12.12.2018
Episode 88: Erika Wasser, Founder of Glam & Go
Summary
Erika Wasser, Founder and CEO of Glam & Go, didn’t mean to be a beauty entrepreneur. She was a working actor and comedian who just needed a really fast blowout. On that premise alone, she started with a single seat in a fancy gym locker room and the goodwill of her favorite hairstylist. Turns out she wasn’t the only one with a desire for amazing hair in 15 minutes—breakout success unexpectedly ensued, with demand growing faster than a chance to write a business plan. Or buy insurance, a website and everything else that comes with a brand. Hear how she created a profitable, multi-location venture by responding to growth as it came.
Transcript
| Announcer | Welcome to WHERE BRAINS MEET BEAUTY® hosted by Jodi Katz, Founder and Creative Director of Base Beauty Creative Agency. |
| Jodi Katz | Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. I am happy to be sitting next to Erika Wasser. She is the founder of Glam&Go. Welcome to WHERE BRAINS MEET BEAUTY®. |
| Erika Wasser | Thank you so much. |
| Jodi Katz | I'm so excited to have you here today. |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah. No, this is amazing. |
| Jodi Katz | You just made it home from a ... Were you on a plane or a train? |
| Erika Wasser | Plane. |
| Jodi Katz | Plane? |
| Erika Wasser | Plane. Amtrak is avoided at all costs. Yeah, from Boston, so a very quick trip. |
| Jodi Katz | You're a New Yorker through and through. |
| Erika Wasser | Yes. Born here, raised here, not planning on leaving anytime soon. |
| Jodi Katz | Tell us how you're going to spend the day today. |
| Erika Wasser | I came in this morning to come see you, which I'm really excited about. Hopefully, there's some lunch in our future. We have a really exciting meeting coming up, I don't know that I'm allowed to say this, with a celebrity hairstylist who works on a lot of the people that you would instantly recognize. We're working on a collaboration to start bringing some new services and creative vision into our Glam&Go salons. Then we're doing a shoot for The Real Housewives of New York in our Tribeca salon later. Then hopefully, I'm going to see a Star is Born [inaudible 00:01:23]. |
| Jodi Katz | Oh, what a big day. |
| Erika Wasser | I know. |
| Jodi Katz | That's awesome. |
| Erika Wasser | A big day. |
| Jodi Katz | Let's just tell everybody what Glam&Go is. |
| Erika Wasser | Glam&Go is a chain of salons between New York, Miami, LA, soon to be DC. Really, the entire premise was prior to starting Glam&Go, I'd do on-air for HGTV and Google and different stuff like that, and I was always in these green rooms where I was getting my hair done in 15 minutes super efficiently with great results that lasted for days. Then, when I was in between shows and wasn't working, I was really dissatisfied with the quality that I was getting at Dry Bar, and I didn't really want to have the time or the financial commitment of a full-service salon, and so I thought what if I could replicate the green room experience where it's really pared down, no one's making you coffee, but you're going to have great hair, in and out, where women needed it most: in gyms, hotels, residential towers, corporate buildings, airports? Really bring beauty front and center in a way that women could afford from a time perspective and a budget perspective. |
| Jodi Katz | Is your blow out less expensive than other similar chains? |
| Erika Wasser | Our a la carte blow out is not, it's 45, but our membership options is where you can really save. So our gateway drug we call it is our Flex Membership. It starts at 79 so right away you're saving, but then it includes two blow-outs a month. So everything else you do after that, you receive member pricing so you'll pay 35 instead of 45 for a signature and 15 instead of 25 for an express. Then our unlimited is 225, which is kind of nuts. |
| Jodi Katz | So I can go every day for a month. |
| Erika Wasser | You can go ever single day, mm-hmm (affirmative). |
| Jodi Katz | Do you have customers who do that? |
| Erika Wasser | We have customers who come three to five times a week. |
| Jodi Katz | Wow. |
| Erika Wasser | Most of them. |
| Jodi Katz | How long will that blow-out take? |
| Erika Wasser | So an express blow-out takes 15 minutes. It starts on completely dry hair, so shower, do your errands, do what you need to do, pop in to us, 10 to 15 minutes. You'll leave with a blow-out finish. It's incredible. Then our signature blow-out is about 35 to 40 minutes and that's a classic wash and blow. |
