← Superwomen with Rebecca Minkoff
Superwomen with Rebecca Minkoff
Ann McFerran Left Thailand With Nothing. Then Built a $40M Beauty Empire.
00:46:41
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- [00:00]
LinkedIn Hiring Pro Narrator
Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money and most importantly, momentum. A good hire, they can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through the piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screen candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit. As a founder, I know how important it is to build the right team. And when I talk to other founders on this pod that comes up again and again. Behind every superwoman is another superwoman. And I've heard horror stories too. I've talked to founders who have had a bad hire hurt the whole trajectory of their business. And when you're scaling, it's not a mistake you can afford to make. Trust me, I've been there. So hiring is important, but it can be a full time job. That's why LinkedIn is such an asset. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, Those hiring with LinkedIn are 24% less likely to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free@LinkedIn.com superw that's LinkedIn.com super super w
- [01:24]
Rebecca Minkoff
terms and conditions apply.
- [01:25]
Anne McFerrin
I was actually like kind of a broke artist, like living out of a one bedroom apartment in Koreatown, literally a back house to another house paying less than a grand for rent. But I had this big idea of wanting to start my own small business.
- [01:40]
Rebecca Minkoff
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Superwomen. Today's guest is Anne McFerrin, the founder of Glamnetics and also Digibauty. She has taken over two of the hardest categories in beauty and has done it as a of side self funded bootstrapped founder. She was doing over $40 million in year two of her company.
- [01:56]
Anne McFerrin
I think people come from a place of I want to give equity away because I don't believe in myself fully. I always tell founders, try to do as much as you can by yourself without any outside help.
- [02:08]
Rebecca Minkoff
We talk about getting scrappy, how you need to build trust in order to build teams and what she's done to supercharge her growth. More recently with the launch of Digi Beauty, she now is getting into the nail space and really disrupting an area that is rife with competition. But she's showing that innovation can take place anywhere.
- [02:26]
Anne McFerrin
You don't have to come from anything fancy to be able to accomplish anything you dream of. I think you can literally have nothing and achieve anything in America.
- [02:41]
Rebecca Minkoff
I'm Rebecca Minkoff and this is Superwomen. Each week, inspiring women are interviewed to uncover the unexpected journeys, the challenges, and the unwavering spirit that makes them powerful. Get ready to be motivated by stories of resilience and discover the keys to unlocking your own potential. And welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today.
- [03:04]
Anne McFerrin
Thank you so much for having me.
- [03:06]
Rebecca Minkoff
So I'm a big lash girly. It's because I have these semi Asiatic eyes. I get asked where I'm from all the time and it's always Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Japan. And I feel like for me, lashes have been the thing that's been my like, thank goodness people make lashes. But. So I want to get into Glamnetic. And then obviously what you just launched with Digibauty. But what even gave you the idea to get started? Because from what I know, you were going to be a doctor before you pivoted.
- [03:35]
Anne McFerrin
Yes. So I actually went to UCLA for psychobiology. It was like pre med medicine. And then I completely took a pivot. Well, before I even went into starting Glamnetic as a brand founder, I sort of dipped my toes into entrepreneurship by getting into fine art. So I was a fine artist for about four or five years. Like, seriously selling paintings pretty much like all around the US I was doing commissions online. I started building an Instagram following, selling paintings online, custom paintings. And then I started showing at the LA art show and Art Basel. And I did that for a while, seriously, before I actually started Glamnetic and. But the reason why I started Glamnetic was I felt very lonely doing art because I was in the studio for eight hours a day by myself. It's such a solo journey. And I really yearned to have some sort of structure, a team, a scalable product. Because one of my favorite things about art was I was able to create something that people could have an emotional reaction towards. Like my biggest. The thing that gave me the most joy was when I gave somebody a custom painting and they just have this big smile on their face. And so I really loved bringing people joy through the product. So I'm like, how do I make this scalable? And I was actually like, kind of a broke artist, like living out of a one bedroom apartment in Koreatown, like literally a back house to another house, you know, paying less than a grand for. For rent. And I was driving this little PT Cruiser. But I had this big idea of wanting to start my own small business at the time. And I had this idea for magnetic lashes that were glam because I really liked more like, glam lashes, but there was none on the market that were easy to apply and glam. And so I basically created this, the world's first glam magnetic lashes, by just starting this process of, like, innovation, reaching out to, like, suppliers internationally and just, like, trying to see, like, who could make this idea come to life. And it was a labor of love because I didn't know what I was doing. So I was literally going on YouTube and learning, you know, through YouTube University, they say, right? Like, learning tutorials and figuring out how do I source suppliers, like, where do I get this? Like, how do I design? How do I start to formulate things and just kind of learning from scratch. But thanks to my, like, scientific background, I think I had this, like, really good, like, hypotheses and then conjecture type of thing. So I would learn how to create these products from scratch and finally went through, like. I mean, I went through, like, hundreds of suppliers. So I had, like, all these lash samples from all these suppliers and finally landed on one that actually worked, a prototype that actually worked. And so when I went to market, basically the idea that I had was this liquid eyeliner that was also magnetic. It was adhesive, and it also was magnetic. And so you would apply, like, a normal eyeliner. It just had a higher concentration of iron oxide, which is magnetic. And then the lashes had small little magnets in the back. We started basically with five magnets. We just kept adding, like, more magnets, but basically glued these small magnets in the back, and then they would magnetize to the eyeliner, and so that's how the lash would connect. And I showed a lot of my girlfriends, and they freaked out because they're like, what? I've never seen this in my life. This is insane. And I think that's when I knew I was like, oh, I think I have something here. I think I have a solution. Because for me, I know that so many girls struggle with lash application. And so we basically launched with that. And initially it was a little bit slow. Like, I had to basically get my initial customers through all of the organic traffic. So I was dming. I had this idea of, like, to DM every single customer, like, that was following me. I had been building the page up probably for about a year before I Even launched. And so I had like some, you know, like a few thousand followers. And so I was like, wait, like this is kind of like door to door sales. You know, when you do cold sales
- [07:54]
Rebecca Minkoff
door to door, I talk about door to door all the time. And we have to go back to that.
