May 6, 2021 • 23 mins
Starting a new business can mean that a million things go wrong—and Alli Webb probably encountered most of them on her way to making Drybar, a revolutionary chain of blow-out salons, a hit from coast to coast. Hear how she learned to find an upside in even the worst situations.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Made by Women by the Seneca Women Podcast
Network and I Heart Radio. At a moment when businesses
face some of the biggest challenges in recent history, we
bring you inspiring stories, practical insights, and shared learnings to
help you successfully navigate in today's environment. Every Thursday, Made
(00:26):
by Women will showcase the experiences of legendary women, entrepreneurs,
fierce up and comers, and everyday women who found success
their own way. Consider this your real world MBA designed
for the new now. I'm Kim Azzarelli and thanks so
much for joining us today. In something new and intriguing
(00:47):
arrived on the scene, a hair salon that did only
one thing, no color, no cuts, just blowouts. It was
called dry Bar and locations were soon popping up across
the country. Dry Bar has been acclaimed as a beauty
industry disruptor. It was one of the top one billion
ideas of Entrepreneur magazine, and founder Ali Webb has been
(01:10):
named to Fortune's forty Under forty list. And it all
started when I stay at home mother decided to launch
a mobile hair salon. Please enjoy my conversation with dry
Bar founder Ali Webb. Thanks so much for joining us
thanks for having me. So I dare say that most
people know what dry bar is, but tell us a
little bit about it and why you started it. Well,
(01:32):
the idea really came from the fact that I was
born with naturally curly hair, and my whole life, you know,
especially as a kid, I just I didn't really like it.
I didn't know how to deal with my you know,
crazy frizzy hair. I grew up in South Florida where
it was like so much humidity in the air that
my hair vis is always unruly, and I didn't really
like it, and I didn't know how to tame it.
(01:53):
And you know, fast forward to many different jobs and
careers and other paths that I took. I eventually went
to beauty school, completely fell in love with it, and
became a hair stylist. And I spent most of my twenties,
uh doing hair and perfecting my own blowout. And while
I was cutting hair professionally in a salon, you know,
(02:15):
I loved getting through the haircut to do the blow out,
and that was just the part that was like the
most exciting for me about the process. But you know,
I never you know, the idea of dry bar and
a bloody bar like never like entered my mind. However,
in retrospect, you know, the idea is something that like
I as a kid would have loved because I used
to beg my mom to blow out my own my
(02:37):
hair and she wasn't very good at it. She was
an hair style was um. But anyways, I UM. I
met my well now ex husband when I was living
in New York City and we got married, moved to
southern California. I had my two boys who are now
Goal four team in sixteen, and you know, and I
(02:58):
was a stay at home mom for five and I
really thought i'd like hit the jackpot on that, and
I loved the idea that I was able to stay
home with my boys. And and while I loved it,
and I obviously loved my kids tremendously, after five years
of being home, you know, stay at home mom, I
just got like the bug and the urge, like the
itch to get back out there and do something for myself,
but at my own pace. So I decided to start
(03:20):
a mobile blow up business, which was again taking the
thing that I loved about when I did hair and
and turn it into this little business. And it was
you know, it just meant to be a smell business.
And it was called straight at Home. And Cam, who's
my ex husband, and you know, we're on very good terms,
but he is a creative genius and he's the you know,
he's really the brains behind the brand for dry bar.
(03:41):
And he made me this one little page website called
straight at Home dot com and I started posting it
all over the place on all the mommy blogs because
I had, you know, we so immersed in the mommy
community because when we first moved to l A, I
was having my first son, so I the only people
I really knew in LA were mom So that's why
(04:02):
I was catering to I started this business. I was
only charging forty dollars, which you know, to get somebody
to come to your house for four years is like
unheard of. But for me, it was just more like,
how can I make this like attainable and something that
people will actually want to do a lot. And so
I started this business and I got so busy so
fast just operating the mobile business that I was like
and I feel like, why isn't there a place that
(04:24):
just does blow up, you know, in a beautiful space,
in a cool environment, you know, there was like fantastic
SAMs of the World, and if you're in New York,
it was like John Louis Devide and you know, those
kind of businesses that are great businesses, but you know,
and women like me who have naturally curly hair, I
think we're figuring it out and they were finding their
person at those places, but there was nothing cohesive and
(04:45):
a great experience for just to blow up. Yeah. I
have to remember very clearly when you came on the scene,
because you're right, there was just nothing like that. It
was just such a novel thought. Yeah. Yeah, so you
have the idea, um and you think, why there's something
like that, and so how do you do you get
started on that? Well, because my my brother Michael Landa,
who is my business partner, we'd always been really close
(05:05):
and in a former life we had opened up a
couple of Nicole Miller boutiques, and we were you know,
our parents were entrepreneurs, so I kind of had always
have had that kind of entrepreneurial like spirit or d
n A. And when Michael saw how much success I
was having with my mobile business, you know, and I
went to him and said, I feel like we should open,
or I should open like a brick and mortar. Instead
(05:26):
of me going to them, they come to me. And
you know, Michael, it was like a little bit loop
warm on the idea at first, because his wife has
like stick straight hair, like the hair of my dreams,
you know that like just grows out of her hair,
that head, but that way. And I was always like,
you know, those kind of girls like always mystified me
because mine did not. And so anyways, I went to
(05:46):
him and I said, I want to do this, you know,
but I don't want you to learn I can't do
it alone. Would you be willing to, you know, help me?
Obviously from a financial place because I didn't have the
money to do it, and from a you know, business perspective,
because he's just a really naturally smart business man, you know.
And he like he very quickly talked him into it,
and he knew the kind of hair I had and
(06:07):
whatever and um, but he he more thought it was
like you know, he used to say, like the women
of l A have too much time and too much
money on their hands, so this will work here. And
I was like, I don't think so, dude, Like I
think that like anywhere there's women. You know, most women,
the majority of women, like struggle with doing their own hair.
You know, some are better than others, but and there's
nothing like that like salon feeling blowout. So, you know,
(06:30):
he very quickly became interested in and I think more
if you were to ask him, he would tell you
it's more from the perspective of like, hey, I want
to help my little sister, um, you know, get this
business off the ground. He had worked for Yahoo in
the early days that he made some money and was
willing to, like, you know, do this with me. And
at the time, you know, he was like, uh, you know,
I'll give you sweat equity and I'll put up all
(06:51):
the money. And I didn't know what that meant, and
obviously I do now. And just a side note, full
circle moment, is this is this new jewelry business that
I started it um called back At and Quill, the
girl that I basically invested in, I've put up all
the money and she's getting sweat equity. So it's just
funny eleven years later to be that on the other
side of that. Um, yeah, it's really cool. But anyway,
(07:14):
so Michael, you know, Michael took the chance, and he
um he was he thought that it was a great idea.
And then you know and Cam my ex husband, who's,
like I said, just such a brilliant creative. He was
also like, you know, you get your nails done once
a week and I really don't notice, but when you
get your hair blown out, it's the first thing I noticed.
So as an advertising guy who's pretty cynical, he thought
(07:36):
it was a great idea. So that really helps give
me the momentum and confidence that I needed. And so
we all kind of started working on the things that
we all knew how to do. I mean, I was
like figuring out how to like get a salon, you know,
quote and quote salon up and running and with all
the things, the millions of things that that requires. And
I was I felt like I spent most of my
life on the phone with like the collegethology board, and
(07:58):
you know, Michael was getting all are like you know, utilities,
and I mean he still tells the story to this
day how he like lost so many hours of his
life to a T and T trying to get our
phones connected. I mean it was just like the minutia
that you're in when you're trying to start a business,
um and and then start finding the location, the lease,
and we had to personally guarantee that first lease. And
(08:19):
I mean it was like a beautiful, like disaster trying
to get it off the ground, but you know, we did.
And like many startups, we ran out of money towards
the end because everything became more expensive. And Michael had
brought in Josh Hitler, who's our architect still to this day,
and he's amazing these this Harvard Award winning architect, and he,
(08:39):
you know, gave us a deal. We gave him some equity,
and you know, we just we ran out of money
and had to get investors at the you know, the
eleventh hour. But but in a nutshell, that's how it
all started. And then it was just like Gangbusters. Once
we opened, it was so bananas and busy and crazy
and we and and it was in the middle of
a recession. And yeah, well you've hit on so many
(09:01):
points that I think everybody faces when you when you
start a business, and it's just so great. I mean,
what's exciting to hear about really is ten eleven years later,
it looks like a perfect business. But I think, you know,
you're really showing what it means in the beginning when
you want to get started and what that's all about.
And I feel like that's something that people don't recognize
enough after they've had a lot of success, as you have.
(09:23):
We'll be back with Senecas made by women after this
short break. So you know, you're you're going through those
really really hard times. I mean, of course you're in
business with your brother and your husband, so maybe that's
a little bit helpful, but still, you know, I'm sure
those there are those dark nights where you're like, Wow,
(09:44):
why did I do this? How did you deal with that? Oh? Yeah, well,
I mean I think it was like, I mean, it's
funny that you say it looks like a perfect business,
because it, gosh, it's like so far from that. And
you know, there there definitely were times that it was
like I don't remember ever feeling like I didn't want
to do it or so unmanageable, but I you know,
(10:04):
but I definitely did feel like it was just so
unbelievably all encompassing, you know. And I had little kids
at the time, and it was just the first like
six months I was at the store every single day
which we opened seven days a week, so I have
such a hard time, you know. So I was so
thrust into this and not complaining, I'm so grateful for it,
but I was so thrust into it, like talking about
(10:26):
being thrown in the deep end and not knowing how
to swim, and I just didn't know how to like
do all this. It was like learning on the job,
and you know, it was the pace was so much
faster than any of us had anticipated. So it was
like I'm playing catchup and trying to figure everything out,
which was a great problem to have. Um. So it
was you know, it was overwhelming, but it was also
overwhelming and exciting and intoxicating and amazing and so stressful
(10:51):
and just you know, it was like all the emotions, um,
you know, wrapped into one. But but but mostly, I
mean I look back on that time so far only
and it was just such a rush that you know,
people were loving this business and we're having this amazing
impact on all these women, and now we're starting to
provide all these jobs. And it was like in the
you know, we're in the middle of a recession. It
(11:12):
was just it was so it was so cool and
you know, and while building, it was hard, and and
you know, it's there's so many challenges with this business
and you know we as you might imagine the managing
our stylists and labor, and there's and and clients, and
it's like it's it's a very like mixed bag of problems.