| Jodi Katz | Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's so interesting. So I want to start at the beginning here because you've been a standup comedian and a media host, and I'm just thinking why walk away from the limelight? |
| Erika Wasser | Duty calls. I think this was something that was really a pain point for me, right? So I was really struggling in between finishing a gig at HGTV and starting to audition and going to all these meetings, and at that point in my career I had a small team of a great manager and someone that was sending me out on auditions from an agency, and when you're on camera, working out is just, it's not an option, it's an obligation. So I found myself really held hostage by my hair because if I wanted to workout in the morning, then I couldn't figure out how to get back into my day because I really, I can't do my own hair. I just found myself really missing that quick turnaround. So I thought oh God, other women have to need this too because I had no kids, no husband, no nine to five obligations and I couldn't figure out how to make it work, so I was like how do women do this? |
| Jodi Katz | I'm thinking about, now that you're talking about working out, I totally plan my hair washing around my workouts. |
| Erika Wasser | I know. |
| Jodi Katz | Not that I have a ton of hair, like I cut it recently so it's not really a big deal, but it's just inconvenient to deal with it. I don't want to wash it every day so I totally look at my workout schedule and then figure it out. Sometimes I'll just go with super greasy hair because I know there's a workout the next day so I'm not really into like washing ... |
| Erika Wasser | Totally. |
| Jodi Katz | ... again. |
| Erika Wasser | Totally, totally, totally. |
| Jodi Katz | Unless it's the summer and then like every day. |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah, New York summer, it's just like a three shower day. |
| Jodi Katz | Yeah. So did you leave a career where you were like rolling in it from doing standup and like walking away from all the prestige of that world? |
| Erika Wasser | So it was really weird, the timing of everything. MTV does this showcase every fall where they select like five or six people that they want to work with. They rent out a comedy club, they invite all of the Viacom executives and basically they're saying this is a talent that you have to work with for the upcoming season. I was really honored to be one of the six. I had a great set, tons of pilot meetings through January. Same exact time I thought of Glam&Go because I was in the mix of everything, and so the actual struggle of my time and my presentation sort of hit home. We launched Glam&Go at Exhale on Madison Avenue just as a holiday pop-up. So we opened I think December 18th and it was just supposed to be for a few weeks. Women went berserk. We're a very high tech, modern company. We had a piece of paper that you would have to sign your name on before class and then after you could sit in our IKEA kitchen cart and little stool that was just set up in the middle of the retail space, get your hair touched up and leave. Women were crossing each other's names out, writing people's names inside, in between people's names. |
| Jodi Katz | They were getting vicious? |
| Erika Wasser | Oh my God, you have no idea. I mean it's Madison and 76th so I'll let you extrapolate from there. But yeah, these women were going crazy, and then four weeks after that, mind you, we're literally a small cart and a stool in not a real space, we got picked up by the New York Times. There was a little article in the New York Times and I remember they called me on Tuesday because it ran on a Thursday and they said, "Oh, do you have a website?" I was like, "Oh, I'm so sorry, we don't have one." Like, it wasn't supposed to be a business. It was just supposed to be a side hobby and someone to do my hair at my gym. They're like, "Well, I don't know how to tell you this, but the New York Times is not running a story on a company without a website." I don't remember the writer's last name but her first name was Hillary and I said, "Okay, I'll have one for you tomorrow," and I literally like called one of my friends that does graphic design and we sat up with GoDaddy all night and by Wednesday morning there was Glam&GoHair.com. Then Good Morning America called from the New York Times and said, "Can we come film tomorrow and air on Monday?" |
| Jodi Katz | This is all from just having like a stool. |
| Erika Wasser | Yes. It was only five hours. We were only open from seven in the morning till two in the afternoon inside of Exhale Spa's retail space. |
| Jodi Katz | So how did you even get Exhale to agree to let you do this? |
