The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - #151: Gal Meets Glam Founders Julia Engel & Thomas Berolzheimer - Blog to Brand to Product Line, How To Stay Focused, How to Execute a Long Term Vision & Working With Your Significant Other

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

On this episode we sit down with the dynamic duo and married couple behind the mega blog and brand Gal Meets Glam. Founders Julia Engel and Thomas Berolzheimer sit down with us and talk shop about their journey in the blogger/influencer world. As early adapters the couple discuss what their journey has been like from blog, to brand, to product line. We also dive into what it's like working with your significant other, how to stay focused on a longterm vision and how to execute on a long term strategy.  To shop The Gal Meets Glam Dress Collection and receive 15% OFF your order go to https://shop.galmeetsglam.com/ and use promo code TSC15 To connect with Julia Engel click HERE to connect with Thomas Berolzheimer click HERE  To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by THRIVE MARKET. We use Thrive for our online grocery delivery on a weekly basis and we also now get our wine at Thrive! They provide the highest quality products and ingredients delivered straight to our door with unbeatable prices.  Be sure to grab our deal by going to to https://thrivemarket.com/skinnywine to receive 25% off your first order (Max $20) + free shipping and a 30 day trial. This episode is brought to you by RITUAL Forget everything you thought you knew about vitamins. Ritual is the brand that’s reinventing the experience with 9 essential nutrients women lack the most. If you’re ready to invest in your health, do what I did and go to www.ritual.com/skinny  Your future self will thank you for taking Ritual: Consider it your ‘Lifelong-Health-401k’. Why put anything but clean ingredients (backed by real science) in your body?  

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She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. It was the first dress I had thought of way back in, you know, 2014 when we wanted to start the collection. And it was the first dress I had thought of way back in, you know, 2014 when we wanted to start the collection. And it was the first dress that I saw the seamstresses making a sample of.

And I burst into tears the moment I saw it because I just couldn't, I couldn't believe that my vision had finally come to life in a product. And it was beautiful. And, you know, I wasn't crazy with my ideas. That clip was from our guests of the show, Thomas Berrelzheimer and Julia Engel from the blog turn brand Gal Meets Glam. On this episode, we discuss what it takes to go from blogger to brand to product and succeed, how to stay focused on long term goals and the process of working with your significant other, which Lauren and I know plenty about. For those of you that are new to the show, my name is Michael Bostic. I am a serial entrepreneur and brand builder, most recently the CEO of Dear Media. And I am Lauren Everett, Michael's wife.

I am all relaxed from Cabo and I am the creator of The Skinny Confidential, which is a blog, a brand, and obviously a podcast. You i was when i got when we got back from mexico i was i kept trying to get in it with you i was i kept trying to like it was for those get in it what what does that mean michael i was trying to get it in okay you were trying to get it in the second i landed from new york so for people that um aren't aware of what we're talking about it was just our anniversary you have to step away from that phone i think the whole time i'm down there i'm trying to get it in and you're trying to get it out. Right. Okay. Trying to get that content out. I'm trying to get that content in. Michael, I had, I had to do some content, but I did make

time for you. So, so don't act like you're like crying about it. How am I supposed to like, turn it up? You turn it up. Get that Barry Manilow, Marvin Gaye going when you have that camera on every second. You guys, I was trying to videotape him. I'm just kidding. I turned off my phone for half the trip, I would say. So we were, well, I was in New York for the Victoria's Secret fashion show, and it was amazing. I'm going to do a recap of all the tips and tricks.

In the meantime, you can go to a picture on my Instagram where my boobs are hanging out and I'm wearing a purple bodysuit and swipe right and see some behind the scenes. Anyway, I was there for the show. It was insane. I can't wait to share some BTS with you guys on the blog. And then from New York, I went straight to Cabo, which was a little weird to not travel with Michael because I'm so used to him micromanaging my every move when I travel, but I made it. I want to know. Okay. So you had to, you had to take multiple connecting flights. I want to know. It was bleak. You left the, you left the hotel at like three in the morning. I left the hotel at five in the morning, which for those of you who travel to JFK in New York is a pain. That's

a pain in the ass airport to get to. And you know, it just got rated the worst airport in the United States. Okay. Well, I got a spray tan in my room at 1am. I had been drinking from the Victoria's Secret after party. I stayed up all night I packed I got in the car at five flew to the airport or drove to the airport and almost forgot my passport. Michael, you would have freaked out and got on a plane to see you. Well, I wouldn't have freaked out. But I just I wish I could have been like a fly on the wall to watch you travel. Cause you know, for as tough as you act, I know-

I'm not a good traveler. How you are. No, I just like, like when you do everything for me. But now, do you know what the problem is now? Since you, now that I've seen that you're capable to do it on your own, which you should be because you're an adult woman. Now I know you can do it.

So now I don't have, now I know I don't have to help you as much when we go to the airport. No, I'm always going to play that card. Do you know, all these people have been tagging me in that post from the fat jewish of the guy running on the treadmill with the bags and the uh the bags and the for the running through the airport and they're like literally i got tagged by eight people on that that actually is you though like that's not funny yeah but the only thing that was off is they say

that that guy should have only 37 minutes before the flight and you know i'm there at least an hour no michael is so gnarly at the airport you guys i've never seen anything like it it's he's acting as if the world is ending like you you are chaotic at the airport it's ridiculous yep so i mean there's a lot of people out there listen i like to leisurely go through we've talked about in the show i don't know anybody that i don't know why people want to show up late and sweat and stress and run through like home alone 2 and 1 to get to the airport. That's number two? Yeah, number two.

But they always run through the airport. That's Home Alone people. So I got to Cabo and Michael texts me that there was a ginger margarita waiting for me and chips and salsa. And popsicles. Michael was so relaxed, which is like a rare plot twist when I got there. And we had so much fun on our anniversary. We really kicked up the romance, had some time to connect. Kicked it up between takes. Didn't work

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Again, thrivemarket.com slash skinny wine for 25% off your first order with a max of $20. And get the Sandra Alvesa. We're so excited to have Thomas and Julia on the show, you guys. They're just so major in the blogging world. And both of them are such a cool couple. I feel like Michael and I had so much to talk about with them because there's a lot of similarities in a lot of ways. They both work together like us. They work in the same space. They sleep together like us. Yeah. Travel together. Thomas and I did like a little bromance. We've been DMing each other and I don't DM a lot of people, right? I'm not like on there DMing a lot. And, uh, I don't know how it happened,

but we randomly started talking and I don't talk to a lot of like i guess we call them blogger husbands right like i guess that's what i am if you know to a certain degree and i don't talk to a lot of uh blogger husbands um or a lot of people on dm but we don't talk to anyone yeah to be honest i was trying to think about who i talk i don't talk to anyone really so anyways i was talking to thomas and i started watching his content he's doing cool stuff coffee he's like completely opposite of me in the photography department he He's a master at it. Michael can't even take a fucking iPhone photo of me. We're sharing book tips and just kind of shooting the shit and give each other advice once in a while. And we develop a little online friendship. And so I was

really happy to be able to sit down with both of them. They are some of the nicest people I've ever met in this space. Down to earth, highly successful, humble, built some mega stuff. Julia has great skin too. Beautiful skin. And I think the key to their success, if I could dumb it down, well, there's a lot of reasons, but one of the main things is they have extremely long-term vision, extreme long-term vision, and they really know what they want. They're really specific about it. They don't get swayed by distractions. They don't, you know, they're very focused. Tunnel vision.

Tunnel vision. They work their asses off. Long-term players. Yep, long-term players, and it's going to pay off. We have massive respect for both of them. We could not be more excited to have them on the show. So with that, let's welcome Thomas and Julia from the mega blog and brand Gal Meets Glam

to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. We are in the studio with the mega couple behind the mega brand Gal Meets Glam, Thomas and Julia. Welcome to the show. Excited to get you both in the hot seat. Here we go. Thank you so much. We're thrilled to be here. Thank you so much. Thomas and I developed a little bromance relationship through DM. hot seat here we go thank you so much we're thrilled to be here thank you so much thomas and i developed a little bromance relationship through dm we slid into each other's dms yeah we talk

about uh books mostly books mostly business favorite subject he loves oh i know he could i mean i have 20 books i haven't touched a single one yet. Of the ones I've recommended? Yeah, sadly. Heartbreaking. Maybe Cliff Notes. I need Cliff Notes. Anything you want. So thank you guys for doing this. We're excited to get into it with you. I think there's a lot of similarity between us and you.

There are. We've had outside sources tell us that, too. Yeah? Who are those outside sources? Mainly Raina and Vanessa. Okay, so. Management. Management. What do they say those outside sources? Mainly Raina and Vanessa. Okay. So management, uh, what do they, what do they say those similarities are? I'm curious to, to, to hear, and I want to see if

we're how close we're on this. Well, I think it's just the dynamic between the couple and the drive, the focus on business, um, and just the way we think about our business. You know, we both come from similar backgrounds of starting blogs and developing them into more than just content, more than just blogs. So I think there's a lot of people doing it different ways, and I think we think similarly. But you guys live in Charleston in the cute town, and we're in LA. So we got to come visit you, I feel like. Yes, you absolutely. And how long has it been?

Drive me by Patricia's house. Since you started the blog. It's been... 2011. April 2011, so... Okay, so similar. And I've been here the whole time. Yeah, he has.

He started as my boyfriend. Oh, you guys dated? Yeah, okay. Yeah, he was my boyfriend. That's how my girl and I work. And I basically gave him my Canon point and shoot that I took to parties in college. You know, the one that you kept in your purse.

And said, can you take some pictures of my outfits? And he was like, why? Why do I have to do this? And the pictures were so bad. Were you always into photography? No. Because you're an amazing photographer. And I have absolutely zero skill in that department.

I'll probably pick your brain at some point. But you're really good. And, you know, Lauren's always pointing and saying, look at this, look at this. And I'm like, I can't even skill in that department. I'll probably pick your brain at some point. But you're really good. And Lauren's always pointing, saying, look at this, look at this. And I'm like, I can't even come close to that. He takes two iPhone photos of me and says, did we get it? Only two? He used to do that. I used to have a five picture maximum.

He'd say, if you don't get it in five pictures, it wasn't meant to be. That's a good. That's not the case anymore no he's like i'll take 150 hopefully we got something when we started the blog i was not interested in photography at all i was kind of forced i mean the same thing like we would sit in in our room and julia would be going through all these other blogs and she's like why can't you take pictures like this and it was hard because I was trying to learn how to do it. I wasn't that interested in doing it,

but I wanted to help Julia. So it was like not until about two years that I really kind of mastered it that I actually started enjoying photography. And then when it wasn't like, oh, I was fussing around with all the camera, trying to figure out composition stuff, that's when I was finally,

it became like a passion of mine. And now I'm so obsessed with it. Yeah, and you're really into the tech side of mine. And now I'm so obsessed with it. Yeah. And you're really into the tech side of it too. I've read some of your stuff. That's why I think he likes it so much is because anything that he can fully understand and become an expert at, he will become obsessed with it. Like he did home brewing in college. And it was more about the technical.

Beer, yeah. Cool. obsessed with it like he did home brewing in college and it was more about the technical beer yeah it was more about the technical side of like the science behind creating the beer than i think you wouldn't even drink the beer at the end i mean you would kind of but he would basically set up a keg and just say okay everybody like try the beer but it was more just um learning like the craft of it and becoming obsessed with that until i I met Julia, that was my career path. I was going to own my own brewery. So I want to back up. Where did both of you guys grow up? Before you guys met, what was your life like? Yeah. So I grew up kind of in a few different places. I was born in just outside of Seattle in Washington. Then my family moved to Lodi in California and I lived

there until about seventh grade. And then I lived in Atwater, California until just for high school. And then I moved back to Stockton, which is next to Lodi. Thomas grew up in Stockton. And then we both went to University of the Pacific, which is a small private school in Stockton, California. And that's where we met. But how long have you guys known each other now then? We met in 2010, but our families had been trying to set us up since we were in middle school. So I knew his whole family.

He knew my family. He'd been on both of our grandpa's fly fish, and they'd been on tons of fly fishing trips together. Our grandmas are in the same cribbage group and like go see plays together and stuff so I heard all about him and funny enough his grandma had been trying to tell him about me but he had a girlfriend at the time and she loves to always remind him like listen to your grandma because remember when I tried to tell you about Julia and she actually just said it in an email last week she was trying to set us up with another uh charleston couple yeah and she was like remember last time i tried

to set you up and i was right so listen to your grandma so who ended up pursuing him so our best friends were dating and introduced us it wasn't really it wasn't a setup either it was just like we sort of randomly met finally and we sort of both had this moment where we we just met and we're like wait i was supposed to meet you like we already knew so much about each other and then i mean it was pretty much instant i would say you pursued me and he was the first guy i ever met that did such romantic things. He made me dinner. Thomas told me that you just wouldn't stop calling him and bothering him. He said you were just beating down his door.

I said, listen, I can relate. Trust me, this one, he's following me everywhere. Oh, my God. Probably the other way around. I'd never had a guy make me dinner before or just do these really thoughtful romantic gestures he would always open the door for me always bring me my favorite coffee drink he just did all these i'd never had anybody that was just kind and nice before thomas did you know you were gonna marry her right away yeah you did instantly really yeah yeah i didn't know that? No. She's lying.

