Advice Line with Marcia Kilgore of Beauty Pie

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/158f7b5a8067de77

Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab.
Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you.
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and we'll put all this info in the podcast description.
Alright.
Let's get to it. Joining me this week is serial entrepreneur Marcia Kilgore, founder of BeautyPie. Marcia, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. We're excited to have you. So you were first.
On the show back in in twenty eighteen, um, you told us about the origin story of Bliss, which was the the spa brand that really kinda changed
the beauty landscape and then of course
You went on to build all of these different brands afterwards, like Soap and Glory and Fitflop, and then BeautyPie. Um it's just so awesome to have you back. And we will put a link to your original interview in the episode description. And also you anybody listening can easily find that by searching how I built this in Marcia Kilgore.
Lots of great stories and insights. Um Marcy, I know that today you are continuing to grow beauty pie. You're and and pushing to to kind of you know give consumers access to

you know, a more transparent pricing.
Um, and I know recently you've been focused on educating consumers about something called warehouse pricing. So can you
Tell us a little bit more about what that is.
Well, you there are different definitions for it in the US versus the UK. The mainstream beauty industry has always had a really uh
multi-layer distribution system.
Where it would go from the mind of a founder to a manufacturer. The manufacturer would then ship it to a warehouse. The warehouse would ship it to a distributor. The distributor would then ship it to a retailer. And in all of these different layers of distribution, you would end up with a markup of twelve hundred percent.
Yeah. At minimum on that product. So something that is manufactured for five dollars.
would retail for sixty at minimum because the retailer themselves are taking at least half of that. And especially if you're a new brand in the cosmetics business, it can be really tough because they will demand higher
Yeah.
Because they have the shelf space and you don't really have much negotiating leverage.
And I'd been in the beauty stud industry for quite a long time and realized that for me it was a little depressing that customers would have to spend so much to get something that actually didn't have the value that they thought it had. And so
I decided to start beauty pie just for that reason so that people could get the good stuff when it landed in the warehouse with enough of a markup.
to cover that, which we call our warehouse pricing or lab to warehouse pricing, and not any of the markup that happens after it leaves that warehouse and ends up in the hands of a distributor or a retailer. So
That's our definition of warehouse pricing.
brands are made in Switzerland or in Japan, um some in France and
You are offering the same quality essentially, but at much lower prices.
Very often even a better quality, but at much lower prices. Uh, we can manufacture from scratch. We can kind of dream because we're not really worried about all that.
extra added cost that a product will
In gender once it leaves the warehouse and goes to a retailer. So we negotiate hard with our manufacturers, but it stops at about three times the manufactured cost and it doesn't go farther than that, whereas most beauty products go to
Ten or twelve or sometimes twenty. Wow. I mean the kind of the more luxurious the brand, the crazier the prices. And you'll see creams out there selling for three thousand dollars for a fifty milliliter jar of cream, which is just insanity. There's nothing in'em. But
If it makes you feel better about yourself, that you can buy something really expensive. I guess there's you know, there's a little bit of that.
Yeah. Alright, Marcia, before we get to today's callers, I I wanna ask a little bit more about about your story. Um
And and kinda how it relates to to building a company today, because in your original episode
You know, you told us about how you started by giving facials in this tiny
you know, room in New York City and and how that kind of led to and taught you
What
customers' value and that's that helped you build bliss into this amazing brand. Do you do you think that's necessary today for founders to have that direct kind of customer service or hands on experience?
to to succeed in in in beauty.
It's a great question. I think Jim Collins would always say that you want to focus on what you're good at. Yeah. And then you wanna look at those tangential things to try and do something different.
So it is much easier to start a business.
In an area that you've got expertise because you can solve your problems very often yourself.
And you've got that deep and rich insight into whatever that problem is. However, if you just go and do what everybody else is doing, you're not gonna have anything new and you're not gonna have any kind of, you know, leg up in the market with all the other people who are doing exactly that. So it's really important, I think
One to have
expertise in the area that you are trying to build, but then also to look sideways and see what people are doing in other
areas of business that might
dovetail into yours and create something that's really fresh and new.
