From billion-dollar brand to blank slate: Bobbi Brown’s comeback Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/b375f27c7dc0f650 The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them. Creative planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together. Proactive tax efficiency, state strategy, investments all under one roof. Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale. Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more. Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too. Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. My husband came to me and he saidАрій, в агріантін, They would like you to sign a 25 year non-compete. I started counting on my fingers. Twenty five, I'm gonna be in my sixties. I'm not gonna wanna work. So who cares? As a young entrepreneur, Bobby Brown sold her then butting cosmetics company. and it grew into a billion dollar brand. And as it turned out twenty five years later when that non compete was finally over, she wasn't ready to retire. Not even close. Instead, Bobby dove headfirst into building a new beauty company. She quickly learned that things work differently. in the age of TikTok influencers. 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 You know, Bobby Brown clapped back. I didn't know what a clap pack was, but apparently. I clapped back. You gotta have incredible talent at every position. Huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is truly gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. So I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. We're gonna add a free bedroom apartment. Nutball ten years later, well that's just how you do it. We haven't made it just how you do it. This is masters of scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, Bobby Brown. She built her namesake company, Bobby Brown Cosmetics, into an icon in the world of beauty. But after a rocky split with her parent company, Bobby had to start over. In her sixties. Now she's back in startup mode with Jones Road Beauty. Bobby Brown, welcome to Masters of Scale. Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to talking to you. I'd like to start by going all the way back. Why beauty? 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. How do you get from that? Mom advice to actually launching your own brand. Well, I s 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 was is a major in teatrical makeup and a minor in photograфі. 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. Not everyone fortuitously meets a chemist. So how how did you put yourself in position to meet a chemist at that point in your career? I said yes to a job, you know, when you're a freelance makeup artist, you get Jobs for the day. So this was a job where I was taking a women's magazine, self magazine, makeup shopping to alternative places in New York. And one of the places was Kehl's pharmacy, and there was a chemist there. And like I asked questions, I talked to him. And I told him how unhappy I was with This is nineteen ninety. Could have even been eighty nine. 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 lipstick that were out there. Most lipstick were just greasy and smelled bad and Bad colors, you know, 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 make up in a natural way. And I showed him and told him what I wanted. I pulled out of my the three things I mixed together to get this color that I wanted for my lips. I never thought this was gonna be anything except it was gonna be a lipstick for me that I would love. So it was kind of a browny, 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'em together. So I explained all that to him. And we looked at a couple, you know, existing lipstick, 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 you know, 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 fifteen dollars. You'll take seven fifty, I'll take seven fifty, 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 gonna supply you. All those words I didn't know what they were at the time, you know, PR and marketing and analytics. And Then I realised Wow, people would love this, and then I said not everyone's gonna love this. Some people have darker lips, some people have lighter lips, some people have pinker lips. And we went back and forth and I added a red, a pink, and an orange. And a deep. And then I came up with this concept, I said This is a m line of lipstick. Like designed by a makeup artist, and I'm gonna teach women how they could mix and blend these colors to get almost any tone they wanted. And they would never have to, you know, buy another lipstick. And We had ten lipstick 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. Before we get to Bergdorf, you said they became very popular. And This is Pre internet. pre consumer internet. We have some sense in the twenty twenties of how something might become very popular very quickly. In the early nineteen nineties, how does this become very popular? 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 realize that's called PR. So she wrote about it. With An eight hundred number or my home number, I just don't remember. And we started getting orders. Literally people are like calling your house and and placing orders. There's no e commerce and you had no retail presence. So you show up in a beauty magazine and next thing you know, it's flying off the metaphorical shelves. You know, I'm not saying thousands, but hundreds, you know, hundreds. So we're like wow. When we got into Bergdorf, I think it was A year at least a year. After we were selling in the house. How did it evolve and how did you go from A set of products to an actual company. We had a completely scale up. And you know, 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, you know, what do you do? And she worked at a cosmetics manufacturer in Queens. I asked her for her card. And they replicated the lipsticks. Sounds like Glamour was a tipping point. Was Bergdorf another tipping point for you? It was huge. Bergdorf was huge. And it really did become an overnight sensation, these ten lipsticks. And Fogue wrote about it and All the cosmetics companies, the competitors were coming in and buying all ten of them, and the president of the store. Who you know 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 Niemann Marcus because Bergdorf's and Niemans were cousins. And after four years we were the number one line in Bergdorf and Niemand. At 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? Never. We never ever talked about selling the company. It would just I mean, first of all, we didn't take outside investments. My husband and I emptied out our then bank account, which I think was ten thousand dollars. Our partners put in the same we did. And we all of a sudden had twenty thousand dollars to start this company. And It's somehow becomes profitable. right away. We didn't do advertising, we didn't do any of that. