How to Turn Content into a Scaleable, Multi-Million Dollar Brand: Lisa Jauregui on Building BK Beauty

On this week’s episode, we sit down with Lisa Jauregui, Founder of BK Beauty, to break down how she turned audience feedback into a $25 million beauty brand. 

Before founding BK Beauty, Lisa worked in advertising, became a MAC makeup artist, and later began creating YouTube makeup tutorials while raising her kids. By consistently sharing expert advice and education, she built a loyal audience that trusted her recommendations. Through affiliate link data, Lisa gained clear insight into exactly what her audience wanted - from product categories and price points to buying behavior and preferences. 

That data became the foundation for BK Beauty. Instead of guessing what to launch, Lisa used real audience feedback to design products people were already asking for, leading to one of the most successful creator‑led beauty brands today, with massive traction on TikTok and social media. 

If you’re a creator, influencer, founder, or aspiring entrepreneur looking to turn content into a scalable, multi‑million‑dollar brand, this episode is packed with practical takeaways. Tune in to hear how Lisa leveraged data, audience trust, and education to build BK Beauty, and how you can apply the same strategy to your own brand. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I think what a lot of people would understand is for you to get on a shelf, someone else is coming off that shelf. Last year, we did uh $25 million in optimal sales. Wow. And it would do that completely self-funded. Completely self-funded. We started the brand with $30,000. The first year, year and a half, it was all organic. It was me talking about on my channel. It was me speaking it to my friends. They're also beauty creators. And so how are you nurturing kind of your community? One thing I told myself when things were just exploding and my head was spinning, all these opportunities were coming at us. And I just told myself, don't get too attached to this because this will not be around forever. You know, we had a subscriber with a million, we had a subscriber with 30,000. It wasn't about the numbers, it was about the impact that I could see. It was about someone that truly loved the brand authentically and organically, and they were sharing it as if they were a brand ambassador and they weren't.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

It's a brand new day, and you know what that means. It's time for another episode of Brandedly Speaking with your host, moi, Chris Gordon. Today we sit down with Lisa Howdegee, the founder of BK Beauty. She's launched an unbelievable line of brushes, and she shares all the secrets of how she built and scaled to a $25 million a year brand. She uncovers what it really takes to build brand today, and she shares insights into cool collaborations and how brands can actually give back to their community. This is an episode you won't want to miss. Hi, Lisa. Thanks so much for joining us today. I am so excited to be here. Thank you. Of course. Well, I'm excited because the beauty gal in me is screaming. I have loved the brand for many, many years. I think that what you've created is completely iconic. BK Beauty is a brand that has become so well known through social media and now has expanded so much since. I'd love for you to dive in a little bit about the background in your career, how you actually got started. I know that you were a Mac trainer first. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yes, that is. Yeah. So I started uh working at the MAC Counter when I was 19 years old. I honestly thought it was like a part-time job through college because I at the time didn't think that a makeup artist was like the quote unquote real career, but I loved it. So I worked at the Matt Counter, I started a freelance wedding makeup business. Uh after college, I worked in advertising Monday through Friday. I still loved makeup, so I started a wedding makeup business. And I would do a wedding on the weekends and work in advertising Monday through Friday. So I was working seven days a week. Um, and then I, you know, had children, and of course that had to stop. And so that's when YouTube came into my life.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Okay. So you made that transition when you had kids, but you didn't want to stop doing what you loved. And so, what advice do you have for people that are in that transition in life where they're deciding on whether they're gonna become a mom, start a brand, like what does it actually take to keep going?

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, so um, you know, if I look at my own story, I always tell people I I didn't set out to start BK Beauty when I started my YouTube channel. My YouTube channel was really just at the time, it was an outlet for me to like continue my passion. I had this passion of sharing makeup and beauty and tips with women, and I couldn't do wedding makeup anymore. I had two little kids at home. And I uh I was like, I'll just upload YouTube videos. So when I look back now, I realized that my whole path that led me here was really me just following a passion and finding a way to fit it in my life at the time that worked. And you know, a few years on YouTube, I now had this audience that I had created and this community, and and that kind of led the wheels to start spinning about what I could do with that and and launching the brand was what came next.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

So, what does it actually take? You went from creating content, being educational, and then you transitioned into okay, it's time to launch a product. What was that impetus? What was that moment that you kind of made the switch?