Well what do you think? I mean you've built so many brands and building a brand is really hard and and arguably
harder in in some ways today than than ever m you know, than it's been in in in recent years. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges of of trying to build a brand in twenty twenty five?
Um in twenty twenty five there is more competition than ever.
And I think that people also look at the internet and think it's super easy to put your product out there on the internet.
and spend money advertising it and people will flock to you.
Um I think what they don't necessarily realize is
Number one, how hard it is to get visibility and any kind of scale. Number two, how many iterations you might have to go through before you get something that resonates with a customer. Uh, number three, how expensive that can be, depending on which market you're in and which niche you're in. Because there are a lot of people thinking exactly like you're thinking. And um I I think that
Everything has moved towards digital.
Uh such a
fast way. Covet did that for us, right? It was this huge digital rush. So it used to be quite easy to throw a website up and it still is, but getting people to come to that website is the hardest thing. So I think there's always
Always on the part of a founder. A little bit of ownership bias.
Why because they think it's great that other people will naturally show up.
And maybe they don't realize how hard it is to get attention in such a saturated world of, you know, trying to get eyeballs. You have to do a lot more, be constantly creative. And there's a lot of help out there now with AI, which can help you be more creative if you're not necess necessarily creative.
But um everybody's got a lot of the same tools. So you have to work smarter, you have to work faster, you have to work harder, but you have to really be original.
Yeah. Uh Marcy, let's go ahead and take take um uh some calls. Let's let's bring on our first caller. Um hello, welcome to the advice line. You are on with Marcia Kilgore. Please tell us your name and where you're calling from and just a little bit about your business.
Guy Marcia, what an honor it is to be here, very excited.
My name is Victor Garcia. I am calling from the very hot city of Fort Worth, Texas.
co-founder of Sol Diaz Ice Cream. Uh we specialize in making ice cream and paletas with the flavors and preparation styles of my hometown, Mexica Can Jalisco, and we are on a mission of making these treats as popular and accessible as tacos are in the US today.
Awesome. So tell us a little bit about um palettas or pop schools, basically, right? Yeah.
Um and ice cream. So tell us a little bit about what yeah, what about w what you sell?
So uh the two things that really helps us stand out, number one is I mentioned the flavors, the ingredients. So we've got things like mango chamui or like a rice cinnamon.
We have uh tequila ice cream, tequila paletas, um mame, the flavors of Mexico, right? And our churn process
is very slow.
Um
It takes twenty five, thirty five minutes to make a batch and really that just helps the natural flavors of the product.
Get injected into
what the ice cream is or what the valeta is. Um
A lot of American ice cream are
lot of ice cream in general, right? It gets injected with air and blasted frozen six, seven minutes. Um so one of the big things I tell people just
you can have a pint of regular ice cream and you can have a pint of soldia and you will be able to feel the difference. The Soldia is gonna be a lot heavier'cause it's got a lot less air.
Um, so that's kind of a little bit about us and what we do.
And
How did you get into the in in into the ice cream business?
Uh the tiny town that I mentioned mixed to Jalisco is nicknamed La Cuna de La Laro y La Paleta, which just briefly translates to
the birthplace of ice cream and paletas. And so that's kinda where everything came from. We immigrated to the US. Um
didn't quite find the same flavors of home and that's kind of what encouraged the business to start.
And and so you you've got a brick and mortar shop, or you've got more than one shop?
We got three brick and mortar shops in Dallas for Wow, amazing. Congrats. And how tell me a little bit about how the business is doing.
Um the business has been growing steadily, thirty five to forty percent a year. Um
Everything's been
Been going well so far.
All right, so so uh what's your question for us?
Yes. So we have
brick and mortar side of the business and then we have a retail side of the business.
We've been trying to tackle both.
Um
The nagging question is, is that too much? At our stage, right, right now, three stores.
One point five million in revenue.
Does it make sense to continue trying
To go after both, should we focus on one or the other?
So so do you focus on selling your products in retail or do you focus on brick and mortar? Okay. Marcia, let me bring you in. Um he's got a growing business uh uh uh
brick and mortar business.
With ambitions, I think, right?
to to grow.
But you've got the
These products that you could sell in stores, Sam's Clubs and maybe Costco's and other places, what should he do? What should he focus on?
Uh.
Thank you.
What a dream to be selling ice cream. Yes. I think many of us would would want to um have a business like yours. It sounds really exciting. It sounds like you have a really great market niche also.
Um, and so congratulations.
building it so far. Um and it sounds like you really have a lot of success and more to come.
Uh and ask a couple of questions, so I'm just gonna fire them away at you. Can you tell me right now how the revenue is split between your stores and your
Well say.
Right now it's sixty percent stores, forty percent wholesale.
And
in terms of margin on stores versus margin on wholesale, once you take the stores and the operations into account.
It's about seventeen percent the net margins on the stores. Uh net margins on wholesale is slightly higher.
Um at uh hovering at around twenty.
Okay, so relatively the same, but easier to scale, obviously your wholesale, isn't it?
Um retail is tough as you
May not know yet.
I know. I know, trust me.
You know, you've got whether, you know, a a big football game comes on, like no one leaves their house. You know, you're sort of at the mercy of a lot of different elements.
Um, however, retail is really great for marketing for your brand. So it's nice to be able to have those
Flagship retail locations
Where people can come and experience it and test product, et cetera, et cetera.
How are you guys doing on social media? Are you getting a lot of
information out to potential clients or doing a lot of promotion via organic social media or not yet?
That's the only way that we advertise. It's really just social media, word of mouth. Um, like you mentioned earlier, is the product good enough to live without any advertising? And I immediately thought, Well, we sometimes don't post for a month and things continue to go well. But yeah.
Yeah.
Frozen or needs to be kept cold when shipped versus not.
You have other things, right?
Products that it's not just ice cream and palettes.
Correct correct. Uh that's like those are our hero products, but we also make a variety of other Mexican sweets and treats. Uh churros, aguas frescas,
Dulce and China. Those uh like spicy gummies. Um on the
Storefronts it's probably about
Seventy percent is frozen, thirty percent is not frozen. Um on the retail side, we just have two products.
in stores, which is gonna be the paletas and the spicy gummies. Um and right now
It's really about
Half is palettas, half is is is spicy gummies. I thought spicy gummies might be pop as soon as you said it, I just thought, you know what, there's something about spicy gummies.
Like a jalapeno or some kind of like hot pepper gummies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see every teenage boy
If you had
The one that's so crazy that it burns your mouth. Every teenage boy would be buying those. Yes. I know because I have teenage boys. The extreme version, absolutely. You gotta have that.
Obviously you in your distribution and your wholesale you're gonna wanna try and get more of those non frozen products in because it's just so much cheaper to not have to ship something in refrigerated trucks and
And also really build a couple
hero products like those spicy gummies.
Um, if that's like something you're really known for that you can then kind of branch off of and develop more products like the spicy gummy, or it's the spicy chewy or the spicy whatever, whatever, but you want to have one big hero products and of course you'll have your ice cream, right? And you'll have your palettas, but something that's not frozen. It'll be a lot easier.
It's not
worry about that, especially in heat waves, et cetera, et cetera, I'm sure it can get kind of crazy.
Yeah.
When you talk about um
Retail stores.
I don't think you need
You know, twenty of them. I think you need like a couple of really good ones strategically located, where there is a line out the door.
Nothing is better for your business than a line out the door of people waiting for ice cream, right? Right. And then you
where I would spend money instead of doing two stores or four stores, you and you now have three. So instead of doing six.
Hire some really great brand designer.
