This is the full transcript for Episode #292 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Dal LaMagna – Tweezerman, Raising Eyebrows. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Dal LaMagna 0:00
Don’t procrastinate. I mean, if you really want to do it, get out there and do it.
Max Branstetter 0:24
That is the sound of the Tweezerman. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth podcast! This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is Episode 292, which is a fantastic year if you ask me ’92 and today’s guest is Dal LaMagna like lasagna, The Tweezerman. And speaking of lasagna, as Jeff Garlin would say, he is a big bowl of entrepreneurial insight. In this episode, we talk Dal’s unbelievable story with Tweezerman, which started with $500 and turned into selling it in 2005 for $57 million. We’ve talked failures along the way, the best entrepreneurial tips that he learned along the way as well as advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. His book, Raising Eyebrows, which has a fantastic name. And of course, his favorite color of Tweezerman tweezers. It is THE Tweezerman. Enjoyyyyyyy the showwwwwww! Aaaaalrightyyyy we are here with Dal LaMagna, Founder of Tweezerman, CEO of IceStone, just incredible serial entrepreneur, businessman beyond. Dal, so excited to speak with you today. How you doing how you doing? I just combined with thanks for joining. How are you doing? And thank you for joining.
Dal LaMagna 2:03
Yeah, exactly. Doing well. Anxious to help anybody out there who wants to avoid the corporate society of working for companies that don’t care about you doing it on their own.
Max Branstetter 2:17
It’s a crazy world. Yeah, I was just listening to somebody talking about how once you get that bug of being your own boss, it’s really hard to go back to anything else. Yeah, exactly. You’ve lived that well. So we’re going to talk the Tweezerman story and beyond before we get to when you actually started the business, which is an awesome story in itself. When you were a little boy, was there any part of you that knew anything about tweezers or hinted at anything that you could, you know, end up in a space and being so influential?
Dal LaMagna 2:47
No, not at all, what I didn’t know, when I was a little guy was, I needed to do something other than work three jobs to support my family, which is what my dad did. I mean, I was eight years old when I was selling chance books for my church. And the whole deal was that the person who would sell the most chances would get a bicycle. And I needed a bicycle. So I got out there and I started selling chances. And you know, you go to your neighbors and all that yourself and your family. But I realized that the only way I was going to really get serious was to go out into the world. So I stood by a bus stop in Rosedale queens and pitched Hey, you know, by chance when it Cadillac and started selling lots of chances that really turned into I won the bike before children’s books, and I almost got kicked out of school because back then I was a comedian. And I would interrupt the class all the time. And I was in Catholic school, top non came in and she said, If you don’t behave, we’re going to send you back to public school. After a chance book run, they weren’t sending me anywhere. I was in for good. So that was my beginning.
Max Branstetter 4:01
Oh my god. So class clown book salesman, so I chance that’s probably something a lot of people know about. I’m actually not familiar with it. What is the chance book?
Dal LaMagna 4:11
What happens is you a church raises money by finding someone to donate a car in this kitchen is black, and then they sell chances. Transport Did you get a chance? It’s like,
Max Branstetter 4:24
okay, got it. Literally the word chance. Yep, literally.
Dal LaMagna 4:28
So that’s, that was my start. And I really never thought I would want to work for a big company where you’re invisible and your your whole thing is, oh, how do I impress the guy who’s or the gal who’s in charge me? I always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur. I’ve always was an entrepreneur. I mean, it’s just so many things. And one of the subtext titles in my book was I was failing to get ahead. I failed a lot. When I was 32 years old, I was making $50,000 in debt, I had an MBA from Harvard Business School, and no job and didn’t want a job actually, and just was out there trying things, a lot of failures. But before we really get into anything, I think it’s important for me to tell everybody who’s listening to ask you guys out there and gals, look, fear of success, not failure. Because if you succeed, that’s your life. Some people say, Oh, I got a great idea. And you go off and you start doing it, and then all of a sudden, now you’re trapped. For instance, I was in the restaurant business at one point, I fell into a and started to succeed, and realized how this is a horrible life. The more successful I became, the harder it became. I was working hours. And so think through it, where do you want to live? How do you want to work? You want to work with other people, you want to work alone, go through that process? Before you get into what you’re going to do it yourself. And so starting there, you know, we can talk about things that you know, I did, I mean, tweezing man, people say, How the hell did Tweezerman started well, I was in Venice Beach, California, at a time trying to be a movie producer, and living. At one point, I was living under the docks in Santa Barbara. And by the way, you sleep under a dock in Santa Barbara for a few nights and you want to help people because sleep in houses. I mean, I loved it.
Max Branstetter 6:30
You mean literally like literally open air under the docks like sand water at your feet?
Dal LaMagna 6:35
Yes. That’s where I slept at night for it went on for about a week. And then somehow I managed to find someone and I slept in there. You know, on the edge thing. That’s in Venice, I was sunbathing on a redwood deck with Rose and Lily, and oh, natural. And we were on towels, and we were up there. And then roses, boyfriend shows up and they’re dancing. And all of a sudden he noticed, you know, they’re doing it and literally looks at me and goes well, and I own I was 24 at the time and she was 18 I’m thinking now, you know, she’s a little young, but she’s 18. Anyway, when I got back to my apartment and took a shower, my butt felt like I had like porcupines I mean, it was covered with trying to deal with these splinters. I’m looking into a mirror with a tweezer in one hand and the needle on the other hand, trying to get these ones I couldn’t get one splinter out. And that’s when I thought she wished this tweezer was a needle. I went into town I went to a drugstore, do you have needlepoint tweezers, we have needles, we have tweezers. We don’t use try to hardware store. I went there. They had appointed Teresa anyway could not find a needle pointed tweezer. And that’s when I got the idea that the needle point to use would be a great business to be and now I’ve had at this point, my life failed in a lot of different things. And I realized there’s no way I was going to create a needle point in that tweet. So I forgot about it. But a few years later, when I’ve took a break from being an entrepreneur, and I was living with my sister and my mother in Deer Park, New York, and I borrowed my sister’s bike and I went into the industrial park next door and I found a job at a place called the poker industries where they handle capacitors and diodes on the assembly line and they were the women who were doing this had needlepoint tweezers. So Whoa. So I grabbed the tweezer and packaged it. Now one of the things you know you want to do when you’re starting a business is don’t spend any money you don’t have to spend I mean don’t set everything up and you got to be very frugal, you know, buy things used. And here I am trying to figure out how to packages tweezer so I went and found a guy who had a mold that actually fit over my tweezers and I glued it to a piece of cardboard a cardboard thing I printed at the printer and I created a package that had my needle point a tweezer and I went to Lumbee hardware stores and started selling them there. They you know they sold but it wasn’t going to it wasn’t going to really work finding my brother woman who was America said hey, you know Could you get me a pointed tweezers and not a needle point a tweezer that I could use in my salon for eyebrows. And so I went to the supplier of the needle pointed tweezers that I had I said you have anything that’s not so needle like and and he’s well we have a tweezer used by diamond handlers is called it’s an OCT 10 And it was a perfect tweezer now i At the time I was very into environmental you know not waste not creating unnecessary packaging. I thought okay, I’ll stick this my father smoked cigars and this cigar came in a tube. So I found the tube. You know I was able to get to that didn’t have to pay for a multiple I stuck the tweezers in the tube and sold them to her and she started selling. So dalla Manya pa Kardan. You sent around if it she’ll call my company Dal LaMagna Grooming. And I went and so you know, so these tweezers when she started selling them seriously selling them. So I just stopped selling Splinter tweezers to hardware stores and I went to beauty salons and went around selling decision I bought tweezers. Now here I am a graduate of Harvard Business School. You know, I don’t walk into a salon and introduce myself or do anything, I just go, Hey, I got this great tweezer you want to see it you’re interested in whoever was there looking and trying to Yeah, I’ll buy it and started selling enough tweezers on a Saturday and beauty salons where I, at that point, was able to quit my job. First I went to the people at the company said, Hey, I got this great idea. You want to do it and I can do it. You guys can work with me. Now. We don’t want to do it. We’re not interested. We’re not in that business. So I quit. And went around selling tweezers. Now, you know, as I’m doing this, building my business, you know, very slowly, but um, personally, I find myself going back to a salon. And when I walked in, the woman yells Hey, the tweezer man’s here. That point I go, Whoa, that’s a great name. I should call myself Twizy man, and my Harvard Business School friends saying you can’t do that. You need to call if something like this is willing, you know, a German Swiss sounding company name that makes funny agnostic and with the tweezer. Man. And that’s how I came up with the fact that was tweezer. Man. It’s funny. I was at one wedding of my friend Larry Jackson in in Hollywood. At the wedding, one of his one of the women they asked when they met me. I mean, Tweezerman was completely unknown. At that point, she found out I was the tweezing man. And she said, we aim to tweeze. So that became my motto, which is great, madam. That’s the starting point of tourism. And then we go from there.
Max Branstetter 12:07
It’s just incredible name. And that’s an incredible slogan to I think one of the thing like I see this in the podcast world when people ask like, what should you name your podcast and like, no matter how like fun, playful the name is, like, the most important thing is that somebody sees the name and knows exactly what it is. And tweezer man was like, bam, you have it. And so it just sticks. It gels there. I’m also sore, by the way, still, from your story about all the splinters that initially caused this. So yeah, hopefully you’re recovered.
Dal LaMagna 12:36
And, you know, and my edge just just a big red tweezer beautiful, slanted tweezer. At first, I was just selling stainless steel tweezers. And I found someone in Switzerland who was making them for me. There was a crisis at his company, the owner of that Swiss tweezer company passed away his daughter took over and she fired him. I had said to him at some point that she if you ever want to work together, you know, I’m down for it. So when he got fired, he called me said how you willing to you said you might work with me, will you? So I said, Yeah, he lived in Italy, close to the Swiss border. And he set up a little Twitter factory. And that’s we started making, he didn’t become partners to Tweezerman. He just had his own company and I bought every tweet that he could make. It goes from there. That one of the things that, you know, again, just I know people here are listening who are going to start but let me just tell you, the first person you hire should be somebody who is very organized. And we’re not what I would do when I’m interviewing these, this person, I follow them to their car after the interview to see if the car was missing. If the car was messy, I wouldn’t. You know, I needed a fanatically organized person. And that’s what you need. You need someone who’s going to be on top of everything, and that’s the person you can’t buy it. And then the other thing you do is you don’t want to you don’t want to give credit to people at that point. The way you finance your business, you don’t want to raise money from people and give away your business half your business. You do whatever you can you get money, you borrow money from friends, I borrowed money from family. My father, I borrowed money from my father, you got to make sure you pay the interest on the monthly interest. That’s the way it was set up for me. I paid the interest every month and sometimes I borrowed more money to pay the interest but that’s how I financed the business. Now I was very confident that this was all going to work and then went very slowly you know you grow. Once I figured out how to do something, I would hire someone else to do it. Like going around to Beauty Salons I mean that I can’t do that and run a business so I found this guy who was sharpening scissors for people in beauty salons that his name was shot George and I had him represent tweezers man so he was the one that went around and sold tweezers one of the time to beauty salons and stuff are working on other things like packaging, the tweezers, putting them in the counter display and then going to pharmacies and putting them in pharmacies and having them sell sold. And even there, once I figured that out how to do that, and I hired someone, a sales rep to go and set up pharmacies, your processes, you’re constantly figuring out how to do something and replacing yourself with another person to do it. I also in terms of understanding how you run a business, you want to think of your business as an equal lateral triangle, there are three equal sides to your business, you make a product, that’s production, you sell it as the other side, and then you run your business. Now the thing, the thing about an equal our triangle is at any given moment, both sides are in touch with each other. So I would fully concentrate on sales, for instance, for four months out of the year, then I’d switch first four months of the year, it was marketing timing was time when they were trade shows in the beauty industry. Then I moved to production and I would be visiting factories out there developing the product. And then the third part of the year, four months, I would be working on like things like computers and setting up operations. And then as I grew, you know, like replace myself on each side. So I had hired a CFO who handled all all the operational sides of things. And I had my director of sales to do the sales. And then I had a person to handle production. In my case production was we packaged everything, we bought the tweezers, and I’ve moved from tweezers to all these other kind of grooming tools. So that’s how you grow and you keep on constantly replacing yourself. It’s really important also, you want to make your employees your give them a stake in the business. My my employees as group on 20% of the business. When I sell tweezers, man, by the way, I started with $500 when I sold it for $57 million 20 years, 25 years later, my employees got about $14 million as a group. And they didn’t lose their job. I mean, I remember the janitor who barely spoke English, when we gave him what his share of of the capital gains was was a year salary. He thought we were firing him and he was going oh, no, no, you just don’t want me job. Don’t worry. I just took you from, you know, selling tweezers in the streets to having a 57 $30 million company, which I made $57 million on. And let me tell you the way I got there, the thing that I really learned was focus. You really have to you got to you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re getting ideas every day, oh, I should be doing this, I should be doing that. People said, Why aren’t you selling makeup, you know, you’re in every beauty salon and every pharmacy in the country now. Now, that’s okay, I don’t think I want to get into the makeup business, or the manicure business, or any other business, you know, I’ll sell beauty tools. So I went from the tweezer to his man’s tweezers. And then my first tool was a nail cuticle nipper. Always the best that you could get at that. And then skincare tools and says hair cutting scissors. It was just all beauty tools. And that focus really was important. Also, making sure you can get tweezers, I was like I said I spend most summers in Europe looking for people to make tweezers because you don’t just make a tweezer the people who will make the kinds of traces that I was selling, take some oil life to learn how to do the final process, which is filing the edges so they meet perfectly. And I would go around not only looking for other factories to make tweezers but also to find all the products like French Foley nail clipper that was a huge success. I found this tweezer in France, it was an automatic, you would snap it in would pull out the hair fast now, I didn’t mean people do that. I recommend that. Take a shower. You gently pull up the hair in the direction of growth. And totally the guy who had he was in France, you know I said, Yeah, you know, that’s a great product. Give me a name. I’ll think about it. I was at a trade show in California beauty convention when my Lisa bone who was running the company at that point for me calls me to Tao our phones are ringing off the hook. I go What do you mean our phone? She was calling me from her home. She says we were on Oprah. How did that happen? Well, we had that happened was Oprah had somebody in the audience talk about her automatic tweezer was this automatic tweezer that snaps the hair and supposedly It was painless because it did it fast and operated for Minister this thing. And then they go to commercial and they put up phone number to call which is their number. And when people call them, they didn’t know who had the Teresa, but they assume 20 demanded, going back to the point everybody knows who Tweezerman is. So people were calling us for this, this falling now clip now I didn’t even have it. So I call the guy in, in France and go, by the way, it’s important that you do this, I go to the guy in France and go, Hey, how many tweezers will I need to buy from you. So I have an exclusive for America. I mean, you always want to get into collusive with someone, if if someone’s making your product, you want to make sure that they agree to only sell it to you and not to be selling your product to other people. I mean, these are all little things that happen along the way. I’m just telling you this stuff. And so he goes well, yeah. 6000 So I said, Okay, air me 6000 Tweezers by air, shipped me another 6000 by boat. So we so it was the most remarkable press that I ever got. I mean, I got a lot of presses tweezing man, I mean, I Elaine on Seinfeld, when she was interviewed by Playboy said that she doesn’t leave her house without her tweezers and a tweezer. Which incredible man, you know, people everybody’s talking about nothing like the Oprah thing and so grateful for Oprah.
Max Branstetter 21:17
Well, I was actually I was wondering, because obviously that Well, both of those, I’m sure were great spikes inflection points for the business from a PR media standpoint, but overall, like $500 to 30 million and ultimately 57 million. You know, that’s like the American dream like that is unbelievable. Was there a, you know, one or two key inflection points that based on a decision you made that really stepped things up to scale the business in a new way?
Dal LaMagna 21:44
Yeah, let me let me just answer that by telling you that I was big on employee empowerment. As I said, I made my employees partners 20% of the company went to my employees, I embedded them in every level of decision making, I set it up. So there was always an odd number of people on a committee. So decisions could be made. That’s clever, by the way, just telling people how to do not get a partner, if you want a partner get to, because you’ll you’ll always be able to make a decision. And for me, you know, I didn’t want to have to take a vote when I made a decision. So I didn’t have partners. I didn’t, you know, my sister worked for me. And she could have ended up being my partner, she didn’t want to be my problem, which was fine. But you want to be able to make decisions and you want your employees to make decisions. So you empower your employees, you know, you give them health care, you, you know, you take care of them, and they take care of you, I would not have grown as much as I did on my own because I just wasn’t interested. I was not a person interested in making a lot of money. I was interested in more and making a difference. So you know, I had a political life. You know, I had a film I was making films, I was always trying to improve things, you know, in the world. So empower your employees doing that. I ended up having I was CEO, but I had my employees who push the company out. There was a point where I went to school. I was running, I ran for congress while I was a Tweezerman got into trouble because Tweezerman Congress, the FEC came at me for that one, but it was fine. So you know, the Oprah moment was big. The other thing that that was really big was I had grown to the point where I was doing about $8 million. 9/11 happened. At that time, I was at the Kennedy School, after having failed to women run for Congress. And when I went to the Kennedy School, to maybe become you know, Secretary, this is Secretary that still leaning towards a man when 9/11 happened. And we tweeted, men had never had a day a week where it didn’t do any business. And after 9/11 We had that week, and I did not lay people off. I just said to everybody, look, we’re not gonna hire anybody else if someone leaves, but let’s just slow down. That was it. And I was carrying the employee for at least a month or two. January 911 hemsson. And by January, what had been happening was people’s tweezers were being confiscated on the airlines. When you flew if you had a tweezer they took it from you. And the New York Times ran a picture of a garbage can full of tweezers. And there was a story in the Style section which opened up with, you know, a woman saying, you know, I, you know, I’m not interested in what people would fly in private. I’m not interested in having my $20 Tweezerman tweezers confiscated at the airport. And all of a sudden, we got hit with the stores. Were selling out a tweezers. I mean, we had a lot of stores out there at that point. And we were there we were ready. We were a business and the year after, just boomed and had I laid off people, I would have had a problem. So that was one inflection point. Another time was when we have this account called Sally Beauty Supply which was 1000 and beauty stores beauty distribution stores. They were happy to do business with us as long as we were not in the Chain Drugstores. So how do we get into the Chain Drugstores? Because you know, that’s very big business. What we did was we created tweezers, man limited. That was line for the drugstores. Tweezerman. Professional was for the Sally Beauty Supply and for the beauty business, and Tweezerman. The LUX was for department stores. Now, some people who get to that point, when they start moving to other markets, they create another name, which I didn’t think was very smart. You got one brand is too easy, man. You just do it this way. Now I’m at the Kennedy School, I get a call from my director Morgan says we got a problem. CVS is going to discount Tweezerman heavily discount tweezer man, and they gave us notice. And Sally Beauty Supply basically notified us if that happens, we’re losing the account. That means we’re going to lose 1000 locations. So I call my my friend, block McFadden who is a big time lawyer and flog What do I do? I mean, can I do something I can do? I mean, because you can’t tell people how much to sell your tweets. While you can, it turns out, it turns out that you could, you can declare that you will not allow people to discount your product by a certain amount. And you won’t supply it, you’re allowed to do that. So I then what I did was I notified CVS, that if they discounted our product, we would discontinue selling to them that we had a policy. I didn’t notify them I notified everybody who I did business with that we have a policy now you can only discount him by 10%. So CVS responds to us and buys us. Oh, thank you. Because Thank you What do you mean, because they had not large margins on Tweezerman. They liked their large margins. Thank you, well, Walmart was going to discount the product. So we had to meet the price. And now because of what your policy is, we don’t have to do this. So we basically saved the whole thing, and didn’t lose any business and survived that crisis. So and then from there, now we’re, we’re in CVS, Walgreens, we’re in Sally Beauty Supply,
Max Branstetter 27:23
it just shows that you really have to be ready for anything in business. And obviously, there’s, like some of the examples you talked about, you never know what’s going to happen and what can unexpectedly impact your business. But how you stay prepared and agile is, I mean, a fantastic way of doing that as like you said, empowering your employees and keeping your team strong. And then providing that infrastructure where you know, it can provide for quick decisions, and you have ways of handling things. So you know, you and team and not an even number team and on number team have done an incredible job of being ready for that. I want to go back to something that you spoke about towards the start how important it is to to fail, and that it’s okay to fail. And then actually Oh, you said before is that you should actually fear success more than failure. Why do you say that?
Dal LaMagna 28:13
Again, if you succeed at something, and all of a sudden you have a miserable life, you’re stuck in an office, you’re stuck in the city, because you You grabbed an idea and all sudden you went with it. That’s basically you want to think about your life, your life is more important than your business. And you want to remember that it’s that simple.
Max Branstetter 28:35
It’s been an absolute incredible journey. I know we gotta hop off soon. But I would like to wrap up with this super speedy Rapid-Fire Q&A. So a little bit of a switch up. But you ready for a couple quick questions?
Dal LaMagna 28:45
And just before I go, Hey, my book, RaisingEyebrows.com is my book, which tells you everything you need to know. It’s all true and all the stories
Max Branstetter 28:54
perfect. And on that note, DalLaMagna.com. Is that where you want to direct people to?
Dal LaMagna 28:58
Yeah or RaisingEyebrows.com either either way, we’ll get you there. You’ll see the book and you’ll be able to get the book and whatever in whatever form you want. And and then if you want my own advice, if you have a book, I’ll talk to you. Yeah,
Max Branstetter 29:11
perfect. Awesome. So that actually segues perfectly my first Rapid-Fire question. When people don’t know how to pronounce your name, you say Dal LaMagna like lasagna. Where is the best lasagna that you’ve ever tasted?
Dal LaMagna 29:24
In Italy. When I make it myself, I also like to say because you know, I’m so big on and socially responsible investment and caring for people. In addition to lasagna. I’m Italian, the Italian Dalai Lama Dal LaMagna. I also I also executive produced a movie called The Last Dalai Lama? I’ve made movies. You know, I’ve run for political office.
Max Branstetter 29:49
You’re a renaissance man. A Dali Lama and lasagna superfan or pundit we’ll call you, no just kidding. I’m extra curious. I know you got some really cool, you know, Tweezerman the all you know your flagship tweezers. There’s a bunch of different color options. What is your go-to favorite color option for your Tweezerman?
Dal LaMagna 30:07
Red. I have 6,000 Red tweezers I took with me when I sold my company.
Max Branstetter 30:14
Perfect, that’s a nice parting gift. Not everybody can say they have 6,000 red tweezers they parted with, but it’s perfect for you. Last thing, I’ve never done this before this is actually blended we’re gonna combine it last thing I yes guess your Final Thoughts but we’re gonna keep it to like if there’s one sentence like one sentence word of advice that you have for entrepreneurs out there, just advice to take home with, what would that be?
Dal LaMagna 30:37
Don’t procrastinate. I mean, if you really want to do it, get out there and do it. Most people talk about oh, they’re going to do this. Just do it. Stop your life and do it.
Max Branstetter 30:46
Perfect. Thank you so much, Dal. This has been absolutely fantastic and lasagna to celebrate right now. Lasagna and tweezers – the combination you never knew you needed or never knew you. tweeze-ded I tried. Dal, thank you so much for coming on the Wild Business Growth podcast, sharing your incredible Tweezerman story – a real superhero. And thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to Follow or Subscribe to the Wild Business Growth podcast on your favorite podcast platform. And hit subscribe on YouTube. YouTube is @MaxBranstetter. There you will find the video versions, or a tweezing tutorial, or maybe some of both. You can also find us on Goodpods, where there are good podcast recommendations and people. And for any help with the podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com. And sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That is short and sweet and tweezed this time every Thursday and is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship and the worst puns and known to man and to Tweezerman. And for any help. No, I already said that. You could tell I hit a wall when I start repeating stuff. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
