Ep. 438 • From Fork in the Road to CEO w/ Vargaro's Fred Helou

You know, this is my twerid. It's just about recognizing that moment and saying, you know, it's time for me to go to overcribe and do something else. - Hello, this is Ocel. - This is Jake Cash, the hair tech. - This is Eater and Derek. - Hi, this is Jacob Conn. - This is the platinum giraffe and you're listening to the Hair Game Podcast. (upbeat music) - Hey everybody, it's Harry here, producer of the Hair Game Podcast. We have some very exciting information. Salon Republic just opened a brand new location in Philadelphia, our first ever East Coast location. You can go to salonrepublic.com to book your space and find your new home. A little bit later, we'll have a new location in Jankin Town, little north of Philadelphia. Go to salonrepublic.com and get notified and we're gonna be beginning to ours. - Now onto our episode with Fred Halu. (upbeat music) - Hey Fred, how's it going? - Very good, how are you doing, Eric? - I'm doing great. So as normally happens listeners, when I get a guest on here that I haven't met before, maybe sometimes we DM or we email or whatever, but I haven't actually met them. We start talking and personal stuff and then I have to stop us halfway through that conversation because we have to start recording. So here we are. I stopped the personal conversation because we were getting into the good stuff and I wanna record it. So for you listeners who don't know Fred, he's the founder and CEO of Vigaro. If you haven't heard of Vigaro, you're not in the beauty industry. Maybe you've got the wrong podcast, but Vigaro is his clearly one of the winners, I would say, of the booking app race that's been around for more than a decade now. And so super excited to have Fred on here. I wanna get into how you got into this business. It's my first question with almost every episode and everybody's got a slightly different story and it's always quite interesting. And so I think you're a tech guy, but how does a tech guy get into this business? - So I've always been close to here for whatever reason. My grandfather was a barber, my uncle was a barber. I remember going to my uncle's barber shop and wanting to get a haircut. I guess I had a long hair when I was younger and my sisters don't want me to get a short haircut. I remember that being pond of contentious in the house 'cause the youngest in the family and my sisters were always, "Mom, don't cut his hair." There was David Cassidy and they wanted me to have long hair like David Cassidy. That was the thing. And so I would go and I'm like, "Uncle, don't cut my hair." My mom would wink at her, "Oh man, of course he was gonna pick her side." But yeah, then I left Lebanon when I was 18 years old and I was at the best student. I went and came to the US. I'm like, "I need a new fresh start." - That's a big deal. Going from Lebanon moving to the US, why? - You know, Lebanon, I grew up during the war. It's no secret that I think anyone who watches any news will know Lebanon was in a civil war for a long time. The war started when I was five years old. So really my whole life, if you think about it, the first memories you have is when you're five. So all I remember is war. Like there's nothing about Lebanon that I remember that didn't have war in it, does that make sense? - Of course. - And you grow and you go to school and academically Lebanese people, like we're very well studied, you know, school is a big deal over there. But then you graduate and there's really no future for anyone because everybody, it's either they get a lawyer degree, a civil engineering degree or a doctor. Like everybody gets these degrees and there isn't enough of these jobs for everybody that lives there and what you wind up finding is a lot of people out of a job, doctors, lawyers, and they have no jobs, you know. I kinda saw that growing up and I could see, 'cause I'm the youngest, so I had, I'm not just the youngest in my family, I was really the youngest between my cousins and you know, I could just see how everybody's growing up and like graduating and coming, and you could tell the whole country just had no future. So I made up my mind, I think around 13 years old that I'm gonna leave, you know. The minute I finish high school, I wanna go to the, and I always wanted to go to the United States. My dad was a big USA fan. He would always talk about the United States, like it's a big deal, you know, so just listening to my dad and how much he loved the United States, it kinda just made me wanna come to the US and live the life that he probably wanted to live here, you know. That's kinda what happened. So yeah, the minute I turned 18, and really that was my grades in high school were not gonna get me in any college either. And LeBanon, so, and big part of it, 'cause I kinda didn't care to go to college in LeBanon, you know. So I kinda just was already serving myself to just leave, you know. And I came to the US at 18, I had $4,000 in my pocket, that's all I had. My parents gave me to come to the US, which at 18 seems like a lot of money, and ignorance is a bliss, you know. So I came here with 4,000, I'm like, I'll be good, I'll be fine. I got pick pocketed at church. I swear I got at the airport in France. I had to lay over in France, I got pick up pocketed. And I realized I was pick pocketed 10 minutes before I got on the plane. And I was like freaked out, imagine at 18 years old, you were in your country, was nobody in your pocket. And I got on the plane, 'cause I'm like, I either just sit there or go on the plane, you know. So I got on the plane and I came to the United States was nobody, you know. But luckily my brother came to the US seven years before me, 'cause he's seven years older, and he had a job at a company and he got me a job to, you know, I landed on a Sunday and that hard be on a Thursday to be that you're in King. You know, so I had a job right away and I was able to stay with my brothers. - So you had learned English? - Yeah, that, 11 on everybody speaks like three languages, you know. - Yeah. - Okay, and where did you arrive to in the US? - I was at a soundseeing, California. - Got it. - And you had the, there's a certain foundation of your brother's time here, which was, I'm sure really, really great and made it easier. You had a couch to sleep on, stuff like that. - A couch to sleep on, that's exactly what I was sleeping. I slept on a couch for two or three months, but then his wife was like, he was married at the time. She was annoyed by his family on the couch. - Of course. - So I got, I moved with a roommate, you know, it was in three months and it was a coworker, you know, at the same company we worked together. So I rented the room at his condo at the time, yeah. - Your whole childhood was amidst a war. And so what is that, your whole perspective has to be different than a normal person's perspective growing up in peace. It is, it's scary. It's especially scary when I was five years old. When it started, I remember being so scared, you know. - How did your parents explain that to you? - Oh, they're just, they'd been a lie. It was war, they would say that, you know. But I, they would have to tell me that it's far from us 'cause I couldn't hear the bullets. The war actually started, we were at a wedding. I remember, with mom and my sisters, and we were all at a wedding. And then at the wedding, somebody said, there's a war that just started in our city where we lived, you know, in Beirut, you know. And so we were coming down to back to the house. My mom heard that, but we didn't know what that meant. And then we're going back to the house and you could just hear bullets all over the place. And I remember specifically, we're all ducking. My mom's driving and we're on the back seat. And we're like laying down, you know, as if that's gonna protect you. I think most bullets can hear straight through the car. And we're all just laying down, trying to, and my mom's driving fast to get us home safely, you know. That was the first day of the war, you know. They call it the bus incident in Lebanon, like you could Google it. - You know, this was early 80s, correct? - That was 1975. - 1970. - Okay. - So this was before, because Israel invaded in the early 80s. So we're before that. - Yeah, so that was the war between the Lebanese and the Palestinians refugees that were in Lebanon. - And I'm sure that, I mean, do you attribute certain principles or, you know, certain elements of your perspective to those early years? - There's one thing good about war. And I hate to say that. - That's what it tends. - Let me tell you why. I've, you learn so much to stay at home during bad times and entertain yourself. You get really close with your neighbors, with your sisters, with your, you know, you sit down and you play cards and play chess. I played a lot of chess, was like, a lot of the kids at the neighborhood, which chess is a great game to learn, by the way, for thinking ahead and stuff like that. So that, in that way, it was good. It prepares you to crap that could happen to you later in life. Growing up in Lebanon, I went and now just me, luckily no one in my immediate family like between my mom, mom of dad and brother and sisters, we were, we never got hurt, but I lost my grandparents to a bomb, I lost my cousin to a bomb and, you know, like we all had someone in our family. You can't live there that long and not to have someone pretty close to you pass away or get injured. My uncle lost his leg, you know, at our house, you know, we were, he was in our building where we lived. And there was war. They stopped for a little while. He went outside and a bomb fell and I remember chaos and everybody screaming and then somebody comes out and says, Uncle Joseph lost his leg, you know, it was like kind of, you know. So, but so you go through these emotions and I feel like people can't be sad all the time, you know what I mean? So, so you go through this and then you always find a way to like, and that's true for all Lebanese people. I don't know if you know much about Lebanon, but like, people are like, I don't like to party. They like to, you know, they're always trying to find a way to recover and have a good time and move on and, and, you know, and bring happiness back to their life. So, it puts a lot of stuff in perspective and it seems like anything else that happens after that. You almost like, I've been in there. I've had, I remember this feeling, you know what I mean? And I can't survive it because I've survived very similar situations before in my life. You know, I just became so, and you know, there's light at the end of the tunnel and you just gotta time heals and, you know what I mean? All these experiences. We've kind of all learned that at an early age, you know? - So, I do know some Lebanese people, some Lebanese friends and I know that the diaspora, so the diaspora for those who don't know the word, it's a group of people from somewhere who spread themselves out or across the world. So, I know that the Lebanese diaspora is one of the most highly productive, successful group of people from anywhere. And I think that's why I asked the question and it makes sense that, you know, growing up and at that time with a war that lasted so long if it doesn't kill you, it's gonna make you stronger. And I think that that's been a unifying element of a lot of the people that I know from there. - Yep, yep. And, you know, and growing up and I see what's going on. I don't wanna get political but in Palestine right now. And, you know, I can just imagine what these kids are going through and, you know, and yeah, it's just, it's gonna be the same thing. Hopefully they'll all grow up to be something special, you know? - Yeah. - Anyway, Iraq, what happened in Iraq before and, you know, and you don't have to be on ease or side just the fact that kids from any country that goes through this experience, you know, you grow up different, you know? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Absolutely. Okay, so you make it to San Jose with zero dollars because you got pick pocketed and the darn French. - Yes. - Those airports are very, yeah, I mean, you're coming from a war and you're supposed to be in a safe area of the French airport, Charles de Gaulle probably. And then that's where you get pick pocketed. - And the fun fact, I've been closer to being killed more in the U.S. I've had a lot of, I've been in the United States at knife point. Closes, I've came to death and it wasn't in Lebanon. (laughing) We can go on forever about these stories. But, yeah, so I left Lebanon and right away, it was a smack in the face, you know what I mean? To get robbed. But again, it's always these bad experiences, you know? Like, I feel like there's a fork in the road whenever something happens to you and what are you decide to do? Maybe it was blessing in disguise, you know, that I got pick pocketed and it forced me to, hey, right away I need to figure out where to make money and, you know, and I got a job, which, monthly this job is why I became a software engineer, you know? - Right. - That I got, yep. - Yes, I used to talk about that fork in a road. There was a book I read years ago. It had a really interesting name for it. It was like, I'm not gonna try to think of it here. But basically, it's, you know, when you're confronted with adversity, you have to choose consciously whether to move forward and persevere with grit and tenacity or to backtrack, you know, and go back into safety. And so it's, you know, obviously the themes of this conversation are thick already, so early. All right, so you get to San Jose, you had a job which is awesome. You eventually got kicked out of your, kicked off your brother and your sister-in-law's couch yet to get your own place. And so this was a tech company in San Jose? - Yeah, it was a tech company, a very small company, was about 12 employees, you know. I was supposed to be the, like, Aaron's kid, you know, go do this. We're talking 1988, no GPS, nothing, I just came. Lebanon most places you walk and you need pencils, you go down the building across the street, you get pencils, whatever. The first Aaron I had to do was to get pencils from Michael. Michael's, you know, and he gave me directions, take 680 to 880, whatever. Which I didn't know what he was talking about, 680. You know, directions that he left on is like, you make a left at the butthole, you go straight, you see butthole, you make a right, there might be somehow. You know, that's like, that we, you know, there was no street name, some street numbers. - Yeah, yeah. - And most places are close. So I'm like going to get pencils and I got on 680 and I'm like, I gotta get on 880 and I'm like, and I could see on the side of the road there, 680, I'm like, maybe if I keep driving, the number will be 690. It just keeps going. I'm like, completely, I have no clue what's going on. I keep driving, it's state 680. I'm like, there's no way I have to drive that long to get pencils. I took the first, I said, I'm like, it's been like three, four miles and I still can't find Michael. I like that, that's hard to get a pencils in the United States. I took the exit, got completely lost. Finally, somehow, four hours later, I kinda, there was no cell phones back there, right? So I kinda like pull over, grab a cell phone, I can call and say, hey, I'm lost or any of that stuff. So I got lost, somehow four hours later, from all the driving I did, I sold the road where the company was at. You know, and I got back, my bus was like, so where's the pencils? Where are you all the time? Like, well, I got lost, I have no pencils, I'm lucky I got back. So after that, he never sent me out to get anything. He's trying to, to his credit, he wanted to figure out what to do because I was my brother's, you know, for my brother. Like, he's trying to figure out what to do with me. And, you know, growing up in Levin, I used to draw a lot of cartoons, you know. So he's, what can you do? I'm like, I'm a good drawer. I could, you need drawing, I can draw for you guys. And it was an engine unit company and they did mechanical parts. So I started drawing everything that they would design for them on a, you know, three-dimensional hand drawings. And then I became, I went from that to knowing if all the computers, that's when I started learning the computers, you know. And, yeah. This was pre-cad? No, that was the beginning of CAD. Like, AutoCAD was just started. I was using CAD. It was really slow. Like, you could see it, you know, the circle. Like, every dot on the circle would be, you know, turning. You know, you could actually see that. Yeah, it was really slow back then. Yeah. Very interesting. Okay. So, so, then what? How long were you there? And how did you get into it? You know, how did your tech career evolve? Yeah. So I couldn't go to school right away. And I really came to go to school, but I had no money to go to school because I lost all my money. So I had to save money to go to school. So I was working there and I was working time and a half. I realized my salary was $5 an hour, but over time, it becomes $7.50. Oh, yeah. So I'm like, for every dollar, now I can't have given myself a raise if I were over time. Oh, and by the way, if you go over 60, you're making double. Now I'm at $10 an hour, you know. A lot of weeks I would work $60 more than 60 hours a week, you know. And they're okay with that. They needed the work from you. They needed the work and honestly, a lot of times somebody would leave and I would get their job and a dollar raise. Like, it would come to me in my office. We get along pretty well, you know. And he would come to me and say, so and so left. We lost our machinist. I would like you to do the job. I'm going to, he was really good at knowing how to do every single other company, you know. So here we teach me how to machine. the machine, the parts, and he's like, you got his job and a dollar raise. Like, okay, I just heard dollar raise. I saw the raise. - Right, I'll do it. (laughs) - So I actually turned out good 'cause I was drawing the mechanical parts, and then I would go machino on the lathe and the car. And it actually, so I became kind of the designer of the company because I was, when I would draw it, eventually he got me 3D CADs, I would put it in 3D, and I would see how it's built. I'm like, okay, well, if I, if this is too big, I'm gonna make it smaller, blah, blah, blah. And I'm gonna design it in such a way that it's easy for me later to go machine, you know? And that's great skill to know how to design and machine. - Absolutely. - Yeah, because oftentimes it's the opposite, right? The guy who's designing it doesn't actually have to build it, so they're not, they don't have the same perspective. - 100%. And by the way, I'll apply that for software engineering later in the design right now. And so yeah, so it made me better designer because I was machining and I'm like, I wanna make this as easy for me to build as possible, you know? And yeah, so started machining, and then a year later I saved enough money, so I decided going to night school to study electrical engineering, and then my boss again wanted to teach me how to program computer. So I was doing mechanical design, then I would do it with the machining and electrical from school, and I learned how to program computers. And I liked, so it was a great job for me. The guy was great, Tom Talton, I don't know where he is anymore, but like I owe everything to him in life, I feel. - Wow. - And, but at the end I decided I like software engineering, the best, the most because mechanical, you had to like design it and then go build it, and that could take days. Electrical, you design a circuit board, and then you send it out back then, and you'd get it back a few weeks later. Like there was so much long time of turn around versus software engineering was like, you would, you know, write the code, you compile it right away, you see it, the satisfaction of seeing your creation and come to life was much faster, and that's kind of what I appreciated the most about it, you know, so I felt like I found my calling, you know. Even though I came to the S, I had no clue what I wanted to be at the time, and I thought I was a horrible student, so I probably, you know, I'd get into it much, but it's turned out it's software engineering was a perfect job for me. - Yep. And so before starting Vigaro, did you work for a software company? Did you get like trained somewhere in a real world software environment? - Yeah, so school was electrical, but you know, whenever you take electrical engineering classes they're software classes that you have to take. I challenged all of them and I passed it, so I was like, okay, starting to get more confidence about myself was a software engineering, 'cause I'm like, I'm challenging the class that they're giving at college and passing it. And by the way, and I learned software from him teaching me and me reading books. I've always been a best, you know. What I liked about doing stuff on my own, I've always wanted to learn the way I wanted to learn the way I wanted to absorb things and buying the books and reading them and doing the exercises in them was I was doing it at my own pace, you know what I mean? And the way I like to do it. And I think that's kind of why it worked for me, you know. So then I, so working at the, then I got a job to go to another company. They still had the work I did for this company and they, hey Fred, you wanna work here, you know, we like your work, so I went there and I still was the only software engineer there I was programming robotics at the time, not like the Tesla, I don't know what's, you're thinking of it, it was more for, for wafers and semiconductor, just to do wafers for semiconductor. And then another company, which is a big company, applied materials, they're still around. They hired, they saw my work at that company and they hired me as a contractor for them through that company for a while. They love my work and then they hired me full time. So I went to ed applied and that's when I started working with other software engineers. And I learned a lot about architecture and you know how different things are done and how to be part of a big company, you know. And that was a really good experience for me, you know. So you're getting a lot of really good experience at really good companies and a very special part of the world, which is Silicon Valley. - Exactly. - Yeah. Okay, so then when did the Vagaro idea, light bulb come around? - Yeah, so after I applied, I got a job at another company called Novelas, I just started and they sent me to Korea to Santa. You know, that was the customers that we kinda had at the time. And by then I'm in my 20s, you know. And Korea, I have a barber that I loved. He's my friend's like barber with go skiing together. You know, I don't mean it was my buddy, you know. And but, you know, I don't know about you. I never thought about getting, like the only time I think I need a haircut is when I'm at home eating dinner or I'm about to go out and be like, oh my god, my hair is horrible. I should have booked a haircut. And you know, back then you can book a line and you know, there's no one to call at 8 p.m. Right, these clothes. So that's been something that's bothered me for a while and to make it worse, I was in Korea and I'm like crap. This is happening again, you know. Except now I'm in Korea and it's 2 a.m. in the morning of the United States. And that's when the dot com, so that was around 99 when the dot com boom is happening, you know, that dot com and remember Yahoo's coming out and all of it. Yeah. I'm like, hey, I wish there's a website. I could go online and book my haircut was my barber right now. Well, I'm in Korea because otherwise I have to remember to call them tomorrow and pay $2 a minute. Remember those days, you know, telephone now is the existing, but it still costs $2.50 for international call, you know. I'm like, yeah, that's too expensive. I'm gonna have to wait till I get back to the United States to call them and book an app on that. That's ridiculous, you know, I should be able to go online and book it. And now my mind is like going, I'm like, geez, you can do it for restaurants, you can do it for tea times, you can do it for all kind of everything, you know. Yeah. Can only to get back, came back to the United States. I'm ready to go, but I just got this job. And I'm like, I have a program robots, not websites, you know, so my experience was more than robots. I'm like, I'm gonna at least call a lawyer and create a patent. So if somebody creates it, at least I get royalty on it or something, you know, call the lawyer to create the concept. And at the time he said, you can't do a patent on process. You can only do it on things that have schematics on it. That change since then that change. Very, so I was very disappointed. And I'm like, maybe I should stay in my lane. There's probably somebody already working on it anyway, you know. So I tried to ignore it and I went back to doing my job two years later. I seen an ad on the radio for OpenTable. And I'm like, here is, you know, somebody already did a four restaurants, probably going to be in a matter of month when I hear someone is doing it for some laws, right? I didn't realize sorry to pause you, but I didn't realize OpenTable was that old. Yeah, it's been around for a long time. And I was so annoyed. I don't give up. By the way, when I thought of the website in 99, the idea, remember email, everything was e something about ePoints.com domain. I bought that domain. I owned it for a while. You know, I was like, ePointment rolls right off the tongue. You know, and I said on it, and anyway, it expired the domain, somebody else bought it afterward. But yeah, I even bought the domain back then. So yeah, OpenTable is created. And then golf now a few years later. And I'm like, when is somebody going to create a four salon in a spa? And all my friends at work, you know, all these dudes, software developers, you know, they know nothing about hair salons. I'll be like, hey, I have this great idea. Software for salons, that's why you can book a hair guy's like, it's freck, what do you want with salons? You're not an engineer. Just stop talking. I'm like, who cares? No, you can't get software. Don't you want to be able to book with your, you know, hair stylist or barber online and stuff like that? Like, it's a good idea. I can say no, you know. If you're a hair stylist, barber or salon owner, you already know your skills are everything. But protecting and growing your career matters just as much. 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So I got laid off that just like I thought it's probably going to happen. And I had no clue how to get money from VC or anything. I knew these terms VC, venture capital, but I don't know any friends that are like that, you know. So I called my sister who lived in Dubai and I'm like, hey, I have this idea, you know, any rich people in Dubai that would want to invest in my company. And so I went to Dubai, I showed it to her in my brother law. And in my to their credit, my sister in my brother, I love the idea and they decided to invest in the company themselves and a couple of friends of there. So we, we, the company is always for Lebanese guys, you know, so it was, you know, we put our money together and we created the baguette. Wow. Okay. So I'm going back to that time period. I remember. So I started Salon Republic in 2000. And so I, you know, I would see what what is out there in the marketplace. I remember early booking websites, not apps yet necessarily. I was dial seat in early one. Stasi came like a year after us, I think you know, okay, you're later. There was another one that was focusing on Southern California, it was called open share. Do you remember seeing one called open share. I remember thinking, you know, I think it came right on the heels of open table and it was called open share. And it even had similar branding. It was red and black. And I remember thinking, darn it, that's a great name. It's a great idea. But you know, I wasn't, I wasn't necessarily tech oriented. I wasn't looking at doing it like the way that you were looking at doing it. I was just kind of seeing what's out there. I saw a bunch, you know, Groupon was heavily in the industry with the promotional things, you know, stuff like that. And even before Groupon, there were humans standing there with these little slips of paper, you know, right on the street corner that were promoting various, you know, independent beauty professionals and then Groupon came after that. So there were little things that were kind of happening with, you know, the kind of proliferation of the internet and the consumer space at the time. And so I saw open share and I was like, oh, somebody's doing that. You know, what a great idea. And I didn't even realize that that really it was still an open marketplace. And by the way, talking about ignores as a, as a bliss, I couldn't find any company that did that that did what I was trying to do. And by the way, my idea was from day one was a marketplace where you can go search for hairdressers. And quickly realized to have the marketplace, you have to have to for people to be on the marketplace, you got to give the hairdressers the tool to be able to manage their solos and so on. Now my system will love that by the way, from the time I had the idea to finally did it, I'm married and my sister loves a hairdresser and she's a booth writer, you know, and she's not very tax savvy. And I was able to pick her brain how she does her business, what she needs blah, blah, blah. So I quickly realized that she's not going to be able to have a cash register at her desk and she should be able to do everything on her iPhone. So she had an, you know, I created the company in 2009, the iPhone has been out for two years, the app store was just created. I'm like, it made sense to have it. So what from day one, I wanted to have an app. So for her to be able to see all her problems on the iPhone, I wanted to have a marketplace for people to go and find businesses on it and book was on, you know. And I wanted to have with the app a web interface for salons that have multiple employees. So what I did before I started the company, I had my sister a lot to pick her brain as a booth writer as a solo printer. And then I went to a salon next to my house and asked for the owner turns out he likes a golf. So I was golfing wasn't twice a week. Or four hours on the golf course, I would ask him what he needed. He was using salon biz and he was telling me everything that salon biz did and how you ran inventory and stuff like that. So from day one, I had the what that what is it a full salon need is, you know, what is a full salon need and what it does a headdresser who works in a salon as a booth writer need. And I tried to make sure that Vagaro can a cater to both, you know, and that's why we're the idea. And it was a marketplace. So I thought nobody had a marketplace. Nobody had the only software that I knew existed was Appalemant Plus. I don't know if you know about them. That's the only one I could from all my Google searches was upon a plus the only thing that was coming up. And my end that's that was online. And you about salon biz because my system law, the guy that I met with keep talking about salon biz where my system law work day was using millennium at the time. And I heard of STX, you know, like, because they're in the Mac guys, the iPhone guys. And but they were all on premise. And every time I would go to their website, they were charging an arm at the leg and you had to have your own servers, computers in the back and back you know, like that stuff. And I was like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, it was like a disk you put in your computer and right and you would you would launch the software from the disk and the software would would exist pretty much only locally there. And people would be like, why I don't want my information. I had a lot of resistance about that. I'm like, I don't want they don't want the information of the cloud. They wanted to be in the computer in the back. What if the internet goes down. It took a while, you know, for people to be adjusted to the cloud. And a lot of people don't have good internet dialogue. You know, like that's what I started with. There was people still on dialogue. And if you're on dial up, you can't be listening to Pandora while you're trying to use baguaro because it's eating up all your baby. I was running really slow. So yeah, we're through all this stuff. But fun days, you know, wow. That's it's so cool to remember that period of time. And and to think back and because I think it's so instructive as we go about our daily lives to think back, you know, 15 years. There was so much opportunity at the time, but you don't always recognize all that opportunity at the time, right? And I have kids 13 to 14 years old. And I try really hard to explain this to them that right now there's tremendous opportunity that exists. And it just doesn't seem like it because it's not clear, but the best opportunities aren't always clear. And so it just requires, you know, a little bit more thought and creativity and time thinking about certain things. And it's very easy to describe it if you go back in time with a story like this. And honestly, we all have good ideas that we think about like how many times have you somebody should create this? How many times he tells yourself somebody should create. And then two weeks later, you forgot what that thing was that you thought that somebody should create. You know what I mean? For me, for some reason, this, I mean, this I go through this. I so go through this all the time. For some reason, the booking haircut stayed with me. It never left my mind. You really should when you have an idea and you say somebody should create this, you should write it down, you know, and get it to where bothers you and really do your research. Cause if you think it's a good idea, you probably should do it, you know, and why not give it a try? So, so the, so you had the idea for 10 years before you acted on it and you did you described a little bit of the reason why you didn't act on it. But I want to drill down for a second more on that. I find that sometimes when I have an idea and I don't act on it, I fail to see how important or how big it could be. It sometimes things seem very nitchy. And did you feel like that was the case in 1999 when you're like, how come I can't book a haircut digitally? Did you think it's a small idea? I thought it's a great idea. I was scared. I'll be honest with you. I was just scared. I had a job. I just got the job. I wanted to do good job at it. You know, I tend to when I have a job, like I worked just as hard for when I worked for the other companies that I do for my company, you know, it's really weird. And I just did not want to mess it up. You know, I was like just really if they don't want to have two jobs and if you write about it and I have enough money to like go on my own and quit my job and start this company, you know. And by the way, so that was during calm. But if you remember two years later, everybody was talking about that gun. You know, so many of these companies that came around were joining out business, you know. and I'm like, there was a crash. - Yep, so a lot of what seemed like a great idea didn't tend to be a great idea. But I was pretty sure this alone thing. And before I finally did it, there was a survey company that was created called Zomerang at the time. I don't think they exist anymore, but they think Survey Monkey or whatever, you know? And with them, you can send a survey out. So I clear the list of questions and ask people, what is it that they booked the most? You know, and by far it was hair and nail. You know, I'm like, how often do you book your plumber, your lawyer and a can of you, saying it'd be as high as these guys? But you could tell, most of them said hair and nail and massage, you know, that like there was different ranking and we surveyed about 1,000 people and it's not very expensive to do it, by the way. And then I was like, would you like, if the service like this existed, where you could book online, would you use it? And overwhelmingly, people are saying yes. So, and I use that to be able to get money, you know? But overwhelmingly, can I reinforce what I was thinking, you know? Yeah. Fun part is we created the app and we put it in the app store and I had zero advertisement. And I came in, the minute the app was approved, I come into work, I had an office, because I can't work at home for some reason. I like to be in an office. So I had an office, even though like, I had no customers or employees, but I had to go in an office. I had my nephew helping me write documentation at the time as an Amazon app. And I'm looking at the software and I'm playing with it and I see there's customers. I'm like, hey, Zach, are you creating fake account? He's like, no. So just from having the app in the app store, we decided to get any customers like, so then, yeah, so people were looking for what we were creating, you know? All the more interesting because you named it Vigaro. You didn't name it, ePointments or hair bookings or that other one that you talked about or open share. You named it Vigaro. Why did you name it Vigaro? So although the maze were gone by then, ePointment was gone, findtime.com. I was like, findtime.com, but they were all sounding so boring to me, you know? And I'm like, yeah, too generic and I'm like, and I don't want to, you know, I want the fun thing, a word that's fun to say, you know what I mean? And I remember Google was around and everybody saying, Google, I'm like, nobody, Google has a meaning, but nobody knows what it is. And everybody knows Google, you know? Yeah, who, you know, nobody knows what it is being. Does it mean anything? Everybody saying, I'm like, why do I have to come up with a name that's mean something? You know, I'm just going to pick a name that is fun to say, you know? And I'm like, okay, it's whistle-ons, you know? Let's look for French names. I started researching French, kids names, Italian names. I think I saw an Italian name that was Vigaro, Vee, and I'm like, okay, that sounds good. Vigaro, Vigaro, you know, maybe let's make it Vigaro. It sounds better. Man, it's nobody's name, you know? It's purely old by us. And I like the V at the beginning and the O at the end. It started with a V and it ended with an O. And our first logo was like a V and an O. So, like we could create and some kind of an animation where it morphs together into a clock. The V and the O. So our first logo was a clock. Yeah, that's kind of what I was seeing in my mind. And yeah, we did it. And then we went to the first hair show in Long Beach. You know, here I was my pop-up dad. And you know, we opened up the tent. And I opened up the tent and our logo's on top. And the slay dee comes to me like within half an hour. And she goes, what is this? By our ground, like, no, it's a Vigaro. And she rest something completely different. And people kept saying that to me. I don't know how to go. You know, like a picture on a game. You know. Then I was like, kept happening during the show, by the way. Like, Vagaro, I'm like, did I pick the wrong name? But I was like, yeah. Sounds like a hair industry event. Well, I was like, yeah, where Vagaro for your business? I'm like, let's play all that. Who cares? It's my own business. That's exactly who we are. You know, so we just-- I love it. Yep, yep. OK, so people were finding it right out of the gate. And so when it comes to the original capital that you're-- I think your brothers and sisters put in. So that was probably mostly spent on development of the product. How long did it take you to actually get a viable product and launch it? Yeah, so April is when we formed the company. I spent two months hiring developers in India. I went to India, and I-- because I cannot afford hiring people in the United States. So I spent two months in India interviewing developers. I picked four developers that were working for me. And then by December of that year, we had a product that was kind of working. We had an app. We had the marketplace develop. It's really incredible. And we had a calendar that you could use online. And we were going to show it. Our first-- our coming up was going to be at the Long Beach. I think it's ISSE. Used to be ISSE, yep. Yeah. And that's where we were going to go and show the website in Bakaru. But like I said, a few days before that, we were starting already to get customers. Yeah, it was a record. I went there. I remember-- that was first time I saw Salon Rosie. I didn't know that Salon Rosie. I remember Rosie. They were there. I made the guys there. They were nice. And I think Salon Biz was there. I had mine body. I never heard of mine body until I went there. Then I realized, OK, there's more software than I knew existed. And they were over there. But nobody had the marketplace. So what we had, that nobody else had, was a marketplace and the app. And I think I was on to something was the app for the booth renters. Because nobody really catered for the booth renters. Like I said, everybody was going after the Salonz and so on. Right. The front desk. Yeah. And just having my system while being the booth renter and picking a brain, it really made sense to have an app that you could do everything on. And the marketplace, nobody cared. Because I was like, well, who's on their market? I'm like, well, my system all is on it. But hopefully you sign up and there'll be more people on it. I mean, now it's a different story. It was a marketplace. Yeah. And so is this the kind of business where you launch the product into the marketplace? And then you need to raise more money every so often. We started the company $750,000. I used to have it every time somebody would sign up. I would get a text message. And I had an Android phone at the time. And you can make it if you get a text message from this number to go, "Chitching." You know, that you can make it a little sound. I just made money. And when we started, it'd be like one chitching every two days, three days. And I remember that I wanted it. The goal was like, one chitching a day, then I'm happy. And I'd be with my kids and all the stuff. And it's four o'clock and I haven't heard any chitchings. I'm like, "Chitching." So if I could get it to change, and I'm happy, then the goal was like, two chitchings a day. Now, I've eventually turned that off. But that's kind of how I knew, because I knew from the math I did if I get two of those. I'll be profitable by then. So within two years of business, I was profitable. I had $5,000 left in the bank. And the next month, I was going to be profitable. So we went up to $5,000. And then the next month, we were proud and we've been profitable ever since. - That's amazing. So you raised the perfect amount of money. - 100%. And the plan was completely different. When we started, it was my brother-in-law, and we were talking about having students. It would go knock door to door and sell baguaro. And then I quickly realized, I don't need to do that, 'cause I have the app and the app, so people are signing up this way. And honestly, none of the competition realized the value of having an app in the app. If you thought salon app or anything, for four years of me being in business, the only app you were going to find was baguaro. Now, obviously, there's a-- - You're hitting me. So Rosie, I think, wasn't Rosie Millennium? - No, Rosie were their own get-throwies. - Rosie was a new, okay. 'Cause I know Millennium, which is the one that Millennium put out there? It's like-- - They switch Millennium to Mivo, now they're called Mivo. - Mivo, okay. So maybe some of the early players didn't want to invest in an app. - I got the feeling I was at the hair show one time, and somebody was like, almost making final meeting here the app guys, you know what I mean? Or being the app guys, like they saw it as, oh, you're just the app guy, you're like selling this little thing or something, you know what I mean? I don't know if they thought it's too much work to create an app. And I don't think it was really the case, you know, because yeah, a lot of them just didn't do it. And one thing I didn't do because I, I talked to all of them and became friends with all of them, but I never said you should create an app. Of course, you know what I mean? So I was like, yeah, yeah. I was, I'm like, why is no one thinking about doing this? You know, right? Yeah. I got for you. All right. So, so as an entrepreneur who's married and growing his business, grew his business in the early years of marriage, what was that like with your relationship with your wife? Did she, did you get married after you started Vigaro or vice versa? No, we'd been married, I think 20 something. I'm getting again. Okay. 24 years. She was with you. All right. So you were with her for about nine years before eight years before you got laid off in the great financial recession and decided with two kids on, and you decided to start this app. And so what was her thinking on that when you told her you were going to do that? So I got laid off Christmas. I got laid off beginning of December, right before Christmas. You know, think how again, that fork in the road thing, you know, that whole, well, I've been there. I know what it feels like to go through crap. I came home and, you know, I'm like, it's not going to be very good Christmas this year, you know, and we just bought a house. You know, so I just bought a house. Two kids got laid off with a subprime mortgage, hopefully. That's remember at the time, a lot of people were, yeah, exactly losing their houses and all the stuff. Yeah. That's all during that time. And she was supportive, but she wanted me to get a job. She didn't want me to start a company. And I told you, when I worked for a company, I worked my butt off, like whoever it is. And I'm like, I just worked my butt off for this company. And there was nothing that I could do to keep my job or change how this company performed. It's not my fault that this company failed at keeping its employees and, you know, dealing with this crisis, you know, and I'm like, I'm never going to put myself in a position again where I'm not the one deciding what my destiny is, you know. And of course, my wife didn't really know if I'm a, I had a lot of self-confidence in my ability because I'm, I worked was now I've been working for so many years. I worked with so many software developers and then you. I'm better than everybody. I mean, I don't want to be, but I knew my people, I knew like I was better than everybody. I worked with you know, I mean, I knew I'm better than what I'm, I'm today. And I knew if I kept working for someone on the company, I worked that I was never going to be the CEO. No, I was going to make me the CEO. I had to make myself the CEO. That was, I couldn't work hard enough to be moved up in that company to be the CEO. So I'm like, I'm done working for someone. I'm going to give this a shot. I'm going to put everything I can into it and create a company. Yeah, the first year or two, I mean, I wasn't seeing much of my family. I was always working, you know, she, she was worried. But then, you know, we got profitable and then finally, the butter and nice burst. You know, and you could see the light at the end of the tunnel, finally, I was so proud of myself to be able to buy that purse, you know, at a mid. And, and yeah, things got better. We obviously, yeah, but yeah, phenomenal. Yep. Yeah. Fantastic. So many paradoxes in the story, you know, whether it's the leaving a war torn country to, to, to, into almost, you know, less secure areas and experiences and taking more risk after leaving a war torn country to then, you know, seeing, finding that your best opportunity happens in an international financial crisis, right? And this is, this is how life is so often. It's that fork. Yeah. When the, when the deal, yeah, I made a presentation. And, you know, our iconic event, which I think you went to at one time, I made a presentation about the fork and the road thing, you know, what I mean? And it's all, like we all need to recognize that moment. And like you said, we could either let it destroy us or set us back or say, no, that's not me. I'm going to do something different, you know, this is, it's just about recognizing that moment and saying, you know, it's time for me to, to go. To overcribe and do something else. I, I looked on my, so I have a note on my, you know, note section on my iPhone, where I write notes. And so I have a note where I have certain principles in there and I wrote it down. And I was trying to think of it earlier, but I just went ahead and looked it up. And it says, chances are you will, you'll meet many, quote, unquote threshold of control moments. You have the choice to focus intensely on executing or focus on fear and failure. Human nature has this fearing failure and loss over anything else. Learn to focus on execution, exercise that muscle and you'll get better. Yeah. What used to be hard will be easy. Yeah. Yeah, it is, it's, it's usually most problems are solvable. If you just decide to solve it, you know, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And, and don't let the negative emotions come in and make it harder. Yeah, you got to write your own story. Don't let anyone write the story for you, you know, and you know, or tell you put you in a, say, you don't want other people to tell who you are. You know, it's for you to decide who you are really and people could be negative and, you know, you know, like I said, I was never going to be promoted if I didn't create my own company and I was old at some job. Why I'm not getting that promotion this time or whatever, you know, it was all, always in my mind, much BS, you know, yeah, I love it. Okay. So that was a really great deep dive in your story. Before we wrap things up, I want to talk about what Vigaro is doing with functionality. I mean, it seems like there's been an arms race of sorts. And there, I mean, going back maybe five, six years, there was, there was a very long tail of platforms that were out there hundreds. And we've, we've done quite a bit of research into many of them. And since then, there's been some M and A, there's been some consolidation and it seems like there's a few strong leaders out there and you guys are one of them. And amongst those strong leaders, it seems like a lot of you are getting really good at coming up with anything and everything that any beauty professional or salon would possibly want to have on this platform. And I want to talk about some of those things because in all the conversations that I have with beauty professionals, it seems like not everybody really knows a lot of the things. It kind of makes me think about like my, I have a BMW and I bought the car because the seat was comfortable. And then I, so I get in the car and I'm about to drive it away and the salesperson's like, okay, so now we can go through the, you know, the, the briefing of everything the car does and I'm looking around on the screen and there's hundreds of little indications and buttons and this and he starts going into it and I'm like, you know what, I just need to get to the office to tell you the truth. I don't have 30 minutes to go over everything. And so this car does 800 things. I know about maybe five of them and I'm totally happy. I think that I find that a lot of beauty professionals are similar. Of course you're going to have some who know about, you know, if a Garo has a hundred different functions, they know about 95 of them. And that's really good. I suspect a lot of people don't know about them. So I did, I did want to ask you in this episode, what are some of the really cool things you're doing? Because I know that you're doing a lot of really cool things. Yeah. So you're right, we have the super users and I'm amazed how many of our customers are really super users and they won't, you know, most of what you've believed on on the software, I mean, I had the original idea, but everything we've added since then, it's been input from our customers and our hairdressers. They come in and say, I wish we did this, I wish we did that. And I was actually good idea. Let's go in and add it. You know, so you don't have one person that wants all the functionality, but we have enough people on the platform that want the different subsets of the functionality that we have. And enough of them, you know, there's like every obviously the upon foot booking and using the iPhone app is pretty much common for everybody. But there's all this French stuff like, for example, I don't want to. I do hair extensions Monday through Thursday. I only want to do hair extensions on Friday because they take so much time. So in the command, I'm like something I would never never thought of. Why, well, I just, you know, like to do it on Friday. Not your business. And you know, and we just wanna do it, you know, and it's a great feature for our customers. Or like, I don't wanna be coming in at 8 a.m. in the morning and my next opponent would be at 2 p.m. in the afternoon. I would like my booking to be bunched up all next to each other, you know? You know, stuff like that. I wanna have gap time so I can do a service in between color being applied, you know, or something like that. I want, and you know, I wanna send emails out to customers that, you know, haven't visited me for a while but don't have opponents in the future, you know? All kinds of stuff. And we keep learning and we keep adding to it. And yes, the more the, we add, the more complex the software is getting. But at the same time, our challenge is how do we add all this complexity, but still keep it simple, you know, and not let the software get bloated. And so we always keep stuff on the screen. So they know if you wanna use this, this feature exists, don't go sign up with somebody else. We do have it. It's right there. You don't have to use it, but you know, whenever you decide it's time for you to use it, it is there for you. And eventually they evolve, you know? A lot of our customers didn't want online booking and they turned that on, few months later and they liked it. And then they don't wanna charge credit cards through our platform and then they start charging credit cards through the platform and then they like it. So slowly they can add these add-ons and digest them as they get comfortable with a smaller subset that we have. You probably know more about your BMW, you know? Then you first got it, right? A little stuff. - A little stuff. - You know what I'm saying? - I'm kidding. Yeah, of course. I get used to it, yes. - Yeah. And we've kind of like that. And it's because just like I had this idea of, you know, I wish there's a way for me to go online booking and book a software. You know, they get this idea, oh, I wish Vagaro could do this and can I do that? And then they go and find out that yes we can. And we honestly, every time they have this idea, I want Vagaro the answer to be yes. And that's why I tell everybody in company, like every time a customer comes and says, "I wish you guys did that, the answer should be yes." And that's what's working on making it happen. Now, the future is going to be AI in a lot of ways. And we want to use AI to move out of the way. I tell everybody, all my designers here in the company that don't get over yourself, we're not a Instagram, we're not Snapchat. Nobody's using Vagaro for fun. Like, nobody's sitting on Vagaro and I go like this. We're here, a very simple job, you know? People just want to be able to book an app on that and leave. And people want to be able to charge a credit card and leave. And let's not get over our stuff and making things hard to do. Everything should be on the user interface, very easily, findable. Don't make it so tricky to figure out how to use the software, you know, it should be very few clicks, you know, very fast. But with AI now, there's a lot of things we could do where we can kind of figure out what a person of that profile most probably wants to do, you know? I mean, at the end, she, hairdresser just wants to do her craft and be busy for the eight hours or nine hours that she gave herself for that day to do hair, you know? And Vagaro's job is to make those nine hours as enjoyable as possible, right? Meaning, hopefully she's fully booked during those nine hours and was our marketplace and all the AI tools and everything that we do to bring her more customers, you know what I mean? We'll be playing into that. And during those nine hours, she's able to charge credit cards and get the reviews from customers on how she did, right? And as seamless and as quick as possible, right? Again, I accomplished those two things. And then after five or six o'clock, I don't want any hairdresser to think about Vagaro. I just wanted her to go home, eat dinner, and be with her family, you know what I mean? And I'm not worried about Vagaro until the next day. Because after that, all the online booking will be happening with us, all the getting her more customers for the next day. If she has openings tomorrow, we're going to be working very hard to fill up these up all things for her and so on and make sure that she's as busy as long as possible. And I keep saying she goes as we all go for our customers are women. This is the point in the AI kind of evolution where all the companies are trying to integrate it into the user experience and it's kind of funny, right? I mean, there's a lot of memes out there with the way that the different companies are trying to integrate AI. And some of it's good and a lot of it's not. You know? And I imagine it's going to be like, you know, all the other experiences with technology over the last 20 or 30 years where it's going to start off a little wonky and people will be a little pessimistic about it like these memes, you know, show. But then of course, it's going to get better and better and better. And then we'll probably not even notice all the benefits that we're getting from its integration. I mean, best AI will be just, you live your life, right? Like, it shouldn't be AI that it's. Look, we're not going to think that. I'm not going to be a chat GPT. You know, we're not going to be there for a hairdresser to be chatting with us and telling us, sorry, that's not who we are. The AI that we want to create for them is actually the one that she doesn't have to talk to as much. And she doesn't have to. All she has to do is, again, worry about doing her craft and interacting with people, not with robot, you know what I mean. And just the robot is just taking care of making things as easy as possible for anything that could be automated outside of doing hair or makeup or massage or whatever that craft might be, is not something that she needs to worry about. She doesn't need to worry about sending email marketing out anymore. She doesn't need to say the worry about advertising herself or any of that stuff. She just needs to say, by go, it's like the co-pilot on a car, you know what I mean, you put it on a drive and you just let it take you home, you know. You can do this well. I think that's really the AI that you, and you're a lot of the AI that's being created and now it's a bunch of chatbots, copy of, you know, and we will have that too. But I don't think that's the winning way of doing AI, you know, 'cause that's more interaction. Like I said, nobody wants to, we need to remember that nobody wants to spend their time using Vagaro. Like, if you're using Vagaro, you're doing work, you're not doing anything fun, you know. So we just got to remember that, you know. - Yeah, that's so funny. Okay, so tell us about the podcast. Why would you want to do that to yourself? Why would you want to start a podcast? - I'm always willing to do whatever it takes to help Vagaro out, you know. And honestly, I enjoy these conversations me and you are having it right now so much. You know, I, you know, say it was my friends all the time. So I like meeting new people. I like figuring out what people are about, how they get where they got. And I'm like, why not feed a podcast, talk to some of our customers or people in our industry and find out more about them. And hopefully people like what I'm sharing with them and enjoying it. The name of the podcast is, you know what I mean? And it's because I say that all the time. I might have said it. During our conversation, I do it unconsciously. I used to say it in Arabic, growing up in Lebanon, I would always say out of two, which means, you know what I mean. And you would think coming to the United States that would go away, people make fun of me in Lebanon about it, 'cause I always said it. It's as you ask. And people make fun of me here about it. So we're trying to figure out the name for the podcast. And one of my employees said, we should call it, you know what I mean? It's how I'm like, okay, that sounds good. I like it. It's great. So that's what the podcast is, you know what I mean? But it's really, it's mostly talking about who is different people in the industry and just about their life and how they get there. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I look forward to listening to it. I think you've got six episodes or so out there. And I think back to when I started and I was so bad, whether it was the way that my voice sounded, or I was nervous, or I didn't, you know, the cadence of the questions or the answers or the all of it. And it wasn't until I listened to a few episodes and I realized all the things that I hated about the way that I was speaking or communicating or asking the questions or the way I laughed. I'm like, oh my God, I cannot believe you sound like that when you laugh, right? All these things. And then over the years, I've just kind of whittled away on all the things that annoy me about what it is to listen to myself. So I'm curious, you know, you're about your early experiences. And I want to listen first before we talk about it. - So I'll be honest with you, I haven't listened to any of them. (laughing) Well done. That was my next question because I know you're busy. And I was busy-ish, you know, eight years ago. I think it was eight years ago, 19 or 19. 2017 in the fall is when my first one was. I was busy too, but I wasn't as busy as I am now. And I know that you definitely, it's hard to find time on your calendar. So I'm not surprised that you haven't listened to yourself. One, that and two, I feel so cringey about it because I'm going to have all these insecurities like it. I can't believe I sound like that. We all think we sell the completely different than we actually do, you know what I mean? And I don't want to fake it. It is what it is. This is how I speak. This is how I talk. And this is how I laugh or whatever it is. And I like it. They like it. If they don't like it, then I'm not going to be somebody else. Does that make sense? I don't want to be too rehearsed. Right. Well, you sound fine. You sound fine to me. I know it's different, you know, listening to yourself. I actually, there were tendencies that I had that annoyed me so much. I actually went and bought a vocal book. Oh, wow. And and read about like how to breathe and how to get because there were certain parts of my speech where I wouldn't have power behind the words. And I don't remember details, but let's say making it up. At the end of a sentence, the power, at least the volume of my voice would trail away and not be enjoyable to listen to or even possible to listen to. And I'm like, I can't believe nobody's ever told me that I do that. So I just went and bought a book about, you know, vocal power, vocal speech, and stuff like that. And it was fascinating. Well, this has been amazing. Thank you for the time. And I love the story. And there's just so many themes here for the listeners to dig into. And principles that, you know, everybody can use in their daily lives. And I really appreciate it all. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Fred. You're a good day. You bet. Thank you all so much for joining us today. We absolutely love having you here, the Hair Game podcast. And can't wait to see you in our next episode. See you then.