So I want to talk. So you guys are obviously now a very public couple, as we are. And there's challenges that come with that, especially when you're working together. Yeah. So for people that are looking from the outside in and they see this picture-perfect couple and this great brand and everything you guys are doing, what are the challenges of working together and being a public couple? Yeah. I think, well, there's a lot of challenges the challenge of being public and then also the challenge of working together I would say working together was a learning process in the first couple years and now we're in a like a really good place where we both know what our our strong suits are and we both trust each other and allow each other to do those things

um whereas in the beginning it was trying to just figure out those what the what those were in the very beginning because I had done everything sort of on my own on the content and blogging side that just wasn't photography because he had a full-time job when we graduated from college and moved to San Francisco. He worked in tech and he still did the photography, but that was really it. And he would help me with some website design stuff. So when he left his job to join me full-time, it was really figuring out, okay, what are his responsibilities going to be? And how can he take ownership over them? How can I let him take ownership over them and help him grow into what his role is and allow him to develop new ideas for Gal Meets Glam

instead of me just dictating everything. One of the things that I respect so much about you guys is I've watched your evolution and I can tell from as a blogger and from an outside perspective that it's so strategic how you guys have built your business. Like it's not, things aren't just happening, right? I can see that you guys have a very clear brand. You have a clear message. You know your why. How did you guys sort of set that up at

the beginning when you both didn't know each other's strengths yet? Yeah. So it wasn't set up at the beginning. The beginning was really random. We didn't know why we were starting. I just found blogging as a way to be creative and to create something. Thomas was always very entrepreneurial. He really excelled in school. He loved business. And I was studying business, but I didn't necessarily feel passionate about it. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was concentrating in marketing, but I wasn't passionate about marketing. And I also had no real-life experience to feel passionate about with marketing. I mean, I always had jobs in high school and college, and I had a marketing internship as well in college. I just felt this intense desire to create something online.

I literally woke up one day in college and said, I need to have something online. I don't know what it is, but I need to create something online. I literally woke up one day in college and said, I need to have something online. I don't know what it is, but I need to create a website. And I found Blogger. And it's just sort of snowballed from there. But we really didn't set up strategically. I mean, luckily we started at a time where we could kind of find our voice and kind of experiment.

And if you look back and look at what we did in the first couple years it's it's almost embarrassing but it's part of like trial and error like we're figuring out listen to the first five to ten episodes of this yeah i almost murdered him yeah well thomas always says if you what's the quote you always like to say like if you're not embarrassed by your first product then you launch too late yeah yeah like i think it's so quote you always like to say? If you're not embarrassed by your first product, then you launched too late. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's so true. Nothing is ever going to be perfect when you launch. So just launch.

Just do it. Don't try and perfect everything. And I'm so glad that I had that sort of naive outlook. I didn't even think twice. I just did it. And it was never – I mean, it was within maybe 24 hours that I created my blog from the moment I thought of it I literally called my mom I was like what should it be called and then we came up with the name I am a vitamin snob it took me honestly so long to talk about vitamins on the skinny

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ritual vitamins because I wrote a whole in-depth post on it. How do you guys navigate? Cause, and I'm sure this, maybe this is more of a question for Thomas. Cause that's similar for me. She has an established brand. It's online. Her audience is primarily there for her in the beginning. And then you jump in, how do you navigate that as a man leaving another job? Cause I'd like to just hear how you did it. Cause there's ways that I did it, but it's but it's a challenge when you're jumping into somebody's established brand, especially when it's your wife. I mean, I've been involved the entire time. And even though Julia has been doing the nitty-gritty of the content, I've always had more of an analytical approach. And that was actually what I used to do at my previous job. And I kind of looked at it from this perspective. And I think

I could kind of work in any business and I'm obsessed with the customer I'm obsessed with our readers and trying to understand how we can impact their life so I think it's more just like focusing on them and I was lucky I'm not sure what it would have been like if I wasn't involved in the first few years of it, but I think I've always kind of... I helped us find our voice. It was mostly Julia, but I mean, I was there. You know why you're smart? And I always use this analogy. There's always got to be one Mick Jagger and then there's Keith Richards. And obviously Mick Jagger is the lead singer and Keith Richards supports that. But a lot of husbands that are jumping into their wives brands are running into trouble where they're trying to be on like equal footing I don't want to say that we're not equal footing

but there's got to be a front man and just a completely different platform like we're our platforms are equal but the platforms are made out of two different things there's just got to be the front man though yeah so Lauren is the front man, obviously. I'll be your Keith Richards. Yeah, I was wondering. I'm like, whoa, wait. But no, do you get what I'm saying? No, absolutely. Also, I'm a dreamer.

Like, I think of crazy ideas all the time. A visionary. I wouldn't say that. And I want to act immediately, always. And Thomas reels me back in. Sounds familiar. And it's like, okay, that's a great idea. Let's tone it back a little bit and not do it right now, but let's come up with some steps. And he always is, is, is thinking

big picture, not short term. It's a very strong team effort, but I, I guess the reason I was asking is there's a lot of people that are running into trouble. It's like, who is the lead person? Julia is in charge. Yeah. I mean, we both are. I never, honestly, I never think about I'm in charge and he has to listen to me. It's just whoever is the expert and leading whatever topic we're discussing, that person should be spearhead um, spearheading that and it varies all the time and it varies between our team. It's not always just you and I.

So what would be some relationship advice for couples who are thinking about starting to work together? And we've talked about a lot, but it'd be interesting to hear your take. Yeah. Thomas buckle up. Yeah. I always say it's one of the most challenging things i've ever done but it is so rewarding and i feel like him and i have this like layer of an onion of a relationship yeah because we work together um you know to go to bed and it's 11 30 at night and he's asking me questions about work but that's what he does too and i'm like let's turn it off now because that's sometimes if a thought pops in my head I have to I have to talk about it yeah yeah I mean I would say what's helpful is that we're very

different people and we have very different interests and very different reasons for you know why we love working on this business and I think it's important to have some at least like you can't be both doing the same exact thing I think that can create a lot I think it's important to have some at least like you can't be both doing the same exact thing. I think that can create a lot of problems. It's important to have very clear boundaries and what the work is that you're doing. It's also important to focus on the product and make sure that it's about the customer and not about you and your relationship. It is important to have boundaries at the end of the day. Like, hey, 10 p.m. is our hard stop time.

I think that can be important. We need a hard stop time. Yeah. I mean, it's much easier to say, you know, have a hard stop time. In reality, we really don't ever. But we try, you know, or just trying to do things that aren't work related so that you just kind of get your mind off it for a little bit but but i don't think we could have built the business that we have without being around each other 24 7 you know we work at a pace

that not a lot of people can keep up with and And frankly, it's, it's helped us build a business and get it to the point of where we're at now. And if we were not together, if we were just business partners, not even living together, we would have a set amount of conversations that we can have. And now we can really get into everything and go into the finer details because we have the time to do it. That's the challenge though, right? Because you're at dinner, you're at home. Yeah. We deal with the same thing, right? We're with each other all the time.

I like Michael. It's not like I like to be around Michael. Exactly. It's exactly the same. Like we're best friends. It's not, it's not forced. I'm so grateful to have the relationship that we have. And I know it's unique because people ask all the time, how do you work with your husband? I would kill mine. And you do have to have sort of the perfect dynamic in order for it to work. Because I don't think every couple can work together. When you're committed to building a vision or you're both on the same team towards that vision you you make sacrifices because the rewards are so great yeah and we also just have so much fun I mean you know you we talk about turning off

business but some of our our best business conversations are you know at midnight at a restaurant after sharing a bottle of wine and we're just like spilling ideas and maybe we shouldn't be talking about business but it's fun we love it we want to and we're dreamers and we're just like spilling ideas and maybe we shouldn't be talking about business, but it's fun. We love it. We want to, and we're dreamers and we're always thinking about what we can be doing better and what the potential could be. And we don't always want to turn it off. I don't think I could be with a woman who wanted me to turn it off all the time. I always, you know, I always say couples have to be matched in that way. Like if you have, if there's one individual that wants to be turned on all the time and talk about business and do this and you can't talk about it with your significant other, like, I don't know how, how much longevity there is in that relationship.

And so people was like, Oh, you guys got to find time to turn it off. But similarly, like we don't always like to turn it off. Like, and that's why we're together. I think. Yeah. When did you guys decide and how did you decide to scale your business? So you've, you know, I've watched you, you've got this great platform, you're doing collabs, like everything's going really well. At what point were you like, okay, we need to scale this, we need to grow the team, and then we need to also do a product. So it was in 2014. And before talking about growing the team, we knew that we wanted to go into product. We just, we always talked about

where do we see ourselves long-term, what scale meets glam potential. And we knew that people came to us for a reason. And we knew that people had sort of a defined reason of, of why they were coming to us. I, you know, I have a very distinct style. It's very specific. I don't stray from it. Even when I work with brands, you know, it's always very feminine, always very classic. And we knew people were coming to us because they identified with that. Even if it wasn't style, it was home decor or the way we travel or any of these lifestyle elements. And so we really wanted to hone in on that and create something for our customers. And it was without a doubt a dress line.

I never even questioned what it would be. It was always going to be dresses. And I actually saw a huge gap in the market for a product like that. You were thoughtful about it. I remember we talked like – Oh, yeah. I remember we talked at like a reward style conference or was that what we were doing? You told me you were working on it. Yeah. I mean, that was forever ago. And I had, I mean, we'd been talking about it with people for years and years and it, it, at times it felt like it was never going to take off because, you know, we hit a lot of sort of stopping points in the process of trying to get it off the ground, but we never, ever, ever strayed from our initial idea.

And the end result of our first collection was exactly what I wanted to create in 2014. I never changed my mind along the way. You could see it. Yeah. And and, you know, there were many, many challenges and it took four years to get it going. And that alone could, you know, set somebody off to, you know, just give up or to do something else. But and I think also like in launching a business, timing is is so important, too. When we first went out and we're trying to pitch manufacturers four years ago. It was a very different time in this kind of influencer space as well as on the manufacturing side. Yeah, very little influencers had brands at the time.

The only one we could really point to was Kiara with her shoes. Nobody else had launched. So manufacturers were kind of being difficult or they weren't respecting the space as much? Both, both. They didn't. If they were interested in the partnership, they were basically like, we know what works. You know, we know you have your ideas. We'll take them into consideration.

But we know how to do this. Because I kept saying, you know, I know exactly what I want the product to be. I want to design it with a designer. I'm not a trained designer, but I have, you know, designs in my head that I just need to communicate so somebody can draw it out and then I can work with them to create that. I have so many parallels with you. It's crazy. We've got a lot of people on the show. I have, like, you and I'm very very well a lot of it is like a lot of it is basically convincing people to trust you in your vision

it's very frustrating sometimes because you see and like you know what you want to do but you like you said you're not a designer yeah um like even with when I wanted to launch a website I'm not a website designer, but I saw what was in my head. And I, I almost can't sleep until I get what is in my head. It's very frustrating. And you do have to be very patient. Yeah. We had to be incredibly patient and, and I was willing to be patient because I, it was never a race for me. It was, you know, we either do it right or we don't do it at all. And it was, you know, we either do it right or we don't do it at all. And it was, you know, we had some manufacturers that were very interested in partnering with us,

but I just knew at the end of the day they wouldn't be right for what we wanted to create. Or there were some that, you know, had crazy demands. Like they wanted us to make X amount of money by year one or year two because they're used to doing licensing deals with celebrities where, you know, they can just do crazy sales. And we just didn't want that kind of pressure on ourselves. Trying to build a brand. We're trying to build a brand, not, you know, just make a quick dollar over two years or something. So let me ask you both this, when you being close to the influencer space, blogging space for so long and watching your peers launch product line some of them doing it right some of them doing it wrong won't call

anybody out what do you see as the biggest mistakes that influencers make when they're transitioning to product yeah that puts you in the hot seat i mean i would say you can tell when a influencer who has an audience they have a point of view, and then when they do a product and that doesn't translate. Or they're not involved with it. Right. You can tell that they're not involved. They have a couple meetings a year to approve a line sheet,

and it's kind of based on their style, but it's more the manufacturer or their license partner making it and creating it. You don't want to just attach your name to something. No, I never, ever, ever want, that was the opposite of, that's what I was fearful of. It's the white label. Yeah, it's the white label, you know, where you can peel off the label and stick it onto another brand's line.

And it looks, I mean, we go, we, we just did two, two market shows because we're expanding Galmy's Glam Collection into specialty stores and boutiques and there's so much product out there and I kept telling Thomas there's so much of it that just looks the same you could take one label off and put it on another and I wanted our line to be specific I only wanted to do dresses because I knew that we needed to be known for something and we didn't need to cater to everybody. Our dresses are not meant for everybody's style, but I wanted women that did identify with it to really identify with it and know why they were coming to us. And we've been able to create that.

I mean, I just have to call your dresses out because I have two and they're beautiful. You can tell they're so thoughtful. They're so you, they're so on brand. I have the pink one. Can you say the name of the one I have? and they're beautiful. You can tell they're so thoughtful. They're so you, they're so on brand. Um, I have the pink one. Can you say the name of the one I have? The Ellie. Okay. And then I have a Navy one. That's so cute that I wear with white tennis shoes. Which one is that? It's like a collar and it's short sleeve. Um, short sleeve. If we, if we, um, don't know the name, we can put it in the show notes for you guys. Yeah. I'll also put it on Instagram. Why can't I think Navy short sleeve? It's like little tiny dots. It's Navy.

It's so cute. Okay. We'll put it in the show notes for them to check out. We've done, I mean. You have 150, right? We have so many dresses. And right now, it's funny because we're always working a year ahead. Right now, we're designing fall 2019.

So to put my mind back to. That to like a year out, a year out. So how did you decide that you were going to do 150 to start? Like how are all these decisions made? We didn't. We I mean, what we started out wanting to do was nowhere near what we ended up doing. And it all really sort of evolved from the demand in the marketplace. I wanted to do a really tiny collection and we weren't initially planning on launching every single month. We were going to do seasons, you know, spring, summer, fall, winter, resort. And just the demand in the market for our type of product was so big that the retailer that we partnered with, Nordstrom, just said, you know, if you have more designs, like, we're interested to see them. And we just ended up creating a much bigger line than we had ever anticipated because of their support at launch.

And we just sort of have been able to keep up with it since and we're expanding into more retailers in February. You guys have kind of started a category, if you think about it. It is. Yeah. I mean, especially at the price point that we're hitting, there are very little, if any, brands doing what we're doing and focusing on the type of product that we're creating. Too many brands are worried about, especially affordable brands, are worried about catering to every type of customer. They're like, we need to get this woman and we also need to get this woman and let's not forget about her and her and her. And we have one woman we're trying to cater to and we're able to focus on her and understand why she loves us, why is she coming to us.

