Jack Black Skin Care: Curran and Jeff Dandurand

In 1998, Curran Dandurand and a colleague from Mary Kay Cosmetics came up with an unorthodox idea: a premium skincare brand for men. Despite the prevailing wisdom that American men would never want to moisturize and exfoliate - and a total lack of interest from investors - Curran and Emily Dalton forged ahead, with the help of Curran’s husband Jeff. Their brand, Jack Black, launched in 2000, and eventually landed in major department stores, with some unexpected boosts from the Dallas Cowboys and Matthew McConaughey. The brand became a leader in men’s skincare, and eventually sold to Edgewell Personal Care for just under $100 million. This episode was produced by Casey Herman, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Edited by Neva Grant with research help from Katherine Sypher. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. 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.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2 a.m. kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan,

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

  Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands, on the table in rewards you never earned, money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back

• 2:16Guy Raz?

  on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,

• 3:00Guy Raz?

  new Delta SkyMiles Reserve American Express Card members can earn two Delta Comfort Round Trip flights for travel within the 48 contiguous US states, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. Plus, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles towards your next getaway. And who doesn't appreciate an elevated airport experience? Delta SkyMiles Reserve Card members get access to the Delta Sky Club, your pre-flight oasis to recharge, with 15 visits and four one-time guest passes each medallion year when flying Delta together. That's up to $950 in annual value. Value estimate based on $50 per visit rate to purchase additional visits

• 3:45Guy Raz?

  or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best ones obsess over things

• 4:29Guy Raz?

  their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile regular gas in port fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary. Visit mobilefuels.com for details. Hey, it's Guy here. You know, we hear a lot about pivots

• 5:13Guy Raz?

  on How I Built This, how a simple change in perspective can create a whole new opportunity. And this made me think of a conversation I recently had with Kenan Thompson, who's the longest-running cast member of Saturday Night Live ever, 20 seasons. And I asked him, what if, one day, instead of performing on SNL, you were given the keys to run SNL? You will definitely want to hear his answer. Check out my interview with Kenan Thompson over on my other podcast, The Great Creators. Just search for The Great Creators with Guy Raz wherever you listen to podcasts. And now, on to today's show.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  We had this, oh, seven-foot-tall, very beautiful wood floor standing fixture, laser-cut logo. We spent a ton of money on it. And our idea was, this is the display you're going to use in your golf shop.

• 6:11Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  But people would look at that display and just like go on, what are you thinking? We don't need, we can't put that in our shop. We would never sell that much product. They just weren't interested. And Jeff's like, this isn't working. We gotta pull the plug. And we gotta go get real jobs.

• 6:37Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:50Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how current and Jeff Dandurand took a gamble on men's skincare and managed to build a $100 million brand, Jack Black.

• 7:09Guy Raz?

  The men's skincare market is a tough one to crack. It's a tiny fraction of the overall skincare market. Guys just don't spend much time moisturizing or exfoliating their faces. They might shave or use shampoo and soap in the shower, and that's it. But that's slowly changing. Between 2018 and 2021, sales of men's prestige skincare brands grew by 21%. And part of that growth has to do with a brand called Jack Black. It's a brand that was designed specifically to appeal to men. Blue-colored tubes, labels that look like cigar brands, even the name, Jack Black, sounds like a rugged dude in

• 7:54Guy Raz?

  a bourbon appreciation society. The name, by the way, was picked before the actor Jack Black was well-known. Anyway, when Curran Dandurand founded the company with her friend Emily Dalton in 2000, almost no one wanted to touch men's personal care, in part because it was, and still is, dominated by the big players like Gillette. But the other reason is that some of the prestige brands like Clinique and Shiseido already had men's skincare lines that weren't really flying off the shelves at department stores. But Curran had a hunch that if she could redesign men's skincare, make it appeal to men in, say, Texas, she might be able to break through. And that's what Jack Black did.

• 8:38Guy Raz?

  They would lure guys to department store counters and give them samples to take home. And over time, it won them over. Early on, Curran recruited her husband Jeff to help with sales, and it took many years before they managed to eke out a small profit. Today, Jack Black is owned by Edgewell. It's a company that also owns brands like Schick and Playtex. The co-founders sold the company in 2018 and made a hefty return, but we'll get there. Curran grew up in Florida and went to college at Vanderbilt. Jeff grew up in Indiana and went to college at the University of Mississippi. They met in Dallas after they both graduated. Jeff was working as an executive recruiter, and Curran was working in market research

• 9:23Guy Raz?

  at Mary Kay Cosmetics.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  I thought that cosmetics would be fun and exciting and creative. I really wanted to be creative. I didn't have any experience in cosmetics. I was a minimal user of cosmetics at the time, but it had all the ingredients of a product category that I thought I would be good at and enjoy.

• 9:45Guy Raz?

  And explain what, I mean, for people who aren't familiar with it, Mary Kay, basically, it's a old-school, direct-to-consumer company, right? It's a direct marketing company.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Direct selling, exactly.

• 9:56Guy Raz?

  Direct selling. And basically, so they don't sell in stores. You've got an army of independent entrepreneurs, mostly women, who sell cosmetics to their friends, door-to-door at parties, right?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Right. And so you have a hostess, and you would sell to a group of the hostess's friends. And I moved up very quickly, so it was very stimulating and challenging and rewarding for me. They were growing like crazy. So it was very fast paced.

• 10:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  It was a good life. I had, I loved my job, but I had a good social life. I was dating a lot. I wasn't married. I didn't have kids, didn't have that responsibility.

• 10:38Guy Raz?

  And at the same time, you decided to do an MBA, I guess, sort of at night or part time.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Right. At night and on the weekends. It took three years.

• 10:47Guy Raz?

  Okay. So Jeff, I know that you were in Dallas around the same time as Corinne, working as an executive recruiter.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Correct. Yeah.

• 10:55Guy Raz?

  Okay. And Corinne, you're sort of working your way up at the time at Mary Kay. So tell me, how did the two of you meet? Like, what do you remember?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Well, we met at the downtown YMCA. I was doing aerobics.

• 11:07Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Back in the Jane Fonda aerobics days.

• 11:09Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  He was playing basketball and he sent some friends over that were mutual friends that I knew. And they asked me if I would be interested in going out with him. And I said, well, what does he look like? And we peeked over the basketball court and they pointed to him and I'm like, yeah, he's good looking. I'll go out with him.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  And she started walking towards me and I was just so nervous. I was just like, do you want to go out? And she said, yeah, I'll go out. And I just thought, man, this girl is just beautiful. And

• 11:42Guy Raz?

  And you were like, you were like, I'm

• 11:44Speaker 02

  I was just like thinking I'm going way above my program.

• 11:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah. It's out of my league. Yeah.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, out of my league.

• 11:49Guy Raz?

  I'm like a goofy dude playing basketball.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got an Afro and, you know, long hair and it was totally

• 11:57Speaker 01

  And he had this super shiny suit on that was like too short.

• 12:00Guy Raz?

  So bad style on top of it.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Above his ankle.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Oh geez.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  First impressions weren't so great.

• 12:07Guy Raz?

  But you agreed. You guys were on a date. And how did that date go, Corinne?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Well, I wasn't, I didn't think it went very well. He talked about himself the entire night. He went into minutia detail about how he keeps a index card filing system about all his recruiting prospects and how he works that system. He got up several times to go use the payphone. He never asked me what my job was, where I was from.

• 12:39Guy Raz?

  This is promising.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:41Guy Raz?

  This is gonna be a long and fruitful relationship.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Never going out with this guy again. That's one and done.

• 12:46Guy Raz?

  And Jeff, how did the date go for you?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Well, I was living with my brother at the time, and he asked me. He said, how did that date go? I said, it went great. I said, I'm gonna marry that girl.

• 12:59Guy Raz?

  Had you had insight into her thinking, you would never have thought that.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  No, I would have been very disappointed, for sure.

• 13:07Guy Raz?

  So Kern, why did you agree to go out with him a second time if he was boring and talking about index cards on the first date?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Well, he was so persistent, and this is a trait that really benefited us at Jack Black many years later. He did not take rejection. He didn't take no. And so, finally, he wore me down, and I went out with him again, and he started being a little more interesting and having a two-way conversation.

• 13:34Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  And then he lied, and he said, I want a trip to Mexico, and I'd like to take you with me. And I said no about 10 times. Finally, he wore me down.

• 13:44Guy Raz?

  Wait, sorry, pause. Jeff, you made up a story about winning a contest?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say I lied. I'd say that I bended the truth a little bit. We were talking about a sales trip at our company. I just decided it was gonna be Cancun, Mexico, and that I had won that trip.

• 14:02Guy Raz?

  Okay, I got you. You were gonna engineer this trip. So eventually, you convinced her to go to Cancun with you, and you agreed, Kern. You agreed to go.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yes. And that was the turning point. Then I started to fall in love with him, and things changed after that.

• 14:21Guy Raz?

  All right, so you guys become a couple, and then a few years later, I think in 1989, maybe, you get married and start a family. And you were, Kern, you were kind of climbing the ranks at Mary Kay. And tell me what you were doing there. Tell me about your job.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  When we got married, I was director of marketing. And then, a couple of years after we got married, we had our son. And then by the time we had our daughter, two years after that, I was executive VP of Global Marketing and Business Development. So I was over product development, marketing for the entire world, many countries. And they were public when I joined. And the owners, which were Richard Rogers and Mary Kay, Ash decided to take it private. Yep. And so that was, that was an important milestone for the company. And it also afforded me some phantom share options that they granted to key people,

• 15:25Speaker 01

  which I was later able to use to help fund Jack Black's startup.

• 15:30Guy Raz?

  Corinne, tell me about the culture at Mary Kay. I mean, now you were sort of rising up the ranks and eventually as you're in your late 30s, you're getting into the executive suite there, mid to late 30s. And you basically started there when you were 22.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:48Guy Raz?

  So you were a lifer. You were a lifer.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:52Guy Raz?

  What was the culture like there?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Well, I think towards the end of the time I was there, it got very political, more bureaucratic. I felt like I was solving the same problems over and over. And then they brought in a new CEO that I didn't think had the chops or the experience or the knowledge of the business. And I just felt like it was time for me to move on.

• 16:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Did you have ambitions to be the CEO?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  I wouldn't want it to be given to me, but if I was the best candidate and I had earned it, yes, I wanted it.

• 16:30Guy Raz?

  When you decided to leave Mary Kay in 1998, that must have been a difficult decision. First of all, you know, you guys were not independently wealthy. I mean, Jeff had a job and money coming in and you had some shares, but it wasn't enough to stop working for the rest of your life.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:49Guy Raz?

  So that must have been a difficult decision.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was the major breadwinner. And Jeff was very distraught at my decision. And I pretty much decided I'm leaving, but I didn't know exactly what my next move was going to be. I just knew I had to do it.

• 17:09Guy Raz?

  Jeff, when she made that decision. I mean, of course, I'm assuming you were supportive of your husband, but were you worried about that?

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was. And when she started talking about leaving, and she would tell me she was very upset and she didn't want to be there anymore. And I would try to talk her into staying. And I was able to do that for maybe six to nine months before she finally left.

• 17:37Guy Raz?

  Right. And now, Jeff, the pressure's a little bit on you because you've got the sole paycheck coming in.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Well, my job was straight commission. I was basically, month by month, having no idea what I was going to get paid that month or make anything that month.

• 17:57Guy Raz?

  Because if you didn't place people in jobs, you didn't get anything.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 18:01Guy Raz?

  So you're constantly having to hustle, constantly having to sell.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:05Guy Raz?

  So that's going on. And Karin, you're out of Mary Kay. And what did you start to do? I mean, did you start to have conversations with people? Did you just-- or did you completely stop thinking about work for a while?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  No, I just knew I was going to keep working. It wasn't like I was going to retire. But I was starting to realize, hey, I don't want to go back to the corporate world. I want to do something different. I want to be in control of my destiny. I want to be in control of who I work with and how I run the business. And then the turning point was, after I had resigned from Mary Kay, several of the key marketing people that worked for me also resigned. And one of those top performers was Emily Dalton, who eventually was the co-founder of Jack Black with us. And we had lunch, and she said, "Why don't we start a business together?" I'm like, "Well, what are you thinking?"

• 19:05Speaker 01

  And she's like, "Well, it's got to be in cosmetics because that's what we know." And I'm like, "Right."

• 19:10Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  And she's like, "What about men?"

• 19:13Guy Raz?

  "What about men?" she said.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Men, yeah.

• 19:15Guy Raz?

  Like cosmetics for men?

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, "What?" And I'm like, "No, that is such a small, nonexistent market." Because people had tried it. Mary Kay tried it. It was like 0.1% of their business. And she's like, "No." Men are changing. Nobody's doing it. Somebody's gonna figure it out. Let's pursue it. Let's think about it.

• 19:38Guy Raz?

  So when the two of you started, because it's exciting, that conversation, that first conversation, it gets your blood pumping and you're like, wait a minute, maybe there's something here. But when you started talking, I mean, was the conversation around cosmetics for men, like concealer and, you know, things like that for men? Or was it?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Never. It was never cosmetics. It was skincare, grooming, head to toe, care for your body.

• 20:07Guy Raz?

  So personal, like what we call personal care?

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Functional products like deodorant, antiperspirant, shave cream, but then moisturizer, sunscreen. A brand that was luxury because you had the mass market grooming brands like Gillette. And in the prestige market, you had fragrances, but you did not have a complete line of skincare that was positioned at the luxury end of the market.

• 20:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Targeting more affluent guys, luxurious textures. That didn't exist.

• 20:41Guy Raz?

  So what did you do? I mean, did you go home and start to talk to Jeff about this?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Well, Emily and I talked amongst ourselves extensively. We were both marketing people. So we're putting together tear sheets and imagery and crafting the brand personality. And we knew we had to do almost everything totally different than the women's brands were doing to break through to men. Our insight was that that's why it had failed before.

• 21:13Guy Raz?

  Right. Because it was like, there was Clinique for men. And I remember, but it, and I think it's still around, but it just looks like Clinique for women, but just says Clinique for men.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:21Guy Raz?

  And that didn't quite work.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Totally. So they basically cost reduced their women's formulas, put it in stock, gray packaging, and put it on the shelf with the women's stuff and never supported it. So we were busy brainstorming, okay, what is our strategy? How are we going to make this work when so many others have failed?

• 21:44Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Kiran comes up with the name Jack Black, and why Jeff takes their first display case for showcasing the product and winds up smashing it into bits. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 22:04Guy Raz?

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• 22:48Guy Raz?

  and people bring taste, judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities, it's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on. NetSuite Next surfaces insights

• 23:32Guy Raz?

  exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper

• 24:15Guy Raz?

  from it. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Stripe is built for whatever comes next, because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally. From payments and billing to fraud protection

• 24:58Guy Raz?

  and cross-border payouts, Stripe is built to support the new pace of commerce. They're trusted by the companies building at the frontier, from 86% of the Forbes AI 50 to global leaders like Salesforce and OpenAI. In fact, more than 1.6% of global GDP flows through Stripe, with Stripe's users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com.

• 25:34Guy Raz?

  One more thing before we get back to the show. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And it's totally free.

• 25:48Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the late 1990s and Curran Dandurand and her colleague from Mary Kay, Emily Dalton, are brainstorming ways to launch a brand of skincare products for men. And it turns out that their first tough pitch meeting isn't with investors. Instead, they have to convince Curran's husband, Jeff.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  I was out playing golf one day and I came in through our garage to our family room and Curran and Emily had all the things that she talked about out on our tables. And I said, well, what are you guys doing? And they said, well, we're thinking about starting a company. And I said, well, what kind of company? And they said, well, we're going to start a skincare company for men. I said, that's a crazy idea. Guys don't care about skincare. I said, where are you going to get the money? They said, we're going to use our money. And I was like, that's even a crazier idea. But then they spent a little bit of money on doing some market research where they

• 26:51Speaker 02

  talked with men about skincare, what they used, how they used it. We got those reports back a couple of weeks later and I was reading the reports one evening in bed and I thought, you know what? They're really on to something here.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we did focus groups and we basically presented our brand concept, which was rugged masculinity, but there was a luxury and a polish about it. So we showed different pictures of celebrities, Tom Landry, Steve McQueen. These are the kind of guys that this brand is for. And men really liked that. One of our inspirations was to have our packaging kind of be inspired by liquor labels and cigar labels, which are kind of timeless and cool and interesting. And they liked that. And so we got positive feedback. Yeah, I'd be receptive. I'd like to know more.

• 27:48Guy Raz?

  All right, so you decide that you're going to jump into this. And tell me about how you're going to finance it.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Well, we did want to raise money. We spent a lot of time putting together a very beautiful business plan.

• 28:01Guy Raz?

  This is you and Emily?

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Me and Emily.

• 28:03Guy Raz?

  Because Jeff is still working. He's still recruiting.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's involved on the periphery. He's aware of it, but he's still working. You know, we had to have some income coming into our family. So we networked with people we knew that were connected to investors. And we sent out a bunch of business plans. We got mostly credits. Nobody even bothered to respond. The one response we did get was, "I'll pass. This won't work."

• 28:34Guy Raz?

  I'm just surprised because both of you had come to the table with such deep experience in the industry. It wasn't like you were just out of college.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  I know.

• 28:43Guy Raz?

  With this pie in the sky.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  And we were pretty cocky. You know, we're like, "Okay, this business plan's going to wow them. They're going to see the potential."

• 28:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  We just got total thumbs down, just not even the courtesy of a response. And I look back and I don't know exactly why we kept going. We were totally undeterred. And we're just like, "Okay, well, we'll fund it ourselves." And which, in hindsight, I'm so grateful because we had total control. We had no outside investors.

• 29:13Guy Raz?

  And you had a little bit of a nest egg from your time at Mary Kay.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 29:17Guy Raz?

  How much money did you have to use?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Close to half a million.

• 29:22Guy Raz?

  Was that pretty much everything you had?

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:25Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  And Jeff, at this point, Jeff got laid off from his recruiting job.

• 29:31Guy Raz?

  At around this time?

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Yes. So Jeff was on board because then there was three founders, three co-founders.

• 29:38Guy Raz?

  And Jeff, from what I understand, the company where you were working, I guess their business really started to slow down. And so there just wasn't much recruiting for you to do at that point. And you were laid off, right? Correct, yeah. But can I just ask kind of where your head was at the time? Because, I mean, you'd read the surveys and research that Kern and Emily had done. And you thought that was encouraging, but still, like, you did not, now you didn't have a steady income. And Kern was going to put in all of your money into this business, which was a huge risk. I mean, were you worried about that?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I would.

• 30:17Guy Raz?

  Because you guys were like four, you know.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Forty years old.

• 30:20Guy Raz?

  Forty, yeah, I mean, that's, you know.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Well, I thought the numbers, the business plan they put together was very achievable. And I thought, gosh, we're going to be killing it in five years. Because the numbers supported a hugely successful company.

• 30:34Guy Raz?

  The projections.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, projections.

• 30:37Guy Raz?

  But the projections are numbers.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:39Guy Raz?

  Projections are projections.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And we didn't, and we didn't make our projections.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  We didn't even come close to that. But the reality was that I just didn't think about us not being successful.

• 30:51Guy Raz?

  And it was, it was sort of like this incredible stroke of luck that you lost your job at this time. And of course, at the time, I probably didn't feel that way. But Emily and Curran had expertise in marketing and in product, but not in sales. You were a sales guy. They needed a salesperson.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I, you know, I talked to Emily and Curran about helping them with sales and developing a database for us to contact golf country club buyers all over the country.

• 31:23Guy Raz?

  And these were for golf shops. You thought golf shops on golf courses.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:26Guy Raz?

  This is smart because that's a tribe and Jeff is a golfer, right? Jeff, you're a good golfer and so.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 31:33Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  And so, I mean, we really thought that this golf club strategy of distribution would be a very strong one.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. When we first started the company, we were more thinking we're going to focus on sunscreens.

• 31:46Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  But then we're also going to add on things like shave cream and hand cream, lip balm. Because we're thinking, well, the men, they're playing golf every weekend. They're not going to the mall. So let's reach them where they're going. We're trying to be innovative in our distribution.

• 32:03Guy Raz?

  And Curran, was Emily at all nervous, like, ooh, your husband coming in? Like, was there any, any of that weirdness?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. She had some advisors, some lawyers that were like, you don't want to get involved with the married couple. Like, what if that goes off the rails?

• 32:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Also, you know, with Jeff and I combined, if we voted against her, you know, we could go, hey, we just want this whole thing for ourselves. We're. You know, kicking you out.

• 32:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  But she trusted us and believed in the concept and she moved forward. But we did have to talk through that.

• 32:39Guy Raz?

  And tell me about the name. How did you, how did you, because you didn't initially didn't have a name. You just said a concept.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah, tell me more about that.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Well, I actually came up with the name. I was on a flight. I had a yellow legal pad and I just wrote down Jack Black. I liked the strength of that name, the simplicity of it, the timelessness. It felt very masculine and it could have authority over a lot of different product categories. It wasn't so narrow, like the art of shaving, or you're just body, or you know, you're just sunscreen.

• 33:15Guy Raz?

  And you wanted the name of a person because?

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Because I wanted the guys to relate to it, like it's their buddy. And they're not embarrassed at all to say, I use Jack Black.

• 33:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Versus I use something that I can't pronounce, or it's a French name, or it's a girl's name.

• 33:33Guy Raz?

  And Jack Black could be the person who, who started the company, like Vidal Sasson, or, or you know, like, it's Jack Black, it's my company.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Just a very strong, rugged, masculine, athletic guy.

• 33:48Guy Raz?

  You wanted, like, maybe this is the best analogy, but you kind of wanted the Marlboro man.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, but not a smoker.

• 33:57Guy Raz?

  Said not smoking, yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:59Guy Raz?

  Not smoking.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  And the big potential was getting the vast numbers of heterosexual guys that cared about how they looked, that worked out, spent money on their clothes, tried to eat right, get them to use skincare.

• 34:13Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Because it totally makes sense.

• 34:15Guy Raz?

  All right, so you have this name, Jack Black. And by the way, just coincidentally, I mean, this was kind of before the actor, Jack Black, really blew up. I think High Fidelity, can't remember when that came out, that was his first big role.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Shortly thereafter, like, yeah, we had already trademarked the name and locked into that and designed the packaging when he. Had his first movie.

• 34:36Guy Raz?

  And God bless him, but he is not like the Marlboro Man. He's amazing. I love him. If he was here right now, I'd have a beer with him or a coffee. But he is not, I don't think of rugged Americana when I think of the actor Jack Black.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  No, we would not have ever picked him to be our.

• 34:54Guy Raz?

  He's Kung Fu Panda.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Mascot.

• 34:56Guy Raz?

  Panda.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, so there was confusion in the early days and people were thinking he owned the company. And we'd get emails to our info at Get Jack Black. Hey, Jack, I love your latest movie and I love your line.

• 35:16Guy Raz?

  All right, so you've got this name and this brand. Now, let's talk about the colors and the label. What did you do for that?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Well, this was Emily's strength, too. She was so good at design and everything was just meticulously crafted. The label and the overall design was more inspired by cigar labels and liquor, upscale craft liquor.

• 35:41Guy Raz?

  It's a diamond shaped.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:43Guy Raz?

  Sticker, it looks like a sticker.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:46Guy Raz?

  But was it diamond shaped logo on top of a solid colored? And the color was blue.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Right, it was a royal blue. And at the time, the men's lines were white, gray and brown.

• 36:01Guy Raz?

  The competing lines you're talking about.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:03Guy Raz?

  Competitors, yeah, were white, gray and brown, okay.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  And we knew we had to have massive eye appeal to get men to notice it. So we liked the strength of the blue and the black together.

• 36:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  And then after we did the first focus groups, we didn't do any more research because we didn't have any money. So we're just, this is all gut feel and instinct. But we settled on what we ended up going with and it's what we still market today.

• 36:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right, so you have the logo, you've got the name, and you've got the money to get this out there. And I'm assuming that you didn't build your own facility, you didn't have enough money for that. But there were contract manufacturers that you could presumably go to and pick out the ingredients and say, this is what we want. So, did you already have relationships with some of those manufacturers through Mary Kay?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  We did. And we went to three different contract manufacturers that we had worked with at Mary Kay. So, we knew the people and they were willing to work with us. And we, all the formulas were custom. We did test the formulas amongst different guys that we knew in the Dallas area and got really good feedback. So, that was encouraging.

• 37:12Guy Raz?

  And what kind of scents, what kind of smells were you going for?

• 37:15Speaker 01

  That's a good question because the aromas are so important for guys. And what we had found in the market was either they were super heavily fragranced or they were just not fragranced at all. So, we really took approach, the approach of light aromas, not fragrance. There was a lot of eucalyptus and peppermint, very fresh, kind of tingly, spa-like fragrances. And the other thing in the formulations that we focused on were the textures. Men really object to heavy, greasy, kind of occlusive feelings. So, the products were very sheer and light and didn't weigh heavy on the skin, which was important.

• 37:56Guy Raz?

  All right, so 2000, you launched the brand. The idea is you're going to be in golf stores. So, you have, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars worth of product, right? That you've ordered. And what are you going to do from there? Like, how are you going to start? How are you going to get people to notice? How did you decide to like, launch this product?

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Well, we decided to debut at the 2000 PGA show in Orlando, which is a massive show, like 30,000 people attend.

• 38:24Guy Raz?

  This is presumably one of the biggest golf.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  It's in the world, biggest in the world.

• 38:28Guy Raz?

  In the world, okay. So, you're preparing for this show. And, you know, you need to get the word out. There probably aren't going to be too many personal care products shown there. So, what did you do?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  So, Jeff had meticulously compiled a list of, what was it, like 5,000?

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was about 5,000. Golf country clubs, resort clubs, all over the country. And then when I got laid off, I just spent my whole day calling country clubs and making sure that the database that we were putting together had the right address and the right buyer's name, email address, follow-up phone number, and then the mailer, right, Karen?

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we designed this mailer that featured our product line, beautiful photography, and we mailed it out to all these 5,000 buyers that Jeff had carefully researched. And we didn't design the mailing panel correctly. And the post office read the return address as the ship to address. So all of them came, like, within two weeks later, three weeks later, like, right before the show, we'd get them all back to the executive suite.

• 39:43Guy Raz?

  So the mailers never got there to anybody?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Never got there. So, like, nobody knew we were there.

• 39:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  So that was the first sign it was gonna be an interesting show.

• 39:53Guy Raz?

  So you get to Orlando at this PGA trade show. You've got a booth there, and you show up, and tell me about the show.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Well, it's massive. There's just people everywhere. We had terrible location for our booth. We were in the very last row, at the very end of that row, in the back corner, not even by a bathroom or anything. We had no traffic coming by. So we would kind of walk the aisles and grab people and bring them back and put the product on their hands and...

• 40:24Guy Raz?

  And what did your display look like? I mean, did you have all the products in, you know, all labeled and everything?

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Well, we didn't have production yet, so we had lab samples, which were basically white tubes that were hand-cremmed by the lab.

• 40:39Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  And then we had this... Oh, seven foot tall, very beautiful wood floor standing fixture. Laser cut logo. We spent a ton of money on it. And our idea was this is the display you're going to use in your golf shop and it'll hold $4,000 worth of Jack Black product and doesn't it look beautiful?

• 41:00Guy Raz?

  And you were going to provide that to whoever?

• 41:02Speaker 01

  If you ordered 4,000, you could get the free display.

• 41:06Guy Raz?

  The wood display, okay.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  So first of all, when we finally got a few people back there, we would, you know, take the tubes and get ready to let them feel the product and the crimps would bust and shoot out the other end all over their shirts. So the crimps were busting everywhere. People would look at that display and just like go on, what are you thinking? We don't need, we can't put that in our shop. We would never sell that much sunscreen product or shave cream. They just weren't interested. They were there to look at the latest equipment, the latest golf balls, rangefinders.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Hats, clothing.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they just, the category, they're just like, I don't care.

• 41:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  I don't get it. And so finally Jeff rounded up seven of his good friends in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that were head pros at the various country clubs and got, brought them over. And we got a sale, probably a pity purchase from each of them. So it was a big, a big fail.

• 42:15Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so this, I mean, you had put your entire strategy was this tribe of people.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:22Guy Raz?

  Were golfers and golf courses. And did you ask yourself, what did I get wrong? What, what happened here?

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we were starting to go, hmm, you know, we might need to expand and go to traditional retail. But we, after we left, I will say Jeff took that floor standing, seven foot wooden display. He cracked it into a million pieces and put it in the dumpster. He was so mad.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  And then we went to the Orlando airport. We went to Chili's to have dinner before our flight. And Jeff's like, this isn't working. We gotta pull the plug and we gotta go get real jobs.

• 43:06Guy Raz?

  Wow. Jeff, you're the guy who's like, was persistent in pursuing Kern, never taking no for an answer. You're the guy that, and she was like, no, I'm not gonna marry you. I'm not gonna date you. And you're like, no, come on. You're the one who says, let's pack this in?

• 43:21Speaker 02

  I was so discouraged by the lack of sales at that show. And Kern looked at me and said, no, when we get back to Dallas, you gotta get on the phone and start making some calls to open up accounts. We have $450,000 worth of inventory coming in in March and April, and we need to start selling that. So I thought, okay, you know, I've got a really strong database here. We did meet some people that seemed interested. And I found a couple independent reps. And I started talking to those reps about carrying Jack Black. And then I just got on the phone and cold called all day, literally all day.

• 44:03Guy Raz?

  So you needed a different approach.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 44:05Guy Raz?

  You were not gonna build a scalable brand through golf shops.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, we didn't abandon golf, but, and Jeff continued to build golf. And we opened some really amazing accounts, which, you know, a few months later led to a great PR mention. So we opened, was it Austin Country Club, Jeff?

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, Austin Country Club.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Austin Country Club. The pro told Jeff that Matthew McConaughey was using our products and loved them.

• 44:37Guy Raz?

  How, he was buying it at the shop there?

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  In the golf pro shop.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Because he lives in Austin.

• 44:41Guy Raz?

  So they, the golf pro there says, Matthew McConaughey likes your stuff. But you didn't know that for sure.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  We just heard it through the pro.

• 44:49Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  So this was at the height of InStyle, InStyle Magazine, and there was always celebrity features about what the celebs are using. So Emily was based in New York and she was really hitting the streets, you know, talking to the editors, trying to get some ink on Jack Black. And she landed a meeting with InStyle and she shared the Matthew McConaughey tidbit. And they published it in September.

• 45:14Guy Raz?

  Just a photo of him and then saying, hey, he likes Jack Black products.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Right. And then they had a picture of the beard lube and the lip balm.

• 45:21Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  And so that led to specialty stores calling us. We actually got inbound calls from people interested in taking our line, which was a first.

• 45:34Guy Raz?

  Here's my question about that. She could have been totally lying, like she could have said, hey, Matthew McConaughey.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:40Guy Raz?

  Or Jack Nicholson. And they, they were just like, yeah, great, we'll, we'll run a story. Like, I'm amazed about that. I mean, because, and Matthew McConaughey probably doesn't read InStyle, but like, he could have been flipping through it at the grocery store if he goes and had been like, my Jack Black. First of all, what is Jack Black? Or he might have been like, how do they even know this?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:00Guy Raz?

  Right? They just ran with it.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Well, that was back in the day, back in 2000. That doesn't happen anymore.

• 46:06Guy Raz?

  Doesn't not happen anymore, yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  You get sued, yeah.

• 46:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  So the magazines, you know, they carefully do their diligence and all that. But back then, it was very, very common.

• 46:16Guy Raz?

  All right, so you have Matthew McConaughey, maybe, maybe not using the product, but it doesn't matter. You're getting attention and you, but you also knew through the disaster at Orlando that you had to probably start to look at retail shops.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:33Guy Raz?

  And, and so I guess the first big store was a Dallas department store, Stanley Korsak is what it was called.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 46:41Guy Raz?

  So tell me about, about that approach. How did you get in there?

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Well, they just have one location, but it's super. Special store, very upscale, great selection of merchandise. And the buyer granted me a meeting and I presented the line. At that point, it was still in lab samples because we didn't have production. He took everything home and he tried it and he called back very quickly. And he's like, I love your formulas. We'll take it. And we're like, oh, my gosh, like, that's great. And they immediately did well with it. They had good sell-through and were reordering. And so we started really to focus on the more traditional retailers, but to not abandon golf either, though.

• 47:24Guy Raz?

  And once you got into the stores, right? Still, the problem that you have was not, was far from being solved, which is the behavioral change. Because, you know, it reminds me, we did a story on the show about Guayaki Yerba Mate, right? And it's a big company now, but like, when they first started trying to get people to drink it, they're like, this tastes awful, it's bitter, what is this? And it took them like 20 years to, you know, to kind of introduce it to people. It's still growing, but you're in Stanley Korsak. And then what? Like, don't you have to like show people how to use it and get men to start using it?

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Well, they had really great salespeople that did a lot of consultation and personal service.

• 48:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  But what we, when our eyes were really opened was when we opened Nordstrom. We pitched the guy in Dallas, his name was Mark Lance. He said he liked the formulas, but he wasn't sure it would work. You know, because retailers are very protective of their valuable real estate on the floor and they got to make sure you're going to sell.

• 48:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  And so men's skincare was absolutely not proven and it was very risky for them. Finally, he's like, okay, we'll bring you into Stonebrier, we'll test it.

• 48:42Guy Raz?

  Stonebrier is a, where is that?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  It's in Frisco.

• 48:46Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  That's where the Dallas Cowboys headquarters are. It's like a booming, booming town. So they invited us to come to the grand opening of the store. It was the last minute invite. We could not get a babysitter. And so me, Jeff and our two little kids went to the opening. And I kind of manned our product and Jeff followed, chased the kids around the mall. So I didn't sell anything, but I did see this woman.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Making sale after sale. Her name was Elaine Psych. And she's the best salesperson I've ever laid eyes on.

• 49:26Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  And at the end of the night, I went up to her and I introduced myself and we started talking. And I'm like, we just started this line and would you be willing to work a few hours for us? And she, she agreed to give us five hours a week. And she sold like crazy. She would pull guys over, start to talk to them, put the product on their skin, let them feel it, let them smell it, and they would buy. So here's this, this model of how you educate guys. And they would come back and reorder.

• 50:02Guy Raz?

  What would she sell them? Shaving cream or?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Well, our strategy was guys understand shave product. You hook them with just a superior shave cream. And that was our hero product. It was called beard lube. It was very unique. It was translucent. It had a lot of natural oils in it, had some skincare ingredients in it. So it was a great shave and it left your skin feeling really soft and silky.

• 50:27Guy Raz?

  That was the gateway, the shaving cream?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:30Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  You would talk about the beard lube. They would say buy it. You'd give them a sample of the face buff, which is your cleanser and your scrub. Use this in the shower before you shave. It exfoliates, gets you a closer shave. And then you give them a sample of the post shave cooling gel. After you're done shaving, put this on to cool the skin and gently hydrate. And so I saw at that moment, the power of what a great salesperson can do at the store level, what we had to invest in.

• 51:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  You had to pull the guy in because he's not just walking up going, I'm looking for grooming products. He's walking by and you're literally chatting him up and pulling him from what he's doing and bringing him over to your area.

• 51:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  And that's what we had to do. It was very time consuming and labor intensive, but you had to do that. That's how you get the behavior change. Educating these guys one by one.

• 51:32Guy Raz?

  When we come back after the break, how Jack Black shows up at Cowboys Stadium and the Super Bowl. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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• 53:26Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2002, two years after launching Jack Black, and Curran, Jeff, and Emily are shifting their initial strategy from selling to men in golf shops to selling to men in department stores. And they're starting to get some traction, hitting $2 million in annual sales.

• 53:48Guy Raz?

  By the way, were your projections right? Is that what you had anticipated for 2002?

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Oh, from the original? No, we were way under. Way, way under. I mean, that business plan was bogus and off target from day one.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  We may have had, at the end of year two, $8 million in sales in our projections. It wasn't even close.

• 54:10Guy Raz?

  And that's because you overestimated initially how big the market was going to be at that point?

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and how much golf shops would sell.

• 54:20Guy Raz?

  So, let me ask about your relationship during this time. Because it's, you know, yes, you're growing and it looks good, but still, you know, you're not, I mean, bringing $2 million in a year, you guys were not making, you're not profitable. And I have to assume you guys had almost no salary at that point because you had to spend money on product. What was your relationship like? I mean, was it stressful being married, raising kids, and running the business? Like, did you guys, did you guys fight?

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yes, it was very, very stressful. And there was a lot of tension, a lot of pressure. We didn't pay ourselves for maybe four years, pay ourselves at all. And, you know, you're just, you're struggling to survive. And your family's all in on it, right?

• 55:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  So, we got through it, but you've got to know what you're getting into. I advise other couples that are thinking about starting a business. It's going to really strain your marriage because you could disagree at work and have a heated discussion. If it's not your husband, you come home and you don't have to see that person that you just had that big fight with. But when you're working with them, there, there they are. And you're still fighting when you get home from work. And then you're fighting when you're back on the job. And there's no escape.

• 55:42Guy Raz?

  Jeff, did you, I mean, it sounds like you really, Kern was the CEO, that you defer to her leadership? Or, or did you sometimes, I don't know, "medals" is maybe not the right word. Did you sometimes question her leadership?

• 55:55Speaker 02

  No, I never really questioned her, her leadership or Emily's. I mean, they were just, in my opinion, extremely talented and...

• 56:05Speaker 02

  I mean, I will say that my annual physical, my, my doctor, who I'd known for many years, asked me how things were going. I said, you know what? It's pretty tough. I said, it's, things at home are rough because, you know, we're, we're working together. We're trying to build this business. And he said, have you ever thought about, you know, going to therapy? Hmm. And I said, yeah, you know, I, I have. And he gave me the name of a therapist and I, Kern and I went to, you know, for an hour visit. And, you know, I thought it was pretty helpful. And she said, you know, your wife is really, really smart. And you need to

• 56:44Speaker 02

  stop arguing about the little things and save your ammunition for something that really matters. And I stopped that, that day, the next day, I just, I just said, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to keep arguing about this little stuff. And then a couple of years later, when we started, you know, really doing better and start paying ourselves more, I mean, that helped a lot. Those two things helped a lot.

• 57:10Guy Raz?

  I think you guys started to break even, or maybe even turn a slight profit in your maybe third or fourth year. Your sales were about $5 million that year. Did that ease the pressure a little bit?

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you could breathe a little easier, but I was still super conservative fiscally. Like,

• 57:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  we still didn't have a lot of money to spend. And so I was very tight fisted about what we spent our money on. And we had, we had a saying that we're fabulously frugal, try to make it positive. You know, we didn't have, we had really crappy offices, no trappings and flow coach, stayed in budget hotels. And we would not spend money unless we knew it was going to drive sales because we were not out of the woods yet.

• 58:03Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Well, and we were operating with a line of credit at that point that was expanding. You know, I think initially it was 250, then it was 500, then it became a million dollars. And that was within Five, six years of starting the business. And of course, there weren't any bankers that were going to give you that money without a personal guarantee. So we'd have to take our stock portfolio and personally guarantee that to have the line of credit.

• 58:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah. What about, what, I mean, of course, you're still small, even as you grew, you know, you're growing every year, which was impressive. I mean, by, you know, I think 2011, you hit $35 million in sales. So 11 years in, but still small compared to the overall cosmetics industry. Did that, in a sense, shield you from potential threats and competitors? Or did you already start to see the shark circling, saying, wait a minute, maybe they're on to something?

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It was just hyper competitive.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Immediately.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. You had everybody from the big companies to the little startups to everybody in between. Because in the industry, everybody's, you know, it's pretty quick to copy something that's working well. So there was a lot of competitors and it was even more brutal than the women's because the total size of the market was so much smaller, the space you were granted on the floor was smaller, but yet there were so many more people wanting to get a piece of it. And some of them could be ruthless. They'd try to steal your employees, steal your customers. You know, you'd have your space all set up and the next day you'd go into work and it was gone because your competitor moved it.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  So there was just a lot of battles on the store floors.

• 59:54Guy Raz?

  One of the things that you guys did, and I think it goes back to the, to the sort of the golf strategy, was you started to partner with NFL teams. Like you would put your product in locker rooms so players could use them. You partnered with the Dallas Cowboys. I mean, this is, you know, you're in Dallas, America's team, right? And did that move the needle? I mean, being in luxury suites at Cowboys stadium or being in the locker rooms at, you know, NFL locker rooms, did that really, does that really matter? Does that make a difference?

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Well, it was hard to quantify, but I do feel like it was a game changer for us. We first got into the NFL program through the Cowboys. The Joneses were building the new stadium and it was gonna be the absolute epitome of luxury stadiums. And Jerry Jones used Jack Black and we were invited to meet with them about putting our products in the luxury suites. And we would co-brand the products, so we'd change our labeling to include the Cowboys star. And then we would also, in return for providing the products, we negotiated advertising in the stadium and on their website.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  And also, we would do gifting to VIPs, which is a great way to sample.

• 1:01:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  And, you know, you're creating this relationship with the guy's favorite football team. And that's, that's a good, good combination for us and it's positive aura for our brand.

• 1:01:26Guy Raz?

  Tony Romo is using Jack Black. It's good enough for me.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Or like, the Cowboys like Jack Black. Wow, I'm gonna check that out.

• 1:01:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Um, so, the Super Bowl, I think it was in 2011, was at the Cowboys stadium. And all our products were in the suites. And all the other NFL team owners and executives, of course, came to the game. And they saw our products. And we started getting so many phone calls from the other teams. We wanna put your products in our suites. We want it to be co-branded, you know, with our Packers logo, with the Bears, whatever. And we reached so many men that way that we wouldn't have otherwise reached.

• 1:02:07Guy Raz?

  I mean, the growth really was organic, right? I mean, you just kind of cash flowed, grew.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:14Guy Raz?

  I mean, once you were in Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's and these big, big retailers, was it still a hustle? Did Jeff, did you still have to like? Call people up and try to open accounts? Or did it get significantly easier?

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  Well, the cold calling was obviously heavy for the first six or seven years. And then from that point forward, you know, I dealt with our independent sales reps who sold to gift stores, specialty shops, spas, men's clothing stores. I mean, it was a whole different category that no one else was going after either. We had, you know, at one point, maybe six or 700 independent retail type stores that were selling Jack Black. And I dealt with all the reps that were helping us open those types of accounts.

• 1:03:04Guy Raz?

  When did you feel, Corinne, that you were like, OK, I think we have crossed the threshold? Like, now, now we have done enough work where there's momentum in people understanding what these products are, how to use them?

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  I think it would be, you know, around 2011, 12. So 10, 12 years into it, we're with the NFL teams. We have that great sports program. Our brand awareness was growing. We were number one with almost all our retailers. We had 35% share in the luxury category and we were the dominant leader. But I never felt like I could rest because there was always somebody trying to take you out.

• 1:03:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  There are so many competitors. And so even to the point where we sold the company, every day I was still like fighting the good fight.

• 1:04:02Guy Raz?

  Let me ask you about that because you did, of course, 2018. 18 years in, you were acquired by Edgewell. And they're a pretty big personal care company. They paid you a significant amount of money for the brand. And I imagine 18 years in, you guys were exhausted. And so had you been looking for an out at that point?

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  Yes, we actually, at that point, started a process with investment bankers to pursue selling the company. Emily had two small, they were in junior high, high school.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  And she was ready to just spend time with her kids. We'd worked so hard. Jeff was ready. I was getting there. I was the last one to finally say, hey, you know, it's time to retire. For Jeff and I, everything we had was tied up in the company. And so we had little liquidity at that point. So we just felt like it was time and we had grown the business to a good point. And we had a great story to tell.

• 1:05:07Guy Raz?

  And did you ever think about, I'm sure you were approached by like private equity groups who are like, look, we'll buy a chunk of it. You can take money off the table and let's make this even bigger.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Right. They would go, you have two bites of the apple. We weren't interested in that, in that option. But we, we did talk to some private equity groups as part of the process.

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  Prior to the actual hiring of an investment banker, two years prior to that, we were approached by a very significant player in the category. They made us an unsolicited, non-binding offer. That was, you know, very nice offer. And we spent nine months with them, giving them every detail of our business. They knew that they were the only ones bidding for our business. We, you know, provided them with details on new products, on how we sold, on the sales and every store that we sold to. And two weeks prior to closing, they came into Dallas. We met at the Four Seasons Hotel. They probably had 40 people.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  I think we had five or six. And they said, you know, that offer we made you nine months ago, non-binding? Well, our board can't get to that number.

• 1:06:22Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  I mean, they, basically the offer that we made, we're not, that number's off the table. You know, we asked them, well, what, what do you have in mind? I mean, what, you know, the number's X. What's the new number? And they were, they just wouldn't give us a number. They just said, you're not going to be happy with it. And we were like, well, what is it? And then I asked them, I said, well, how much do you think you can grow our business by? We only think we can grow your business by 15 to 20%. I said, we can grow our business 15 to 20% without you.

• 1:06:53Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  And it ended. I mean, it basically just stopped that day.

• 1:06:57Guy Raz?

  And this is after you'd opened your entire data room to them.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  For nine months.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  For nine months.

• 1:07:01Guy Raz?

  And what year was this?

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  2015, 2016.

• 1:07:05Guy Raz?

  Wow. So they had, they had New Year's trade secrets.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  They had everything.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  They had our formulas, everything.

• 1:07:10Guy Raz?

  Oof.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we learned a very painful lesson.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  You need to have competition in your process.

• 1:07:18Guy Raz?

  That must have been quite devastating.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  It really was.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And we did not see it coming because they were just whining and dining and sweet talking and...

• 1:07:28Guy Raz?

  And it was non-binding, so they didn't have to pay a penalty or anything.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Zero. So we waited a couple of years before we hired a banker to, you know, do it the right way.

• 1:07:38Guy Raz?

  Do it all again, yeah. You reportedly, the Edgewell paid about $100 million for the brand. I don't know if that's accurate or not. That's been reported, but still amazing, an amazing exit for a brand that you started, you know, in 2000. I mean, once that happened, I think Jeff, you left, right? You sort of retired.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  I stayed for one year.

• 1:08:04Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  I agreed to stay on for a year to help with the transition.

• 1:08:08Guy Raz?

  Emily left right away, or she left pretty soon after, right?

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, she left and we closed in January and she left in December.

• 1:08:16Guy Raz?

  And you, Karen, you stayed for a while as an advisor, even up until like 2021, I think, right?

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was worried I would be bored because I've always been pretty much a workaholic. But when I did retire, and I kind of weaned myself from work because gradually reducing my hours that I was working after we sold the company. But I never had any girlfriends when I was working because it was just so all-consuming. You had your work and then your kids. So I never had any friends. And now I've got time to have some good girlfriends, which I'm enjoying. So it's been good.

• 1:08:53Guy Raz?

  I mean, when you guys think about this journey and everything that led up to it, how much of it do you attribute to your work and how much do you think has to do with getting lucky? I mean, I've heard some luck in there. I mean, I think the fact that you got laid off, Jeff, was a little lucky. I mean, I felt that at the time. But what do you think, Jeff? First to you.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  I believe in luck. I'm a lucky guy. I was lucky to have met Corinne. She changed my life. We were lucky to have Emily as our business partner. I think we were lucky to open some of the retailers that we opened. But also, you know, we worked extremely hard. You know, it seemed like we were always working. It just seemed like for 18 years there that we didn't have a lot of downtime, but we were lucky. I think we were very lucky.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  But if we hadn't been resilient and pivoted when we needed to and worked hard, then I think we wouldn't have capitalized on the luck. So you've got to have, I guess, all of it firing on all cylinders.

• 1:10:01Guy Raz?

  That's Corinne and Jeff Dandurand, co-founders of Jack Black. By the way, probably not a huge surprise here, but one of the company's most loyal customers is Jeff.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  I am not lying. I use probably 14 or 15 Jack Black products every day.

• 1:10:19Guy Raz?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  And when I take a shower, I use the body wash. I use the shampoo. I use the conditioner. I use the face buff and the shampoo.

• 1:10:27Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  I use aftershave.

• 1:10:30Guy Raz?

  Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's totally free. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Katherine Seifer. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Sam Paulson, Ramel Wood, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, Elaine Coats, John Isabella, Chris Messine, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.