| Erika Wasser | So somehow, well, I workout at Exhale. Their bar class I still swear by. I somehow found their CEO's email and I just emailed her. I was like, "Hey, here's my idea. Here's what I'd like to do. What do you think?" She then said, "Can you come meet with Julia," who is their COO I think like a week or so later. I came in, I met with Julia. I explained to her what I wanted to do and she said, "Okay, but can you be open in 30 days? We'd like it to hit for holiday." I went, "Yeah, why not?" I had no hairstylists, no insurance, no brand, no biz. I just wanted someone to do my hair. I remember getting to the lobby floor and I texted my dad and I was like, "They said yes." He was like, "I guess you're in business." That's really what happened. Then I called my longtime hairstylist and I was like, "Hey, I need your help." |
| Jodi Katz | We're you charging women for this service? |
| Erika Wasser | We were. |
| Jodi Katz | Okay. The piece of paper, sign up before your class and hope that your turn is ready when you're done with class. |
| Erika Wasser | We had a square thing that went into a cell phone. |
| Jodi Katz | Right, to charge people. |
| Erika Wasser | To charge people. |
| Jodi Katz | Okay, and then why did Good Morning America think this was a story? |
| Erika Wasser | I have no idea. |
| Jodi Katz | What was the story? Did they run it? |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah. Sarah Haines who now is doing so incredibly well, that sometimes we'll see each other in passing and we're like, "Hey, I remember you when." She came and she did like a bar class at Exhale and then came into what was Glam&Go. The original Glam&Gos were just stools at the existing blow dry counter. |
| Jodi Katz | This was enough for the well-heeled clientele of Exhale? They were okay with that? |
| Erika Wasser | No, everybody hated it. |
| Jodi Katz | Oh. |
| Erika Wasser | Actually, everybody hated it. The New York Times loved it, Good Morning America loved it. People hated it. |
| Jodi Katz | So what kind of feedback did you get? |
| Erika Wasser | Well, so from a stylist perspective, right, we wanted to bring not just hair services, but really top talent and top quality. They're artists and they didn't love working in a locker room. The clients that weren't using our service found us to be in the way and then the ones that were, it was exposed. It was a little awkward. There was no sense of proprietorial space. So it was really more for people that are very efficiency-focused like myself or like we were a last resort of like, "Oh, everywhere else is booked or I have time," right? That became pretty clear within the first six weeks that we were in business. I kind of said to myself, "I don't really feel like working my ass off to be someone's last resort." That sucks. |
| Jodi Katz | That's incredible to discover that after only six weeks. I mean some people spend six years in their business and they're just still sorting through that. |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah. I grew up on the Upper East Side and the one thing that love them or hate them, they're vocal, so we would get yelled at by people that weren't using the service. We would get kind of like, "I really wish that this wasn't here," from the people that were in the chair. Then because it really became this whole feud of like what side are you on within the Exhale 980 women's group of are you like pro-Glam&Go or anti-Glam&Go? Oh no, no, no, this was a thing. |
| Jodi Katz | So there were people spending their time ... |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah, so there were people actually like writing emails to corporate. It really became this whole thing, and the one thing that I loved so much and I've learned so much about watching Exhale as a business is they really gracefully somehow handled both of these groups in a way that made everybody happy while maintaining a really strong partnership with us and never making us feel marginalized. |
| Jodi Katz | How did they do that? |
| Erika Wasser | I wish that I know. Julia and Margaret are some of the most brilliant operators I've ever seen. I've just learned so much from watching both of them over the last four or so years. |
| Jodi Katz | So what happens after realizing after six weeks okay, this is not going to work? Is this a time to get your own space? Is it time to [inaudible 00:12:09] that space? |
