The 3 Things Laura Geller Did to Make $Millions on QVC (That Work on TikTok Today)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm really her, my customer, my fan, my friends. I'm
no different.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
What would you say you recognized early on that enabled
you to become a masterclass in sales and human connection.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
I wasn't talking to them, I was connecting with them.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Flora Geller is an OG in the beauty industry, a
makeup artist who turned her expertise into one of the
earliest founder led beauty brands from opening a New York
studio to pioneering live selling on QBC. She didn't just
follow beauty's evolution, she helps shape how products are built
and sold today.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
I made up the biggest celebrities in the world, but
when I would finish their makeup, they'd say to me, well,
how do I do it? I realized that every woman
wants to learn.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Did you have to fake it till you make it?

Speaker 1 (00:41):
You got to fake it till you make it sometimes
to break in, But if you know you're good, it's okay.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
What were your biggest business regrets that you wouldn't want
any founder to make?

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Oh my god, you're making me remember stuff. The hardest
part of the business's employees. I can write a book
on how many times I got burned. Don't expect it
to be an easy ride. If everybody listening wants to
learn something very important, listen to this right now.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Hi guys, Kate here, Thank you so much for tuning
in to today's conversation with Laura Geller. If you are
enjoying post run high, please be sure to follow the
show wherever you're listening, and we will be right back
with our chat after this shortbreak. Laura, you figured out

(01:31):
how to sell trust before anyone else knew what selling
trust actually meant. So what would you say you recognized
early on that enabled you to become a masterclass in
sales and human connection.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
I think what really was different about my approach to
beauty was that I'm really her. I know her, my customer,
my fan, my friends. I'm no different. I want to learn,
and I had the piece that was missing. I wasn't
talking to them. I was connecting with them, meaning I

(02:07):
educated them on how to do their makeup in a
way that they understood it. And I got that from
understanding that I made up the biggest celebrities in the world.
But when I would finish their makeup, they'd say to me, well,
how do I do it? I need to learn how
to do it, You're not always going to be with me.
And I realized that every woman, whether you're a high

(02:28):
profile or real woman, wants to learn. So that technique
of teaching and making it relatable is what set me apart.
I didn't have to be good in sales. It was
once you taught what your product was and they understood it,
they were quick to want to have it because they

(02:49):
thought they could attain what I did to them. And
that's fact.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
And when you say they and them, who exactly is
your target audience?

Speaker 1 (02:57):
So we call them our geller gals, but giller gals
and guys because our products are used on men too.
My very dear friend Chasdine wear's my Kajal eyeliner and
calls it guyliner, just saying, so our gal is over forty.
I think she may even skew a little older. She's

(03:19):
over fifty and beyond. But I know that we are
hitting three generations now because when I started, I was
eighteen when I started doing makeup. But mostly I would say,
the gen ziers and the young women today know about
me from their mothers and their grandmothers, and they love

(03:42):
my product. And so I'm always fascinated when they say, oh,
I have your product, I use it. I go thank you,
because they don't need to try to fit in and
be cool and only wear the trendy product that's out.
They know that they're getting good product and they're not
ashamed to admit it.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
I mean, I'm currently wearing the casual mascara. Oh that's
what the right name, right. I was so excited when
you guys sent you to me because I really needed
a new brown mascara and it's great.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, we just came out with it in brown and yeah, listen,
I mean, when you think about it, to your point,
I make Miss Gara, but so does the cool kids
who were making Miss Garret too. What is the difference.
I am such a season pro now that I know
ingredients and understand them and understand what every woman, whatever

(04:29):
age is going to like it. But I think because
of my age, I'm sixty seven right now, I feel
like just it was yesterday when I said I'm fifty.
It goes so fast. I think that no matter who
you are, you just want good product that delivers, and
you don't want to be ripped off. That's consistent no

(04:49):
matter who you were, and what age you wore.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, And I think what's so cool about your brand
is it really feels like as you have gotten older,
your audience and your and your brand has aged with
you and grown with you, which speaks so much to
the trust that people have in you.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Lauri Geller, thank you, Thank you. I know. I always say,
for an example, in live shopping, there's a famous celebrity
who is much younger than me who was launching her
clothing brand on QBC and I met her in Vegas
at an event that QBC was having, and she said,
do you have any advice for me? And my piece

(05:28):
of advice was, you may be busy, and Katie, you
may be busy, but not everybody watching QBC is a
busy woman and running and going and doing. So when
you're speaking to the audience, don't assume like we're all
busy gals out here doing it. I said, talk to
her and meet her where she is. And so when
I do live shopping, I'll say, whether you're a stay

(05:52):
at home mom, whether you're retired, whether you're an empty nester,
whatever it may be, this will work for you and
it will be versatile and time effective for you because
you shouldn't assume that people are in the place that
you're at. And that was an important piece of advice.
And I still watch GUBC and I see people speaking

(06:15):
to customers at home and I think, ooh, they shouldn't
be saying that, you know, because you can't assume that
the customer is like you. You have to think about every
person in whatever they are at in their life, whatever
time they are in their life.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Is that hard sometimes when you're running a brand that
has your name stamped on it, to sometimes take the
assumptions out of it.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
No, not hard for me. I mean I really do
feel like whatever service or product you have, first you
have to love it so much that you're passionate about
it and willing to work and stick with it. Because
it doesn't come easy for anybody. We're all going to
go through it. It's going to be hard, but you

(07:00):
have to want to believe that this product you have
or the service you're selling is going to work for everybody.
Oh maybe not. Maybe there is a segment of people
that it's not right for. But you have to assume
that every person is that's watching is not in a
cosmopolitan city. They could be living in an area where
the area where they can't get your product or service,

(07:22):
how can they get it? How can you make it
accessible to them and make it in a way where
they go, oh, wait a minute, I think I need
that and I can do that, and that to me
is not hard. That's honesty. I did something with NBC
Stages about a year ago and they brought in women
were able to buy tickets to this event, and a

(07:44):
woman stood up in the audience and it was it
proved my point. She said, I live in this rural town.
I can't remember where it was, she said, we don't
even I think there's one hair salon. She had no
makeup on. She was gray, but not the kind of
gray where it was styled right or colored right. And
she said, I don't know where to begin, and I

(08:06):
want something different, and I felt her pain. I was like, Wow,
people don't know where to begin, they don't know how
to get started. How can you make your product and
service in a way that you're talking to somebody new
maybe you know it's the first time for me that
they're using makeup. And she came up to me after

(08:28):
and I said, I'm going to tell you what we're
going to do for you. We're going to do a
virtual consultation and I'm going to be with you before
we do it. I'm going to send you the product
and we're going to do it slowly together, and then
I'm going to introduce you before you leave the city
to a place where they're going to color your hair.
Keep it the beautiful silver hair you have. And in

(08:51):
the Stages NBC Stages event, they had hairdressers there and
I just saw her come alive. She wasn't trying to
be an fluentz or a model or she just wanted
to feel like her best self and that was attainable.
She just didn't know how to go about it. So
I think I treat everybody the same and make it

(09:12):
approachable for everybody.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Laura and I were together probably about a year ago,
and it was right before Jeremy and I got married,
and we met for the first time and I was
just enamored by you. I was so fascinated by you.
And after we had met and we did our walking interview,
and then later on I went down like such a
wormhole of some of the interviews you've done in the
past and just kind of thought, I was like, I
need to learn all about her because her energy is incredible.

(09:37):
It makes so much sense why you've been so successful.
And I think it was right after that interview I
said to you, I was like, well, at some point
you have to come on my podcast.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
And I was so excited that here we are. I know,
I was so happy you asked me to be on it.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Oh well, I was honored when he said yes, thank you.
And I think the thing that really stood out to
me was it's so clear through getting to know you
and you know, hearing you talk in past interviews and
just understanding your body of work is you are somebody
that I feel like is really living their life mission
and what you do is so aligned with who you

(10:10):
are as a person. So for today, I would love
for you to bring us back. So bring us back,
take us back to the Bronx.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
How much time do we have. I'm sixty seven.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
I mean, really, I have as much time as you
have to give.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Well, I don't want to bore everybody listening, so I'll
keep it tight and tell you that basically I was
born in the Bronx. I left the Bronx when I
was around eight years old, and I moved to a
suburb in Rockland County, New York called Spring Valley, New York.
It was like desolate when we moved there. It was farmland.
But the block I moved on, some of the mothers

(10:45):
on that block, to my friends that I made on
that block, were very fashion forward and knew how to
put their makeup on and dress. And my mom was
a little older than most of them, probably by ten years,
and she came from immigrant parents and they didn't really
teach her about fashion and makeup, and so she was

(11:07):
very plaging. Maybe she wore a little bright red lipstick
and a little pancake they called it on her face.
But I was so fascinated watching these women transform, because frankly,
I would see them when they didn't have their makeup on.
And one woman in particular took me under her wing
because she knew my mother wasn't the type to make
me up for my prom or my sweet sixteen and

(11:31):
so Laura Miltchman would bring me into her house and
do my hair and do my makeup. And I really
was so happy with seeing how you could feel good.
And I was about to go off to college because
who doesn't go to college?

