25: Building a Beauty Brand That Actually Listens with Sabah from Calling Beauty
70 phone calls, a face mist obsession, and the dating advice that made my editor demand I start a second podcast
I'm about to become a walking advertisement for a face mist, and I'm not even sorry about it.
But first, let me tell you about my friend Sabah, who did something absolutely amazing: she quit her job at Harrods and decided to build a beauty brand by literally picking up the phone and talking to women.
She called 70+ women and asked them about their beauty routines. And from those conversations, she built Calling Beauty — a brand that feels like your best friend made it specifically for you.
Oh, and fun fact: I helped name this brand years ago and wrote the copy that's literally on the Face Fog bottle right now.
So yes, I'm biased. But I'm also right about how incredible this product is. (There’s a whole section of this post dedicated to just this product!)
This episode is the longest one I've ever recorded, and it goes places I never expected. We start with beauty brand building and somehow end with me giving a shitton of dating advice.
Rapid-Fire Squirrel Brain Questions
Here's what we learned about Sabah in her round of squirrel brain chaos:
If she could gather "nuts" like a squirrel: Screenshots of encouragement. She has a folder called "Boost" filled with every supportive DM, text, and email she's ever received about her brand or founder journey. For those dark 3am founder moments when you're wondering if you have what it takes.
If her brain had a pop-up ad: More trust. As she put it, "The opposite of anxiety isn't calm, it's trust."
If her life came with a warning label: "Handle with care." Both as a reminder to be present and to be kinder to yourself.
What she'd win an Olympic gold medal for: Writing emails. English lit degree coming in clutch for those stressful business communications.
Something she thought she'd have figured out by now: Being married. But she HAS figured out dating. She knows what she wants, who she wants, and what values matter. It just hasn't happened yet. And as she perfectly put it: "You can't be late to your own life."
Her walkout song: "Mirrorball" by Taylor Swift. (And she’s an Apple Music girlie.)
The Boost Folder Every Founder Needs
Can we talk about Sabah's "Boost" folder for a second? Because this might be the most important business advice in this entire episode.
She screenshots every single piece of positive feedback — DMs, texts, emails, comments — and saves them for the inevitable dark days that come with being a founder. When you're sitting in your apartment at 5am wondering if you have what it takes, you pull out that folder and remember why you started.
My mom gave me this exact advice years ago, and I've been doing it ever since. I have praise folders in my email, on my desktop, in my screenshots. Birthday texts, client feedback, random compliments — it all goes in there.
As Sabah said: collect it when you're follicular, read it when you're luteal. You're welcome.
But the best part is that these folders are also marketing gold. Those screenshots become testimonials, social proof for your about page, content for your sales emails.
So consider this your homework and start screenshotting everything nice anyone has ever said about you or your work.
How to Cold Email Taylor Swift's Makeup Artist
So Sabah's dad — who's been in business his whole life and is one of her biggest mentors — saw how obsessed she was with Taylor Swift and casually suggested she should try to get on Taylor's radar. Sabah's immediate response? "Dad, I love you, but I don't think you understand how big she is."
But then Sabah saw a story from Fazit (the freckle tattoo brand) where the founder was literally crying because Taylor had worn their freckles to a Chiefs game. And something clicked.
Instead of trying to reach Taylor directly, Sabah got resourceful. She found Taylor's makeup artist's email through her personal website and thought, "Maybe she won't even answer, but let's try."
Within TWO HOURS of sending that email, she got a response that said: "Hi Sabah, thank you for this lovely email. Thank you so much for telling me about Calling. I'd be delighted to receive some product."
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?
So Sabah sent the most gorgeous PR package: Face Fog, the new Mega Bite lip oils, and she sprayed her best perfume all over the tissue paper. When she followed up weeks later, the makeup artist said the presentation was wonderful and the box smelled amazing.
Now, obviously you can't expect something like this to result in Taylor Swift being photographed with your product (though how iconic would that be?). But this is exactly the kind of resourceful thinking that separates successful founders from everyone else.
Sara's Obsession with Face Fog
Okay, in full transparency, I helped name Calling Beauty, I wrote the copy that's literally on the Face Fog bottle, and I wrote their website. But I'm NOT an investor, I don't get royalties, I have zero financial stake in this brand.
And I have purchased at least five Face Fogs with my own money. I will pay international shipping from the UK to the US if I have to (although they currently have free shipping!) because I don't give a fuck.
That is the best face mist on the market, period.
It’s the first thing I pack in my makeup bag when I travel, and it goes EVERYWHERE with me.
And Sabah's branding is perfect — it's about making face mist part of your ritual, not just your routine. Take it to the gym, put it in your makeup bag, use it at the airport, the options are endless.
