In this episode of the E-commerce Evolution Podcast, host Brett Curry sits down with with award-winning entrepreneur Leah Garcia (https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-garcia-592988/), founder of Nulastin (https://nulastin.com/).

Leah has a remarkable journey building a beauty brand with shocking retention numbers—80% blended returning revenue and 65% subscription-based customers. From her bootstrapped beginnings (going from zero to $17.5M before hiring her first employee!) to developing bio-designed elastin products that deliver real results, Leah unpacks the strategies that have made her company a standout success even in uncertain economic times.

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Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

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Chapters: 

(00:00) Introducing Leah Garcia 

(02:54) Nulastin’s Mission and Core Products

(07:19) How to Achieve High Retention Rates

(12:59) Removing Friction in the Shopping Experience

(19:33) Optimizing Subscription Models 

(25:50) Knowing Your Customers & Fostering Connections

(30:50) Improvements to Reduce Churn 

(37:08) Direct Response Marketing Insights

(41:42) Navigating Uncertainty in Business

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Connect With Brett: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce 
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ 

Relevant Links:

• Nulastin: https://nulastin.com
• Leah’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/leah-garcia-592988
• Leah’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leahgarciatv/
• Heart & Soil Beef Organics: https://heartandsoil.co/

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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more

My superpowers. I make really, really

fast decisions when I make them.

I give the person that I'm going into

business with or making a decision with my

all and I don't keep one foot

on each side of the fence.

Well, hello and welcome to another edition

of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.

I'm your host, Brett

Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce,

and today I am delighted

to welcome to the show Leah

Garcia. We met in Denver, Colorado.

We both spoke at Ezra Firestones last

ever, the final, the grand finale,

glue and Mastermind. Lee

and I both spoke there.

I think you spoke right after me,

and so I was up close to the stage.

I heard you talk and thought, man,

got to get you on the podcast.

And so here we are today.

But Leah is an award-winning entrepreneur.

She won the EY winning Entrepreneur,

female entrepreneur class of

We'll hear more about that as we go.

She's built a company called New Lastin,

which is really has some

shocking retention numbers

that we're going to unpack

and that you're going to learn from.

She's been involved with the rodeo,

she's been on tv, she's sold on QVC.

She's done a little bit of everything.

It turns out as we got to talking, we

know about a bunch of the same people,

and so she's just an impressive

human and brings amazing energy.

Although she did confess to me

this energy is going to be raw.

It's going to be all Leah because she's

got no coffee right now, no caffeine.

And so I love that you're willing

to do this podcast without caffeine.

You're traveling, didn't have access

to coffee. So with that, Leah,

welcome to the show and how you doing?

Thank you.

I tried to make my screen smaller

to see your face not so ginormous.

And right now all I've got is

an exclamation point that says,

thanks for joining, but

if you can still see me,

I'm literally looking at a blank

screen right now, which is fine.

Yeah, yeah, you look great. You

look great. So yeah, perfect.

Perfect. This is more

like a Braille podcast,

and I'm actually down with that because

oftentimes I sit around staring at

myself in the mirror way too long.

So we're done with that. No coffee,

no reflection, complete,

just full on transparency.

I love it. I love it. So

amazing. So let's start here,

Lee,

I want to get into some of your story as

we go because it's really fascinating.

You've done a lot of amazing things, but

what is Elastin? Why did you start it?

And then we're going to talk about some

shocking numbers you've been able to

create in terms of subscriber percentages

and return customer percentages and

LTV and some stuff that's really,

really valuable right now.

But what is new lesson

and why did you start it?

The journey really was personal

problem, resourceful resource,

meaningful monetization.

I had an issue that was going on

as I was aging and losing elastin

and it manifest itself in

ways I was in television,

but the wrinkles, the lack of

vitality, hair was thinning eyebrows.

I over plucked, that was all on me.

Things were happening in my body as I

started aging in this world of being front

facing camera.

And I was introduced to this very

powerful protein called elastin,

and I met a microbiologist and I

had my aha moment where I realized

that this was truly

the miracle youth protein that

nobody else was really addressing.

People were talking about

collagen but not about elastin.

So elastin was for me that aha moment.

And the company was founded on science.

So bio designed an elastin

replenishment product for

scalp hair, beautiful skin.

And the thing that makes

it so novel is that it's

one of the first bio designed proteins

that's identical to the human body,

meaning that when you put

this product on topically,

your body recognizes it as native so

it doesn't fight with it. And now they

use fancy words like

biomimetic bioidentical,

but your body loves these types of

proteins. It says, oh yeah, I make this,

I produce this. I know what to do with

this so that I'm going to work for you.

And it's probably one of the

most natural ways to continue

getting the results that you're looking

for. So I fell in love with the science,

even though I'm not a scientist,

but that's how the whole business

started was I had a personal problem.

I found this solution which was elastin.

It wasn't being addressed in

the marketplace, and I thought,

I can really change lives here.

I can do something for women, especially.

I started with women that

wouldn't just give them results,

but that would give them so much

something bigger like their confidence,

their identity, their sense of self,

and that's what we're doing at Elastin.

That's fantastic. And so your

core products are hair lash, brow,

correct.

So talk a little bit about

your hero products and then

we're going to talk about

your incredible results and

what we can learn from 'em.

I started the company

with two hero products,

which is lash and brow, and boy,

timing is everything. So

we did have some skincare.

I've been using the

skincare for about a decade,

but it was a prototype formula and wasn't

really commercialized, but I used it.

I've always been using science-based

skincare, wound healing,

tissue regeneration. I've

never been an Avon girl.

I've never used anything that was sort

of what you would at a department store.

So I don't know if that's just because

of my professional athletic background.

You're always playing around with what's

the newest nutritional supplement or

what's the newest thing that you can

concoct so that you can go faster or climb

higher and do all the things

that you want to do to win.

So the lash in the brow serum

had demonstrable results

within some people a

couple of weeks, six weeks,

eight weeks by 12 weeks.

It was just mind boggling, the changes.

And so we had these gorgeous

before and afters and

that was a really fun

product to bring to market.

But my dream was always to

be able to tackle the hair,

but I just knew that that was to

try to get the same amount of active

ingredients in a 50 mil container that

would give the same demonstrable results

in an amount of time that wasn't going

to cost somebody their arm and a leg.

That was the journey that took a

wee bit longer to get that really

pinpointed so that we just didn't have

a $400 bottle that we were trying.

To sell. Yeah, little bit difficult.

Even if the results are great and

we all want to look youthful enough,

vibrant hair and skin

and brows and lashes,

hard to justify 400 bucks for a

bottle of shampoo. That's for short.

So let's unpack something Leah,

because there's a lot that's

impressive about you, by the way.

You're an amazing presenter

on stage, you look great,

you take fitness seriously.

You're aging gracefully.

You got so many cool things going

on, but you shared this with me.

You have 80% blended returning revenue,

so 80% of your revenue is

blended returning customers,

65% subscription based for customers.

Your A OV is 90 in the 94th

percentile of your vertical,

and then your LTV is off the charts.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

But how have you done this?

Because I know this is by design.

You said this was the goal from the

beginning. I know it's a great product,

but how do you get to that 65% of

your revenues from subscriptions?

80% is blend to returning

customers. How do you do it?

Well, first of all, you better

have a product that works, right?

And so now there's all

sorts of fancy words for it,

but back in the day it was word

of mouth and the trajectory to

getting a really nice return customer

isn't just putting in cancellation

prevention, finding the right

tech stack, which is key.

I think that if you break it

down into four categories,

you're looking at discover,

discover your customer pain points,

that's going to be the first thing that

you need to do. Put skin in the game,

literally something that is a personal

problem that you've lived through that

you can then identify and that immediately

is going to give you a product that

people are going to want and

to understand and can be the

heartbeat of the formula.

And then you want to make sure that you're

identifying the things in your

business model that are the defeat,

repeat moments, what's defeating them?

Is it a bad value proposition? Is

it a shitty product which we don't have?

And then the final one,

which I think is really,

really key is do you have a

gap?

Is there a frustrating technical

experience for the customer?

Because let's face it, nobody wants to

get to the finish line to buy something,

to have tech breakdown or their

website not work or gosh dang it,

I've already given you my

credit card five times.

Why do I have to go

find that number again?

There's these points that happen in a

customer journey that will just throw them

off. They'll just, I'm done. I'm

done with you. That was frustrating.

It wasn't fun, it wasn't pleasant.

So these frustrating experience will

break down that repeat customer.

And then the biggest one for us, honestly,

we did really well up to, geez,

last year because we had

such a great product,

we cared so deeply about our customers,

we did nice things for our customers,

but I still didn't have

the right tech partners,

and that was really the missing link

for me getting up to this 80% and

65% was finally plugging in the right tech

partners.

And my tech stack isn't anything novel,

but it just started working once I had

left hand and right hand talking to one

another.

Yeah, so it all starts

with product, right?

We got to have a product that is amazing

that we want to keep ordering again and

again. That's so good that we're telling

our friends about it, things like that.

That's solving a real problem. We

got to then make the process easy.

We've got to have good tech solutions.

There's a lot that goes into that.

But what's interesting, and you

talked about solving a real problem,

I want to give a quick shout out to Dean

Brennan. He was a guest on the podcast,

CEO of Heart and Soil.

These are meat based

supplements as a weird concept.

I do plant-based supplements

in these supplements,

but he tipped me off on this joint care

because as I've been aging, I work out,

I run, I do things, joints hurt,

and he tipped me off to this joint

care supplement. It's fantastic.

I've never taken anything

like I don't ache at all.

We went on a trip to Vegas just before

actually the Denver event where I spoke

with you and a couple

of guys were with me.

We were running on the pavement and they

were all complaining about being sore.

And I'm like, I feel great. My

joints don't ache at all. Anyway,

so that's a product where

I started taking that.

I am not going to unsubscribe from that.

That is going to become part of

my routine because I feel awesome.

And so same is true for you though,

man, the skin is looking good,

the brows looking good,

the hair's looking good.

We're just going to keep buying.

So that makes a ton of sense.

Talk this out. Lemme on to

what you just said because

that is so key, right? So you have

a product, he tells you about it,

you use it, it works, and then what

do you just do? You told me about it.

Now I'm curious. And that's

what we're talking about.

That's how you get that

sticky customer. It's no one.

If I can get on that soapbox again,

and you've heard me get on my soapbox.

If you've got a product because you just

want to make money because you want to

sell, because you just want

to cut corners, do people,

if you will, they might

buy maybe once or twice,

but ultimately it's not

going to be the longevity.

It's not going to be what's going to

serve them well in the long run because

ultimately people don't want crap.

They want something that works.

It's going to be grind.

You're always going to have to be

hustling for that next sale where,

whereas with you with your

product now 65% of your revenue

comes in automatically

through subscriptions,

and then another 15% comes in

through repeat customers anyway,

so it's really awesome.

Talk about some of the things you

did to remove friction from the

shopping process to make

subscriptions easier.

And you have any insights on,

do you get first purchase take rate on

subscriptions or is it more like they try

it once and then you're getting them on

subscriptions through email and SMS and

remarketing campaigns? Talk

through some of the tactics there.

First. Yeah. Okay. So

when I first started,

I bootstrapped the company and my claim

to fame was that I went from zero to

17 and a half million before

I hired my first employee.

No way.

Yes, that's the claim to fame.

That being said, I did have,

excuse me,

I did have an agency that I

had hired that really helped me

with my digital marketing

and they helped me with my

paid media marketing.

So I wasn't able to really control.

They had their things

they were working on.

So I started with bold subscriptions

and Bold just did not work for me.

We didn't have the right website

and the right theme and the right

anything to manage that

subscription platform.

And then we transferred.

Once I started professionalizing and

bringing in employees and we're looking at

like 20, 21 at this point,

then I transferred over to another

subscription platform and that one didn't

work out at all.

They were very tech heavy and I still

didn't have the internal tech because I

was bringing everything in house. So

it was just a mismatched relationship,

just literally oil and vinegar.

And so then

ultimately I got a cold call from

a recharge rep that said, Hey,

Leah, so-and-so from Recharge and I

don't like cold calls, but I said,

you've got five minutes to convince me

why I should switch to your platform.

And then ultimately we arm wrestled

and negotiated a good contract,

which is something that was very important

to me. And then I signed on and when

I go, I go deep. I don't

wish my superpowers,

I make really, really fast

decisions when I make them.

I give the person that I'm going into

business with or making a decision with my

all, and I don't keep one foot on

each side of the fence. It's amazing,

a good

Partner.

So they then introduced me

to a web development team

that at first I didn't hire,

but I really liked them.

And then eventually I realized that I

still didn't have left hand and right hand

talking and that these teams

needed to all be working in Shopify

Plus.

So my basis for my tech

stack is literally absolute

web recharge and Shopify Plus.

And then from there you can build out

with the Klaviyo's and the postscripts and

all the new things that come around.

But because they all work

together collectively and kind of

synergistically,

that made my job easier

so that we could use the

insights. And I'll tell you with

Recharge, constantly innovating,

they came out with their

cancellation prevention,

which was telling me I knew

my customers were overstocked,

but I didn't know to what degree.

So then when I find out that I'm

30% plus overstocked with customers,

which is why they're churning, then

I can really do something about it.

So then my web tech team got together

and we created a really bespoke,

a really bespoke

journey whereby now we changed

our subscription so that we

open with a 10 week supply because

Elastin is a product that you need to use

over time to see the results.

Got.

It. So instead of maybe them

picking haphazardly six weeks,

despite the fact that we tell them

otherwise, then they get overstocked.

Then we transfer from that 10

week supply to a five week supply,

for example,

so that they now have a manageable

cadence coming in with their

subscription. And that

immediately turned things around.

I mean that alone,

we saw an uptick in our subscription

take, and then we saw a decrease in churn.

So churn can hover between eight to 10 ish

percent, which me I'd

love churn to be about 2%.

No doubt.

I'm a dreamer.

But the customers that were sticking

around then became stickier,

if you will.

And that's when that lifetime value for

our subscription customers could also

be identified as a ridiculous number

compared to non-subscribers.

I think it's $146 for our,

no, excuse me,

$436 for our subscriber lifetime value

compared to 186 for non-subscribers.

Way.

More than double.

That's huge, right?

It's huge.

And then we do that smart

cancellation prevention,

which then saves us an additional

7% of would be cancellations.

And that's all done through automation

and thoughtful touch points.

So something that we

just didn't have before,

but I'll tell you the

biggest thing for me,

the thing that really turned my business

is that our customer service team,

which we have an in-house team of work

from home moms that are just amazing.

It's amazing.

We have always been one of the

top performing brands on gorgeous,

the platform that we use for

cx, our tickets went down 50%,

I'm pausing there.

Tickets went down 50%

by having all of these

optimizations, all of this website flow,

this smarter website,

this smoother website,

all of those friction points, once

they were removed, I'm saving money,

I'm making more money, and

my customer service team,

it has 50% fewer tickets,

happier customers,

and we're not even paying that

higher platform anymore. On Gorg.

We'd had to keep up in

our fee for our agreement

because we were just so

much customer service,

so much customer service. And

now that's being eliminated.

It's amazing. So now you're cutting down,

you're able to staff less or you're

saving on costs for answering tickets.

But think about it from

the customer's perspective.

Nobody wants to submit a ticket,

nobody wants to interact.

Even if customer support is

delightful, it's a stay-at-home mom,

and they're just a joy to talk

to. I still don't want to do it.

And so if you can eliminate that,

it's even better. So part of that,

so let's talk about why.

And I want to look at,

you said something a minute ago was

really important. You said, Hey,

people need to take this for

10 weeks to see the results.

So that's what you started selling, right?

So is that like a 10 week bundle or just

sign up and you get it for 10 weeks or.

Two pack for example,

just a two pack of lash,

two pack of brow or a two

pack of the hair treatment.

And that's the vibrant scalp

treatment. So use it consistently,

use it every day. You need to

premix that fuel, if you will.

You want to get those hyper results

in the beginning because if not,

people will lose interest.

It's already hard enough that I am not a

mascara where you put it on and you get

longer lashes immediately.

This is something that depending on

where you are naturally with your hair

growth cycle, it takes a

while. Get those real results.

So some people, depending on where

they're at with that growth journey,

they may have results right away.

But for the most part, aging women,

who is our demographic,

me, I am the demographic,

we don't exactly respond.

Those young bucks do.

So it takes us a little while to

get that diesel engine revved up

and we just need to make sure that

people are using it and then they start

seeing results. And that's when the

excitement sets in. And then when.

You at that point, and then you.

Go for Vegas with your buddies and your

knees don't ache, you're like, hello?

Yeah, exactly. Tell me what you're

taking. Tell me what you're taking.

Yeah,

I wrote a lot statement.

So it's a two pack so they can use it

for 10 weeks, get the best results.

So that's the first start.

The first piece says,

what do they need to take

to get the best results,

whether it's a physical product,

something you're using or something

you're putting on ingestible, whatever.

So what do they need to take to get

the best results? Let's sell them that.

And then what did you do in

terms of messaging or just making

it easier to understand and to say yes to?

Talk to me about some

specific tactics there.

The tactic, I think

that's the most important,

just if we're talking D two C

and just brand building is I

had a lot of fractional

copywriters for a while,

so we didn't have a single voice,

and then we hired a gal who is

leading our brand and our brand

copy and her copy then hit that whole

customer journey.

So what we see on our macros from

customer service is what we see

on the post-consumer flow

for our email marketing,

it's what they're getting

when they're seeing

the ad perhaps on meta or wherever

they first found out that top of the

funnel perspective. So they're seeing,

here's what they're seeing

in the top of the funnel,

here's the middle of the funnel,

here's the bottom of the funnel,

here's the email marketing campaign,

here's how it's flowing with the SMS,

here's the information they're

getting from all angles. And it all

sounds the same and it all makes sense.

So you're not sending mixed

messages anymore. And before,

I'm probably guilty of having sent

more mixed messages or just not

having that through line,

that continuity so that we're all

just really making sure that people

understand what we're delivering

to the customers. And it's a serum.

I'm at my temporary desk

here, but for example, here's,

here's a sample of the

vibrate scalp treatment,

the lash and the brow

that's in just a single box.

This was one of our promo boxes that

we put together. So they're all serums.

You use 'em twice daily, once

in the morning, once at night,

and people will inadvertently say, oh,

so I need to keep using that product,

and if I stop using it, it stops working.

And the answer is yes. If you stop

drinking water, you get dehydrated. Of.

Course, yeah.

If you stop eating food,

you get hungry. If you stop,

I want to vitamin I can take.

That's.

It. Things change. But it's

still that age old question.

And that comes from, I kid you not,

that comes from old school

mentality before people really got a

little bit smarter to realize that

consistency is what delivers results in

everything. If you want

to stay fit, stay fit.

You, I've got to keep working out. I've

got to keep sleeping well every night.

Come on, that's want to

do it once, it's so good.

But it's not necessarily even

a nice to have once you start

fighting back mother

nature, it's a must have.

And this is where that longevity game

comes in there because what we're doing to

biohack our bodies and our

health and our wellbeing

is really the rage right now. And

I've been biohacking since day one.

I think the biggest thing I

did to biohack was not have.

Children. I'm sure I've never.

Said that out loud before.

New biohack don't have kids.

Turns out that's also a great

savings plan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know a lot of parents that get pretty

dang stressed right now in this world.

There's enough stress going on.

So I always laugh that my husband and I

are able to just pick up and go whenever

we want. We've got all this freedom.

And I could also focus on the business.

So truthfully,

my business is those are my children, my.

Members.

That's who I care about right.

Now. I love that. I love

that. My wife and I,

we can get up and travel

anytime we want to as well.

We just have eight kids that

we have to tow around with us.

Actually they don't all live

at home. So it's not eight,

it's only like five or

six. It's no big deal. But.

That to me,

I think that single voice to the

question going back to What are the

mechanics, what can you do right now?

What are the actionable items that

some of the individuals listening to

can take and take from this?

And you talked about that

ability for us to get on the

phone.

And something that I always say flies

in the face of what we've been taught is

to really know your customer.

So we do have a lot of

older women who have felt

unseen and unheard and

undervalued in their lives.

And so our customer service team is

empowered to spend however extra time they

need on the phone with those

individuals until that individual

feels like they've gotten what they need.

And sometimes they can be on

the phone for a long time,

which is why our gorgeous score

has probably gone from a 4.8

and not to a five. I mean,

we're still at 94.8% of

all gorgeous platforms.

That's that 5% stat.

But we stay where we're

at because one of the

metrics that's timed on gorg is

how quickly do you answer those

questions for people? And sometimes we

just don't answer them that quickly.

We'll respond quickly,

but then we take our time.

Take your time. But yeah,

and it's more about optimizing for

satisfaction than it is to hitting some

metrics that may indicate

satisfaction, but not always.

And so I love the way you guys do that.

This idea of consistent communication,

I've heard it's called the

golden thread or consistency.

So every message we share, whether it's

a video with static image, it's on med,

it's on YouTube, it's on Google,

it's an email, it's an SMS,

it's all saying the same

thing. It's reinforcing,

maybe we're hitting the same message

from a couple of different angles,

but ultimately it's the same

thing when you get on the lander.

Also the same message.

Simplification and clarity

are super important.

Sometimes we overcomplicate things

and a confused customer does not

buy. So what are some of the messages,

the go-to messages or what are you trying

to communicate when you're creating

this consistency across all.

Channels?

We fall back always on our pillars

at elastin. So real science,

real results, real people

and real responsibility.

But that's the pillar.

And then from the pillar then you

identify what is the pain point for the

customer. And it really always

boils down to their sense of self,

their confidence, their sense of identity,

their desire to be the best version of

themselves. So I'm going to go

back to what you said. You said,

I started taking this supplement,

I feel so much better.

I'm not hurting anymore. I wake

up, maybe you don't need coffee.

And all of a sudden

now you didn't say, oh,

I like where they source their product.

They did a really good job of where

they sourced and they're environmentally

friendly and they've done all

these things. Well, that's a given.

Now you need to have all of that.

You can't come into a beauty brand

right now if you're not sustainable,

if you are not taking care of

vegan and cruelty-free and no

preservatives and all of the lists. So

we call those our safe science standards,

but you can't lead with that

because nobody buys a product.

Nobody buys a product because it's got

the best biodesign proteins and the most

peptides.

For sure.

That doesn't sell. What sells is,

does it do what they want it to do.

So the message has to always be about

what the customer needs and what

that pain point is that we're solving

or what that aspiration is that they're

looking to gain. And then ultimately,

if we don't deliver the

product that really works,

they're never going to come back again.

But the other flip side is

because of where people are,

whether they've got thyroid

post-treatment, post stress,

aging, loss of elastin,

naturally too much sun, exposure,

exposure, environmental,

stressing out about what's happening in

our political and our culture right now,

all of these things are causing

people to lose their hair.

And we saw this during Covid as well.

So what we also have to do at

Neulasta is we have to look at how we

can kind of bundle that and make

sure that we're still giving the

customer the time they

need to get the results.

So if 12 weeks isn't enough,

I'm going to take care of them and give

them more product so that they get the

results they're asking for. And whether

I do that sometimes with free product,

sometimes with a deeper discount, but

if they call me, I will literally say,

you didn't start this journey because

you were just trying something.

You want something.

So I'm going to give that to you for

as long as it takes till you get that

result.

That's so good. That's so good.

Talk to me about the

process of reducing churn.

You talked about some

of the programs you run.

If someone's about to cancel their

subscription, how do you mitigate that?

What are some of the

strategies that you've used?

Most recently, it's

going to go back to just

that very,

very powerful buy box that

people are seeing so that the web

functionality, I believe I mentioned

this, smoother, faster, smarter,

but that buy box, which is the small

powerful decision point, right?

That's transformed so

that it now has above

the fold because before

it wasn't above the fold,

but it's a smarter way of

customers to get the right

cadence with the right

subscription that they needed.

And then as they go through

the checkout process,

not too many more decisions to make,

but then there are some upsells

and there are some cross sells,

but mainly trying to serve the

customer with a very smart flow

so that they don't have to

get confused or question it.

So the result of that alone

with that buy box and the web

functionality was a 13.4%

increase in conversion rate.

So we immediately started getting that.

And then the next part of

it is just continuing to

innovate when we see

something that's not working.

We work with the web partner now

and we try to innovate and solve

around the entire customer journey and

anticipate their needs so that we can

exceed those expectations.

Yeah, it's so good. I'm looking

at your detail page now,

and we'll put this in the video

version. If someone's on YouTube,

they can see it. But I love

the way this is laid out.

So the top section you automatically

selected subscribe and save 25%.

You got three different options,

deliver every eight weeks.

In the middle it says deliver 10 weeks,

it's got a check mark and it's bolded

and it says recommended right under it.

And then or deliver every 12 weeks. And

it says free shipping, cancel any time,

full flexibility, try really compelling,

and then it's got the strikethrough price

and the price that you'll pay saving

25%. And then below that you

could choose a one-time purchase.

You save 12% that way. What is,

so you talked about 65% of

your revenue is subscriptions.

What's the take rate on subscriptions

when someone's checking out with these

products?

I don't have that answer

off the top of my head.

It's got to be a pretty high,

it's got to be a high take rate since

everything else is off the charts as well.

Being the owner of the

company and the founder,

I always get just a little bit

puckered up there because you still

have people who want that big deep

discount and they're playing the game.

So you're always going to get

the people who are like, oh,

I can get free shipping. Oh, I

can get this really deep discount,

possibly almost 30% on my first order.

And they have absolutely no

intention. They're playing the field.

They might be doing the stance

with a lot of other companies,

but ideally if they've purchased

two products from us or the Tupac,

then they are going to see results.

And they might have a aha

moment themselves where they

stick around for a little

bit longer. But

it is high,

and we're working on it because we

actually didn't have as robust of

a landing page funnel as we do now.

It's still not the Ezra Firestone funnel,

but that is something that we're working

on so that we have the capacity now

to build out more landing pages

so that it makes it easy for that

first take rate. I want to

say 80%, but I might be wrong,

so don't quote me and hold

me to that particular number.

With every other number being off the

charts, the take rate's got to be really,

really healthy as well.

And so can you talk about the landing

page work that you guys are doing?

Is that tying specific

offer to specific ad

and what are you doing and any

interesting learnings with that journey?

Yes, better. It's still not set up.

I've seen so many great landing pages

that I start falling in love with,

but if they're seeing an ad for,

with a particular human being being

featured in an age category and an

offer for lash,

and then they come over to a PDP

page as a checkout page versus going

to a landing page where then we continue

selling them on that journey where then

we get that buy box that really

speaks to what they're after,

because at that point, they

don't want to mess around.

They just want to get in there.

I'm like, yeah, that's what I want.

That's what I want to buy.

So you want to make sure that

you're not confusing them.

And that's what we've been trying to do

is follow that journey from what ad they

saw on meta, for example,

to where they land and get that checkout.

And it's the landing page strategy

is by far the best performer,

but we also find that our PDP pages are

equally as good. And back in the day,

we were sort of, and we would just go

to the homepage and that was a disaster.

I mean, it works a little bit, but it's

just, it's too much. It's like too much.

Nobody wants to.

Yeah, you're introducing too

many options in most cases.

But I will say, yeah, your PDP, which

is what I just showed a second ago,

it's fantastic. And.

That's only the landing page.

So I can send you links to

get to the landing pages,

which are those mysterious pages that

unless you're following a particular link,

you'll never find again. I was laughing

about that the other day. I'm like,

geez, even I own the company and

sometimes if I can't find my landing page,

I'm like, what's that foreign slash,

where did we go and how do you get back

to it again? So funny, once I lose it,

man, I can't find it again.

And that's an old anchor trick that I

learned from back in the day of direct

response infomercial is they

were just classic landing

page.

Marketers.

It was just.

Guthy Riner legends, legends in the game.

And so what did you do with them again?

Was that one of your products

or you worked with Guthy Riner?

No, but I was in the infomercial world,

so that's kind of where I cut my teeth

with direct response marketing is I

started in the direct response.

I was selling on HSNA particular AB belt,

and then I helped launch the

contour core sculpting system,

and that's a product that was in 2008,

one of the most successful

shows of its time.

And we went from zero to 220 million

in about three years,

and we had a seven to one media

marketing efficiency ratio.

So.

Seven to one.

A seven mer. Everyone listing is like.

Come, we're back in the day,

the Anthony Sullivans

and the Cindy Crawfords,

but we were watching them, they were

watching us. We were all competing.

But it was back,

it was in the good old days

where crepe erase was rocking.

And I mean, I am old,

so I remember the Suzanne Summer's in.

I remember watching the ThighMaster.

X.

90 XI bought because of P 90 X. Yeah,

actually friends that ran

the erase campaigns and.

Stuff. But I always ask, do we reflect,

and this is something I said in one of

my presentations recently is do we ever

reflect on that is really where we learned

the formula for our direct response

marketing. And they had three segments,

28 minute show compelling

problem solution,

and H one had a call to action. So if

you're jumping in somewhere in between,

it's here's how we're going to

save you time, money, energy,

get you what you're looking for. Here's

your call to action. If you order now,

you're going to get this, this, this,

and this. But wait, there's more.

And all that stuff worked. And

you know what? It still kind of.

Works. It still works. Maybe you're

executing it a little bit differently.

But the psychology there,

the problem solution,

the presenting it in a compelling way

and an engaging way with high energy,

it still works. And that's something

you and I were talking about.

I'm a huge YouTube guy.

We are seeing a lot of people that

have been historical TV advertisers now

trying YouTubes. We're leaning into that.

Love.

It. But I'm also seeing

some D two C brands,

brands that are born online that

are now leaning into connected tv,

whether that's through

YouTube or other platform,

and they're dabbling in TV advertising,

but it's direct response style,

TV advertising,

getting someone to take an action to

visit a site to get a free download or to

free trial, whatever.

Just works. I think we need to be more

clever and I need to meet more of a brand

recognition. I tried some,

our mutual colleague Stacy

helped me try to buy some linear

TV spots. It just didn't work for us,

but we didn't do enough. It

wasn't long enough, deep enough.

But elastin as big of a

brand as I think we are,

we're still not a name brand.

So you can walk down the street and people

aren't going to really recognize us.

So we're staying somewhat niche

in that. We have, I believe,

the best science in the industry,

and I would challenge anyone to match our

38 US and international patents all in

the elastin space.

It's.

Amazing.

We've got a category that no one else

is really focusing on to our depth

and breadth. But at the end of the

day, again, science isn't selling.

So now I've got to be able to just

communicate to people that we have a

beautiful product with a founder

and an entire team that cares

deeply for that customer journey and

that we're going to do everything in our

power to get them the results that

they want. And they can also trust.

I think small brands,

one of the beauties is that they can

trust the integrity that goes behind it

and that what we say is what we do.

Sometimes when you get that

thought of a big brand,

you kind of wonder did they lose it?

So if JJ buys a business and all of

a sudden you see it on the shelf at a

target, then old school

people would think, oh,

they must have done something different.

Now it's lost its allure or it

doesn't have the same formula.

And maybe they're right.

Maybe people take a formula,

they buy a company and then they fairy

dust the active ingredients and it might

not have the same punch that happens.

Right? Right. Yeah. I think

your passion rings true.

Listening to you talk and if someone

can see you or hear you talk in an ad,

it's clear you're going to do whatever

is necessary for someone to get the

results that they want, which is

great. I want to kind of end on this.

We only have a few minutes left,

but times are uncertain right

now at the time we're recording,

we're dealing with some

tariff, chaos and madness.

Consumer confidence is at a low.

Business owners are worried.

We work almost exclusively

with D two c e-commerce brands.

Many of our clients

don't import from China,

and so they're feeling a little

bit better than those that do,

but there's still just

uncertainty everywhere.

So what advice do you have and

what are you leaning into now when

times are uncertain?

How are you operating?

I have been guilty of falling

into a trap of feeling

the scarcity mentality and the panic,

but I am doing everything that I can to

try to come from a point of abundance,

and that might be a little too

metaphysical for this podcast,

but I literally need to stay true to

what we do over here. We need to

make money to stay in business,

but do I need to make a 94% contribution

margin every day, all day? Probably not.

I need to take a hit

with everybody going in,

and I'm willing to do that so that I

don't have to put it on my customers.

During covid, when people were upping

their prices, I stayed the same.

As a matter of fact,

just earlier this year,

first time I increased

I am going to do everything

I can to get clever to

figure out how to,

I only get packaging from China,

only my primary packaging. So that's

the stuff that you see, like this.

Packaging.

And I get a few, and it's not pretty.

You don't want to pay something that might

cost you 60 cents and all of a sudden

have to pay $2 for it

depending on where you're at.

I've got a product right now on the water

that was a little scalp scrubber that

I got from China, and it

was a 50 cent product.

And right now we don't know

because when it went on,

it was before the tax went up to 148%.

And at the end of the day, if I have to

pay the tax, what going to do? Say, no,

I'm going to send it back. That's

one option. It is an option.

My CFO said,

you need to deny shipments coming over

right now so that you don't have to pay

$26,000 in taxes that you don't

know where it's going. And I agree.

And then tomorrow they could

change it and I could end up paying

$12,000 in taxes versus a 46 versus

a hundred thousand dollars in

taxes. So it's huge. I mean, it's

going to cut into profit margins,

but my hope is that smarter

brains will prevail.

That somebody will at some point talk

to the government and talk to somebody.

And there's got to be,

if enough of us come together

without being hysterical and

we have those smart conversations,

we have to reach a point

where there's stability.

And I will do everything

I can to join that

movement if it happens.

But otherwise I am just not going to

bring stuff over. That's a nice to have.

It's got to be a must have.

Totally. Yeah.

And I think it's a really good take

where a couple things to keep in mind,

and you talked about mindset. I think

that is underrated in some ways where yes,

we get tactical on this podcast.

We want to look at how can we increase

our subscription take rate and how can we

reduce churn and things like

that. But your mindset matters,

and if you are overly stressed

or panicking, you're going

to make bad decisions.

You're going to craft bad marketing,

it's just not going to work well for you.

So work on the mindset. It will

only make everything else better.

But I always believe there's

always a move to make.

There's always something you can do and

every other one of your competitors is

dealing with the same

stuff you are dealing with.

So if you can be more scrappy,

more resourceful, more crafty,

you can find edges.

And it's like there are always

opportunities in crazy times like this.

I do believe there'll be adjustments

made with tariffs and stuff.

Who knows what that will be or

when or what direction it'll be.

But I think you're smart. How can we

limit what we're bringing over right now?

I'm hearing that from a

lot of different customers.

How can we just bring over the essentials.

Or how do we work together?

So let's say there's five of us in the

beauty industry that have a similar

product that might be coming.

Why not set up another manufacturing

or another warehouse, for example,

somewhere without taxes? Share the cost

on that, bring product over. I mean,

this is a time where we need to

kumbaya and lean in with one another.

There's ways around this. Even if it

doesn't change, I'm hoping it changes,

but if it doesn't change, let's

not panic. Let's collaborate.

Let's work together. Let's figure it out.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I

love that so much. And yeah,

there will be winners during

this season. No doubt.

It's just not easy and not overly

fun, but it's where we are.

And so got to focus on solutions. Leah,

this has been absolutely

fantastic. I love your brand.

I love the energy you bring.

I love what you're building,

and we need to catch up again soon

sometime. So thanks for coming on.

Thank you very much. We didn't

even talk about bull riding,

but we'll get to that later.

Bull riding next time. So I

will end with this though.

People have to follow you on social.

So you're a great follow on LinkedIn,

but you're also active on

Instagram and other channels.

Yes, yes. I'm still old

school, Leah Garcia TV Act.

Elastin is where the brand is found, but

I am more on the speaking

circuit these days.

So LinkedIn is probably one of the

best places to find my whereabouts.

And you got some great content recently

about those speaking engagements,

so check it out. Leah Garcia on

LinkedIn and Instagram. Leah,

thank you so much. This has been an

absolute pleasure and we'll chat soon.

I'm stoked. Thank you so much. Cheers.

Awesome. As always,

thank you for tuning in.

Would love to hear feedback

from you. If you've not left us,

that review on iTunes means

the world to us. And with that,

until next time, thank you for listening.