As part of the Morning Lazziness series highlighting empowering women who are making a remarkable impact with their ideas, I had the pleasure of interviewing Barbara Werner.
Barbara Werner is a seasoned healthcare operations leader with over 20 years of experience managing multi-jurisdictional hair transplantation and cosmetic surgery practices. Now serving as U.S. Operations Director at Lucinda Ellery Consultancy, she brings deep expertise in hair loss solutions, specializing in supporting women for whom hair transplantation is not a viable option.
At Lucinda Ellery, Barbara oversees all aspects of business development and operational strategy—ranging from accounts receivable/payable, bookkeeping, and EMR management to marketing, project leadership, and corporate growth. Her work focuses on providing custom hair systems for women experiencing hair loss due to chemotherapy, radiation, autoimmune disorders, alopecia areata, PCOS, and genetic thinning.
Known for her analytical mindset and results-driven leadership, Barbara excels at evaluating KPIs and setting clear ROI benchmarks to support organizational success. Passionate about making a difference, she combines clinical understanding with compassionate care, helping clients regain confidence and quality of life through tailored, non-surgical solutions.
In this candid conversation, Barbara shares her journey, insights, and the strategies that have helped her build a results-driven business—and empower other entrepreneurs to do the same.
What inspired you to become an entrepreneur, and what sparked the idea for your current business venture?
I am the entrepreneur who supplies the support for other entrepreneurs to succeed.
I accelerate small businesses and help ensure they have the foundations to grow and expand.
After 25 years in the hair loss industry, 3 in the entertainment and food services industry, 5 in plastic surgery, and a year accelerating an HVAC and general contracting firm, I have brought 9 companies from start-up to profitability and from profitability to expansion. I have now joined the team at Lucinda Ellery.
What problem does your business solve, and how is it uniquely positioned in the market?
We create fully customized hair systems for women who are facing hair loss for a reason. Whether their hair loss is caused by chemotherapy, alopecia areata, frontal fibrosing alopecia, menopausal or hormonal hair loss, trichotillomania etc, we custom build a mesh-integrated hair system using our patented technology.
What sets apart is that with our system, we allow the client to be a part of the decision making process all in a one-day build. What color, cut, style, how much hair they want, where they want to part their hair, etc are all discussed and it can help restore our clients confidence and allow them to ‘look like themselves’ throughout their healing process.
We help women feel amazing about their hair again without the pressure of ‘you look good anyway… ‘ They know they look good.
Our system gives them control over their hair at a time when everything else may feel out of their control.
What were the biggest challenges you faced when starting your business, and how did you overcome them?
Lucinda Ellery is a person. Now retired, the seeds of this company were planted when she was very young. She herself had suffered at a very young age from Alopecia Areata, an auto-immune disorder that causes hair to be lost in patches. The insidious part of alopecia areata is that the hair may grow back in one area only to be lost in another area over time. There is no rhyme or reason to alopecia areata. So the system she devised can adjust and pivot to the needs of our clients.
She also brings a sense of family to a difficult time in people’s lives. A single mother for many years, she built the company from the ground up and now her 3 small children are all grown and run the company for her. They all strive to impart that sense of togetherness, caring and family to our staff and clients as well.
How do you stay motivated during tough times or uncertain periods in your business journey?
If you understand what your personal motivation is, and you keep that thing in your sites, then you will never have the lag time, because you will be self-motivating. It is important for you to understand what motivates you personally because it is likely different for everyone. It may be income or wealth, time with family, travel, the thrill of the deal, etc. If you don’t know what your personal motivation is, then you are bound to lose motivation quickly.
For me,it is usually found in the second year of an expansion.
The first year is all about audits. Auditing vendors, operating procedures, auditing personnel, their skill sets, auditing HR, standardizing rules and processes, auditing financial records and recording etc.
But the second year, that’s when the creativity begins. That’s when the marketing structure takes shape, branding is pushed forward, changes to websites, SEO, hosting, outreach, customer contact, and cultivating referrals really accelerates..
This is the “Jazz” for me.
What daily habits or routines contribute most to your productivity and success as a founder?
Starting or working with global company’s, your time is not your own. You need to be ready for that.
Lucinda Ellery is headquartered in London, with satellites across the UK. The US has a location in New York (our central hub) and Los Angeles with a 5-year cross country expansion already begun.
Our SEO is in Chicago. Our CIO is in Slovenia. And our CTO is in Spain.
Meetings may have to be called at any hour of the day or night. So it is imperative that our senior staff understand that when a meeting is called, it’s time to adjust our personal schedule. Sometimes that may mean having dinner at 2am or lunch at 6.
It’s very helpful to be cognizant of your bodies needs. If it needs sleep – sleep. If it needs food – eat.
Don’t let the clock dictate to you what you should be doing. If you can allow your body and mind to dictate the clock, it helps you maintain a balance and increases your productivity.
What’s been the most effective way for you to acquire new customers and grow your client base?
Look internally. Your Clients, Your Staff, Yourself
Start with the current clients. They are a great way to acquire new clients and usually an untapped source. Data is key. Where are your clients from? How did they find you? Which ones are particularly ‘chatty’? What do they do for a living?
Google Analytics are a great start but you need to have a way of tracking what is important to you and your business not just through analytics or AI. Speak with your clients. Get into the mix and see why they chose you, what motivated them . . .Then run with it
Look at your staff. What hidden gifts do they have? A painter? Sponsor a charity driven gallery of their work. A dancer? Promote the arts through them. This gets the word out about you and your staff and is a great way to spread word of mouth to other areas.
Look at yourself. Don’t discount the power of a good relationship with your local chamber of commerce. Who do you know? How can they help? Understand that everything you do will come back to reflect on your company.
How do you measure success—personally and professionally—in your business?
I measure success by evaluating expense versus revenue and overall growth. In the early years, the focus is on keeping expenses low, then increasing revenue, and eventually scaling through expansion.
I always have success benchmarks along the way, but when all three hit and you look back and say – yeah did it again, it’s a great feeling.
What marketing or branding strategy has had the most impact on your business growth?
You have to look hard at your brand without the heart involved. For me, it is easier than most because I come into companies and can see what their brand is and compare it to what they thing it is, with an outsiders critical eye.
For example, at Lucinda Ellery, they thought that they were first and foremost a ‘beauty’ company, giving people beautiful hair, and competing in the beauty industry.
They are not. They are, in fact, quite different, 100% of their clients have hair loss of some kind. They are filling a need for clients who have medical problems, but don’t want to look like they have medical problems, They may be sick and feel sick but they want to look like themselves – beautiful. That is very different.
One of the strongest gifts at this company is their sense of family. Everyone works here 3, 6, 8, 10 years etc.
It may be because Lucinda’s “kids now run the kingdom”, but there is a sense of caring that emits between the staff and the clients that is beyond the norm.
They aren’t just hairdressers specializing in hair loss.
They are confidants who allow women who previously were embarrassed to walk into a salon because of their hair loss, have a normal, comfortable, safe salon experience.
That alone is priceless and unbelievably rewarding to both parties.
Can you share a mistake that taught you an important lesson in entrepreneurship?
Make sure your paperwork is solid from the beginning. If you have partners in the business, even if they are friends, make sure you get everything in writing, so that you can stay friends.
What advice would you give to someone just starting out as a first-time entrepreneur?
If you are not willing to work nights, weekends, holidays, and spend most of your time thinking about the business, then you might be better off as a really valued employee than the owner. And make sure you have the financial backing and financial knowledge to track your money. Do not ever give this power to someone else.
How do you build and maintain a strong team culture or work environment?
You have to know the staff to know what motivates them. It goes back to the same question. What motivates you may not be what motivates someone else.
Do an audit of the staff and ask them. If someone is motivated by time with their family and they always seem to check out mentally every Friday at 3, then see if someone who is motivate by something else may want to do a split shift with them. You can’t build a strong team if you don’t know the people on that team.
What are the top 5 things you believe every entrepreneur needs to overcome self-doubt and build confidence?
Understanding that is my source of happiness has made me extremely successful in my current capacity, and I don’t get bored.
So:
- Understand yourself
- Understand your personal motivation
- See yourself the way others see you
- Be critical in your evaluation of your own skills and desires
- Be critical of the company. Look at the inner workings with your mind and a ledger pad, not with your heart.
If you could lead or inspire a global movement to make an impact, what would it be and why?
I think that if each company looks at what they make, create or manufacture and think what charity could benefit from it in some small way, then it’s a win.
With Lucinda Ellery it’s easy. Breast cancer research, alopecia areata foundation, Trichotillomania cooperatives, these are natural connections to what we do, and it is where our hearts are, so it makes sense for us to participate in those type of fundraisers.
If every company did that, then there would be support across the board of potentially underserved charities. Companies could benefit not only from tax benefits but use the fundraising programs as team-building exercises. Then you are all coming together towards one goal.
What’s a quote, motto, or philosophy that you live by as a business leader?
I once saw a play with my sister called A Catered Affair with Harvey Fierstein and he may have gone off script. But on this particular night, his character asked:
“Life is a roller coaster – When you ride a roller coaster, do you do it with your eyes open or your eyes closed? – Try it with your eyes open”.
After the play ended my sister and I discussed it. When I asked her that same question, she said “I won’t even get on a roller coaster” and laughed.
I said, “I ride it in the front car with my hands and feet in the air, screaming at the top of my lungs.” That summed up our personalities and it’s a philosophy that I still follow.
For any business leader, know yourself, know your path, stay true to the coarse but be ready to pivot when you have to, and then, just bring it home.
How can our readers or listeners connect with you and follow your journey online?
They can contact me directly at Barbara@lucindaellery.com or drop me a line from our website.
Or via our social media