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Yeah, so I, you know, I had this YouTube channel at that point, it had been about four years, and I started to use affiliate marketing, right? So I was talking about products in my videos and I was linking them, right, with affiliate links. So after a year or so of doing that, I had a really great insight into what type of consumer was watching my content and what type of consumer was my community, right? I could see she shopped at Nordstrom, I could see she liked to spend $50 on a foundation, I could see, I could see the places she liked to shop and the products she liked to buy. And it kind of gave me a lot of great insight into what type of product and and where I needed to come in on the market to create a product that resonated with that audience.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Okay, so you kind of had a built-in way of tapping into community to understand what they needed. Were those stats something that you were seeing in the mass? Like how at the time, let's talk about specifically those affiliate links. Were you seeing 50 women, hundreds of women, thousands of women? Like how much of a gauge and how much data did you have before making these decisions? Oh, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Um, I would say, you know, I had probably hundreds of women shopping my my links. Okay. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

You know why I asked? Because so many people are scared that maybe they don't have enough traction or enough of that data or that research to actually start something. But the reality is that you can have smaller case studies and you can understand what your community wants in little ways also, and then make some decisions about how you're gonna build a brand based on that.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Totally. And and outside of even the affiliate link data, like I was very connected to my community. So I could see what videos were performing well. You know, if I did a drugstore video versus a Nordstrom video, like I could see where the what people were interested in. So even outside of the affiliate links, I was getting a lot of data just by the content that I was producing and what was resonating and what wasn't. Um and then also just that communication, the comments, and the requests for videos. And it just, I just got a really clear picture of who she was.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yeah. And then did it help you shape the content that you create for BK Beauty today?

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Uh yes, and no in some ways. Um, so you know, BK Beauty, we are known for our makeup brushes, makeup brushes and tools. So I still talk about a lot of other brands in my content because our product pairs so well with all the makeup products that I'm using and applying. Um, so my my brushes are in every piece of content that I create naturally, but it still gives me the ability to um, you know, objectively review and talk about other brands, which I think is important as a creator/slash founder. You know, it's how I I started as a creator and I really wanted to um to hold on to that and to continue to, you know, create content for a community that wasn't just all about my brand.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah. And I love this in beauty because I feel like there's a lot of possibility for cross-collaboration. And I love when brands are really open to it. You know, I've been in the industry for, you know, almost 17 years and understanding that brands can actually collaborate with other like-minded brands, but you have a special opportunity to do that because your brushes. And we actually had a guest on the podcast a couple weeks ago, Joe Baker, who's a celebrity makeup artist. She does like Olivia Wilde and Kristen Wigg and all these amazing celebrities. And she's a huge fan of the brushes. And so it was really fun that we have that connection because I am someone that like analyzes the community and and likes to understand beauty and how it's actually being used by the pros and by the consumer. And so when she brought that up, I was like, oh my God, what's a small world? It makes it so fun to see what you've built.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Well, thank you. And I have to say, when I hear a makeup artist like at her level loves our brushes, I think that's the biggest compliment.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah, she's and you know what? Listen, it's a testament to what you've built because makeup artists are hard critics, rightfully so. This is their craft. And they take that very seriously and who they trust and the brands that they trust are going to be, I think, not highly, they're not gonna be highly critical of them, but they're going to be very careful about who they work with, what products are in their kit, because at the end of the day, their job is their job, it's their livelihood, it's their reputation. And so when they're working with brands, the ones that are in their kit, I always love to like peek inside of makeup artist kit. I'm like, what do you got in there? Because you know what? They have the best stuff. They've already done all the research for you. Totally. I mean, they're the experts. They have the authority. Yeah. And are you tapping into a lot of pros? Are you doing a lot of seeding programs? Like, how are you getting the brand to continue to spread the way that it has?

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yes, definitely. We do a lot of seeding and we really do support uh obviously the creator community, but also the pro-makeup artist community. And I love seeing how pro MUAs are now becoming creators, right? And it's kind of just an organic thing. It's not like they're saying out to become influencers or creators, but because they have that authority, uh, people want to know what they're using. They want to see, learn from them. And I love that they're sharing that online. But yes, to answer your question, we do a lot of support with pro MUAs. Um, a lot of what I've seen over the last couple of years with pro MUAs that they'll do these masterclasses. So they'll travel around the country and they'll host these masterclasses. And so we'll support them with products to put in their swag bags. And it's great because a lot of the people that attend these workshops are also pro makeup artists. And so it's a way for us to not only support the create that makeup artist, but get our product in the hands of a hundred other makeup artists.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your path to growth for the brand, growth and scale from where it started to where it is now. What were some of kind of those critical moments and those decisions you had to make to scale it?

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah, so we started the brand in 2019, August 1st of 2019, we launched out of my living room. And I honestly thought this is gonna be a brand that my husband and I pack orders around our kitchen table nights and weekends. Um, I I did. I mean, I really did. He didn't, he saw what was ahead for us, but uh I I just, you know, I didn't see that. And so we launched the brand in 2019. Um, we did 2019 from August to December, we did about $360,000 in revenue, those that short half of that year. Um, last year we did uh $25 million in annual sales.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

So it has been we our first six years were just like, you know, it's the growth was insane. I mean, we went from doing five million one year to two years later doing 30. Wow. And did you do that completely self-funded? Completely self-funded. We started the brand with $30,000.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Wow. And then you just reinvested. At every stage in the business, you reinvested, you made smart decisions. What was the one of the most critical decisions you made for that type of scale?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

That growth, yeah. When I look back, there were several inflection points in the business. So um the first year, year and a half, it was all organic. It was me talking about on my channel, it was me seeding it to my friends that were also beauty creators, um, and also starting to seed to other creators that maybe I didn't have a connection to, but 100% organic. Um, about a year in, um, a creator, her name is Angie Hot and Flashy, she started talking about our brushes, and I could see the impact because she has this incredible trusted community that um is really special. And so we we really saw like she's a fan of the brushes, and every time she talks about them in a video, our sales like explode that day. So about a year and a half in, we did a collaboration with her, like a seven-piece set where she got to design them, had complete creative control, and it was a co-branded collaboration. And that was our first real big inflection point in the brand. And that really allowed us to um kind of scale to the next level. And about two years in, we started doing um paid ads. Um, and so now we invest about 30% of our revenue in paid ads. So that's really been kind of the vehicle to have the type of growth that we've had the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

How did you decide how much to invest into paid ads every single year? Was it based on a percentage of sales? Was it based on kind of where you wanted that growth to go or how many people you wanted to be watching it?

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah, I mean, we kind of stick to about a percentage of of uh revenue, but we're always looking and seeing what's performing really well and where we need to double down and spend more. Um, another big inflection point that I didn't mention was TikTok shop.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

TikTok shop came on on board in August of 2023. We were uh one of the first brands to be in their beta program. And looking back, when I look at what the other brands were doing, I think a lot of brands were hesitant to get on TikTok shop that early because at the time there was a lot of uncertainty around TikTok shop. There wasn't, there were some random obscure brands on there, but no one really big. And you know, we we got uh invited to be in the beta program. We're like, let's do it. We have all these TikTok creators that have already been using our brushes and they've had no way to monetize it. So we already have TikTok creators, they're fans. And and so we got on the program in August. Uh we started. By November, we were doing a million in annual by November, we were doing a million dollars a month in revenue just on TikTok shop.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Wow. You know, we talk to our clients all the time about TikTok shop, and I will say that one of the advantages of an indie brand is the fact that you're not as scared to try certain things. Whereas large heritage brands, it's like you're kind of trying to like move a cruise ship, right, to make these decisions. But the reality is these decisions need to start to be made pretty fast in order to see if it works and they can't be scared to like risk it and fail or for it to just not work out. What advice would you have for brands that are trying new platforms to essentially help increase sales and visibility?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah, so uh speaking from our experience at the time of getting on TikTok shop, we were actually looking to onboard on Amazon at the time. We hadn't quite done it, we were in that process. Once we saw the opportunity with TikTok shop, we just completely uh pivoted and just put like all of our resources and focus into TikTok shop. We hired another person to come onto our social team so that they could manage Instagram and we could have one person dedicated to TikTok. And we just, I mean, we doubled it down. Um, so I think my advice would be to kind of look at what's working and a really uh if you're a small brand with limited resources, you know, in that position, just put your attention where where the revenue is. And we did that and um rode that TikTok shop train for a good year or so. Things are a little different on TikTok shop now. Yeah. It's not the same as it was those early days. Um, yeah, we we did a lot of live selling, we leaned into that. Um but what ended up happening from TikTok shop is but after about six months of being viral on TikTok, we noticed that we weren't yet on Amazon, but there was a lot of search traffic on Amazon for our brand and we weren't there yet. So, of course, we onboard with Amazon and that there was like this halo effect that TikTok created, you know, of more search happening on our website, more search happening on Amazon. So when we onboarded on Amazon, um, I think we were like the number one uh concealer brush in the category for Amazon Prime, that first Amazon Prime day. It was just it was insane.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Yeah, that's amazing. And tell me a little bit about your office now, your warehouse, like how are you doing things behind the scenes to keep such a machine running?

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yes, that's a good question. So we decided to hold on to fulfillment. Um, whereas most brands like ours will utilize a 3PL, right, at the party logistics center to help with um fulfillment. Fulfillment can be challenging for a business like ours because you know, one week you might need 15 people, the next week you might need three. So from a staffing perspective, it's really challenging. Um, but the more we looked into three PLs, we ultimately decided to hold on to fulfillment because for a few reasons. First and foremost, it allows us to control the customer's experience from the moment they see our product and place in order to the delivery. We have complete control over that, and that's important for us. But another benefit to holding on to fulfillment, it is it has allowed us to share our brand and building this brand on social media in a way that we just would not be able to do if we didn't have fulfillment in-house. Um, so when you ask what our office looks like, we have an office here in Austin, Texas. We just moved into it actually a couple weeks ago. It's about 12,000 square feet, and in the front of the office we have social media, myself, my husband, who's my partner, um, and then we have fulfillment in all of our inventory warehoused in the back.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Oh, so fun. It's like makeup heaven. I'd be like all trying all the brushes and looking at all the things. How do you decide how many SKUs to continue, how to continue to expand, what decisions do you have to make from a scale perspective? Because the brush category is very specific. Um, so how are you making those decisions?

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Yeah, that's a good question. We actually haven't discontinued any brushes yet. Um we have um we have a lot of SKUs, but they're all and they're all in brushes, but that includes all of our sets and our bundles. Um, you know, obviously we forecast inventory and we, you know, try and get ahead of in our the first two years, our biggest challenge was inventory management. We were always sold out of everything. Umigate that. I mean, we would just be sold out. And unfortunately, you know, I don't think what a lot of of people understand is that, you know, the the length of time it takes from submitting a PO to receiving that product can be like four months in a lot of cases. So that was the challenge. So did you create like wait lists? Like how did you keep your customer like coming back for more? Yeah, we did. We had wait lists so that way when the product was available, obviously we could um, you know, we can market to that, those people that had been waiting. But um, now we do a really great job of managing our inventory. And uh when the A506 brush, for example, went viral a couple years on TikTok, we overinvested. We had a ton of A506 inventory, but it's actually great because now uh, you know, now we're on Ulta.com and we can participate in things like the Ulta Beauty 21 Days of Beauty, where we marked that brush down 50% because we have this inventory. So it gives us like these extra um, these extra levers to pull and promotions to play with.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yeah, well, I love that because it's a good lesson in understanding that sometimes with brand building, you might have missteps, and that's okay. It's not like the death of your brand. So many people are worried about under forecasting, not having enough inventory because they're like, oh my God, if I don't have enough, and then it sells out, and then I'm not selling something for months, that can really hurt my brand. But in order to learn, you have to, you know, make some mistakes sometimes. And also it helps you grow. And then you can get really crafty with how you ultimately make some next choices, and that can work to your benefit. So as long as I think you're thinking on your toes and you're seeing every opportunity where a mistake is actually an opportunity for growth, then it's a good lesson in growing up and building a business.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Absolutely, absolutely. And the one thing I think that we have going for us that is a little untraditional than like color cosmetics is there's no expiration date on brushes.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

So they can sit on a shelf for a while. A lot of people building a brand are so emotionally invested in the things that they're launching, and sometimes that hurts them in trying to make a decision on how they need to transition the business in a moment, and it almost can judge their clarity around certain decisions that they have to make. But was it hard? Was it emotional? Was a lot of like discussing it with your husband, discussing it with your team? Like, what did that actually look like?

SPEAKER_01 17:05

You know, the great thing is, is um it wasn't that emotional for me. You know, um, my husband and I run the business together, and it's nice because we are so different and we see the business so differently. Um, I bring the passion, he brings the business ambitions, and so you know, it was pretty clear to see that from a profitability standpoint, um, brushes were just the way that we need to go. At the time, too, we we'd have really low margins on our color cosmetics. It was, we didn't quite have the right partner in place. We were spinning a lot, we weren't making a lot, it just didn't make sense. Um, and I'm really excited because we're actually gonna be relaunching into color cosmetics very soon this year. And the way that we're doing it now, it's like night and day. Like now we have the resources, we've we've taken our time. I know what I want, and I'm able to create that product because we have the resources to do it, to do it right this time.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Yeah, I think that's a great lesson for so many people. Whether you are a small indie brand and you're trying to make decisions on where to invest, or a large brand that's making some decisions on how many products to launch and which products are going to make the most sense, you might have to make tough decisions, but years later, those tough decisions can become like a part of learning and a part of growing. And so I think that that's really cool to be able to take some of those missed steps and actually like recalculate and re-strategize, if you will. Um, when you decided to go back into color, which I'm so excited to hear that it's gonna be a big year for you. How were some of those decisions made? Like what did that actually look like? Did you kind of like look across the board at the market on what you felt was missing, on where you feel like BK Beauty can really fill a gap? Because obviously beauty is a very saturated market and color cosmetics are a plenty, but what is kind of the UVP here?

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah, so I um it's it's a it's a delicate balance of me of like looking at how I can create something new and unique and innovative, right? But also something that I want to create, that a type of product that I use and love all the time. And um, our strategy with color cosmetics initially will be to launch products that pair really well with some of our best-selling brushes, right? So um we're creating a product that's gonna pair really well with our 109 brush, which is one of our best sellers. Um, so these first launches will definitely be products that you apply with a brush versus something like an eyeliner or a mascara, right? Um, but as we grow, we'll expand into other product categories.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Okay, amazing. Well, education has always been very central to BK Beauty, obviously, because of your background and how you connected with your community through education and tutorials. But how are you using that to your benefit as a brand right now?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Um, it's kind of been the root of uh our brand all along. You know, I started my YouTube channel as a uh former Mac trainer, pro makeup artist. My whole passion was teaching women makeup. Me, and when I say women, it's really women in kind of my age and older, right? Women that love makeup, but you want to put yourself together, but life is busy and you don't maybe not have a lot of time like I did when in my 20s. And so I've always focused on education. And I think that it's funny because when I was worked in advertising, I was actually in a sales job. And it was so hard for me. I don't, I don't feel like a natural salesperson. And so whenever we have launches or and I'm, you know, want to create a video that's obviously gonna sell the product, I think when you focus on education and not selling, it's just like it's giving value and the sales come as a result of that. So I always try to stay very education focused. And I think too, just understanding that um, you know, makeup is not easy for every woman. You know, it comes easy to me. I've been doing it for a very long time, but I meet a lot of women that are like, I'm, you know, I'm in my 50s and I just started wearing makeup. And it's just a good reminder to me that even if I'm teaching something that I think everybody already knows, there's a large segment of women that that don't know, and it's very helpful and valuable. So I just, you know, I just keep that lens of trying to educate at all times.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

And it's what's interesting to me is that I talk a lot about, you know, building a brand and having kind of a mission. What is that overarching mission that keeps you going that you're ultimately fighting for? In the world of beauty, we have such an opportunity to create really big impact and use beauty as a way to like storytelling and invite people into a community and have everyone feel accepted and embraced. What would you say is the mission of your brand and BK beauty and maybe you personally? Like, because I feel like the education piece and really being able to give back and make women feel confident is clearly a part of it. But have you ever thought about what the ultimate mission is? Is that like something that like you talk about internally or that you use as a guiding light?

