Erika Wasser got the idea for her Glam+Go blowout service when she was hosting a home-and-design web channel in 2014, and realized her gym habit was negatively impacting her appearance.
She never looked as put together as she would have liked to for auditions and meetings following a midday gym session, and she knew that bringing the concept of backstage touch-ups done for on-air personalities into high-end gym boutiques like SoulCycle would be a fit for their clientele. Now, four years later, Glam+Go has nine standalone locations in New York, Miami and Los Angeles, as well as partnerships with gyms, hotels and residential towers such as The Gansevoort Group and Equinox. It provides blowouts and makeup applications, and is now branching out into manicures and men’s grooming.
Wasser walked us through a typical day in her life, which included walking her dog, Harry, a mid-morning workout, working with her team on expansion details and a product roll-out, and dinner with a friend.
5:30 a.m.: When I first started Glam+Go and it was just me running everything, our daily “system” (if you can even call it that) consisted of me texting all the stylists scheduled that morning to confirm they were also awake and on their way to work, because Glam+Go salons open at 7 a.m. Thankfully, our infrastructure has improved, but without fail, I still wake up at around 5:30 in the morning. I start the day in bed catching up on emails.
8:00 a.m.: My apartment has a terrace that receives amazing direct sunlight in the morning. After taking my dog, Harry, out for a quick morning walk and picking up the New York Post and an oat milk latte, we head back to the terrace (in hopes of keeping a tan) and read the news. OK, I mostly play Soduku, but I also read some news!
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9:30 a.m.: We have our morning call with the East Coast team to discuss the day. We always share everyone’s Sally Brompton horoscope (the Post’s resident spiritual adviser). We’re all different signs, which keeps it interesting. Today, our operations director, Sam — who is a Capricorn — got: “You are full of ideas for the future and determined to reach the top, and the planets indicate it won’t be long before good things start coming your way.”
The timing was perfect, because overnight I received the final contract for our new location within the Fairmont Georgetown, and we’re expecting signed paperwork back from our second Miami location to open this fall within the Shore Club, so good things are already coming!
10:30 a.m.: Time for SoulCycle. If I don’t work out by noon, it’s not happening. My favorite SoulCycle class to take is the 9:30 a.m. class at Tribeca. When all else fails, there’s a 10:30 a.m. class, and you can literally get lost in [the instructor’s] abs, so win-win. Today was a 10:30 kind of day.
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12:00 p.m.: I head to our new Tribeca flagship that just opened at 93 Worth St., which is the closest to my apartment, for a 30-minute blowout. To be truthful, the blowout takes a little longer than 30 minutes, mostly because I keep getting distracted with business calls and tasks around the salon, so the staff has a hard time keeping me in the chair.
1:00 p.m: We’re interviewing new stylists and barbers because we are launching a “Men’s Shape Up” membership this fall. Sam judges the quality of the cuts and fades, while my job is to cajole unsuspecting men on the street and/or in nearby buildings into being hair models for us. Probably not the most efficient plan, but certainly effective.
3:00 p.m: Since opening in Tribeca, our go-to lunch spot has been The Odeon. Lunch generally consists of the kale Caesar with chicken, while Sam and I go through the upcoming week. It’s noon in L.A., so we check in with our Santa Monica team. We’re all starting to plan Q4/holiday, which is our biggest quarter. We also really want to bring top-quality wine into the stores — we’ve decided if we’re going to start offering wines, we can only offer what we’d actually want to do drink.
4:00 p.m: I head down to Brookfield Place for a quick meeting to check out a possible new space and partnership with Joel Warren’s Salon Project.
5:00 p.m: We just launched a brand-new-booking app available on iOS and Android, and I’m so happy with how it turned out. After working with our less-than-tech-savvy team on building the app, the development team thought it might be best to sit us down and carefully walk us through how to properly use everything before we accidentally burn the house down.
7:00 p.m: My brain is fried. It’s time to go meet friends. Today, I’m meeting colleague-turned-close friend Rachel Glass. She runs Glosslab, and we deal with some of the same headaches. We commiserate over dinner and chardonnay before the conversation pivots to clothes and men, as it often does.
11:00 p.m: Back home to Harry, who is always so excited to see me. We do a quick loop around the block before calling it a night. I generally end my nights on the terrace with a glass of wine, blaring ’90s/2000s/today’s music from my Sonos and just decompress with the dog before heading to bed — the 5:30 a.m. wake-up typically has me in bed early!
