YouSaid · the spoken record

Amy Errett

lines on the record: 88
first: 2025-08-18
most recent: 2025-08-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think altogether it ended up being like maybe 160,000 of US dollars because remember the first run was a limited minimum order. Quantity. And when we launched, we only had 19 shades.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“PPB, resource, and all Sulfates. This is all the things that stabilize hair color so it works. And you're going to try to sell it on the internet. So they were like, I don't understand. And then lucky number 11, I spent five hours with them. And I was meeting with the CEO. He's since become a very close friend. And he's listening to this idea. And he's like, yeah, you can take the chemicals out, but nobody wants to do that. Like, it's more expensive. And you need to spend more time in the lab and you need to really do a lot more testing and stabilization. And then he paused and he said, and you're a venture capitalist. And so are you going to raise money for this? And I said, yes. And then he said, we laugh about it today. He says, well, you have to pay me up front 100% for the first run and all in euro.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I wanted to figure out whether you could do it without harsh chemicals. Like, was it really feasible? There must be a reason that people aren't doing it. I kept thinking I'm missing something. I'm missing something. And the first 10 contract manufacturers I met with were all guys. And they literally laughed at me.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Emailed him and I said, Hey, this is a crazy question. Do you know scientists? And he said, I know these people who have a consultant company that help people develop hair color. And you know the private label industry is all in Italy. And so... I went to Italy with these scientists, these hair color expert stylists”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. I never doubted did I have the energy? Did I have the brain power? Did I have the persistence? It was like everything I've done up to this point. I felt like positioned me uniquely to be successful at this business. I'm a better CEO because I was an investor. And because I got fired and because I faced into adversity and boy, do you face into adversity every single day in these jobs?”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And he left like two months later, so I didn't know that he was leaving. And he was like, this is a really good idea. It's hard, but it's a really good idea.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He said, Well, this is something that somebody needs to disrupt because there's no prestige box that goes to somebody. And if you do it, I'll invest.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that was part of the mix of all this research that I started to do, talking to a lot of friends, how often do you get your hair color? Do you care what's in the ingredients? And just I spent about six months digging deep into just, is this a good idea? Could it work? Why hasn't somebody had a $30 prestige box? What are the limitations of that? And then found out the access you get when you're a VC is that I ended up getting what was supposed to be 30 minutes on the phone with an executive at L'Oreal. And just started to ask a bunch of questions, not under the guise of me starting it, but like, I want to find out about the industry and what goes on. He started asking me questions. Like, are you going to start something? Like, are you going to, like, why are you asking this? And then I finally said, I'm contemplating this”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I buy a box with dust all over it, meaning it's been sitting there a long time, of the darkest black hair color that I can find. And the next stop on the Saturday morning errands was Walgreens. And I was picking up prescriptions and happened to walk down the hair color aisle and turned. And if you've ever looked at it, it is crazy. There is no product differentiation. It's all $10. It's just an inferior consumer experience. And I bought 30 boxes. Randomly Just put them in my basket and went home and now Claire and Madison are like, what are you doing? And I'm taking them apart looking at. And seeing, like, this is torturing a woman, smelling the developer, torturing a woman and the irony of it is she's supposed to feel beautiful at the end.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I'm a believer of synchronicity in life. And so while I can't make this story up, while I'm thinking about this, my wife, who turned gray at 25, who spent every 10 days sitting in a high-end stylist chair because she doesn't want to be gray, was saying a lot of things about what do you think is in hair color? Like I'm doing it this often. It doesn't feel that good. Like it smells, it burns. It's kind of crazy. I'm in Whole Foods. doing a Saturday morning shop and she texts me and says, do you mind buying me a box of hair color? And I text back at Whole Foods. She says, yes. I said, well, where is it? And so you go, I go over to the beauty section and, you know, have to, there are six shades. I say, this is not high quality. Like, why are you going to do it at home? She said, well, at Whole Foods, it must have better ingredients.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had an analyst who worked for me as a summer intern from GSB, and she did a scan of analogous products with repetitive use in the women's beauty category or women's category. And hair color was the number one thing that came up. And I kept saying, this can't be true. These numbers just seem very large. And that's what came up. And then I started to do a bunch of research about online solutions for buying hair color. There must be something that I'm missing. And I wasn't missing it.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They eventually had a very good outcome. And I was intrigued by the concept of disrupting consumer products by the internet and bypassing someone's shelf. And that's exactly what Dollar Shaved Club did.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Like that, and that's the way I was thinking like, oh, like, do I want to be an investor? Like, I was bored. You do a deal a year. You kiss a lot of frogs. It isn't results-oriented for 10 years or eight years, right? So it's just a different lifestyle. And people that love it are great at it. And I found a way to be good at it, but I wasn't great at it because it wasn't my passion point. It didn't make me spring out of bed every morning saying I'm here. I'm ready. So the operator part was an itch. And we saw an investment at Mavron called Dollar Shave Club.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, not at all. And I would say that where I landed initially, a little bit of a twist to what you said is that I want to be an operator again.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're a working class kid and the first one to go to college and you go to Wharton and you work at a blue chip bank and you just keep trying to prove that you can be successful. This is a game I can play my whole life. I can decide no matter what happens at Madison Reed, it's not big enough because there will always be an AI company that's bigger. There'll always be a SaaS platform that's bigger. And I have a hard time seeing myself as successful. I don't think of myself as a successful person.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And this is one of the things that I'm not sure when I say that guy that I feel proud of that, but it's a vulnerable thing to say, which is that I did not think that I had the outcome that other people that I was hanging out around with, you know, I am in something called YPO. And my counterparts, you know, are the, you know, the top of whatever mountain there is in Silicon Valley. And I'm thinking I'm smart. I need to do that. So I think it was ego-driven as much as it was. And I think I used the excuse, which I've done all of my life as a working class kid, that I needed more money. I think I used that excuse because when is enough ever enough of anything in life?”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I remember my experience being in boards where I'd be watching the CEO wishing I was that person, while all the other investors got in their Teslas, as I say, and drove away, probably completely relieved that the board meeting was over and I was sitting there thinking, what would I do if I was in their position? And that became more and more and more of what I was feeling.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he was seeing a trend about the purchasing patterns at Starbucks. Was starting to see the consumer's pain or the consumer's, the afternoon drink, so to speak, was something that I think they were starting to experience that slowdown. So validating one's gut. Is an important part of what I saw in Howard and excellent brand builder as well.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I learned that this thing inside of me, which is mission-based and values-based, was an important factor in whatever I did next. And so he validated that that could be true and have success through that. And I had the good fortune of walking into stores with him and seeing that he started to get on the line when there was a line taking orders, right? That he was just part of Starbucks regardless of him, whatever role that he was in. I also learned that he saw things before other people saw things. He had a gift about spotting a trend. I will never forget it was the fall of 2007, and we had an investment meeting in Seattle, and he walked in and he said, we need to slow down our investments. Now, you remember that bank collapses happened in the fall of 2008. This was 2007, a year before that.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll go back to not being able to be out. Right, there is some analogy here with absorbing a certain amount of things that you don't want to be true that are true. And when you're not out, you're living in a sort of numb state anyway. And so I think I was used to living in a numbed state. I wasn't being in my life at work. I was doing. And why I say it's the best thing is that I got really clear about what motivates me and what's important to me.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Certain amount of resilience and persistence. And so I knew what was true about me. And so I just decided that I needed to release myself from that shame and just put my head down and follow my heart, important word heart, not head. I tend to go to my head a lot to the analytics rather than the feelings. And I made a conscious decision I wasn't going to go take a job again that didn't satisfy me.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. So I felt financial pressure, but I also, as you said, felt a lot of shame and reputation, you know, damage. And I started to go down a journey. I got a therapist. And I think it was my first opportunity to understand that things don't happen to us. We have 100% responsibility for what does happen. And I was really unhappy in the job. And in fact, my wife had been telling me for about a year, I don't think this is a great job for you. You're frustrated. The business. You have bigger things you could do. And so I don't understand why you're being loyal and staying there. And I just blew that off and thought I was, you know, I had made a commitment. And so I was going to stay and try to do the best I could. And I think that's just an important lesson in life, that sometimes shit happens to you. And the key for my life has been.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lawyer's letter describing how I was being let go for cause. And cause was very nebulous. And so I was really blindsided. And yeah. It was one of the hardest things in my life, and it was one in retrospect the best thing that ever happened.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I walked into the lobby and she was there sitting on a couch and I went to give her a hug and she sort of moved back and I thought, well, that's strange. And then she handed me an envelope and said, we're taking the company in a completely different direction. You're no longer the CEO. And I was completely startled.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The founder had a health issue. And so I hadn't seen her in a really long time, but was reporting to her in the form of emails or sort of updates. So I thought we were just having breakfast. We weren't having breakfast, by the way.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We actually were very large vacation experiences. So we would rent Holland America ships, cruise ships, and reinvent the entire experience, the entertainment, the activities, the excursions to tailor it to what gay women would want. So it was a premium, it was a great experience. You know, we had people like Melissa Etheridge or the Indigo Girls or people that were iconic in the gay women's community.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Made a good amount of money, but I didn't make enough money to live the lifestyle that I wanted. So I was still chasing more.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, a absolutely life-changing transaction for me. But I was three years of can I get more money because these earnouts are about you get a payment and then you spend the rest of the time chasing the remaining payments. And so I did that. And I was really focused on the bottom line of that.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I grew up Jewish. So this was, yeah, my mother who just unfortunately passed away at the end of last year very hard moment. Had this famous saying that I've talked about all the time, I was okay when you came out as a lesbian, but now that you're chairing a Methodist church, you're killing me. So that was her comment about Judaism. But I didn't grow up religious. I grew up more with traditions, I would say. To this day, it wasn't about reading the Bible, it was about helping people and the goodness of paying it forward. That's where my spirituality lies today”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A friend took me because my stepmother was dying of cancer. And I was going through a hard personal time. I was close to her. And so I watched the... Dying process and was a caretaker for her back east. I used to go back and forth. They lived in Florida at the time. So I was in a grieving stage and a friend told me about the spiritual pieces of Glide. And so I started going because of that.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yes, Methodist Church has large a set of social service programs in the city, a food program, housing program, recovery program. So I was very involved and had gotten on the board and I was actually chairing the board. And Claire sang in the gospel choir.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a massage therapist, so very different, and we met each other through a place that I had gotten very involved in called Glydchurch”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most people did that through their friend circles. You had a close knit group of people and that's who you sort of did everything with and you met other people in their circles of people. So really communities were very tight, much more than today where, for instance, my wife and I have an equal number of gay friends and straight friends. Like it just doesn't, in those days, if you had straight friends, that was outside of your gay circle.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely. It was much more gay friendly. I had told my family before I moved and I had a lot of acceptance. So I wasn't somebody that was struggling with their family rejecting them, which I have a lot of friends that's happened to. And it's. For me, it was shocking that it was happening, but it was definitely happening. But yeah, I met a social crowd. I had a lot of friends. And I had told my business partner and I was out at work.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was exciting, and remember that I had spent my whole career in New York City on Park Avenue or down in Wall Street. And it was completely different. The whole fact that people didn't put a business suit on to go to work was like a mind blower. I mean, we had an office and I hired an assistant here. And Halloween happened and the assistant came in their costume, which was very customary in a place like San Francisco. But in New York, you would never go to work in your costume. And so things like that were just foreign to me.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were doing well. We were a profitable company from the first six months and never became unprofitable, never needed to raise any more money. So it was a very different thing than raising venture money, which, you know.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And it turned very quickly as well that we would do the transaction and then the buyer would ask us to come in to consult about how to integrate that business into their business, which then turned into consulting fees that kept us going.”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had four co founders when I started. And all three of them are gone from the company through some of the most painful experiences that I've ever had in my life. These were three people that I cared deeply about. Two were personal friends. And I thought I could will it to work. And it didn't. And it cost the, I would say it cost the company a couple of years in retrospect. And I learned a lot. My Series A investor said Amy, four co-founders is too many. And I said, no, it's not. And boy, was he right”
2025-08-18 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Madison Reed: Amy Errett · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT