Lisa Price Of Carol's Daughter At The HIBT Summit

It's our final episode in our series from this year's How I Built This Summit! Today, we're featuring Lisa Price of the beauty brand Carol's Daughter. When Lisa sat down with Guy Raz in October, she described how her business expanded well beyond her Brooklyn kitchen. As it grew, she decided "not to sit at the head of the table," and deferred to the experts. She later came to regret that. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Guy Raz?

  Hey, it's Guy here. And today, we're releasing our final episode from the How I Built This Summit in San Francisco. And today's conversation is with Lisa Price, the founder of Carol's Daughter. Now, if you don't know her story yet, you may want to listen to the original episode, which ran back in June of last year. It's an incredible story of how Lisa began making lotions and body creams in her kitchen in the 1990s. She named her brand after her mom, Carol, and eventually, she turned it into a major line of beauty products, primarily for women of color. And then, she sold her company to L'Oréal about four years ago. It's a classic story about starting small and growing big.

• 0:45Guy Raz?

  And when I spoke with Lisa at the summit, I wanted to ask her about that and about some of the hard lessons she learned when she was expanding her company from a one-woman show into a major brand.

• 1:00Guy Raz?

  Thank you for coming, Lisa. Okay, Carol's Daughter, one of the biggest beauty products brands that was initially discovered mainly by women of color. Let's start with the idea. Take us back to the early 90s. How did you-- how did this start? How'd you get the idea?

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Well, initially, it started from me making fragrances. I have always loved fragrance for as long as I can remember. And I read this article about Prince, who's my favorite musician of all time. Yes, thank you. And in this article, it said that he used to blend different fragrances on different parts of his body to create a unique scent. And I was like, okay, I'm sold. That's a great idea. And I started to blend fragrances--

• 1:46Guy Raz?

  For yourself?

• 1:46Speaker 01

  For myself.

• 1:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  And then, I realized that I needed to have moisturizers in these scents, because that's how you layer your fragrance. That's how your fragrance lasts. And I started to add the fragrances to lotions that I would buy at the drugstore. But they didn't blend well. They would get messy. So then, I started to make my own on the kitchen stove. And then, I began to share it with friends and family. And my mom said, why don't you sell at the St. Mary's Flea Market? That was May 25, 1993.

• 2:20Guy Raz?

  And just to be clear, like you were, I mean, you were buying like off the shelf cocoa butter and melting it down and just like in your kitchen, like on the stove?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yes, before Amazon Prime.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  These ingredients were not as easy to find as they are today.

• 2:35Guy Raz?

  And if you remember the episode that Lisa was on, at the time, you start to sell out of your apartment and people buy it here and there. Still, was your side hustle for like three or four years?

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:45Guy Raz?

  At what point, because a lot of people here are, they've got side hustles going. I've met many of them, amazing, amazing products that people are trying to create. At what point did you, were you able to take the mental leap and say, you know what? I'm going to turn my side hustle into my main, my main gig?

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Well, in 1996, I was pregnant with my first son, Forrest. He's now 22, but he was born in March of 96. And I basically looked at my schedule and figured out that if I tried to continue working along with trying to take care of a newborn, I would basically have to give my paycheck to the babysitter. So it just seemed to make sense at that time to let the job go and give the business a try, since I would just hand my paycheck to someone else anyway.

• 3:42Guy Raz?

  Were you, I mean, were you worried about making ends meet at that point? I mean, because it's because you had a pretty decent paying job in TV.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:50Guy Raz?

  And presumably, you weren't making as much from, from the lotions at that point.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  I wasn't as worried when I first started because it made such logical sense. Where it got scary was about a year later, when my husband lost his job.

• 4:07Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And then it was just the business to take care of everything. That's when it really got scary. And at that point, we purchased a home as well. So now we had a mortgage, a second baby on the way, and all of a sudden, he had no job.

• 4:23Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  And we managed our expenses as best we could. We can be very frugal people when we need to be. And thankfully, it worked. And the business continued to grow. And within about six to eight months, my husband Gordon was working again. But that six to eight months without him working and with another child on the way, it was tough.

• 4:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Was the idea, was your vision to turn this into a massive company? Or did you think, this is going to be something for me, my friends, and anyone who wants to buy it?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  I did not think of it being a massive company at all. I really thought that what I defined as success in the beginning was that I would make enough money that I could contribute to my household. And maybe I would run a business out of a garage. You know, like we would buy a house.

• 5:13Guy Raz?

  Which you basically were doing, right? It was your apartment was the business.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  But I thought we'd get, you know, like a bigger place.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  And I didn't think that I would be traveling and, you know, doing the different things that I have to do, you know, for the business today. I had no idea.

• 5:32Guy Raz?

  You got, something happened in, I think it was 2003, which is Oprah Winfrey profiled you. She put you on the show.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:40Guy Raz?

  And that's 10 years after, amazing. That's 10 years after you're in a church, church flea market. Right?

• 5:49Guy Raz?

  She puts you on the show.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  It was amazing.

• 5:52Guy Raz?

  So what happened after that? Did it, I mean, was it just like a crazy spike?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  It wasn't crazy like a lot of people think. Like, a lot of people think that because you meet Oprah Winfrey and you shake her hand, that when you shake her hand, a wire transfer takes place. And you're suddenly a millionaire. That doesn't happen.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  But our website actually crashed. We told the people that were hosting it, it's going to be a lot of traffic. Oh, we're ready, we're ready. They weren't ready. But we were still able to capture a lot of orders, capture a lot of email addresses. And it was a good build, but like a steady build. It wasn't something that we couldn't manage. And it continued to climb. So I appeared on her show in June of 2003. And then People Magazine had been thinking about doing something on me. And that cinched it. They were like, oh, yes, we're doing a spread on you. And the show re-aired in October.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  The People Magazine article came out in November. And I had a book deal by the top of the following year. So it was a very good fourth quarter in 2003.

• 7:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, so was it sort of like just a spike in the fourth quarter?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it stayed there.

• 7:15Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  It didn't fall off.

• 7:17Guy Raz?

  And how did you manage that, that level of scaling? I mean, all of a sudden, you've got to hire people. You've got to, you've got to expand your inventory. You've got to increase the production.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Well, what was good about it was the show wasn't about a specific product. So it was about women who started businesses. So they just profiled the business. Oprah happened to mention the foot cream. Now, I had a foot lotion and I had a foot butter. I didn't have a foot cream. But what we did, we put the foot products on the first page of the website. So when you went to the website, foot products were there. And we had a week between when I taped it and when the show aired. So the staff just beefed up production on foot butter and foot lotion. And we were ready.

• 8:09Guy Raz?

  Wow. So when you started, it was you and like a stove top and, and the table at the flea market. By 2003, 2004, how many, how many people were working with you?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  About 20.

• 8:23Guy Raz?

  And then, how big did it eventually get?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  By the time we were acquired by L'Oréal, we had about 42 employees.

• 8:30Guy Raz?

  So what is that, I mean, what was that like? To go from just you in a kitchen to overseeing 42 people? I mean, was that, it's a different beast, right?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Oh, it's very different. If you're not an HR person, or a manager in that way, it's a very different skill set. So it was something that I had to learn how to do. Because you sort of assume that everyone's going to follow your work ethic, and your style, and you're just going to tell people that this is what they have to do, and they're just going to do it. And then you have to remember, wait, what did I do when I had a job? Did I always listen to my boss? No.

• 9:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  I'm the boss now, and this is their job. Ah, they don't like me. Got it.

• 9:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Guy Raz?

  Did you, when you were on the show, I remember you saying something like, that as we grew, it sort of felt like the company kind of got away from me a little bit.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:33Guy Raz?

  Do you remember, do you remember why? What happened?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Well, I had investors who had come into the company, and then we had equity partners. And when you have equity partners, more money comes in, and things get very professional. So now, you know, sitting at the table, you have someone who's been in sales, beauty sales for 15 years, and someone who's been in operations for 10 years, and someone that's run beauty companies for the last 12 years. And there was all of this experience at the table that I didn't have. And I decided that I was going to take the position of, I'm not going to sit at the head of the table. I'm going to sit at the table with everyone, because there's so much that I need to learn.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  And unfortunately, that was perceived as a weakness. And it was perceived as me choosing to take... A less important role in a less important seat. And I began to notice that people weren't coming to me first with things. They weren't necessarily valuing my opinion in the same way that they should. And I began to lose my voice within my own brand and I had to get it back.

• 10:54Guy Raz?

  Did you? Were you able to?

• 10:55Speaker 01

  I was able to. We hired a person to be the president of the company. And that person was a person who decided that he wasn't going to make changes without me and without my support. And he was someone who taught me instead of just told me. You know, other people would tell me what was happening or they would say, oh, don't worry about it, we've got it. And Richard explained things to me and I could safely ask him questions without feeling as if I was less than because I didn't know.

• 11:35Guy Raz?

  I mean, I can understand that instinct, right? When you're surrounded, like you start this business, you've got the passion, but then all these sort of experts who've got years or decades of industry experience come in and you think, okay, I should kind of take a backseat because they've got this expertise. Like, I can understand that instinct to want to pull back. But at the same time, when you did that, you had to kind of give up a lot of your stamp on the company. What do you think you would have done differently if you had a chance to be in that position again?

• 12:07Speaker 01

  I would trust my gut more. I'm not sad that I did it because that's how I learned, so it would never happen again. And I think I had to go through that to learn that. But it's important to understand that no matter how much someone else knows, they still don't know your brand. And if you compare your brand to your child...

• 12:38Speaker 01

  There may be, you know, a teacher or a tutor who's just a miracle worker and they're able to break through and get to your kid in a way that you haven't been able to figure out. But that doesn't make them a better parent for your child. That just makes them a really good tutor or a really good teacher. But it doesn't make them their parent. And that was what I had to learn. That even though there were some people along the way who knew better things about the business, it didn't mean that they understood her and that they really knew how to help her grow and how to translate her for other people. That was my job. And I should never have let anyone else try to do that job.

• 13:28Guy Raz?

  But you say that you kind of had to go through that to learn that you made a mistake and you now know that. But here in this audience and people listening to this podcast are going to be in a similar position, right? Where they may have created something and it grows and lots of experts come in and say, you know, let me take this over. What should they do? What, I mean, what are their options?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Well, no one's ever going to say, let me take this over. They won't be that overt. It happens quietly and differently. You know your gut and you know when something is right and you know when something is wrong. And there were times when I knew something wasn't right, but I let my gut go. You know, I said, well, he's been doing it for 12 years and this is different and this is a different level. So let's just see. And, you know, we would let's just see and it wasn't right.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Um, don't let that happen. You know, speak up when your gut feels like it isn't right. And what I, what I learned from it was when I do speak up, it doesn't necessarily mean that every single time people are just gonna listen to me and they're not gonna listen to anybody else. But at least there was a conversation and there was a dialogue. And sometimes when there's a dialogue, someone will explain to me, "Well, you know, the reason that we wanted to do this is because of this. And if we learn this, then we know we should go in this direction." And then I say, "Oh, okay, I can understand why you would wanna do that because we're gonna learn something different." Um, so then I would learn from that process and they would learn from that process.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  But it's awful when you say nothing, even though inside you know, "This isn't quite right, I wouldn't do it this way, I don't understand why it's going in this direction." So you have to speak up because you don't wanna live with that "what if", and "if I had just" and "oh, if I had only", you, you don't wanna live with that.

• 15:38Guy Raz?

  You, we, we discussed this a little bit on the podcast. You got a little bit of backlash from your hardcore fans when, when Carol's Daughter was sold to L'Oréal because particularly, you know, some of your, your fans said, "Hey, you know, self-made African-American businesswoman selling this company to a big multinational, um, it's a sell-out, blah, blah, blah." You, you heard that criticism. Did that, did that sting and did, did you, did you kind of take that personally?

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, it stung a lot. Um, and I did take it personally for a short period of time and then I let it go because I realized that, you know, people had written a story for me. And that was okay, that was what they understood and that was what they thought and they thought that I should go in this direction. But they didn't really know the whole story and they didn't know that the way that I had built the business, my investors needed to exit. And they didn't know the work that it took to get a company to a place where a company like L'Oréal would buy it. You know, a lot of people think that- That, you know, you're not doing so well. So they pick you up for a song.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  And it doesn't work that way. You have to be profitable. You have to be doing well. You have to have good profit margins. And they have to see growth coming from you. So it hurt and it stung for about 36 hours. And I let it go.

• 17:06Guy Raz?

  And you did very well.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 17:10Guy Raz?

  Very briefly, we played an audio montage at the beginning of the day where you said, whether you're doing 40,000 in sales a year or 28 million, you're still doing the same work.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:20Guy Raz?

  What do you mean by that?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  You know, it's very interesting being an entrepreneur because technically, right now, I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm an employee of L'Oréal. But there's so much that I do that is still the same work. You know, I push, I believe, I rally people together. I lead, I inspire. There's so many things that I do today that I did when I was selling in the flea market. I just might have to do less grunt work, if you will. But a lot of it is the same. And it takes that same drive and passion and love for what I do.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  And I've gone back to making things in the kitchen just for myself and just for fun. And it's amazing to be in a place where I can do it and give it away. You know, like, I'm not reliant on how much each bottle is going to bring in to pay whatever bill.

• 18:25Guy Raz?

  Now you can just do it.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  I can just make a batch and just go to my neighbors and be like, here.

• 18:29Guy Raz?

  Here you go. Amazing. Lisa Price, founder of Carol's Daughter. Incredible, incredible story. Thank you.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 18:40Guy Raz?

  I spoke with Lisa this past October at the How I Built This Summit in San Francisco. And this has been the final episode from the summit main stage. You can check out the previous five interviews in your podcast queue. And stay tuned for details about how you can attend a How I Built This live event in the future. Our episode was produced this week by Rachel Faulkner with original music from Ramtin Arablouei. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Life Kit is like your friend with really good advice.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  So can I really be truthful?

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  It's just me and you, right?

• 19:24Speaker 04

  Well, sure. Let's say it is.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Three times a week, Life Kit is in your feeds with episodes on health, personal finance, personal growth, and so much more. Listen to Life Kit from NPR.