How I Built 5 Multi-Million Dollar Companies: Marcia Kilgore | E99

Marcia Kilgore tells Steven Bartlett how growing up poor in small-town Saskatchewan after her father's early death shaped her independence and drive. Starting with three part-time jobs as a teenager and bodybuilding, she moved to New York at 18 and became a celebrity personal trainer, then a facialist, building the Bliss spa empire she sold to LVMH at 30. She walks through founding Soap & Glory and FitFlop, learning to deal with monopolistic retailers like Boots, and now building Beauty Pie. Throughout, she returns to her core principles: relentless attention to detail, treating every customer equally and with gratitude, editing ideas ruthlessly with her 'so what' test, and using the 'deathbed test' to prioritize what matters.

• She sold 70% of Bliss to LVMH for tens of millions in 1999, just three years after launch, at age 30.
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• After Bliss she founded Soap & Glory, building affordable high-quality cosmetics sold through Boots.
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• Soap & Glory was selling over a hundred million dollars worth of product a year through Boots.
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• She founded FitFlop because she couldn't find comfortable shoes; it now sells in 65 countries.
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• Her idea filter is the 'so what' test: if you can't explain why anyone should care in one sentence, it's not good enough.
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• The 'deathbed test', learned from a Saks Fifth Avenue CEO, guides her to never miss her kids' milestones over work metrics.
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• She credits failure, not mentorship, as her real teacher, citing a failed Soap & Glory men's range.
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• She was a middleweight bodybuilding champion as a teenager before moving to New York.
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• She trained at Better Bodies gym in NYC alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme and bodybuilder Gladys Portugues.
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• At 18 she charged celebrities $5 to $20 an hour for personal training when minimum wage was about $3.50.
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• Bliss began with models lying on the floor of her East Village apartment for facials.
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• Bliss was booked roughly a year in advance, with clients booking the same monthly slot two years out.
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• Pre-email, staff made nightly apologetic 'story calls' to every customer on the waiting list.
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• A suitor flew her to Paris on the Concorde for lunch while courting an acquisition of Bliss.
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• Soap & Glory's first week in 300 Boots stores generated only about $300 because it was on the bottom shelf.
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