From billion-dollar brand to blank slate

Note: Transcripts are automatically generated from episode audio, and are not fully corrected for spelling, grammar, and formatting.

BOBBI BROWN: My husband, he came to me and he said, “All right, we’ve agreed on everything except they would like you to sign a 25-year noncompete.” I started counting on my fingers. “25? I’m going to be in my 60s. I’m not going to work. So who cares?”

JEFF BERMAN: As a young entrepreneur, Bobbi Brown sold her then budding cosmetics company, and it grew into a billion dollar brand. And as it turned out, 25 years later, when that noncompete was finally over, she wasn’t ready to retire. Not even close. Instead, Bobbi dove headfirst into building a new beauty company. She quickly learned that things work differently in the age of TikTok influencers.

BROWN: I said, “I’m a makeup artist. I love to learn new things.” And I dug my hands in the foundation, and I put them on my face, and I just started cracking up. And that went viral. And I learned a new term because everyone that watched it said, “Bobbi Brown clap back.” I didn’t know what a clap back was but apparently, I clapped back.

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BERMAN: I’m Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show: Bobbi Brown. She built her namesake company, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, into an icon in the world of beauty. But after a rocky split with her parent company, Bobbi had to start over in her 60s. Now, she’s back in start-up mode with Jones Road Beauty.

Bobbi Brown, welcome to Masters of Scale.

BROWN: Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to talking to you.

Copy LinkBobbi Brown’s makeup origin story

BERMAN: I’d like to start by going all the way back. Why beauty?

BROWN: I wasn’t very good at accounting and honestly, my mother was the one that just said, “What’s your passion? What could you do if today was your birthday?” And I said, “I’d love to go play with makeup at the department store.” She said, “Why don’t you make that your life’s work?” And I said, “That’s a great idea.”

BERMAN: How do you get from that mom advice to actually launching your own brand?

BROWN: Well, I went to college. My third college was at Emerson College in Boston, and I went there because they let me design my own major, which is a major in theatrical makeup and a minor in photography.

I moved to New York and started cold calling people that I found in the Yellow Pages and built a portfolio and asked a lot of questions. I’ve always been incredibly curious, and I’ve also been not afraid to ask people to please explain it to me. How do you do this? How does this work? So I started as a freelance makeup artist in New York, and I did that for about seven years until I fortuitously met a chemist and created a lipstick.

BERMAN: Not everyone fortuitously meets a chemist. So how did you put yourself in position to meet a chemist at that point in your career?

BROWN: I said yes to a job. When you’re a freelance makeup artist, you get jobs for the day. So this was a job where I was taking a woman’s magazine, SELF magazine, makeup shopping to alternative places in New York, and one of the places was Kiehl’s Pharmacy, and there was a chemist there, and I asked questions. I talked to him, and I told him how unhappy I was with traditional lipsticks, and I used to always fix them, and he said, “Oh, I could probably make one for you.” And so that’s how I made my first lipstick.

BERMAN: Why were you unhappy with the traditional lipsticks at that time and what year is this? Will you just situate us?

BROWN: This is 1990. Could have even been ’89. I was pregnant with my first baby. I was living in the suburbs of New Jersey, even though I worked in New York, and that was a thing that didn’t happen back then. People just didn’t work in the New York fashion and go home to New Jersey, but I did.

And why I didn’t like the lipsticks that were out there? Most lipsticks were just greasy and smelled bad and bad colors. As a makeup artist, I was always mixing my own to make them more palatable to what I liked, and I always liked a natural look. I was just prone to do makeup in a natural way.

And I showed him and told him what I wanted. I pulled out of my kit, because I was working that day, the three things I mixed together to get this color that I wanted for my lips. I never thought this was going to be anything except it was going to be a lipstick for me that I would love.

It was a brownie, plummy tone. Didn’t have any smell at all. I wanted it creamy, not greasy. I didn’t want it dry, and I wanted it dense so that when I put it on my bottom lip, I could smack them together. So I explained all that to him.

