Founder's Story - Bootstrapping to 9 Figures: Ann McFerran's Glamnetic Success Story | S2: E28

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Today's episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, whom I LOVE their MAGNESIUM BREAKTHROUGH product that has helped me sleep better, stay focused, and feel all around healthier. Check out their products at http://bioptimizers.com/danrobbins use promo code FOUNDERS for 10% off any order. Ann McFerran, founder of Glamnetic and a Forbes 30 Under 30 awardee, has redefined the beauty industry. McFerran’s journey began in Bangkok, Thailand, before transitioning to California, where she pursued a degree in psychobiology at UCLA. Yet, her creative passion led her away from a medical career, guiding her into the arts, where she began to explore her entrepreneurial potential. Glamnetic was born out of McFerran’s desire to simplify lash application. The company's innovative magnetic lashes with eyeliner quickly gained traction, solving a major pain point in the beauty industry. Through savvy digital marketing tactics, including DIY advertisements featuring McFerran herself, Glamnetic's popularity skyrocketed. Bootstrapped from the ground up, the brand has grown to generate over 9 figures in revenue. APPLY TO BE ON PODCAST: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScae1KS6UZRjdG2FjGI-HYNKT-VIdflxbO2YYe62ofAFgDKmA/viewform?usp=pp_url  Our Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to Founders Story, the podcast where trailblazing entrepreneurs share their extraordinary journeys. Uncover the passion, grit, and vision that drive the world of business. Hey, everyone, welcome back to Founders Story. We have an incredible founder today that I've been following for the last few years. It's Anne McFerrin. She's a Thai immigrant turned Forbes 30 under 30 and the founder of Glamnetic. I'm sure you've seen this. You've seen their profile, her profile, a beauty industry innovator, over nine figures, accumulated revenue, bootstrapped, which is insane. But Anne, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Let's go back to the beginning. What was the story behind you starting Glamnetic?

Yeah, so thank you for asking that. I actually was born in Bangkok, Thailand, and I actually came to America as an immigrant. My mom was a single mom moving here from Thailand. And we moved to a small town called Manteca, California. And then I soon after went to UCLA for college. And I went to college for psychobiology. So I was actually going to school for pre-medicine, which is so not related to what I'm doing today. But once I graduated that, you know, I realized that I am a very creative person. I love arts.

I was learning how to paint and stuff like that throughout college. And I realized that that's what I wanted to do when I graduated. So I graduated college, UCLA, like 2015. And I went straight into taking commissions from people. My first commission I sold for $5,000 to like the celebrity dentist. And I was like, Oh, this is my career path. This is it. And so I did that for about four years, full time. And then I felt like it was very much like backbreaking work because I was always on my canvas, like eight hours a day painting and I was developing back problems as a result. But that was how I was making all of my income. So I really couldn't stop painting. And then a lot of my clients at the time were also entrepreneurs, like they had their own

companies. A lot of them started like Shopify stores that were doing really well. So I was like, wow, they don't actually have to be like in front of a canvas or, you know, they don't have to be there 24-7 to do something similar. And I thought it was really cool too, how you can put your creativity into a product. So that for me was like kind of what I was doing with art. I was creating a product, except for I was having to be the one creating the product every single day to then sell it. So I was like, okay, let me look into this. And I really saw a gap in the market for easy to apply lashes at the time.

I had been an avid lash wearer my whole life. I started wearing lashes when I was like 15 years old and ever since then I wore lashes basically every single day. It just opened up my eyes more and a lot of my friends would ask me to apply lashes for them and I was like how come there's no lashes on the market that are actually easy for beginners to apply so I really did a deep dive on that went down a rabbit hole and I basically found a product that was really innovative so it's a magnetic eyeliner that you just replace your normal liner with it and then the lashes have magnets in the back of them like small magnets and they magnetize to the eyeliner so you basically skip the whole glue step which is also toxic for

a lot of people especially people allergic to latex so um i tested this product with uh with a bunch of people um and they were like so stunned they were like i can't believe that this is not something that's already on the market um and so when i launched we were the first glam magnetic lashes to ever launch at the time there were magnetic lashes but they were the type that like sandwich your lashes in between two layers of magnets and they were really hard to apply and like very easily they easily fall off. And so this sort of created this whole new, you know, technique of lash application that made it 100 times easier for people. And so when we first launched, I didn't, the way that I got my word out was, you know, just DMing people.

But then, um, as it kind of started to scale, I started running ads with my face on it where I would just, cause we didn't have any, um, we didn't have a budget to actually pay people to like be influencers for us. So I was the influencer for my own brand. So I would just sit in front of my phone every day and just record me talking about the product and demonstrating how the lashes magnetized to the liner. And people were just like freaked out when they saw it. And it started to do really well on ads. Let's talk about bootstrapping. A lot of people now will not start a business because they feel they don't have the funding. And you've proven that wrong. You bootstrapped this to millions upon millions of dollars. What was that like? I think people think that it happens all at once. It's something that is a slow build. So

when I first started Glamnetic, my initial goal was just to make $10,000 a month. That was my initial goal. It was like a small business. I'd be happy like living on that. And, um, so I just only ordered a hundred units of each skew, uh, each, each, um, unit. So I basically ordered a hundred units. And then, uh, once that sold out, we then cycled and bought another hundred and I just kind of kept doing that. And then I bought 200 and then I bought 400 and I kind of kept doubling it until we got to a point where, you know, before you knew it, we were doing, you know, over a million dollars a month in revenue

and all of the profit that we were making, we were putting it back into the company. So that's how we were able to scale completely bootstrapped because it just kind of happened incrementally. Sometimes people think it's an overnight success, right? Like all of a sudden you have this company doing nine figures of revenue over time and it's like, wow, but they don't realize how much went into it. Let's go back to the first few hires that you made.

What was maybe one hire, not the person's name, but the position that you said wow that position made all the difference i would say was i mean the the very first hire that i ever made because i was doing everything myself from uh running the social media accounts responding to customer service inquiries uh i wasn't shipping out product myself thankfully because we had a 3pl but um I was taking all the photography myself and and also I was the face of the brand so I was running ads shooting ads and running them so it was a lot going on um and then finally I was like okay I really really need to put some time aside to to hire people and that was hard because that meant

that I would go two days without doing all of all of that. And I was kind of scared that like things would tumble if I wasn't like, you know, super on hands of 24 hours a day for those two days. But I did set the time aside and I invested in, you know, trying to find a person. And it took me four tries because the first four hires kind of got scared of they would they were coming into basically what was my room in in my apartment in this in Koreatown in L.A. It was a very small apartment. And I was like, oh, a glamatic headquarters. You know, it wasn't it wasn't anything glamorous. So I think people are expecting it to be something different when they're looking at us online.

And then they come into the headquarters. It is actually, you know, my bedroom. And so, yeah, the first four people quit, which was really hard because I had put all this time into training them. And then I finally got a referral from a friend of a friend. And she ended up staying and she's still here. Her name's Mia. And, yeah, she's still here to this day. Now she's specialized a lot more and become our editor. But initially she was like my right hand woman, like doing literally everything also with me. But I would say that those were the fondest memories that I had during the brand, during growing the brand. It was so fun. That reminds me totally of watching my wife. She also started in the beauty industry, in the garage, shipping and packing and stuff. So I can totally relate to seeing that firsthand.

You were really at the forefront of being a creator, but then really monetizing that with a brand that you made versus going out and finding sponsors and things. How do you see the future of this creator-led brands? I think that you can't rely on your followers. If you're starting off, if you're starting a brand, I think like a celeb-led brand, for example, can get the first initial sales. There's definitely like a threshold of sales that they can get to. But after that, it's really about the returning customers, like how good the core product is, what's the USP, if there's a product market fit. We will return to our show shortly. But first, let's talk about today's sponsor,

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B-I-O-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S.com, backslash Dan Robbins. That's biooptimizers.com, backslash D-A-N-R-O-B-B-I-N-S for a special offer. And make sure you use the code FOUNDERS, F-O-U-N-D-E-d-e-r-s founders and you get your 10 off so check out biooptimizers.com to learn more and back to the show um and i think it's also uh in the marketing right how how well the the brand itself markets the products and then

how are you innovating and building a better pipeline from then. So it basically, initially it's really good to have a celeb brand, a celeb-led brand, because it gives you this like umbrella of awareness. But afterwards, it really requires the team to make sure that they have their ducks in the line in terms of marketing and products. For me, i wasn't necessarily an influencer or anything i was very micro and i would say that you know maybe the first 10 sales or something was from my following but after that honestly most of it was just um advertising marketing running ads on meta uh stuff like that so if you could look back, besides you being the creator and the creator part, I know you

just mentioned meta. What was maybe one digital marketing strategy that you did that was game changer and maybe even still works today? Well, I think the first initial thing that I did to get the first initial sales and people always ask me, the small business owners ask me this as well, because they're like how do we start how do we first get that like first ten thousand dollars in sales um i sort of did like guerrilla marketing tactics basically i went in and i looked at every single follower um that we that we had and then i dm'd every single one of them um and it was like the same script every time but But basically, I would get to a point where I'm giving them a personal discount code in their name, because on Shopify,

you can create their you can create a custom discount code really quickly. And I would make the expiration date be in like two days or something like that. So they have two days to make the purchase. But I'm like conversating personally as the brand owner and being like, hey, what's up? Like, what questions do you have about our product? And then I answer all of them and I'm like, Oh, Hey, here's a discount code in your name. And it worked really well. That tactic worked really well. And I was basically depending on that tactic for the first like three months initially to kind of get us the first like 30 to $50,000 in sales. And, um, and then after that, it was really,

uh, about running ads about, uh, influencer gifting and like getting the word out there and becoming like a real brand outside of just like DMing customers. But I would say that that's a really good starting tactic for anyone who's a new business owner. I love that tactic. I mean, anything that you can personalize, it really feels like you are speaking to them, not just this blanket message. And now with AI and everything just seems very scripted, that is a great tactic that could live on for a long time. Let's dive into AI and the future of AI generated creators and brands leveraging them or people also creating them. How do you see this changing the game of social media as well as digital marketing for

brands? Yeah, I think that there's places where AI can be inserted that is really effective in saving money for brands, really. For us, we actually try to use automated like AI messages in customer service because we always get like similar inquiries. And so we have sort of like an AI system that like helps so that the number of tickets get reduced for our, you know, like real human people that are answering the messages. So we don't have to have as many staffed. So that's something that really helps and also helps with the response time, right? So it really cuts the response time to like a few seconds because they're getting like an immediate answer. So that's when like AI can be really effective. But I say, I would say that, you know, you still really

need human creativity when it comes to product innovation, coming up with marketing strategies. Obviously, ChatGPT can help in terms of like, like actually coming up with ideas for captions or names and stuff like that. But we've found that when we tried that, it's just like the names that it comes up with currently it's it's not really uh up to par with like standard in terms of like what's creative what's like really in and trendy right now it still definitely requires a lot of like human interaction and then when it comes to ai creators um that's not something we've like tapped into yet but i am aware of like michaela the uh she's she's has like probably one of the biggest followings she's like AI is AI creator um I am interested to see how AI creators will uh if

they'll actually sell product in the future like how effective that will be I haven't seen it done quite yet successfully but it is the very very beginning of it right now. So I'm sure that in the future there will be because in a weird way, it's like there's going to be a lot more male controlled female AI characters because I know that there are like a lot of men that are wanting to get into like more like the beauty, like influencer side, but they can't get into it because they are not female themselves and like can't be the influencer themselves. So they can kind of use this AI as sort of like a way

to do that. So that would be very interesting. It's gonna be an interesting role. And I saw a lot of controversy around this recently around these AI awards that they're giving out, but all the women look the same because they're created by men all the women look the same because they're created by men creating the same looking person hopefully they'll be like diverse

in terms of different looking people let's I'd love to understand your opinions on like live shopping here in the US where do you see that going here in terms of live shopping yeah I think we are really trying to catch up but it hasn't quite caught on yet i would say we're probably like five years behind maybe where china's at and i'm not even sure that five years into the future we're gonna get to the same level that china has gotten to just because culturally we're we're very different. I think that that's something that maybe people are not highlighting enough is that the culture difference between China or just Asia in general and the US is very different.