And, yeah, there's probably other women who are also identifying with a few pieces here and there, but, you know, that's great, but we're just focused on our core customer. I always say when I'm writing a blog post, I have a girl that I'm writing to. Her name is Caitlin, and, like, I know her nail polish color. I know what she's listening to on the way to work. Like, I think that that's so important to know who you're speaking to or who you're selling to. It's, I mean, instead of trying to get everyone. I have a question for Thomas. This is a left turn. So I always take left turns, but so obviously I was always a behind the scenes person. I never

thought that there would be any kind of pub public persona at all. Right. I was running businesses. I'm traditionally an entrepreneur behind behind the scenes guy, right? Lauren obviously made the decision to be a public person. You made the decision to be a public person. You and I both did not. How do you now deal with that? Because I don't mind it necessarily, like having that aspect of our life now,

but it wasn't something that I chose. So I was curious on how you've dealt with that. I can't say we ever made a clear decision to really bring me into it. I think I've always just been part of the story. Yeah. You definitely didn't feel as comfortable in the beginning being in videos or being really vocal. I was at a restaurant one time and somebody screamed across the street, Susan screamed it it i never anticipated that in my life it's that's kind of what i'm trying to get to it's like when people i mean people recognize him more sometimes than i do because i think also the glasses are very distinct i would say i enjoy it i mean i like making the connection and and i know some people i actually

when we're walking on the street and this happens a lot in bigger cities, especially in New York, you can tell when people recognize at least Julia. And Julia can't always recognize. I never notice. She never notices. Pay attention. I always see it. And so I can tell, like, what percentage occasion I'm by myself and I'm on the street, people will still come up to me and I enjoy it because I think there's this, they might be more intimidated to say hi to Julia,

but they're less intimidated to say hello to me. There was a woman that ripped my phone out of my hand the other day when I was talking to Lauren and just started talking to Lauren right in the middle of the street. She has spies of her. I'll be out having a coffee and her readers will be like, hey, I see Michael right now. Don't worry, now don't worry he's not whenever he travels alone i go careful i have spies that is amazing how do you guys deal with you could never cheat

i would never but still like i can't even go down the street and get a coffee without someone reporting like hey don't worry i got eyes on this guy i love that how do you guys deal with because we've dealt with it how do you deal with backlash and negativity online honestly I don't really pay attention to it the best thing I ever did for myself was to realize that I can't please everybody and I can't make people like me because there's going to be people that have no reason they just don't like you and it doesn't matter how hard you try or what a nice email or comment you leave back to them they're still just not going to like you and you just should not it's not your problem it's theirs because they shouldn't be following you

and there's truly nothing you can do so when I sort of finally embrace that idea like stop obsessing over it or wondering what you can do to get them to like you just let them go and let them unfollow or go somewhere else because I'm not going to change who I am I'm not going to change how I write I'm not going to change my style I'm not going to change my personality for somebody I don't even know and they don't even know me and they're judging me on their perception of me, and you can't change somebody's perception. You can only hope that you are being yourself and that people are perceiving that in the right way.

You know, I don't know if you remember this, but at the Reward Style Conference, I met you guys a long time ago. This was like beginning of the book. I remember, I remember, yeah. And I asked you that. Yeah. Do you remember that kind of it was like at the end of a really like at the end of the party right yeah it was late at night i said because i was having trouble with it in the what did i say back then you gave me the best advice you said i don't respond to anything unless it's

a constructive comment it's true it's true unless i know It's true. It's true. Unless I know that something, I can take something positive from it and the person writing the comment can take something positive from it. I don't respond to it because if it's just negative, negativity for the sake of being negative, there's no reason. I mean, it's just,

it's giving something attention that doesn't need attention versus if somebody is truly giving you feedback from a loving perspective and and like they care about your brand they care about you and they've been following along i think you know everybody should be open to constructive criticism and feedback but there's there is a line that i think you have to recognize you have to recognize being a dick. Yeah. And there are many of those. And honestly, I just, I just turn it off. I just don't pay attention to any of that because just mentally I can't. I agree with you. And I do think it's practice. The more you put yourself

out there, the more you get used to it and then you just don't care anymore. And it's very nice. Like the longer you go on. Yeah. I would say in the beginning when – because at the first couple years, it was just all like butterflies and rainbows. And then when like blogging really started to get bigger and bigger and more people were like, wait, you know, what's going on here? Then we did sort of start to get some negativity. And then once we just said, you know, nope, we're not dealing with this. We're not addressing this. This is a positive place. And if people want to be negative, we're not going to engage with it. And it sort of panned off after that because they probably went elsewhere to get attention. And, you know,

I'm not entirely sure why always. It's just, it's something that we just can't control. And I think you have to kind of let it go. So I want to switch the gear. You guys have a positive community that you've embraced. Yes, we do. What is the recipe for building a positive community? Imagine you're talking to someone that wants to get into this space. I'm a huge believer that this space is not oversaturated, that it hasn't even started,

that there's room for everyone. Say someone wants to get into this space is not oversaturated, that it hasn't even started, that there's room for everyone. Say someone wants to get into this space, how can they build a positive community like you guys have built? I mean, I'm a pretty positive person to begin with, and I'm a happy person. I like being around happy, positive people. I don't like to complain. I have truly nothing to... I mean, obviously, everybody has hardships and tough things are going through. I complain sometimes. I mean, I complain.

Don't get me wrong. I just, I mean, on a platform, I don't ever want... I have nothing to complain about. You know, like the people reading, I never want to sound ungrateful. So I come from a perspective when writing to always be positive and to not complain and to just be grateful. We also have a fine line of how much sort of personal moments

that we share within our brand. And I would say it's pretty private. What are the moments you don't share? I mean, everything. What are these private moments? Let's hear everything there's so much there's so much that we don't share tell me about these private yeah you go go for it thomas it's just you and i talking if he would let me know about the intimate moments if it wasn't for me, he would probably overshare. I'm just not a natural overshare. I hold stuff back. It's just in my nature.

I don't. I just that's how I am. And he I think I don't want to talk for you. I mean, I always say that I Julia on occasion asks me to be funny for the camera, which is very hard to do. I'm a very naturally funny person. See? Yeah. And so I would actually rather have cameras or audio following me around 24-7. Because you're not an actor. You just want to be yourself. Yeah. Right. Okay. Like, what's off limits? Because that's how I'm going to find out what you don't share. I mean, I don't really videotape my day or talk to the camera that often. I mean, you know, I'll try to, you know, if we're having a goofy moment, I'll try to, you know, bring out my phone and snap it. And, you know, it just depends on, like, maybe he's not in a great mood to want to be on camera or I'm not in a great –

it's so hard to find the perfect balance. I'm not the type of person that's so hard to find the perfect balance. And I'm not the type of person that wants to document my whole entire day. And I never document when I'm with friends. I never post when, you know, I'm at dinner. I can get that with the friends because you have such a large platform. Yeah. I just, you know, my family members aren't interested in being on social media and, you know, our, our team in the office I mean there's I would say like 99% of our day is not documented I think that's part of your brand though it's like you're it's a very positive curated in the best way whimsical space and it's not curated in the

sense to make it look perfect it's just it's not in my nature to document everything. And yeah, we love to take pictures because we love creating. Creating is a good word. I think you can tell that there's just so many, whimsical whenever I look. Is that the right word? Yeah, yeah, it is. And I think the one thing I struggle the most with is, and we both do, and we talk about it all the time, is should we be sharing more? You know, are people connecting enough?