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Yes, we actually say that we have a passion for beauty, but a mission for kindness. Um, so BK actually stands for, so my two daughters are Brooklyn and Kate. Um, when I started my YouTube channel, I had I was pregnant and then I had a two year old. Um I was like 29, 30 years old. Um, when I started the brand, I now had young girls. And you know, I think with age comes wisdom and confidence. You know, I know for me, I really don't think that I had a lot of self acceptance and self kindness to myself until my late 30s. And so here I was a beauty creator, but I was honestly kind of rethinking like, what am I teaching my daughters about beauty? Am I just teaching them that putting makeup on is what makes you pretty? And I struggled with that. I really did. So the brand actually stands for beauty is kindness. And it's all about being kind to others, isn't very important. We hear that message all the time. But where's the message of being kind to yourself, right? Being kind to yourself, loving yourself. And a fun fact about BK Beauty, we actually give back a portion to an organization called the Kindness Campaign. And so they go into schools and they teach kids about social emotional awareness and mental health and just self-acceptance.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

That's so important. It's such a personal passion of mine, also. I have four kids, and my girls will come in while I'm doing my makeup. And I'm kind of at that same place that you were. It's the questions that I get asked and the things that they are kind of looking and observing about me and how I interact in beauty. And it's always been a part of my personal mission to make a change through the world of beauty. But now seeing it through their eyes, it's like I'm doubled down on the impact that I want to make because we have such a responsibility to help kids understand their own value and feel their own self-confidence. It's not about how they look, it's all about how they feel. And we need to be having those conversations. Are you having conversations right now with your girls about kind of because how old are they now?

SPEAKER_01 23:13

I have a 14-year-old and 11.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Okay, so they're at an age where this has becomes even more critical, right? They're like talking to friends. They're probably even, I mean, there's a whole like Sephora craze amongst that age age group right now. And I think it's been something that's been in the media a lot because I don't think it's new. I think that kids have been watching their parents, watching their mothers like do their makeup for years and years, but now with access to social media, we're seeing it more. We have more accessibility to having live conversations about what that really means for the future of our kids. Um, but what kind of conversations are you having now with your girls?

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah, I mean, I'm really I when it comes to conversations about like self-love and kindness to my girls, I think it really starts at like understanding your emotions and how to like understand that all emotions are normal, right? And so if anything, I'm just really trying to to help my girls kind of process and regulate those emotions with my daughters, you know, they're they're in that hormonal stage, right? And so we're dealing with a lot of emotions right now. And just like saying it's okay to be sad, like it's okay to be sad and not know why, like that's normal. And you know, take some time to yourself and and process these feelings. And I think that where we get into trouble is when we don't allow kids to feel that way. Um, I I grew up in the generation of just like be a good girl and don't like, you know, don't be angry, don't be mad, don't be in and it those are normal emotions, normal human emotions. And I think just normalizing feeling and and knowing that things come and go. So I always try and tell my my uh kids, like, you um like my daughter was really worked up the other day because she left her iPad at school and she couldn't do her homework. And she was really worked up and just had all this anxiety about it. And I said, I know, I I get it. Like I'd be anxious too. I said, but you know, right now there's nothing we can do about it. It's at school, school's closed, like so let's think about what we can do tomorrow and we'll make a plan and we'll go from there. But you know, I was trying to validate her feelings, but also help her understand that this is out of our control right now. Um so those are kind of more my conversations right now about uh my girls are surprisingly more into skincare than they are into makeup.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Oh my god, a whole lot of a lot of kids are into skincare now, and I think like it's all it's all good if you begin associate it with also like self-care and taking a moment for yourself, and as long as we're educating them about the proper ingredients and things to put on their skin, and there's so many hormone disruptors and all of that. And I think that the beauty industry is under a little scrutiny right now because of it. Um, but at the end of the day, I also think it gives us an opportunity to have conversations that we weren't otherwise having with a different group of people, right? So educating parents on how to talk to their children, um, doing things like you do by giving back to these types of organizations, it's wonderful that you do that. Those types of decisions from a business standpoint can be tough sometimes, right? So when a brand is starting out, or even a brand that's like grown and considering how they're going to incorporate maybe like a give back program or a certain percentage donation, how are you making those decisions and how does it fit into the business? Was it a decision that you made from the beginning? Was it something that like once the brand grew and scaled, you were like, okay, we have the means now to give back? Like, where did that come in?

SPEAKER_01 26:10

It came in from day one. Yeah. Uh I actually was a makeup artist to the founder of the kindness campaign before I started BK Beauty. So I was aware of the kindness campaign, I would do her makeup, I'd hear about the organization. And when I came up with the name and the mission for BK Beauty, I said, we're gonna do this, we're gonna give back, and I'll never forget taking my first check over to her. Um, and it was funny because when I when I told her she's so sweet and she's actually a very dear friend of mine now, but I told her we were gonna give back, and and she was like, Oh, that's great. You know, in the first after 10 days of our launch, I took a $10,000 check to her to give to her. And we gave back 10% of our profits. And uh, and and it was just like a moment I'll never forget. Um, and we've actually expanded over the last few years. We don't give everything to the kindness campaign now that we have more to give. We um we were able to give to other organizations, but uh, it's just something we've always committed to and stuck to, and um I think our customers love it. I feel like they're connected to that mission as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yeah, it's part of the fabric of your brand and you stay true to it, and that's really important. I think that at the end of the day, there can be things that brands try and trends that they go after, and that's fine. But staying true to the mission and understanding that's a part of the fabric of your brand that allows you to show up consistently with your audience so people really know what you stand for. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about retail expansion because you've expanded into retail. Can you break down kind of how long that took and when you made the decision to expand, and then what it actually took from a business standpoint to make that happen?

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Yeah, so actually currently we're only online. Okay. We're on um Ulta's Marketplace, we're on Nordstrom's Marketplace, uh, which those are all brand new. Um we're on our our website.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

We're on you were just D2C before that.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Okay. And then when did you launch onto Ulta.com and Nordstrom?

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Ulta we launched in December of this past year. So we've just been on for a few months and Nordstrom too, about a couple months ago. Okay, months. What was that like? I mean, still so new. I want to hear all about it. Yeah, still so new. So we, you know, we've had a lot of growth and we we like to again go kind of narrow and deep. We and I also think being just brushes, it's a little challenging for us to in terms of like wholesale and getting to like an Ulta or Sephora. You know, I think what a lot of people don't understand is for you to get on a shelf, someone else is coming off that shelf, right? And when you're looking at a category like, you know, my brushes, it's like you go into an Ulta and you have like the real techniques of the world, which is more mass. It's not really, we're not gonna replace a brand like that. And then you've got like the cosmetics of the world, right? In Ulta. And it's like, um, I don't know, I would assume it cosmetics is doing great. I've they're a great partner for Ulta, you know. So it's a hard case to make, right? Yeah, I think once we get into color, that will be a product category that we'll need to be in retail for because people want to experience and touch and swatch the product. Um, so we've really just focused on on D2C, but but being on Ulta has been amazing. It's exciting for our customers. We just had our first, we're actually in the middle of our first 21 days of beauty with Ulta, and it's um been wildly, you know, beyond what we expected it to be. So I see it as an opportunity for us to show these retailers what we can do. I see it as an opportunity to show them, like, you know, this is the BK Beauty community and customer. And, you know, I may be a little overconfident here, but I feel like they're gonna come knocking on our door soon.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

You know one, I think it's all strategy and it's all a good thing because the the expansion, especially if done strategically, it seems like you kind of like built your brand D to C, you nurtured your community for a certain amount of time, and then you made some strategic decisions for expansion. And those decisions were probably not made lightly. You probably had to consider a lot of things, like how much of your D2C is going to be moved over there because it's a choice to be online. Um, but also it's strategic because you then have certain named partners that are also invested in making this successful for their own sake, you know? So I think that brands can really learn from those strategic movements. Did you have to like forecast differently once you made those decisions, or did you already have the inventory you needed to support it?

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Yeah, I mean, we definitely did forecast differently and we kind of looked at onboarding our our uh best-selling SKUs, which we had more inventory of. And so we obviously choose the in the products that we have the most inventory to do these like promotional deals, like with the 50% off daily deal with Ulta. Um, but I think too strategically, it's like once we were able to tell our community of creators that share us, like, hey, you can now link us from North Shroom Anniversary Sale. You can now link us for Ulta 21 Days of Beauty, because these are massive sales events that creators plan their business around. And when those events are happening, they're not linking to BK Beauty, they're linking to whatever brush they can on those sites. And so just being available for them to do that, there was so much excitement around that. Yeah. Um, so so yeah, it's uh we're looking forward to expanding even further.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

It's great because you're making decisions also to support your creators, and the creators are supporting your brand. Totally. And so you're making these decisions from that lens, and I think that's a really good learning for a lot of people that are growing beauty businesses because at the end of the day, there's so many decisions and it could be really overwhelming. Like I said, it's a saturated market, and you've narrowed in on the product that you are selling, and you've then strategically decided to expand this year to continue to kind of build the presence around your brand. You've decided to expand into certain retailers strategically online to be able to support your creators. So it sounds like all the decisions you make are also driven by the community that you're building the product for. Is that true? 100%. Yeah. 100%. That's great. The brand has been around for about the last six years or so. I would say that's pretty fast growth for a brand. Um, the achievements that you have now are amazing. But in the early days, to keep you going when things got really hard, because as founders, like there are gonna be those moments where you're like questioning, like, what do we do next? Oh my God, this is so hard. The hard days and all the decisions that you have to make. Were there achievements that you used as kind of milestones that kept you going to know that you were on the right path? Like, what did you do to keep yourself motivated in that growth phase?

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Yeah, so um, I would say the collaborations that we've done, we've done a collaboration with Angie Hot and Flash, who I mentioned, and we've also done with Nikki LaRose. Um, and just the process of doing that has meant a lot to me personally. It's just incredible. Like, you know, these are women that I admire, I respect, now are very good friends, but just like being able to bring other creators into the magic of what we're doing is so special. And I think that that is what has really kept me going is just that excitement of being able to share part of this with other creators. Um, one thing I told myself when things were just exploding, the business was just exploding, and my head was spinning, all these opportunities were coming at us, and I remember thinking to myself, like, don't get too attached to this feeling, right? Because I think a lot of founders and entrepreneurs will will, their happiness is directly related to the stage of their business at the time, you know, and if things are growing and and and they they, you know, tie their happiness to that. And I just told myself, don't get too attached to this because this will not be around forever. You cannot sustain growth like this. And I knew that, right? Um enjoy the moment, right? But but know that don't get too high in your highs and don't get too low in your lows because the lows will come. And if you're just attached to that, um, you're gonna be in trouble.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Oh, that's great advice. It's so true. I know, and sometimes even I mean, I need to take that advice because I get very emotionally like attached to certain decisions, and I'm like very passionate. I have a lot of intensity. So sometimes my intensity can like swing like a pendulum. So it's really good advice for people out there that are building because you have to allow yourself to kind of like ebb and flow with the highs and the lows. You talked a little bit about collaborations, and I want to dive into that a bit because I think that there are so many ways to collaborate with people, with creators. I'd love for you to give some advice on some best practices on what's really worked for the brand and what you feel like the beauty industry can learn from some of your collaborations.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Yeah, so um I'll just talk about the the um two that we have now with Angie and Nikki. So they're very different. Um, you know, Angie is a uh her her tag is hot and flashy, right? She talks to like women in menopause, right? And that demographic. When we launched with her, she had about a million subscribers, but it wasn't her subscriber count that we hung on to. It was really the impact that she was making already organically, right? Nikki LaRose, right now Nikki's a huge name. When I approached Nikki to do the collaboration with us, she had 30,000 subscribers, which is pretty small for a creator. Yeah. But her engagement at the time was just, I mean, I had about 10 times the subscriber she had at the time, but her engagement was three to four times mine. Her views were higher. Like I could see, and she had just started, so I could see like she's going somewhere, you know, I knew it. And again, she was sharing the brand organically. So, you know, we had a subscriber with a million, we had a subscriber with 30,000. It wasn't about the numbers, it was about the impact that I could see. It was about someone that truly loved the brand authentically and organically, and they were sharing it as if they were a brand ambassador and they weren't. Um, and just getting that feedback from people. We had people emailing us, Nikki says I need this brush. And and so that's how we chose our partners. We chose based off of that. Um, and so no like formula, a little bit of intuition, a little bit of really understanding who's already supporting the brand. Yes, like who's it gonna make sense for? Who was the community gonna be so excited for them and so happy for them because this person has already been sharing the brand for a year, right? If the collaboration comes out of nowhere and the community's never heard this creator really talk about this brand, or maybe they just started talking about them as they're leading up to their announcement, it's so unauthentic, right? It's like, what? You know, so it was just like you have to, you have to really um nurture and and um that that authenticity and that love for the brand organically. Because the community's excited too. They're just so excited about it.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Yeah, and they're like cheering them on. And I also feel like it's such a great thing for creators to understand, too. There's so many creators out there that want to have these partnerships and want to get in front of certain brands, but there also has to be some type of organic relationship that happens. Like, let's see that they really actually love the product or using it in some way, shape, or form. I think the industry has turned so transactional. And what I hope and what I'm already kind of seeing is that it's turning back. And you know, everything is kind of like a cycle, right? It was like all this organic content, and then there was these, you know, really, really big mega influencers, and then it was like the rise of the microinfluencer, and then all of a sudden there was a moment in time where everything felt way too transactional and people wouldn't even post your unboxing unless you were paying them. Now I think it's coming back around, and creators are understanding that there's also this need for them to appeal to their community and have their community trust them again just by simply sharing the things that they truly are already using and loving, and that's getting the attention of brands. So I think it's a good lesson all around from the brand side and from the creator side. I think so too.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

