How Anastasia Soare built a beauty brand worth billions

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Copy LinkAppearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show

ANASTASIA SOARE: I met and I worked with so many celebrities, but when I met Oprah — that was my Oscar moment.

JEFF BERMAN: Oprah’s production team called Anastasia Soare. Would she come do Oprah’s eyebrows live on the massively popular daytime TV show?

SOARE: And, it was kind of scary because to do her eyebrows live in front of a camera is very difficult.

OPRAH WINFREY: I knew she was coming today, so I haven’t plucked yet. This is Anastasia, Queen of Brows.

BERMAN: Anastasia was used to fixing up the eyebrows of famous people in her Beverly Hills studio. But to do it for Oprah – I mean, it’s Oprah?! Live. On stage. On television.

SOARE: I wanted to cry. I wanted to jump. I want — I don’t even remember what.

BERMAN: But Anastasia kept her cool on camera. She walked the audience through how to perfectly shape your eyebrows. And Oprah loved the result.

WINFREY: You will not find anybody better than her on the planet for doing brows. I haven’t. Ooh, look at that brow, baby.

BERMAN: This was a different era. Daytime television really mattered. And no one mattered more than Oprah. Her talk show was seen by millions and millions of people every day. So after the episode aired…?

SOARE: The phone will not stop ringing.

BERMAN: And it hasn’t stopped ringing ever since. The Romanian immigrant’s celebrity-fueled beauty business grew from renting a room in Beverly Hills to a global brand that peaked at a valuation of no less than $3 billion dollars.

[THEME MUSIC]

BERMAN: I’m Jeff Berman, your host.

Anastasia Soare is the expert esthetician responsible for the way everyone from Oprah and Michelle Obama to Kim Kardashian and Michelle Pfeiffer shape their eyebrows.

In this episode, she shares lessons in leveraging today’s influencer economy and explains why she never wants to retire.

I was thrilled to sit down with Anastasia in Los Angeles for this conversation — and honestly a little shocked by what she said when we started talking.

You have good eyebrows, by the way.

BERMAN: Look at that. My day is made.

SOARE: I know!

BERMAN: Anastasia, welcome to Masters of Scale.

SOARE: Thank you so much for having me.

Copy LinkImmigrating to the U.S. with $0 in her pocket

BERMAN: I’m thrilled to have you. You, like so many of the founders we have on Masters of Scale, are an immigrant. But most of the immigrant founders we have on the show came to the U.S. as children or came here for college. You came a little bit later. Can you tell us about growing up in Romania, and what brought you to the United States?

SOARE: So I grew up in Romania. And, after the communist regime came to power in ’51, things slowly start changing. The more time passed by, the communist regime became stronger, more powerful,.They started taking property from my grandparents, and my uncles were not allowed to own the restaurants anymore. They were taken by the government. They started cutting electricity. Food was scarce. And that was probably one of the reasons why I wanted to leave the country.

BERMAN: And so you were 30 when you came to the U. S.?

SOARE: Was 31, yes. 31.

BERMAN: And how did you get here?

SOARE: So my husband was a ship captain. And he went to American embassy, asked for political asylum, and he came to United States, and I had to wait three years. The Romanian government didn’t want to give me the passport.

BERMAN: So, you have this three-year wait between your husband applying for political asylum and getting to the U.S., and you landed in Los Angeles?

SOARE: Yes, I landed because I told him we need to move only in Los Angeles. We were restricted, we couldn’t watch movies, Hollywood movies, everything was black market, so we had to close the drapes and watch everything in the dark, and it was a dream. I remember watching Pretty Woman and Beverly Hills Cops and I thought I want to walk on that street.

BERMAN: When you got here, you landed LAX, and what happens?

SOARE: So the rule was that I could not leave with $1 in my pocket because every Romanian citizen that owns any dollars will be put in jail. So I asked, “Can I have at least $10, so just in case my husband will not be there, I could make a phone call.” They’re like, “n”No. We’ll put you in jail if you have one dollar.” And my fear was that I will walk in the airport, Los Angeles airport, and my husband will not be there, and I will not have a coin to make a phone call. Hopefully, I mean, thankfully he was there, and I just remember getting out of the airport in the car, and I saw that bright light and the palm trees.

BERMAN: The Los Angeles light, yeah.

SOARE: It was magical but scary in the same time.

BERMAN: Tell me about the scary part.

