Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin

Turning Brows Into a Billion-Dollar Business: Anastasia Soare on Building Anastasia Beverly Hills

October 21, 2025

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  • Anastasia Soare's entrepreneurial foundation was built by learning finance and business directly from her mother, an entrepreneur in communist Romania. 
  • Financial independence, defined as the ability to call one's own shots without worrying about basic bills, is the primary value Anastasia Soare derives from having money. 
  • Success in business, especially early on, relies on relentless dedication to mastering one's craft and using every client as a 'walking advertisement' to generate word-of-mouth referrals. 

Segments

Early Life and Financial Trauma
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(00:04:02)
  • Key Takeaway: Growing up in communist Romania instilled a deep-seated drive for financial independence, which remains a core motivator despite later success.
  • Summary: Anastasia Soare learned business fundamentals from her mother, who ran a small clothing business under the communist regime. She experienced financial trauma from her upbringing and later losing everything in a fire, reinforcing the belief that money equals freedom and independence. She explicitly states that having a lot of money brings more happiness than not having it, having experienced both sides.
Building Credit History
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(00:07:13)
  • Key Takeaway: Securing initial credit as an immigrant in the early 1990s required leveraging existing success and making strong personal assurances to the bank manager.
  • Summary: In 1990, Anastasia Soare struggled to obtain a credit card due to lacking a credit history, highlighting the catch-22 for new immigrants. She successfully convinced a Wells Fargo manager by showcasing her hard work, existing celebrity clientele, and $2,000 in her checking account to secure a $500 credit line. She has remained a customer of that bank ever since.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategy
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(00:10:33)
  • Key Takeaway: Mastering the craft and ensuring every client received the best service was Anastasia’s primary, organic advertising strategy before social media.
  • Summary: Her initial promotion relied on doing the best eyebrow work possible, as clients with great brows served as walking advertisements, leading to referrals from celebrities and beauty editors. She began working with Jennifer Lopez in 1992 and maintained that relationship through consistent, high-quality service. Cultivating these relationships involved non-stop networking, including promoting her business with a hairstylist friend after long workdays.
Transition to Entrepreneurship
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(00:13:35)
  • Key Takeaway: Being rejected by her salon employer to start her own brow service was a blessing in disguise that forced her to bet on her specialized skill.
  • Summary: After two years in the U.S., she saved $5,000 and successfully negotiated a lease for her first space by appealing to the landlord’s empathy and pointing out the location had been vacant for two years. She later saved $60,000 by living extremely frugally, cleaning her own home and never eating out, to fund her first store. She secured that lease by refusing to take no for an answer, promising the landlord success within six months.
Product Innovation and IP Lessons
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(00:17:58)
  • Key Takeaway: Early product innovation, like creating a custom angle-cut brush and brow pomade, was driven by the need to scale service efficiency for high client volume.
  • Summary: She mixed aloe vera, eyeshadow, and Vaseline to create an early pomade and designed an integrated brush/spoolie tool to minimize movements and serve up to 100 clients daily. A key financial lesson learned was the difficulty of trademarking a common name, necessitating the addition of ‘Beverly Hills’ to secure the brand name. She advises new entrepreneurs to hire a smart lawyer immediately for contracts and intellectual property protection.
Work Ethic and Family Employment
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(00:22:35)
  • Key Takeaway: Anastasia Soare views work as her life and passion, maintaining the same intense work ethic now as when she needed money to pay rent, believing love for the work prevents burnout.
  • Summary: She fired her daughter from the business for being repeatedly late, teaching her a hard lesson about professional accountability and the necessity of earning one’s position. The daughter eventually returned, begging for her job back, and now works diligently, having learned that rules apply equally to family members in the workplace. She emphasizes that setting strict rules and being harder on family employees sets a necessary example for the rest of the staff.
Private Equity Decision Making
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(00:30:07)
  • Key Takeaway: Taking on private equity (TPG) was motivated by the need for external expertise to manage international expansion, not by a desire for valuation realization.
  • Summary: The company was bootstrapped until 2018, when she sought a partner to handle the complexities of international operations, which required expertise she lacked. The business was valued at $3 billion during the process, a figure she hadn’t focused on as her goal was product innovation and customer satisfaction. She advises entrepreneurs to clearly define what operational help they need from private equity before making a deal.
Social Media Growth and Authenticity
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(00:34:52)
  • Key Takeaway: Anastasia Beverly Hills was one of the first beauty brands to explode on Instagram by fostering an authentic community where users helped each other improve their makeup skills.
  • Summary: Her daughter spearheaded the Instagram strategy, initially focusing on reposting user-generated content from people who were genuinely passionate about makeup, long before paid influencers were common. This organic growth helped build a massive, engaged community that organically discovered and promoted products like the Brow Freeze wax. Today, the landscape has changed, requiring brands to ‘pay to play’ on social platforms.
Beauty Trend Opinions (Bullish/Bearish)
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(00:38:24)
  • Key Takeaway: Anastasia Soare is bearish on heavily laminated, straight brows and 90s thin eyebrows, preferring natural movement and thickness for facial proportion.
  • Summary: She expressed bearishness on heavily laminated brows because she believes hair needs to curl naturally to create a beautiful arch, though she is bullish on slightly lighter bleached brows for brunettes. She is strongly bearish on the 90s trend of thin eyebrows, noting that thicker brows would dramatically improve the look of celebrities like Pamela Anderson. She is bearish on current filler and Botox trends, preferring natural aging.
Overcoming Trauma and Moving Forward
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(00:44:30)
  • Key Takeaway: To move past the trauma of losing her home in the Northridge earthquake, Anastasia focused energy on the future and used a symbolic ritual to release the past.
  • Summary: The earthquake trauma was severe, causing her to consider moving back to Romania and leading to a year of sleeplessness. Her advice is to stop putting energy into what cannot be changed and instead learn from the experience before symbolically releasing the anger, such as by writing a letter and burning it. She maintains a positive outlook, believing she cannot live in fear because she still has lessons to learn.