Makeup, Body Image, and Self-Love
I don't even wear makeup most of the time. I was blessed with good skin, and I'm not going to be humble about it. But as I always tell my friends (who hate me for this), I was given other struggles in life. I was a fat kid who couldn't fit into straight sizes in sixth grade. You don't know what it was like to not be able to wear Hollister, okay???
Sabah opened up about her own journey with weight and body image, especially during the stress of launching Calling Beauty. She quit her job at Harrods, moved back to London on her own, and launched a business all while dealing with anxiety and major life changes. As her therapist told her, her entire nervous system was resetting.
Her weight changed significantly, and she's still working to find her way back to what feels normal.
Sabah mentioned looking at cute outfits on Pinterest and thinking, "But I'm not that size."
And this hit hard because there really is no inspiration for regular-ass large sizes. There's skinny, there's plus-size, and if you say you're "mid-size," people get mad because mid-size is actually like a size 16. What about those of us who are size 12? What about people with rectangle body shapes, or apron bellies, or bodies that don't fit the curvy ideal?
I've fluctuated in weight my entire life — lost 80 pounds, gained 90 during pregnancy, lost 60, gained 30 back. I went to the gym almost every day in 2024, but then went through an incredibly stressful period from September to the end of the year.
It didn't matter how much I worked out or what I ate, the stress I was holding in my body changed the shape of my body.
But fortunately, I don't have a negative relationship with food or my body. I don't cry when I look in the mirror. I just would prefer to look a bit different, and that's okay to say.
As Sabah beautifully put it: "You can be wanting to change your body, but you don't have to hate the way it looks right now."
She goes to the gym now because she wants to be the kind of person who shows up for herself, who gets up early when it's cold and dark and does something good for her mind, body, and spirit.
And you know what? We can leave the self-loathing at home. She doesn't need to come with us to the gym.
And can I just say? I had major surgery and made a whole human. I'm not going to have a flat stomach, and that's fine. The life I made is hilarious, thinks I'm cute, calls me Mommy, and tells me not to wash off my tattoos in the shower because they make me me.
The Only Origin Story You'll Hear on This Podcast
Okay, I'm morally against asking people their origin story on podcasts because it's lazy and boring. But Sabah's story is one worth hearing.
From age 14, Sabah was obsessed with fashion. Her whole career was tailored toward fashion — London College of Fashion, fashion internships, eventually working in women's wear buying at Harrods.
One of her first internships was at Tom Ford Beauty, and later she worked at Chalhoub Group in the Middle East (they distribute major fashion and beauty brands to places like Sephora Middle East). So beauty kept showing up, even when she was chasing fashion.
The turning point came in 2017.
Sabah was working at Harrods — this amazing, very Devil Wears Prada job — but her anxiety was terrible. She was in a relationship that wasn't in alignment, and she was out of sync on multiple levels without realizing it.
After suffering through extreme anxiety all day at work, she'd come home and watch YouTube beauty content. It was one of the only things that would get her brain to switch off and stop the hyperventilating.
And that's when she realized something crucial: beauty felt different than fashion.
In beauty, there's a sense that you're always welcome. There's emotional attachment — you remember your first lipstick, the first time your mom taught you to apply blush. Sabah's first beauty memory was learning to apply kohl at her grandmother's house in Pakistan with a traditional kohl pencil.
But the beauty industry she was seeing felt artificial. Where was the sense of women's personal curation? Where were the beauty love letters handed down through generations? Where was the essence of real women communing over beauty?
One evening after work, she pulled out her old dissertation project from London College of Fashion. It was supposed to be a fashion brand, but fashion didn't feel like her path anymore. So she started chipping away at it — weekends, evenings, slowly reworking the business plan.
She stayed at Harrods a bit longer, but eventually resigned because she knew if she was going to do this, it would need all of her.
By the time Sabah came to me, she had everything ready — the product in development, colors, fonts, entire visual representation. She just didn't have a name. And without a name, you can't design a logo.
It was November 2020, cold and dreary, and she's on FaceTime with her friend Paris (who she worked with at Harrods). They knew the core story was about picking up the phone and speaking to women. Out of my suggestions, "Called To" felt right, but then they started saying variations of the word "call."
Paris said, "What about Calling?" And it was like a penny dropped.
Sabah still has the notebook from her first brand ideation. She wrote it down and underlined it immediately. That was the name.
The 70 Phone Calls That Built a Brand
Here's what makes Sabah's approach so brilliant. Instead of assuming she knew what women wanted, she literally picked up the phone and asked them.
Sabah went through her contacts — old friends she only had on Facebook, family members, cousins, aunts — and said, "I'm working on a concept. I want to know about your beauty routine. Do you have 30 minutes for a call?"
Even women who said "I'm not really much of a beauty girl" ended up revealing something profound once they started talking. The intimacy and emotion ingrained in our beauty choices became so apparent to Sabah that she realized this wasn't just any purchase we make. There's curation to it. It's intimate and private, yet also public.
Think about it: beauty occupies both your most private spaces (your bathroom, your vanity) and your most public moments (getting dressed for a big presentation, doing your makeup for a first date, putting yourself together for the gym because you want to feel good).
The two questions that got the best responses:
"What does your beauty routine do to you? What does it make you feel?" Women got really explicit about this. Words like "protection," "self-preservation," "self-care," "makes me feel like the best version of myself." But it wasn't surface-level. They'd share specifics: "I had a terrible day at work and was terrified about this meeting with my boss, but I wore a specific outfit, did my hair a specific way, knew what lipstick shade I was going to wear."
It's armor. But it's also about coming back to yourself — how we choose to present ourselves to the world, and then how we strip everything back down and return to our natural skin.
"What do you wish you saw more of from beauty brands or in the beauty industry?" This is where Sabah learned about the desire for real people in campaigns (which is why she now casts from her community first), more inclusivity, and clean beauty. People wanted clean products but needed education about why it matters — hormone disruption, neurotoxins, the real impact of ingredients.
Sabah was scientific about it. Same questions for everyone, recorded the calls, transcribed them. As she said, "People pay agencies tens of thousands of pounds to do this, but I'm just going to do it myself."
From those conversations, she tested three product ideas. Face Fog was the one that got people's attention. She knew she wanted something better than the face mists that either broke her out or were sticky and didn't truly nourish skin.
The Unglamorous Side of Creating a Beauty Product
Here's the stuff nobody talks about because it's not sexy: the actual logistics of getting a physical product from your brain to someone's bathroom shelf.
As Sabah perfectly put it: "When you have a product-based business, your supply chain is your skeleton. If you think of the human body without the spine, it's not going to be a good time."
Let me walk you through what this looks like, because I genuinely had no idea and found this fascinating.
The Timeline:
Finalize your formula with the lab
Develop packaging simultaneously
Prepare website and social media (Calling launched on social in late 2021, deliberately before having a product to build community)
Handle all the practical stuff nobody warns you about
The Supply Chain Journey: Face Fog's bottle materials are made in South Korea, but the actual product is assembled in a lab in Italy (where the Face Fog formula goes into the bottles with Sara's copy printed on them), then shipped to a fulfillment center in London.
When those finished bottles arrive in London, they're connected to Shopify. Every time someone orders two Face Fogs and a Megabyte lip oil, the fulfillment team picks those specific products, packs them according to Sabah's specifications, and ships them out daily.
The Hidden Costs: Here's what blew my mind: every single step of the packing process costs extra money. Want tissue paper? Extra cost. Want them to tie it with a ribbon? Extra cost. Want a sticker added? Extra cost.
Sabah had to make strategic decisions about the unboxing experience. As a new brand, she knew she'd get one shot to show up at someone's doorstep and make it meaningful, but she couldn't let it cost an arm and a leg.
She toured the fulfillment center before choosing them (both her and her intern Nell showing up in full hair and makeup, wearing the required safety jackets — iconic). They showed her every stage of the packing process so she could decide exactly what was worth the extra cost.
The Founder Reality: Sabah takes on basically everything as a solo founder, but she drew the line at running to the post office every week. You have to decide what your "too much" is. For some founders, that might be social media management. For Sabah, it was fulfillment logistics.
And here's a detail that shows how thorough she had to be: beauty products need to be temperature-controlled during storage. It's not just about getting the product made — it's about maintaining its integrity throughout the entire supply chain.
Storage and Fulfillment Fees: The fulfillment center charges storage fees plus per-order fulfillment fees. But as order volume increases, those per-unit costs decrease. It's all about scale.
This is the stuff that makes creating a physical product so much more complex than an online business. Every single detail — from that tiny label on the bottom of your lip balm to the ribbon around your package — requires decisions, costs, and logistics most of us never think about.
Even Men Love Face Fog
Okay, this is hilarious and also the best product validation ever: men are obsessed with Face Fog too.
I literally made my boyfriend spray it on his face when we were first dating. I was explaining what I do for work — website copy — and mentioned I'd done some product copy. He was like, "What do you mean, product copy?" So I dragged him to my bathroom, grabbed the Face Fog bottle, and said, "Like literally this. I wrote all of this."
He was amazed that I'd written copy that exists on an actual product, so I made him spray it on his face. "What is it?" he asked. "Just spray it on your face. It's going to feel good."
He sprayed it and immediately said, "Yeah, that smells pretty good." Now he uses it regularly.
But here's the best testimonial Sabah's ever gotten. One of her friends from Dubai texted her after trying Face Fog: "This product is incredible. My husband steals it and puts it in his bag and takes it when he goes and plays football."
A man stealing his wife's face mist to take to football practice? That's when you know you've created something universally amazing.
As Sabah said, the formula is gende- neutral, but the marketing is obviously targeted toward women. Yet men keep discovering it and becoming obsessed.
Speaking of well-groomed men, My boyfriend has a better skincare routine than me, which is honestly embarrassing. I was touching his arm the other day and was like, "Why are you making yourself this soft on purpose?"
His routine: wash face, moisturizer, vitamin C cream. At night: wash face again, retinol. Meanwhile, I wash my face three times a week maximum (sometimes once), use Fenty Beauty cleanser when I remember, and that's it. My entire skincare routine is Face Fog and maybe the Fenty cleanser.
Fulfillment Centers, Brexit, and Shipping Costs
Let's talk about the real financial impact of international shipping and how Brexit literally changed the game for UK-based businesses.
The Fulfillment Process: Those finished Face Fog bottles arrive at the London fulfillment center, where they get packed according to Sabah's specifications. Custom shipping boxes with branding, specific tissue paper, stickers—all according to her detailed instructions.
The fulfillment center handles everything: printing shipping labels, packing orders, sending them out. Orders placed before 1pm go out the same day via Royal Mail (UK) or UPS (US).
Brexit's Impact on Beauty Businesses: Here's something most people don't realize: Brexit completely changed the economics of running an international beauty business from the UK.
Before Brexit, if Sabah's goods were made in Italy and shipped to the UK, there were no taxes or duties to declare. Now, we're talking thousands in additional costs.
Shipping within Europe used to be as simple as shipping within the UK. Now it's expensive, like 20 pounds to ship to the US expensive.
The Free Shipping Strategy: Here's Sabah's brilliant move: she offers free shipping on all orders and absorbs those costs herself. A UK shipment might cost her 3-4 pounds, but she didn't want potential customers thinking, "I like the product, but God, that's going to be 4 pounds in shipping."
For a new brand, removing barriers to purchase was more important than protecting margins in the short term. And it worked: they saw a massive increase in first-time orders.
Beauty Industry Margins: In the beauty industry, you want to be around 70% margin. In reality, especially if you're selling through retailers like Sephora or Space NK, it can drop to 50-60% because retailers take their cut.
As a direct-to-consumer brand, you can command 80-90% margins on the product itself. But when you factor in shipping (especially international), those numbers change dramatically.
Face Fog retails for £37 (about $43-46 depending on conversion rates). When it costs £20 to ship internationally and Sabah's absorbing that cost, you can see how the economics shift between UK and US customers.
The Role of PR in Brand Visibility
Sabah didn't expect PR boxes to become something the brand would be known for, but every time they send them out, people say, "You guys always do the best PR."
Sabah uses those PR boxes for everything. They're not just for influencers. They're a visual expression of what the brand is and what the product represents. They tell the story.
Every time Calling Beauty has a stand or display at industry events, those PR boxes get more people to stop at their booth than anything else.
Case in point: the CEW (Cosmetic Executive Women) awards program.
CEW has huge arms in both the US and UK, and the UK managing director, Sally Berkery, is apparently like a godmother for beauty founders — especially small brands.
At the awards demo event, Sabah saw huge brands with boring stands — white tablecloths, basic displays. But if you're Clinique, you don't need an introduction. If you're a small brand trying to get noticed by buyers, potential investors, and industry peers, you need to make a statement.
So Sabah set up her booth with brown telephone boxes (on brand for "Calling"), her gorgeous products, brown tablecloth — the whole aesthetic was cohesive and eye-catching.
The exec from a large beauty brand at the booth next to theirs spent the whole night talking to Sabah and trading products. By the end of the night, she told her area manager: "This is exactly the kind of brand our parent company should be looking at."
Sabah's Long-Term Goals
When I asked Sabah if she'd ever sell Calling Beauty, her answer surprised me: "My long-term goal has not been to sell, it's been to build something more akin to our own conglomerate. I would love to be an anchor brand for our own conglomerate one day."
Sabah has ambitious goals while staying open to divine redirection. This mindset comes from advice she got from her very first boss during an internship at an agency called Rainbow Wave.
At the end of her internship, she took her to lunch and said something that Sabah has never forgotten: "Don't let what you think you should do get in the way of what you actually should be doing. Don't let what you want to do necessarily, or what you think you're good at, get in the way of what you're meant and destined to do."
This is exactly why Sabah was able to pivot from fashion to beauty. If she'd been rigid about becoming a fashion designer, she might have missed her true calling.
But the most impactful advice came from her dad when she was considering starting Calling Beauty. As a fellow Capricorn and someone she trusts most in business and life, he gave her the honest assessment she needed.
"I think you can do it," he said. "But as you are right now, you're very inflexible. If something doesn't happen according to your plan or the way you'd perfectly scheduled it, you lose it."
Then came the hard truth: "Your job is going to be fixing things that didn't go the way you thought they were going to go. If you want to be a CEO, and if you don't learn to change, you will hate your job. You will hate it. It won't matter that it's your business or your little brand, because ultimately what it takes to run a company is things not going your way."
He warned her that if she couldn't learn to lean into uncertainty, it would be really painful and she wouldn't make it — not because she lacked skill or work ethic, but because the rigidity would make her shut down.
Sabah's approach to building her business is this beautiful balance between showing up and doing the work while staying open to divine guidance. As she put it: "I can't just sit and pray all day for it to be a success and not get out of bed. It's a combination between me choosing to show up and acting on something, and then God being the source of everything."
This resonates so deeply because it's about taking responsibility for your part while trusting that there are things beyond your control. Sometimes you'll miss an amazing direction if you're too rigid about the path.
The Moment This Became a Dating Podcast
As Sabah put it: "People need to come to you for copywriting advice 100%, but also your advice on boys is second to none. And I say this as someone who has texted Sara from the gym being like, 'He's here! My gym crush is here!'"
And apparently I respond with strategic battle plans: "Okay, remain calm, this is what we're going to do. And if you don't want to be that aggressive, then this is what you're going to do. And if that doesn't work, this is what we're going to do."
My Dating Philosophy (For My Single Girlies)
I've had every possible negative dating scenario happen to me. Every way you can be cheated on, every way a man can be trash — it's all happened. You'd think I'd be a traumatized puppy in the corner, but I'm not, because I have love to give as a person.
Here's how I think about it: it's either this person or it's not. If it's not, we're one person closer to who it's supposed to be. So there's no reason to hold back on how you feel.
In my view, the biggest mistake people make in dating is holding back because they're scared of saying the wrong thing.
But the thing is, you can't say the wrong thing to the right person. If you tell them you like them, text them back immediately, or are obvious about your feelings — and that annoys them or puts them off — then they're not your person.
I'm 30 years old. If he doesn't text me back in 17 minutes, am I going to wait 18 to respond? No. I'm going to text him 10 times if I want to. If that's annoying to him, he's not my man.
Instead of "Do they like me?" ask yourself: "Do I like them? Would my future husband act this way?" We ignore parts of our personality or values because we're so focused on getting someone to like us instead of evaluating if they're right for us.
The things you're feeling as a single person — insecurity, anxiety, whatever — a partner isn't going to fix that. If you're insecure about yourself, your man isn't the one fixing that. You need to create a secure environment for yourself. You can't rely on someone else to manage your feelings.
When I started dating Side Character, I couldn't tell if I actually liked him romantically or if we were just vibing as friends. We talked for hours about everything and nothing. I literally canceled plans because we were standing in a parking lot talking.
But that friendship foundation is the strongest way to start. As Sabah said, "If you can't feel some level of platonic love for your partner, it's probably not that great of a partnership because the rest don't sustain themselves very long."
When it's rooted in friendship, you show up as exactly who you are, which is what you want someone to accept you for. Period.
Now he's my boyfriend and my bestie — the person I want to be with all the time. Sometimes I forget and start telling him something like, "I want you to have this tea because you're my bestie," then remember, "Oh wait, you're my boyfriend, maybe I should be respectful about my ex-stories."
Bottom line: Life is too short to be coy. Show up as yourself, say what you mean, and trust that the right person will love exactly that version of you.
Point of the Story
You can't micromanage your way to success. Whether you're building a beauty empire or just trying to figure out your life, the magic happens when you show up consistently but stay flexible enough to let things unfold the way they're meant to.
Sabah Links:
Follow Sabah and Calling Beauty on Instagram
Follow her on Tiktok too
Check out her website
Her community for Muslim women navigating dating and marriage
Her product that Sara is absolutely obsessed with
Sabah’s walkout song
BTL Links:
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Other Links:
Podcast episode: What Even Is A Quantum Leap? with Kaitlyn Kessler
Newsletter: TOC #119: So, We Got Tattoos Together
This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz.