Xtreme Lashes is the global leader in eyelash extensions. The company started in 2005 as a home-based, family owned business, and has grown into a global company with representation in 50 countries. RN, BSN Co-Founder, President & CEO, Xtreme Lashes, LLC, Jo Mousselli, oversees the company’s explosive growth and helps ensure the company stays true to it’s original mission: empowering people and enriching lives. In this latest "Small Business Spotlight" series interview, she shares the importance of empowering customers and employees alike, and how the right technology helps her company to scale.

1. What made you decide to start/make the jump to your company today?

After 10 years in the healthcare industry, I embarked on a mission to create a family business through which we empower and enrich lives with a revolutionary new product - semi-permanent eyelash extensions.   Through this revolutionary new product, my mission was to provide the modern day busy women with high performance, long-lasting, and low maintenance beauty products and services, while providing rewarding and profitable careers to thousands of beauty and health professionals worldwide.
 

2. How would you describe your company culture and mantra?

A culture that encourages the employees to be creative and innovative. We have created an environment of trust, fun, creativity, and accountability. We have enabled employees to design products that are safe and effective, in-demand, innovative, and revolutionary.

3. How do you balance the multiple hats that you are required to wear?

I don’t view going to work as work – I view it as my daily journey. I enjoy coming to the office each day and working with creative, driven, like-minded employees that enjoy being on this journey with me. We are a highly productive and collaborative cross-functional team.

One of the most important hats that I wear is being a wife and mother.  Xtreme Lashes is a family owned business.  I co-founded the company with my husband and children.  We worked together as a team and utilized each of our areas of expertise to develop and deliver products, education and training, marketing and sales strategies. Over the years, my family and I grew the business to now include a large team of capable and passionate extended family of employees.  This translated into empowering my children to grow their skill set while we spent quality family time together, and they were able to take pride in starting a family owned business from scratch, without a blueprint, and witness the value in teamwork and entrepreneurship.

4. What are the top three company priorities that you focus on?

Quality – Safety – Support

5. What are the top three KPIs for each of your teams and why?

1. Largest selection of highest quality products

2. Most compressive education and training

3. Legendary customer service and marketing and business support

To help set and manage our KPI’s, I needed an integrated software program that would enable me to run our business in a very effective and efficient manner.  With Salesforce, we can manage our supply chain from concept to finish: product development, procurement, shipping and receiving, and quality control.  

We can monitor employee performance and track KPI’s.  We can manage financials and profits & losses.

We can manage and monitor new client acquisition, client retention, and growth.

And, we can manage our ecommerce website, create communities, manage social media, and more.  There are so many native apps to choose from that can be selected and integrated to enable you to customize to your business needs.

6. What is the one piece of advice that you want to share with executives of other fast growing small businesses?

Develop standard operating procedures that enable you to scale your company in a systematic way. Having an excellent ERP system, record management, and performance management system - all-in-one - will streamline your everyday business needs enabling you to focus on growing your business in order to meet your goals.