In this episode I had the privilege of sitting down with award-winning entrepreneur Leah Garcia, founder of Nulastin. 

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.

Key Takeaways

• Product is Everything: Leah emphasizes that customer retention starts with having a product that genuinely works and solves real problems. Nulastin's focus on elastin (instead of collagen) as the "miracle youth protein" created a market differentiator with demonstrable results.
• Reducing Friction Points: By partnering with the right tech stack (Recharge, Shopify Plus, and Absolute Web), Leah transformed her subscription program, resulting in a 50% reduction in customer service tickets and significantly increased LTV ($436 for subscribers vs. $186 for non-subscribers).
• Smart Cancellation Prevention: Understanding that customers were often "overstocked" led to subscription innovations like offering a 10-week initial supply followed by 5-week refills, creating manageable cadences that reduced churn and saved an additional 7% of would-be cancellations.
• Consistent Brand Messaging: Creating a "golden thread" of consistent communication across all customer touchpoints—from ads to emails to customer service—helps reinforce the value proposition and keeps customers engaged throughout their journey.
• Navigating Business Uncertainty: Leah shares her approach to managing through uncertain times, including maintaining an abundance mindset, focusing on essentials, and seeking opportunities for industry collaboration rather than panic-driven decisions.

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Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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 2024. So that's Ernst and Young. 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?

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah, you look great. You look great. So yeah, perfect,

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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.

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

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?

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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.

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

No way,

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

Got

Leah Garcia:

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%.

Brett Curry:

No doubt

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

More than double.

Leah Garcia:

That's huge, right?

Brett Curry:

It's huge.

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

It's amazing.

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

You at that point, and then you

Leah Garcia:

Go for Vegas with your buddies and your knees don't ache, you're like, hello?

Brett Curry:

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.

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

Course, yeah.

Leah Garcia:

If you stop eating food, you get hungry. If you stop, I want to vitamin I can take,

Brett Curry:

That's

Leah Garcia:

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,

Brett Curry:

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.

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

Children. I'm sure I've never

Leah Garcia:

Said that out loud before.

Brett Curry:

New biohack don't have kids. Turns out that's also a great savings plan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

Members.

Leah Garcia:

That's who I care about right

Brett Curry:

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

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

For sure.

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Leah Garcia:

I don't have that answer off the top of my head.

Brett Curry:

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.

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

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?

Leah Garcia:

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,

Brett Curry:

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

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

Marketers.

Leah Garcia:

It was just

Brett Curry:

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?

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

So

Leah Garcia:

Seven to one

Brett Curry:

A seven mer. Everyone listing is like,

Leah Garcia:

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,

Brett Curry:

I remember watching the ThighMaster

Leah Garcia:

X

Brett Curry:

90 XI bought because of P 90 X. Yeah, actually friends that ran the erase campaigns and

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

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.

Leah Garcia:

Love

Brett Curry:

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

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

It's

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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?

Leah Garcia:

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 my prices since 2017, 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

Brett Curry:

Packaging,

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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.

Leah Garcia:

Thank you very much. We didn't even talk about bull riding, but we'll get to that later

Brett Curry:

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.

Leah Garcia:

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.

Brett Curry:

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.

Leah Garcia:

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

Brett Curry:

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.

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