When Alli Webb based Drybar in 2010, she couldn’t have anticipated her ardour for hair styling would transcend right into a multi-million greenback magnificence empire with over 150 storefronts nationwide. With its notable yellow and grey brand and brightly branded merchandise, the corporate capitalized on an unmet shopper curiosity—a easy blowout, no cuts nor colours.
“We were on such a rocket ship with Drybar, and the trajectory of the business was so fast and amazing,” Webb, who bought the $255 million blowout firm in 2019, tells Fortune. However, there was a harsher actuality to Webb’s story, which she reveals in her newly launched memoir The Messy Truth. “I am a living, breathing example of just how high one can climb and how fast one can fall,” she writes in her e book.
Webb didn’t have a conventional enterprise background however recollects feeling celebrated in what she describes as a time of entrepreneurial reputation for feminine founders. “I was kind of your unexpected, scrappier entrepreneur,” says Webb. However together with her fast rise to success got here the highlight—after which the strain to maintain her place in it. Coupled with challenges at dwelling, she confronted burnout and depression and now shares her story as a message for different founders.
Burnout and melancholy as an entrepreneur
Webb all the time cherished styling hair. After attending magnificence college, getting married, and having two youngsters, she started providing mothers a easy $40 blowout within the consolation of their properties as their newborns slept. Her providers turned extremely wanted, significantly for working mothers, she particulars within the e book. As phrase of mouth propelled her at-home service enterprise, she laid the groundwork for her subsequent enterprise. When her sons had been about three and 5, she based Drybar alongside her brother and then-husband to deliver blow-drying providers to the plenty.
However because the enterprise took off, Webb suffered a sequence of emotional difficulties—a failed marriage with the husband whom she labored alongside, and her mom’s loss of life after a most cancers prognosis—that left her with melancholy.
Webb masked her emotions by hustling extra at work—a lot so she was featured on the duvet of Inc. journal and appeared as a visitor choose on Shark Tank. Webb recollects feeling profitable in a single realm of her life, however a failure in one other. She hated that she now not had the picture-perfect picture she had of herself and her household, she says. However Webb refused to decelerate, which ultimately led to burnout.
“You’re giving so much of yourself to the cause, and you can easily lose yourself,” she says. “My life kind of imploded along the way.”
Ultimately, numbing didn’t work, particularly when her son wanted assist. By 12 months seven of the corporate, her eldest started to battle together with his personal psychological well being and spent a while in rehab. She regrets not seeing the extent of his struggling earlier, she writes in her e book. Feeling like she failed her household, Webb, for the primary time in her life, had misplaced the motivation that propelled her professionally. She didn’t really feel like herself, wasn’t caring for her physique bodily or mentally, and couldn’t get away from bed.
Alli Webb
Trying again, Webb tells Fortune her incapability to delegate at work and, later, her lack of self-care was “very small thinking.” Webb, who has since gone to remedy, says she’s realized to handle herself by admitting when issues aren’t as glamorous as they appear as a substitute of utilizing working to keep away from challenges.
She has a message for entrepreneurs: Don’t be afraid to be susceptible, take a again seat when it is advisable to, and verify in together with your ego.
How entrepreneurs can fight the darkish facet of success
Webb admits she started to crave reward and accolades: “Drybar was all the rage, and it was intoxicating. I loved it,” she says. “It’s a little bit of a drug. It’s like an addiction.”
Discovering contentment past the model was essential. “At some point, [things] will start to implode because you’re not taking care of yourself,” she says.
Studying to delegate and belief others served the corporate and allowed her to handle herself. Webb, who’s acts as extra of a artistic advisor now, feels fortunate for her enterprise’ far attain and the alternatives it’s supplied.
She additionally hopes her memoir serves as a reminder to take a extra balanced method to ambition and success: “You’re not letting the great things that happen be this crazy high, and not allowing the bad things that happen take you down,” she says.
