Drybar: Alli Webb (2017)

A decade ago, full-time mom Alli Webb noticed a gap in the beauty market: there was no place that just focused on blow-drying hair. Now with more than 100 locations, Drybar is testament to Webb's motto: Focus on one thing and be the best at it. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," we check back in with Chris Healy, a long-haired Southern Californian who co-founded The Longhairs and created special hair ties for guys. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Hey, it's Guy here. So imagine if 30 years ago, you had a friend who passionately believed that people would spend lots of money on coffee and that coffee could become a huge, global phenomenon as like a chain restaurant. You would probably think that person was nuts. But Howard Schultz of Starbucks, he believed that. Same with Tareek Farid. He was convinced that people would buy cut-up pieces of fruit arranged in bouquets. And well, edible arrangements became a hit. Well, today's story is not that different because about 10 years ago, Alli Webb decided to start a hair salon that doesn't actually cut hair.

• 0:41Guy Raz?

  And lots of people also thought she was crazy. How She Built Drybar is an amazing story that first ran back in January of last year. Enjoy.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  That first day was bananas. I mean, women were lining up. Women were pissed because they were coming and they were like, "It said you could walk in." And I'm like, "We don't have any more chairs." And I was. I was doing blowouts at the first chair and I was running the front desk. And I was there around the clock, probably for six months before I took a day off because I just couldn't leave it. And I didn't want to leave it. It was so fun.

• 1:21Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:36Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz. And on today's show, how Alli Webb went from being a stay-at-home mom just six years ago to building a national chain of blow-dry salons called Drybar.

• 1:53Guy Raz?

  When Alli Webb was a kid, growing up in Boca Raton in southern Florida, school wasn't really her thing.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  No, wasn't interested in school, wasn't very good at it. I was kind of dubbed the underachiever of the family. It was like, what the hell is Ali going to do with her life?

• 2:08Guy Raz?

  She eventually went to college and after about a year, she dropped out. For a while, Ali just sort of drifted. She lived in New York for some time and then she moved back to Florida and lived with her parents. But her older brother, Michael? He seemed to have it all together.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  He was like the overachiever of the family. And he was like naturally good student, like we're Jewish and he had a bar mitzvah. I was like, there's no way I'm going to Hebrew school. But he did it and he was great. And he was like the smarty pants of the family.

• 2:37Guy Raz?

  So while Ally was sort of floating around in her early 20s, Michael was doing pretty well for himself. He was moving up the corporate ladder. And in the mid 1990s, Ally started to have this idea of what she wanted to do with her life. So she asked Michael for advice.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  He was the first person I talked to about it. And I said, you know, I feel like I really want to go to beauty school. That is what I really want to do. And my parents were kind of like, they didn't get it. And they had these little old lady clothing stores in Delray Beach in Boca. And next to every one of them was a hair salon. And there was these like little old ladies getting their hair done. And they're like, that's what you want to do? I'm like, no, that is not what I want to do. I want to move to New York City and I want to do fashion shows and I want to do editorial. And I, you know, and I had like grand dreams of what I would do in the hair industry. And my brother, we had always been very, very close. Like if my parents were sitting here, they would tell you that he raised me. Like we were very, very, very close. He was really one of the few people who really believed in this little dream that I had.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  So I was living in Boca and I enrolled in the local beauty school. And I loved every second of it. From the moment I enrolled, I was like, ah, these are my people.

• 3:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  I mean, that's how I felt. I loved it. I loved the environment. I was so happy. And I soaked it all up. And while I was in beauty school, I was working for a guy who owned a local salon. And he was amazing and he taught me so much. And again, I wouldn't have known it at the time, but because he owned the salon, I really saw how he managed the salon too, which was an education I was getting that I didn't even know.

• 4:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  I was getting.

• 4:09Guy Raz?

  And but you're, I mean, at that point, your ambition in life was to, was to work in a salon.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Well, to do hair.

• 4:14Guy Raz?

  To do hair.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  I didn't know what capacity that was going to be. Although I had this like itch to get back to New York. And I was also a huge fan of John Sahag, who's sadly not alive anymore. But he was like the pioneer of dry cutting, which I'm not sure if you know.

• 4:27Guy Raz?

  I'm assuming like instead of cutting wet hair, you cut it when it's dry?

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it wasn't, it just wasn't done before John. And he was like it.

• 4:35Guy Raz?

  So like what, like what made him it? Like what was his deal?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  He had one salon in New York on Madison Avenue. He was this rock and roll kind of cool guy. He had his two huge greyhounds that like sat next to him in the salons. And I had it in my head that was the only person I wanted to work for. So I moved to New York and I remember it like it was yesterday. Got an interview. I like walked in with my leather pants on and like tried to like-

• 4:56Guy Raz?

  Cause you're trying to look New York.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Trying to look New York and cool. And I remember him like looking at me and making eye contact. And I was like, I know I'm gonna get this job.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  It was like an assistant job. It wasn't like the world's greatest-

• 5:07Guy Raz?

  An assistant-

• 5:08Speaker 01

  At the salon. And I was assisting him a little bit and I was assisting the other stylists in the shop, which meant I was the person washing and blowing the hair. And it was a great education. I was still very, very new in the industry, even though I had my license and was on the floor in South Florida. It was a very different ballgame in New York. So, I mean, I used to do all of John's clients and his girlfriend. And it was like the best training you could ever imagine.

• 5:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah, so I mean, it sounds, sounds like you were having a great time. But then I read that you left. You like dropped out of, of like hair and you went to become a publicist. Is that right?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Well, not even. I became like an assistant to the guy who was running the music department at Rogers and Cowan. It's like one of the big ones in New York and they represent everybody, which was a pretty awesome job. I mean, he represented Paul McCartney, Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez. So now I'm like, I don't know, 25, 26. And I, then I started to get antsy again, but that was to like to find my husband and get married and have kids. Then I started getting that bug. And during this time, I did meet my husband and-

• 6:08Guy Raz?

  In, in, in New York?

• 6:09Speaker 01

  In New York City. And we met at a, at a bar named Hell in the Meatpacking District.

• 6:12Guy Raz?

  In Hell? You met him in Hell?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  He always says we were a match made in Hell. Like a dive bar in the Meatpacking District that obviously doesn't exist anymore today.

• 6:21Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you met this guy, who is now your husband, of course. What, what was he, he doing at the time?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  He was in advertising. So we started dating and we got very, it was like love at first sight. I mean, really, we were together like every day since and we practically moved in with each other like right away. So we, we were, we got married, we got engaged a year after we met and then we got married two years after we met. And I, I think I was, you know, having grown up in South Florida, the winters in New York were starting to kill me. I was like, I gotta get out of here. And so we decided to move to LA. And he, for him in advertising, it's like he needs to be in a big city, so.

• 6:54Guy Raz?

  So you decided to move to LA just because you wanted to change the scene and he thought, I'll just get a job there?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:59Guy Raz?

  And you figured, I'll figure something out?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yep. Well, at that point, I was like really itching to have kids.

• 7:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  So we, within a year, we got pregnant and my first son, Grant, was born in 2005. And I was like as happy as could be and I thought I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom forever. I loved every second of it. It was so great. And then we had our second son and, do you have kids?

• 7:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah, two boys.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was like, it got a lot harder when there was two. And after being at home as a stay-at-home mom for five years, I got really antsy again. Like, I can't go to the park every day. And I remember my husband used to come home from work and I'd be like, because I hadn't really, I'd talk to kids all day. And I felt like, man, I need to do something for myself again. And that's, that's, that's what initially started. And then it was like, well, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna go back to working at a hair salon? Like, I have two kids now, what do I want to do? And, and because blowouts and doing hair was always my thing and so many of my girlfriends would ask me to blow out their hair all the time.

• 7:57Guy Raz?

  They would just like say, hey, can you?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Because they knew, they knew my story. They knew I was hairstylist. I always had good hair. And so they would always ask me.

• 8:03Guy Raz?

  Would you charge them?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  No, no, I would just do it, especially if it was like for a party or an event or a wedding or something. I just did everybody's hair. And I was good at it. And so I remember like sitting in my living room with my best friend with our like babies crawling around and I was like, you know, maybe I should start a mobile blow-dry business. Where I go around and blow out like my mommy friends. Because I was very immersed in like the mommy community, which is really strong in LA. So I posted on this mommy group called Peachhead, where it was like a Yahoo group. And it was this resource for moms. It was like 5,000 moms in LA. And they all went to this site. So I posted on there one day when I had this idea popped in my head. I said, I'm a longtime stylist. I'm thinking about starting a mobile blow-dry business where I'd charge,

• 8:48Speaker 01

  I don't know, $35 or $40. Would anybody out there be interested? I got flooded with emails.

• 8:53Guy Raz?

  Like, yes, I'm interested. I'd pay $35 to $40 bucks for a blow-dry?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yes, pretty much. So I started getting emails. So then my husband was like, I think this is such a great idea. And he said, but you need a cute website. If they think it's cute, they'll call you.

• 9:06Guy Raz?

  But at this point, you're thinking, this is gonna be like my side hustle.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Totally a side hustle.

• 9:11Guy Raz?

  I am just going to... Were you thinking about getting a van?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  No, no. I was like, I thought about putting all the tools I had in a duffel bag and heading out the door. That was it.

• 9:20Guy Raz?

  In your car?

• 9:21Speaker 01

  In my car.

• 9:22Guy Raz?

  And so you would blow-dry at their homes?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:25Guy Raz?

  Like, you'd go in, okay.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  I was like, while your baby's sleeping. Because like, we were all like, when our baby's napping was the only time we could do anything. I'll come to your house and blow-dry your hair. You know, I mean, that was, I mean, this was not a very like, thought-out plan. That was, it was so basic. And honestly, we came up with $40 because it was like, cheap and easy. It's like, $220, done.

• 9:44Guy Raz?

  And you like, you put this out there on this mommy website? And all of a sudden, mommies were like, yep, I totally want this. And you sort of like, put things in your calendar?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I started doing these bots. And of course, like, I still had to pick up my kids from preschool at like, 2 o'clock or whatever it was.

• 9:58Guy Raz?

  And then drive in LA traffic, right?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yes, I was in traffic. And between gas and whatever, I don't think I actually made any money.

• 10:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah, right.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  But it really wasn't about the money. It was much more about getting out there and like, talking to adults and just like, doing something for myself and being able to kind of, you know, satisfy that desire in me to do something for myself again.

• 10:15Guy Raz?

  So you start doing this? You start driving around the west side of LA?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  And I got really busy, really fast. And it was very word of mouth. Like, I'd go and do one mom, and then she would tell like, six of her friends. And then all of a sudden, they would call me. And it was such a thrill. And I got to the point where I was saying no, more than I was saying yes. And so that's when I was like, huh, you know, this is interesting. And I think that's, then I started asking my clients. I said, what do you do when I can't come to your house? And they're like, well... I either begrudgingly go to my cut and color salon where they overcharge me and want to cut my hair and there's all this pressure.

• 10:47Guy Raz?

  OK.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Or I go to the discount chain down the street, which kind of sucks and the experience is bad and bad lighting. And I was like, God, there really is two bad choices out there. And that's it. And so that's when I think the idea started percolating for me. And I was like, huh, you know, there's no place in the middle. And that's when I went to my brother. And he was working for Yahoo at the time, also when Yahoo was in, was like, the thing.

• 11:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  And it was really successful. And he was watching my little business from the sidelines and he thought it was an interesting idea, but nothing beyond that.

• 11:18Guy Raz?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  So I told him that I thought I should turn my little mobile blow dry business into an actual brick and mortar. So instead of me going to my clients, they could start coming to me. And I asked him to basically help me and help me finance it.

