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Yep.
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Joe Wisenthal.
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Have you ever been to a dry bar?
I just I just thought i'd start this conversation as simply as possible.
You don't mean a bar that isn't serving alcohol.
No, but if there were, I would like that. But those are.
Called coffee shops, Joe, No, I have in fact been to a dry bar. I remember when dry bars first became a thing, and it was the sort of novel concept that you could go someplace and have your hair blow dried by a professional, sometimes while having a drink,
or like watching silly movies on TV. And it was it was different to how it had worked historically, because normally you would, you know, maybe you would go to your local hair salon to get a blow dry, or often you would just have a blow dry after getting your hair cut or something like that. But it became this really big thing.
Yeah, absolutely, And I remember, Okay, so I will say I have never you've never been. I assume I have never gotten I think, a proper blowout, but you know, I've gotten my hair done for TV, and so I guess that's the closest gutten. But also I just sort of remember when they started popping up, and it felt like one of those businesses and business models that sort of defined the twenty tens maybe or defined a certain era.
And this sort of idea of the fusion of brick and mortar with booking on an app and the proliferation of new times of stores like that felt like a big part of the twenty tens economy.
Stores which were providing a service and also an experience because I remember the experiential portion of it was a big part of the offering. So again, you could go get your hair blow dried for forty or sixty minutes or however long it takes, and you could have a cocktail while you did it, and a lot.
Of these they did do it. You could have a cocktail.
Yes, oh my gosh, yes, that was a big like part of it. And a lot of the stores, well, I'm thinking of one in particular because it is going to be the topic of this podcast. The original dry bar offered. You know, they would have movie screens like the TVs built in and you could watch like rom coms from the early two thousands. It was great.
The experience economy, You're right, that was like such a big part of the story where that was such a big part of what people talked about people wanting to have high quality experiences something above maybe some of the old dingy physical retail physical service locations of the past. I do think that it really sort of redefined a category.
And I'm interested, you know, like obviously that exploded during a specific era in time, the rise of smartphones, low interest rates, so vcs investing in fast growing concepts, of various sort digital and physical, loose labor markets and the ability to hire lots of people fast and so like. Thinking about those business conditions, modern business conditions, how they've changed, Lessons learned from that period of course sort of a
go go era for fundraising and so forth. I think there's still more to.
Learn, absolutely. I mean things have changed, as you just mentioned, but I think the desire for services slash experiences is something that we still hear about today.
Well, I'm excited. We really do have literally the perfect guest to talk about all of these things. We are going to be speaking with Ali Webb. She was the founder of Drybar, also author of the New York Times best selling book The Messy Truth How I Sold My Business for millions but Almost Lost Myself amazing title, and she's also gone on to found more businesses, including a franchise chain of massage therapy location. So it sort of sounds like Drybar for massages. So, Alie, thank you so
much for coming on. Odd lots thrilled to have you here.
Well, thanks for having me, and I love your conversation about Drybar.
You guys really nailed it.
The title of your book is so good. How did you almost lose yourself?
Well, I mean, if you know, the book really goes into a lot of it, but it was a long story but more or less, you know, building a business over the last ten years, which is an incredible journey, and we definitely kind of you know, capture lightning in a bottle and it was intoxicating and exhilarating and amazing. But you know, and a lot of my personal life in the background kind of fell apart. You know, there was divorce and rehab and depression and you name it.
And so it was you know, a lot of like navigating real life stuff alongside growing this you know, massive, amazing business. And you know, it's kind of like if like a business book met a memoir and had a baby.
That's kind of what this book feels like to me anyways, because it's really the coming together of the stories of all the things that I learned and lessons and takeaways from building a business as someone who didn't go to college and doesn't have a you know, fancy business degree, but then also like you know, the underpinnings of it all and how it's you lose yourself. And if you ask any entrepreneur, they will tell you the same thing.
It's like, you know, you get so invested in this thing that's like a baby to you, and you kind of easily lose sight of a lot of other things personally in your life and yourself, and you know, and the response to it has been overwhelmingly positive and just helped so many women and people are just relating to
it and like, oh my god, that's me. And I felt like I was reading about me and that's my story, which is fascinating to me that to put out stuff that I don't think people talk about enough in such a public content, and then for people to relate so heavily to it has been, I mean, such a joy and privilege for me.
I should say, first of all, thank you for coming up with this idea, because it has been enormously helpful in my own life as someone who has like fairly untamable, very thick hair that gets super poofy in the summer especially. And nowadays we take the concept of dry bars, I mean, it's gone beyond the brand, right you think about dry bar, you think about a hair salon that is exclusively operating like drop in blow drys basically, So it really became
a thing. But back when you founded the company, this was obviously a new and novel concept. Maybe just to begin with, could you talk about the business opportunity as you saw it back then, Like what was the gap in the market that you were able to identify?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I shouldn't say that.
I wasn't, you know, a business person looking for a hole in the marketplace.
You know, although you know that's great if you are. I just wasn't, you know.
I just felt like there was not a place to go get a good blowout at an affordable price.
And I think I had felt that my.
Entire life, you know, just as somebody who also has hair that's curly and prison and hard to manage. I was always kind of frustrated, and as a kid, I would go to the hair slump and beg my mom to blow out my hair. I mean, I was always on the hunt, you know, and I was always into my hair as a kid, and you know, so I think on some level, subconsciously I wanted something like dry
bar my whole life, you know. And fast forward to becoming a professional hairstylist in my early twenties and then spending my life you know, so much of my life doing hair and working in salons.
I think I intuitively, instinctively.
Knew that there had to be a better way to get a blowout, you know, and there was pretty bad choices out in the market, which was like the discount change, which I'm sure you've been to, or you know, your fancy hair salon where they're charging you so much money and upselling you on other things, and you know, there just wasn't anything like it. But what ultimately led me to Drybar was that I started a mobile blowout business.
And when I was you know, I had been a stay at home mom for a couple of years.
My boys were two and four, and I.
Started running around La and my niece on like Sarah blowdrying my mommy friends really because that was the world I was very much in at the time.
And you know, I posted an ad that said I'll come.
Over and blow out your hair while you're baby sleeping, and it was I would charge forty bucks. And again it was it was for me. It was like if I don't charge that much money, more people will call me. You know. It wasn't a very like sophisticated business plan, but that's you know, what I hope.
For, and sure enough they did.
And I realized during that because I got so busy while I was operating my mobile business, because I was really, you know, it was pretty good at what I was doing, and because I was only charging.
Forty bucks, like I was so crazy busy, you know.
That that's when like the kind of light bulb went off for me and was like, wow, you know, at the right price point, women will do this a lot, you know. And I, because I got so busy and I was, you know, came to a crossroads. Am I going to expand this thing mobilely or do I open a brick and mortar instead of me going to them, have them come to me, which is obviously ultimately what I decided to do. And I went to my brother and asked him to help me with all of this.
But I just it was such a great learning even though I didn't make any money at my mobile business, but who cares, because it, you know, informed what would become dry bar, you know, because I realized during that time, it all really crystallized for me that like, at the right price point in a beautiful space, a great blowout can be something and affordable luxury that women, do you know, once a week, twice a week, whatever it is, and we have plenty of clients who don't even watch their
own hair anymore. I mean, because the price point was right, the experience was great, and I realized nobody else was doing anything like this, and so it was like a prime opportunity that I really felt like I kind of of stumbled into.
Can you talk about growth?
And when I think about twenty ten's business culture, I think of magazine coverers were like this founder just raised X million dollars, this founder just had a huge exit. This twenty eight year old is now a billionaire.
And in total addressable market, total.
Addressable market, this just sort of like money growth culture. And you know, obviously as you as you talked about there's a sort of presumably you are not the only one that there was like a real dark side to this and a personal cost, et cetera. But can you talk a little bit more about the sort of decision to take your idea and make it of you know, you raised money and you expanded it became a national
maybe international brand. Can you talk about that sort of like choice to like, Okay, we have to go for this, and we have to grow big and we have to deliver results.
Yeah, and it's certainly a choice, and not everybody wants to do that. I mean, you know, but you get like a little taste of that, and it's hard to walk away from it, you know. And I think we all knew that we were onto something really special, and it was we did to have to make some hard decisions, like, you know, obviously, this is going to change our lives significantly.
Do we really want to go for this?
And you know, you know, there was so much demand, there was so much request, you know, to open more stores and more markets, and you know, and it was going to be a whole thing, you know, to really go for this and to really grow this thing.
And we had to really lock arms and decide that that's.
What we wanted to do because it was going to really change our lives, which it did in every conceivable way. And you know, and I think I see lots of businesses that decide not to do that, you know, to
grow at a more organic, slower pace. I mean obviously for us, maybe not obviously, but for us to grow, we were going to have to raise capital because even though drive Bar was successful, our first two stores were successful, they didn't throw off enough money to grow the way we wanted to, or the pace in which not all I shouldn't say wanted to, I should say like the pace that we needed to, because we knew a lot of people were on our tail, and they were, you know,
there were so many copycats like popping up left and right, who humbly were just not nearly as good as we were and didn't totally understand what we were doing, but saw, you know, an opportunity. It's like you open up a salon and throw some chairs in. It's like it's just so not that simple. And so, you know, I think we felt a little bit of pressure, like if we're going to like really go for this, we got to like move fast, and in order to move.
Fast, we need to raise money.
And so then we raised like our first two or three million with friends and family because they were and this is also like not super common, but you know, friends and family were like practically throwing money at us because they saw the writing on the wall that like
this was a great opportunity, you know. And and so yeah, I mean we you know, ultimately came together to make this decision that we're going to really go for this and grow this thing, and that meant so many other things that I at the time I knew nothing about, you know, about like how you grow and scale and hiring and and all the complexities that go into that. But there was a lot of pressure because if we were going to do we had to do it now, you know, and otherwise we were gonna we were gonna
fall behind. My brother found an investment banker and we went out and did like a formal process in probably year like two maybe, and you know, decided to you know, to really, like no pun intended blow this thing up.
Could you sorry, I'm a fan of puns.
Uh, could you have a lot of that?
Oh?
Good, excellent. Can you talk a little bit more about the business model itself, because you know, I mentioned in the intro like going to a dry bar was a nice experience. It wasn't like you're going to a budget hair salon and just getting this thing done for the cheapest price. But at the same time, the price you were charging four blowouts was very reasonable, especially when compared to a more higher end salon. So how did you
actually contain those costs? Like where did the savings actually we come from.
Well, I mean, it wasn't easy, and our margins were razor thin to your point, because the amount of money we spent on the build out, you know, to make it look the way it looked and to make it feel high end, we just not have the high end price tag.
The name of the game for us was volume. Like I'll see there's another ton.
You we all of these are flying right over Joe's heading.
No, no, I got I got that one.
You know, we have in like volume, big hair. So anyway we need.
Closer to God, right, isn't that?
That's right? That's right, and it is a true statement. Don't let anybody tell you different. So we knew that we.
Needed to do a ton of blowouts to day, and like just to give you an example of.
What I mean by a ton, like we thought in our Brentwood.
Location, which was our first location that had eight chairs, we thought, you know, if we do thirty to forty blowouts a day, like that's a good business and whatever. We completely underestimated the demand and we were doing more like eighty ish blowout today, which very quickly turned to one hundred blowout today once we were fully staffed, you know, So we were open from seven am to like nine pm,
so you know, you could theoretically do that. So once we realized that, you know, we could do so many blowouts, were open seven days a week, you know, twelve hours a day, that we could we could theoretically do it.
It really was about volume. We had to get those numbers in in order to make the business work, which, by the way, didn't always work because, as you might imagine, like you know, supply and demand was a real thing, and for us, the supply was hairstylusts and it was hard to get extremely hard to get great hairstylists in and it's just an interesting market. And having been I'm a hairstylist myself, it's like our strengths are our weaknesses.
Like I'm a little flaky, I'm not the most you know, I'm usually late to most things, and so our most hairstylists not all, but you know, and just getting hair stylists who were okay, just doing blowouts all day long,
you know. Understandably, so many stylists wanted to grow their business and do cuts in color, and drybar was more like a stuff for them, not like a destination, you know, And so that part of it was really hard getting and training stylists, you know, to the level of which we wanted them to be, you know, all of that. So it was a tough business model in terms of like getting that to all work. And you know, we in some stores and sometimes we did it better than others.
We had a gajillion different strategies on recruiting and staffing and all of that, but the business model, you know, only worked if we did x amount of blowouts per day per store, you know, which we were, for the most part, able to really pull off.
I'm glad you mentioned recruitment and training because I got the sense that this was kind of important for the business model as well. So talk to us a little bit more about how you identified the right hair stylists for the business. As you mentioned, it might not be that every stylist wants to spend their entire day just blow drying hair. And then secondly, how much of the
labor force was flexible? Was everyone working full time or were people coming in and doing it for like three or four hours to sort of add on to their main job.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
You know, we tried to be as nimble and flexible as possible as stylists because of that reason, Like you know, it is very labor intensive, and I really always understood that, Like you know, some stylists really loved it and would and could do like a six seven, eight hour shift. Other stylists were like, you know, I can't do this for more than a few hours. Like I get it, no problem, you know, especially in the early days, I was like, I will take whatever you can get.
If you can only come in and do four.
Blowouts, fine, you know, Like it was that diet and the dyer is not the right word, but it was that like crazy and busy that and of course I was doing tons of blowouts in those early days to accommodate people. I would sit or stand at the first chair and blow hair and be able to like manage.
The front desk. I mean that was those were crazy times.
But you know, so we were really flexible in terms of what stylists what they wanted to do and how many days a week they wanted to work, because we knew we had to be in order like to get people to like it was like a hodgepodge of stylists getting them in and then you know, and then the other big challenge, as you might imagine, is like making.
Sure that those stylists are you know, are really great. And that was the other thing, is like, you know, there was there was.
Like a subset of stilists who'd you know, been doing this for a long time and they just you know, they were great and we didn't need to do a lot of training.
And then there were stylists who were newer out of beauty.
School and they didn't have a lot of training, and so we needed to spend a lot of time with them.
But we didn't have that time.
You know, we weren't doing much training, which was getting us in trouble, you know, because for me, it was obviously really important that the blowouts were top notch amazing.
We do one thing, and we.
Better do it really well. So you know, it was really stressful to get a stylist in there who wasn't at the top of their game, you know. So that piece of it was challenging. And I would eventually build out a very robust training program, but that wouldn't be you know, for years, or would take years, and we were always tweaking that. But I felt really strongly about a certain like culture that I wanted to have in
the shops. And so it was like there was stylists that were just not the right fit for dry bar. They didn't want to just do blowouts. They didn't want to be washing their clients hair. They wanted to take a break in between every client. And you know, for better or worse, it was like you would do, you know, a handful of blowouts and then take a break or take your lunch or whatever, but you were working the
whole time. I mean, you were on dry bar and so that you know, and that wasn't something that every stylist wanted and not the typical culture of hair salons. Even as I grew up in hair salons, it was like, you know, people would take smoke breaks all the time and there was like a more casual nature about it. Not always you know, the really really busy salons weren't like that. But you know, we were really really busy shop.
So we you know, we needed that kind of work ethic and not and that just wasn't for everybody, which was totally okay. And that was so that was something that I always would preface with stylists when we were like, you know, opening a new store because you know, we have one hundred and fifty locations. I'd say the first like fifty or so, I went to every single opening
until I just like physically couldn't anymore. But I used to say to the stilust, I would do this like kind of raw raw like what we'd call the new hire, you know, orientation, where I would sit and like you know, basically in a group setting and talk to the silist about who I was, why this idea came to be, what our core values were.
And all of that.
And I would and I would also say, every one of you sitting here may not end up staying here because this may not be the job for you. You may not like this. This is a like very fast paced hustle bustle. You've got to like thriving chaos, enjoy this that part of it, or it might not be the best job for you.
And that's okay. You know, it doesn't have to be for everybody.
You know.
And so that was like, you know, the mentality of the shop.
And we didn't have access to like every single hairstylist that there was out there.
You know, we were pretty picky from.
Both a you know, a technical styling point and like we want you to be a really nice person who you know has over the top customer service, because that's a huge part of the business model, and it was the most challenging part of the whole thing.
So I mean, what I imagine the challenges that you faced early on with hiring and recruiting and retaining talent or like this precursor to probably what like hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs across the country these days, particularly in the COVID era of hire labor tien are like tearing their hairs out, And I have to imagine you know, as you said, you couldn't eventually, you couldn't go to every opening. Not every new stylist got to hear a
pep talk from Elieweb. What are the broader lessons that you imparted to hiring managers at locations, at drybars or some of your newer ventures including Squeeze the I know you're not the CEO, but the co founder of the massage, Like what do people need to know about identifying talent who will be committed to the operation? Like what did you learn about how to scale that sort of identification?
Yeah, I mean we always did these like pre hires before anybody even walked in the door. You know, we had a team of people who we talked to potential employees, you know, just to get what we would call the cultural interview piece of it, which was like a pretty candid conversation just trying to.
Get to know somebody.
And and that was even like in the early early days before we opened the first location, I used to have hairstylist come over to my house to blow out my hair. That was like the job interview, which was awesome and not always awesome, but anyways, and part of that process, just for me in that very very small scale, was you know, getting to know their personality. And it kind of goes back to what I was talking about
that this job isn't for everybody. So as we scaled and grew, those culture interviews became essential because you could tell very quickly the conversation was like, you know, why do you want to do this, and like what do you love about this? And for me and for our team, what we always like would listen for is for somebody who really enjoys being in the service industry, you know, like enjoys like making people feel good and that and like giving and sharing this amazing talent they.
Have as a hairstylist with others, you know.
And and just like the way people would show up on calls like prepared and ready and you know, answer and questions with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm about the brand, you know, on the contrary, as you would imagine, you know, the stylists who were you know, really quiet, really self spoken, didn't get the sense that this was
like something they're really excited about or loved. And it might sound it feels like it sounds simple coming out of my mouth, but it is that like basic, like I really want to do this and be a part of this brand, and I love this company and I love hair and I love styling and making women feel great. Like that's like the first barrier to entry for us is like making sure that that at least that piece.
Is there and you're going to show up and be kind and nice.
You know, that is an you know, an intangible that you that you must simply have in order to be successful. So if you don't even have that, there's no point in going any further, you know. And like I said, as we grew, there was a team that was instructed to really listen for this kind of stuff and make sure that we were bringing in the right personalities as well as great hairstylists.
So you talked a little bit about the grind and how intensive this whole process of building a business actually was, and of course, you know that's a big portion of what your book is actually about, this idea of losing yourself in your business your baby. I'm curious though, like it sounds tough and you're sort of like working and working until you get presumably to like the big payoff
of some sort. And I always wonder with new startups, like how much money are you able to take off the table in the beginning, Like how do you balance building the business and investing in it versus rewarding yourself for the hardware that you're actually doing well.
I love this question because I think it's such an important thing to point out that people. You know, it's a tricky one because I know that there's obviously, you know, people want to ultimately make money and they want to be successful, and that largely looks like making money.
I get that, and I feel that too.
I mean, just like anybody else, I really like making money, and I like money and nice things, but money wasn't the big driver for me in this business. And I feel like it feels to me like a mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make, is like they're only looking at the money and the opportunity to make money, sell a company, whatever, versus doing something that they just really love, you know.
And I feel so strongly about this.
And if you look at like some of the most successful companies and are in the last couple decades, like you know, and you hear the founder's story, it has always started from some sort of personal necessity, something that they felt like in their heart of hearts, that they could make better and do better.
And the reward is it working and.
The success of the company being you know, being felt and growing this thing, and the excitement and the adrenaline that you get from building something that people love, you know, and then and then you know, providing all these jobs and all this opportunity and all of that, you know.
I mean, for me, that was really.
What I loved a lot more than like, oh, we're going to build this thing to sell it.
It was never ever that conversation for us, you know.
I think I started to realize after a couple of years in this thing, like you know, having never had any experience in like M and A and going public and all of that stuff that I you know, I didn't even know that that happened in the world.
Like, you know, I was so naive back then.
And as I started to like pay more attention to that, and I was, you know, starting to become friends with more founders, and I was starting to be in these rooms where people were talking about buying and selling companies, I was like, oh my god, that might be us one day, you know, And that was like an exciting
like part of it. I mean, obviously, we sold it ten years after we built it, and you know, I would say in a year like after we had raised a bunch of money, obviously everything changed and you know, ultimately we raised seventy five million, and that now you have investors, and now you have that's that is what they're thinking about, and that you know, is good for them to be thinking about and moving the business in the right direction. But all of that was so new
to me when I started. I Mean, this whole thing was really just started out of like a passion to like find my purpose in my life and to do something that I really loved to do, and I loved it. I mean I loved building that business and I loved every second of it. I was in that shop seven days a week. I mean I couldn't get enough of it. And that is so, I mean, so much more valuable than any dollar amount to have that, Like, I love what I'm doing and what I get to do every day,
you know. So you know, again, once I realized like, oh, we might actually be able to sell this thing, like oh we're going to actually be able to make a lot of money, like that was really awesome, but just not you know what. I went into this thing thinking, I want.
To ask you a question about fundraising. I have heard that vcs or investors don't still necessarily have a great grasp of the business model of rapid growth physical locations.
And so there's sort of like investors who sort of like understand physical operation, and then there's vcs who probably often think in uh, you know, the idiom of software and five people in a room growing to something that a billion people can use, and that a lot of these sort of like modern concepts of physical growth locations, whether it's like a dry bar or a kava or something like that sort of exist in this middle space
and investors don't have a great understanding of it. Was that the case for you when you first went out trying to explain to them your vision? And do you think investors these days like feel like they have a better handle on these types of startups?
Well, I mean, it's such as it feels the wild West right now, you know. I mean, I think retail is so like tough right now that I you know, I don't blame in you know, vcs and all these guys. It's like it's like you just don't know. It's so hard to predict what's going to happen right now. So it's such a funky time. And I actually had this.
Thought not not long ago, like I wonder, you know.
I mean, part of the success of Drybar, I think was when we started it, we only wanted to raise like ten or fifteen million that first round, and you know, we ended up raising twenty five million because we went with private equity. We never went down the venture capital and they wanted to put in more as they do.
And I think it was again.
A very different time, and retail was very sleepy at that time, you know, in two thousand and nine when we when we first started Drybar, and then dry Bar you know, resonated and took off and we raised the first like three million with friends and family, which got us like to a couple of stores. But the buzz was there, and the pr was there, and women were like telling O their friends, and so we had that
in our corner. And so by the time we were in these rooms with these private equity guys, granted you can picture the scene. It's like me and my big personality and then these guys in suits and they're.
Like, what are you doing. You're blowing women's hair?
Is you know, like and talk about puns and the ridiculous jokes so annoying, but they didn't quite get it yet, but they're.
Like, you know, my wife's been talking about this thing, or my daughter's you know.
There was that kind of general like in the air, we've heard about this and it seems to be getting a lot of attention, and you know, and then of course there were really conversations of like are you going to do nails and makeup too? Because you can and you're doing one hundred women a day, and why don't you do this, which of course, and I had to say, no,
we do one thing, we do it really well. And that turned off a lot of investors who didn't want to get involved in drive Bart, which was like, no problem, but not the right fit, you know, So there was a lot of trepidation of how do you scale the thing when they didn't really understand it to begin with, you know, like and again back to our initial projections of doing like thirty to forty blowouts a day, when obviously we far outseated that, but.
That was like we were in La and.
Our second location, which is a franchise, was in Dallas, which obviously makes a lot of sense, but there was still a lot of like, how, you know, how we proved the concept? You know, how is this something that really works far and wide across the country. And then there was still kind of a question mark for a lot of people, my brother included, you know, who was always like, we got to prove the concept, We got
to prove the concept. And I was like, I just think it works where women have hair, like real hair, this will work, and that, you know was.
My very bullish and maybe naive idea.
But we kept going and we knew we knew we had something really special and magical, and so we kept going until we found the right partner and they really understood our vision and didn't want to change it and wanted to, like you know, really lock arms with us and partner with us, which was Castanea, which is now known as Strung.
And so yeah, that's not all went down.
So I want to move on and talk about your new business, Squeeze, which I've seen described as sort of the dry bar for massages, and so I guess my first question is listening to you describe again like the grind of starting another business, why are you putting yourself through all of this again? And then secondly, how much overlap is there in terms of the business model between you know, Squeeze offering massages and the dry bar offering blowouts.
Well, first of all, I am not in the grind, thank you very much.
I'm fair enough.
Because yeah, it's a great question, like no thanks, And it's funny when my brother this is really my brother's idea, and when he as you know, a bald dude who never got blowouts, his frustration in the market place was around massage because as someone who went to you know, the local chain which you know who I'm talking about, you know, and had a pretty bad experience from having to call every location to book and the decor was like eh, and the massage is very hit or missed,
and the whole process was just so clunky. You know that he was so frustrated that there wasn't a great place for him to go for massage as someone who liked to get like a weekly massage, even though the price point.
Was was good at you know, at a local chain.
And then if, of course, if you went to a spa, you know, it was the same conundrum that you had a drive Bar. The spa would be really expensive, just like a high end hair salon was really expensive for blow up. So the similarities and the problem was pretty much the same. And so when we were like in the last couple of years of Drivebar, Michael really wanted
to start this. Obviously, we didn't have a bandwidth for it, and I, to your question, did not want to go back into like the early stages of building a business.
So I was like, Nope, not doing that.
But you know, then we went to Brittany Driscoll, who's the CEO and our co founder and who ran marketing at dry Bar for several years, and she was on her way out of Drybar was like going to explore new opportunities, and we said, hey, you know, we have this idea for a massage concept because for the reasons I just mentioned, you know, we wanted something different and better that didn't exist, you know, which is always my advice to entrepreneurs is like, you do not have to
reinvent the wheel. Like obviously we did not invent blowouts or massages. We've just created a much better experience and price point and a million other details around them that
nobody's paying close attention to. And the big differentiator of Squeeze, though, is that there's an app that you even though it's a brick and mortar and you go in for a physical massage, there's an app that you book all your preferences on from like if you like a litter elotion and the type of music in this if you know, there's a very like intuitive body that you you know, press on like I like a lot of you know,
pressure here but not here. And so by the time you walk into Squeeze, the therapist already knows all of this stuff because you've had to have you know, gone through the app and really filled out all your information and that that was a big undertaking. It took us over a year to build out this app that you know had all these bells and whistles. That was super intuitive and nobody else has this and it is the biggest differentiator of Squeeze. Not to mention, it's the same
founding team as Drybar. My ex husband Cam did. All the creative are the same architect who built dry Bars.
Everything is.
It's the same team and it is the dry Bar of massage because it's it's exactly the same thinking as Dry Bar. It's like this is not being done well, We're going to go do it much better, you know. And if you if you read the reviews on Squeeze,
they're all like they're literally all five stars. I mean, we've had such great experience, and so much of that comes from the learning from drive Bar, you know, especially Brittany having you know, lived this world with us for many years and you know, we knew what was working, what wasn't working, And to date, I think we've we're doing it completely franchise model where Drivebar was a little both, but we've sold over eighty locations across the country, so
you'll start seeing them popping up all over the place in the next year or so.
Speaking of those locations, that actually fits right into what I was going to ask next. You mentioned sort of generally Drybar you saw as being successful anywhere that women have hair, which is everywhere. But you must have thought, you know, specific about the types of locations, whether they're in high end malls or busy areas, that are really
optimal for opening a location. These days, obviously there's all kinds of questions about what is even the future of offices and where and how are people going to work? What have you like seen in terms of our Where is your thinking in terms of selecting locations in the year twenty twenty three where you feel confident that it'll work at a time in which I think it's still very up in the ear even where people are going to be working.
Yeah, it's such a good question, and I you know, I think we're trying to figure that out right now too. I mean to go back in time a little bit. I mean with dry Bar, which I still kind of feel and I do just for the record, far be it for me to predict the future. But I really believe the pendulum is going to swing back to experiences. You know, I think people are desperately hungry for being out in the world with other people again and having experiences. You know.
I think it's just taking a minute to get back to it.
That said, with Drybar, it was like we realize very quickly that being like in you know, a woman's like daily routine, you know, like being near a grocery store, being near you know, her workout, or where she liked to shop and where she liked to have lunch or you know, we knew the importance of being in that mix of like your daily use and that was always the guiding light of where we put a drybar, like near and you know, in the right area.
Which, by the way, can be really tricky.
I mean we certainly experienced this the hard way that you could move. You could open a store in the right like mile radius, but if you were in the wrong shopping center on the wrong side of the street, that was, you would never know unless you were unless you tapped local knowledge to know that, Like it's really hard to park there, and nobody likes to go there
because of the way the shopping center. Who knows you know, it's like from an out you know, when an outside, big corporate company comes in and it looks really pretty and the other stores are good, You're like, yeah, this looks.
Great, you know.
But unless you get that local knowledge, which again we have been burned on that before, you don't really understand the neighborhood and how it functions, you know, and how women really use it. So it's it's an important but small and often overlook nuance when you're when you're looking at real estate to make sure that you really understand, like where do people park?
Is parking a total pain? You know? Is it? Is it easy to park? Is the is the location easy to access if you're in.
A mall, which you know malls are such a dying dinosaur anyways as well, But you know all those factors, like we opened in Fashion Island mall in Orange County.
So I've been to that one.
Yeah, but you know then that we are strategically placed near the parking lot.
You know, it would not make sense for us to be like deep in the mall.
For like you if you're like, oh, I'm popping in, I have to go over to Fashion Island, which is already could be a pain, which how is how busy that place is, you know, but like at least we're at the very tip, you know, we're near the Barnes and Noble. I don't know if that's still there where you're like, oh, I can just park and run into dry Bar, you know, and there's an old sail right there,
and there's a whole foods and you know. So all of that was very strategic and how we always thought about our locations making it as easy as possible for women to access us, you know, and then for her to be able to do two or three other things.
So dry Bar seamlessly fits into her day, which you know is similar thinking for Squeeze and you know, in any location, I mean any kind of business that we open, And it's tricky like when you're going into like New York City because it's obviously a different animal than like the suburbs. But even still, are we near a subway? Can like a bunch of women walk to us. Are
we near where they're going for other stuff? And sometimes it's like we always said, we didn't we couldn't afford to be on Maine and Maine, but we could be on the little side street off Main Street, so we could afford the rent but still be close enough where she can easily pop over.
What's been the biggest I guess noticeable difference between doing Squeeze in the current environment versus Dry Bar, you know, ten or twenty years ago, Like what has most markedly changed for you?
I think the biggest thing is like is costs and like getting stuff, you know, for lack of a better word, to our stores, you know, real estate deals seem harder. The construction prices are so much higher than we were than they were when we started Dry Bar.
Not always, but we could often go into a shopping.
Center that had a hair full service hair salon because we would explain to them, listen, we're coming in and we're not going to take your lunch. Like, we're not doing cotton color, We're just doing blowouts. And if you're really smart, you'll leverage us, you know, and we'll send you clients, and they'll send us clients.
You know, And a lot did and really got it. But you know, some landlords and some you know, tenants, if there was already a hair.
Salon, which there usually was in most shopping centers, could easily block.
Us from coming and the same. You know, it's true of Squeeze.
There's a lot of massage concepts in a lot of places, albeit some of them aren't great, you know, but they're there, so that impedes us from coming there as well.
So that is, you know, just a.
Challenge that you know, anybody deals with you or if you're going into any kind of business that already exists.
Which it did for Drybar as well as Squeeze.
But you know, so you just have to get a little more creative with where you're going.
I was gonna wrap it right there, but just real quickly. So do tenants of shopping centers and malls do they have stipulations frequently about the types of competitors or adjacent companies that can move in.
I didn't. I'd never thought about that before.
Yeah, yeah, they totally do.
I mean, and it definitely is not like one rule that it changes in my experience, it changes from center to center. And but yeah, I mean, especially when you think of like less probably in a mall, but and I don't have a ton of experience with malls, but in like a strip center shopping mall, they will have in there A lot of those tenants in their leases will have something that says you cannot another air slon cannot open in here.
Makes a lot of sense.
Ellie Webb, the author of the new book The Messy Truth How I sold my business for millions but almost lost myself. Thank you so much for coming on, odd Lass.
That was great.
Thanks for having me. It was a fun conversation. I'ven't talked about this stuff in a long time.
So awesome. Thank you.
Yeah, that was great.
That was really fun.
Tracy, First of all, I mean, it's obvious when she says it, but like for example, at the end, it hadn't occurred to me that such things would be in a leases. That Okay, if you're going to open up a nail salon or a sneaker snore, a sneaker.
Store, or a hit sneaker stores, sneaker snores, sneaker snores.
Or a karate studio or whatever you see in strip malls, that you have some stipulation like you can't just open another one next door.
But it makes a ton of sense.
Yeah, it does. I think also for shopping malls, I think like the owner of the shopping mall wants differentiation and like variety, right, so they try to build that into a lot of their leases. No, that was really interesting. So it seems like Ali really kind of hit a sweet spot at that time period, where like she was offering a service rather than a good, and at a time when you know, brick and mortar retail was experiencing a downturn. We had that episode recently on dead malls
and commercial real estate and in two thousand and nine. Yeah, that was really the era of the dead mall in competition from online shopping and things like that. So she was able to identify something that people would still pay for and have to go to to receive in person. And then secondly, I think one of the things that I found really interesting was the idea of having that flexible workforce. Yeah, and you know, offering stylists the chance to come in for two or four hours versus a
full time position. So it feels like she also tapped into that sort of upswell of I guess gig work, which was also just beginning at that time.
Yeah.
No, Like I said, you know, it really felt like they sort of nailed a huge aspect of what I think of is that even though I have never been in a dry bar, my intuition sense of it. I guess it's strong enough that I associated one of those like defining brands of the twenty tens economy. So many interesting details. I mean, just in you mentioned that aspect of the labor force, and I feel like what Ali was dealing with early on, it's probably so many people
are dealing with in the last few years ago. Now, how do you hire people that are going to maintain the quality that you expect for your outward facing quality, that are going to stick around, that are going to maintain the brand, Like it felt like she had to deal with a lot of those things, like from the beginning in a way in which many business operators probably never really struggled with that up until maybe year twenty twenty or twenty twenty one.
Absolutely, and it'll be interesting to see her sort of replicate it in the massage market as well, like where do you get all the excuses from?
I also really like that point, and maybe we should do an episode on this at some point, like the art of location selections for a brand, you know, and the idea of like yeah, when she said it makes ton of sense, like if the ideas you're going to be a convenient stop for women to get a blowout. Then you want to be on the perimeter of the mall, not the inside of the mall. If you're at the
inside of the mall, it obviates the whole thing. But you know, in the idea of like proximity to parking, I think our friend who've had on, Patrick McKenzie, has talked about this a couple of times with banks that like that is a big thing in terms of you can have two locations that look very similar, but if one is not on the right corner and the right way,
it's going to fail. And so maybe we sh do an episode on how it would talk to it like a commercial real estate broker about finding good locations.
Oh, that would be so interesting. Yeah, and then we should go to strip malls and like observe in real life totally. I would do that. Okay, shall we leave it there.
Let's leave it there.
This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart. Follow our guest Ellieweb on Instagram. She's at Ellie Webb and check out her new book, The Messy Truth How He sold My business for millions but almost lost myself. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, Dashel Bennett at Dashbot and Calebrooks at Cale Brooks. And thank you
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