Building big in America’s beauty boom: learning fast in the land of opportunity
by Neil Friedman10 minute read
Neil Friedman - USA Country Manager
At Premiere Orlando, the biggest beauty trade show in America, I met someone who changed how I think about our work. His name is Mr. Mustache, one of our Global Ambassadors, and his story encapsulates everything that makes the US beauty market both challenging and exciting.
He moved here from Argentina just a few years ago, barely speaking English. Today, he's built an incredible following and credits Booksy for much of his success. That conversation reminded me why America matters for our global mission - this is where entrepreneurial dreams collide with practical tools that actually work.
The US beauty industry isn't just growing. It's BOOMING.
We're in the middle of the biggest entrepreneurship wave in decades, and beauty pros are riding it hard. Solo providers are ditching traditional employment to rent chairs in salon suites. New businesses launch weekly. Everyone's chasing their version of the American dream, one appointment at a time.
What excites me most is watching how we help them succeed. We're not just providing software - we're giving business owners the tools to build thriving businesses while making self-care convenient for thousands of their clients. When a provider books their hundredth client through our marketplace, or processes payments seamlessly, or reclaims hours each week they used to spend on admin - that's when our work becomes real.
This creates opportunities that don't exist in other markets, but it also creates problems.
Competition here is fierce - more intense than anywhere else we operate. That affects everything from how we advertise to how we sell. You can't succeed with generic approaches when everyone's fighting for the same clients.
Then there's geography. America is massive. Having a strong presence in Miami means nothing in Portland. We've had to learn that scaling here requires hyper-local thinking across dozens of major cities simultaneously.
Our team has gotten good at this complexity because we had to. When you're competing with established players, expanding into new cities, and serving providers who expect everything to work perfectly immediately, you develop resilience fast.
Americans demand convenience. The hustle culture here means appointment booking needs to be effortless, payments need to be instant, and marketplace discovery needs to surface the right provider immediately. Our marketplace feature is particularly popular here because providers understand that acquiring new clients isn't optional - it's survival.
This environment has pushed us to become better operators.
We've built sales leadership frameworks that other markets are now adopting. We've learned to maintain quality while hiring rapidly. We've figured out how to measure what matters instead of what's easy to track.
The scale creates learning opportunities you can't get elsewhere. When we solve problems for beauty professionals in America, those solutions often benefit providers globally. The pressure to perform at scale makes us sharper.
But what makes me proudest isn't our growth metrics. It's watching our team navigate this complexity while genuinely supporting each other.
We're hiring aggressively - which can sometimes damage culture - not here. But we've kept our standards high and are building a team of dedicated people who actually like working together. They collaborate across cities, share what's working, help each other through tough problems, and celebrate wins collectively. That camaraderie matters when the work is demanding.
Our people embody something Ben Franklin wrote: "Energy and persistence conquer all things." They take on impossible timelines, learn new markets quickly, make mistakes, iterate, and keep pushing forward. Not because someone's forcing them, but because they're building something worth building - and they're doing it together.
The next twelve months will test everything we've learned. We're expanding into new markets, scaling existing ones, and hiring dozens of people who maintain the service quality our providers expect.
Many companies would struggle under that pressure. We're energized by it.
America rewards people who show up prepared to work hard and figure things out. That's exactly the type of person who thrives here - self-starters who love challenges, embrace rapid learning, and want to drive results that matter.
If you join us early in this scaling journey, you'll have opportunities that simply don't exist at more mature companies. You'll help shape how we grow, not just execute someone else's plan. And you'll do it alongside people who'll support you every step of the way.