• 11:33Guy Raz?

  Did at any point, anyone, particularly, I'm thinking men, say to you, wait, you want to start a store?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  A do what?

• 11:40Guy Raz?

  Where you just blow dry hair? And what? Like, who's gonna go there?

• 11:44Speaker 01

  What the hell is that?

• 11:45Guy Raz?

  Like, why would anybody pay for that?

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Well, and also, my brother, ironically, and my husband, both bald. And they're like, they have no, they're like, what? Although my husband always had this interesting insight because he knows what my hair looks like naturally. And he always would say, you get your nails done, but I never notice it. When you get your hair done, I notice it. And so he was like, I think this is the next nail salon. I think this is gonna kill it. Let's do this.

• 12:12Guy Raz?

  Coming up, how Ali started to imagine a salon with a service most women didn't yet know they wanted. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 12:39Guy Raz?

  It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So Alli Webb had this idea for a business where you just blow dry people's hair. No cutting, no coloring, just blow drying. And her brother, Michael, and her husband, Cameron, they were on board. So to start the company, they cashed out Cameron's retirement accounts. And Michael put in a chunk of money he had made during the dot com boom at Yahoo. And the three of them, they started to get to work trying to figure out the details of what Drybar would be, while at the same time, still holding their day jobs.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  That's when it was like the moonlighting phase, when I was still running my mobile business and taking care of my kids. My brother had a real estate marketing company at the time. And Cameron was a creative director in advertising industry, which is like, he already was working crazy hours. So what would happen is every night, once the kids were asleep, my brother was at his house. Cameron was home. We'd all be like on our laptops in bed and we'd be working on Drybar. And so Cameron, at night, started developing the Drybar website and building out the website. And he was really new to that. He'd never built a website, but he was a designer, so he could do all of that. So in the wee hours of the night, for weeks, we started developing the website. And Michael and I started looking at real estate and trying to figure out where the shop was going to go. And talking to landlords and all this like crazy stuff.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  And I was on the phone with the cosmetology board like around the clock, trying to figure out what I needed to open this shop. And then, you know, that's kind of how it all started.

• 14:05Guy Raz?

  Were you nervous? I mean, did you feel like, like this will be okay? Or was like a part of you, like, this is a lot of money that we've put into this?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  They were more nervous than me. My brother was probably the most nervous because he had the biggest stake in it financially. But I had a really good feeling. It was like one of those things in my gut. I was like, I know there's enough women out there like me that will make one shop work. I'm sure one shop will work, or at least work a little bit. And, and at that point, we had figured out if we can do like 30 blowouts a day, 30, 40 blowouts, like that'd be a great business. And so in my mind, like, I remember going to sleep at night being like, if we can do five blowouts an hour and we're open X amount. Like, I would literally like figure out how many people were going to have to come in to make those numbers.

• 14:48Guy Raz?

  But you were going to do the, the blowouts too, right? I mean, you were going to be running the shop, blow drying hair, and you'd have to hire people.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, so that, the hiring process was kind of funny. And there's a couple stylists that still work for us who remember this. Like, I used to have stylists come to my house and blow out my hair. That was their interview. You know, I would talk to them, make sure they were nice. And then they'd blow out my hair. And if they did a good job, I'd hire them. I mean, that was it back then. And I only hired like, I don't know, about 15 stylists. And I wasn't sure. One of the things I wasn't sure about is if there was enough stylists out there like me that were interested in just the styling part like I was, but there were.

• 15:27Guy Raz?

  What was it that was going to be your competitive advantage? Like, what was?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  There was no competition.

• 15:33Guy Raz?

  There was no one doing this?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  No, there was no competition. There were hair salons.

• 15:36Guy Raz?

  How is it that nobody thought of this?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Nobody thought of it. There was nothing.

• 15:40Guy Raz?

  So you found a spot? And where did you open the first location?

• 15:43Speaker 01

  So I was living in Santa Monica, and the first location was on San Vicente, which was a thoroughfare. So if you came off the 405 and you were going to Santa Monica, to Palisades, or Brentwood, you kind of had to take that route. And also, I should tell you that my brother, having worked on other big projects, and he met this guy named Josh Heitler, who was an architect. And so my brother, one of the many, many things he's brought to the table, when I had this idea to have a salon, he went to Josh and said, "Do you want to build a hair salon for my sister?" And Josh was like, "Sure." And we offered him some equity to get involved. And that was, again, I don't even know if I would have thought of an architect. I mean, that was my brother.

• 16:23Guy Raz?

  And what was your vision? Like, what was, when he came to talk to you, what did you say? Like, how did you want it to look?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Well, I knew I wanted it to feel like a bar. And I remember explaining to my brother and to Josh that if, that's something that happened in my mobile blow-dry business, that when I would go to my clients' homes and do their blowouts, it was usually like in their living room. It was never in their personal bathroom in their home. So I'd do it in their living room, so they couldn't see the blowout when it was happening. And when I was done with the blowout, I'd say, "Okay, now I'm ready for you to look at it." And so to go from not seeing your hair to seeing this amazing gorgeous hair was like kind of a powerful thing. And I explained that to Josh and to Michael. And so that was kind of a task for Josh. Like, how do we incorporate that into the design of this shop?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  So we, the mirrors are behind the stations. And that's very intentional, that when the client is done, the stylist spins her around for the big reveal. And that totally came from my... My blow up business.

• 17:24Guy Raz?

  So the idea was that the experience was going to be different?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Well, and I wanted, again, it was like taking everything that I had accumulated in all of my years as being a stylist and saying like, I'm just gonna do it the way I want to do it, not the way it's always been done. And of course, it was like a bar and I wanted the flat screen TV because I thought that would be like a fun getaway for women and like-

• 17:43Guy Raz?

  And what do you play on the TV?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  All like chick flicks.

• 17:45Guy Raz?

  Nice.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  All chick flicks. And it's like movies that you probably wouldn't watch again, but when you see them and they have subtitles, you get really drawn in. I mean, I sit there sometimes and I'm like, oh, man, I love this movie.

• 17:55Guy Raz?

  Sleepless in Seattle.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  It is. It's like Sleepless in Seattle, like How to Be Single. Like, we play like Breakfast at Tiffany's, like all of it. And Michael, my brother, had the idea to put charging stations for your iPhones at every- I mean, it was like, it was such, we got so lucky, the fact that my brother and my husband and Josh and me, it was like we were this perfect storm of all these people that came together to do this and that had the perfect skill set. So it was just this, we were this like powerhouse that nobody had to pay anybody to do.

• 18:25Guy Raz?

  All right. So you opened the first location in Brentwood in 2010.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  2010.

• 18:30Guy Raz?

  And what's, what happens? Do people show up?

• 18:33Speaker 01

  So I don't know if you remember Daily Candy?

• 18:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it was, it was like that, that daily email lister thing about, about fashion, right?

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, back in its like original state, Daily Candy was this like website or that you would get emails from them and they would be these like places you've never heard of and they would break like businesses and stories. You'd get these like nuggets of, of information that nobody knew. And we got Daily Candy to write a story about Drybar coming. That must have ran like three or four days before we opened. I remember sitting at lunch with my brother on our BlackBerrys, because it's for iPhones, and, and we used to get appointment notifications. And all of a sudden, we're sitting at lunch and our phones start going crazy and all these appointments start booking and we're like, We thought like the system was broken. We were like, what is going on? And then someone sent us the Daily Candy piece and we were like, oh my God, it's because Daily Candy ran today.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  And so, everybody started booking appointments before we even opened. And so, that very first day, we opened to a very, very full shop. And so, that first day was bananas. I mean, women were lining up, women were pissed because they were coming and they were like, it said you could walk in. And I'm like, we don't have any more chairs. And I was, I was doing blowouts at the first chair and I was running the front desk. And I was, I mean, I was there around the clock, probably for six months before I took a day off because I just couldn't leave it. And I didn't want to leave it, it was so fun.

• 19:55Guy Raz?

  So you guys were incredibly busy, like, right from the beginning. So were you making a profit in that first year?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Well, even within that first year, we turned everything back into the business. So, not really. You know, I mean, we were barely taking any money for ourselves. And within six months, we opened our second store. And it just kept going and going.

• 20:14Guy Raz?

  How did you scale it up? I mean, obviously you had like a big hit on your hands.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:18Guy Raz?

  So how did you begin the process of scaling it up when you didn't have a whole lot of cash to work with?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Well, that was, that was the challenge. And that's where it was like, thank God for Michael. Because Cam and I were like the creatives and we're like, what now? You know, we really didn't know what to do.

• 20:31Guy Raz?

  Neither of you guys were sort of business people?

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Not at all. But we all knew we had something on our hands. And we used to, I used to get women coming in being like, can you get these Beverly Hills women their own shop? It was like, we were the cool club you couldn't get into, but that's not very cool for long, you know? So.

• 20:46Guy Raz?

  And did your husband at this point leave his job?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  No, he couldn't leave yet. Because I wasn't taking a salary. I was like, we still needed his salary. So he was, but he was still doing a lot of work. I mean, gosh, my poor husband, he was basically working two full-time jobs.

• 20:58Guy Raz?

  And you had two kids.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  And we had two kids. So it was crazy. It was such like a life flip. And it was, you know, we just didn't, we couldn't believe how much our lives had changed. And, yeah, and then Cameron stayed, I think it was about a year and a half before he actually left his job to be able to. To come to Drybar full time.

• 21:17Guy Raz?

  So as you started to scale up, did you have to go find outside investors?

• 21:23Speaker 01

  So again, I knew nothing about raising money. And Michael started to say, hey, I think, I think we should franchise this because we had, we were getting mobbed with franchise requests. I remember like we had our first meeting with like a franchise consulting group at Cameron's office, like his big advertising office. That's the only place that we had an office, like we could sit at a conference table. Which, that's so funny, that was so long ago. But, so we started getting like our documentation together so we could franchise. And so I was a little like, not like super excited about franchise because I didn't, I didn't want to like give it away is how I kind of felt about it.

• 21:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, I would imagine that you would be freaked out that, you know, some franchise couldn't maintain the quality that you wanted to maintain.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, it was, it kept me up at night. And we, we were very, very particular and about who we franchised with and made sure that they understood the importance of all of that stuff. And, and like I said, there, there was that fear and there still is that fear today, but it was great. And it really did help spread our name and, you know, much quicker than we could have if we didn't do franchising. And then we're raising money at the same time.

• 22:28Guy Raz?

  You, you guys opened your first store in 2010, which is crazy. By the way, how many locations do you have today?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  67, well 68 as of tomorrow.

• 22:39Guy Raz?

  It's pretty insane that you go from being a stay at home mom to running a, or being an executive at a multimillion dollar company in like two years. How did you mentally make that transition?

• 22:54Speaker 01

  It's still so mind blowing to all of us that it took off and happened the way it has. And it's, it's been such a shift and it is, it was hard and it's still hard to this day balancing it all with the kids. And, but I think we all kind of grew into it pretty naturally and we, there's so much passion behind what we're doing and we all love it so much that there's probably adrenaline rush that it was a lot of figuring it out as we went along, but, but we did.

• 23:21Guy Raz?

  Do you work more now or do you work less now than you did when you started?

• 23:26Speaker 01

  It's a different kind of work. In the beginning, I was in the stores nonstop all the time. And I remember so well when it went from like three to five to seven stores and being like, I can't be in all the stores at one time anymore. I used to be able, I remember we had Brentwood, West Hollywood, Palisades, and Studio City. Like, I could hop around. Those were pretty easy for me to get to store to store. And then as we started to grow, you know, I slowly but surely like started bringing in people who, you know, we brought in a regional manager who kind of managed the managers, and then I managed the regional manager. And it kind of kept going like that in that way. And now, now we have this massive infrastructure now.

• 24:08Guy Raz?

  How many people work for the company?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Well, there's about 3,000 stylists and about, I don't know, maybe 70, 80 people in our support center. So it's pretty massive now. And so now it's like, you know, it's good and bad. I don't have to be in the weeds every day, which I, which is kind of good. But then it's like, there's days that I'm like, you know, decisions get made and things get made that I'm not involved in anymore, which I used to be involved in so much. And, you know, it's like, it's very hard for me to walk in stores. I walk in stores and I see everything that needs to be fixed and changed, you know, where I don't get to enjoy them the way most clients do.

• 24:42Guy Raz?

  Does that not only drive you crazy, but drive the people in the stores crazy?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  When I come in. I think it, I think it makes everybody nervous, which is so, so weird to me. I'm like, why are you nervous? But it does. And that is truly the weirdest thing. And Courtney, our field director, she's like, why don't you understand that it makes people nervous? I'm like, I don't understand. I don't think people should get nervous.

• 25:06Guy Raz?

  What, what have you learned about, you know, I mean, you didn't have a business degree. You didn't have

• 25:12Speaker 01

  None, nothing.

• 25:13Guy Raz?

  managerial experience. You weren't trained to do any of this. So what are some of like your strengths that you learned about and your weaknesses you learned about as you had to kind of take on these roles?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Well, I think my strength was the confidence that I knew this business really well. Nobody could tell me I didn't know this business. I knew how to treat customers. I knew how to treat stylists. I knew how to make this business work. I knew how to talk to people, I think, from being in PR. You know, everything I had done, I always felt like, I mean, it's so cheesy, but I felt like everything led me to this moment in my life. And I felt like I had what I needed to have to run these stores. And then there are things that I didn't know, that's where Michael and Cam came in. And Michael knew to hire, like, we needed a president of retail. I was like, I didn't even know that was a thing. And so there was so much of the things I didn't know were filled in. And I think that that was one of my biggest learning experiences. You need to bring on people who know what you don't.

• 26:05Guy Raz?

  What is, I mean, a lot of people listening would say, I would never be able to work with my partner in a business. Like, it's really hard. But it sounds like you guys have a really, you know, functional working relationship and a great marriage. Is that true?

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:20Guy Raz?

  I mean, are there tensions or tension in running the business together?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, there is. I mean, my husband and I, it's certainly a struggle. And yeah, it definitely comes with its challenges. But the good so much more outweighs the bad. And we have, especially now, we have different teams that work under us. And so we don't have to, like, we don't work nearly as closely as we did in the beginning. But there's so much trust that you have when you're working with your husband and your brother that it supersedes everything, I think.

• 26:48Guy Raz?

  If I said to you, you know, 70 years ago, when you were, you know, driving around in your Nissan Xterra to people's homes blow drying hairs?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  I used to love that car.

• 26:59Guy Raz?

  In 70 years, you're going to have 70 stores all across the country, and you're going to be doing $100 million in revenue a year, would you be like?

• 27:06Speaker 01

  You're out of your mind?

• 27:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I could not see that far down. And I remember people asking us, you know, what's next for you guys? And I was like, We're going to keep opening stores. And I think it was, you know, to be at 67. I mean, it's so mind blowing because it wasn't a premeditated, like, we didn't have a business plan. It wasn't like, this is our goal and this is our trajectory. Like, there was none of that. It was all this very organic and we're on to something, so we're going to figure it out and keep growing it.

• 27:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  And it's very, very rewarding for me personally because I was like the one in the family that everyone was like, oh, god, what's Ali going to do? And so it's particularly gratifying, especially for my parents who have seen my brother and I succeed together in business. And we love that we're able to be close on another level through the business. So it's pretty special.

• 27:57Guy Raz?

  Alli Webb, founder of Drybar. The company, by the way, is planning to expand internationally very soon into Canada and also into Europe. Ali just published a book all about blow drying hair. It's called The Drybar Guide to Good Hair for All. And you might not believe it if you met her or if you saw pictures of her, but Ali's hair is actually naturally curly. I guess I should clarify, you have very uncurly hair right now.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yes, well, yes. But this is like a very carefully styled look.

• 28:25Guy Raz?

  Did you get that done in the last few days?

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Well, I am a professional stylist myself, and I have been for 20 years. So I actually did my own hair this morning. I know how to do that.

• 28:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah, right, right.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  I built a business on that.

• 28:46Guy Raz?

  And please do stick around because in just a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you're building.

• 28:55Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for How You Built That. And today, we're going to update a story we ran last year. And this story comes from Chris Healy of San Diego.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 29:07Guy Raz?

  Who, like any other entrepreneur, wanted to solve a problem. But before we get to the problem, here's a bit about Chris.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  My hair is blonde. It's about down to the middle of my back.

• 29:20Guy Raz?

  So Chris and his buddy Lindsay, they're both dudes with long hair. And when I say long, I mean Brooke Shields in 1982 long. And because of this, they kept running into a problem that a lot of men with long hair face.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  We go to the women's haircare aisle and search for the hair ties that look the least girly.

• 29:43Guy Raz?

  The struggle is real, guys.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  It's not a very fun experience when you have to choose the least bad option.

• 29:51Guy Raz?

  So, one day, and this was back in 2014, when Chris was driving back with Lindsay after visiting a client, it came to him.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  I swear, it just popped out. The words just popped out. I got it. It's hair ties. For guys.

• 30:06Guy Raz?

  In short, a more manly, man bun scrunchy. Chris wanted a hair tie that was a little bit wider, a little more comfortable, and with some cool designs he wasn't seeing in the drugstore aisle.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Everything from surfboards, lightning bolts, martini glasses, camouflage, rocket launchers. Fun designs.

• 30:28Guy Raz?

  So Chris and Lindsay thought, we've got this great idea. Let's make some hair ties, quick and easy. But it wasn't so simple.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  We started out buying our own materials, tying them off, finally go to manufacturing connection. We got the first round with our designs printed on them. Not what we were looking for. Finally, probably five samples later, we finally got what we wanted. And it took almost two years from the time that we had the idea until we had the product ready to sell.

• 30:56Guy Raz?

  That was back in December of 2015. Since then, they've sold more than 30,000 packs of hair ties to customers all over the world. Their website is called The Long Hairs.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  We truly are a lifestyle brand because having long hair is a lifestyle. It's a choice.

• 31:14Guy Raz?

  I mean, just look at DiCaprio and Brad Pitt or Harry Styles and of course David Beckham. Celebrities who have all at some point worn a man bun, which is a term Chris actually doesn't really like.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  So, we call it a highball, like a fine glass of scotch. It's refined, it's dignified, and it portrays the proper respect of the fine men's hairstyle that it is.

• 31:39Guy Raz?

  That's Chris Healy, co-founder of The Long Hairs. Since we last spoke to Chris, he and Lindsay are both working full-time and earning a living with The Long Hairs. They've also established a charity partnership to make wigs, and next year, they'll try to break the world record for the largest hair donation in history. And if you want to find out more about The Long Hairs or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, howibuiltthis.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. We love hearing what you're up to. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're

• 32:22Guy Raz?

  there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at how I built this. Our show was produced this week by Casey Herman, with original music composed by Ramin Arablouei. Thanks also to Noor Kutsi, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is J.C. Howard. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  We all have moments where our limits are tested. What I want to talk about is how we define those limits and what it means to exceed them. I'm Jay Williams. Check out my show, The Limits, where I talk to people who have overcome theirs and achieved great things in business, sports, and culture. Listen to The Limits from NPR.