| Erika Wasser | We basically stayed where we were until we could find another space and then there was a small room behind where you would check-in that we ultimately moved into and made it our own. Then that really sort of changed our whole model for us because we were in like, I don't know, three to five different gym locker rooms in the city at that point. We did Exhale, 980 Exhale, Central Park South. What is now Equinox but was Sports Cabaret on 64th Street. We were in the [Sitai 00:12:42] Club on Wall Street and the Manhattan Club in the Mercedes House on 11th. We literally would just show up with our tools in a locker room. It just, it wasn't going to ever become a way to really control an experience. It's really hard to do when you don't control the environment. So we sort of took those challenges and rather than like kept on banging down a wall, went back to our partners and said, "Guys listen, I know that I told you that I wasn't going to have any sort of capital or resourse destruction in my original pitch, but I was wrong." I'd say all of our partners really valued that and the ones that had the space gave it to us and the ones that didn't said like, "Let's try to find it if we can, and if we can't we understand if you can't service here." So I think one of the biggest things that I learned is like we as a small company have some of the largest hospitality brands as partners, from Fairmont in Santa Monica, to we're opening Fairmont DC. I think those are two destination properties for the Fairmont brand. We're in Equinox. We're in Exhale. We're in Lowe's. We're in [Ginsubort 00:13:59]. We're opening in The Dream in Hollywood, which I'm super excited about, but I think the biggest thing that sort of had all of these super highend partners stay with us through our growing pains, which we most certainly had, I think they never had to call us to tell us there was water in the basement. Right? As soon as there was a drip we'd pick up the phone and be like, "Hey, this is what's going on. Not entirely sure how we're going to fix it." Because sometimes we didn't know, but like we're on it, we see it, we're committed to making it right. We're really sorry. |
| Jodi Katz | So this is so fascinating because navigating these larger corporations is really challenging, like partnerships especially when it comes to you actually have real estate issues, right? Where you're putting your power comping from? Where's the lights coming from? |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah. |
| Jodi Katz | So it's usually the type of thing that takes like a year or two to even get the right meeting with the right person, but yet you've done it six times, seven times. |
| Erika Wasser | We're actually about to have 16 or 17 locations by the end of the year. |
| Jodi Katz | A lot of these are with third partners. |
| Erika Wasser | All of them are with third partners. |
| Jodi Katz | So you don't have any of like your own space. |
| Erika Wasser | We have one which is in Tribeca, which was our first flagship. We opened it in July of this past summer, which was super exciting because it was, I mean that was sort of like a dream for us to be able to do. Then we're opening our second storefront, like stand-alone in Brentwood in California. |
| Jodi Katz | This is amazing. |
| Erika Wasser | So that will open in like a week. |
| Jodi Katz | So you seem pretty humble and low key and I'm wondering if you actually realize like the magnitude of what you've developed here. |
| Erika Wasser | I don't know. I'm so deep in it. Like on my way here I'm getting phone calls about like plumbing and nonsense, right? Like I'm going to spend some of my time going through a storage unit to try to find a Glam&Go t-shirt, so the range of my job is, it's humbling in and of itself. |
| Jodi Katz | Right. So what I see from the outside is you've climbed up a lot of mountains and some of these mountains seem like they would be not, you wouldn't be able to pass over them, but you would pass over many of them. So congratulations to you ... |
| Erika Wasser | Thank you. |
| Jodi Katz | ... for doing that. |
| Erika Wasser | You know, a lot of people ask, "How are you doing all this?" I'm like, "Because we're like too stupid not to try." I hate to say it, but if we actually sat down and thought about oh, how would we do this, we would never have done any of it. We kind of just like find ourselves knee deep and then we dig ourselves out and it's better and easier and faster and more efficient and more successful every single time we do it. |
| Jodi Katz | Are you making money? |
| Erika Wasser | We are, which is really exciting. |
| Jodi Katz | That's a big deal. |
| Erika Wasser | I know. Yeah, it is. |
| Jodi Katz | Okay, so let's talk about this word glam. So your company was Glam&Go. |
| Erika Wasser | Yup. |
| Jodi Katz | We [inaudible 00:17:00] conversation about this because I think [crosstalk 00:17:02] be thinking this. There is so many other glam brands, glam this, glam that, glam this, glam upside down, glam backwards. Why glam? |
| Erika Wasser | This would have been one of those things that had we sat down and thought about starting a company, we probably wouldn't have named it this because it is a pretty saturated word and space. You know, it's sort of like, I don't know if this is an appropriate analogy, but if your name was Ashley in the '90s. Everyone was Ashley in the '90s, but that doesn't mean that you don't love your name and feel like it's yours and have ownership in it and for whatever reason your Ashley is different than the other million and two Ashleys. So we've sort of just embraced it and said, "All right well, if we're going to be in a competitive space, we just need to be the best." Right? We took that to heart in our branding and in the colors that we use and making sure that we're like we're the only hair brand, I mean, that I can think of who uses like a deep navy and black and a little bit of millennial pink, but we really wanted to say okay, how do we stay true to who we are as a New York based brand for just cool women that are trying to get shit done and look great doing it? What does that mean under the umbrella of glam, which can sort of take a very tacky road? |
| Jodi Katz | Right. So were there other names that you considered? |
| Erika Wasser | Well no, because I'm telling you, this was not ... I'm very happy with the way this all ended up, but this was not a plan. I shouldn't say this, but we still don't have a business plan, right? We have ideas on napkins, but we've sort of just been really receptive to the feedback. We got really lucky that right away we had some proof of product market fit, even if it's just women going crazy on the clipboard, and we sort of have taken every challenge as it came. We'd raised a small seed round, which is the only time we raised institutional capital back in 2015. They brought it up too and they we're like, "Well, Glam Squad sort of owns Glam." At least in New York, and at the time they did. She said, "You know, our lead investors kind of think you should look at other names before you kind of fully out of the gate." We did and we tried and we really wanted to rename ourselves as [Zhoosh 00:19:44], which then existential crisis was how the hell do you spell it? |
| Jodi Katz | How would you have spelled Zhoosh? |
| Erika Wasser | Okay, so I was a big fan of J-E-U-G-E. |
| Jodi Katz | I'm going to write this down, J-E-U-G-E. |
| Erika Wasser | Then there was J-O-O-J and we loved how that sort of looked from a typography standpoint. It is in Webster's Dictionary and the actual spelling of zhoosh is Z-H-O-O-S-H. |
| Jodi Katz | Right, so I wanted have known zhoosh, because I am like a little zhoosh. |
| Erika Wasser | I know. I always zhoosh. |
| Jodi Katz | So I guess I always thought it was, like when I would type it in text messages, I always guess I thought it was J-U-S, which it probably isn't. |
| Erika Wasser | I think that's Jus, like if you're having like a chicken jus. |
| Jodi Katz | Right, like maybe I can do zhoosh with a Z but then it doesn't look right. J-U-Z. |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah, it just became so challenging and we spent so much time on zhoosh that by the time we got out of zhooshing our zhoosh, we're like, "Fuck it, we're staying with Glam&Go." |
| Jodi Katz | Right. So you talked about investors, so here you are, you're doing media work. You're on stage in standup and now you're talking about investors. How did you even know how to talk to investors, find investors? |
| Erika Wasser | You know, I hate telling this story too because we had such a weird, just lucky. I mean this whole business has been kismet. |
| Jodi Katz | Like do you really believe in luck or did ... |
| Erika Wasser | Oh, I most certain ... Well, I believe you put yourself in enough good situations, good things happen. |
| Jodi Katz | Right, so you made it happen. |
| Erika Wasser | You know, I had a bunch of friends who were in the venture community and I said, "Hey, can I take you out for drinks and show you my dec? Can I take you to dinner and by the way, Power Point." You know? So I had a lot of really great feedback of like fix this, fix that or this is missing. So I really depended on my network of other awesome people to tell me where I was right and where I was wrong. |
| Jodi Katz | To me that's not lucky. Lucky is just standing there and all of a sudden flowers appear. You made it happen. |
| Erika Wasser | Then our lead investor who is awesome, we got introduced through one of my friends who was sort of helping me tweak stuff, and she worked in a venture community that only looked at cryptocurrencies so it wasn't a fit but she had this big Rolodex. We met for coffee. She got the idea. She said, "Great, I'm in," paid for her coffee and left and wasn't lying. That's really what happened. I just remember sitting there and I was like, "Okay." She pledged the full ask that we were asking for and said, "I'm leaving for vacation in a few weeks, we need to wrap this up in the next 10 days." I just said, "Okay, great." We did. She still uses the services two or three times a week. I'd say she is probably the best voice of this is wrong on the app or I love this stylist or this one needs to work on bangs. It's so great to have another person who's invested in the business in the space from just a client perspective because a lot of our stylists wouldn't know who she was and so having sort of that like secret shopper of sorts has been super helpful. |
| Jodi Katz | I think the best job in our business is secret shopper. |
| Erika Wasser | Well, you're more than welcome to come secret shop with us any time you want. |
| Jodi Katz | I think it's so fun. Whenever I walk into a store I'm like secret shopping even though, like in my head. Only in my head has someone hired me as a secret shopper. |
| Erika Wasser | It's so funny because now I walk into other service businesses and I'm like, "That's wrong and easy to fix. That's silly. Why are you doing ..." I'll get really annoyed and then I give like in my head other businesses such little slack and then I give ourselves so much room sometimes that I think the one, it's almost like nobody knows somebody else's business or somebody else's relationships so it's always easy to look from the outside and be like, "Oh, none of this makes sense," but just operating on a day-to-day basis is so difficult. |
| Jodi Katz | Well, I don't think the customer sees all the things you see. |
| Erika Wasser | No. |
| Jodi Katz | If someone's rude to her, she notices. If she's ignored, she notices. If she's waiting too long, she notices, but the peeling chipped paint in the corner on this or a mirror that's smashed. |
| Erika Wasser | It's like a bar mitzvah. Nobody knows when you mess up. Just keep making [inaudible 00:24:21] noises. You'll get through. That's what I did. |
| Jodi Katz | My son is in the early stages. He's in fifth grade, he's in the early stages of like all the bar mitzvah crap and stuff, and the prayer before you read from the Torah, I'm like, "Oh my God, it all came back to me." I can just sing it, the whole thing. I know it. |
| Erika Wasser | [crosstalk 00:24:39]. |
| Jodi Katz | I'm not going to sing it on-air. We can practice afterwards, but it's so weird how it all came back. |
| Erika Wasser | Because it had been so long and I think it is, I can still sing that one too. |
| Jodi Katz | Yeah, you can do it and then there's a closing one. You can do that one as well because it's very similar. Anyway, so off topic. Okay, let's just talk for the next few minutes about the experience of going on-stage or going from the camera. What is going through your mind at those moments because I want to hear what the parallels are to being an entrepreneur, if there are any. |
| Erika Wasser | So there's a ton of parallels. I think what goes through your head in all three situations is like, well, just don't fuck it up. Just don't fuck it up. But I'd say the biggest parallel I think between business ownership probably would be more with standup than being on-camera just because if you mumble or you say something wrong or you fall down, you start over again. You don't get those opportunities in real life, right? There's no way that I can call a customer and be like, "Hi. So remember when that terrible thing happened? We're just going to strike that. We're going to start this over." You don't get those opportunities. So what I loved most about standup and similarly in business ownership is you put these ideas together in your head as to what you think makes sense or what you think is going to land and what you think your audience, whether it's your customer or someone with a two drink minimum, wants from you. Then you go out there and you try it, you put it out there to the best of your ability and you get immediate feedback, right? Then it's your job then to sort of a gauge that feedback and figure out where you go from there. How do you grow? What worked? What didn't work? What needs tweaking and how you continue to navigate forward because there's only direction in both. |
| Jodi Katz | So everything you just said made me think of something you mentioned a few minutes ago, which was that your team was always super proactive with your partners on what the pipe was leaking, right? |
| Erika Wasser | Mm-hmm (affirmative). |
| Jodi Katz | That was your analogy, and it kind of makes a lot of sense that if you were in the world of standup where you're delivering a joke at Val's and you move onto the next one, it works, right, you're in this constant conversation almost with your audience. |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah. |
| Jodi Katz | Maybe that's one of the reasons why you're just naturally in this space to be like, "Oh, we're going to tell the jan that this isn't working and we're going to figure it out later." Because that's really hard for people actually, to admit that something's not right without the resolution for it yet, but maybe it's just that kind of relationship with your audience where you have to just be in the moment. |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah. I think you have to be honest, right? At the end of the day, people are all human and know what they're looking more for, at least what we look for in a partner is one that's always going to be honest with us, right? Sometimes delivering not great news and how you do that is so much more telling of who you are as a person and as a business owner and as a partner, right? Because it's very easy to pick up the phone and be like, "Hey, guess what? Everything's great." |
| Jodi Katz | Right, but when you speak about these things it makes me think you're very comfortable and confident in your position of like there's a problem. I've always moved through the world being really lacking confidence and not being comfortable so I would have been faced with the situation, like it would have burned in my belly and I would have lost sleep and all that stuff. So it's kind of awesome that you're just so at ease with the fact that we all are human and there is no perfection, things like that. |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah. I mean I borrow this from African American which I'm not in or have ever been, but I love their concept of progress, not perfection. That's one that is in our handbook. It's one that we onboard all of our team with, right? I'd say what has allowed our business to grow so quickly is instilling the ability for people to make mistakes and be okay with them and be honest about them. Like I'm so beyond proud of Sam Shepherd. She's now running all of our New York operations, but she started as a stylist with us a couple years ago and she always says to me, she says, "You know, I think the one thing I would say really even changed my personal life is when something's not going right, I pick up the phone, I call you. I go, 'I know this is what you want, but this is not going to happen,' and then we figure it out." Right, because I have to credit my parents because the way that I was raised was like the truth we can deal with. |
| Jodi Katz | That's so nice. That's something that you guys talked about as household? |
| Erika Wasser | Yeah. |
| Jodi Katz | Wow. |
| Erika Wasser | Anytime something happened, we were very much one family unit, so if we got in trouble in school or whatever, the truth we can deal with. So if you don't tell us what's going on, then we can't best defend or safeguard you from ... Then once that issue's done, then we can deal with our personal laundry at home, but there's no reason, like there's never anyone worth lying for. |
| Jodi Katz | Okay, I love this. I'm going to bring that home to my family tonight. I think I'm going to put progress, not perfection in our handbook too. |
| Erika Wasser | It's true. |
| Jodi Katz | So thanks for the inspiration. |
| Erika Wasser | I always tell our team, the truth I can deal with. Call me and tell me that you set the place on fire because the less minutes it's burning, the better. |
| Jodi Katz | Right, right. Right. I love this. Okay, this is so great. Thank you so much for your wisdom today. |
| Erika Wasser | Thanks. I don't know that I've ever heard it referred to as wisdom before. This is awesome. |
| Jodi Katz | Yeah, oh my God. Our listeners are going to be so excited, and for our listeners, I hope you enjoyed this interview with Erika. Please subscribe to our series on iTunes and for updates about the show follow us on Instagram @WhereBrainsMeetBeautyPodcast. |
| Announcer | Thanks for listening to WHERE BRAINS MEET BEAUTY® with Jodi Katz. Tune in again for more authentic conversations with beauty leaders. |
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