(11:35):
You can't believe. I mean, someone as a joke, brought
brought us a wacka mall machine one because it's like
that's really what it's like, you know, I mean, it
is really what it was like. I mean every day
you could expect a phone call like I mean, you
name it. You know, like we had there was a
there was a stinkhole and in our flat Iron store
when we opened, there was like that. Let's mentioned how
(11:56):
many times like stories didn't open because whoever was opening
it slept, don't over slap. Yeah, I mean I have
to say a sinkhole in the flat Iron district. That
is that's a big one. That is a surprise. Yeah,
but like the water wouldn't come on, the hot water
wouldn't come on. It was just like you name it.
There was something literally every day. So it was. But
(12:17):
but it's also like this amazing fun challenge too. So
I look back on it very fondly. So actually, that's
that's such an interesting point because you know, at the
beginning or probably in any business, in most businesses, there's
always things that go wrong, and they go wrong a
lot um, So how do you kind of shift your
mindset to rather than feeling like everything's an emergency and
(12:39):
you're freaking out over every sinkhole that comes up, Rather,
how do you shift it to kind of embrace it
and kind of live in that uncertainty. Well, I think
you have to have a pretty thick skin, and you know,
and I would love to say that I always did,
but I think it was like it's a it's an
overtime learned kind of behavior that like, you know, and
and I think it's also on par with like, you know,
(12:59):
like customer complaints and customers not being happy or like
getting something wrong or being too busy or not someone
that liking to blowout. You know, it's like you kind
of learn, it's like you brace yourself for that stuff.
And um, I remember early on having to you know,
when people weren't unhappy, when something went wrong, whatever happened,
and having to like deal with that, and it's like
(13:20):
it's like the best way I can I can equate
it to you is like I don't know if you
ever take cold showers, but I do for a lot
of different reasons. And it's like when you first get in,
it just hurts and it's uncomfortable and it's terrible, but
then you like your body like it's like okay with
it after a few seconds. And I think it's like
that when you're dealing with all the things that are coming.
(13:40):
It's like it hurts and stings for a second, and
then you just like go into Okay, how are we
going to deal with this? How are we going to
fix it? You know, it's really easy, I think, as
an entrepreneur or a boss or really anybody to get
bob down and they're like whoa is me? And your
this really stucks and blah blah blah and feel bad
for yourself. But you kind of have to snap yourself
out of that just go into like fix it mode
(14:02):
and how do we make this better? And how do
we make sure it doesn't happen again? You know, And
then that mindset of like it hurts for a second,
but we have to just keep powering through, and you know,
and I think that over time, I got a thicker skin.
I mean, there were certainly times that I didn't, But
for the most part, you learn how to like roll
with the punges and deal with all the stuff that
(14:23):
comes up. And if you really are good, you can
remember and those moments, which is almost impossible. But like
there is a reason and a lesson here. You know,
it's much easier to see that in retrospect, but there
always is, you know, there's always some sort of learning
that comes out of, you know, anything that goes wrong. Well,
I think that's that's kind of to me, seems like
the key to life generally. Yeah, two points that you
(14:46):
just made. One is certainly understanding how to deal with
pain or how you you yourself can deal with discomfort.
And I heard a great piece of advice about trying
to learn to reinterpret pain, and I think that's what
kind of those lance are instrums of the world, do, etcetera.
You know, this is kind of like a marathon or
a race. You know, you've got to just sort of
know how to reinterpret those difficult times. But then what
you just said to me, it is sort of the key,
(15:07):
which is how do you draw something out of all
this that you can then learn from, and that to
me seems like really a life lesson that you've learned there. Yeah,
and you know, I'm thirty six years old of you know,
to like teenage kids. I've gone through divorce, Like, I've
learned a lot of life lessons, you know, and and
I've gotten a lot better at dealing with them. Um.
I was just listening to some and a master class.
(15:29):
I don't know if you follow that account, but it's
like there was a mindful master and he was talking
about how you have to you know, be just as
like keenly like focus on the bad quote unquote bad things.
It's a good things, you know, and then you don't
aren't is overwhelmed with the suffering of it. You know.
It's like, which is so much harder, so much easier
said than done, you know, but it is it is
(15:50):
something to think about ponder, you know. I Mean. The
other thing that's funny about that, which is about life,
I guess, is that you know, you never really know
what's bad or good right Like the time you think
this is definitely gonna be the best thing, and then
you're like, oh that was the worst and the thing
that you thought was the worst thing. Later on you're like,
thank god, that happened. So it's really hard to know.
And I guess if we can separate ourselves a little
bit from that, that helps a lot. But speaking of which,
(16:13):
we're in the middle of COVID or hopefully towards the
end of the COVID pandemic here. But we're in a
pandemic and obviously you're in a business that's very physical.
So how have you had to pivot during this period? Well,
I mean the first like, I mean, we're you know,
we're just over a year and it's like you know
that we closed down very early and had some fits
and starts with opening back up, but you know, ultimately
(16:34):
have only recently opened almost all of our stores back up,
and it's on a slower capacity and we're not able.
It's definitely not like the driver you know and love
right now, which is okay, and we're building back up
to that, you know, because the separation and all of
that um and and there was a lot of pivoting.
I mean, it just they got our business like it was.
(16:55):
It was so hard, and you know, we we were
able to survive a little bit it more than we
might have been able to otherwise if we hadn't we
had sold our product division, Like I mean, what like
days before things really went cret It was the time.
It was unbelievable. So that was able to help like
bridge the gap for us to be able to like
(17:15):
stay afloat um, you know, but it was it was
really challenging to get you know, for our employees and
our managers and like these people that had worked so
hard for so long, it was just like nothing, you know,
there's like nothing we could do um. And that was
like just such a devastating blow. And we did our
very best to like stay in touch with our with
our teams at a regular basis and try to keep
(17:37):
morale up. But and we did a lot of stuff
with like promoting products and how to do lots at
home and all of that stuff. But you know, there's
there's no way to spin it. It's just it's and yeah,
and and we are we are, you know, luckily you know,
gaining momentum again. And I think again the silver lighting
here is that like people are really excited to get
(17:59):
back out, are getting brought out again. We're seeing like
the books are filling up very quickly again. So um,
you know, and we didn't think it would be any
other way, but it is. We have a lot of
investors and all of that, so it is like, you know,
it's a pretty daunting situation to be in, but we
I think we are just about on the other side
of it, or getting close to it. So you've started
(18:21):
this business, You've just started another business, So you have
a wealth of advice for listeners out there who right
now are thinking about starting something on their own but
feel that, you know, this might not be the right time,
or you know, they wish they were more prepared. Is
there advice you would give them, Well, I would say,
don't worry about being prepared. I was not prepared, you know.
(18:41):
I think that what happens is I think people get
in this like, you know, they have to have everything
figured out before they start a business. And the truth
of it, at least in my experience, is that you know,
you there's just so much more that you don't know
then you know when you're starting a business, and so
you know, of course like prepared much as you can
and do as much as you can, but but but
(19:02):
also like just just do it. And I think people
get stuck in like analysis paralysis and like, oh, I
don't really know how to do sometimes do that. It's
like you know, you just kind of go and start
and you you know, you figure it out day by day.
And I think it's this like it doesn't have to
be perfect, you know, to start, and that that's always
you know. I mean, it's like, you know, this this
(19:22):
other business I started back in a quill, which is
a Juliy business, which is a direct to consumer, which
is like so out of my wheelhouse. I've never run
a director consumer business. I know nothing about it, but
I started this business anyways. And it's like, you know,
we have good days and we have bad days, and
like some things is that we're doing are working, and
some things that aren't doing aren't working. But I certainly
like they're making tons of mistakes. We're doing tons of
(19:43):
things wrong and then we're like, yeah, we're not gonna
do that again, and and you know, and it's just
this like there's so much more I didn't know about
this business than I knew. All I knew was that
like I thought this was a good idea. I could
wrap some great branding around it. Meredith like she's so
good at what she does and like, let's just get
the business off the ground. And you know, we we
we in terms of being prepared, we you know, we
(20:05):
made a new website, we we cam did, we did
the branding for me. We you know, we hired a
web guy. We've we hired a handful of people to
help us, like get this off the ground, very hard time,
and and we said it and we're learning so much
as we go, you know, so it's not perfect. I mean,
I wish we could have come out of the gates,
like with much stronger numbers, much people, more people coming
(20:27):
to our website. But it's you know, it's just it's
you know, I do practice that my own advice with
like let's just go and let's see what happens, you know,
And and that's you know, kind of how we're operating.
And I think it's like I don't I'm sure that
mentality is not for everybody, but you know, for for me,
that's always kind of been how I how I operate.
And you know, we squeeze our massage business. You know,
(20:49):
Brittany Driscoll who used to run marketing at draw Bar,
she's the CEO of that and our co founder and
you know, she's much more like data driven and organized,
and you know, she's such a good thing to Mayang
because she does have all of that. But there is
a fair amount of like we're learning a lot of
things as we go here too, and we are adjusting
(21:09):
and pivoting and changing all sorts of things even right now.
And the business has been you know, well technically open
for two years, but one of those was covid. Um.
You know, so there's just like a million different ways.
I hate the expression is gonna cat, but that's the
one that comes to mind. You know. It's just like
there's a million different ways to to do it. And um,
the one thing that you should that I believe you
(21:31):
shouldn't do is like wait for the quote unquote perfect time,
because there truly never is. I totally agree. Well, I mean,
you have the experience to to show for it, so
we appreciate it. And clearly your approach is working for you.
So UM, we appreciate you sharing that with Thank you
so thanks for joining us on the show. And you know,
we look forward to getting our hair done soon and often, um,
(21:52):
and we look forward to what you're doing next. Thank
you so much. This has been a lot of fun.
There are so many valuable lessons we can learn from
Ali Webb. Here are three things I took from the conversation. First,
if you want to build a successful business, start with
what you love and what you know. Ali loved doing blowouts,
(22:14):
and after five years as a stay at home mother,
she was itching to do something different. The only people
she knew in l A were moms, so she launched
a mobile blow up business catering to mothers and advertise
it on all the mommy blogs. Second, as an entrepreneur,
be prepared to deal with discomfort. There are a million
opportunities for things to go wrong, and they will, but
(22:37):
as Ali says, you have to snap out of it
and go into fix it mode. When you do, you'll
also find that each misstep has a lesson in it.
With practice, you can teach yourself to see that the
so called bad things maybe good things and things you
can learn from. Finally, you don't have to know everything
in order to run a successful business. In fact, you can't,
(22:57):
so don't succumb to analysis paralysis. Says all be prepared
and learn all that you can, of course, but then
take the leap dive in and figure things out along
the Way. Made by Women is brought to you by
the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with
support from founding partner PNG
Welcome to Made by Women by the Seneca Women Podcast
Network and I Heart Radio. At a moment when businesses
face some of the biggest challenges in recent history, we
bring you inspiring stories, practical insights, and shared learnings to
help you successfully navigate in today's environment. Every Thursday, Made
(00:26):
by Women will showcase the experiences of legendary women, entrepreneurs,
fierce up and comers, and everyday women who found success
their own way. Consider this your real world MBA designed
for the new now. I'm Kim Azzarelli and thanks so
much for joining us today. In something new and intriguing
(00:47):
arrived on the scene, a hair salon that did only
one thing, no color, no cuts, just blowouts. It was
called dry Bar and locations were soon popping up across
the country. Dry Bar has been acclaimed as a beauty
industry disruptor. It was one of the top one billion
ideas of Entrepreneur magazine, and founder Ali Webb has been
(01:10):
named to Fortune's forty Under forty list. And it all
started when I stay at home mother decided to launch
a mobile hair salon. Please enjoy my conversation with dry
Bar founder Ali Webb. Thanks so much for joining us
thanks for having me. So I dare say that most
people know what dry bar is, but tell us a
little bit about it and why you started it. Well,
(01:32):
the idea really came from the fact that I was
born with naturally curly hair, and my whole life, you know,
especially as a kid, I just I didn't really like it.
I didn't know how to deal with my you know,
crazy frizzy hair. I grew up in South Florida where
it was like so much humidity in the air that
my hair vis is always unruly, and I didn't really
like it, and I didn't know how to tame it.
(01:53):
And you know, fast forward to many different jobs and
careers and other paths that I took. I eventually went
to beauty school, completely fell in love with it, and
became a hair stylist. And I spent most of my twenties,
uh doing hair and perfecting my own blowout. And while
I was cutting hair professionally in a salon, you know,
(02:15):
I loved getting through the haircut to do the blow out,
and that was just the part that was like the
most exciting for me about the process. But you know,
I never you know, the idea of dry bar and
a bloody bar like never like entered my mind. However,
in retrospect, you know, the idea is something that like
I as a kid would have loved because I used
to beg my mom to blow out my own my
(02:37):
hair and she wasn't very good at it. She was
an hair style was um. But anyways, I UM. I
met my well now ex husband when I was living
in New York City and we got married, moved to
southern California. I had my two boys who are now
Goal four team in sixteen, and you know, and I
(02:58):
was a stay at home mom for five and I
really thought i'd like hit the jackpot on that, and
I loved the idea that I was able to stay
home with my boys. And and while I loved it,
and I obviously loved my kids tremendously, after five years
of being home, you know, stay at home mom, I
just got like the bug and the urge, like the
itch to get back out there and do something for myself,
but at my own pace. So I decided to start
(03:20):
a mobile blow up business, which was again taking the
thing that I loved about when I did hair and
and turn it into this little business. And it was
you know, it just meant to be a smell business.
And it was called straight at Home. And Cam, who's
my ex husband, and you know, we're on very good terms,
but he is a creative genius and he's the you know,
he's really the brains behind the brand for dry bar.
(03:41):
And he made me this one little page website called
straight at Home dot com and I started posting it
all over the place on all the mommy blogs because
I had, you know, we so immersed in the mommy
community because when we first moved to l A, I
was having my first son, so I the only people
I really knew in LA were mom So that's why
(04:02):
I was catering to I started this business. I was
only charging forty dollars, which you know, to get somebody
to come to your house for four years is like
unheard of. But for me, it was just more like,
how can I make this like attainable and something that
people will actually want to do a lot. And so
I started this business and I got so busy so
fast just operating the mobile business that I was like
and I feel like, why isn't there a place that
(04:24):
just does blow up, you know, in a beautiful space,
in a cool environment, you know, there was like fantastic
SAMs of the World, and if you're in New York,
it was like John Louis Devide and you know, those
kind of businesses that are great businesses, but you know,
and women like me who have naturally curly hair, I
think we're figuring it out and they were finding their
person at those places, but there was nothing cohesive and
(04:45):
a great experience for just to blow up. Yeah. I
have to remember very clearly when you came on the scene,
because you're right, there was just nothing like that. It
was just such a novel thought. Yeah. Yeah, so you
have the idea, um and you think, why there's something
like that, and so how do you do you get
started on that? Well, because my my brother Michael Landa,
who is my business partner, we'd always been really close
(05:05):
and in a former life we had opened up a
couple of Nicole Miller boutiques, and we were you know,
our parents were entrepreneurs, so I kind of had always
have had that kind of entrepreneurial like spirit or d
n A. And when Michael saw how much success I
was having with my mobile business, you know, and I
went to him and said, I feel like we should open,
or I should open like a brick and mortar. Instead
(05:26):
of me going to them, they come to me. And
you know, Michael, it was like a little bit loop
warm on the idea at first, because his wife has
like stick straight hair, like the hair of my dreams,
you know that like just grows out of her hair,
that head, but that way. And I was always like,
you know, those kind of girls like always mystified me
because mine did not. And so anyways, I went to
(05:46):
him and I said, I want to do this, you know,
but I don't want you to learn I can't do
it alone. Would you be willing to, you know, help me?
