Marcia Kilgore
Founder, Beauty Pie. On 1 show, 5 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
1shows
5appearances
48statements
7resolved
6supported
1contradicted
86%fully supported
14said about them ↓ Everything Marcia Kilgore said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Kilgore: Mainstream beauty products carry at least a 1,200% retail markup
“And in all of these different layers of distribution, you would end up with a markup of 1200% At minimum on that product. So something that is manufactured for five dollars would retail for 60 at minimum because the retailer themselves are taking at least half…”
True entrepreneurs hedge bets and avoid risking everything on one venture
“True entrepreneurs always hedge their bets, right? You don't give up your day job because you think that your, you know, side hustle or whatever it is, is going to actually pay off. You always do two things at the same time because one of them may not work and…”
Kilgore: True entrepreneurs hedge their bets by running two ventures simultaneously
“True entrepreneurs always hedge their bets, right? You don't give up your day job because you think that your, you know, side hustle or whatever it is, is going to actually pay off. You always do two things at the same time because one of them may not work and…”
Kilgore: Beauty Pie caps product markup at 3x manufactured cost
“So we negotiate hard with our manufacturers, but it stops at about three times the manufactured cost, and it doesn't go farther than that, whereas most beauty products go to 10 or 12, or sometimes 20.”
Kilgore: Brands need a few flagship stores with lines, not 20 locations
“When you talk about retail stores, I don't think you need, you know, 20 of them. I think you need, like, a couple of really good ones strategically located where there is a line out the door. Nothing is better for your business than a line out the door of peop…”
Kilgore: Avoid brand names that fail when spelled conventionally
“But I would never have a name myself that if people spell the word properly, it doesn't come up.”
Kilgore: Founders should ignore feedback from friends and family
“Don't listen to your friends or family, because they will always be nice, and they're going to say it's great, or they're going to be like, nah, that'll never work.”
Kilgore: Disappointing ten customers beats holding large unsold inventory
“But that's okay because it's a lot better to make 10 people really upset than to be sitting on hundreds of thousands of units of something that's not going to sell.”
Kilgore: E-commerce founders should not delay follow-up emails out of politeness
“Don't be too polite. People are getting constantly barraged with emails, and if you think, oh, I'm going to be polite, I'm not going to send this for another two weeks, they might have bought a bag by then, right, from somebody else.”
Kilgore: Consumers feel responsible picking medium, cheap picking small, superior picking large
“Very often people feel more responsible if they just go for the medium. They feel cheap if they go for the small. They feel superior if they go for the large. It's really crazy, but these things are very true.”
Marcia Kilgore: Unreleased Classic Inventory Remains Effectively New to Customers
“Sometimes if you've got a classic product, no one will know that it isn't new except for you. And it is new the first time that anybody sees it.”
Marcia Kilgore: Small Business Founders Must Learn to Do Outsourced Roles
“For smaller businesses, hedging your bets probably just means learning more parts of that business that you might have thought you could afford to outsource, maybe you can't right now, and that's all right. There'll be a time for it, and probably that will mea…”
Marcia Kilgore: Beauty Pie Lowers Prices by Removing Retail Markups
“We just didn't charge for the retailer markup or for the celebrity marketing or for the middleman. So it's the same product, but you know, much less expensive.”
Marcia Kilgore: Retail Brands Must Maintain Strict Price Parity Across Channels
“If you're a brand that's in retailers and on retail websites, you're going to have to charge the same price for your product, no matter where people pick it up.”
Kilgore: Structured problem mapping counters the dangerous unchecked optimism of entrepreneurs
“If you're somebody who's quite optimistic, which is a requirement to be an entrepreneur, you have to be kind of optimistic to a fault. You won't want to look at the hurdles that may be in the way. So actually sitting down and mapping things out will tell you k…”
Kilgore: Serial founders scale up because mastering smaller challenges gets boring
“It's kind of, when you learn to ski, right? First you're on the bunny slope, and then it's really boring to be on the bunny slope. So you have to go to the green. And then you have to go to the blue. To go to the blue. And then you've got to go to the red, and…”
Kilgore: Business size should prioritize founder happiness over obligatory massive scale
“Any size of business, listen, when it comes down to it, what's the most important thing? Happiness, right? So if you're happy with a small business where you're not stressed all day, that's perfectly great. And then if you're not happy, unless your business is…”
Kilgore: Founders must listen to social media attacks instead of getting defensive
“Customers will attack you all the time, especially with social media, right? So you will get onslaughts and onslaughts of people criticizing you, and you have to actually take it and think, you know what? Listen to them, because they're telling you what to do.…”
Kilgore: Every business idea must pass the one-sentence 'so what' test
“Every idea you have has to pass the so what test. So, have someone ask you so what, and then explain so what in one sentence. If you can't, and it's not cool, like what's cool about that? What's new about that? Go back and work on your idea before you spend a …”
Kilgore: Fixing a botched product launch is costlier than delaying it
“Always think long-term, because cleaning up a mess is way more expensive than waiting for a little while, and it's exhausting.”
A 1996 Vogue feature funded most of Bliss Spa's construction costs
“When this article dropped, thousands of people started to call to buy this Swiss oxygen cream. It lasted probably for four or five months of, you know, this article having such an incredible effect on the sales of products out of our little facial place that a…”
Kilgore left Bliss after clashing with Starwood's inexperienced appointed executive
“They put somebody in charge of the business, who was a young guy, probably the prodigy of the man who owned Starwood at the time, who really didn't understand customer service the way I understood it, and I felt like I was spending most of my day trying to tea…”
Founders must understand brain psychology to avoid reacting emotionally
“One of the tools that they should have is the understanding of how the human brain works, right? Because if you can understand how your brain is fooling you, when you might be reacting to something rather than making a sound decision, or When you might be feel…”
The other half of the tape: Marcia Kilgore's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 9 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 10Marla Beck 1Jo Malone 1
Statements about Marcia Kilgore, by other people (2)
Sol Díaz Ice Cream sees 17% store margins and 20% wholesale margins
“It's about 17%, the net margins on the stores net margins on wholesale is slightly higher at hovering at around 20.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 12
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2019 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Marcia's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Founder, Beauty Pie | 5 | 48 | 86% 6/7 | full record on How I Built This → |