I think that we really love, we have like, first of all, we have very short attention spans. And I think we really love like the short um tidbits of like girls really like pushing a specific type of product and that's why I think TikTok shop has been doing so well with like TikTok shop affiliates because I would say like every other TikTok you scroll down they're now pushing TikTok shop and so you're getting somebody who's like super passionate about something they're like oh my god you need this sticky bra it's so amazing like

I think that that's going to continue for a while but I would say that it's hard to give that kind of energy consistently when you're on a live you know what I mean like if some if that same girl was on a live I don't think she'd be able to push it to the same level as if it was like just a single um TikTok that she filmed that then goes viral I feel like there's that's like working smarter, not harder in a way, because you're not having to stay on live for multiple hours. You just shoot for like 30 minutes and you can get a viral TikTok that gets like millions of views. So in terms of like working smarter, not harder, I feel like that is a bit better payoff right now for for us. But it is interesting to see, you know, how this progresses into the future for sure.

I haven't thought about that. It makes sense if you make 10 recorded videos selling 10 different products, that could go viral or get you more sales than sitting there for five hours trying to sell one thing and your ROI is probably less. And I say too, like you get less viewers per like, when you're streaming, it's really hard for TikTok to like push you because there's so many other lives happening. And a lot of them are trying to sell things. And I see people in China, or like in Asia, like, they have very gimmicky ways in which they're selling things like either on a treadmill, or they're like, there's like a bat of things in a and they're like bagging it and they're like oh you get you get all of these items for ten dollars um so there's like gimmicky things that they're

doing and i think that they are making good money on it but i would say like viewership wise it's like less views you know um during the entire live yeah totally different culture how we view things i know when i'm on TikTok, I think I spend like five seconds per video and I'm just continually scrolling for hours. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. How do you see that in terms of as a brand and you're going to be working with different social media type platforms that might come out in the future? Things like VR becoming more of a thing. You have the new glasses from Apple and our vision and you have all these changes. How are you looking to the future with Glamnetic?

Yeah, I think as a brand owner, you have to be very laser focused on, you know, a few things at a time. You have to prioritize. It's very easy to get like shiny object syndrome and think, oh, my God, like, for example, remember when NFTs were really hot and then a bunch of brands, you know, started jumping on like creating their own NFTs and then the whole NFT market like crashed and then nothing really came of it. But those brands probably spent like thousands of hours and thousands of dollars, you know, investing team time into like looking into it and creating it. Not every brand did it like probably the bigger brands but that's an example of like shiny object syndrome where like you could jump on that but what's the actual roi on it you know so i think vr and and that is it's very new right now so i would say like the bigger brands like nike you know these massive corporations they can

invest into those things because they have the manpower and extra time to do it. But for startups, for mom and pop shops and for self-raised like company, like bootstrap companies like us, I feel like we are more focused on, okay, where are we getting the best ROI? And that's really like investing in like better content on ads, better product, you know, so that we have better retention and continuing to innovate and be ahead of the curve. Like those are the things that we're focusing on and like better launches, better collaborations with bigger IPs. So those are the things where that is sort of like 80-20 role. You're getting, you know, 80% of the impact

with 20% of the work or the amount of stuff you're focused on. So that's very important as a brand owner. That's incredible. I hope everyone hears that. Shiny object syndrome. It's very true. And I feel, I see so many brands are like,

I want to go into this category, this category, this category. And then they don't realize it's actually like, almost like starting another brand from scratch. If you're launching in a whole nother category and it actually will be detrimental to you if you have a category that's already successful and then you're getting shiny object syndrome somewhere else i've seen that with glamnetic i mean you've really hyper focused you've quadrupled 10 time down on the things that work. You don't launch a bunch of different items. You launch a few going into the IP. I've watched that as well. So I hope

a lot of people hear this because I've seen this like the death of many businesses is this right here. I want to understand that I know changing a little bit on the topic when it comes to dealing with stress, mental health, entrepreneurship for me has always been a giant roller coaster of a lot of ups and as many, if not more downs. And it can be really hard for a lot of people to handle that. And I think that's why a lot of people can't find success in entrepreneurship because they can't handle those things. How do you deal with that? Yeah. That is one of the most important things too, as a, as a business owner, you, you have to be good mentally and physically first before you can take care of other people. And I think that's just the rule of life, not even just business, but you know, when it comes to your family, like raising your kids or, you know, when it comes to your family, like raising your kids,

or, you know, you, you have to make sure that you are in good health mentally, physically, spiritually, before, you know, you can take care of other people. Because then when you, when you get to a place where you're very stressed all the time, like burnout is a real thing. And I've seen a lot of other founders, knock on wood, thank God I haven't gone there yet, but, um, I, I've, I've care about balance in my life. And, um, you know, now we've like hired out, uh, to a point where now I feel like there is balance in my life. Um, two, the first two years, definitely no balance, which is very normal, but, um, you know, the last couple of years, it's been great with just like hiring out people and then like

very very much like uh installing a great leadership team and then trusting them um with with their work and like making sure you empower people to do the best that they can and like trusting them to make the right decisions so that you don't always have to like micromanage and be breathing out their necks um that's something also as a brand owner that is maybe hard to learn initially because it's like your baby. Like you want to do everything you can and always see every single thing, every single move that's being made all the time.

But you have to really understand it's more about like, okay, like trusting the process, trusting the people that you put in place and like letting them do their job. And you, they also now benefit from a better mental wellbeing. So I meditate, um, regularly. I, uh, I'm also, I go out to nature. I take trips in nature quite often as well. Um, and I work out, um, every day almost. So those are the things that keep me sane.

And those are very important to me. So you need to figure out what that is for you that will help you ground. Everyone's method is different. Yeah, that's, I mean, really great points there. It's so detrimental. And we already know if you can't be there for yourself, how are you going to be there for your employees, for your family, for other people around you? It can really drag you down and it's not easy and it takes a long time. So thank you for sharing that. If you're

sitting in a room of 30 students who are graduating right now with entrepreneurship degrees, what's one piece of advice you'd give to them? I would say don't overthink. I think that's, I've noticed that with a lot of people who are like trying to start their own business, I think there's a lot of manic energy where people are just like, I don't know, should I be doing this? Should I do that? Is this the way you should do it? Like they're just asking a million questions and it's all kind of stuff in their head that they can figure out on their own. But I think it's just kind of taking the first step before you're ready to take the first step. I think that's a rule of thumb in life too. You have to kind of take that first step before you're ready because you're never going to be ready. But, you know, I think it's really important to have a North Star

and understand, you know, what is the unique white space that you're filling? Like, how is your product filling that white space? That's very important. You need to be clear on that. And I think once you're clear on that, like everything else will fall into place. But the main thing people need to remember is it has to be the right product market fit. So you just need to figure out what that product is and like, you know, spend all of your time on that piece. And once the product is good, everything else will come naturally, branding, marketing, all of that. But if you don't

have the right product, everything else, you can have everything else right and the business will fail so it's very important um to focus on the product i want to quote you on that and i hope people also quote you too take the first step before you take the first step i think that's so you're ready to take the first step yeah take the first step before you're ready to take the first step. Exactly. That's amazing. No, and this has been great. Thank you for all that you've given us today. I think a lot of people are going to be inspired. Not only are you going to go on to selling hundreds of millions, maybe billions in your lifetime, I'm sure. But you're also going to inspire. You're going to inspire millions, if not maybe a billion people, I can tell. But Anne, if people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more

information, how can they do so? Yes. On my Instagram, I'm at themodernartista. That's the name that I have because I was an artist before. So themodernartista, A-R-T-I-s-t-a and then um my tick tock is ann a-n-n and last name mcferran m-c-f-e-r-r-a-n so those are the two platforms i'm most active on and then glamnetic um of course you can find us at glamnetic g-l-a-m i actually have the necklace right here so glamnetics felt like that dot com um and and also on all social handles it's at glamnetic well and thanks again for being here on founder story and in five years you got to come back yes what's gonna happen in five years it's gonna be insane who knows you know the world is gonna be a different place but everyone is always gonna need lashes nails all these things the beauty

industry is so giant and you've really figured it out. So thank you, Anne, for being here today. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for tuning in to Founders Story. Keep exploring, keep dreaming, and join us next time for more inspiring entrepreneurial journeys.