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Right?

Speaker 1 (11:49):
And I ran into a friend who was graduating with me,
who was a very smart young lady. I was always creative.
I was an art seed person. My mother was an
art person. She did the sculptures, which I've never said.
And I ran into my friend Jane and she said,
what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm looking

(12:10):
at schools, but I don't know what I want to do.
And she said, well, I'm going to beauty school to
be a hairdresser. Why don't you come with me? I
know you love makeup. I said, how the heck am
I going to go to beauty school and not go
to college. Well, she said, just come with me and
let's talk to the owner of the beauty school, which
was in Spring Valley. So I went with her and
mister Frank. I met with mister Frank Mullinari and may

(12:34):
he rest in peace, and he said you're going to
be very successful and I said, oh really, he said yeah.
I said, well how do you know that? He said,
because you have a gift of gab and I said,
oh okay. And he just sold me on the school.
Maybe he was just selling a service.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
I don't know, No, Laura, it does in fact have
the gift of the gab.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
So I was like, he was like, it's only nine months.
He said, you can always go to school after that,
try it. So I signed up. And what I really
learned back then was that in order to be a
makeup artist you had to have a cosmetology license. But
truth be told, we didn't learn makeup there. We learned
hair styling because it's the same school you go to

(13:16):
to be a hairstylist. And I hated the hair thing
and I was so disappointed. I almost became a beauty
school's dropout, like Greece, which I've recently become friends with
Frenchy from the original Greece D D. Kahn, who's special anyway,
long story short. He sent me to School of Visual
Arts in Manhattan, which is a theater and film makeup class.

(13:38):
He didn't know what it was, it just said makeup.
So I went into New York City. I did the
commute into New York and I learned makeup in a
way that most makeup artists wouldn't learn it today. I
learned the real artistry of makeup, like the science of
a face and the structure of the face. And I

(13:59):
didn't like it because it was like school. I was like,
I just want to learn how to put on pink
eye shadow, like, give me like something cool. But I
stuck it out because I didn't know better. Thank God
for that course. It set me off on the path,
which was that I became a really refined makeup artist.
And I worked in TV, film and theater the beginning

(14:21):
of my career for many years and worked on the
likes of some really great celebrities and actresses and icons.
But it wasn't satisfying. And so every now and again
I'd get a private customer and I'd find that That's
when I got excited because I would see them transition

(14:42):
into this person and be elated about how they looked.
And that's when I started going into makeup for real women.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
So much to unpack here. Backing up a little bit,
When you were growing up and you know your neighbor
on your street was what was the name of Laura Miltone,
Laura Milchman was teaching you how to do your hair
and makeup. What were the makeup trends at the time,
and how do they differ then today?

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Well, truth is, she didn't teach me, Okay, she just
did it and I just felt so fancy. I probably
didn't even look like great who knows, respectfully, Laura. But
I don't know what the trend was. I think that,
you know, I never looked overly made up and I
never wore makeup in high school. Maybe I wore more

(15:28):
than most. I was into it, so I definitely knew
how to like style my hair more. I had that touch,
you know, because I was an artist. But I think
the trend really in those days was much more heavy makeup.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Oh really, because I feel like now it's like even
when you're doing like when I do a light face
of makeup, I mean I'm wearing a full face of
makeup right now.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
You know, it's harder to do a full face of
makeup and look natural like you look now, Katie. That's
a harder makeup to do for makeup artists when we're
doing makeup to make someone look natural, but with a
full face, that's really hard to do because usually when
you do a full face, you can't help but looking
more made up. Like, I love your look, and that's

(16:12):
what I subscribe to, is this is enhancement for you.
Nobody would ever come up to you and think, oh
I can see where she's wearing this, that or the
And to me, that's not a trend. That's the way
women should look all the time, like themselves. I mean,
let's face it, we all have that black tie. We
want to go to that special event when you can
play it up and add some lashes or do a

(16:34):
cat eye or whatever it may be. But every day
I don't want to see makeup on somebody. I want
them to look like themselves.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, just enhance their natural features.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
It is so cool knowing that your background, foundationally was
in theatrical makeup, because when we think about stage makeup
and you know, bright lights shining on us, like theater
makeup and show makeup is so different than beauty counter
natural gland. So what would you say that that teaches
you foundationally that you don't learn as maybe a traditional

(17:07):
makeup artist just doing soft glam.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
How to put makeup on and make it last. I
learned techniques that nobody would know, maybe some of the
old time makeup artists. Then there's a group of us
out there and we're all in touch with one another.
But like things like taking a powder puff, putting powder
in it, rolling it on the skin, pressing it into

(17:32):
the skin if you want your makeup to last. Now
they have makeup setting sprays, but those taking a Kleenex tissue,
a tissue separating it if it's two ply, putting it
over your mouth, taking a powder brush and putting translucent
powder over your lips, your lipstick will last all day.
I mean, I learned tips and tricks. Never putting moisturizer

(17:54):
or emollient under your foundation. Nothing doing it on Matt's skin.
Your makeup holds up and doesn't break down. And that's
how I invented the Spackle franchise, actually, because it was
not practical for real women to do it on Matt's
skin and dry skin. We needed to feel hydration. But
I needed to make something that didn't break your makeup down,

(18:16):
and so I came up with a lab and a
formula that you put on and gives you slip to
your face, but doesn't It has no oil, so it
doesn't break the makeup down. It's those kind of things
that you learn in theatrical makeup that set me apart.
And of course contouring and highlighting like that's like that's
an art to do it and not see it.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
It's hard it's such an art and you really have
to understand the anatomy of somebody's face to be able
to do it right.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
The word I was looking for the anatomy of the face. Yeah,
that's what we learned.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
It makes sense that they taught you that, SBA.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, you also went to fashion at FT.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
I did I have a little bit of a background
in art. I mean, I thought that's what I wanted
to My story is so twisted. But I was a
competitive lacrosse play but I always loved art and but
I kind of my parents pushed athletics. But while I
was in high school, I did a little bit of both,
Like I did my lacrosse, and then I ended up
getting seriously injured and leaned into the artistic side of things.

(19:14):
And I applied to all these art schools, made a portfolio,
did the whole thing, got in like everywhere. I got
into Parsons.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, you applied to art schools mm hmm and got
into them.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
I did, Like I applied. I shotgun to every art
like everybody's like I shotgun the IVY. I like shotgun
to the arts. Talking about undergraduate for undergrad for well
for college. Yeah, is that right?

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, where did you end up?

Speaker 2 (19:36):
So I ended up my well, I ended up just
going to Fordham and said it in going to business school.
But I know I pivoted.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
But that's a major pivot at that time.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Looking back on it, I probably should have done Parsons.
But at the same time, it's like you can't really
live with regrets. You know.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
My advice when I talked to because I didn't study business,
I tell everybody, if you could study business, even if
you think you're going to be an artist, makeup artist,
whatever it is, go to business school. I have to
tell you. I pushed my son because I didn't have it,
and he went to business school. He got into Fordham

(20:14):
Business too, but he went to different school and he
went and studied finance and halfway in he took the
required marketing course and it was COVID and the teacher
we were zooming and she said, let me talk to
your mother. I want to say hi, I know about
I know who she is. And I jumped in. I
bent over, and she said, what is your son doing

(20:37):
in finance? He is a marketing kid. He's going to
be great in sales and marketing. But you know what
he learned so much about business that today he works
in sales and marketing. But because he has a finance
background and the business background, he could do anything.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeahs, that's you up for success, for sure's.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
And you have your own business, you know it sets
you up for success.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Journey's like crazy when I even think about it, It's
like that would require a whole deep dive, confusing interviewed
for somebody to really go into it.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
But uh oh, I think can we Can I come
back and do your podcast and interview you. Sure has
anybody ever done that?

Speaker 2 (21:13):
No?

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Okay, absolutely, I'm fascinated by you. Okay, I love it,
don't I'm not going to tell you the questions in advance,
don't know, and I'm going to deep dive you, okay
and go back.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
I would love that.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
Because I can't believe parents pushed you for athletics. I
know who does that. I know they want you to
do that as a career.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Maybe no, no, no, because there's no professional cross. I think,
like I don't know. Okay, digress, all right, we digress.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
My best friend growing up in Rockland County, and God
willing you'll send your daughter there, has a gymnastics school
in Manhattan called Jodie's Jim and it's a gymnastic school
for children up to eight years old. And she's a
famous gymnast. And we started gymnastics at the same time,

(22:00):
and I could have ended up a gymnast, but I
fell off the parallel bars and I got so scared
that I didn't stick with it. And all the girlfriends
that we grew up with stuck with it, and they
all got full scholarships to their colleges. They're all in shape,
they're gymnasts, and I'm like, oh, those damn parallel bars.
I would have been like, who knows, I would have
been modeling, But you're gonna wind up going. Jody's gym

(22:23):
is eighty fifth Street, but on the East side and
forty years it's there. Talk about people who start their
own business. It's incredible.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, that is incredible. Oh my gosh, gymnastics is a
whole other level.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Talk about digressing.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
I'm sorry, no, but that's why my parents liked sports
because of the college angle. My brothers both played. I
have a twin brother and a brother year older. They
played lacrosse and they both went to Yale.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
I know, so there worked by the way, it does work.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
It does work.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
I know.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Let's talk about the grit that it takes to build
your name as a makeup artist. Did you have to
fake it till you make it?

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah. In fact, one of the famous celebrities I worked
on on Broadway someone told me this expression. When you
go in, she's going to ask you who you've worked on.
And I was new in the business and I had
not worked on anybody. They said, so here's what you're
gonna do. You're going to baffle her with bullshit and
dazzle her with brilliance. Baffle her with bullshit and dazzled

(23:28):
her with excellence or brilliance. I can't remember exactly, but
I was like, oh god, so talking about faking it.
I went in and she was like, who have you
worked on? I go, Barbara Streissan, I bet Middler. I
was like making up names and I had not worked
on any of them, and she was like, all right, okay,
you could do me. So I knew she'd like what

(23:49):
I did, but like I had to like baffle her
with bullshit. I mean, you got to fake it till
you make it sometimes to break in. But if you
know you're good, it's okay. You're not serving up something bad.
But I think for me, I think the beginning of
my career, there was no social media, and I didn't
have to worry. And I didn't also know Katie. I

(24:12):
didn't know what my next thing was going to be.
I wish I could tell you. I had a plan.
I had a five year plan. I knew I was
going to start my own mind. I knew I was
going to open a store in New York City. I
knew i'd be young. I didn't know any of it.
You know how everything happened organically. A customer would say,
after I made her up, I like what you did?

(24:33):
Can I buy the products? And I'd say, oh, no,
this is not I don't have anything to sell you. Well,
can you get me the stuff you used? And I
was like, oh, I guess. And I was shopping in
department stores and putting bags together and working too hard.
And then one day I went, wait a minute, I'm
going to start my own line and I'm going to

(24:53):
get products that I can then sell. And I started
like where you had to get at least a dozen
of a color, And I'm like, what am I doing
with a dozen of a color? I'll never get through it.
And then people I would go to their homes and
they people would say, no, no, I want to come
somewhere to you. So then I'm renting space. Then they'd say, well,
what are you doing here on the west side renting space?

(25:14):
I live on the east side. Why don't you open
a store on the east side. Everything happened. What is
it the expression build it and they will come from
that movie Oh help me, you know that famous gorgeous costner,
Kevin Costner. Build it and they will come about baseball.
It's sort of like that's how it happened for me,
And I'm kind of glad it did, because I do

(25:34):
know today that people getting into business are crushing it
much quicker than I did. But I love that I
have a story to weave and a story to share,
and that I walk through so many different elements of
the business because it guided me to where I really
wanted to be. I was never sure of as a
makeup orders if I wanted to be a TV film theater,

(25:55):
or if I wanted to be a makeup artist for print,
or if I wanted to be a private makeup order
for you know, model shoots, you know, and fashion and
what I found for me was that I enjoyed working
on real women and I enjoyed the order the sale
a little bit. I was good at it. I didn't
know I had that in me. Well.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Also, you have more impact too when you are targeting
an everyday woman.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
And also with my service, I was able. I think
I'm such a woman's woman. I was able to read
my customer if she if I met her for the
first time, like in a few minutes, I would ask
a couple of questions organically, like so, what's your daily
life like, and what would you be willing to do
every day for your makeup routine that I knew had

(26:43):
a tailor of makeup application for them, and teach them
based on what I knew, and I could size up
quickly that she would like. And I sort of was
always good at that. I had that gift, and so
I would do makeup that was natural and then do
makeup that was dramatic, and I did it all. You know,
I did it all. But I think if you're in

(27:06):
a service business and you're the person who is going
to do the service. Let's say you're in a service
business and you don't want to do the service. You
better put somebody in place who's really good with people,
because not everybody has to be have a gift to
gab or be the person who's in the front. So
then get somebody who loves what you're offering and feels

(27:30):
invested in your product. But if you're going to be
that person, you have to like people.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
And you have to be willing. I feel like with
any business to take a grassroots approach, you know, like
you were physically doing people's makeup, talking to them, asking
what they wanted, what they didn't want.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yes, absolutely, I mean and I you know built. I
opened a store in nineteen ninety three on the Upper
East Side and closed it in twenty twelve, had it
for twenty one years, and I eventually had a hire
makeup and makeup people. And I would ask this question
when I would interview them, So what are you going

(28:05):
into this business for? Like you, what's your you know?
Do you like sales? Do you like doing makeup?

Speaker 2 (28:10):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (28:11):
No, I hate sales. And ultimately I want to start
my own line. And I was like, Okay, they're not
working here because I got to pay the rent. If
you can't sell my product, we're in trouble. I mean,
we're not going to make money just doing makeup, you know.
So I learned quickly that you had to have the
gift of liking people, doing the service, and selling the product.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
The hardest thing to do when you're starting to scale
your business is who you hire. And so I'm curious
from your perspective, what advice would you give to founders,
whatever the industry is, when they're starting to hire talent.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
I will tell you I wasn't good at it, and
it was hard because in my case, they had no makeup.
They had to be presentable, they had to be likable,
and there were a lot of things and I got
burned a lot. It was not easy. I have to
tell you. I would tell you and I think you
know this, but anybody listening that's a founder of the business, service, product,

(29:07):
or otherwise would say the hardest part of the business
as employees, it really is. It's the hardest. How do
you get somebody that's loyal, How do you get somebody
that is going to stick with you, that doesn't burn you.
I mean, it's hard, it's really I My advice would
be strictly, you know, it's not always going to be easy,

(29:30):
and you may hire somebody and they may be wrong.
So next next you're going to go through people. You're
going to go through people. You know. In my case,
you know, I think now it's different, it's a different climate.
It was hard then to find people. Now the business
is so big, there's so many people wanting to get

(29:50):
into the space that it would be much easier. But
it's it's hard. I mean, I'll know the answer I
got if I can write a book on how many
times I got burned, I mean badly burned and it hurt,
really hurt.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Do you have an example story that you learned a
lot from.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
I think all of them. I learned a lot from
my mother. May she rest in peace. I remember she'd
be the one that would listen to my pain stacking
stories and then she'd remember them even till the day
she passed, and I would sit with her and she
would say, remember that one, and she would name the person.
Remember what she did. I'd go, Ma, I forgot about that,

(30:30):
Oh my god. I mean I had people that were
stealing from me, and their roommates would call me and say,
you should know she's taking all your products and selling it.
And I'm like what, and like I then would think,
like maybe the roommate just didn't like her roommate, and
maybe it's not happening. Like I never wanted to believe

(30:50):
that anybody could be I had another gal that, Oh
my god, I wanted her to I wanted her to
be part of the business. I was offering her peace
to the business because I loved her. She came out
of beauty school. Someone asked me, as a favor, if
I would interview her and hire her. And I did
because I knew she was She was lovely, presentable, smart,

(31:12):
and I taught her everything she knew. And I said,
I want you to stay with me forever. I said,
I'm going to give you a piece of the business.
And she said no, no, She had just been married.
She said, I can't. My husband wants me to retire
and travel with him. He's in the music business, and
so I'm going to, you know, have to leave. And
I said, I'm so sad. I said, do me a favor.

(31:32):
I said, send all the customers a letter and let
them know that you know you're retiring, and that you
know I don't want them to think I fired you
with it anything's wrong, and she goes, that's a great idea,
naive me. And then a month later a customer comes
in and she's like, did you know about this? With
the letter from this makeup artist that said I'm opening
a makeup studio and it was ten blocks from my store,

(31:56):
and she took my whole client list, and I was like, oh,
how could she do that to me? I loved her,
you know, but it happens. She felt that she helped
build my business, and she was good enough. I just
wish she would have been honest with me. So I
think the hardest part is growing and scaling the business
and meeting people and being able to trust them. But

(32:16):
you have to try, and you have to be open,
that's the truth.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
And you have to be willing to bounce back as
a founder, right because the amount of times, like I mean,
I've I've been burned so many times in this business
and I've only been doing it for three years. Yeah,
like you know, and it is it's very hard. I
mean within the video editing space and production space. I mean,
you know, you're on camera a lot. Like, Yeah, it's
a hard it's a hard industry, and it's also hard
to find the right people you know, and there's so

(32:42):
many intricacies when it comes to conversational edits that some
people understand some people don't.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yes, that's a good point. I would never think about
that part of your business.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Like it's whatever the industry is, it's you have to
be like, okay, this is it's it's hard because you
go into things thinking like the word naive is so good.
It's like when I went in, I was like, this
is so fun, you know, and then one thing happens
and you're like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Oh my god. I literally I used to say back
in the day to the other makeup boardist founders, there's
a group of us that started makeup lines when makeup
lines were just starting. Carol Shore, Sonya Kashuk, Marcia Kilgore,
Bobby Brown, and I used to say to them when
I would run into them events, we should start a

(33:28):
support group, because like, do you feel the pain I'm feeling.
But then I would talk to Jody from Jody's Jim
or Sarah Marian's my friend who owns a photography stud
You every one of us had the same pain points
of scaling the business and having trouble finding the right
people to work with us that didn't burn us, that
didn't that we could trust. I mean, there were good

(33:50):
people out there. And let me tell you, I'm in
touch with three of the people who worked at my
store who were always grateful to me for letting them
work as long long as they could. I had a
woman who's now in her nineties. I mean, so when
you're good, you're good, and you'll have that stick toitiveness.
But boy, every one of us feel those pain points

(34:11):
and there's not a lot of support on how to
navigate that. You just have to be, like you said,
resilient enough to get through it. And I think that's
the key. Just don't expect it to be an easy ride.
It's definitely not an easy ride, but it's worth the success.
It's that much sweeter when you get through it.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah, and when you find those people who are your
rider dies, don't let them go.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Don't let them go. It's so true.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
When you decided to open your studio, what made you
want to take that leap? Was it the customer is
saying to you, we need you to open a studio
because it is a big decision, probably to leave what
you had built, right, and you're I don't know, like
celebrity client tele lists to start your own studio.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah, it was hard. It was hard, but people wanted
a place to come to and I was renting space
in apartments. I was renting space in salons, in clothing
boutiques because I didn't have the business acumen about how
to run a business. Nobody taught me how to do
a P and L and a balance sheet, and I'm like,
I'm opening a business, what do I know about it?

(35:26):
But the customer were like begging me to do it.
And so when I opened in nineteen ninety three, it
was on Lexington Avenue. In the seventies, I also had
that celebrity following that supported me. So I got a
little lucky because they wrote me up in the press,
I got photographed with them. They were like really applauding

(35:48):
my efforts to do this, and so I already had
a leg up in that way. But what I found
was that I became the place that people came to
for special occasions. And really, my awning could have said,
weddings are us. We did every wedding and every special occasion,
and you know, to this day I still miss it.

(36:10):
But to this day, I have people that say, oh,
you did my wedding thirty two years ago, colleagues, friends,
young women saying, you did my mother's wedding, you did
my aunt's wedding. I mean, I didn't realize how busy
I was with it. So then I found a whole
part of a niche that was needed out there, Like
that was not something I planned for. And you find

(36:33):
the space when you sometimes have to build it, even
before you know what it's going to look like and
who's going to pass through those doors. You have to
just build the product or the service, and then it
finds you and then you start to go, wait, I
like this area. Like I remember was doing weddings and
my famous celebrity was like, don't talk about that. That's

(36:53):
not very you know, sexy to talk about like that.
You're doing weddings on the weekend. I'm like, why I'm
making so much more. I'm like they're like, yeah, but
it's not like a cool thing to say. I remember
a couple of the celebrities saying that to me. And
then I was doing these weddings, having so much fun,
and soon it was like, figet the celebrities, I'm gonna

(37:14):
just do weddings and and I sort of ended up
doing mostly special occasions.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
And speaking to the everyday woman and there that is
a big difference between a celebrity clientele and just real people. Gosh,
I wish there were still makeup studios that you could
walk into and get your makeup done. I know, I
feel like it does. It's not a thing anymore. We
need a lower galler pop up.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
I think we do.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Mm hmm, that'd be fun.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Are there no makeup places?

Speaker 2 (37:37):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
No there are.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
I mean, like maybe old to Beauty you can go
to the counter, yeah, and Sephora, But I don't know
how many people do it.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, I feel like I know friends won Nars on
Madison Avenue. I think they opened, but I don't know
if they're still there.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Now there's glam Squad. It comes to your.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
Squad, right, I'm friends with the founder of glam Squad.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Actually, Glamsquad's great. It's great if you could help us
visualize what your store looked like back in the day,
Like when you walked into the Laura Gallery studio, what
did you see, who was there, what was the atmosphere?

Speaker 1 (38:06):
Like, Oh my gosh, it was so wonderful. Well, first,
we had fresh cookies every day. I wanted people to
feel like they were coming to someone's home. It was
important to me that what's the word when you make
somebody comfortable right away, when you take them, when you
take down the guard. There's a word. It'll come to
me that they would walk in and because most if

(38:27):
you walked into deportment stores, you would always be intimidated
walking through the makeup department because there'd be a million
people out there going, let me spray you, let me
touch you up, and you'd be like, no, no, not today,
I'll come back another time, thank you. But I wanted
women to come in and have a cup of coffee
your tea, which we immediately would ask crawfee your tea.
And I mean literally my mother, God bless her. She

(38:50):
used to go to Costco and buy these big tins
of Danish cookies and bring me the paper towels and
tissues from Spring Valley and drive to Manhattan with my
sister unloaded in the car into my store. They coined
me the Upper east Side Cheers for makeup, like the
place that people came to hang. And women would just

(39:12):
come into we say kibbutz to talk, just to talk
and not buy anything, because we got to know everybody
in the neighborhood and they would tell us about every
I mean everything, I mean really truly, And because I
was so busy, I didn't care. Like like sometimes my
employees would go, did you see that ring on her finger?

(39:33):
I'd be like, no, I don't have time to look
at people's rings on their fingers. Did you see that
suit she was wearing, that's you know who. I'd be like,
I wouldn't have recognized it, that it's us, you know who.
I didn't care about any of that. I cared so
much about these women and making them feel comfortable. And
it was so fun, you know, make up everywhere. My

(39:54):
walls were decorated with every press mention. I laminated it,
and my walls would decorate with them. Like if they
just said Laura recommends using X, I still laminated, you know.
But it was really and it was a small store,
but to me that was a big enough deal. But
within a year I outgrew it. Actually from the day

(40:14):
I opened it, I outgrew it. And so the landlord's
wife was my customer and she was walking by the
store and she called me outside Anschnssel, I'll never forget.
And she called me outside, and she goes and she
pointed to the store next door and it said for
for rent. And I didn't even notice that. That's how
busy I was. And I said, oh, no, Ann, I

(40:37):
just opened this store. I had no money. I borrowed
from my friend Sarah, my friend Nancy, and my uncle Marris,
my cousin Ivy. My father gave me five I had
to sign promisory notes to gut one store that was
five hundred and fifty square feet, but I knew I
had to take it. So undercapitalized, I took the store

(40:57):
and I had to build it out again and make
get into one. And that store lasted twenty one years.
And it would have lasted, but I sold a piece
of my business. And the man I sold it, you
didn't want it anymore. He's like, you can keep it,
but I don't want it. And I was like, wait
a minute, how much is the rent here? And then

(41:19):
the rent was going to go up. I don't have
to tell you New York rents. And I was like, yeah, no,
And I have to be honest with you, like I
thought I was I cried. It was my It's like
having my baby two weeks after closing it, and I
didn't have to stress that over employees and opening and
closing the gate. I didn't even know there was electric gates.

(41:40):
I never even had them. I was like, this is working.
I was I had outgrown that piece of it. It
was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Oh my god, you must have some crazy stories too
of just having a physical storefront in New York City.
You deal with a lot.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Oh my god, you're making me remember stuff like something
that you don't plan for when you open a physical
business in New York and we were ground floor. Is
that you know? In those days when I really first opened,
I didn't worry about having to lock my door or
have security or you know, a way that we would
buzz people in. So we left that door unlocked. But

(42:20):
we had a regular visitor. He didn't want to come
during business hours, though, so he chose to come after
business hours. He lived under the subway grate right outside
my store because the train ran along Lexington Avenue. We
used to try to figure out who was coming to
the store because we'd open the gate in the morning

(42:41):
and there'd be something new on the window each day
that we'd have to clean off. He would write bad words,
there would be excrement, there would be things thrown on
the window, there would be paint, and it was only
my window. And we would try to figure it out.
And one day we figured it out. We cracked the code.

(43:02):
We acted like we closed the store and somebody stayed
inside and we put a camera on the outside and
he came up from the grate. We watched him come
up from the grate and he started spitting on the window.
Now it didn't know who it was. It wasn't out
to get me. He just had a thing about my store,
no other store on the block, thank you. And we

(43:26):
called the police, and I mean nothing happened to him,
but they scared the heck out of him and he
never came back after that. But it went on a
really long time till we had to create this whole plan,
this whole spy plan. I mean, there there was some
people who set us up to steal, you know, embezzling people,

(43:49):
stealing people's credit credit cards, you know, and coming in
and take you know, charging stuff. You have to be prepared,
i'd say, today and today's climate, you better have a
good security system, even if you're not on the first floor.
I think that's really important because you don't know who's
going to come in.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
When did you guys start selling Laura Geller makeup products?

Speaker 1 (44:10):
So really, when I had the platform to build the
Laura Geller brand, to be very honest, was when nineteen
ninety seven happened and I was at an event and
I met the buyer at QVC that bought make Color Cosmetics,
and she had heard about me from the press listen.
I had been around a long time by then too,
I was probably in my mid thirties, and she came

(44:33):
to me and no, she was introduced to me. I
was walking around with my publicist at the time, and
my publicist said, I want to introduce you to Laura Galli.
She goes, no, I've heard about you. I'd love to
talk to you. And I was like, you're kidding me.
And my accountant used to say to me all the time,
you should go on QVC. You'd be good on there,
and I thought that I could do it now. Today

(44:54):
I would tell anybody who's listening, and I recently spoke
at a conference and told everybody if you have a
brand or product, go on QBC. There's no better place
to tell you a story. It doesn't work for everybody,
but let me tell you it was life changing. And
when she came to me, she came to my store.
I took her down to the basement, which was our office,

(45:15):
and she met with me to say, what would you
put on you know, if I gave you the opportunity.
I was like a three piece kit contour highlight, a
brush to put it on, and a brush to blend it.
And she was like, okay, I'll come back. Show me
the kit and it was that organic back in the day.

(45:35):
And I immediately ordered, you know, from the private label
manufacturer because I didn't know how many units they were
going to order. I called my best friend, May she
rest in peace, Jana. She said, I'll make you the
instruction manual on print Shop Deluxe. I was like good.
Then I asked my customer's husband if they would get me.
He did premiums, corporate premiums like a plastic bear with

(45:57):
a draw string and put my logo on it. Then
I called someone else. I said, my favorite color is purple.
I need reams of tissue. Then she came back and
I showed her and she said, how much you're going
to charge me? And because I didn't have the business acumen,
I made up a number. I was like seven dollars
and fifty cents. She's like, how are you going to
make money? And I was like why. She goes, I'll

(46:20):
give you ten. I said, I'll take it. She said,
I'm going to order seven hundred and fifty units. I
never sold seven hundred and fifty of anything in my store,
forget one skew, and so now I had to pack
out seven hundred and fifty. I didn't know that they
were fulfillment houses. Also, I wouldn't have been able to
afford it. So I called my mother and I said,
do you still have the bridge table in the garage?

(46:41):
She said yes. I said, do you think any of
your friends from the Bronx would come here and help
me pack up these seven hundred fifty kids. She said, well,
if you feed them, they'll come. I said, I'll totally
feed them, and so they came. Fay and her husband, Marsha,
her husband, who else came? I don My uncle Morris

(47:02):
was there. They did the best pack at job ever.
They wrapped the three piece kit and that purple tissue.
Put it in that bag with the print shop Deluxe
did this, We sent it off to QVC. I drive
down to QVC in June of nineteen ninety seven with
the manager of my store, Janet. We stay at the
local Sheridan the night before, we get to the elevator

(47:24):
separately and I say I can't do it, and she
goes why. I said, I'm having an anxiety attack, and
I really was having one. She goes, listen to me.
Right now. There was a man who was just on
selling a mop. He had hair growing out of his
ears and his nose, and he sold out. If you
can't do it, I don't know who can. This man
just sold out. Get out there. I was like, okay,

(47:45):
and I went out there. They gave you no training
at that time. Now they give you training. Now there's
a whole process to get on there. And I got
out there, and because I was comfortable on sets from
working on sets and cameras and with Techi's, and I
was like, oh, I'm home. I knew where to look

(48:05):
when the red light went on, I knew every time.
They didn't have to guide me. I was totally at home,
and I remember thinking, only teach, just teach. People want
to learn. Your customers want to learn. And I taught
how to put contour on, how to put highlight on
and where it goes, and then how to blend it
with this blending tool. And I sold out of all

(48:26):
seven hundred and fifty pieces in seven minutes. And I
came on and I'm crying, and I had no idea
that they were going to book me again, you know,
I just thought it was a one and done. And
next year's my thirtieth year on QVCO. I'm the longest
standing color brand with the same founder on QVC. So

(48:50):
to say, it's life changing. And how I started my brand.
I was able to order in quantities because they were
ordering in those kinds of quantities, and so I had
a quick lesson in learning how to price things, and
how to properly put your logo, and how you have
to have a brand look across everything. I was a

(49:12):
little bit of everything, and I didn't know and we
hired a brand. In fact, I spoke two weeks ago
at a Future fifty conference for a new fifty startup
beauty brands and skin, hair, makeup, nails, and I remember
I ran into the woman who was owned the branding
agency who helped me develop my logo and my whole

(49:33):
branding across everything. She came up to me. I didn't
recognize her. It was like I'm telling you, it was
like twenty nine years ago, and so you get pushed
into something. It was an opportunity of a lifetime, and
it's how I grew my brand. And then Sephora came
after me after that. They knew they had heard about

(49:55):
people were coming in to their stores and writing them
online and the most requested number one product on safora
dot com in two thousand and seven was the word spackle.
So they looked me. They said, we got to find
this brand, and they contacted me, and I flew to
San Francisco and met them in their offices and they

(50:16):
put me in to start a number of stores, and
then we eventually went into all stores.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
You know what I love about this story too, though,
is like going back to those early days when you're
getting pitched to go on QVC. You're like, Okay, I'm
gonna do it. I'm going to figure out how to
put together products like you just figured it out. And
I feel like sometimes people over complicate things because yes,
you eventually have to figure out the branding and get
that kind of down, but you don't have to start

(50:42):
with everything perfect.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Thank you for summing that up because I tell that
to people. Stop waiting for every to dot, every outcross
every t you got to launch and sometimes launching soft,
you know, and giving it a chance to get the
feedback is where you need to because you learn from
what people want. And that's how I built my business

(51:05):
is learning and making the mistakes and keeping refining it
and refining it. I mean, listen, I went through many
iterations of what the brand looked like to land where
we did today, and even today, we changed our logo
within the last four years. So because you do have
to keep it fresh, you know, you do have to
stay updated. But yeah, to your point, I think you're

(51:29):
not always going to have it perfected when you launch
your product or service. No, you're not.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
So for people that don't know, explain to us what
QBC is.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Yeah, it's the first live shopping experience ever. It's forty
years old now or thirty five years old. HSN was
around longer. They were the first, so they were around
now forty years It was like an extended infomercial, twenty
four hours of live programming where you watched everything from beauty, electronics,

(52:10):
home where, fashion, jewelry, and you would watch a creator,
a founder come on, or maybe a spokesperson, and you'd
watch it long enough and go, wait a minute, maybe
I do need that, even if you didn't think you did,
and you'd find yourself picking up a phone. There was
no way to go online and order, and you would

(52:32):
call a call center and say, I want to order
this item that Laura Geller's selling, and that's how people
were shopping, and it was an addiction for a lot
of people. Believe me. I mean there were more people
that I spoke to through the years that said I
had to stop because I found myself feeling like I
needed everything QBC had to sell.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
Which I feel like is happening now. I have to say.
So for people that are familiar with TikTok Shop and
Amazon Live, these are basically iterating. They are these are
iterations of QBC.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
It's exactly right, and it's funny because we are on
TikTok Shop and Amazon, we are on all the platforms,
and I tell you what people are watching. I'm going
to give away a secret you ready. I learned this
early on. It's the three ws. Do you know what
they are? Okay, if everybody listening wants to learn something

(53:27):
very important, a big takeaway, listen to this right now.
The three ws? What is it? What is this product?
They don't don't assume they know what it is. The
next W is who is it for? Now you've got
to tell them who is it for? And the third
one that they want to know is what is it

(53:48):
going to do for me? The three ws. If you know,
if you can deliver those three ws, clearly you have
sold your product or service. People need to know what
it's going to do for me. That's when they buy in.
They will not buy in just watching you because you're
entertaining or you're funny. You don't have to be an actress,

(54:08):
you don't have to have a gift to gap. You
just have to know your product and service so well
that you can explain what it is in a short
period of time. And by the way, repeat those three
ws throughout the whole selling experience. Constantly come back to it.
And the other tip talk to people like it's the
first time they're meeting you. Do not assume they know

(54:30):
who you are. Do not assume because you think you
have theme, that they're going to go, Oh, I know
who she is, I know what she sells. Speak to
them like it's the first time they ever heard it.
Two things I learned early on from QVC Live Shopping.
It's the same takeaway I give people when I mentor them,
anybody that calls me, anybody I get to talk to,
I always say, what's your thirty second pitch? What's your

(54:53):
sixty second elevator pitch? If I don't understand it myself,
and I'm in the business, m that nobody's gonna want it.
And a lot of times I don't understand what they're
saying because it's close to them. They assume everybody's going
to get it. Not everybody does, Not everybody will.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Yeah, and it hasn't changed. It's the same today. It's
it's it's so funny, how you know, basic sales marketing,
human connection tactics, human connection too. They they stand the
test of time.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
They sure do, they really do. And I think that's
what makes people separates the you know, the people who
aren't getting that and those who do. So it's important
to have that human connection too. You have to really
care about people to be talking to them, right.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
And I feel like sometimes sales gets a bad reputation, right.
People think it's manipulation, it's persuasion, it's pressure, they want
me to buy these things. But what do you think
it really is? What it's done, the way that you
do it.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
I think that we really do solve a problem. We're
solution based. Yeah, we're solution based. So for an example,
I'm always thinking when I develop my product, how is
it going to solve a problem for somebody? What is
their issue? And I mean, yes, you have to come
out with things sometimes that don't always necessarily solve the problem,

(56:12):
but it is something that people just want to play
with and have fun with. But everything I do is
always going to be solution based. If it's not solving
a solution, I kind of don't want to come out
with it. And if it doesn't really work, I really
push back. And once you build the trust in the
customer because they bought something and it really did solve
their problem, they'll listen to you again and come back

(56:34):
to the next thing. And when you deliver that on
a regular basis, they're going to keep coming back and
you're going to have a lot of loyalty a lot.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
So after twenty nine years on QBC, what did you
learn about what makes a woman stop watch and believe you.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
That I'm relatable to them, that I'm her And you know,
I may be dressed up in a prettier package because
I know how to put makeup on, or someone doing
my hair, or I have a nice shirt, but at
the core of it, I know who she is at home,
and no matter who she is at home, I've walked

(57:12):
through all of those passages, whether I worked on someone
similar or I was her once. I speak in a
way where I really feel like I let their help
them let their guard down, and they don't feel intimidated
by me, and they feel that I'm safe, and I

(57:33):
think that's from a real aspect, I really do. Let
me tell you a little bit about the difference between
QBC and TikTok Shop, which we are on now, and
one of the things is it is secular. What's old
is new. We know that that's an old adage, right,
But TikTok Shop, which reaches a much younger audience, we

(57:55):
are on it daily and we are doing her excellent
job here, what's the same. We have three women that
are the people who go on TikTok Shop that are
now so familiar with the audience, and they're much younger
than me, and they're all very different in personality. But
when people come to TikTok Shop now we have a

(58:16):
lot of TikTok affiliates, but those three women are on
for three hours at a clip, and they are now
known to our audience. So people are looking for Alana,
for val for Amber, and so they have that human connection.
I think it's great to be a TikTok affiliate. I
mean the beauty of it is you can do it

(58:37):
out of your own home. If you love talking, if
you're a talker, you can talk as long as you
want on TikTok Shop. That's not the same on QVC.
QVC is different. You're given six to eight minutes per
item on QBC and it's over. You have to sell
your product in that amount of time. But with TikTok Shop,
you can sell that same item for an hour and

(58:59):
so you could keep building. So there's different major differences.
And also QBC still, even though it's now got competition
like TikTok still reaches over one hundred million households. So
I still say QBC reigns supreme in the space of
live shopping. But I think that like I talk to

(59:20):
friends of mine who are Gen xers and baby boomers,
and there's a good number of them who are ordering
on TikTok shopping Instagram live. They see a product, here's
what they like. They see a product and they go ooh.
They see an older person and it's solving a problem,
a solution, whether it's mascara or eyeliner, and they show

(59:40):
it on an older model and they are drawn in.
So they are live shopping. They just don't realize it.
They don't call it live shopping. But to me, what
they're doing is what most people do on QBC, just
in a different platform.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
You know, as somebody that does both short form content,
which kind of makes me think of like the six
minutes spec segments on QVC and also long form content,
like we're sitting down here doing you know, an hour
plus long conversation. What do you think is harder going
live on QBC or sitting down for an hour and
talking about a product.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
I think it's harder to sit down for an hour
and talk about a product. When you're on QBC, it's
very interactive. You've got a host that you're working with,
so you're bouncing things off of each other. Sometimes there's
a caller who calls in, but that does happen on
TikTok and and Instagram. I think you have to be

(01:00:36):
able to read the comments that are coming through and
engage with the people buying the product or asking a question.
I think it's harder on long form in my opinion.
You know. I but that's just maybe because I'm used
to QBC. But I will tell you that when people
are asking me about how to monetize their life, they're

(01:01:01):
you know, how to make money. I'm like, what do
you love? What are you passionate about? Become a TikTok
affiliate for a brand. You can do it in the
comfort of your own home, you know, for people who
may want to pivot or make incremental income and it
becomes a career. I know many of our TikTok affiliates
and they are making bag. How do you like that

(01:01:21):
one making bag?

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
It's true if these a feeliates are making a lot
of money, I actually we've got the nerve.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Dumb, I know, bad.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Yeah. We have these energy mens here and we have
the founder Kent, in the other day and he was
saying that the affiliates crush it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Oh my gosh. I mean sometimes we have, you know,
influencer events, and we invite some of the affiliates and
I go up to them and they're like thank you.
I'm like wait why, they go, do you know how
much money I made last month? And they tell me,
and I go, I'm going to become an affiliate.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
How much money is the highest amount you've heard people
making through the affiliate program?

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
You know? I don't remember a lot. I have a
very bad memory. Don't ask me, but I can remember
meeting one in Dallas. Is it Dallas that I was in? Yeah, Dallas.
And I think she said she made forty grands in
a month. I think.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Well, speaking of TikTok affiliates, we just did an entire
episode talking to Kent from Nirogum, which you and I
both had before it started. Yes, and his entire business.
They were like the number one They were the number
one seller on TikTok shop in twenty twenty four, so
he we went for.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
Number one seller, yes in TikTok shop.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Yeah, it's affiliates with affiliates.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
That's insane, insane.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Yeah, so he went all in affiliate marketing through TikTok
and people make a lot of money through selling his products.
It's really cool.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
Then I can now tell you which you made me
think of it when you said it. We are the
number two brand on TikTok shop for beauty.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
That's really impressive, Laura.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Very impressive. So you are a big believer in live
shop one hundred percent. I never thought I would see
other platforms. I remember when Amazon started live shopping and
it didn't work and they closed it down, and I
remember thinking, of course not who else is going to
do it the way QBC does it. This is not
going to work. And then all of a sudden, TikTok

(01:03:14):
comes along, or maybe it was Instagram first, I can't remember,
but all of a sudden, you have to do it
a lot and a lot and a lot, and it's
that very different platform. But then now Amazon's back doing
it live. We do those two and all the platforms.
And there's also is it called what not? I think

(01:03:34):
it's called what not. Yeah, there's another platform called whatnot
and that's for like resale and that's a whole other platform.
We met them at Future fifty two. I mean, there's
so many platforms cropping up that I would say, if
you've got a product or don't have a product, and
you really want to get involved in something, you should

(01:03:55):
look into an area that you're interested in, and you
just get in touch with the brand and they either
discounted or gifted to you. Does he explain that in
the episode? Does he give away the tips on how
to do it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
No? Give us the tips?

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
Oh no, I'm just saying I'm learning as we go along.
So I talked to my affiliates and they said it
started out where I bought your products and I just
went on and you know, they give a code and
we give a commission. But now we are gifting you know,
certain affiliates that have huge followings. And you know, I

(01:04:36):
left because I'm not on TikTok a lot. But I
told the story that I recently went on TikTok one night,
late at night. I don't know if this is a
funny one and I opened it up and I was
in someone's room and it said live and she was
selling my products. And I'm like, who is she? And
how did she get my product? And all of a

(01:04:56):
sudden I hear her go, oh my god, Laura Gella joined.
I'm like, how did I get in here? And how
does she know him here? And then I was like
if I get out, well she know him out, Like
I want to get out quick, and I ended it,
you know, I got out of the room. But she
was like, I just had a moment. Laura Geller just
joined us. And then I wrote in you're doing a
good job. I didn't even know what I was doing
because I now I'm doing TikTok more. But like, I'm

(01:05:18):
amazed how many affiliates we have. It's a thing. Live
shopping is here. Gary Vee, I know him long before
live shopping. He predicted it. He says it. It's not
going away. We got to keep doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
So by twenty twelve you referenced us. But in twenty twelve,
your company was bought by a private equity Come Invested Invested.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
I had it. I sold a majority stake in twenty
twelve to private equity. I didn't know anything about it,
but I had somebody who liked my mission, believed in
me as a founder, like the whole brand initiative like that.
We were three sixty, we were in Sephora and all over.
So I sold a majority stake in twenty twelve, and

(01:06:05):
I couldn't wait to get rid of like the headaches
of running the business and now having somebody who understood
a P and L and a balance sheet, thank you
very much, and that I can just do what I
did best was live selling and creating product doing the
product development. But it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy, and

(01:06:25):
when you sell a majority steak, you're not going to
have the final say. You have a small say because
you're a minority. And it was definitely challenging. And I
think every founder would agree and had the same pain points.
I just wish I could have talked to them then
and knew how to reach out. I keep saying, Katie,
make it happen. We got to join forces. It doesn't

(01:06:48):
have to be all in the same business. People who
sell their companies need to know what they're going to
possibly be in store for. Sometimes it goes smooth and
sometimes there's hiccups. Be prepared for the hiccups. I now
can save people a lot of time. I got to
write that book one day because I would tell people
what to watch out for, and you know, sometimes they

(01:07:10):
don't want to listen to you anymore and they want
to do it your way, and that's kind of what happened.
My voice wasn't really being heard as much as I
would have liked. But we then sold to a big
private equity company, big, huge, fourth largest in the country,
and they weren't in the beauty space, and they just

(01:07:31):
wanted to get into the beauty space and play and
see what it was like. So we were sort of
the guinea pig and I saw the train coming down
the tracks fast. I was like, oh, no, okay, it
sounds really good that this company wanted us. But now
the guy who invested in me the majority stake was
able to cash out, sell and be done because private

(01:07:52):
equity doesn't like to stay in more than what three
to five years something like that. And when they took over,
I saw what they were doing and that they weren't
listening to me, they weren't listening to the people who
built the brand, and they bankrupted the company in a
year a year and a half because they weren't getting
a return on their investment. That was the darkest time

(01:08:16):
of my career the darkest. I will never forget it
twenty eighteen, and yeah, I had worked my whole life
to build this brand and now it was going to
be puff, just gone in the universe. And so yeah,
it was a really hard time. And then what happened

(01:08:36):
was the company went up for auction, That's what happens,
and privately held guys bought it and they are terrific.
In fact, they built ELF and sold ELF and did
really well with that transaction and wanted to get back
in the space. They knew our brand, they knew our

(01:08:58):
brand heritage. They contacted me, they said, we want to
buy your brand. I said, have at it. I don't
have any control. I mean you'd have to deal with
the people who are selling it. And they bought the
brand in twenty nineteen or eighteen around there, and it's
now going on seven years and the brand is bigger

(01:09:21):
than ever because they trusted me and they let me
be me, and they want my voice and they want
my likeness and they listen. And that coupled with great
marketing strategies, amazing social media. My social media team is
killing it. And they are not gen xers or baby boomers.

(01:09:42):
They are gen z ers, but they get me and
they bring out the best of me and use me.
And it's just I think the road is still ahead
of us, a long road ahead of us. And I
never thought we'd be where we are, and I never
thought that the brand could even scale even more, and
we're still scaling.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
I think the hardest thing too, is it's not like
you were starting a brand that didn't have your name
on it. You know, the brand is called Laura Geller, right,
And yeah, as you said it, you built this brand
for a years. You built up your client teles. You
started as a small makeup artist getting scrappy, then working
with celebrities, then starting a studio. So it's years of
work that then go into fueling this name. So to

(01:10:24):
see something going bankrupt in a year and a half,
like walk us through those emotions when that was happening.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
Oh my gosh. Well I watched it happen. I remember
when they bought the company and I said to them, listen,
you need to get in and I would tell them, who,
you need to have people running this that understand how
to want to found your own business. You need to
have people in here that understand my mission and why

(01:10:51):
I built this business that you wanted. And also the
other part of it was they had no experience in
the beauty space. So you know, when I think about
how I would do it over, I think I would
have probably said to the majority, the person who bought
the majority stake, we weren't ready to sell. We weren't

(01:11:12):
planning to sell. We didn't even have a banker that
made the transaction for us. We were on our way up.
But he got this great opportunity. But I don't know
that I could have convinced him otherwise to not sell.
When I say that, I watched it happening and they
stopped paying bills to our vendors that were my friends.

(01:11:32):
Now people I had been working with for thirty years,
packaging people, you know, I fulfillment people, R and D labs,
I just everything. I can't think of all the different
people that we serviced that worked with us, and they
would call me personally and go, how come you didn't

(01:11:54):
pay me? And I'd be like, I didn't know. It
was really that to me, I think was the hardest
part was disappointing the people who trusted in me, who
helped me build my business, and now we were just
not paying them.

Speaker 2 (01:12:09):
I think trust is the keyword here, right, because your
entire life's journey and work has been building a business
on trust.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Absolutely. And I remember going in and talking to the
people who bought my company and saying, what are you doing?
And then they put people in place. They got rid
of my people that were there, and they put people
in place that come into restructures, so to speak. And
I was like, what's going on? And they felt bad.

(01:12:37):
You know, I paid people out of my pocket because
it killed me that they weren't getting paid. So I
literally wrote checks to people and nobody knew that I
was doing that. I just was like, I can't let
them hurt them now. And I learned a big lesson.
Can I tell you what I learned? This was the

(01:12:59):
fourth largest private equity bank in the world. I remember
when I first met them. Their offices were like nothing
I had ever seen. When we went into board meetings.
By the way, we have no board meetings now. There
is no board. It's just us and I remember going
in and feeling super intimidated. It was men in suits,

(01:13:22):
all ivy leaguers. I don't think there were like maybe
it was one or two women and I remember thinking, oh, geez,
I didn't go to college. They're all smarter than me.
I can't talk their talk. I'm going to just respectfully
say they don't have anything on a founder. When you
build a business and you have that loyalty from your

(01:13:45):
customer and you learned what it is that your customer
wants from you, you can't learn that in school. That
is no Ivy League education is ever going to teach
you that. And I just now look back and think
there was an employe who would sit in those board meetings.
And two years ago we got together for dinner. She said,

(01:14:05):
I will never forget when you raised your hand and
made a comment and the head person at this private
equity group said, we're not interested in what you have
to say. You're here to sell. That's it. That's your
only thing we want from you. And I remember thinking,
oh my god. And she never forgot that. And she said,

(01:14:25):
I wasn't the only one in the room who was
triggered by that. I didn't have anybody to talk to.
You're alone. You don't know that anybody is feeling what
you're feeling. You can't talk to anybody because you can't
bad mouth. It was just a really dark time it was,
and I always thought maybe I should have never named
my brand by my name. When I first started my brand,

(01:14:48):
I was going to name it les Rivage. I thought
it sounded very pretty. I think that means river in French.
And Marjorie rosen Krantz was one of my clients who
came to my house in Hell's Kitchen, and she was like,
the name Laura Geller is very strong. You should call
your business Laura Geller. I go what, and she goes,
forget Leravage, call it Laura Geller. I'm like, all right,

(01:15:09):
and I called it Laura Geller. But then I look
at my friends like Bear Essentials and it Cosmetics and
all my colleagues who started their brands and didn't name
it after themselves, and I thought it was so dependent
on me, and these private equity groups were trying to
make it not dependent on me, and I get what
they were trying to do, but I was like, I'm
still alive. Use me, why not? I'm still here. I

(01:15:32):
want to work still, so lesson learned. You can go
to college, you get a fancy degree. It looks good
on paper, but if you don't understand the mission of
the founder and listen to them and learn from them
and just want to do it based off of P
and L. You're not going to have a successful business
whatever the business.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
Is, especially when it really is a founder led business
where you have made your mark by being the face
of it. Yeah, it's a big difference then being a
brand that doesn't have a face associated.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
With it one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
What were your biggest business regrets that you wouldn't want
any founder to make?

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
Biggest mistakes is you can't take your eye off the ball.
Some of the biggest mistakes I made was I was
so busy being in the front and selling that I
didn't have time to check on what was happening behind
the scenes. So I had a bookkeeper that was stealing
from me. He would say, sign these four checks, and

(01:16:29):
I was so happy just to sign it and be
done like and I trusted him because he was also
servicing another company I knew, but he was stealing and
embezzling from me. You can't take your eye. You have
to be involved in all of it, and you have
to know a little bit about every part of it.
So that's one thing. I think. The other thing is

(01:16:51):
if you're going to sell to private equity or interested
in having an exit. If you want to have an exit,
however it is, could be to strategic private equity. I
think you need to look at how they managed other
brands before, and if they give you references, which they did,

(01:17:13):
don't trust that those references are going to be honest
I did. They were like, oh, he's great, They're great.
And what I should have done was contact people he
didn't give me and say tell me how he or
she ran the business and were you happy and aligned,
because that would have told me a lot too. I
learned something from a very dear friend, Leslie Blodgett, who

(01:17:36):
owned and created Bear Essentials Bare Minerals and sold for
over a billion dollars and I'll never forget it. She's
a good friend to this day. We were both started
on QBC in the nineties together and I called her
for advice and she said, I'm going to ask you
a question. And it was about investing into a new brand,

(01:17:57):
idea into a company that was going to be private
equity and invest in brands, and she said, do you
like the mission of the person? Do you believe in
the mission of the person? And that person worked on
my brand and I didn't really, I wasn't that aligned.
And I said, thank you. You just answered everything. You
just helped me by asking me that question. Do you

(01:18:20):
believe in the person that you're going to go into
do you like the way that person rang your business?
And I said not one hundred percent? And she said,
there's your answer, and she probably saved me a lot
of money. So I think you got to do your
homework and take the knocks. Like you said early on
in this podcast, be resilient because it's not a walk

(01:18:43):
in the park, but it's worth It's worth it in
the end, whether you exit or not.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
And I like knowing that you were friends with you
are friends with the Bear Essentials founder, and you talked
about Bobby Brown. We've referenced a lot of other, you know,
makeup brands that everybody knows about. Essentials I think was
the first palette I ever had. I think I got
a Bear Essentials palette when I was in I was
getting ready for maybe like an eighth grade dance, and
my mom took me to a little shop and I'm
pretty sure it was Bears.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
They had stores, freestanding stores.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
Yes, And I'm curious too, because I think this is
important for founders to know. How do you deal with comparison?

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
I mean, I think you have to look. I wish
I had had more mentorship, and I wish I would
have created something that was looked a little different. My
brand was too mature. Here, you asked a great question.
So a lot of people start a company or brand, service,

(01:19:41):
whatever it is, and they want to exit quick. There's
good and bad in that. The good is that somebody
who's interested in buying your brand may look at it
and go, Wow, there's so much more room to scale this,
and I can make that happen. I have those connections,
and you could be one of those lucky ones. And
I do know a few brands that are like that

(01:20:01):
that exited early for a lot of money. So they
got lucky. Then there are brands like me that didn't
know that I could get an investor. Nobody ever told
me about private equity. I'm telling you, I really was
a gal that you didn't know any of the stuff.
And when they came into my business, I had already

(01:20:25):
had a lot of distribution. So private equity is going
to look at it, or strategic's going to look at
it and say, I don't know if I could build
this brand out anymore because they already are saturated in
this market, that market, this market, so that you may
not get as many people wanting to invest in your brand.
So there is that critical point where you need to

(01:20:46):
pivot and know when it's time for you to go,
and today you'll probably be approached. I wasn't approached like
that early on. It took a banker that knew my
brand to get me to understand that some people would
be interested.

Speaker 2 (01:21:01):
You're somebody that has successfully built a massive business and
been through change in your own business, whether it was
through the acquisitions and just how your position has evolved
over the years. So I'm curious. There's a lot of
change people are talking about right now. There's AI, There's
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
It's it's like you said, disruptors, disruptive, so many different
things happening now.

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
So what is your advice to an anxious twenty something
year old that is looking for a job and finding
it hard to get one because of some of the
disruptors happening in the industry Like AI?

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
I would my first piece of advice is don't be
in a hurry. So here's what I'm going to say,
you're thinking it has to be a certain kind of
job and you have to be involved in a certain space.
Can I tell you the best thing that ever happened
to me, that helped me make my career is walking
through so many iterations of my business. You are not

(01:21:57):
going to know in your early twenties, mid twenty, maybe
even your thirties where you're going to land, But what
you are going to gain is tremendous wealth of knowledge
by walking through so many different spaces. Don't turn your
nose up at a job opportunity that may, in your estimation,

(01:22:19):
not look sexy, not look like what you want. Take
their job and learn. When you're bored at that job,
when there's nothing more to learn, there's no way you
can find out if that you can grow in this company,
that's when it's time to pivot and move out. But
if you are learning, if you are gaining knowledge, you

(01:22:41):
can't imagine how much that knowledge is. One doing two
things for you is setting you up for your next job.
Somebody's going to want you because you worked at that
company that is desirable that they're going to be like
she or he came from that whoa we need to
get them. Two, you've already figured out what you do.
I don't like what you're doing and what you love.

(01:23:02):
So now you're applying to places and jobs that maybe
specialize more in those areas. You're not supposed to have
it figured out. I am telling you I have. If
I know anything, I know that it took me till
I was thirty five, and I was working since I
was eighteen till I figured out that I wanted to

(01:23:23):
work on real women and teach them how to do
their makeup and not do makeup for TV, film, stage print.
I mean, that's where I learned what my sweet spot was.
And so that would be my advice. But it would
also be that in your free time when you're not working,
maybe take a course of two in AI, in whatever

(01:23:45):
how to get your CV looking really good and look
into things that maybe will help you to land that position.
But don't turn your nose up at anything.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
Don't turn your nose up. And also I think it's
great advice, and I feel like from my personal experience too,
it's stop comparing yourself to the kids that are maybe
having the perfect job handed to them, because that's not reality.
And if you have the opportunity to live in a
city like New York City. This is where dreams come true.
So you really have to just yeah, not turn your
nose up, take the job opportunity that comes your way,

(01:24:18):
It's true, and hustle on the side because you know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:22):
You just made me. Remember something I taught my son
from the day he graduated, even high school, but of
course college. Don't look in front of you and don't
look behind you. There's always going to be someone in
front of you, and there's always going to be someone
looking at you that's behind you. So don't look here
and don't look there. Concentrate on where you're at. You

(01:24:44):
can aspire to look there, but don't think you should
be there. You're obviously not there for a reason. There's
a lesson that has to be taught. And he remembers that,
and he always says, I know, I know, don't look
in front, don't look behind. There's something to that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
Do you think with AI? This time is different for me?

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
AI is definitely. I've seen it's changing the landscape. For
an example, AI is being used for fashion where you
almost don't need a stylist on set. There's a lot
of things even hair stylists. I've talked about this with
some of my colleagues, But one thing AI can't give

(01:25:21):
and take away from us is the human connection that
we've been talking about this whole podcast. Let me tell you,
if you have got that human connection with whoever it
is that's watching you, AI can never take that away,
So don't worry. Just remember the human connection is more
valuable than almost anything else in business.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
We covered so much day, Laura, I could talk to
you for hours. If you could go back and tell
the little girl from the Bronx one thing, what would
it be.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
Maybe learn a little bit about Maybe learn a little
bit about business can hurt because you can't take your
eye off the ball for one second. Even if you're
a creative person, even if you just have product to sell,
it's important you know everything that it takes to run

(01:26:15):
the business. You don't have to have an Ivy League education,
but take that business course. There is so much available
out there today that wasn't available to me and I
didn't know how to find it. Maybe even do that first,
and also run your pitch. Run your pitch to a
lot of people. Join the organizations if they're available to you.

(01:26:39):
They weren't to me. That will help you grow your
business and help you network with the people in your space.
I wish that somebody had said to me, Laura, you
know what you got to learn the business, honey. Don't
just trust the bookkeeper who is taking your money and

(01:27:01):
paying your bills. Know what you're doing and ask for
help and go to the people. Here's a good one.
Here's a great tip. I have found that you can
go to the people who paved the way before you
and did something similar in the space that you're in,
and they appreciate when you reach out to them and

(01:27:22):
ask them a question, DM them, email them, ask the question.
The worst that will happen is they don't respond. The
best that will happen is they'll tell you one thing
like my friend Leslie Blodgett told me, or the way
I tell people today, that will help you in your journey.
I was so busy selling and doing makeup that I

(01:27:44):
didn't even have the time to reach out to people.
And then it was like, where do I begin to
reach out to somebody? Stop and spend time doing that,
because they will educate you and school you. Don't be
afraid to ask questions or for help.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
Well, thank you so much for being on post Rindan
Hi today.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
Well, thank you for having me and getting all the
tea from me. You're good.

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
I'm gonna need you to come back at some point. Hi, guys,
Kate here. If you made it this far into our conversation,
thank you so much. Laura Geller is truly one of
my favorite guests to interview and just hang out with
in general. She's such a breath of information and if
you guys are feeling as inspired as i am, please

(01:28:28):
share this episode with a friend who can also gain
something from it. As always, if you're enjoying post run high,
please follow a show wherever you're listening. We have weekly
episodes coming your way and we will see you next week.

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