- [07:58]
Anne McFerrin
Oh, okay. Amazing. Yeah, it's literally door to door sales, but like virtually where you just like DM every customer and be like, hey, do you have any questions about the products? And a lot of people did have questions because they'd never seen this product before. They'd be like, wait, how does this work? And then I would explain it or send a video that would give them a discount code that expired in 24 hours on Shopify and it would have like a 30% conversion rate. And at the time there weren't many founder facing brands. This was before TikTok. I started this 2019. And so I was very forward facing because I did not have money to pay an influencer to talk about my product. So I had to become the influencer myself. And every single day I made like at least 10 videos. And then things really started to get more traction. As, you know, the DM sales were, were, were working. And then, I mean, I only had like a hundred units stocked of five lashes. I had five, five different styles and I had a hundred units each. And those went by like in a couple months. And I was like, okay, I need to like restock. And then I brought on an ad buyer and we were sort of like learning Instagram. He knew ads, but he never worked for like a, like a real, like a real E commerce brand. So we kind of like learning things together. And, and then he'd be like, wait, try this video. And then we would sort of go back and forth. And I started basically like sending him all these videos that, where I was talking about the product and demonstrating it in real time and those started to really convert. We would post on Instagram and Facebook and then things just. That's when things really started to take off, was really with the ads mixed in with, you know, the organic word of mouth that people would be like, wait, this product is crazy. And the conversions would start to like go up and be crazy because I would demonstrate and visually show people like, oh, I had no lash. And then I have this liner on and then boom, it would go on like literally I would drop, I would literally drop the lash onto the eye and it would just stick. So it was just like such a visual like before and after that. I think many girls got so excited for. And things just really start to work. And then when Covid hit, this was the craziest thing. Everyone started wearing masks and everyone started going online. And so because everyone, you know, like, it's. I focused. So then basically like our sales just like tripled overnight. Pretty much like the mix of stimulus checks, the I. I focus and everybody being at home. And then just like that entire year, I remember how it was so insane. We couldn't keep product in stock. I went from like end of 2019, like a couple months, a few months end of 2019, we were doing like maybe a. And then like that following year, 2020, you know, we did like 40 million in net revenue.
- [10:49]
Rebecca Minkoff
Okay, so we have to. I have to stop you there. To go from 1 million to 40 self funded. It's not like. And it's not like people were investing in brands. Then how did you fund that? You just talked about how you stayed in the back house in Koreatown and like living paycheck to paycheck or commission to commission. How did you even know what to do? And. And did you have a business sense to even figure it out?
- [11:11]
Anne McFerrin
It was a lot of, like, finagling. Like, we had to really. Well, every single dollar we made, we put it back into the business. Like, no questions asked. And also taking out credit card, like a bunch of credit cards, maxing out the credit card. We didn't qualify for a loan yet because you have to be like a more mature business to qualify for loans. So it was just kind of like really figuring out the financial engineering behind that. And thankfully, I have a really good ops person who like, really was understanding all of that because I think the business would have broke if we didn't have that. Who is your.
- [11:45]
Rebecca Minkoff
Who was your team at that moment? Like you said, we. But was it still a tiny team?
- [11:49]
Anne McFerrin
Yeah, it was super tiny. I had hired on. Well, I had Kevin Gold, who was my business partner, and then I also had Lucas, who was sort of our head of ops. And then I hired on one full time team member who started off as an intern pretty much. And then she went into full time. She came right out of college, so she didn't really have a lot of, like, experience. This was the hardest thing also is trying to get somebody to work for me and to believe in the vision I had. Like, I hired like three, four people, trained them, and then had them leave pretty much almost like a week after I trained them. Because we were working out of a back house in Korea town. I think they were like, this is so not. This is.
- [12:30]
Rebecca Minkoff
So you gotta find the people I find in those scenarios that are just like gritty, like up for anything, have no prior expectations. Because I remember too when we did our first hires, the minute we hired someone more senior, if they came in and they saw us rubbing two sticks together, they're like, no, no, no, I'm out. I did, I did that already.
- [12:47]
Anne McFerrin
Yeah, exactly, exactly. People who have no ego is like very important. And so thankfully like Mia. Mia was my first deploy. She basically was my right hand woman. Like we did everything together. Customer service, product development, photography. I was, I'd learned photography fully by myself too. And we'd had like our own like in home shoot and we would trade off being photographers and you know, like literally everything that you could potentially think of with social media emails. Like we were doing all of the things just us two and, and you know, the guys would do like the back end stuff like the ops and the finance and just making sure things weren't breaking. And so it was a labor of love. And then we, we started to hire like strategically, like, okay, somebody who takes on customer service. And so our team started to grow gradually within that year, in 2020, I think we had like about like 10 people by the end of 2020. But still that the business was just like grew so massively. And you can imagine how demand planning was extremely complex. And we were like, what are we going to do next year? You know, we're doing this. I think we also had to be realistic with ourselves of just like, is this something that is like a Covid bump or is this something that could continue? And I know we were going to talk about that like the pivot into nails and kind of like what led to that.
- [14:08]
Rebecca Minkoff
Everyone, sorry for the quick pause. I want to share something really exciting. Superwoman has a brand new YouTube channel. It's still under construction, but big things are coming in 2026. You'll find past episodes, new episodes, and some bonus content I cannot wait for you to see. Just search SuperWoman Media on YouTube and hit subscribe so you don't miss a thing. Okay, back to the pod. So before we pivot into nails, everyone wants the story you described, but they have no idea that it's. It can be just as painful as having something not work out because to go through that kind of growth. So what were some of the successful things you did during that time that enabled you to sort of weather the course? Because it is, it can be incredibly stressful and you're like, this is great, but like I'm working 100 hours a week or I can't sleep, or a shipment was missed or inventory is gone and we're pissing off customers. Like, what helped got you get you through those moments? Yes.
- [15:08]
Anne McFerrin
I mean, I think I had never had such passion and purpose in my life up to that point, honestly. Like, I went to school, I. I did the whole like, artist thing and all that stuff, but I felt like I was going through the motions of those things versus with Glamnetic. I just felt it in my soul that this was my passion and purpose here on earth. Like, I. I just felt like this brand, even the name of it, like, came to me in a way that was almost like a spiritual awakening. I don't know how to explain that, but. So I think it was just something that was the only thing I thought about. Like, I was so obsessed and, you know, I didn't even talk to my friends or family, to be honest, for, like, that. Those whole, like two first two years that we were starting, just because it was. It just took that amount of focus for me to be able to do that. And especially I just look back on, like, the amount of things that I was doing and the amount of things that were happening at the time. And like every day felt like a year because of just like the intensity of like how much we were putting in and you know, when we were like, sold out. And also people kept ordering and we allowed pre orders and stuff, so we were like back ordered for a lot of that time. And I would just literally be calling the factories and being like, what do you have? Like, what could you do for me to get this here faster? And I just remember they were like, well, labeling takes a week and a half or two weeks. And I'm like, I'll do the labeling, send the product with the labels and I'll do the labeling. And I literally started my own, like, almost like factory line with my friends. And I was like, I don't have anything. I don't have any money to offer you right now, but I can offer you pizza and like some good vibes. And so people came over and we were just like labeling eyeliners for like, I don't know, like 10 hours.
- [16:56]
Rebecca Minkoff
I don't know if you feel this way, but I love. So I had a scrappy beginning, scrappy journey. And at the same time that it was like the most excited and fulfilling, like you said. Yeah, the thought of, like, sometimes I get a new business idea and then I'm like, oh, God, I know what that's going to be like. And it's like, even though I did it and I loved it, it's like, I don't know if I could ever go back there. Do you ever. I mean, clearly you, you don't feel that way because you just launched Digi. What made you go, oh, let me go back to. Not that you're starting over because you're not going to be scrappy and having people doing your labels with your success, but what, what gives you the, like, oh, let me start something new again and feel like, okay about it?
- [17:38]
Anne McFerrin
I mean, I think now it's like a night and day difference because we have, we have like a team, we have infrastructure. Like, it's so different from the literally doing it alone with no team. Yeah. And being, having all of the weight fully on pretty much my shoulders in terms of just like everything. The creative, the vision, the product development. And just like, if this thing fails, it's basically my fault at this point because we have, I mean, we almost have 100 person team at this point now and the teams are very built out and we have like a leadership team and then people that report to that leadership team. So, like, it's very much more developed. So now it's like, if I step away, honestly for like a couple weeks or even a month, like, they're gonna be fine. Back then, if I stepped away even for a day, things would collapse. So it was, the pressure was just so much different. And I, I think it was also the ownership of it though. It's kind of like literally birthing a baby and you're like, newborn baby, it's gonna die if I don't take care of it.
- [18:40]
Rebecca Minkoff
Literally.
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Anne McFerrin
It's like that pressure. But also like, I think that's why new moms like love it so much because they think it's like the hardest times, but it's also the most like rewarding times. And that's kind of like how I felt with this. And so like, I look back and I just think that those are the best times of my life because I'm just never going to have that again unless I literally fully start a new company with a new team. But even then I still have resources. You know, I just, I literally be
- [19:05]
Rebecca Minkoff
undercover millionaire and have nothing.
- [19:08]
Anne McFerrin
Exactly. Yeah, I could do that. But it's just like so hard to fake that now because when you have resources coming from starting a company now, it's just like start over the way you did before.
- [19:17]
Rebecca Minkoff
So what was one of the first decisions you felt like you made that was really risky at the time, I think.
- [19:22]
Anne McFerrin
Think like, well, the pre order situation because we were like, well we, either because we ran out of product and we were like, okay, either we like allow pre orders or we, we cut it off and we, we don't do it because like some, because people will get mad if you know, like their product is delayed for, for X amount of time. But we realize it's all about communication just being clear, like, hey, this is not going to come for three weeks and people are okay with that. Then they keep ordering. Then okay, like we have time to do that. We're not like stressing out because it just got so bad with obviously we didn't have demand planning and we tried to demand planning as much but when you go from 1 to 40 million in a year, it's just like it's impossible to plan for that. And so it was just kind of like it had to be, it was a very strategic decision to be like, okay, we have to keep running ads because if we stop running ads we lose the momentum and then we might not get that back. And so we just have this, this wind on our back right now that we need to make use of it. But also like stressing out being like, do I have to fly to China myself to get the product? And it was just like there was just so much on the line and also at the same time having to deal with like I'm doing the social media myself, I'm doing the photography myself for social media and I'm having to respond to all of these customer service questions. I was literally in text with, with customers at that point.
- [20:38]
Rebecca Minkoff
It sounds impossible. Like when you describe the, the size of your company plus everything you're doing, it's like you were a hundred people. Like you were doing it all.
- [20:46]
Anne McFerrin
Exactly. I would be like, we. But it was just me. It's just me and my room, you know, So I would just have to fake that we were kind of bigger that because people thought that we were big based on kind of like all the ads they were seeing. And so I was very like, I would get the customer's number and literally text them myself individually if they were, if they needed the attention. And I would literally call customers directly and just be like, I got your order, don't worry, I'm going to the post office right now, sending it. Like I was very. As much as I could alleviate any sort of, I don't know, people were, you know, mad or tense or whatever. Like I wanted to be like, hey, I'm going to talk to you directly as the founder. And that would maybe. And that did help a lot because people were like, wow, you really care. Like, the founder's talking to me. I would literally send Voice memos through DMs, you know, so. And the DMs, by the way, the DM sales, we were still doing them, and that took, like, three, four hours of my day alone. And so I started hiring. Well, I would start basically asking my friends, like, hey, like, I would give you commission for sales. Just like, here are the time slots. And I would literally give them time slots of the day where they could do DM sales, and I would give them commission based on, like, the. The number of coupons that they would convert. And so it just started becoming, like, a whole thing. And I would have to manage those people while trying to do the. The product. So it was just like, such an insane time of my life that I made it work. Oh, another. Another funny thing is I was very desperate to find model. But we also, at the time, like, it's. Especially in the beginning, we didn't have any money. So I went on Bumble bff, and I would swipe right on all the girls that I wanted to, like, have model for me, and then I would ask them to come over, and I would give them free lashes and take a photo for them and be like, okay, like, I'll do your. I'll do your, you know, your lashes, your makeup, and they'll be like, yeah, I want to do that. That sounds great. And just like, it was like a trade type of a situation, and it worked. We had, like, really great models.
- [22:39]
Rebecca Minkoff
I love how you thought through solving so many problems in so many unique ways, like, whether it was your remote ad sales buyer or going on bumble and swiping. Right. Or just, like, all the way or commissioning friends. I think that so many founders get stuck in these problems, and then they think it costs a ton of money to solve it. I'm curious to know with, like, safeguarding your product, like, you were making something that could have easily been copied. How did you get that protected first and foremost? And how do you protect it now? Because I feel like in beauty, it's, like, knockoff central.
- [23:14]
Anne McFerrin
Yeah, it's. I mean, it's one of those hardest things. It's one of the hardest things. It's like you can try to get patents up the wazoo and, like, spend, you know, millions of dollars trying to litigate that, or you just try to continually innovate. So that's what I was talking about with the adding more magnets. So initially we actually, we started with three magnets and then we kept adding more and more until we got to like basically like 5 to 6 magnets. And we just kept making the product better each time. And then the creativity we would put into the packaging. Like we had, you know, a birthday collection. We made it this whole like astronaut themed, like outer space themes. And there was just nobody in the space doing the creative part as well as we were doing on top of the marketing. I really used my artistic background to really help me with those aspects because I, I think people only focus on like product, the product itself, but they didn't focus on design. Like the whole world around the product. And, and that's where like we brought that into nail and there was nobody doing that in nail either. And so now we like basically are the leader in nail because we were the first to do it. And there's going to be copycats for sure. But it's like how do you innovate forward and stay ahead of those people before they even get there?
- [24:40]
Rebecca Minkoff
Are you wearing the nails now?
- [24:41]
Anne McFerrin
Yes.
- [24:42]
Rebecca Minkoff
Do a little show and tell. I was, I was noticing. So is that this, is that like a similar technology where it's magnetic?
- [24:49]
Anne McFerrin
No, no, this is completed. This is glue. Okay. It's, it's a glue on nail. So. But the glue is like basically some of the strongest on the market. But we like to add like multiple finishes. Like this one has a magnetic finish underneath. That's why it's like kind of like shiny looking.
- [25:03]
Rebecca Minkoff
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [25:04]
Anne McFerrin
Magnetic cat eye finish and then like gems. This isn't this one we just launched. Like it's so good.
- [25:11]
Rebecca Minkoff
My daughter is nail obsessed. Like she only wears fake nails all the time.
- [25:16]
Anne McFerrin
We can send her anything she wants.
- [25:18]
Rebecca Minkoff
She will be very happy to hear that. What do you think is your best protection around competition? Because in beauty it's like overwhelming. New products every day, new brands every day. And then each brand has to iterate and have like a million things. As much as I wish you could just have one product and like that would be it. So how have you protected yourself against that?
- [25:39]
Anne McFerrin
Yeah, well, I mean in, in lash, right? We just out marketed everyone. I basically was filming like I don't know, 10 to 20 videos a day. I would post them also, but then my, I would send it to my ad buyer to like basically to run as ads and we would just do like a lot of iterations and same thing now with my ads, I mean I have a whole ads team. Now with the, you know, for Glamtic for nails, because. And they just come up with, like, new creatives all the time. Like, it's really just like, how do we. How do we out market everyone else? And how do we also come up with newness? Like, right now, we're doing almost two launches every single month in.
- [26:16]
Rebecca Minkoff
In nails and lashes.
- [26:18]
Anne McFerrin
Adjusting nails, because we did the pivot right into. Pretty much like, you kind of have to. It's hard to own two categories at once because you have to, like, really invest in marketing spend. Yeah, Each brand has a finite amount of marketing spend, and you have to decide how you want to do that. If you want to do half and half, you might be mediocre at both and kind of like second tier at both, but if you invest fully in one, you become the leader in that. And that's what we decided to do is like, we wanted to become a leader in a specific category. And kind of like after Covid, lash craze died down a little bit because of, you know, like, people were not wearing masks anymore. And just in general too, like, premium lashes category went down. And so we were like, okay, what do we have to do? We started launching nails and we started to see some traction there. And I also saw, like, a clear white space for diy because again, people love diy. People stopped going in the nail salon during COVID because I wanted to do things at home, and there was nobody doing on trend premium press on nails. There was just like, you know, drugstore brands that were doing it at a kind of like a lower level, lower quality, like, not great designs. But when you look at Instagram and you have like, all this nail inspo, like, I was not seeing those in press on your form. So I was like, I want to take your nail inspo. Literally put it in press on nail form at the highest quality we can create it in. And so people can have these in five minutes for $20, you know, instead of having to wait. Because of. My biggest pet peeve is like, efficiency. I love efficiency. I get. I get. I get bored quickly and I get very patient. So being at the nail salon, to me is like, it's torture. I went to the nail salon maybe one time for prom in. In high school, and I hated it. I hated it. So I was like, I never am gonna go back again. Oh, look at you. We gotta get.
- [28:07]
Rebecca Minkoff
I hate going and I don't have time. So I was like, sure, Exactly. That solves the yes.
- [28:11]
Anne McFerrin
You have to lose. You have to use, like, lose both of your hands and then it's like all the toxic fumes. You know, when you're pregnant you can't go to the nail salon. So yeah, it's just all of these restrictions and obviously the stuff that came out with TPE being cancerous, you know, and being banned in the eu. So yeah, there's so many reasons why I think press on nails are just superior. And like the technology now has come so far because we custom made the mold because there was no mold like this that existed on the market that was like thick and high quality. So it's like super durable. And we actually showed a lot of different durability tests where we like ran a car. We literally like had like a Ferrari run over the car, over the nails to show like how durable they are. And the glue is so strong, it's almost like cement. So it literally stays on. I mean, some people are getting four weeks depending on the nail bed, but typically we say up to two weeks and then we're adding all of these cute designs and we're launching twice a month because it's almost kind of like fashion in a way where you want to keep up with newness and people just want the latest and greatest people like nail trends change. And so keeping up with that is super important. And just like fashion, you have the core basics that never got a style. So like your French tips, your solids, your magnetic like cat eyes, your like those things never go out of of style. So we have those core that continue to be bestsellers. But then we also layer in like new, new styles that are very on trend. Like we're coming out with like a Euro summer collection next month and we that's been requested for a long time. We get so many requests for so many things and so we try to take people's requests. This was for spring and so like depending on the season, we come out with like seasonal nails. And then we also do IP collabs with major IPs. Like we did Harry Potter, we did hello Kitty, we did Beetlejuice, Bratz, and we're continuing to do. We have two big ones this year that I'm like so excited for. I can't say what they are yet, but I think those are going to be major. One of them is a film coming up having like major tailwinds. And so yeah, we, we try to layer in these collabs. We did one with Glamzilla and then we're doing a part two with Glamzilla, who's like a big beauty influencer. And so we have a lot of fun on the creative side. And the creative team is just, like, always, like, trying to change it up to get people excited.
- [30:35]
Rebecca Minkoff
So all of this fuel and effort is going into your work. And clearly, like, the you. You've only had the company the last seven years. There's a lot of conversation around, you know, how I don't believe in balance. I'll just say that I talk about it all the time, you know, but has this taken a toll on you personally in any way? Or how do you make sure you stay healthy and fueled yourself this whole time? Because it's not lost on me that what you're doing and taking on is huge now. Obviously you have a huge team now, but, like, you're still the founder, you're still the face, still relies on you.
- [31:07]
Anne McFerrin
Yeah, Yeah. I feel like, you know, over the years, things have gradually become a little bit better and easier for me, like, in terms of just the sheer amount of, like, being in the weeds workload. Right. Like, I used to be so in the weeds all the time, like, posting all of the posts myself. And, you know, having a leadership team has been like a game changer, like an executive team that just is able to oversee things and sort of be my eyes and ears. As long as I know that I can trust each of the people in the leadership team, I can trust their sense of judgment. I think that was the biggest thing for me, was just like, learning how to trust people. That was really hard for me in the beginning. I felt like I was such a control freak and I was such a micromanager in the beginning because I just. I. It's my baby. And so I was just like, everything that somebody did, I criticized. And I was just like, oh, this is not. This is not healthy. Because it wasn't. It wasn't good for the employees. And so I learned over the years, like, how to be more of a. Like a. A proactive supporter and just sort of like a fan, I guess. I'm like, oh, yay, Go team. Like, always, like, very positive. Because people just work better through positive reinforcement, I realize. And like, you give them trust. If you give somebody trust, they will go the extra mile and feel like they can do what they need to do and their critical thinking skills go up and all these things improved. And so just over. Especially over the last two years, like, I've just learned how to, like, trust my team a lot more, and I feel like things have continued to flourish because now they're able to do what they do best.
- [32:43]
Rebecca Minkoff
Do you ever feel like, and I don't believe in the word imposter syndrome, because I think that's a mindset shift that it's almost like the more you practice something, the more competent you get. I think that so many people are, like, say that they have imposter syndrome when I just think you haven't done something. And until you do it enough and get the expertise, that's just what you're experiencing. But here you are doing everything yourself, launching in a new category, you know, disrupting an entire category. Then you're hiring an executive team, and then you're managing them. How did you know how to know, like, what to do and who to trust and bring on, never having done it before?
- [33:19]
Anne McFerrin
Yeah, I think that was one of the hardest things. We definitely went through a few bad seeds, and so I think it's literally trial and error. And like I said, like, even hiring my first employee, we went through three people where I was, like, losing a week to train somebody at that stage of the business was so sensitive that I felt like it was very, like, make or break, and it happened, like, multiple times. So it just very much was. It was one of those things that started to, like, defeat me, where I was like, this is very defeating. And I would, like, literally have mental breakdowns where I'm like, I don't know if I can do this. And I just really had to be like, no, no, it's fine, it's fine. Like, we can do this, we can do this. And I just have to give myself the pep talk to just try again and just be like. Like, use. Okay. Like, let's find a better process. Because, you know, hiring through Craigslist is not a good idea. Like, hiring through LinkedIn is. Is way better of an idea. And then, you know, we had, like, multiple, like, head of brands and they didn't work out, you know, like. And those are.
- [34:18]
Rebecca Minkoff
The graveyard is big with us, but it's with anyone.
- [34:21]
Anne McFerrin
Yes, exactly. You kind of just have to go through and just try to use your best judgment and just, like, don't. I think just don't get down on yourself so much. Don't. Don't beat yourself up. I think a lot of people are, like, mean to themselves. I think just, like, talk to yourself positively and just be like, listen, like, you're doing this for the first time. No one is perfect. Let's try it again. So I think it's just, you know, that another day is coming. And at the end of the day, I think you have, like, having Tailwinds of just like any success previously in within the business. And thinking of that, like, gives you a lot of energy and hope that things are going to work out. And that's the type of energy that I try to bring. And I think that's why we've built such a good team. It's just like, we've been through the bad seeds and now we. Now we have a really good leadership team.
- [35:08]
Rebecca Minkoff
So are you still self funded? Yes. So how did you not get drunk on the Kool Aid like everyone else and go raise a bunch of money or go through that process? And how did you stick? You know, now it's becoming cool again to say that you didn't take funding. But I feel for so long it was a female founder's, like, badge of honor to be like, and I raised this. And I'm like, yeah, you sold a lot of your company. Like, I'm not sure why we're bragging here.
- [35:34]
Anne McFerrin
Yeah, I felt the same way. I was like, why? Why is. I remember when the Forbes 30 under 30 list came out and they were highlighting mostly the people that, you know, raised all money. I was just like, I was like, how come they're not highlighting the people that, like, literally came from nothing? Like, came from, like, like, bootstraps, like, nothing. And I think it made sense to me. I was like, why would I give equity away if I don't absolutely, like, have to? I feel like. I think people come from a place of, like, I want to give equity away because I don't believe in myself fully. I think it comes from a place of, like, not fully believing yourself. Or I think also, like, I'm in. I'm lucky to be in a space like, E. Commerce is not as intensive as, like, building an app or AI or like, any of these. Like, if you're in those, like, you definitely need to raise. But it's not like we're like, hiring engineers, you know, like, like, I'm. I'm creating lashes or nails, right? So it's just like, we can learn how to develop those things a lot more bootstrapped. And I think once we started to make money, we were like, oh, wait, we have momentum. Why would we need to, like, raise more money? We, if anything, we could take out a bank loan. And then, like, later on when we feel like we're ready, we can raise if we want. Like, we really want to, like, meet capital for something crazy. But at this point, now that we've been growing pretty steadily, like, year over year, it's like, Our cash flow is a lot. In a lot healthier place than it was initially. But I think those first two years are definitely the most critical in terms of make or break in your company in terms of, like, financial health. And once we figured out, like, hey, this is like, we're past that stage now, like, we definitely don't feel like we need to now for sure. But I think those two first two years are like, I always tell founders, try to do as much as you can by yourself without any outside help. See how far you can take it before you absolutely need to take. And even if you need to take anything, like, I don't know, borrow, borrow money from friends or family, like, take out, like, more credit card. I don't know, there's just like, so many other things you can do before going the raising money route because at the end of the day, I also don't want investors to be in our business and like, dictating anything that we, we can or cannot do, it changes
- [37:45]
Rebecca Minkoff
everything in a big way that most people don't realize. So I'm a proponent of, of everything you just said. Before we wrap two more questions, one would be, is there a piece of, of advice you'd like to pass on that you either learned the hard way or someone gave to you that you feel like is worth having someone else gain the knowledge of?
- [38:06]
Anne McFerrin
Yes, I think, I mean, I get, I get a lot of questions from female founders or potential female founders that are wanting to start a company. I'm sure, like, a lot of your listeners are that. And they asked me, like, how did you figure all this out? Like, this seems so intimidating. And, you know, I always like to say, like, a third, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Like, you really do need to take that first step. And you need, instead of being a bystander, you need to be bulldozer. You have to have that fierceness to, to start. And I think that that for me was the hardest thing. And again, I started everything first before I even brought a business partner on. So before I even had a business partner, I was like, I have this idea. I didn't want to do it, and nobody is going to tell me. No one is going to tell me. No. Right. I even had a boyfriend at the time who wasn't supportive of me starting a business. So I literally didn't even tell him. So, like, I just didn't even tell people I was doing. I was like, I'm just going to do it. And, you know, if you have people around you that are not going to support you in, in that, then just don't, don't tell them and just do it on. Move in silence and do it on your own. I think a lot of people find reasons on why they shouldn't start a company or why, you know, like all of these, oh, I don't have the idea yet. I don't have these things. I don't have like people always come up with all these, these excuses, but I literally was like driving a PT Cruiser in a paying like maybe like less than a thousand dollars a month rent in my one bedroom apartment in Koreatown, like literally had no resources, $2,000 in my bank account. And I was like, I would just want to start a small business. And like that's what you could tell yourself. I just want to start a small business and I'm happy with $10,000 a month from this business and just start with that. Because that's literally how I, what I told myself when I started to get myself going. Because if I told myself I'm going to make 50 or $100 million a year one day, it's like, no, I would never have started because that sounds way too intimidating. But just like psych yourself up by telling yourself $10,000 a month, that's my goal. And before you know it, you're gonna be a big brand one day because you're gonna find this like inner fire and passion for it that you've never felt before and, and then you're going to be so surprised at what you can do in five years.
- [40:14]
Rebecca Minkoff
It's so true. I remember when we first started we got told the wrong advice, but this bank that we wanted a loan from said once you hit 5 million in revenue, things will get so much easier with cash flow and negotiating in margin. And I remember I literally took a Sharpie to the wall of our little two room office. It was a thermometer with like the levels and every time we got to the next level it was like, we're on our way towards the top. We had this grand idea. We're like, okay, when we hit 5 million, the whole team, aka four people, we're all going to go to Jamaica and you're going to get a Rolex. Well, no one got a trip that didn't happen because the math was not mathing. So you couldn't take a trip to Jamaica and you could not get a Rolex. But just knowing like you said, like it can start small and 5 billion might sound big to some people, but we were doing a million. So 5 didn't seem crazy is such great advice. And I just think knowing that women are going to hear what you're saying and that you did do it, you have a huge, incredible. Now two brands that are killing it in an arena that's not easy. I think hopefully gives a lot of women like that.
- [41:16]
Anne McFerrin
Okay.
- [41:16]
Rebecca Minkoff
If Anne can come from nothing, being in Koreatown with a thousand dollar rent and figuring it out, then anyone, then anything's possible. So I'm just so happy to hear your story today.
- [41:28]
Anne McFerrin
Thank you so much. Yeah, I think. Oh, something I forgot to touch on too is like my like, early years, because, like, that's even crazier. I mean, I. I started my story like with you already in America, but I was born in Bangkok, Thailand, and I basically, before my mom brought me to the US was pretty much like living in poverty with my great grandparents. And I don't know. That's a lot of the reasons why I have gut problems is because I was. I literally was raised on like, potato chips because we were so poor. And. And then when I basically was able to come to the US cause my mom married my stepdad, who's American, and so I took on his last name. That's why my Last name is McFerrin, because my Thai name is actually. But then I completely. It fully changed my name when I moved. And so I realized, like, what my life could have been if I had stayed in Thailand. You know, like, it's. It could have been really bad. And so I just feel like, I don't know, God gave me this blessing to be able to come to the US with nothing. And my mom also kind of came here with nothing as well. And so we have this full, like, immigrant story. And just coming here, learning English for the first time, like, literally not be able to communicate with anybody. How old were you? I was like 7 or 8 when I first immigrated over here and then went to, you know, started learning English pretty much, like immediately, like, was pretty much fluid. By, like time I was like 8. And then when I moved to America, I moved to like. So it's a super small town. Like, there's more cows than people in this. In this town, I would say. And I feel like I was raised, like, very, very like humble suburban beginnings. Like, my dad had literally saved a million dollars up for four people for 20 years. So we survived off of that for pretty much like 20 years, just between the four of us just making it work. And then when he passed, you know, my mom took on a lot of the responsibilities on herself. And so I think people should realize like you, you don't have to come from anything fancy to be able to accomplish anything, like anything you dream of. I think you can literally have nothing and achieve anything in America. If you're in America, it's like you're already blessed.
- [43:45]
Rebecca Minkoff
Right.
- [43:45]
Anne McFerrin
Like that's what I'm. Because I feel like if I was in Thailand, there was no way and any other country, it's so much harder. But in you, if you're in America, you are so blessed because that's like you're above like 90 of, of people around the world in terms of a leg up. Because the opportunities here is, is truly insane. You can accomplish anything you want. There's literally no excuse because with AI and, and YouTube and just like how there's so much more free information than when I even started.
- [44:13]
Rebecca Minkoff
Yeah. Knowledge is power, man.
- [44:15]
Anne McFerrin
Power.
- [44:16]
Rebecca Minkoff
Well, you're beyond inspiring. Thank you for coming on today. And where can everyone watch you, buy you, support you?
- [44:23]
Anne McFerrin
Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm on Instagram at the Modern Artista. That's basically that came from my, my art.
- [44:32]
Rebecca Minkoff
Yeah.
- [44:33]
Anne McFerrin
And then on my Instagram is Ann McFerrin. Just my name. A N, N M C F E R R A N. And I was telling Rebecca because this is so crazy, but I got diagnosed with thyroid cancer like two months or three, four months ago. And so I've been kind of documenting my whole health journey on my Instagram as well as my business stuff. So if anyone is interested in that whole natural healing health journey, then you can follow, follow my, my story there.
- [45:01]
Rebecca Minkoff
And we didn't get into it like I wanted, but I wanted to give it time. And so I, I'm proposing a part two when you make the decision of where, what you're going to do and we can go deep into how you're managing health, wellness, business, all that stuff. If, if you're game for it.
- [45:16]
Anne McFerrin
Yes, I'm totally down.
- [45:18]
Rebecca Minkoff
Thank you so much for watching today's episode. Before you head out, I wanted to invite you to our brand new YouTube channel for all things superwomen. It's a fresh space we're building out for 2026, packed with past episodes, future episodes, and some special new content we're cooking up. Just search SuperWomen Media on YouTube and subscribe so you're there for everything coming next. I will see you over there. Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you've enjoyed it, take a second to rate and review the show. Wherever you're tuning in. It really helps others find the podcast. You can follow me on Instagram Rebecca Minkoff and at rmsuperwoman or for a slice into my personal life, Ecky Minkoff. And don't forget to check out my book, Fearless the New Rules for Unlocking Creativity, Courage, and Success. See you next week.