Obviously from a financial place because I didn't have the
money to do it, and from a you know, business perspective,
because he's just a really naturally smart business man, you know.
And he like he very quickly talked him into it,
and he knew the kind of hair I had and
(06:07):
whatever and um, but he he more thought it was
like you know, he used to say, like the women
of l A have too much time and too much
money on their hands, so this will work here. And
I was like, I don't think so, dude, Like I
think that like anywhere there's women. You know, most women,
the majority of women, like struggle with doing their own hair.
You know, some are better than others, but and there's
nothing like that like salon feeling blowout. So, you know,
(06:30):
he very quickly became interested in and I think more
if you were to ask him, he would tell you
it's more from the perspective of like, hey, I want
to help my little sister, um, you know, get this
business off the ground. He had worked for Yahoo in
the early days that he made some money and was
willing to, like, you know, do this with me. And
at the time, you know, he was like, uh, you know,
I'll give you sweat equity and I'll put up all
(06:51):
the money. And I didn't know what that meant, and
obviously I do now. And just a side note, full
circle moment, is this is this new jewelry business that
I started it um called back At and Quill, the
girl that I basically invested in, I've put up all
the money and she's getting sweat equity. So it's just
funny eleven years later to be that on the other
side of that. Um, yeah, it's really cool. But anyway,
(07:14):
so Michael, you know, Michael took the chance, and he
um he was he thought that it was a great idea.
And then you know and Cam my ex husband, who's,
like I said, just such a brilliant creative. He was
also like, you know, you get your nails done once
a week and I really don't notice, but when you
get your hair blown out, it's the first thing I noticed.
So as an advertising guy who's pretty cynical, he thought
(07:36):
it was a great idea. So that really helps give
me the momentum and confidence that I needed. And so
we all kind of started working on the things that
we all knew how to do. I mean, I was
like figuring out how to like get a salon, you know,
quote and quote salon up and running and with all
the things, the millions of things that that requires. And
I was I felt like I spent most of my
life on the phone with like the collegethology board, and
(07:58):
you know, Michael was getting all are like you know, utilities,
and I mean he still tells the story to this
day how he like lost so many hours of his
life to a T and T trying to get our
phones connected. I mean it was just like the minutia
that you're in when you're trying to start a business,
um and and then start finding the location, the lease,
and we had to personally guarantee that first lease. And
(08:19):
I mean it was like a beautiful, like disaster trying
to get it off the ground, but you know, we did.
And like many startups, we ran out of money towards
the end because everything became more expensive. And Michael had
brought in Josh Hitler, who's our architect still to this day,
and he's amazing these this Harvard Award winning architect, and he,
(08:39):
you know, gave us a deal. We gave him some equity,
and you know, we just we ran out of money
and had to get investors at the you know, the
eleventh hour. But but in a nutshell, that's how it
all started. And then it was just like Gangbusters. Once
we opened, it was so bananas and busy and crazy
and we and and it was in the middle of
a recession. And yeah, well you've hit on so many
(09:01):
points that I think everybody faces when you when you
start a business, and it's just so great. I mean,
what's exciting to hear about really is ten eleven years later,
it looks like a perfect business. But I think, you know,
you're really showing what it means in the beginning when
you want to get started and what that's all about.
And I feel like that's something that people don't recognize
enough after they've had a lot of success, as you have.
(09:23):
We'll be back with Senecas made by women after this
short break. So you know, you're you're going through those
really really hard times. I mean, of course you're in
business with your brother and your husband, so maybe that's
a little bit helpful, but still, you know, I'm sure
those there are those dark nights where you're like, Wow,
(09:44):
why did I do this? How did you deal with that? Oh? Yeah, well,
I mean I think it was like, I mean, it's
funny that you say it looks like a perfect business,
because it, gosh, it's like so far from that. And
you know, there there definitely were times that it was
like I don't remember ever feeling like I didn't want
to do it or so unmanageable, but I you know,
(10:04):
but I definitely did feel like it was just so
unbelievably all encompassing, you know. And I had little kids
at the time, and it was just the first like
six months I was at the store every single day
which we opened seven days a week, so I have
such a hard time, you know. So I was so
thrust into this and not complaining, I'm so grateful for it,
but I was so thrust into it, like talking about
(10:26):
being thrown in the deep end and not knowing how
to swim, and I just didn't know how to like
do all this. It was like learning on the job,
and you know, it was the pace was so much
faster than any of us had anticipated. So it was
like I'm playing catchup and trying to figure everything out,
which was a great problem to have. Um. So it
was you know, it was overwhelming, but it was also
overwhelming and exciting and intoxicating and amazing and so stressful
(10:51):
and just you know, it was like all the emotions, um,
you know, wrapped into one. But but but mostly, I
mean I look back on that time so far only
and it was just such a rush that you know,
people were loving this business and we're having this amazing
impact on all these women, and now we're starting to
provide all these jobs. And it was like in the
you know, we're in the middle of a recession. It
(11:12):
was just it was so it was so cool and
you know, and while building, it was hard, and and
you know, it's there's so many challenges with this business
and you know we as you might imagine the managing
our stylists and labor, and there's and and clients, and
it's like it's it's a very like mixed bag of problems.
