C‑Suite to Main Street: Building a Loyal Customer Base, Featuring Founder of Glowbar

Rachel Liverman grew up in a family steeped in skincare and entrepreneurship, but she never planned to simply follow in their footsteps. Instead, she found her own way into the industry by questioning the traditional facial experience—and building the alternative she wanted as a customer.

In this installment of CO—'s C-Suite to Main Street series, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief Jeanette Mulvey speaks with Rachel Liverman, Founder and CEO of Glowbar, about taking an industry she was born into and creating something distinctly her own. Since launching Glowbar in 2019, she has grown the facial bar concept from a single Tribeca location to more than 26 studios across eight states, learning lessons about rejection, resilience, and scaling along the way.

Build something you would want yourself

Liverman grew up learning about entrepreneurship, leadership, and skincare around the kitchen table. Her grandmother opened one of the first accredited vocational schools for esthetics, and her mother carried that expertise forward. But like many people whose families have a particular passion or profession, Liverman wanted to find her own path.

“I always wanted to do my own thing,” Liverman said. She also found facials overpriced, time-consuming, and rarely tailored to her specific needs. “I was frustrated with how skincare was to be experienced,” she said.

That frustration became the foundation for Glowbar. Rather than trying to fit into an existing model, Liverman created the service she wanted as a customer—30-minute, customized facials designed to make professional skincare more accessible to busy consumers.

For her, that personal connection to the business has been essential. Founders spend years talking about, promoting, and defending their vision, so it helps when they genuinely believe in the product themselves.

“You better make sure you love your product and that it's exactly something that you would want,” Liverman said.

Expect the no's, and let them sharpen you

Glowbar is a capital-intensive business. Opening a brick-and-mortar studio often means signing a 10-year lease and funding buildout costs before a single client walks through the door. Liverman started by raising money from family and friends, then moved on to institutional investors, and she heard plenty of rejection along the way.

Rather than treating those no's as a verdict on the business, she treated them as feedback to better understand what investors were questioning and think more critically about Glowbar itself. 

“The beauty of getting a bunch of no's [is] that I just refined my pitch every time,” she said. She compared the process to dating: You put yourself out there, absorb the critiques, and adjust.

She still wonders whether the version of her pitch that finally landed funding was only possible because of the 50 meetings that came before it.

Pivot fast when the ground shifts

Glowbar opened in June 2019. By March 2020, it was shut down, along with the rest of the country's close-contact businesses, for seven unexpected and unprecedented months. 

Liverman had one studio open and another in development, but even with a relatively small footprint, the shutdown required quick decisions. Her response was to bring the business to her clients instead of waiting for them to come back. She took retail inventory home, ran virtual skincare consultations, and shipped product directly to customers, all while her studios sat empty.

She also made the harder call to withhold rent from landlords during the shutdown to preserve enough cash to reopen. Still, Liverman remained confident that customers would eventually return after being starved for human connection, and they did—affirming her decision to act quickly and adapt rather than stick rigidly to her original plan.

Make culture something you can measure

Growth introduces a real risk for any service business, since the founder can no longer personally guarantee the client experience in every location. Liverman's answer is to treat culture as infrastructure, not just a sentiment.

Glowbar operates around a clear mission statement and seven core values that are woven into performance reviews, bonuses, and peer recognition. Liverman believes that employees care more deeply about their work when they have strong relationships with the people leading them.

"People work for people. They do not work for organizations," she said.

Ask for help, and know what you're signing up for

After years of building Glowbar, Liverman still regularly asks people for advice—whether to avoid mistakes, save time, or simply gain perspective. In her experience, founders often make the job harder by taking everything on themselves.

“You don't have to do it on your own, and you shouldn't expect yourself to do it on your own,” she said.

But asking for help doesn’t make entrepreneurship easy. Liverman emphasizes the resilience it takes to build a business and the responsibility that comes with being the person ultimately accountable for its success. 

“You need to ask yourself if you're really ready to put in what it requires,” she said.

For Liverman, being ready does not mean having all the answers. It means being willing to seek them out, learn as you go, and keep moving forward when the path changes. 

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