SOARE: Oh my God, everything was scary. The first thing that I wanted to see was a supermarket. And I start walking in those endless aisles, and I was thinking, “Oh my God, people would be in line for one chicken, from 12 o’clock at night until the next day at three o’clock and sometimes some of them, they will still not be able to leave with anything.” So, I thought, oh my God, the abundance.

BERMAN: Right, you go from literal bread lines to lines of bread.

SOARE: Yes, exactly.

BERMAN: You’ve got culture shock. So what do you do then?

Copy LinkBecoming an esthetician

SOARE: So I found out from the church that was close to the apartment that they had English classes for immigrants. So I went, and I started taking those classes. And my husband worked as a taxi driver. He met a Romanian gentleman, and his wife was an esthetician. And when we met, she said, “I’m pregnant, and I have to take three months off, and I would love to introduce you to the owner. You could work in my place, and then when I am back, you have to leave.” So, for her, it was a good arrangement because she didn’t want the owner to hire somebody, and she could lose her job.

BERMAN: Did you have a background in beauty at that point?

SOARE: So while my husband was here, he learned that Eastern Bloc women, they all were estheticians. So he suggested I should go and get my license in Romania. So while I was waiting for my passport, I went to beauty school there. I never, in my wildest dream, I thought I would be in beauty business. I worked there for two years, and I was kind of surprised that nobody in Hollywood paid attention to eyebrows. And, of course, in Romania, we didn’t have disposable cameras. I bought a disposable camera, and we started taking pictures of us as a family. And I realized that I look surprised in the picture. Because my pen, my eyebrow was pencil thin and round. So the shape of my eyebrows wasn’t correct. And I remember my art teacher talking about how to draw a portrait and change an emotion. And using golden ratio, the Leonardo da Vinci technique that he use in all his work—

BERMAN: So let me pause you there because I’m not sure that all of our audience is familiar with the golden ratio. Could you explain the golden ratio?

SOARE: So, golden ratio, it’s a mathematical formula that is found in nature, plants, and everything that surrounds us. So it’s a proportion that the human eye is encoded to recognize because it creates balance and proportion with everything. You see a building, and if you are attracted, you think, “Oh wow, this is a beautiful building, that is in a great proportion.” The height with the length and the depth is in one point. So the proportion is 1.618. that creates a harmony.

BERMAN: As you are seeing your own face in these photos from the disposable camera and looking at your clients, you’re realizing the golden ratio needs to be applied to the brows.

SOARE: Yes.

BERMAN: So what did you do with this realization?

SOARE: So I wanted to fix my own eyebrows. And once I did that, my clients used to come and say, “Wow, you look different. You look rested. What did you do?” And, of course, I start sharing with them my discovery, and I started shaping their eyebrows.

And I went to the owner and I said, “Look, I think we should do this as a service. Because it’s incredible.”

And they said, “Well, we cannot charge more than $10, because it wasn’t a service.” And it didn’t make business sense for them.

BERMAN: It didn’t scale.

Copy LinkOpening her first salon & mastering her craft

SOARE: It didn’t scale. But I really believed in it. And one Sunday, I told my husband I’m going to open my own business. So this was two years after I came to America.

I said, “Well, look. I came here to do something. I have to do this. This is why we came here. Otherwise, we could stay in Romania. Or we’ll go back. If I will not be able to make it, we’ll go back anyway.” So, I looked in a newspaper, and I said, “I’m going to rent a room in a salon, only in Beverly Hills.”

BERMAN: Nothing to lose and everything to gain, right? So, the boldness of the vision, the ‘I’m going to do this, I know it doesn’t scale yet, but I see the opportunity, I can feel it. I’m going to rent a room,’ is a real leap of faith.

SOARE: Yes, absolutely. And this was the only country that would allow me to do that.

BERMAN: So in the course of most of the ’90s then, you go from one room rented in somebody else’s salon to Oprah. So, how do you go from renting a room and just starting to working with the biggest, most famous talent in the world.

SOARE: That’s a really good question. The moment I rented the room, which was scary in a way, what I wanted to do was to do was to master my skill. I cannot tell you how many free eyebrows I’ve done at the beginning of my career.

Every shampoo girl, every hairstylist, every makeup artist, everybody, cause I want them to believe in my skills and talk to their clients, send me their clients. If they were happy and was important for me that they will be happy, they will send me their clients.

Copy LinkBuilding a devoted & famous clientele

BERMAN: Soon, Anastasia was working with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. It didn’t take long for women’s magazines to take notice of this new beauty trend. She says Allure Magazine was the first to call her in the early ‘90s.