(11:35):
You can't believe. I mean, someone as a joke, brought
brought us a wacka mall machine one because it's like
that's really what it's like, you know, I mean, it
is really what it was like. I mean every day
you could expect a phone call like I mean, you
name it. You know, like we had there was a
there was a stinkhole and in our flat Iron store
when we opened, there was like that. Let's mentioned how
(11:56):
many times like stories didn't open because whoever was opening
it slept, don't over slap. Yeah, I mean I have
to say a sinkhole in the flat Iron district. That
is that's a big one. That is a surprise. Yeah,
but like the water wouldn't come on, the hot water
wouldn't come on. It was just like you name it.
There was something literally every day. So it was. But
(12:17):
but it's also like this amazing fun challenge too. So
I look back on it very fondly. So actually, that's
that's such an interesting point because you know, at the
beginning or probably in any business, in most businesses, there's
always things that go wrong, and they go wrong a
lot um, So how do you kind of shift your
mindset to rather than feeling like everything's an emergency and
(12:39):
you're freaking out over every sinkhole that comes up, Rather,
how do you shift it to kind of embrace it
and kind of live in that uncertainty. Well, I think
you have to have a pretty thick skin, and you know,
and I would love to say that I always did,
but I think it was like it's a it's an
overtime learned kind of behavior that like, you know, and
and I think it's also on par with like, you know,
(12:59):
like customer complaints and customers not being happy or like
getting something wrong or being too busy or not someone
that liking to blowout. You know, it's like you kind
of learn, it's like you brace yourself for that stuff.
And um, I remember early on having to you know,
when people weren't unhappy, when something went wrong, whatever happened,
and having to like deal with that, and it's like
(13:20):
it's like the best way I can I can equate
it to you is like I don't know if you
ever take cold showers, but I do for a lot
of different reasons. And it's like when you first get in,
it just hurts and it's uncomfortable and it's terrible, but
then you like your body like it's like okay with
it after a few seconds. And I think it's like
that when you're dealing with all the things that are coming.
(13:40):
It's like it hurts and stings for a second, and
then you just like go into Okay, how are we
going to deal with this? How are we going to
fix it? You know, it's really easy, I think, as
an entrepreneur or a boss or really anybody to get
bob down and they're like whoa is me? And your
this really stucks and blah blah blah and feel bad
for yourself. But you kind of have to snap yourself
out of that just go into like fix it mode
(14:02):
and how do we make this better? And how do
we make sure it doesn't happen again? You know, And
then that mindset of like it hurts for a second,
but we have to just keep powering through, and you know,
and I think that over time, I got a thicker skin.
I mean, there were certainly times that I didn't, But
for the most part, you learn how to like roll
with the punges and deal with all the stuff that
(14:23):
comes up. And if you really are good, you can
remember and those moments, which is almost impossible. But like
there is a reason and a lesson here. You know,
it's much easier to see that in retrospect, but there
always is, you know, there's always some sort of learning
that comes out of, you know, anything that goes wrong. Well,
I think that's that's kind of to me, seems like
the key to life generally. Yeah, two points that you
(14:46):
just made. One is certainly understanding how to deal with
pain or how you you yourself can deal with discomfort.
And I heard a great piece of advice about trying
to learn to reinterpret pain, and I think that's what
kind of those lance are instrums of the world, do, etcetera.
You know, this is kind of like a marathon or
a race. You know, you've got to just sort of
know how to reinterpret those difficult times. But then what
you just said to me, it is sort of the key,
(15:07):
which is how do you draw something out of all
this that you can then learn from, and that to
me seems like really a life lesson that you've learned there. Yeah,
and you know, I'm thirty six years old of you know,
to like teenage kids. I've gone through divorce, Like, I've
learned a lot of life lessons, you know, and and
I've gotten a lot better at dealing with them. Um.
I was just listening to some and a master class.
(15:29):
I don't know if you follow that account, but it's
like there was a mindful master and he was talking
about how you have to you know, be just as
like keenly like focus on the bad quote unquote bad things.
It's a good things, you know, and then you don't
aren't is overwhelmed with the suffering of it. You know.
It's like, which is so much harder, so much easier
said than done, you know, but it is it is
(15:50):
something to think about ponder, you know. I Mean. The
other thing that's funny about that, which is about life,
I guess, is that you know, you never really know
what's bad or good right Like the time you think
this is definitely gonna be the best thing, and then
you're like, oh that was the worst and the thing
that you thought was the worst thing. Later on you're like,
thank god, that happened. So it's really hard to know.
And I guess if we can separate ourselves a little
bit from that, that helps a lot. But speaking of which,
(16:13):
we're in the middle of COVID or hopefully towards the
end of the COVID pandemic here. But we're in a
pandemic and obviously you're in a business that's very physical.
So how have you had to pivot during this period? Well,
I mean the first like, I mean, we're you know,
we're just over a year and it's like you know
that we closed down very early and had some fits
and starts with opening back up, but you know, ultimately
(16:34):
have only recently opened almost all of our stores back up,
and it's on a slower capacity and we're not able.
It's definitely not like the driver you know and love
right now, which is okay, and we're building back up
to that, you know, because the separation and all of
that um and and there was a lot of pivoting.
I mean, it just they got our business like it was.
(16:55):
It was so hard, and you know, we we were
able to survive a little bit it more than we
might have been able to otherwise if we hadn't we
had sold our product division, Like I mean, what like
days before things really went cret It was the time.
It was unbelievable. So that was able to help like
bridge the gap for us to be able to like
(17:15):
stay afloat um, you know, but it was it was
really challenging to get you know, for our employees and
our managers and like these people that had worked so
hard for so long, it was just like nothing, you know,
there's like nothing we could do um. And that was
like just such a devastating blow. And we did our
very best to like stay in touch with our with
our teams at a regular basis and try to keep
(17:37):
morale up. But and we did a lot of stuff
with like promoting products and how to do lots at
home and all of that stuff. But you know, there's
there's no way to spin it. It's just it's and yeah,
and and we are we are, you know, luckily you know,
gaining momentum again. And I think again the silver lighting
here is that like people are really excited to get
(17:59):
back out, are getting brought out again. We're seeing like
the books are filling up very quickly again. So um,
you know, and we didn't think it would be any
other way, but it is. We have a lot of
investors and all of that, so it is like, you know,
it's a pretty daunting situation to be in, but we
I think we are just about on the other side
of it, or getting close to it. So you've started
(18:21):
this business, You've just started another business, So you have
a wealth of advice for listeners out there who right
now are thinking about starting something on their own but
feel that, you know, this might not be the right time,
or you know, they wish they were more prepared. Is
there advice you would give them, Well, I would say,
don't worry about being prepared. I was not prepared, you know.
(18:41):
I think that what happens is I think people get
in this like, you know, they have to have everything
figured out before they start a business. And the truth
of it, at least in my experience, is that you know,
you there's just so much more that you don't know
then you know when you're starting a business, and so
you know, of course like prepared much as you can
and do as much as you can, but but but
(19:02):
also like just just do it. And I think people
get stuck in like analysis paralysis and like, oh, I
don't really know how to do sometimes do that. It's
like you know, you just kind of go and start
and you you know, you figure it out day by day.
And I think it's this like it doesn't have to
be perfect, you know, to start, and that that's always
you know. I mean, it's like, you know, this this
(19:22):
other business I started back in a quill, which is
a Juliy business, which is a direct to consumer, which
is like so out of my wheelhouse. I've never run
a director consumer business. I know nothing about it, but
I started this business anyways. And it's like, you know,
we have good days and we have bad days, and
like some things is that we're doing are working, and
some things that aren't doing aren't working. But I certainly
like they're making tons of mistakes. We're doing tons of
(19:43):
things wrong and then we're like, yeah, we're not gonna
do that again, and and you know, and it's just
this like there's so much more I didn't know about
this business than I knew. All I knew was that
like I thought this was a good idea. I could
wrap some great branding around it. Meredith like she's so
good at what she does and like, let's just get
the business off the ground. And you know, we we
we in terms of being prepared, we you know, we
(20:05):
made a new website, we we cam did, we did
the branding for me. We you know, we hired a
web guy. We've we hired a handful of people to
help us, like get this off the ground, very hard time,
and and we said it and we're learning so much
as we go, you know, so it's not perfect. I mean,
I wish we could have come out of the gates,
like with much stronger numbers, much people, more people coming
(20:27):
to our website. But it's you know, it's just it's
you know, I do practice that my own advice with
like let's just go and let's see what happens, you know,
And and that's you know, kind of how we're operating.
And I think it's like I don't I'm sure that
mentality is not for everybody, but you know, for for me,
that's always kind of been how I how I operate.
And you know, we squeeze our massage business. You know,
(20:49):
Brittany Driscoll who used to run marketing at draw Bar,
she's the CEO of that and our co founder and
you know, she's much more like data driven and organized,
and you know, she's such a good thing to Mayang
because she does have all of that. But there is
a fair amount of like we're learning a lot of
things as we go here too, and we are adjusting
(21:09):
and pivoting and changing all sorts of things even right now.
And the business has been you know, well technically open
for two years, but one of those was covid. Um.
You know, so there's just like a million different ways.
I hate the expression is gonna cat, but that's the
one that comes to mind. You know. It's just like
there's a million different ways to to do it. And um,
the one thing that you should that I believe you
(21:31):
shouldn't do is like wait for the quote unquote perfect time,
because there truly never is. I totally agree. Well, I mean,
you have the experience to to show for it, so
we appreciate it. And clearly your approach is working for you.
So UM, we appreciate you sharing that with Thank you
so thanks for joining us on the show. And you know,
we look forward to getting our hair done soon and often, um,
(21:52):
and we look forward to what you're doing next. Thank
you so much. This has been a lot of fun.
There are so many valuable lessons we can learn from
Ali Webb. Here are three things I took from the conversation. First,
if you want to build a successful business, start with
what you love and what you know. Ali loved doing blowouts,
(22:14):
and after five years as a stay at home mother,
she was itching to do something different. The only people
she knew in l A were moms, so she launched
a mobile blow up business catering to mothers and advertise
it on all the mommy blogs. Second, as an entrepreneur,
be prepared to deal with discomfort. There are a million
opportunities for things to go wrong, and they will, but
(22:37):
as Ali says, you have to snap out of it
and go into fix it mode. When you do, you'll
also find that each misstep has a lesson in it.
With practice, you can teach yourself to see that the
so called bad things maybe good things and things you
can learn from. Finally, you don't have to know everything
in order to run a successful business. In fact, you can't,
(22:57):
so don't succumb to analysis paralysis. Says all be prepared
and learn all that you can, of course, but then
take the leap dive in and figure things out along
the Way. Made by Women is brought to you by
the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with
support from founding partner PNG
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