And I have I have the unique position of being a creator myself and also being a brand brand founder. So when I work, because I still work with brands, no brush brands, but I still work with other brands. But I want this to be successful for the brand too. So I'm always thinking about okay, what is my rate? What am I comfortable with my rate being where I can deliver a return on this brand's investment, right? Because I think the the rates around creators can are just gotten so inflated. And it we have to understand that if we want this to uh have longevity, this creator economy to have longevity, it has to make sense.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Yeah, there has to be a give and take at this point. Also, listen, I get it, it's business. It's a business on both sides. But I also think that like when we can make these decisions together as a category and as an industry, we're all gonna rise together. Creators are gonna ultimately get more business, brands are gonna be able to get more exposure, they're gonna have more authentic partnerships, they're gonna be able to tap into community. I talk a lot about the power of like borrowing somebody else's community, right? If you're a beauty brand and you have the unique chance of building a community because you already had kind of a built-in community, and that automatically allowed you to like piggyback off of that to build BK Beauty, but there's a lot of brands out there that are trying to build community now. And the first thing I tell them is if the first thing you do with your community is try to sell them something, you're doing it wrong. Right. You have to think the other way around. What are you offering them that doesn't cost them anything and is valuable to them first? Is it education? Is it some free pop-up that you're, you know, doing where you just want them to be involved and be celebrated as your consumer? What are you offering them in return for being a part of it? Because community means that it is a space where people want to show up and support each other within it.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

Oh, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

Yeah. And so how are you nurturing kind of your community? Are they now kind of like becoming friends with one another? Are they commenting on each other's things? Like, what is the way that the brand is really nurturing that?

SPEAKER_01 38:17

So, yeah, from the brand actually, and this is great timing you asked this actually. We um we just uh invited, we so we hit our one millionth order on Shopify a couple months ago. And so we did this big giveaway where uh we posted on on social media, like, you know, we're gonna fly one of you out with a friend to Austin, Texas, to hang out with us, to hang out with me, to have dinner with us, to shop with us, um, and to enter just comment with like what your dream day with BK Beauty team would look like. And we got thousands of, you know, entries. And so we picked a winner, and she actually is flying back home today. She's been here the last couple days. So fun. So we flew her and a friend here. I picked them up from the airport on Thursday. Um, they came to the BK Beauty office. We sat down and had lunch. She asked all these questions about building the brand with us. We filmed content, she filmed content packing orders. We did a shopping spree, so her and her friend got to take bags and just load up whatever they wanted from you know from our little shop there. Um, we had dinner. Actually, Laura Geller was having an event that I was invited to, and so I got them an invite to that too. So they got to come to visit our gallery. Oh my god, the beauty community. Yeah, it was so funny. And then the next day we went and bought them boots at Takova's. Uh, we took them to lunch. So so those are things that we want to do more of. And they were consumer. Yeah. And now I'm like, now we're friends. I'm like, oh, can we be stay friends? Like, is that okay? But I want to do things like that. I was telling our team, I'm like, we should do a trip every year instead of an influencer trip. Um, we should do a community trip where we invite four or five customers here, and we do the exact same thing we did, and they get to connect and they get to talk. And um, so we're always trying to find ways we can do things like that.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Yes, I love that so much. Coco Kind actually has done that and it's worked really well for their brand, and the way that they've gotten engagement from it has like been tremendous. Um, and I think that there's like a time and a place for everything, right? There's influencer trips, there's press events, there's all these tactics that you can do, but the rise of being able to like essentially like pay back the most loyal customers to your brand and treat them as influencers themselves because ultimately they are. That's where loyalty really comes in. And it's also just like a great community building moment. So I love to hear that you're doing that. That is so much fun. All right. Well, this is where we get into branded banter. It's some rapid-fire questions, all right? One answer, don't think too much about it, all right? Okay, okay. What's your one holy grail product? If you lost it tomorrow, you'd replace it immediately. My brow wax. Yeah. What's one product or trend you're officially breaking up with and never buying again?

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Oh my gosh, I feel bad saying this, but the uh lip stains that you go around your lip with and you let them sit for 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

I just don't have the time. The ones that like you peel off? Yeah, that's not time. Founder-led brand or celebrity brand? Founder-led brand, all the time. Organic influencer seeding or paid partnerships? Organic seeding. Virality or longevity? Longevity. Big budget campaign or scrappy idea with cultural relevance. Scrappy idea with cultural relevance. What's the most overrated word in marketing right now?

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Um I don't know if this cat falls into the like obsessed. Like I'm obsessed with this. Um I think holy grail too.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

I don't know. Do those count? Yes, they do. One word that will define the next era of beauty brands.

SPEAKER_01 41:29

Uh one word, okay. Uh I mean this is just coming to me, but I feel like this is cheating. Authenticity, just honesty. Transparency.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

That's better. Transparency. Okay, transparency. I like it. If you were launching a brand tomorrow, what's the first thing you'd obsess over? Customer service. All right. Well, Lisa, thank you so much. This was wonderful. And thanks for being so open and so candid about what it really takes to build a brand. You've had so much success in a short amount of time. You've made a lot of pivots, you've learned from your mistakes. I think that people being able to hear this type of conversation, no matter where you are, whether it's a founder, led brand, or an executive at a company, can really, really benefit from what you dropped here today on the podcast. So thank you for being my guest. Thank you for having me. This was such a joy.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

The views and opinions expressed by guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies or positions of MC or individuality.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Guest appearances do not constitute an endorphin.