SOARE: They asked me if they could write about the best kept secret in Hollywood. And, I said, “Sure.” So, I asked Michelle Pfeiffer, “Can I use your name?”

She’s like, “Oh, of course, of course.” And at that time, remember, people didn’t talk about facials or Brazilian bikini, and I thought, I’m going to talk about eyebrows because eyebrows is something that — it’s a walking advertising, and everybody could see it, and everybody’s happy to talk about it.

BERMAN: And what it sounds like is you built really a hand-by-hand person-by-person and incredibly devoted clientele to the point where within just a few years. I mean, I don’t know that our younger audience members know that Michelle Pfeiffer the early mid-90s was—

SOARE: What a beautiful, oh my—

BERMAN: As big as a star that existed. This is not a small thing that not only can you call her, but she’s going to say yes to being with you in Allure.

SOARE: Yes. Amazing. I have to say that my clients were the biggest supporters. They were the most wonderful people that helped me to learn the language better. If I had a question, “hey, I don’t know how to write a check, how should I do it, where should I write?” “Okay, we’ll help you.”

BERMAN: Yeah. No, I have a photograph in my home that I love, it’s a sign, and it reads something like, “The words ‘I love you are’ indeed beautiful and powerful, but there are no more important three words in the English language than ‘Can I help?'” And, that spirit of wanting to help is so, so deeply powerful.

SOARE: Absolutely. And I learned from them that you have to ask.

BERMAN: Still ahead, how Anastasia’s daughter helped her company reach new heights as an early adopter of Instagram.

[AD BREAK]

BERMAN: Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and more on our YouTube channel.

Anastasia went from Hollywood’s best-kept secret to a household name when she appeared on Oprah.

Copy LinkThe Oprah moment

SOARE: They said, “Well, Oprah wants to get her eyebrows done by Anastasia live.” And, it was kind of scary because, to do live her eyebrows and doing live in front of a camera is very difficult. So, of course, I said yes, I went there, and it was very powerful,

BERMAN: Oprah had always been central to Anastasia’s idea of success in America.

SOARE: And remember, I came in this country, and for the first three months, going to school, we had only one TV, and my husband used to watch Lakers and all the news, and I said, “I want to watch only one show, this three o’clock show. This woman called Oprah.” And he’s like, “But you don’t understand English. Like, why do you want?” And it’s like, “I don’t know. But I feel like I want to watch her, this show. This is the deal. You could watch all day long, all night. I need to watch at 3 o’clock.” And, after a while, he will fight with me. And he’s like, “I don’t understand. Why?” And I said, “Well, I need to understand how she asks questions because one day I’m going to be on her show.” Obviously, it was just to make him mad, but, that was my—

BERMAN: You saw it. You saw it.

SOARE: I put it in the universe. So when I went and I did her eyebrows, oh my God, I couldn’t, I wanted to cry. I wanted to jump. I want — I don’t even remember what. You know what I mean? It was one of the most powerful women on the planet, the most influential woman and her power and her energy, her aura was so powerful. I met and I worked with so many celebrities, but when I met Oprah — that was my Oscar moment.

BERMAN: Yeah.

SOARE: After, the phone will not stop ringing. It changes everything.

Copy LinkPartnering with Nordstrom & scaling her craft

BERMAN: And so, there’s one direction to go in building this business where you could be franchising and launching Anastasia all across America and what have you. There’s another where you start launching consumer products. Which direction did you go?

SOARE: So, actually I worked on both. I used to do master classes and teach people, estheticians, how to do eyebrows, and it was very difficult because they will get the certificate, they will put it in their salon, and then if they had a client that wasn’t happy, they’d pull off half of their eyebrows and call my salon because it was my name there.

BERMAN: You’ve certified them.

SOARE: So to keep the quality was very difficult, every face is different.

BERMAN: So the judgment of the person who’s providing the service comes into play in a way it just doesn’t in other kinds of businesses.

SOARE: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, when I start doing eyebrows, I used to mix some Vaseline with aloe vera and eyeshadow to fill in the eyebrows, to create that perfect shape. And the client will come back and say, “Well, I know my eyebrow looks amazing when I leave, but after I take a shower, I need that product.” So that was the reason why I wanted to create products.

So it was a normal thing for my business to do. Because I had such a long list of celebrities, Nordstrom invited me to launch the product there.

