An Exclusive Interview With Dylan Mullan On The Importance Of Market Research and Building a Team.

Many entrepreneurs fail in their ventures because of 2 major reasons

1. Market Research 
2. Building a Team

If you want to be successful as an entrepreneur, these two factors are extremely important and crucial to your success. 

So how do you carry out a proper Market Research and Build a sustainable Team? 

To help explain this, I had a conversation with Dylan Mullan, the founder of the world’s number one at-home laser hair removal device. 

Dylan Mullan was able to scale Happyskinco from $0-$20M in just two years. This was an exceptional feat, and there were a lot of lessons to learn from him. 

How did he do it? 

Brief History: 

When Dylan Mullan started out, he didn’t always want to be an entrepreneur. In fact, he wanted to become a lawyer. But after getting into the university, he realized that Law wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wanted more out of life and he proceeded to do the next logical thing. He dropped out. 

After dropping out, he decided to take on something completely unconventional, and that’s when he took an acting course. The acting course was supposed to be a one-month thing, but he had so much fun with acting that it turned into 4 years. 

But as time went by, Dylan wanted more control for himself. He wanted more out of life. To this end, he started listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, reading blog posts, and a lot more. By doing this, he was able to figure out that e-commerce was going to be the best avenue for him to get into the business. 

To survive as an entrepreneur, Dylan Mullan knew he had to find the right product and this is when Market Research comes in.

Tell Us a Little About Your Market Research? 

I really wanted to get into e-commerce, and I knew that to succeed, I had to find the right product. To achieve that, I began to study and analyze what successful e-commerce brands have done. It took me a while but I was able to figure out that if you can take a product or service that’s generally done in a salon or somewhere of equal measures and turn it into an at-home product, then you’ve really got a chance. 

This was what happened in the teeth whitening space. Teeth whitening used to be done in a dentist’s office, and it was quite expensive plus you had to book an appointment. But when brands came along and made it an at-home product, it was a big change. 

I wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before. And on some random ad that was barely written in English, I came across the idea for a laser hair removal device that could be used at home. 

When the idea came about, I started to speak to people, about 100-200, just asking them a bunch of questions, and what I realized was that about 95% of them had done laser hair removal before. And if they’d not done it, they either didn’t bother because the session was too expensive or it was painful. With that knowledge, I knew that an at-home hair removal laser device had a lot of opportunities. 

How did you go about Building a Team? 

I’ll share a tip that has worked for me when it comes to building a team. I’ve been hiring for like 2 years and in that time I’ve made some good decisions and I have made bad choices. 

But one thing that has always worked for me is that I hire people that I know. I hire based on recommendations of people I trust. And till now, I’m yet to be let down by a recommendation. 

Hiring based on job ads is a hit or miss most times. So I prefer to hire based on recommendations.

Also, If you want to succeed in the e-commerce space, you need to build a solid team. You need to find people that want to work with you, and you also need to build an environment where people want to come on a journey with you. 

These are the things that will help you grow as an entrepreneur. 

What advice do you have for younger entrepreneurs? 

Relax and trust the process, trust where you’re going. Do not stress out about trying to control every moment cause that’s impossible in life particularly in the business world where the bigger you get, the more problems you have. You need to learn to trust yourself. Also, trust the universe and know that you’ll end up where you’re meant to be