experience being part of that brand, as you said, for CMO during really their growth stage when they were taking off. Drybar itself was a huge disruptor for retail in general, but definitely for beauty. Kind of coming out to the market with a service specifically focused on one thing and doing it well, we've talked about with some of our other entrepreneurs, and that was a blowout.

Speaker 3 (21:09):

You have to explain blowout all the guys out there or maybe a lot of the guys. I never heard about a blowout. So I moved to Miami and I was like 50 years old. So that's a blowout.

Sarah (21:19):

So most people know, and women, especially when you go for a hair appointment, it can be several hours long if you're getting your hair cut, you're getting your hair colored, but the end of the appointment really is the best when you get your hair blown out and styled.

(21:35):

So Drybar literally was a service you could book. You could go in, you got your hair washed, they used a blow dryer and blew it out, styled it for you, had a great service on top of it. You were walking out of your daily grind into this great experience where you could watch a chick flick, you could have a glass of wine, and basically it was all about you. And then you left Drybar with great hair and felt like you could conquer the world, whether you're going to a big meeting or maybe out on a date or some other special occasion, all packed in 45 minutes at a very accessible price point. And it was essentially a genius idea, a brand all about accessibility, fun, and empowering people.

Mark (22:21):

That's a super good story. I mean, it's smart idea too. When you think about other opportunities to start a business where you might be able to just take some part of it and make that the entire experience, what were the price points out of curiosity? What were women paying or what do women pay for the blowout?

Sarah (22:38):

Yeah, it ranged based on where you went to Drybar, but at the time it may have changed. Today it was around $50 to $60, so very reasonably priced that you could do this frequently. I mean, we had customers and we would track them. We called them our barflies that would come in multiple times a month even or get our membership. It was something people could definitely engage in before it was affordable and to do it, it was affordable. Yeah.

Mark (23:07):

What's her story, her early days, education, et cetera? What are we looking at there?

Sarah (23:13):

Yeah, so Allie started out as a stylist herself working at some high-end places on the east coast. And then when she got married and became a mom, she had a lot of her friends asking for this. So she basically started this as her prototype as a mobile blowout service. She would drive around with all of her tools and products in the car and basically do all of her friend's hair. She had the idea to turn this into an actual business opportunity and teamed up with her brother who had a great background on more on the business side. And together they started along with Allie's husband at the time, who was the creative director, built the brand out and the whole story and idea Drybar and turned it into the actual business.

Mark (24:02):

I mean, to me, the brand is like, it's an amazing name, right? Drybar, I think it's a really incredible name. How about financing? Do you know the early days? Was it self-finance?

Sarah (24:13):

When I came onto the business, it was at the point where they had taken on professional investors and private equity, and at that time too, which I really admire about Ali and her new partners, they recognized it was that point that made sense for them to bring in additional professional part of the team. So they had brought in a professional CEO who was really amazing and was one of my mentors and still is today. They brought in myself CMO. They also brought in a head of retail and so rounded out that team. And it was a really interesting point because Allie's role changed. She was still very much involved in the day-to-day, but it enabled her to use her creativity and innovation and become, and still remains kind of the face of the brand, but in a different capacity. So we set ourselves up to success to expand.

Mark (25:08):

To my mind. I think it's super important for an entrepreneur to realize when they do need that additional talent and they don't have the skills to keep going in a particular area, to bring somebody in that knows what they're doing. Another question I have is what was it like to be in a meeting with her? What's the typical flow of a meeting? What's the kind of feel that you got in a meeting with her?

Sarah (25:29):

Allie was a very relatable person. I mean, she's even written about as the America's sweetheart girl next door. But she was also a tough businesswoman. She created the brand. She had the creative vision. I remember in particular when the products business was really starting, so I talked about the blowouts, which was kind of the heart in beginning a Drybar. But the other really smart thing was once that was established, it was a natural next step to start building hair products around it, meaning shampoos, conditioners, styling products, all the way through blow dryers. And that not only enabled Drybar to expand, but then get into some other distribution too. The Sephoras, the Ultas, and those were great margin products to also compliment the actual service. So even with the new team on board, Allie was very involved in the products. She would come in, be able to set the direction for the sense of the products, which we were known for help with the naming, what's that next Innovation in hair. So had a very good point of view, but also was able to collaborate with the rest of the team.

Mark (26:43):

Was there ever a temptation to move into, I don't know, doing nails and other things that women get done and other services?

Sarah (26:51):

Yeah, it's funny you should ask that. There definitely was easy to say, oh, Drybar nailed hair. Why don't we start doing nails? Why don't we start doing makeup? And that was also, and I credit the CEO along with Allie saying, no, we are good at blowouts and that's what we're going to do, and we're going to focus on the things that compliment that

Sarah (27:14):

Because those other businesses may seem straightforward, but they're completely different operating models, completely different training that would've been adding on different operating models into a pretty early stage business that was just taking off on what it was good at.

Mark (27:30):

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Stick to what you're doing, do it the best in the world. So also question, when she sold the business or sold, I guess majority ownership to the private equity, what did that look like? How did she take that? I shared earlier one of my journeys was a difficult period for me personally. Whenever we sold a business and you weren't really the boss anymore, she take that.

Sarah (27:54):

When I started, we had just been invested in private equity. And then during the time I was there, we sold the brand again to another company. Wow. And I would say so at that point, that was more of an exit for Allie out of the business.

Sarah (28:11):

And then she very public, came out, had some personal things going on in her life, some depression. She wrote a book about it. She's very upfront but also self-deprecating about it. Somebody that really could relate to as, Hey, I was this amazing entrepreneur and face of this brand and now the brand is kind of gone. What do I do next?

Mark (28:33):

Yeah, sure.

Sarah (28:34):

Went on to start some other ventures, did some speaking things, but even to this day, you can watch and see her, especially on her social channels, being very upfront about her life and those personal struggles and

Mark (28:48):

Dealing

Sarah (28:49):

With mental health and things like that.

Mark (28:51):

I mean, it's so, so important for the listeners and for people to realize entrepreneurs are not superhuman and these people that you see that have made millions and billions of dollars or just ordinary people with their own struggles. And we talked about Davie early as well, who kind of got into a rot during a period over the business. Allie, same thing. And probably the other two entrepreneurs we discussed as well. So if you're kind of out there and you're having a difficult time just like this, it can snap and you can have everything going for you and your life can change. And so it's important to keep after it. Keep after it. The wake isn't steering, isn't steering the ship, right?

Sarah (29:30):

That's right. You can't look back. You got to recognize and acknowledge and move forward. I was so grateful to get to work with Allie and all the learnings from that and the success we're able to get out of it.

Mark (29:43):

Yeah, indeed. And in fact, as one of the business ballers, you literally helped her to grow her business and expand her business. And I think we should talk a little bit more now about how our course actually would've benefited some of the steps, if you will, that you've included from your time at Drybar into the actual course and how it can help people who are watching here.

Sarah (30:05):

Yeah. Well, I'll say the great thing is where we helped and now can help other businesses is totally our bread and butter. The first is on the marketing side. Everything Allie did and I worked with her on was how do you drive more acquisition to the brand, especially as we were rapidly opening starting up. And then for all those loyalists that I talked about, how we kept them in the brand, how we kept them interested, building out a real big end-to-end marketing plan that covered social media, to email, to texting to what you needed to do for paid media. We show you in the course those pieces of the plan that you need to have to be able to start out and to grow.

Mark (30:55):

The understanding of the data and the data science behind this brand was really germane to their success. This is another thing that we really push in the course as well to understand the data. And you might want to talk a little bit about how you see that as well. Yeah,

Sarah (31:11):

This is actually one of the things that I love talking about what we did at Drybar, and it was behind the scenes, so most people don't know about it, but I would say especially in the beauty space, we were one of the first brands to really champion what we called our own first party data. But we had such a rich opportunity to engage our customer base by capturing data that they actually wanted us to know about them in order to get access. Access, for example, access to our wifi, wifi coming into our salon, everybody we got to fill out three quick questions. What's your main hair concern?

(31:51):

Do you color your hair? And they give us that really because they wanted wifi, but then we could capture that data, the style they pick, the products they use, and then we'd immediately shoot 'em out an email saying like, Hey, did you love our styles were called after cocktails, so did you like your Mai Tai? You better pick up piece of products to keep it going. Things like that where we just said, what are all those touch points where our customer's engaging, they know they're telling us this, so how can we show that we really know and understand them, and then we can filter that down and market back to them in a really smart and personalized way.

Mark (32:31):

Yeah, that's really amazing. That's super, super smart. I love the branding too, on the different styles. You guys were reaching in the areas where you didn't have actual physical stores as well, right? With another mechanism of expansion.

Sarah (32:44):

Yeah, e-commerce was also big. They had started a bit of e-commerce because we shared the site with the booking site, but there was no real plan towards how do you build out a position in e-comm. And that was especially important as you were getting at that we had this huge community, but since Drybar was still growing, we weren't in every city or even in every state. So having that e-commerce position where people could do everything from shop the products to, we developed content for them on how to do it at home, enabled people who didn't live near a Drybar to actually engage in the brand and still feel like they were part of it. And then we knew if they were traveling ever in a city with a Drybar that they'd come visit us, but we didn't leave those folks out, and they became a big part of the brand too. Plus it added great revenue and EBITA for us also. So that's what I love about that learning from that building, that e-commerce and a big thing that's in the business ballers courses. If you don't know what CRO is, you don't know what AOV is, how to manage your metrics every day. We're going to tell you what those are and what you need to know so you can build out your business too.

Mark (34:01):

Exactly. I mean, the language of business is numbers.

Sarah (34:04):

That's right.

Mark (34:05):

And if you can't speak that language, that means you can't talk to potential investors, you can't talk to partners, you can't speak to employees in certain instances. So it's really absolutely critical that people have those skills both on financial side and then also of course in controlling your e-commerce elements as well.

Sarah (34:23):

Yeah, totally agree.

Mark (34:24):

Yeah,

Sarah (34:25):

Very grateful for the time there and the learnings and the opportunity to work alongside Ali both professionally and well get to know her personally and really have a great result and exit out of it too.

Mark (34:38):

That's a really awesome story. So to recap the stories that we've talked about today, you can see some commonalities in everything here. All of these entrepreneurs are just real people. They didn't start out with a silver spoon in their mouth. They're just like you. They're like, we were. They're just getting going and you can do it as well. We also, I think, looked at some people that were very humble and remained beautiful people along their journey, despite their enormous success. They still were good, humble, decent people, which Sarah and I love to see. And finally, I think we talked a lot about how our course directly would've impacted and could have helped these obviously very successful entrepreneurs. And of course, hindsight's 2020. It's easy to look at it, but we can see what we can learn from those and what we've learned together in our experiences and help you apply it in your business.

Sarah (35:34):

Yeah, that's right. So whether you're out there thinking about starting a business or you already have a business, I go get the Business Ballers course. We talked about a lot of things today, but we are going to show you how to look at market potential, how to vet and size an idea, how to build a plan that get that financial budget in place, get your go-to market there, and then how to raise money if you need to, as well as all of our marketing tips and tricks and secrets and our e-commerce as well. If you want to take control of your financial future and your life, go sign up for the Business ballers course@businessballers.com.

Mark (36:17):

You got to do it. And also comment below on episodes you'd like to see from us in the future from Business Ballers Podcast. Get After It. Go there. Do it. Let’s make it happen together.