These days it seems like practically anyone can launch a beauty brand. But turning it into an international success is a very different story, and one that Anastasia Soare, the founder of Anastasia Beverly Hills (ABH), knows well. Soare risked her life to escape communist Romania and start over in the US, building her beloved billion-dollar beauty brand without any connections—all while raising a daughter on her own. Soare didn’t speak English when she arrived in Los Angeles, but learned it from watching “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and in a full circle moment went on to shape Oprah’s eyebrows on the show years later.
Soare shares her story in her new book, Raising Brows: My Story of Building a Billion-Dollar Beauty Empire, along with the many lessons she learned along the way in the part memoir, part advice book. “The only reason why I wanted to write this book is to share with people and give them hope that they could do whatever they want,” Soare says. These eight lessons helped Soare become the mogul she is today.
Turn disadvantages into advantages
When Soare arrived in the US, she didn’t have any money, connections or even fluency of the English language. But she saw being an immigrant as an advantage and considers herself the embodiment of the American dream. “When you come to this country as an immigrant, you want to take any opportunity to build something better than what you had in the country where you are coming from,” Soare says. “So, you start from nothing, you take jobs, and you build something that if I was born here and I was privileged, maybe I would not take any job. Everybody was a doctor or an engineer back home in an Eastern country from a communist regime, but when they came here they were willing to take any job possible, because they wanted to learn, to have an experience and to build their American dream, and it’s up to you where you want to start and where you want to end.”
Believe in your dreams
Soare watched The Oprah Winfrey Show to learn English, but her admiration for Oprah ran much deeper. Throughout her book, Soare shares what she calls “Oscar moments,” the times that felt surreal to her, and going on Oprah’s show to do her brows was the crowning one. “Being on The Oprah Winfrey Show was absolutely my best moment in my life and my career,” Soare says. “I have to say, her support throughout the years, since 1998, really elevated my brand.”
Be an early adapter
Soare was quick to explore unchartered territory long before it was a success, including being one of the first beauty brands to embrace social media. “[My daughter] Claudia was very young and she and her friends were the first ones on Instagram,” Soare says. “One day she came to me and said, ‘Mom, I think we should open an account for Anastasia Beverly Hills on this app called Instagram.’ I always like to surround myself with young people because they see things totally different than me, and I was willing to try. What did I had to lose posting there?” ABH shared videos on how to use their products, one of the first brands to do so. “Of course, we were reading every comment, and one comment said, ‘I would love to buy this product’ and I said, ‘send me the address and I will ship you one.’ And she said, ‘You can’t, because I’m from a small village in India.’ That was the moment when I thought, wow, we could reach people in [rural] India. That was the day when I thought let’s put all our effort into social media.”
Learn the business side
Many creatives struggle with the business side of things, but Soare didn’t have a choice with her limited budget. In fact, she didn’t hire a CFO until 2019 and managed her company until then without any formal business training. “We watched every single move, every payment, every check signed, every negotiation,” she says. “Sometimes I look back and think how I had enough time to do all those. I didn’t have training, but you know what? I knew how to save money. You save money and you spend only what you have, not what you don’t have, because at that time it was very difficult for me to get investors. I didn’t come from a culture where funds are available. When we lived in Romania, you spent as much as you had. This is a totally different culture. You have the banks, you have the loans, you have investors. I didn’t live in a country where something like that was possible. So, I used the old-fashioned way of you spend as much as you earn. I used to do eyebrows non-stop and all the money I put in the company. I used to flip homes. That was my part-time job and all the money that I made I put back in the company.”
Never give up
When Soare was starting out people told her it was impossible to create a brand only focused on eyebrows. But Soare always believed in herself. “Everybody was telling me that it’s impossible to build something on shaping eyebrows, and there were days when I didn’t know how to handle things,” she recalls. “I would go home and I think I’m going to give up; I can’t do this anymore. But I would wake up in the morning and felt like I had so many responsibilities that it wasn’t about me anymore. I couldn’t see any other road for me. I loved what I did and knew I would continue to work at it to fulfill my vision. I learned from other people, I learned from my mistakes and I never gave up.”
Don’t take no for an answer
In her book, Soare recounts an occasion when she was trying to get a loan from the bank for her business, but the bank employee kept declining. She refused to take no for an answer and instead negotiated on the spot. “When I lived in Romania, my mother used to have her own business, and in a communist regime, you were not allowed to have your own business,” Soare says. “My mother is still giving me that feeling of everything is possible. You could find ways to get what you needed. She started making clothes for the wives of all the Communist party leaders and my mother was able to run her own business, and she always had such a positive way of thinking. There was always something that could be done, even if you get no as an answer, because in Romania, that was very normal. She had the confidence that she could find a way to get what she wanted. She was my role model that I learned that from her. The best advice that I could give people is to believe in themselves and to be confident, because I think that’s better than any [lesson from] Harvard University.”
Learn to think on your feet
When Soare’s furniture delivery for her new salon didn’t come in time for her opening, she pulled her personal furniture from her home instead and used it to decorate and fill the space. “You learn in Romania to pivot because one day was something and the next day you had to change everything you did to survive,” she says. “When the guy didn’t answer—he completely shut me off—I thought let me take all the furniture from my apartment and put it in the salon, and I bought some shelves that I found the day before and I put the retail products on them. You have to find ways to survive to make it work.”
Find a mentor
The word “mentor” gets thrown around a lot, but Soare believes you can learn so much simply from watching others. “People think that mentoring means somebody is going to sit with you at a desk and take you step by step and tell you what to do,” she says. “Mentoring, to me, was observing somebody that I admire and that will give me hope, and I would try to do as much as I could to be like this person. I remember watching Oprah, how she treated people around her, her employees, and I thought, wow, she’s Oprah Winfrey, and look how considerate she is with other people. Mentoring means that you find somebody that you feel is such an incredible person that achieved a lot, and I want to learn everything, read everything about them, and follow and learn from their mistakes. You have to surround yourself with people that you could learn something from.”