Like, are we sharing enough of our life, of our personality? But then we stop ourselves and say, you know, if that doesn't make us comfortable, then we shouldn't be doing it. You should do what you want to do. You should do it. But at the same time, people are like, you know, you're not being real enough. And are like you know you're not being real enough and it's not that you're not being real enough it's that you know you're this is business do you go to your work and you know document everything it's just it's tough because on one hand you're lucky because your life i could be rolling out of bed in my underpants with my hair everywhere

looking like garbage maybe i ate a bunch of pasta the night before and the camera will be on and i'll have no say it'll be posted before i even know it's there i'll tune in like 12 hours later and see myself it's all different i think that's but if i get the wrong angle with this one she's like take that down no well sometimes he gets an angle with like but can you teach him about light thomas can you please please teach him about light like he it's a double standard it's so bad do you have any lighting tips it's a double standard there is a double standard but i mean i'm trying to think it's it's pretty practical if you're taking a picture on an iphone you should be able to see that the light is just go for even light even i know i don't like taking pictures maybe if i spent some time with you and like

learned some of the technical stuff and some of the things that like you have five tips that you can yeah do you have any tips i just can. Yeah. Do you have any tips? I just, I really don't like taking pictures. So what I do is I kind of like set the bar really low and make them so bad that she just doesn't ask me anymore. So we do other things for myself. Do you have any picture tips that you can share with the audience? So light and composition are easily the most important things about i i think if you're a

bad photographer or an average photographer like i said even light don't have crazy contrasty light don't have a really bright background and you're standing in the shade if you can look and find even light that will just get you a long way the other part is composition i see all the time people like pinching to zoom on a phone is like oh i cringe every time i see someone do that but figure out like what are the most flattering if you're taking pictures of people like figure out what are the most flattering crops you know you can crop at the waist you can crop at the knee you can crop like full body after the picture or when you're taking no when you're taking when you're taking

it yeah i mean you can always adjust it to get it just right when you're um editing the other thing too is um i'm trying to think on the spot yeah i know it's just it's come so natural to me i'm just i see you have to have some type of eye and talent what is the camera that you have right here oh this is a film camera the other the other tip is angles try different angles yeah if you see a scene shoot five different angles of it and another pet peeve i see of people is like let's say you're taking a picture of someone and it's the full body a lot of people will change the angle up and down so they'll shoot it and the person will either look really most of the time they look really short it's hard to describe it no that makes sense or they get too low and then

you look really awkwardly tall and long unnaturally your pictures are so beautiful i always think if you're taking an iphone photo of someone let's say full body try and have the phone match eye level with them so it should be just about at the same height and there should be no angle it should just be kind of flat on yeah that's a good that's okay that's a good tip because i think i'm probably gonna get just mostly the iphone things going you know yeah it'd be nice if you could take a picture of me every now and then lauren don't talk to me about angles you should see the angles she gets at me. I look like the guy from the Goonies. Oh, always move.

Like, just, I think pictures look so much more natural if there's just movement in it. You know, just sometimes it feels really silly to just move around, but it does sort of add a nice element to a photo when it's not just very, like, posed and stoic. Why did you guys move to Charleston? Well there's a couple reasons but we sort of fell in love with the city. After you just went and visited and said it's great? Yeah we I mean we've been living in San Francisco. It is a huge move. We had been living in San Francisco and that's where we both ended up after college. It's where we both got jobs

and I mean we used to travel we would go to London we would go to Paris we go to New York and we would say you know can we see ourselves living here and I would say we could probably move to London I mean we love it a lot but just with the international stuff and owning our own business it just made it really complicated. We had explored the option of trying to buy something in San Francisco and things just weren't really working out. And then we kind of had this moment where we realized like, we don't necessarily need to live here. There's nothing that's keeping us here. We both work for ourselves. And we just happened to go on a trip to Charleston. And within, I would say, like by the time we drove from the airport to our hotel, at least I was considering moving there.

His parents were the ones that kept saying, you guys need to visit Charleston. It's so beautiful because they would go all the time. And Thomas spent a lot of time in Georgia growing up, and we just loved that part of the world. And funny enough, enough like in college when we had no idea what we were going to do or where we were going to live you know we used to watch HGTV all the time and and I I would always say um you know what if we what if we moved to Georgia and lived in the south and then we just never really explored it once the reality hit of you know where are we going to get jobs, like just get a job after

college. And then once we had the opportunity to kind of live anywhere, and we sort of have a nomad lifestyle anyways, with always being on the road. And you know, we see our families as much when we live near them as we do when we don't live near them because we're always gone anyways. So we just fell in love with Charleston, and we knew that we're always going to need to be in a big city for work. New York is a really easy flight. Sometimes we take the 6 a.m. flight up and the 9 p.m. flight back, and we can do a day full of meetings and sleep in our own bed at the end of the day. Yeah, that's cool.

Which is really great. But there's just this laid-back sort of it has it has small town feels but also all of like the cosmopolitan amenities so like great restaurants and shops and great people beaches i have a selfish question yeah what does your team look like and and and how have you structured that because for me it's so interesting to talk to other influencers because this business is so new so it's it's it's like the wild wild west everyone says so I would love to know how you guys structure your team your day are they in office are you using freelancers? How do you guys structure that? Yeah, so the team has been slowly growing over a couple years as we realize what our needs are. And I have a really difficult time giving off tasks that I've been doing for years,

but it's at the point where I can't keep doing all of these things because I have more important things I need to be focusing on so I it was a huge learning curve for me in the beginning to just be able to pass along things but we have a really fantastic team it's Thomas and I my mom actually works for us and she does she has an HR background so she does a lot of HR a lot of paperwork works with our lawyers um sort of like manages the team since we're always on the road um we have one woman that focuses on content editing photos editing video coming up with sponsored brand campaigns um she works on a lot of creative stuff with me. We have another woman that does emails, blog emails, the email series. She helps with the...

Galmys Glam. Galmys Glam. Instagram account. Instagram account. We're now starting to do smaller influencer campaigns for Galmys Glam collection and takeovers on social and stuff like that. So she's sort of focusing on those things. We have a part-time copywriter that we recently added to the team

that helps with just all the copy. I mean, the amount of things that we write in a single week is bananas. And then we also have a part-time graphic designer slash brand. She's done all of our branding. Yeah, all in Charleston. We had an office downtown when we moved back into our home after renovating. We moved the office over there. It's under construction right now, but it'll hopefully be done by the end of the year.

So right now our team is working out of our in-home office um and they all work from there we obviously work from there when we're home and then we have a whole separate team in New York for the collection that we're basically split our time between we live part-time in New York basically and the team there is is vast I mean it's part you know, part our manufacturers team from their end and then part our team from, I mean, we have, you know, seamstresses, pattern makers, sales team, marketing team, design team, which our design team is the smallest. It's just me and our head designer. And then we have a fabric director. So he basically goes around the world sourcing all of these amazing fabrics for me to go through and pick for the dresses. Can you guys think back on a specific, I don't want to say failure or challenge,

along the way that at the time felt devastating but ended up turning into a blessing? I would say specifically with the collection, we had been in talks with the manufacturer based here in in la for about eight months we were at least eight months yeah we had been negotiating negotiating they had been trying to get kind of approval from everyone involved their investors and board and and we thought we were moving forward so we essentially we spent eight months so let's just call it like essentially legal fees i mean we had our lawyer negotiating that entire time the contract so i mean almost a year and it's just you know in business there's restrictions you don't have as much resources or money or people and they just

they went a different direction and that felt very devastating we were boarding a flight and got the email. And at the time... And is your audience involved at this point? Did they know that you're working on something? No, we kept it very under wraps. I mean, because we spent three years just meeting with different manufacturers and trying to find the right one. And this was probably a year and a half in. We thought we found the right people.

They were based here in L.A. And we felt really good about it and the deal just fell through after almost a year and it just it was I turned to Thomas and said this just isn't gonna happen you know maybe we should just give up but looking back I think you having that not work out we really learned what we liked about them, what we didn't like about them. And then we figured, okay, how do we go out and find someone who's going to be even better than what we thought that they could have been? That's called, I like to call that just refining, refining, refining, refining until you get exactly what you want. That's, that's what I feel like I do during my day. It's like so much refinement always until you like whittle down

exactly what it is you want. Absolutely. and I'm so grateful for that looking back because our partners now are our family and they're so incredible and there there's no way that we could have had that with anybody else I really don't think and we didn't really have the luxury that we have with the blog was we launched the blog in 2011. We had this learning experience over time. But specifically with the collection, we knew that we had to do it right from the very beginning. And because if it wasn't right and we didn't launch with the right product, with the right user experience, it just wasn't going to be the long-term brand that we wanted. It would be really hard to gain people's trust again if we failed from the start. What are some routines that you guys do?

It could be a morning routine or a night routine that really set you up for success. You're pretty serious with that coffee maker. He loves routines. He is a routine guy. He loves structure. So I feel like this is a routine guy he loves structure so i feel like this is a you question yeah i mean i would say i love coffee i mean i've been drinking it since i was i think five wow i don't know what my mom was how many cups a day maybe like two i don't need coffee i just enjoy the taste i need coffee so julia's day does not start until i make her coffee in our coffee maker

he i think he's more terrified i don't get a coffee i have a coffee heater by my bed and you don't do anything it's empty every day lauren's a gemini she's got about 11 personalities so it depends which one i can't wait to hear i think he's more terrified of me in the morning without my coffee so he's always like here's your coffee Thomas, only give the answer that's not going to make me look bad. Thomas, give the real answer. So I always say that I like to come up with fake blog names. And one of them would be call for coffee. Because that's like anytime we're staying in a hotel,

this morning we woke up at 5.30. He's always like, do you want to call for coffee? And so I know it's like if they don't have the right amount of... It's the first thing we say to each other in the morning in a hotel. Julia likes almond milk with a side of coffee. So she can just drink it like all day long and it doesn't really impact her much. But yeah, if they don't, if the room service doesn't get the right amount of almond milk and they have to call again or have to go down and get it,

sometimes I'll just be like, can you just fill up the same amount of coffee that you bring? Fill up the same amount of almond milk. Okay, so you do coffee. Is there anything else that you do at night or that you do in the morning that's non-negotiable? Workout? Could be anything. You love to water the plants and listen to podcasts. Yeah.

He has his earbuds in and he's out on the porch watering all the plants and he'll come in and tell me all about the podcast he just listened so since we renovated our house um our sprinklers we've been told not to turn them back on until we put in a new system so I have to go out every single morning and water the plants or if I'm not home someone has to come do it but it takes me about 30 minutes every day so I wake up and it's like the first thing I do I put on my headphones and just throw on a podcast that's therapeutic and meditative no that actually sounds really really nice like I'm not allowed to do it like it's his thing Michael I don't like listen we just got to LA it's really fast like right now if you're listening I'm leaving I'm going to Charleston I'm going to start watering

plants and taking my life a little bit slower pace in the morning. You'll really like it. There's a house for sale down the street from us. Done. All right. We're going to close shop up at Dear Media. I got to get going. Heading to go water the plants.

What's a day in the life for you guys when you're in Charleston working on the business? What time do you wake up? Well, like walk us through a day. Well, the day kind of depends if we're working out in the morning or not because we're let's go with we're working out in the morning we love doing orange theory so we usually wake up at 6 30 we'll go to a class be done around um was that the 7 a.m class if we wake up at 6 30 normally it's a's a 7.30 class. So you're done by 8.30. Well, it depends on what class we're taking.

But you talk the day then. He's got a towel. He's holding back. Has she had her coffee before Orange Theory? No. Okay. No, I don't drink coffee before I work out. Let's just say if it's been the last six months, we haven't been so good at working out.

So let's just say our routine is not working out, which is more realistic. So I would say I wake up at like 7. She'll wake up at 7.30. By the time she's up, her coffee has already been made. And then literally we just jump. Like we might go for a walk in the morning. If I don't make coffee, then we'll go walk to get coffee. It's a good way to just kind of get our... I like moving my body first thing in the morning. If I don't make coffee, then we'll go walk to get coffee. It's a good way to just kind of get our...

I like moving my body first thing in the morning because you've been laying idle all night for, you know, five to eight hours. And I just need motion. So even if it's just like taking a loop around the street. You gotta do something. Yeah, I gotta do something, yeah. So I would say by 9 a.m.,

you know, we're on our computers really working and 10 a.m our employees show up to the house any like big conversations typically take place before they show up because it's not like a typical office where there's conference rooms it's like our house and everything is open concept so it's so all those conversations happen before they arrive then well when we're in Charleston, we actually don't really shoot. It's more we take all of our business calls. We do all of our computer work. We do a lot of bigger picture brainstorming meetings.

And we do full team meetings, plan out the content calendar. It's a lot of computer work. I mean, I would say when we're in Charleston, we rarely leave our house during the work week. Very rarely. Because there's just so much to catch up on. Because when we're in, when we're in New York, I'm just focused on design stuff. So I can't do anything blog related or even collection related that doesn't have anything to do with design it sounds like you guys time batch a lot oh yeah we do yeah and then when we when we travel so i say we spend about a third of our time in charleston a third of our time in new york a third of our time just traveling and so new york is design and focus on the collection home is blog and collection

and getting press yeah and getting caught up on business stuff and then when we're traveling it's it's very content focused i mean we go out and shoot and we'll shoot all day long i mean it's it's something that we love to do so we're we're happy to do that like fuels my creativity so much um if we're in one place for too long i start to get really stir crazy because i want to go out and create or if we're in one place for too long I start to get really stir crazy because I want to go out and create or if we're at our computers for a whole week it feels very productive but I feel like I'm missing something because I need to be out seeing things and shooting and creating but it's if he is out shooting and creating for too long he gets stir crazy because he wants to be at his computer

so we get stir crazy for two different reasons so if someone is new to the gal meets glam collection how how would you tell them to start is there a dress that you just think is is the dress that they should go to yes talk to someone that that's listening that wants to go check out your collection yes so our edith dress is actually the first dress i designed and it was the first dress why did you name it edith well funny enough it was actually called the julia dress um because again it was the first a little bit too it was a little too no no it so um it was the first dress i had thought of way back in you know 2014 when we wanted to start the collection and it was the first dress I had thought of way back in, you know, 2014 when we wanted to start the collection.

And it was the first dress that I saw the seamstresses making a sample of. And I burst into tears the moment I saw it because I just couldn't believe that my vision had finally come to life in a product. And it was beautiful. And, you know, I wasn't crazy with my ideas. But it's called the Edith because when we launched, we named all of the dresses on our e-commerce. And Nordstrom didn't want to take those names because that's just not the way that they had their products. It was more City Crepe Fit and Flare Midi Dress. You know, it was more the description, and I think that's more for like seo purposes but they realized on our launch day

um that all of our customers were coming to nordstrom.com and searching or in the stores or in stores they were they were asking for oh do you have the samantha dress or oh do you have the rose dress or they were seeing that the searches come on their website. They called us at the end of the day and said, can you send us a list of all the names we need to go and change all the product names? And so by that time, I had taken that dress was a Nordstrom exclusive at launch because they loved it so much. And it's actually our bestseller. I'm Googling it right now as you speak. you speak. It's our number one bestseller. They now restock it throughout the year because it's just a classic dress, a year-round dress. And because it was a

Nordstrom exclusive, I still wanted a Julia dress on our e-commerce. So we didn't name it the Julia dress because I wanted to be able to call something the Julia dress on our site and then by the time Nordstrom introduced it to their site it was sort of too late to switch so it's called the Edith but I just looked it up and you know what it says sold out yep it it is just a beautiful classic gal meets glam dress it's it's embodies everything that I love. It's beautiful. It's timeless. The skirt is really full. It's so flattering on every single body type. Everybody that wears it just looks absolutely stunning in it. And it just hits a huge different age range too. You know, a girl who's 18 compared to her college graduation, and we've had women who are 75 send us pictures in it and it looks age appropriate. It's a good

range. It's a huge range. It looks age appropriate on everybody, even though, you know, it's very hard to have a product that looks age appropriate on somebody that's 18 and somebody that's 75. So you got, so for our listeners that want to go and check it out, what's the, what's the link or the site they can go to? And I know you have an offer code for them as well. Yeah, it's 75. So for our listeners that want to go and check it out, what's the link or the site they can go to? And I know you have an offer code for them as well. Yeah, it's shop.galmeetsglam.com. And the blog is galmeetsglam.com. But the addresses are on shop.galmeetsglam.com. And the code?

TSC15. TSC15. And that should give a 15% off discount. Cool. Yeah. Before we go, one book, podcast, resource, quote that you guys could recommend to our audience. Could be anything. Anything that inspires you, business, personal.

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, as we talked about. My favorite one right now is Masters of Scale. Reed Hoffman? Yeah. And I know a lot of people, I mentioned it earlier, and the quote that he talks about all the time about launching. And we get so many questions from people saying, oh, I want to start a blog. I want to get started.

I want to do this. But they're not ready to jump in. And that quote of, like, if you're not embarrassed by your first product, you launch too late, I think that really applies to when you're getting going and started. You really don't know what you launched too late. I think that really applies to when you're getting going and started. You really don't know what you want to do unless you're already an expert in the field. But I don't think people who are experts would be asking us how to start.

So I think that's probably my favorite. There's never been one venture my entire life, my entire career that I've been a part of where the beginning I wasn't a little shaken or embarrassed by the initial launch. It could be applied across products. Even when you first tried to date me. Well, yes, but maybe that's the one area that I was extremely confident. But no, I think that's good advice because like I said, whether it's product, whether it's content, whether it's service, like it's always rough in the beginning

and then you adjust along the way. Yeah. I think, well, for me and our team as a whole, we love using Business of Fashion as a resource. There's so much, so many great articles on there, even just on the business side, but because we're in fashion, just knowing what's going on in the industry and what's going on in the marketplace, it's really important for us to keep up with that. And there's, I mean, every single day we're probably sharing an article to our team to read that is relevant to us. And I think just a lot of people in general. Slack or email? Slack. Yeah. Thomas got us on Slack a couple years ago. And it's a hard transition. you get on you like it slack and air table our life has changed since air table yeah it's incredible it's incredible and everybody that we've referred it to is like this is a game changer we need to get air table because we were using a shauna asana right now we used to use asana and i never got on it's very rare for me to get on board with sort of a task management system or platform because that's just not the way I work. Well, you also were managing so many different platforms

that getting on board with something else is like, oh my God, it's overwhelming. It is. So, I mean, Airtable is amazing for your team, but also for outside sources to access, I mean, I don't really know how to explain it. You could, but it's amazing. I mean, it's a database for everyone. I'm kidding. I'm kidding it. Where can everyone find you? Pimp yourself out.

Share your Instagram handles, website, everything. My Instagram is Julia H. Engel, E-N-G-E-L. And the collection Instagram is just at gal meets glam and our website our website is gal meets glam.com and shop.galmeetsglam.com and you can also shop the collection on nordstrom.com and Thomas because you share a lot of photography tips where can everyone find you Thomas uh at t barrelsberolz, T-B-E-R-O-L-Z. So I actually deleted all my, or I archived all my previous photos, and now I only post film shots.

He rebranded recently. I love a rebrand. You're going through a rebrand, huh? Yeah. I think I have to do a couple of these. You need a rebrand on your Instagram. There's a lot of yellows and oranges popping. Well, a common misconception is that I edit all the photos, but I've never edited the photos.

But the great part about shooting film is that you just get it back and you can post it. Wow. Oh, cool. I mean, it takes three weeks to get it back, but. That's awesome. Maybe I need to get one of those. You don't have to edit it. No, I'll take some pictures of you after this and I'll send them to you in like three weeks.

I just have to stand in the good light. Tell me where to stand and I'm good. Thank you guys for doing this. Thank you guys so much for having us. Yo guys, I have an ask. So if this podcast has brought you any kind of value, any value, I would really, really appreciate it. We would really appreciate it. If you could go to iTunes and rate and review the podcast, we'd love to hear your feedback. And that's a place that really helps us on iTunes. So like I said, if you've had any value from the skinny confidential, him and her podcast, please, please, please rate and review. If you do rate and review,

screenshot it and send it to asklaurenattheskinnyconfidential.com and we will send you my five favorite beauty hacks straight to your inbox. That's ask Lauren, Lauren with a Y, L-A-U-R-Y-N, at theskinnyconfidential.com. This episode is brought to you by Ritual. So as we know, I'm a human guinea pig. I've been trying out Ritual for the last six months. I keep it next to my toothbrush. It's amazing to just grab my toothbrush, brush my teeth, scrape my tongue, and then take my Ritual. This is something that I've seen a difference with, with my toothbrush, brush my teeth, scrape my tongue, and then take my Ritual. This is something that I've seen a difference with my hair, my nails, my skin, everything, especially my nails. Anyways, Ritual is filled with iron, vitamin E, magnesium, folate. I mean, it doesn't get better. So 95% of women do not get the vitamins and minerals they need on a daily basis. So Ritual created a smarter

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