We looked at a couple existing lipsticks, and then he said, “All right, give me your address.” And he started sending me things, and then I would call him and say, “Yes, but this…” or “Why don’t you do that one and that one?” So I gave him direction how I wanted it. So he sent it to me and I’m like, “Wow, this is exactly what I’m looking for.” And he said, “Well…” I said, “I bet we could sell this.”

And he said, “We’ll sell them for $15. You’ll take 7.50. I’ll take 7.50. We’ll split it.”

So basically, what he was saying was, “Okay, you have to do the marketing, the PR, the shipping, analytics, I’m just going to supply you.” All those words, I didn’t know what they were at the time, PR and marketing and analytics.

And then I realized, “Wow, people would love this.” And then I said, “Not everyone’s going to love this.” Some people have darker lips, some people have lighter lips, some people have pinker. And we went back and forth, and I added a red, a pink, and an orange. And then I came up with this concept. I said, “This is a line of lipstick designed by a makeup artist, and I’m going to teach women how they could mix and blend these colors to get almost any tone they wanted, and they would never have to buy another lipstick.”

We had 10 lipsticks that we started selling out of my house where my husband would run to the post office and mail them, and they became very popular. My sister-in-law eventually had to come and do the books, she was a teacher, and when she was done with school, she came over and did the books. My husband was in law school and running to the post office, and we had a little business.

Until one day, I went to someone’s house, and I thanked her for inviting me. I didn’t know her, and she said, “I’m a big fan of yours.” I’m like, “Oh, you know me?” I couldn’t believe it. And I said, “What do you do?” And she said, “I’m a cosmetics buyer at Bergdorf Goodman.”

BERMAN: Before we get to Bergdorf, you said they became very popular and this is pre-internet, pre-consumer internet.

BROWN: Yes.

BERMAN: We have some sense in the 2020s of how something might become very popular very quickly. In the early 1990s, how does this become very popular?

BROWN: I was still a working makeup artist, and I would be talking to all the people there, and I would start selling them, to the models, and then their friends would start calling.

And before we went into Bergdorf Goodman, I was at lunch with a friend of mine who was a beauty editor at Glamour Magazine. We’re chatting, how’s it going, what are you doing, and I said, “Oh, I’m working on this thing.” Now, we call it a side hustle. It was a thing. And she said, “That sounds so interesting. Can I write about it?” And I remember saying, “Why would you want to write about this?” Now I realized that’s called PR.

So she wrote about it with an 800 number, my home number, I just don’t remember and we started getting orders.

BERMAN: Literally, people are calling your house and placing orders –

BROWN: Yes.

BERMAN: There’s no e-commerce.

BROWN: No.

BERMAN: And you had no retail presence?

BROWN: No.

BERMAN: So you show up in a beauty magazine and next thing you know, it’s flying off the metaphorical shelves?

BROWN: I’m not saying thousands but hundreds.

BERMAN: Yeah.

BROWN: Hundreds. So we’re like, “Wow.”

When we got into Bergdorf, I think it was at least a year after we were selling in the house.

Copy LinkScaling Bobbi Brown Cosmetics from a side hustle

BERMAN: How did it evolve, and how did you go from a set of products to an actual company?

BROWN: We had to completely scale up. And we had these new friends that the wife worked in PR and the husband worked in the cosmetics business, so we asked them to become partners. And then literally, I was in an elevator and there’s a girl in the elevator and I said hi to her, and in two seconds, “What do you do?” And she worked at a cosmetics manufacturer in Queens. I asked her for her card, and they replicated the lipsticks.

BERMAN: It sounds like glamour was a tipping point. Was Bergdorf another tipping point for you?

BROWN: It was huge. Bergdorf was huge. And it really did become an overnight sensation, these 10 lipsticks, and Vogue wrote about it, and all the cosmetics companies, the competitors were coming in and buying all 10 of them, and the president of the store, who I remained friends with for years, used to just come in and scratch his head and say, “Okay, we need more. What’s next? We need more.” I’m like, “I guess I could do a lip pencil.”

So we added a lip pencil and then one by one we added other products, and we grew the business in Bergdorf. Eventually, we launched in Neiman Marcus because Bergdorf’s and Neiman’s were cousins, and after four years, we were the number one line in Bergdorf and Neiman’s.

BERMAN: What point does the question come on the table of, are we going to grow this ourselves or are we going to sell the company?

BROWN: Never. We never, ever talked about selling the company. First of all, we didn’t take outside investments. My husband and I emptied out our then bank account, which I think was $10,000. Our partners put in the same we did and we, all of a sudden, had $20,000 to start this company, and it somehow becomes profitable right away. We didn’t do advertising. We didn’t do any of that. Since the partner was from PR and I was already a PR machine, we just used PR.

And what really put Bobbi Brown on the map was I had written my first book, Bobbi Brown Beauty, and I was on a book tour. It was in Florida, and I was at Neiman Marcus and it was the in-circle ladies. So they’re these very fancy ladies. At the end of the talk, I said, “Are there any questions?” And there was a very little old lady sitting in the back with red hair, and I went over to her, answered her question, and she grabbed my arm and I don’t know why, but she said, “Are you Jewish?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I am. Why?” And she said, “Because I’m so proud of you. As a Jewish girl, you’ve done so much. It’s incredible.” I said, “Thank you.” She said, “I’ve seen you on the Today Show.” I had been on once.

And she said, “Is there anything else you want to do?” I said, “I’d like to be a regular on the Today Show.” Why I said that? I don’t know. She said, “Honey, Jeff Zucker is my grandson.” He was the executive producer of the Today Show, and that’s how I got on. And I stayed on for 14 years, once a month for 14 years.

Copy LinkAppearing on Oprah

BERMAN: Bobbi, will you tell us about how you first met Oprah and your first time on the show?

BROWN: Well, I think I probably was on Oprah a dozen times. And the first time I was on Oprah, it wasn’t a national show yet, it was just regional in Chicago, and I got a phone call. I’d never heard of her or the show, but I’m from Chicago, so I flew in to see my family and be on the show.

And I’ll never forget, she came backstage, and we talked, and I don’t remember a lot, but I remember that I had this big ugly green sweater on, and I had this messy makeup artist’s hair, and I went to go change my clothes. She goes, “Don’t change your clothes. You’re perfect as you are.” And I listened to her and I went on and I look at those pictures now, I’m like, “Oh my God. Oprah.” I think I had a perm at the time, whatever. So that was a great Oprah moment.

But the other thing I remembered the other day is one of the times I went to see her, I heard that she loved the pea soup from the Four Seasons in New York. So I called up the Four Seasons and I said, “Could your chef put it in the freezer, this fresh pea soup?” They did and I brought it in a very nice bag, and Oprah said it was the best gift she ever got. Fresh pea soup.

BERMAN: When you can give Oprah the best gift she’s ever gotten, I feel like we’re done. That’s it.

BROWN: We’re done.

Copy LinkNavigating the acquisition with Estée Lauder

BERMAN: How did you meet the Lauders? How did that come to pass?

BROWN: Well, I got a phone call one day from the hairdresser, Frédéric Fekkai, that said, “Leonard Lauder would like to meet you.”

Getting a call like that… Leonard Lauder, that’s like royalty when you’re in the makeup business.
We had dinner and it was the most wonderful, warm, friendly, incredible evening that I had ever had. And he said, “You guys are beating us in the store,” as we were. Bobbi was the number one brand and Estée Lauder was number two, and he said, “I think we should buy you.”

BERMAN: Where was this dinner?

BROWN: At his apartment, on the roof.

Him and his wife were the most incredibly charming, down to earth but everywhere you looked, there was Dubuffets and Picassos and I just never experienced anything like that.

But sitting on their deck, eating dinner, it was like being with any of my family members or my friends. They were incredibly wonderful and down to earth. And I fell in love with him.

And he said to me, he said this at dinner, he said, “I know what you’re good at and what you love, and I know what you don’t love.” He says, “I know you want to be a really good mother and wife, but I also know that you’re the most incredibly creative person. What if we partnered together, and we could help you do all the things you don’t like to do? HR, distribution, all of that.”

So the price was right. He was right. And it probably took about five or six months to get the deal done.

BERMAN: It’s not that common that in a very first meeting – it’s like proposing to get married on a first date. What do you think he knew that gave him confidence that this was the right move for Estée Lauder at that time?

BROWN: Well, I think he looked at this new makeup artist doing this, and it reminded him of his mother.

We did have a follow-up dinner and meetings, and I’m lucky, my husband who was in law school and is a businessman, he just dealt with the deal. He came to me, and he said, “All right. We’ve agreed on everything except they would like you to sign a 25 year noncompete.” I started counting on my fingers, “Twenty-five? I’m going to be in my sixties. I’m not going to work. So who cares?”

BERMAN: Still ahead, why Bobbi Brown built a billion dollar brand and then left it behind to start again.

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Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and more on our YouTube channel.

Copy LinkInside Bobbi Brown’s challenges at Estée Lauder

How did things change for you when you went from being effectively a solopreneur to being part of a pretty big global corporation?

BROWN: In the beginning, in the early years, it was magic. I had such support. When I had an issue with anything, I would just ring up Leonard, and he would just talk me through it and tell me good idea, bad idea, how we can help, what could we do, and it was amazing. And I had the resources from the Estée Lauder labs all the way down to the head of PR marketing. So for many, many, many of the years, it was great until it wasn’t.

BERMAN: What happened that it wasn’t when it wasn’t?

BROWN: It was one awful year and a really tough year before that. There were new sheriffs in town. Leonard was no longer the CEO. There was someone that came in from another corporation that had his way of doing things, and it just started to feel different. Things were starting to shift. But I’ve always been such a naïve person. I thought, “Oh, well, who cares? I could still do what I have to do.” And I guess I couldn’t.

BERMAN: Can you just break down what you were experiencing where you didn’t feel the support? Was it, you couldn’t get the right person on the phone? Was it, they were just saying no to your ideas? Had the company become more process-driven or sclerotic? What changed in your experience of it?

BROWN: Very process-oriented. And a lot of people coming in that were consultants that were not consultants that I signed up for, that was a lot of time and energy suck. I used to interview every single person in the beginning. Every single person. And then big people were being hired, the head of international, the head of this, and it’d be like, “Excuse me. This is not the right person. This person doesn’t understand what this business is.” And that started happening more and more.

BERMAN: And they were being hired not at the Lauder level but at the Bobbi Brown level?

BROWN: At the Bobbi Brown level. Yeah.

BERMAN: And presumably, you’re hardly a shrinking violet, I assume that there were attempts at conversations. What are they saying to you when you’re saying, “It’s not unreasonable for me to interview the people who are going to work on the brand that has my name on it?”

BROWN: No. They would say things like, “This is just what it is.” “This is the best person for the job.” “This is the best person for the job.” “They’ve had success over there.”

One person particularly that was hired for a very big job, I had all these long-term Bobbi Brown heads of countries call me up and saying, “This is a disaster. This is going to ruin the company. He has no idea what this brand is. He’s messed up everything else.” And you know what? I couldn’t get anyone to listen to me.

BERMAN: You’d been there 20 years. The Bobbi Brown brand inside Lauder is how big at this point?

BROWN: When I left, it was a billion dollars.

BERMAN: Okay, so…

BROWN: Yeah. Big.

BERMAN: Not a small business.

BROWN: No. No.

BERMAN: When you look back on it, and particularly for entrepreneurs who do sell their company to a big corporation, what do you think you did right, what’d you do really well, and where would you do it differently if you were doing it all over again?

BROWN: Well, I think what I did really well is, I was a sponge and I was really open to what they had to teach, and I took what they were teaching and did it my way. I had the autonomy, which by the way was a word that I learned when we signed the contract, because I had complete autonomy in my contract. I didn’t even know what it meant. Now, I do. And Leonard stuck to it, and so did all the people he hired.

And then things started to change. There’s a certain amount of pompousness in corporations, especially I find this, I apologize to say this to you, in men. Just men in suits. It’s like, “Are you kidding me? Just because I don’t speak the language you speak, you don’t know more than I do. We know different things. And when you put the different things together, it’s magical. You don’t know what women want. I do.”

BERMAN: It feels like founder and CEO of acquiring company alignment is a huge part of this. Is it your instinct that if Leonard had been there longer, your run there might have gone longer as well?

BROWN: Longer or just even better.

The one thing about Leonard was I did’t care how bad things were, and there were a lot of things that happened that were pretty bad and pretty tough, and I knew that I could always go to Leonard’s office anytime I needed him to shut the door and discuss it with him. He would never look down to me like, “Oh, she’s hysterical. She’s a woman. She’s hysterical.” We would talk about it and sometimes, he would be tough and say, “No, this is the way we have to do it.” And I’d say, “Okay, but what if we then do this?” It was a conversation. And that’s because of who he was. And then the next CEO was a guy named Fred Langhammer. He was the same way.

I don’t need to even dwell on this and talk about it because the only reason I’m reliving all these things is because of my memoir where, for the first time, I write it all down.

BERMAN: The new memoir is called Still Bobbi, and we’ve put a link in our show notes.

BROWN: But I am so… Not tortured. I’m not angry, I’m not hurt. I’m not any of those things anymore. I was in the beginning. But there’s nothing like time and a success of another company to get you over those emotions.

Copy LinkExiting Estée Lauder and finding new ventures

BERMAN: Yeah. Bobbi, the decision to leave, you referenced the 25-year noncompete that you’d signed when you sold the company. It hadn’t been 25 years when you decided to leave. You still had…

BROWN: Four and a half years left.

BERMAN: Not that anyone’s counting.

You don’t strike me as someone who’s going to be super happy sitting on a beach with a drink in your hand not doing anything. How did you square the idea of leaving and having to sit on a metaphorical beach at least when it came to beauty for four and a half years?

BROWN: Well, I didn’t decide to leave. I was called into the office and thinking that I was going to have, finally, some candidates, because we went to search to help me turn around this company and fix the company and all of that, and instead, I walked into the head of legal who canceled my work contract, and I said, “You’re firing me?” She goes, “No. We’re not firing you. We have a new position for you.”

My new position was to be the face of the brand but get out of the day to day. Well, I’m sorry. I know you bought this brand, but it’s my brand. You’re firing me so I was not about to accept that position.

And I had no idea what I was going to do. And I’m not someone… I don’t have girls waiting for me at the tennis courts or a book group. My kids were out of the house. I had no idea what I was going to do.

BERMAN: So what’d you do?

BROWN: Well, I called my husband and he came into the city and he basically said to me, “I’m so glad that you finally left because I’ve been waiting a long time to get a little bit of you even.” And he said, “I just bought this building.” He’s a developer. And he said, “I’ll either turn it into condos, or what if we turn it into a hotel?” And I was like, “Huh.” Never once said, “Let’s develop a hotel.” But that’s what we did. So I had that.

I called a friend of mine, I started making lunch plans, and he happened to own Lord & Taylor, and he said, “I’m so glad you’re free. I’d love you to work with us. Why don’t we do these in shops at Lord & Taylor?” So I did that. And then MasterClass called and asked me to do the first makeup MasterClass, and I’m like, “All right.”

And I started just thinking about what I would do. And it just hit me. I wasn’t done. I had more things to teach, and the world had changed. I had changed since I left the company, and I wanted to teach women how beauty and makeup doesn’t have to be all that. You could be beautiful with less, you could be beautiful in a natural way, and I wanted to know if it was possible to create great products with clean formulas because that was the trend at the time.

BERMAN: What was different about starting a company in 2020 as opposed to 1990?

BROWN: When I started the second company, I had all these years of knowledge and understanding how things work and what makes sense, but the most important thing was I knew what not to do, what was a waste of time, money, and energy. Yes, I didn’t have all the layers to help me do what I wanted to do, but I had a person who was like-minded and scrappy like I was, and we just did it. So I was invigorated again. Instead of all these people and all these layers saying, “Oh, I don’t know,” “No,” whatever, I just got… Everyone’s like, “Oh my God, that’s great. Let’s do this, let’s do this.”

And so the excitement is contagious when you’re working with people that are as excited as you are, and I’m sure if you interviewed them, they would say working with me with all the ideas and enthusiasm, it was just a really fun time. And now it’s five years, by the way.

Copy LinkBuilding and scaling Jones Road in the era of social media

BERMAN: You launched Jones Road in October of 2020, and October 2020 is notable in my mind on this front for two reasons. One, we’re in COVID. Two, we are a few weeks away from one of the most consequential presidential elections in American history.

BROWN: One week.

BERMAN: One week away.

BROWN: It was one week away.

BERMAN: As someone with a marketing background, if you’d called me and said, “What do you think?” I might’ve said, “Bobbi, I don’t know. Maybe you want to wait at least a few weeks here.” Why did you launch in October of 2020 under those circumstances?

BROWN: Because it was the day my noncompete was up, and I have worn a chain with an ampersand charm with the date of my noncompete because it doesn’t feel good to not have my freedom, and I didn’t have my freedom for so long. And finally, I had my freedom so I could. That’s the only reason I did is because I could.

BERMAN: Bobbi launched her new company, Jones Road Beauty, in a much different environment, one where social media influencers might matter a lot more than fancy department stores. So she leaned into this new world.

BROWN: We had two explosions on TikTok. My son, who was then the head of marketing, took the phone in front of my face, he said, “All right, mom, talk to the audience.” I’m like, “Hi, guys, it’s Bobbi. I’m not on TikTok. I’m new, but what would you want to hear from me?” And we got bombarded with questions, and I was answering them, and they started to go viral, whatever number that meant. It did. And then our business quadrupled. It did really well.

But then a year later, we launched this foundation, which I named What The Foundation, I think it’s our top-selling product right now. But it is in a jar, and it is a foundation that when you put it on correctly, just gives you this little glow and you look so natural, your skin has never looked better.

And there was this influencer on TikTok that decided it was an awful product, and she used it in bucketfuls on her hands and put it all over her face, and it was smearing and it was awful. And she basically said, “This is the worst thing. This is terrible.” She had 20 million followers, and everyone’s like, “Oh, it looks terrible. I’ll never buy it.”

And I had to go back into the studio with my son, and I said, “Okay, guys. This is not how you use it. Let me show you how to use it.” And at the very end of my shooting these educational videos, I was giddy at that point. And I said, “Okay, I have one more.” And I said, “I’m a makeup artist. I love to learn new things.” And I dug my hands in the foundation and I put them on my face, and I just started cracking up. And that went viral. That was like… I felt like I was on Tootsie and the cover of all the magazines, but that really blew it up. And I learned a new term because everyone that watched it said, “Bobbi Brown clapback.” I didn’t know what a clapback was, but apparently I clapbacked.

BERMAN: Well, you clapbacked, but you didn’t do it with cruelty or vindictiveness. It was authentic to who you are. So it felt more like an authenticity moment than a clapback moment to me? And authenticity is such an overused word in this world and yet for a reason. You were true to yourself in doing this.