And that was the perfect moment for me to launch the Brow Studios. Because in 2000, when I launched in Nordstrom, women were not very familiar with filling their eyebrows with powder or pomade, so they needed to be educated. So partnering with Nordstrom was the best thing. We opened Brow Studios. I had at that time a field team that would go and train the girls every weekend. I used to travel in different cities and and train the estheticians.

BERMAN: Did you need to raise money to be in the consumer products, or were you able to use the Nordstrom deal to fund the consumer products?

SOARE: In 1990, nobody wanted to invest in something called eyebrows product. So I had to work nonstop doing eyebrows in the salon. I had a part-time job flipping houses. So I would buy a house, fix it, and after two years, I would sell it, and that money I put in the company again. So, it was quite a challenge, and going to Nordstrom, it really helped me to have a different way of doing the business. I mean, they were great partners, even today they are still amazing, and they helped me to build that service business.

BERMAN: And the service business marketed the products.

SOARE: Of course.

BERMAN: It’s a virtuous cycle.

SOARE: Absolutely. Because they charge for the service, and it’s perfect.

Copy LinkThe power of television and magazines

BERMAN: In that 2000 to 2010, 11, 12 range, the consumer internet is starting to explode, but finally Instagram arrives and changes how beauty and beauty products are marketed. How did you grow the business in that phase before we got to the explosion of beauty on social media?

SOARE: I used to be on every single TV show that I could think about.

If you think about it, all the TV anchors wanted their eyebrows beautiful, yes? So they used to come to the salon, producers, and everybody. So, my deal was, “Okay, I will do your eyebrow, but I want to be on the show to talk about my products and my technique.”

So, that was very important. Plus, when I used to travel Sundays and Mondays around the country, before I will go at Nordstrom, I would go on the national TV networks in that specific region.

BERMAN: Going to the Nordstrom Cincinnati—

SOARE: Exactly. So, plus all the beauty editors at fashion magazines, they started talking about beauty. And of course, I had a great relationship there. I believe that beauty editors, they were the initial liaison between the client and the masters. Hairstylist, makeup artist, brow artist, and so forth. So, I think they were the voice that “we’ll kind of teach or share the information with the public.” And this is how people used to come to the salon or went to the department store and buy my products. So I did everything possible the old way.

Copy LinkLeveraging social media to amplify the business

BERMAN: Well, there’s no question hard work has been a core part of your story.

And then this cheat code arrives in the form of Instagram when it comes to beauty. So, a lot of businesses that were established in the ’90s and early 2000s were not able to take advantage of the opportunities. They didn’t see it, they weren’t nimble enough, they weren’t entrepreneurial or opportunistic enough.

And a lot of companies that reach scale, right, and have a founder who’s done things one way for a long time, they miss it, and that’s where insurgents come and take over. But you caught that wave. You took that wave. So what happened that let you do that? How did that happen?

SOARE: So, my daughter started working with me. Saturday night, we’ll take our carry on and we’ll fly to different cities to promote the product. I used to shave the eyebrows, and I would recommend the color and the products, and she used to tell them how to use them. So after a while, she said, “Mom, I work seven days a week. I’m only 18. This app, we should have our products there. We should talk about them. We should post. We should do videos.” And I said, “Claudia, I don’t like Facebook. I don’t care how many coffees people will get.” “No, no, no, this is not Facebook. This is a different type of social media.”

Okay, let’s give a try. So we posted one video, and it was incredible. It was our brow wiz, that is one of our most popular pencil, mechanical pencil. And, of course, we read every single comment, and there was one comment that said, “Oh, I wish I could buy that pencil.”

And I answered, I said, “Can you please send me your address? I would love to gift you one.” And, she said, “Oh, no, you can’t because I live in a small little town or village in India.”

When I read that, I thought, Wow, this is something to pay attention to. I will never be able to reach a person in a small village in India.

So, I sat down with Claudia and said “Let’s hire some younger kids, and let’s really do this. So, we were 24/7 with the Instagram posting.”

Copy LinkRaising private equity to globally expand

BERMAN: And you caught the next wave of what we now call influencers, right? Whether it’s Kardashians or what have you, who were native to that platform and so powerful on that platform. And so you built the business quite impressively. I mean, this has become a very big business to the point where you took on private equity money.

SOARE: Yes.

BERMAN: Can you tell us about the decision to take a private equity?

SOARE: Well, in 2018, we were unstoppable. It was incredible.

BERMAN: Where was the business in 2018, give or take?

SOARE: The business was $300 million in sales and with an incredible margin, incredible margin.

BERMAN: And you had not taken outside investment up to this point?

SOARE: No, I own 100 percent of the business. To be honest with you, I didn’t even know how much the company was worth, but we wanted to expand international.

We were strong, very strong, in domestic, but not internationally. I realized to do business internationally, it’s much more difficult. And to establish every country, for me to do that, it will take me away from doing what I have to do that nobody else could do, which is marketing in the products. And the decision was we wanted to take a partner to help us expand internationally, and this is how we ended up with a partner.

Copy Link“Covid destroyed us”

I mean, they are great partners, very smart people. Unfortunately, there were some events, natural events that really hurt the business. I’m talking about COVID — it destroyed us. COVID was probably the most difficult part, an I made a decision to keep the employees, all the employees, not only that, but I gave every single employee in the company a check personally from me, not from the company, just as a gift, because I thought that was the most hard… It was so shocking, and we never went through that, and I felt so bad for all my employees that I thought, I want to give you some money, I don’t know what it will cover, you couldn’t even go to a restaurant, but order some food and cook it and stay with your family, but something that will make you feel good and makes me feel good.

BERMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

SOARE: So we had to keep all the people, we pledged a million dollars to a small business that couldn’t survive, and it was very hard because you couldn’t touch the makeup, stores were closed. Even when they open, you couldn’t use the tester. So it was hard.

BERMAN: What keeps you optimistic?

SOARE: What keeps me optimistic? This country, I think, this is a country that could always recover and always will win. I, believe in America. America is a country of people that will not give up. And they will, it’s like phoenix from the ashes, they will build something great again. And I think we all love this country. If you live here, I mean, I don’t think there’s another country like it.

Copy LinkAnastasia’s entrepreneurial advice

BERMAN: There isn’t. Anastasia, I want to ask you to imagine a young woman, a young person, who comes to the U.S. much like you did, with nothing. And, who finds a job in a salon and is starting and has your work ethic and your ambition and your values.

What’s your advice to her for how to begin pursuing an entrepreneurial journey where she has a chance to control her own destiny?

SOARE: I think the most important thing is do your homework. First of all, what do you exactly want to do? Because there are a few options that you have. You want to be a housewife? That’s a CEO of a household, and it’s a lot of work, okay?

Do you want to have your own business to be an entrepreneur? That’s a lot of work. So you need to have the support if you still have a family. So, see where you are, how much time you could put into this. To be an entrepreneur, it never stops. The only time when you don’t work is when you sleep.

And then if you check all those points, then you have to think, Okay, you need to perfect your skill. Constantly. I am in this business for 32 years, okay? I constantly want to be better every day. I want to learn more. I want to be better than I was yesterday.

So, perfect your skill. Master your skill — that’s your foundation. Then, you have to market your skill. That’s another important thing as well. You have to surround yourself with people that share your vision, and they will go with you on this journey. And then everything you do has to serve as something. “I want to do this because I want you to take advantage of my skills or whatever I think I could offer.”

I love when Jeff Bezos says, “Amazon, 10 years from now on, people will know that we’ll have good price and they will be in within hours at your doorstep.”

He knows exactly his vision. You need to have very clear vision of what you want to do.

It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of discipline, a lot of determination, but you have to love it because it’s not easy.

But if you love what you do, you feel like you don’t work.

Copy LinkWhat keeps Anastasia going

BERMAN: You have achieved so much and done so well financially and built something and have a world class investor behind you. Many people in your position might say it’s time to pass the torch. What keeps you going?

SOARE: It’s the desire of being better every day and doing something that I love. I don’t see myself doing anything else, I love to work. I mean, I work like I can’t pay my rent next month. It is very important to have a passion and to have a purpose. I don’t think retiring is for me, it’s not going to happen, never. I will never retire. I always said my retirement idea is to work nine to five.

BERMAN: Let us hope you’re able to get there sooner than later. In the meantime, it’s a great place to wrap. Thank you so much for being on Masters of Scale.

SOARE: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

BERMAN: Great having you. Thank you.

Anastasia Soare’s scale journey is truly incredible. She landed in Los Angeles without a nickel in her pocket almost 40 years ago and built a brand synonymous with beauty around the world. It’s a testament to how much hustle and heart can achieve in a country where immigrants are given a chance.

I’m Jeff Berman, thank you for listening.