Lilly Ghalichi: Founder & CEO of Lilly Lashes

Episode 728

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, I’m joined by Lilly Ghalichi, CEO and Founder of Lilly Lashes—an incredible company focused on all things lashes, from pioneering 3D lash designs to creating luxurious styles that flatter every eye shape and occasion. Since launching in 2013, Lilly Lashes has become a global beauty powerhouse with a celebrity following and a reputation for inclusivity, innovation, and quality.
In our conversation, Lilly shares her journey from practicing law to launching a category-defining beauty brand, the inspiration behind creating the 3D lash concept, and how she built a loyal fanbase in an ultra-competitive market. We talk about the challenges of scaling a luxury product, the role social media has played in her brand’s growth, and the lessons she’s learned from launching multiple companies in the beauty space. She opens up about balancing business with motherhood, the importance of staying authentic, and what it takes to keep innovating when you’re already at the top of your category.
Whether you’re a beauty lover, aspiring entrepreneur, or someone curious about building a bold and lasting brand—this episode is full of insights and inspiration. Now on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up, that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control, control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. So excited to have my next guest. We have Lilly Ghalichi, who is the founder and CEO of Lilly Lashes, an incredible company focused on all things lashes, including innovative 3d lash designs, lux materials and styles for every eye shape and occasion. Yes, there are different eye shapes, in case you hadn’t thought about that, but you may know Lilly from her days as a reality TV star, but behind the glam is a powerhouse entrepreneur. She’s also an attorney and multi brand founder who has built a huge global beauty empire. So since launching Lilly Lashes in 2013 she’s transformed the lash category with products that deliver inclusivity, quality and drama, earning a loyal celebrity following and a presence in beauty lovers makeup bags worldwide. So I cannot wait to dive into her journey and hear all about scaling from nothing to something and a big something now. So Lilly, thank you so much for joining us. I’m super excited about this.

Lilly Ghalichi 1:57
Thank you, Kara, that was the warmest welcome ever. I’m so excited to give you all the tea today. No, hold back.

Kara Goldin 2:05
Awesome. So, okay, so let’s start at the beginning. What was the earliest spark that you wanted to create? Lilly Lashes? I mean, you talked a little bit about you were a practicing attorney before, and you always loved lashes and loved, you know, having lots of them, but it’s one thing to like it. It’s another thing to start a business around it. So can you talk about that?

Lilly Ghalichi 2:32
Of course, and that’s such a great question. I’m so happy you asked that because I didn’t set out to start a lash line. I didn’t wake up one day and say, You know what? I want to start a prestige lash line. No, I was merely being my authentic self. I was living what made me feel beautiful. And for me, I like glam. I love heavy makeup. I love dramatic lashes. And at the time, I was a lawyer, and there were no lash options on the market for me, I would spend so much time cutting, gluing, putting lashes together to make the looks that I wanted. There were either barely there, human hair lashes or Halloween, plastic glitter, purple, synthetic lashes. There was no in between, so I created Lilly Lashes, originally for myself. I wanted a product that I needed for my everyday looks. I wanted to save money, because buying three or four pairs of the human hair lashes was expensive. They were $10 each, then it would take me 20 minutes to be a scientist and put them together. So originally, I sought out to create something for myself. Then they told me that I had to buy 100 units of each and, you know, people have minimum order quantities. And I thought to myself, What am I going to do with 100 of each of these styles? So I put up a blog post. I had a blog at the time, and I went to make a sandwich. This is a true story with my sister in my little condo apartment, and when I came back about an hour or two later, my entire Gmail screen, which I think is 50 emails, was full of women that had seen my blog post, and they were like, yes, I want a pair. There was no price. There was no way to buy. It was just, hey, if you want one of these, I’ve created, email me. And so that was my aha moment, when I was like, wow, being authentically me, even if other people thought it was outrageous. There’s so many other women out there that want to be authentic to themselves and have more glamorous lashes, too. And so I looked at my sister, and I said, I’m gonna start a lash line. And she’s like, You should do it. And I said, I’m gonna call it Lilly Lashes. You know, I was young, and it was exciting, and that’s how I got started.

Kara Goldin 4:53
I love it. So when you describe the brand to someone who has. Never tried it. How do you describe it?

Lilly Ghalichi 5:03
So Lilly Lashes is a prestige lash line. You are going to get a product that you can trust. It’s of the highest quality. It’s of the latest innovation. Our lashes are worn and trusted, not only by millions of amazing women around the world, but some of the most famous faces in the world. We’re talking about, Beyonce, whereas I’m on stage, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, so when our brand is trusted and associated with so many faces that depend on us to be the best anyone can trust that we’re going to be the best, and so that’s really what we pride ourselves on. There’s so many lash lines out there, and there’s so many lines that maybe make styles that look exactly like ours, since they’re so popular, but what you’ll get with the real Lilly Lashes is, I think, a quality and a product that you can trust that you’re not going to get anywhere else. And the analogy I love to give is a car. You know, there is a car and then there’s a Ferrari, or there is a handbag, and then there’s a Birkin. And when you’re getting that Ferrari or that Birkin, you’re getting a quality that you just expect, that you can trust, that it’s going to be the best in every way. And that’s what Lilly Lashes are to the lash world.

Kara Goldin 6:23
So starting in beauty is risky. You had not done a consumer product before. You had an amazing journey as as an attorney. But what gave me the confidence to really launch Lilly Lashes outside of your sister saying you should go do it. You know, it’s one thing for a family member to say, oh, Lilly, you can do anything. Then all of a sudden the rubber hits the road and you have to get your product out there to consumers. But what gave you the confidence to know that, gosh, this might make it

Lilly Ghalichi 6:58
so it’s very scary. Let me start with that. Even if you’re the most confident person, the most educated person, you’re financially backed, whatever it may be, which I was not financially backed, it was not any of those things, it’s still scary. Because you have these thoughts of maybe embarrassment. You have these thoughts of, it’s going to be too hard. I can’t do it. You know, I don’t know enough. I’m not experienced enough, I’m not old enough. I’m very lucky, and I’m gonna give the credit to my mom. I had a mom that I read my earliest memory, maybe in second or third grade. Let’s say I had a quiz that day, my mom would tell me that I was the smartest person, and if anyone could make 100 in this test or quiz, you can do it. And my mom, who was a stay at home mom, you know her, and her and my dad were immigrants, struggling holding you know, my dad had multiple jobs. He had three jobs a day. So it’s not like they had experience that they were so successful, but she just instilled this confidence in me that if anyone could do it, I could. And so in that moment, I just believed in myself, and I tried to remind myself throughout the journey when people would tell me, this is a stupid idea. You don’t know what you’re doing. This is never gonna work, I just tried to remind myself that it was authentic to who I was, and it is what I loved. And I think when you’re that passionate about something, it will give you the confidence to keep going.

Kara Goldin 8:29
Where did you sell your product first? Like, what was the first retailer that took in the product?

Lilly Ghalichi 8:35
So my first retailer was my blog. You had to email me, and then you had to PayPal me, because that was the only way, and I would mail you the lash without a box. So they shipped me 100 units in one box, but they were just on trays, and so that’s how the customers would get my lashes. And these girls were so excited, like YouTubers opening it. Then I started my own website, and the first like, major retailer, because I was just a little girl from Texas, like, I didn’t know what I was doing, believe it or not, was Sephora. And they filled out the contact us form at the bottom of our website, and they were like, hi, it’s Sephora. We want to carry these lashes. And, you know, I had never done retail outreach. I never even thought, like, Oh, my little lash brand could be in Sephora. And then the next thing I know, a month later, Target filled out the contact me. Nordstrom filled out the contact me. I mean, it was wild. We were in retailer after retailer, and every single one of them came from the contact me link at the bottom of our

Kara Goldin 9:49
website. That is so wild. So did you? I would imagine you were using Instagram, yes, back in 2013 and you were, were you teaching people? How to put them on were, in addition where, what were you doing in order to kind of get the word out and make people want to buy

Lilly Ghalichi 10:08
so there was no video on Instagram at this time. It was just photos. There weren’t even stories. And so I would just post my daily glam looks, and that’s sort of how I got attention as, like, one of the first influencers on Instagram is I would do my hair and makeup every day, and I would take a photo like, have my own photo shoot and post it. And I gained a lot of attention that way, most of it making fun of me, if you want me to be honest. Like, why does this girl take pictures of herself every day? There was no selfie concept then, but that’s what I did. I did my makeup every day the way that I love to do it. I used the lashes, I took a photo, and then I posted it on Instagram saying which style I was wearing. And what really catapulted me was not that I was selling lashes, yes, but suddenly Kylie Jenner saw my posts on Instagram, and all these really famous faces and famous makeup artists started to DM me and be like, hey, because we were always sold out on the website. You know, my client is Jennifer Lopez. I’m doing, you know, her residency. We need 100 pairs of Hollywood or a celebrity would DM me themselves and say, I want Miami, and it’s sold out. How can I get Miami? And so it was really the celebrities on Instagram that started to wear my lashes, tag my lashes, or we would just repurpose their photo and tag the lashes. That celebrity sort of clientele is what catapulted

Kara Goldin 11:45
us. So when you think about those early days, what was the first point when you I mean, it sounds like you started getting traction from a lot of different areas, right? I always view it as, like, you know, a timeline, right from when you launched in 2013 to now, maybe you’ve got five or six major places in that timeline where it started spiking. What was that first point when you said, you know, I think I actually have a business here, that it’s that it’s really happening. It’s not just a spike. It’s actually a spike that’s going to lead to a lot of

Lilly Ghalichi 12:24
other growing things. Yeah, so when I launched lashes, and it was the first of the kind, and I just gave it this crazy name, 3d lashes, you know, but it kind of broke social media, massive all these people were like, What is a 3d lash? Like, whether it was positive or negative, like, I need a 3d lash, or how ridiculous? Who wants a 3d lash? We got so much social traction, and we sold out in minutes, minutes, and so I couldn’t make them fast enough they would make, you know, a couple 100, and I was paying to airship them because they were coming from Asia, which was so expensive, but as soon as they would have, like, another 200 I’m like, ship them, ship them. And we already had pre orders to fulfill, and, I mean, we couldn’t keep them in stock. It took us a good six months to get enough inventory, because the problem was Asia didn’t know how to make up. It was the first of its kind, and so only one little factory I had been working with that developed it with me. They were hiring new people and training them, but every single lash to this day is made by hand. And so it was a very tedious process, but that was my first like, wow, we are changing the lash world right now. That’s

Kara Goldin 13:48
amazing. So in terms of your audience, obviously, you have tons of celebrities and and, you know, regular consumers. But did you focus on the consumer market as compared to lash artists. Or how did you think about those two markets? And how do you think about them today?

Lilly Ghalichi 14:09
That’s a great question. I honestly, in the beginning it was very glam girl focused, because that’s who I was that’s those were my original styles. They were very dramatic. That’s what I needed. That didn’t exist. And so it was really the other glam girls, which are mostly major, you know, celebrities or artists, and then their makeup artists that we were tailoring to. We were doing collaborations with a lot of big artists. We were making specific styles that maybe their celebrity client needed, and it wasn’t until later in the evolution of the brand that we say, Wait a minute. Women everywhere want to feel beautiful in our lashes, and maybe they’re not as dramatic as me. Maybe they don’t want to have a full face of makeup. Maybe they’re going to a PTO meeting. Mm, hmm. Maybe they’re going, you know, to a board meeting, or maybe there’s just a more natural girl that likes a little bit of lip gloss, a little bit of blush, but she still wants an altar lash style. So I would say, in the early years of the brand, our focus was really celebrities and celebrity makeup artists, but it evolved to what it is today, which is our focus is the everyday woman across the world, because that’s who makes our brand great, right? There’s only so many celebrities, there’s only so many makeup artists, but there’s what, 3 billion women in the world, and so that’s who we focus on and speak to. Now, trying to make a style for every ethnicity, every eye shape, every occasion,

Kara Goldin 15:44
definitely. So you were not only an attorney, but you also were a part of a reality TV show. How do you think that that’s helped you to build the brand? Or maybe it’s actually hurt in some ways, where you’ve had to explain to people that you’re not just a celebrity or reality TV star, you actually have a business and multiple businesses, and you’ve done a lot of incredible things. But I’d love to hear sort of your, was it a good thing that you did? It? Was it were you sort of like, how do you think? No, I

Lilly Ghalichi 16:22
go back and that myself, I’m gonna throw out there that it was a good thing, because undeniably it gave me visibility. Being on Bravo gives you a platform. It gives you visibility to an audience that but for me, being on that show would have never knew that I existed and I was authentically myself on that show too, which was this over the top, glamazon. So I think the following I gained from that show on social media were women or beauty boys that loved me for my glam, for my hair, for my makeup. And so when I released Lilly Lashes, they were also my customers. It’s the same sector of people, so I’m gonna throw out there that it helped me. But the reason that I quit the show, you know, after only one season and one day of the second season, is I also saw that it was kind of hurting my journey as an entrepreneur, in the sense that it’s very emotionally tolling, it’s very time consuming. I mean, you’re signing up for entertainment. You are being paid to be an entertainer. And classy is an entertaining you know, business is an inter professional isn’t entertaining. They want the drama. And so I realize that I can either stay in this drama filled world of entertainment, or if this is truly my passion, I need to be authentic to myself and quit and focus on being a profession.

Kara Goldin 17:54
Yeah, definitely. So scaling from niche to global takes a ton of strategy, and you have four brands. Is that correct?

Lilly Ghalichi 18:05
I do? I do. Lilly Lashes is my first baby, but once you get the formula down, I tell young people this all the time when I speak, you just have to learn the formula, and you’re gonna fail a lot. I’ve done a lot of things that didn’t work out. Lilly Lashes actually wasn’t my first brand. I had a swimsuit line, which it was amazing, but I learned a lot from that about what didn’t work in consumer goods, and once you figure out the recipe, it’s very easy to replicate in your other areas of passion. You know, whether it’s fashion or skincare. And so I do have other brands. I have a hair line. It’s supplements, you know, gummies, hair vitamins, hair care, shampoos, conditioners, dry shampoos. I have a skincare line for body which I developed when I was pregnant. So it’s like stretch mark creams, body butters, and so all my brands, whatever they may be, I always straight stay true to that formula of it being a product that’s authentic to something I need and I can’t find. And so that’s why I just keep rollin them out.

Kara Goldin 19:17
I love it. And so how do you think that your story and the fact that it started with you trying to solve a problem for yourself, has really helped to really grow the brand, the way grow the brands, I should say that the way that it has, because I’m Such a big believer in starting with a problem, right? Starting with a need. It’s like one thing for people to say, I want to go be an entrepreneur. But if you don’t have the vision to see the problem in front of you and the and really the solve for it, then I think it’s just it’s probably not going to work. Right? Because if you can’t speak to it authentically, I think the consumer is way too smart. I mean, gone are the days where you can just hire a celebrity, pay ’em millions of dollars to come and represent your brand if it doesn’t like if it doesn’t actually fit within their lifestyle. And I think that the founder stories are so much more powerful when you are solving a problem, you’re sharing the story with them, as you’ve done with lashes and your other brands. But then it resonates with people, right? And I think they’re like, Oh, why didn’t I do that? Right? So can you talk about that? Like, what the power of the founder story is

Lilly Ghalichi 20:41
that is such a wonderful question, because I think that power is new to maybe the last 10 to 15 years. You know, brands used to be founded or owned or ran by we didn’t know. We just saw the celebrity that endorsed it. We related to that celebrity, and that was it. But social media has really connected the world, and it provides so much information. So a brand now we know everything about it. We know who the founder is. We know why they started the brand, and I don’t believe my lash line would be as successful as it is today if, for example, it were founded by a man that didn’t wear makeup. How can he authentically have spread the word and shown the world and had the passion to create these styles that I needed for myself? He couldn’t have it just isn’t possible if, if you truly have a need for something, and you create it and you use it to fulfill your need every single day, and you love it and you need it, then that’s what people are going to relate to. They’re going to see that authenticity. And you’re not unique. You’re not one of one I always say that. I mean, we are unique in so many ways, but your problems are not unique when I say you’re not. So whatever your problem may be, there’s millions of other out people out there that have the same problem. So if you can create a product to solve your problem, whether it’s your you know, dry skin, or you want dramatic lashes, then people are going to relate to that. And when you share that story across social media, especially if you have a platform like I was so lucky to have, millions of people are going to relate to that. And that’s very authentic. And I think that’s what makes brands succeed, and all the brands that jump on the bandwagon like, oh, wow, look at this lash line. It’s doing so great. We need to start a lash line. And it’s just a board deciding this and saying, Okay, well, it looks like their best sellers based on the back end of Amazon, are these four styles. So let’s copy those four styles that brand may have like a one hit wonder when they copy your styles, but they’re not going to succeed in the long run because they don’t have the passion to evolve. You know, Lilly Lashes just made the world’s first self adhesive lashes, no glue, no magnets. You peel them off and you stick them on in seconds. Well, why did we create that? Because I’m a mom now and I don’t have time anymore. I used to get ready for two hours every morning. I have 10 minutes, if I’m lucky, taking a shower is like a win for the day. So I needed a better solution. I needed an alternative, because I still wanted to get lashes on. I just didn’t have time to glue them anymore. And so our brand keeps evolving because we have behind it a founder that is a real user and that is passionate about creating new products as I evolve in life that need to evolve with me. And I think that that’s what’s missing from brands that don’t have a good founder story.

Kara Goldin 24:03
Yeah, I totally agree. I have turned so many people on to the self adhesive lashes. And many and many people, frankly, don’t I think I stumbled upon them. I didn’t even see it on social media. I like stumbled upon them, and I’ve turned so many people onto them, and they’re like, how did you find these? Because even people who are not necessarily wearing lashes all the time, they want to go out, they want to get clammed up. And they’re like, Oh my God, these are so easy to just put on, and they’re great. So thank you so much for developing those. So when you think about the biggest challenges that you’ve seen, where maybe, you know, certain days you’re like, I don’t know why I’m doing this, maybe I’m going to go back to law or, you know, I’m sure you’ve had maybe I’m just going to just be a mom, or whatever you’ve said in your head for. A minor moment. What? What is the hardest thing about being an entrepreneur? For you,

Lilly Ghalichi 25:08
I’ll be very honest, it’s that massive mistakes are going to happen, whether they’re in your control or not in your control, but you absorb 100% of the responsibility. It’s your brand. It’s your baby. You can’t turn it off. You know, when I used to work somewhere, I would go to work, I would do my job, and when I would leave, I would turn it off. I was not worried about the problems the company was having. I was not losing sleep over it. As an entrepreneur, you carry that with you all the time, whether you’re with your child or trying to sleep at night, you’re thinking about, like, Oh my God, how are we going to fix this? And I’ll give an example of my first big like, I cried for a week. I thought my business was ruined, so we got into Sephora, okay? That contact me. It was the biggest order I ever had. I mean, hundreds of 1000s of units to fill all the Sephora doors. They wanted to do an exclusive style Lilly Lashes for Sephora. I had to use a second factory because the order was so big. And so they trained this factory that, you know, everyone was on a time crunch. Sephora needed it yesterday. So the lashes arrive, and they’re terrible. Hundreds of 1000s of units of terrible lashes I could not deliver to Sephora, and this was my first order with them, I did not know how to tell them. I was like, That’s it. I’m ruined. Like my brand is over. They’re never gonna and I didn’t know what to do. Should I just send them these lashes? Maybe no one will notice. They’re not 100% you know, my quality. And I decided, no, I’m not gonna do that, because this is my product. You buy Lilly Lashes because you can trust it. And so I told Sephora the truth. I said, I am so sorry. I don’t know how to tell you this. I received these lashes. You don’t need to pay for them, but I cannot sell them to you. We can no longer launch. And they were so accommodating. I did not expect this response. They were like, it happens. We understand how, how much time do you need? And yeah, and so I redid them all. It was an amazing launch. Everyone loved the product. And I don’t know if I’m even allowed to say this, but I’m gonna say it. Sephora gave me permission to sell those even though it had their name on it to TJ Maxx. And so what I thought was this huge loss ended up being amazing, because I got an extra couple 100,000 units sale out of it to TJ Maxx that I didn’t expect. And so my advice there would be, don’t give up when you feel like it’s time to quit, it’s time to reset and rest and think about the best solution. Every problem has a solution, and you’re going to run into problems, so just don’t give up.

Kara Goldin 28:24
I love it. Well, I think that’s a great note to end on such great advice. So Lilly, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your journey and also just being the awesome individual that you are. So Lilly, galicci, founder and CEO of Lilly Lashes. Thank you again. Thank you everyone for listening. Thank you bye. Bye. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. You.