BROWN: Right. And funnily, last year, my husband and I were in London. We were at a friend’s restaurant, and he said, “I sat you over here because there’s some TikTok star over there.” And I look up and it’s the girl, and I look at my husband, he looks at me and he nodded his head yes. I got up and I walked over and I said, “Meredith. Hi, I’m Bobbi Brown.” And she looked at me, she goes, “Oh my God. My mother loves your Jones Road.” Not a word about that moment, but…

BERMAN: Yeah. Bobbi, you referenced your son was running marketing at the time. Jones Road feels a little bit like a family affair. Can you share a little bit about how you’ve built the team there both with family and keeping it as lean as you’re keeping it?

BROWN: So my son was a strength and conditioning coach that took these Mastermind courses that became this brilliant kid in growth and digital advertising. So he started working just freelance for the company, and everything he did made a huge difference. And little by little, he grew in the company. He eventually became the CMO, and now he’s the CEO. So he’s running the company. I don’t know if I work for him or he works for me. That’s a whole another story. And his wife is our head of brand. My husband is the chairman of the board. We only have two other board members and they are two of our really close friends who are very big in business.

BERMAN: How many people are at the company right now? 

BROWN: I think there is, in our office, in the 40s, between 40 and 50 depending, and we now have 10 or 12 freestanding stores.

BERMAN: Top line revenue is?

BROWN: I don’t know how to say it. Industry sources. But anyways. Last year, I think we did 160?

BERMAN: 160 million with 40ish employees outside of your retail stores?

BROWN: Right.

BERMAN: Those are pretty extraordinary numbers for a CPG company, certainly one in beauty. How are you able to do that?

BROWN: I don’t know. I only do what I do, and I don’t know how they do it. And I constantly thank them and I constantly say, “How come we can’t do this better?” It’s like it’s working and it’s growing. I don’t need it to grow as fast as my son would like it to grow. He is… I don’t know who raised this kid but it’s like, “Okay.”

To me, the most important thing building a brand is that we make a profit and that we continue to inspire and to feed the people that are buying the products, and they want to rebuy it, and they want to tell their friends about it.

Copy LinkLessons from Leonard Lauder

BERMAN: One of the things that you talk about in the book is your relationship with Leonard Lauder, who unfortunately passed in June of ’25. Reflecting on that relationship, him as a mentor, what’s something that you learned from him that would be valuable for the people building businesses and the Masters of Scale community to know?

BROWN: Well, certainly being a human. Dealing with business with humanity and caring about people, caring about the words that come out of their mouth, your mouth, being incredibly emotionally intelligent, and… It’s not just all black and white. There’s so many things involved, but really being a mensch. You could be tough as nails, you could be smarter than anyone, but just be a really nice, kind person and care about people.

BERMAN: Will you tell us about the last conversation you had with him?

BROWN: When I left the company, Leonard was pretty much out of the picture anyways, but I didn’t talk to him. It was a tough time for me emotionally. And then years passed and when I read about or heard that he turned 90, I said, “How do I not reach out to him and tell him thank you for everything and what he meant to me?” So I sent him this pretty short note and he called immediately and he said, “Can I see you?”

I went up to see him and an hour lunch turned into three and a half hours. And at the very end when I was getting ready to leave, he grabbed my arm and he said, “I just have to apologize to you.” And I said, “Leonard, for what?” He said, “I promised you that I would always take care of you and your brand.” And he said, “And I couldn’t do that.” And I said, “Leonard, honestly, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

BERMAN: A powerful and profound place to wrap the conversation. Thank you so much, Bobbi.

BROWN: My pleasure.

BERMAN: Appreciate you.

BROWN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Bobbi Brown’s story is full of hard won lessons about how to scale, what happens when your brand gets bought by a giant company, and why necessity sometimes really is the mother of reinvention. It’s impressive how she’s leveraging all of those lessons now as she builds Jones Road Beauty.

I’m Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening.