Randi Shinder: Founder & CEO of SBLA Beauty

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 down 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. I am so so excited to have our next guest with us here today we have Randi Shinder, who is a true pioneer in the beauty industry and the founder and CEO of an incredible brand that you may or may not have heard of, but I bet you may have seen some of her products that she has developed. The company is called SBLA Beauty and Randi’s journey and transforming beauty standards began with the launch of some iconic brands that she developed for some amazing, amazing people. One of the brands was clean perfume and another one was desert beauty, setting new benchmarks in the fragrance market. And then in 2018, she took a groundbreaking turn with SP la beauty revolutionising skincare with products like the neck chin and jaw line sculpting wand, which sold over a million units worldwide. Wow. So amazing and continued to do the XL, which became the first topical solution backed by Harvard medical research, and then the recent additions. Oh my God, you have to hear all about these. I can’t wait for Randi to talk to us a little bit more about them. But they are absolutely amazing. The Eye Lift wand and the Liquid Facelift wand continue to push the boundaries of non invasive anti aging technology. So we’re gonna get into Randi’s journey. Obviously, she’s a serial entrepreneur has done incredible things and really knows how to fill white spaces in the beauty industry. So without further ado, welcome, Randi.

Randi Shinder 2:27
Thank you so much for having me, Karen. Super, super excited

Kara Goldin 2:31
that you’re here and finally got a chance to meet you. So what initially drew you into the beauty industry? And what were the early inspirations aspirations of Randi.

Randi Shinder 2:44
So I’ve always been obsessed with fragrance and even as a kid, even though I don’t really particularly where we’re like fragrance very much. I had been the CEO of a.com with 2 million users during the.com crash but the actual premise behind it was actually a cyber currency for the generation that was using the internet the most at the time. Britney Spears was one of my partners. And so it was Justin Timberlake. We actually did the largest webcast at the time that was aired by Yeah, who I still have all the tapes. It’s actually really fun. So they went we closed down Bloomingdale’s and FAO Schwarz over Christmas. And they went to our sponsors like diesel jeans or Lucky Brand Jeans or Nintendo etc. And they were able to Urban Decay makeup, they were able to play with all the sponsors, you know, the brand products or the new releases for holiday. And as a result of that, it had a huge it would we had a huge webcast. Yeah, who sponsored it or aired it. At the time, there was no Google or anything like that. It was a much different landscape. And the consumer on the back end, which was then there’s 2 million of them, they collected what’s called was called you dollars. And we were partnering the Simon brand malls to use that currency in their malls. So essentially, it was the first cyber currency before its time. After the.com bust, we were acquired by a public company. And I had shares that were built they had they were restricted. So once they were unrestricted, they were essentially worthless. The chairman had been charged with securities fraud and all kinds of nonsense like that. I read about it in the newspaper, woke up one morning and I instead of getting all upset, which really wouldn’t have, I didn’t I just felt that that’s not like I’ve always been brought up to realize my father’s an accountant and I’ve always been told, yeah, it’s not yours until it’s yours. So there’s just a piece of paper and instead of getting upset, I I turned to my then husband were since divorced and said, I’m going to start a perfume. And I mean, everybody thought I was crazy, literally like everybody in my personal life. And I went to New York and I met with the president of my then ad agency, and she brought in a PR executive, and I bounced it off them. And I said, Am I crazy to do this? And they said, No. And as a result of that PR, executive being there, they invited me to, to actually present it at the Grammy depot and the Grammys were being held in New York that year at the W. So the actual depot when all the nominees and presenters used to actually go to those things. It was being they actually still went at that time, I shared a spacewalk with rockin Republic jeans. And I had a step and repeat wall and the hotel and put bottles of clean perfume all over the place. And I had a dip tube that showed and I had a stock bottle and I had a label that was peeling and no cartons and no points of distribution. People were grabbing bottles. I got a call that evening that Steven Kadri Caro, who wrote the insert the star watch column for People Magazine and hosted him tonight was writing about it in the first item in Star watch, panicked, put up a website. And I took email addresses 1000s and 1000s of them and wrote to everybody individually, and said it’ll be available soon. And I really had no idea how that was going to happen. But I never had to call a buyer because people were frantically running into stores and asked me if they had clean perfume. I remember my ex husband asking me if there was a perfume crisis in America that we knew nothing about. And from there, so it ended up in Sephora as an example. But it was very well received. It created a new category on the fragrance wheel. And I worked with Michael Edwards to actually sort of figure out how that category should work and he was sort of the guru of perfumes and created the Bible every year. He was in Australia and and now clean perfume is still available worldwide. I sold it in mid 2000s. And but it’s still in every Sephora store. I still see it all the time. I still get messages from people I think people still think I own it to some degree. So but I’m always very proud of that. That was my my paintings. And then from there, Jessica Simpson’s management. She loved clean perfume. contacted me it was Willamina at the time, and they asked me if I would do put together a brand for Jessica. I did and we created dessert beauty. It was 33 skews on launch. Sephora negotiated exclusivity for the first six months for prestige. It then went into other retailers and then the mass market came calling and we created dessert treats and then Walmart came calling it we did a specific line for them called sweet kisses, which was the name of her album at the time. The newlyweds was just beginning to air as she was getting married. There was this you know, angelic halo around Jessica. And there’s that iconic image of Jessica still in the pink boost j with the cupcake in her hand the icing on her finger the J ring which sort of copy with my initials. And I you know I always say if there’s something that’s considered beauty pop culture that ad sexy girls were desert and Jessica and that image sort of, isn’t it and just like some mac campaigns would be considered in that category. And I don’t overthink it but I do believe I still get messages to this day to bring deserve beauty back I saw recently in the past couple of weeks on Tik Tok. Somebody said somebody called radish Jenner to give Jessica Simpson a call. I mean, it’s you know, Snapchat does story InStyle did a story BuzzFeed did a story the world was a better place with dessert beauty in it because it was so playful and fun and taste and Bill lickable you know, just kissable like that was really the idea behind it. So it was a multisensory brand, and it was 33 skews on launch a triple gondola. It’s four It was big. It was a big launch, that I had never done anything that large. We had a huge kickoff event at marquee in New York. It

Kara Goldin 9:50
was fun. So fun. Yeah,

Randi Shinder 9:52
I just got used. I got to experience the paparazzi firsthand and that wasn’t so fun. So that was something that I It didn’t really, you know, enjoy that much. But it was, you know, it was around for a number of years, as long as our contract went, and then Jessica had created her, her, you know, her transaction with Vince Camuto. And could have kept the beauty category. But to be honest, it just, it didn’t make sense to me to continue with the brand. Just in terms of you know, she had Nick, we’re getting divorce, there’s a lot of stuff around it. And I just decided that even though I own the intellectual property for it, I just decided it was enough. And so some brands have a lifespan and this sort of kind of learned. And then, because of their beauty was so successful, my manufacturer came to me with a microsphere, which was collagen that could penetrate the superficial layers of the skin. And they said, If we give this to you exclusively, on shell for 18 months, what will you do with it? And I said, Well, I think I’ll create a lip plumper. There were no lip lovers at the time, it didn’t exist. So we created lip fusion, which everybody used and had and you know, spoken with supermodels since then at Victoria’s Secret. On the Victoria’s Secret runway, everybody. Well, everybody, we’re live fusion period. And in the first calendar year, which made up of approximately nine months in stock. Again, it was an exclusive to Sephora in terms of the launch, but it was an interesting partnership, because they bought 100,000 units initially, of the original formulation, and they were gone in a day, they were selling on ebay for about $200 a unit. I mean, there’s just so mind boggling to me. So they actually bought millions of components. And they said we’re gonna send it to your manufacturer, and we’ll, we’ll issue purchase orders. And when we pay, you will deduct the cost of the component only. So they we kind of partnered in an interesting way. You know, I’ll never forget walking through the shops leaves a store and every pillar and there was a lip fusion component, and there was lip plumping bars across the store. And there were plasma screens when you walked in either entrance. And like, it was very, I mean, they call it an animation. But I’ve never seen anything animated like that before, since to be honest. And it was just an incredible brand. And because so we sold about 33 million at wholesale in the first calendar year of in stock, which is about a $70 million brand for Sephora. So dessert was the first brand to hit over $10 million at Sephora. And then fusion was the first brand to hit over $50 million dollars at Sephora. And so, you know, I essentially had a very interesting relationship with Sephora. I still, you know, the current president and the head of skincare, you know, are the two people that are sort of left there, but I still maintain relationships with the people who’ve left and, and moved on to other careers. And the former president, of course, and you know, it’s just, it was quite an experience, I always considered that, you know, first phase of life in the beauty industry. And kind of a yeah, for me as an independent and, and then, of course, I realized because of the, you know, the the number of units sold by lip fusion. And then into, we went into different categories like skincare called Lip fusion, and we do glow fusion. So we were using the glow word, as you know, which is now such a key buzzword and beauty, but we were using it a long time ago, I sold fusion and clean together under one umbrella. I had offers from about a month after or two months after I launched live fusion. Wow. Wow. So it was interesting times, you

Kara Goldin 13:58
jumped into this industry without having experience, which I think a lot of people, even industry experts would say there’s no way you could penetrate the beauty industry. You know, just by walking in. I mean, you’re an example of that you’re there. You’re an anomaly probably to some extent, but it’s possible Never Say Never as I tell people, especially if you have an idea, and you have resilience and all of creativity and you find the white space, do you think it’s still possible today for people to go into different industries and and try and create something well won’t

Randi Shinder 14:35
really be barriers to entry at all. So never really have you know, my my dad or my parents will joke with me that the word no doesn’t really exist in my vocabulary. So me so I just I really felt and I still do believe that if you you know there’s a lot of You can read a lot today about the industry and there are more brands than ever before. And the brands that are standing out are the brands that that stand out the ones that make a difference. And the brands that don’t make a difference. But it’s interesting because you have a lot of brands doing the same thing, selling the same kinds of products. And it’s more about how you create brands and how you build on your story and the way in which you do so more so than anything else. So it’s an interesting time. I mean, I went after my liquidity event, which was in 2006, I had to stay on as CEO for three years, and which I did. And then in 2009, I sold my remaining equity. And I had a three year long repeat after that, which was Mike, it just took me right out of you know, beauty for a while I had just had to stop looking in that direction. So the lead investor in Utopia was BMG, Sony, so the president of BMG Sony, in Canada, because I was in Toronto at the time, you know, I did some work with them, just to keep busy, I’m not really somebody that’s great at just not doing anything, or not having anything to do, which are two different things, I guess. But so, you know, I can, I can be pretty particular with my time and where I want to spend it. But at the same time, you know, once you create a brand, you’re married to that brand, eat sleep, read it. But when I reentered the industry, I started a brand was Sophia Bush called I Smell Great, which was technology in fragrance and, and salaries. And I find myself with it, like history is repeating itself a bit because I had clean which I was ignoring somewhat in favor of fusion beauty, because at the end of the day, everybody only has so much bandwidth. And, you know, fusion beauty became the marquee brand of the three that I owned at that time. And I will say this, I mean, when I was running three brands, and as in a three story walk up with six or seven employees, and, you know, number one would ever make more money in my life. And number two, you know, we were lean, very busy and wildly successful. And working on three brands. It was a lot, though. But yeah, and now I have my smell great, which is there, it’s still on the brand that exists. So it still sells even though we don’t market it. And I’m working on a relaunch plan for it. And but then I have FBLA and when we launched FBLA. So this is sort of like, a little bit of a similar story to what happened with lip fusion. Not to the same extent except it does No, I’m not margin sharing with a retail. I decided to do this on a DTC sort of basis, I smell great. There was no such thing as digital ads. So I’d really didn’t understand as a marketer. When I came back into the industry how to market one thing to say I make great product. And I’m and I fill voids, it’s another thing to know what to do with it. Either you know how to build a brand how to market it, or you don’t and that’s a very key element in this industry, I believe. So. And I think you would understand that from Pentwater. So that’s a pretty crowded space, too. So I think that you know, I came out of the D noncompete. And I looked around and thought, Okay, well, nobody’s reading magazines anymore. So it’s not about buying a double truck at the beginning of InStyle. And knowing that you’re going to sell out and it’s not about there were no digital ads. So unless Sofia posted on her grid, we weren’t selling product, and I didn’t really understand how to make that work. Now there are of course your digital ads. I created the neck sculpting wand because I’m 57 years old, but I created it in my early in my early 50s and looked at neck areas the first area to age you know I don’t want I’m not a fan of like jowls or crepey skin or anything like that and i i I’m not having any surgery. I don’t really have injectables other than Botox here or there, mainly just you know, in the brow area, they’re pretty careful with women over 50 and I wanted to create a technology that was extremely targeted and I wanted to use the device that I had found which had an antimicrobial antimicrobial application and 104 measured doses So it was very unique in that sense. And I did a production shoot in Montreal, with a group, and we brought in real people, and we had them actually discussing the, you know, they’re how the brand, how the product felt to them, what their results looked like on an iPad, they could see where they started and where they ended up after application. And it was, I realized this was this was something that was really interesting to would be really interesting to market in that direct direct space on digital media. And we did, and got to the point where if somebody hadn’t heard of the brand, Isaiah, you know, the ones that you see on Facebook, and everybody knew what I was talking about. And so we sold in the first five months, which is, as long as we had inventory, so that the first calendar year, we were in stock for five months, and we sold on a $3 million ad buy with Facebook, we sold $8.2 million. So again, I had a situation where I realized, again, this is not a vertical launch, you know, there’s a there’s a brand here and more, two more to come the neck, one XL was launched, which has additional technology in it, and the initial one is based on macro sphere technology. That’s the original mech wind, which gets rid of your sun damage, and tricks your skin into behaving the way it did, when it was in when you were in your prime. So essentially, what your neck looked like when you were, you know, in your 20s or 30s. And it takes about 1717 days of cumulative views to actually you see results right away. But at that point, you know, as long as you continue using it, you really start to see the benefits and inequities. So very

Kara Goldin 22:03
good. Oh, sorry, I just wanted to ask you so on that one in particular on that product for people who haven’t seen it, just to kind of give them a visual of it. So it’s not just, it is a device, but it’s also the liquid, too. So there’s two components to this, do you want to talk just a little bit about both of those and kind of what you’ve developed?

Randi Shinder 22:27
Well, so I’ve really believe in Arelis componentry, just because I think it’s safer. I’ve always felt that way, to some degree. I’ve seen things go wrong. In my brands only once. But I’ve seen I’ve heard just horror stories of you know, and Mike like just things that you just we go through a lot of a lot of safety testing or IPG testing, you know, will run clinicals like we’re, we’re pretty careful. And I know that that has that has become it was all these brands come in from all over the world, I think it’s really important to maintain that kind of integrity, and, and make that part of your brand promise. So I, I wanted, so I wanted errorless components, I wanted people to be able to have an antimicrobial application. And I wanted them to vigorously be able to use it in a comfortable way, without necessarily feeling like there was a film of something on their skin. So how it was formulated mattered a lot to me, and at all, all my formulations matter a lot to me. So I won’t put my name on something until I feel really comfortable releasing it. And I wanted to so I knew that it was actually working with your essentially your Physiol physiological like, you know, aspects of your skin to actually create the macro sphere to actually work. And, and you can see in the before and after results even in the clinicals that we first ran. They were very significant. So necklace lines, the horizontal lines that go across your neck were minimized, you know, and the neck area was smooth and tightened. And most importantly, and I remember Christie Brinkley did an ad about this, but she had like a V pattern in her chest and just just from aging and sun damage from being in the sun a lot. And it just completely disappeared over a couple of weeks. And that, to me is the magic of the industry if you can actually show that and it’s authentic and real. Instead of just wiping a you know, some kind of a filter something over it like actually show people’s real results. So we were very focused on real people in real results. And the thing that makes me the happiest is when I get A a solicited, you know, I don’t know like just like something like a note from people where they just said like, thank you so much for creating this like the neck wand XL, as it has a unique property in it that triggers irisin, which is a hormone that your body makes naturally when you exercise. So but it does it topically, so people have literally minimized creepiness or there are a double chin, and tightened up, wow. And I’ve seen one woman in particular that I follow, just because she got in touch with me. And I mean, she was on a weight loss journey, and just what her wanting, just tighten her whole neck area. I mean, and I’ve read so many great testimonials that I didn’t we didn’t ask for. So we don’t typically go out and ask for testimonials the way a lot of brands do. I don’t think it’s against human nature to write a really nice testimonial for a company, it’s more, you’re more likely to receive something nasty, like, oh, this didn’t work for me or whatever. But you know, the ones that are really positive, are so appreciated.

Kara Goldin 26:16
Yeah, I think I always tell people, that those consumer love letters that founders get to are, you know, incredible. And sometimes the thing that keeps them going, right, because to be an entrepreneur is really tough. And at any stage, whether you’re just in the zero to 1 million, or five to 20 million, or whatever it is, they all have their own kind of challenges. But I think those love letters along the way are just are super powerful, and especially the ones where you don’t know who this person is, or I mean, the ones where you know who the people are, like a Christie Brinkley for sure, are nice to get to. But I think that when you hear it from a consumer that says you saved my life, or oh my gosh, I’ve spent so much money before and now I purchased yours. And it’s, you know, life changing for sure. So what does FBLA beauty stand for?

Randi Shinder 27:17
It’s kind of evolved, because it was like when I said it was supposed to be like a vertical and single SKU, you know, launch, it started out with a celebrity makeup artist that, you know, sort of was doing a lot of very famous faces, but didn’t really know what to do for the neck and jaw line area for for some of his clients who are getting older. So we kind of had him involved, but then that just didn’t make any sense anymore. So it stands for scientific beauty. And it was created in LA. So that’s it just turned into that. And you know, we’ve completely rebranded a few years ago, and just and that’s s Bailey beauty.

Kara Goldin 27:57
I love it. So as I was chatting about before, so you’ve got the liquid and then you’ve got the device. And so it’s important to use the device right with the liquid and I know you have inside the directions, you talk about that. So whenever you’re trying to educate the consumer, it’s always kind of challenging. I think maybe it’s easier now with social media, whether it’s tic tock or Facebook or whatever. But like how difficult Do you think that is? It’s like another step right to make sure that your consumer is getting it What would you say to that? Well,

Randi Shinder 28:33
I think and I learned this in the early years with especially with Fusion beauty that education is a huge component of this industry. So I’m not you know, I’m not I’ve never been in the color cosmetics world and I always say the world doesn’t need another shade of red lipstick. I mean quite frankly, Charlotte Tilbury has put out there 20 Different ones I don’t like I’m not interested in competing in that in that category. Nor do I know enough about it nor am I interested enough so I I like clinical skincare that has very targeted technology and I like creating it and I like fragrance fragrance is just a passion. So the as an example we just sort of Recently we launched our eyelift wand. I can’t keep it in stock. We’re about to hit our sixth sellout. So people who have used it we probably have the most testimonials from the neck wand XL and the eyelift one guy This one in particular, you know that’s opened people’s eyes, people who are considering you know, eyes surgery or don’t know what to do. I think it’s if you’d ask any injector or dermatologist, it is the area that is of the most concern for women who are aging. Women look at their eyes getting smaller, becoming more sunken, whatever the story is, and they don’t know what to do. So if they’re not resorting to surgery or other much more invasive, you know, downtime procedures, where they’re literally lasering the skin on their eyelids or underneath the eye wand really, really, really works. And we did an extra layer of safety testing on it in case you know, the product got into people’s eyes, as well as we just finished clinicals that came out with such significant results with like a 35 person panel, which, you know, I was a little bit nervous to do, but we ran, you know, third party, arm’s length clinicals. And every every single statistic is between 95 and 100% of participants saw X saw their eye open, their eyes were brighter, their hooded eyelids were lifted, their under eye discoloration or bags, you know, were eliminated. I mean, it’s it’s a remarkable product. And it’s the only formulation that we’ve actually patented because it has a unique, it’s really a unique peptide or molecule that that we’ve put into it that just completely opens the, you know, the eye area. And it’s something that I thought about, and I actually directed that particular molecule. So first, I’ve actually said, This is what I want you to use, and I want you to use it, like under the cosmetic standards, and I want it to work. So you know it did vary in the way it works is you do various percentages, and your lab will send it to you and you try it out at all different ones that I have all these little before and after. So I went to all these different people and had sent it to people to try it and other people, doctors and dentists and people who were just all women who were in their 50s and 60s, I even tried it on my father who’s in his early 80s. And I mean, I saw results on everybody, immediately. So I just thought, okay, like I’m very, I would look at the proof of concept before we even start to manufacture. But that I want it’s something else. And

Kara Goldin 32:33
so it’s not just the ingredients to you’re actually using the device to in a certain way to make sure how would you do it? I’m just curious. Well, for me,

Randi Shinder 32:43
I mean, like I want, I want to lift open, so I would use the device and I would be lifting while I’m using it and and then I would extend it outwards. And then I don’t have a lot and never have had a lot going on underneath my eyes, but a lot of women do. As a matter of fact, I would go I would go so far as to say the majority of women do. So an interesting thing is that we just filmed about eight hours of footage for Empower, we’ll just make Ryan’s new. It’s a series on different industries. So we’re, we were chosen as the, you know, the female lead beauty brand. We just finished filming and we’re, we’re editing right now. But it was I did an application, which I typically don’t do have all the products on, you know, a model that we had brought in and I don’t know why I’m pointing but it was, it was so much fun to to do that because she had she had very large bags under her eyes, and she had very bad discoloration. So you know her lip line. She also had no very strong nasal labial folds. She had like, divots, I don’t know what they’re called, but like, like almost like puppet like lines, which are not. And so I used all the various products on her. And when I started using the eye one as an example, I I could watch her I could see that her I was just opening up I was doing one eye at a time to show her the difference between each eye. So we captured her responses in real time, which is of course the best UGC you can possibly actually create, which is stands for user generated content for those who don’t know and it’s and as a founder, it was just I was almost getting excitement. So and then you know, I was using it under her I was getting really really good results. So I I brought all the puffiness down and the Then, but the discoloration was still there. And then I started to use the Liquid Facelift wall, which is new technology. And it’s our newest launch, it has lymphatic drainage it has, there’s more roller balls on it. So it’s meant to be used to actually really like chisel the cheekbone, you know, really instrumental in defining the jaw line on top of the neck wand, lifting, like if you have horizontal forehead lines, so I use her forehead lines, and they were just disappearing in front of my eyes. And my coo was standing, you know, a number of feet away, and he could see it too. And it was, it was just funny, I think my reaction is probably more interesting than hers. And then I thought, You know what, I’m going to try it on her discoloration, just to see what happens. And as I was wanting her discoloration completely disappear.

Kara Goldin 36:03
So just for the day, just one use.

Randi Shinder 36:06
And I said I asked her to please not wash her face, when she went home, I said Have dinner. And I really appreciate if you sent me a picture of yourself in a few hours. Because I know that the I won, for example, I know that a couple hours in you get maximum benefits from it. So just the absorption and it like doing its thing, I can’t really explain it from a physiological standpoint, I don’t really not chemists, so you have to put a lab coat on and pretended to be one either. So but she did and like I took her before it, I spliced it with her after and it was like, unbelievable, is

Kara Goldin 36:47
amazing. So when you’re creating these incredible products, obviously you want them to be really successful. But what’s the most challenging thing about launching a company when you you know, your friends are thinking you’re, you’re amazing, you’re so successful? You know, you don’t want to say no, I’m not because obviously you’ve done a lot of incredible things. But it’s really, really hard to launch a brand. Right? And it’s exhausting. You and I were both chatting at the beginning, before we hit record. It’s It’s tiring, right. But what is the hardest part to think about launching a company launching a brand? Well,

Randi Shinder 37:29
first of all, I think you have to realize that I mean, nothing’s more important to me than my two children, nothing, and nothing will ever be. However, when you launch a brand, you have to understand that that brand almost becomes like, it’s almost like having a child because you have to nurture it, you have to grow it. You kind of eat, sleep and breathe it. You worry about it the way you worry about your kids. That’s the best analogy that I can give. Because, you know, one of the things that was interesting is when I had my liquidity event, and I sold a majority stake of fusion as well as clean perfume. I realized I realized number of things from a business perspective. Besides from that, I was really emotional about that. And I remember my lawyers saying to me, what’s wrong with you, you know, like you, you just got this much money. And I said, Well, it’s on both that said, there’s nothing that’s been changed about the home I live in, or the car I drive, or the way I like, where I traveled to or how I try, like nothing’s gonna change in my life, this isn’t really about me. And that sort of a sort of realizing that it’s, there’s more to it than just, you know, than just making money. And I’ve always believed that people go that go into something and try to add up how much money they’re going to make, they’ll never be successful at it, because it’s just not the way you enter into a business that you feel very passionate about. And the passion is what drives you to make it bigger and better and more successful. It can’t be the dollars, of course you want your profitability, and you have to make sure your, you know, your marketing spends are in check. And, you know, and all of that. However, I do believe that there’s more to it than that. It’s it’s literally your intellectual property, that you’re, you’re selling something that is a part of you that you sort of that belong to and I don’t hear a lot of founders talking from that perspective, and maybe they don’t feel the same way that I do, but that’s how I feel about it. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 39:39
I definitely I think there are. I’ve talked to many founders, and I think that that’s definitely the case and more so with b2c than I think b2b But but you see it with some b2b as well and people talk about it. I mean, the founder of Airbnb, I mean, the founder have, you know many other companies that are in the beauty space and in the beverage industry, but I also think that you definitely see when the passion leaves the room that that sales start to diminish. And it’s, you know, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting conversation for sure, because I think it really does happen in every industry. And I think if you don’t have people call it, the why. But I do think it’s the passion. And it’s, it’s the storytelling, it’s all of the things that you’ve obviously been so good at, but creative and believe in it.

Randi Shinder 40:42
Yeah, one of the things I just I talked to my CEO about, you know, over the past weekend was, you know, I sort of created like a little bit of a Bible in terms of marketing and how to market and I said, there’s a few things here, number one, if like a fifth grader doesn’t understand essentially what he’s reading or can’t pronounce the words, don’t put it in your marketing speak. Even though this is a clinical brand, it’s important that people start to understand it, number one. Number two, the consumer is more savvy and intelligent than I believe a lot of brands give them credit for. So I’ve always spoken to the consumer in somewhat of a scientific way, saying, here’s the weird, like, you know, petri dish, sort of what happens, imagery for you, because I want you to see it. And then it is a before and afters, they have to be authentic. And, and people’s testimonials have to be authentic. And that’s why I love that we capture so many of them on camera, it’s very important to me. And then the formulations like, and that’s the thing, I always ask the question, so many brands, big claims. But I always say, I want to where’s your science? Where’s your science and explain it to him? We don’t give me some crazy concoction, that I’ll never understand because you made it up. Just tell me how this works. And why, like you said the why. Why are you creating this brand? How is it going to help me and because that’s really what matters. And one of the things in my marketing Bible is identify the problem and provide them with the solution, and then make sure they can understand it as other fifth grader, it’s very, very clear to me how marketing should work. And I also maintain, if we get press, for example. And there’s an article like last week, there was an article in InStyle magazine was fairly lengthy about about the brand. And blues, it was about one product or two, I can’t remember exactly, but it was about the brand primarily. And Noah called up the Liquid Facelift wand as well as the I think the neck wand. And I am, I just took the main quotes from MIT that really were understandable and would speak to the consumer, as opposed to the entire article because it doesn’t, you know, the six year old woman who bought it indicated that it took at least 10 years off of her neck. And to me, that was the relatable quote, and that was part of the that was part of the headline of the article. And I also love when press like that comes out, and you’re not expecting it. And so, you know, just like the, there is a lot of I guess, the things that you find, like, you know, a lot of things that make you happy, that make me happy, and you as a candidate for each other people are reading about the brand in such a positive light, and also people’s experiences with it, and how, you know, what, what their, how it solve their issues, and how we’ve been able to help them on their journey daging more beautifully. And more graciously, and on their own terms. It’s an it’s, I think it’s a brand that is filled with empowerment, so people can and interestingly, you know, we sort of had the pandemic and we launched it, you know, like, we had products launching and we gave women and men the opportunity to use our devices with our targeted technologies in their homes while they were under lockdown without having to go to their germs or have laser appointments or injectables or anything like that gave them an opportunity to actually continue to look good when they were on their zoom calls or whatever the case may be. They just felt better. Yeah, well, and I

Kara Goldin 44:48
also think that if you took all of your points that you just made, if you spell it out to the consumer, and they know why they’re purchasing something, those are the companies that act To only survive and do really well, especially in down economies, it’s, it’s you shouldn’t be maybe your sales are hit a little bit more when people don’t have as much money to spend, and they’re being more careful. But if something really works, then people are not going to not purchase something, or I’ve just seen this over and over again with hint. And I think it’s it really is you just have to be able to be out there and market to them and kind of talk to them a little bit more about about it in a very simple way. It can’t be too over anyone’s head. So I think the fifth grade example is is a perfect example for sure. So I know you all are coming up with lots of new technology moving forward, I’m not going to ask you to disclose any of that. But I am going to tell everybody to you know, keep watching you and definitely go to your website and let people know that you’re out there obviously purchase the products too. They’re awesome. The Eye Lift is really amazing. I need to do more of that. And I need to try the facelift one for sure. And such a pleasure. You are so inspiring and definitely a woman to watch in this space, not just to beauty but also just of entrepreneurship and doing incredible things. So have a wonderful rest of the week. And thank you everyone for listening. We’ll have all of Randi’s info and SBLA Beauty in the show notes as well. So thanks again.

Randi Shinder 46:32
Thank you so much, Kara.

Kara Goldin 46:34
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 good bye for now.