Who knows how to bring that all together for you so that when you have a store
It is irresistible.
And people cannot not take a photograph and post it on social media.

You're gonna have them with their ice creams, them with their palettas, them with their
Spicy gummies, whatever it is.
And you're gonna run events in those stores.
Like
The spicy gummy eating contest.
Right. And you're gonna invite people to come and right, or you're gonna invite people you're trying out a new flavor, you put it out, everybody come down or giving out you know, little cups of this new flavor, come down and see what it's like.
And they'll come in, they're gonna take a picture of themselves in the store, they're gonna come in to try the new flavor, they're gonna post about it, talk about it on social media, everything will be free for you for a very long time if you can
have events around the products that you're launching or your hero products and make that store look so cool.
Yeah, okay. But you g you get a line down the street, then you take photos of the lines down the street from your shop and then everybody's like, Oh my God, why is everybody lining up at that?
It's
Really quite easy.
We can do it. If you do the branding right around it.
And then you just keep coming up with ideas around how to
Get people to come in and and
Um be part of your brand.
It's great advice. Victor Garcia, the brand is called Sol Diaz. Good luck. Thanks for calling in.
Thank you so much, Guy Marcia.
All right, thank you.
Take care.
Guy, I talk too much. I'm sorry. No, it's great. You are carrying the day as I'm battling a cold and a pretty severe migraine.
But you are helping you are helping to to to to carry the advice line today, so I appreciate that. Anytime.
We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice.
I'm Guy Raw, stick around, you're listening to the Advice Line on how I built this lab.
Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Roz, and my guest today is Marcia Kilgore. She's the founder of many successful brands including Bliss, Soap and Glory, Fitflop, and
PewDiePie and we are taking your calls and let's bring in our next caller.
Hi Guy, hi Marcia. My name is Lydia Welsh. I'm calling from Seattle, Washington.
and I'm the founder of Clear Story Skincare.
We make small batch botanical skincare products using science backed ingredients for a simple, effective daily routine.
Awesome. Welcome to the show, Lydia. How did you um get into to skincare? Tell me a little bit about how you started the business.
Yeah, um I majored in biology, then I worked in disease research for a few years after college.
Um, and I've always been interested in skincare, but somehow it didn't hit me that skincare is actually all about chemistry and biology.
until twenty twenty, had some free time and I started reading research papers about different ingredients and it all just sort of
came together in my mind. Um so I started
Tinkering with different ingredients and making my own formulas, sharing them with family and friends.
Um and then I launched my business in twenty twenty one.
And tell us a little bit about
But what your yeah, I mean how it's going so far.
It's been an interesting and slow journey. Um, I've been around for, you know, four years, but the first two years of that I was
Um, working full time and then the following two years I had
Two kids. So I've had my hands full.
Um I've basically I started with a few um simple products and
Just did a lot of like farmers markets and things on the weekend and shipping orders in the evenings.
And right now we have
Um
A gentle cleanser, a hydrating mist, and a couple of facial oils.
Um and we have like a small customer base, but um
The people who have used our products really love them.
Um, tell us a little bit about um what you are um you know, where you're s you're s selling this all
Direct to consumer online on your website now.
Yeah, that's right. So everything's direct to consumer.
And tell us what what your question is or what your challenge is.
So I've spent this time refining my product line and I feel like I'm finally ready to grow my business, but I find myself holding back from pitching and marketing because
I'm afraid to fail.
And so my question is, how do I overcome my fear of rejection and gain the confidence to put myself out there?
All right.
Marcy, I wanna bring you in, um with some answers, hopefully.
Oh Livia, okay, I'm gonna tell you something that might really shock you.
Everybody has fear of failure?
Everybody.
So
Welcome to the club.
Never goes away.
Um, like anything else, you just kind of get used to it after you fail a couple of times. So you kind of have to let that go. It's almost like people who tell me, Oh
I can't do this because I'm a perfectionist, so I just can't
decide and it's just a cop out no offense.
But it's a cop out to say you have fear of failure or you're a perfectionist because it just gives you an excuse to not go.
Do what you have to do to get this done. And also not to face the things that aren't working.
openly, honestly, and immediately a move on them, right? It's like so easy to just go, Oh, I'm s too scared to fail, so I'm just not gonna do anything. You know what's gonna happen? You're gonna fail. So anything y if you wanna just say you have a fear of failure and let it give you paralysis because it's a sure thing.
Um can I ask you a couple of questions.
Go ahead. Number one, how did you get the trademark for Clear Story?
Do you have it trademarked? I do.
Yeah.
Okay, and
How do you spell it?
Um C L E R
Story.
Mm-hmm.
You say your brand is called Clear Story.
You're now reaching a subset of people who don't know how to spell the word clear.
That's true. Yeah. You might want to reconsider what you call it.
Okay. Unless you have
fifty thousand units of product sitting in your warehouse.
Yeah.
Interesting idea.
Okay, and there's an infinite number of brand names that you can have.
Um but I would never have
A name myself that if people spell the word properly
It doesn't come up.
Got it.
Mm, my brand is called Clear Story.
Mm-hmm.
And then you have to say, but not with an A. Yeah.
Right. That's already a handicap right there, so you wanna just try and fix that.
Mm-hmm. Um
Do you run any ads? I actually don't.
Okay, so I want you to spend a week
When your children are not
right there with you, learning AI and learning how the Meta Ad Library works. You can even go and chat GPT and say, give me a seven day training program so that I understand how Meta works for advertising. Um and you can do that.
This is the best way to figure out if your proposition is gonna resonate with a large number of people, although you're not gonna pay for a large number of people. So
Um in the second best business book of all time.
Second only to how I built this by Guy Rise.
Jim Collins would say you fire a bullet before you fire a cannonball.
Which means you're gonna test small before you do anything big. So you're gonna make sure that people actually click on your ad with your picture of your product with its description and its brand and its packaging.
And they actually click on it.
Before you go manufacture a whole bunch of them.
I'm gonna assume they're doing small batches at the moment.
Yes. Correct. Yeah. Okay. So you're not sitting on like tens of thousands of anything.
Mm mm. I'm not. That's really good.
So number one, I would go revisit the brand name. Number two
I would mock up using artificial intelligence a whole bunch of different versions of
Packaging of the name.
The description of what the products do.
Mm-hmm.
Learn how to do meta advertising and test.
Because
You will see
When you get something that people are interested in, they're gonna click on it. And you can count those clicks for very little money.
Before you do anything really big and make any really big decisions.
Um
And that will be a really nice way to
Iterate your way to a product that will resonate with people and that they're gonna come
looking for before you then go and manufacture a lot of that product. And then you're gonna take all of that knowledge
And you're gonna start just testing a little bit.
With
Very
Inexpensive ads, not putting them in front of millions of people, you put it in front of a thousand. If nobody clicks on it.
You don't have something yet.
Right, and iterate a few times spending as little money as possible.
Don't listen to your friends or family.
'Cause they will always be.
Nice.
And they're gonna say it's great.
Or they're gonna be like, nah, that'll never work. You're gonna get the two. The very supportive ones and then the ones who are just like naysayers because they're really risk averse. And that's them, not you, right? So
Yeah.
It's better just to see what happens in the wild when you put something in front of a an average human who's in the skincare market and whether or not they click on your thing and come through to your website.
Okay.
And
Then you iterate and you iterate and you iterate and you iterate until you have something.
And you'll build a landing page perhaps for this
New version of what you're testing?
And so they land on you'll still see if they click and add it into their basket, but then you'll say, I'm sorry, this thing is sold out.
But that's okay because it's a lot better to
make ten people really upset.
than to be sitting on
Hundreds of thousands of units of something that's not gonna sell.
Right?
It's great advice. Lydia Welsh, the brand is called Clear Story. Thanks so much for calling in. Yeah, thank you both.
Thank you.
Pye.
Yeah, I mean it it is, right? I mean this is the
Th you're right. I mean everybody is afraid of this, right? It doesn't matter who who who the founder is, uh in in everyone is afraid of failure and rejection. This is a this is just
A common
part of the the the process.
Yeah, you know, boxers probably get in the ring and are they afraid of like a really hard punch? Yes, but the other punches that just are part of the job. I mean get used to it because you're gonna fail.
We've all failed, right? We've had
disasters and you kinda forget about them. Thank God the human brain is wired to it's like childbirth. You just don't remember it. Otherwise we would never
propagate as a species.
Yeah.
Okay, next up after the break, another caller with another business challenge.
I'm Guy Raz and we're answering your business questions right here on the advice line on how I built this lab.
Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking calls with serial entrepreneur and beauty pie founder Marcia Kilgore. So Marcia, ready for our next call?
I'm ready.
Let's bring in our our final caller. Um welcome to the advice line you are on with Marcia Kilgore. Hello, welcome, tell us your name, where you're calling from and a little bit about your business.
Hello, thank you for having me on.
My name is Jack Boland. Hey Jack. I'm out in San Francisco at the moment.
And uh I'm the founder of Wampy Bags. So we make
Custom
Bike bags and accessories that perfectly match your
Bike and your style.
Um we focus on a style of bag called a frame bag, which basically sits inside the triangle on your bike using that negative space there.
And our ultimate goal is to
Um
get people to offer their bike over their car when they can.
So it's a it's a storage bag that fits in
In the frame of your bike, basically.
Exactly. Yeah, that's that's the core product and then we have a handful of other ones that uh mount on your handlebars for water bottles or on the front um while you put snacks in there.
What what fits inside the bag?
So it's a little dependent on your frame.
Um, but it's anything from
What about all spare layers, snacks?
Uh we'll use it for
bike packing trips so they'll throw a tent in there and a sleeping bag.
Or just a couple of beers to and a blanket to go head down to the park. Yeah.
H how did you come up with this idea?
I got into using this just for commuting around town, just going to the breweries in town and a more casual thing. So I'm trying to design a bag that's
is really intended to be more fun and playful and um a little bit more accessible than kind of those
Hardcore bags.
That's awesome. Okay, and how much do the bags sell for, by the way?
What's the price?
It depends on the size of them. So we've got a uh a small
One that's good for maybe tools or a snack.
Uh and that's about one twenty five and then a full frame starts at one forty nine.
And these are custom made.
Exactly. Yeah. So
Um
Basically customers can take a picture of their bike.
Uh they have this
Little special postcard that we'll send them.
And they include that in the photo.
And then they upload this to the website and they can design the shape of the bag they want. They select all the features they're interested in.
And then we
fabricate it, we print the fabric and and create this kind of one of a kind bag for them. Got it. Okay. So what's what are you trying to solve here? What's your challenge?
So my question is around um
sales channels ultimately. So
Uh I mentioned that postcard that's used for sizing and fitting the bag. There's a million different varieties of bikes and sizes and shapes.
And so they need that postcard to
Get it to fit just right.
Um
So we'll we mail that to them.
for free and in that time they kinda you know lose a little momentum on their excitement for purchasing this bag.
And so
I'm curious for what are the channels that we can
be exploring or focusing on that allow us to get this postcard in your hands when you start your your journey and then you're good to go. You can kind of
design and and purchase that bag.
Got it. Okay. So the the problem now is that people start the process but then they drop off.
Basically. Exactly.
Gotcha. Okay.
All right, Marcia, um, people are coming in, they're starting the process of designing their bags, but it's too clunky and they just drop off.
So he's gotta solve this.
Okay, Jack.
I'm gonna ask some really
Basic questions.
even before they even come in to start the process.
But first I'd like to say there's nobody I I like better than a product designer.
Um just the way product designers think is always so incredibly original.
Uh, so I'm sure I'm sure is this your twentieth idea? You're like
The fifty to a hundred range. Yeah, my kinda my kind of guy.
Um love a bit of a product designer. I'm gonna ask
Um you said there are other bags on the market for these purposes. Are they also fitting between the same area of the bicycle or is that your
Thing.
So there's kind of a spectrum of them. There's the
Off the shelf, um
made internationally one size fits all that doesn't really fit anything, but it's a slightly lower
Price point.
And then there are a a couple of companies doing this custom, but it's quite bespoke.
Um, it involves, you know, a couple of weeks of back and forth emails to like figure out exactly
the size of your frame. And so we kind of land in that middle because this software lets us
work a little bit more efficiently, manufacture a little bit more efficiently.
And uh
Land somewhere in between the two of those. Okay, so a customer can go out and find at retail
A bag.
Similar to your bag.
Just not customized.
Yeah, and and then that also kind of typically limits them to your your browns and your blacks, so one of our
big offerings as this can be as colorful, it can be as fun. It can have a picture of your dog uh on the exterior as well. Got it. Okay. Yes, so because this kind of uh unique process where I need to get a bunch of data from them on
what their bike looks like and a sizing
It has this back and forth that doesn't allow people to just
hop on the website, order something because they saw it and they're excited about it.
Yes.
And so
It is almost about do you have a series of emails that goes back to them once they've hit a certain stage in the process?
Saying how excited they are. So normally when you're you know, you go into a website and it tells you, I'm um you're you're at step one of step six.
Right. Do you have email follow ups?
For people who are sort of at step one but they haven't continued.
To say, Hey, you're almost there, you only have a few steps left, here's where you are.
We only have one that's the like
You requested the card and then here's the the getting started steps type of thing. But um
I like the idea of two weeks after that just to check in.
type of one or more integrated.
Too long. Okay. Three days. Three days. Yeah. So three days later you're gonna send them another email and say, Hey, did you get your card yet? I mean, maybe they haven't got their card yet, but you still need to be like in their inbox, right? If they don't wanna hear from you, they're gonna delete you and that's okay. But you gotta be there and you have to keep the momentum going yourself. Don't be too polite.
People are getting constantly barraged with emails and if you think oh I'm gonna be polite, I'm not gonna send this for another two weeks, they might have bought a bag by then.
Right? From somebody else. So you need to
Say how excited you are to be making this bag for them.
And they you've sent out the card and as soon as they receive their card, please, you know, scan do you have a QR code on that card?
I do yeah.
Okay, so they scan the QR code and then they take the picture and then it lands them somewhere that makes the next step really easy?
Yes. So it sends them a link and then they can design the bag.
over that photo. And how many choices for designing the bag are there?
So they can do the shape and then there's a couple toggles for features, you know, various um types of zippers, that type of thing.
And then the like print for the fabric.
And do you find that people drop
There or
Just at the beginning.
Anecdotally.
I think that you get a lot of people in that decision paralysis where they um want to absolut I gave them so many tools that they can optimize this thing perfectly and
Because of that they
Sit on it for a couple weeks.
Yes, okay, so
Dan Arielli.
Right.
Fabulous um behavioral
Scientists.
Guru.
Would say that if someone was ordering a pizza.
Uh you would start with giving them ten toppings and let them remove them.
Rather than asking them to add them.
So you wanna actually start with here's the bag that most people buy.
Take them to a page where you got a fully loaded bag and they just have to upload a picture or choose a
That colour.
And if they want to remove
Certain things they can.
But you make them do one thing, don't make them do ten.
Right? It shouldn't be that many clicks. Assume they want the very best one and tell them this is the one that everybody else buys.
Everybody wants to do what other people are doing because they think it's right.

And so they will very likely
Find it easier to just do what everybody else is doing, and you need to make it easier for them. And then if they need to upload a photo, right? Um, do you happen to know?
The average age of your customer?
I don't
Um, I would I would fathom it's in the twenties, early thirties.
Okay, so they know how to upload photos.
Right. If you have an older customer, they don't know how to upload photos. So you also have to make it easy for those customers who may not be so tech savvy.
But might have a little bit more money.
But if they're in their twenties and thirties, you're good.
Um and Can I ask?
question? Yeah, go ahead, go ahead and question on the the pricing. So I do it starts at the one forty nine and then you have
price adders for various waterproofing or um
various little features that you can put in there.
Should I I've been thinking about doing the like one click purchase type of thing. It automatically sets it up.
Which approach there do you think
You know, one builds the cost up in w way that people are like recognizing the value of the item they're adding, maybe? Um, or should I just
jump to the this is five additional features on there.
I would show three bags.
I would choose small, medium, and large.
Right.
Very often people feel more responsible if they just go for the medium.
They feel cheap if they go for the small.
Okay.
They feel
It's really.
Crazy, but these things are very true. So start with something that's one click. I think it is about reducing
The complication in terms of what should they choose?
Um
And you could even say like X people chose this one today. X people chose this one today, or this one's the bestseller. Uh and you see all of these when you go to websites, you see all the times that people sort of guiding people towards what the best selling one is because
People will think that if a lot of other people did it, it must be the right thing to do. It's just how the human brain works. And then get your
Follow up emails in order so that you are communicating with those customers.
regular. They were excited about that bag. You know it's a great thing and it's really practical for them. Don't don't let them forget, right?
Um and
Yeah, just
Don't feel shy about following up and
sending those emails'cause if you don't, somebody else is gonna get them.
Mm.
That's great advice. Yeah, great advice. Jack Bolan, the brand is called Wampy Bikes, thanks so much for calling in. Good luck.
Thank you so much. This has been so helpful and wonderful to meet you two of you, so.
Thanks, Sha.
Thank you.
Marcia.
Uh great.
Great advice. My God, I just loved this.
I loved it.
Super helpful.
Very practical. I'm I'm practical. For sure. And also thank you for helping me out while I'm getting through this
Um Marcy, before I let you go, um
You know, it's something I I I ask every guest who comes onto the ice line, which is what
what would you you know, now that you have all of this experience, what would you if you could go back to you when you started out, you know, at you know, New York giving facials and then bliss
What advice do you have now that would have been helpful for you back then?
Oh so much. There is a mountain of advice and I'm giving it to people all the time. Uh it was a very different time, of course, and we didn't have the internet to get feedback on. I think that's a real gift to new entrepreneurs today because you can put your thing out there and just
get straight immediate feedback from people and listen to it and use it as a tool.
Yeah.
So um I was very hands on in my businesses and we had to take quite a few
cannonball fires be you know, before bullets where you had to take some big risks. I think taking small risks and learning without you know
Betting the farm um is a is a great piece of advice for anybody who's a young startup, founder, who is you know, working on their own and working on a limited budget.
That's great advice. That's Marcia Kilgore, serial entrepreneur and founder of Beauty Pie. Marcia, thanks so much.
Stay alive, guy, no matter what cold occurs.
And by the way, if you haven't heard Marcia's original How I Built This Episode, you've gotta go back and check it out. Uh you will find a link to it in the podcast description, and here is one of my favorite moments.

I treated myself to a facial after an economics exam and I had saved
forty or fifty dollars to go to this place that was supposed to be the be all and end all of facials. And I remember walking into that place and the esthetician looked through the lamp at my skin and she actually went

What a pity.
And I thought to myself
This is not a treat.
And I left feeling so horrendous. And I remember just seeing my reflection and my face was kind of raw and blotchy and thinking, if I ever had a place like that, I would never make my customers feel bad about themselves.
Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at gyros.com Each week it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever.
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This episode was produced by Carla Esteves with music composed by Remtin Areblui. It was edited by Andrea Bruce. Our audio engineer was Cena Lafredo.
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I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to the advice line.
on how I built this lab.