48-year-old quit her high-paying Wall Street job to start a business from her attic—now it brings in $70 million a year
Louisa Serene Schneider has never been short on business ideas.
She once started a yoga-wear company (“long before Lululemon existed,” she says) and at another point tried to launch a language tutoring business. Neither of them stuck, but ideas kept coming.
Then, in 2017, Schneider came up with an idea that she felt had momentum. She quit her high-profile job on Wall Street with what she calls a “competitive C-level salary” to bet on herself and start an ear-piercing business.
“It was the first time in my life that I hadn’t had a full-time job,” Schneider, now 48, tells CNBC Make It. “I was actually terrified, and I was working out of my attic.”
Seven years later the business, now known as Rowan, is the only ear-piercing business with its own medical board and where registered nurses are trained to pierce ears. Rowan has 90 studios across the U.S. and roughly 800 employees, over half of whom are nurses.
Louisa Serene Schneider is the founder and CEO of Rowan, an ear-piercing business with 90 locations across the U.S.
CNBC Make It
Schneider’s journey to becoming founder and CEO of Rowan hasn’t been easy. “There were many days when I wanted to give up, and days when I would look at the bank account and think, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make payroll,'” she says. “I would just have to keep going.”
Here’s how she built Rowan into a profitable business that brought in over $70 million in revenue last year.
to promote her subscription jewelry line in time for the holidays.
Within minutes of the post going live, Schneider says the company started selling “hundreds and hundreds” of subscription boxes.
It was way more than they expected, and she was worried about completing the gift orders in time. “We didn’t have the ability to fulfill those orders,” she says, “so I called the only people that I could at the time, my parents, who drove six hours and spent the next 48 hours working with me in my attic, putting the boxes together.”
Rowan currently employs over 550 nurses who are trained in ear piercing techniques.
CNBC Make It
After the influencer’s viral post, Schneider started a formal round of seed funding. While Rowan was seeing positive feedback from customers, getting investors onboard was a different story.
“Fundraising is awful,” Schneider says. “People tell you that you’re an idiot over and over and over again, and then you have to pick yourself up and say, ‘OK, am I? No, I know this is right. I know I can do this.'”
During one particularly low moment, Schneider says she was presented an opportunity to take investor meetings while on a family trip to California, only to be told “no” repeatedly: “Not only was I missing my family vacation, but I was being told that the business idea wasn’t big enough for them.”
It’s not lost on her that investors, mostly men, didn’t see the potential in her business that caters primarily to women. “Male investors are typically the allocators of capital, and because they don’t typically get their ears pierced, I felt that there was an obvious gap in this market” they weren’t investing in, Schneider says. Other ear-piercing companies have been around for decades, she notes, but “the experience has not changed or evolved to modern day.”
Keep the momentum going long enough, though, and “eventually you meet somebody that believes in you,” she says.
The company raised $5 million in seed capital between 2018 to 2021. It went on to raise a series A in the spring of 2021, and by that fall, raised $20 million in series B funding.
“Since that time, we have not raised any money because our business, fortunately and with a lot of hard work, has been very profitable,” Schneider says. The company became profitable in 2023, she says.
How To Start A Business: For First-Time Founders. Find step-by-step guidance for launching your first business, from testing your idea to growing your revenue. Sign up today with coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off the regular course price of $127 (plus tax). Offer valid September 16 through September 30, 2025.
Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life, and request to join our exclusive community on LinkedIn to connect with experts and peers.
[title_words_as_hashtags
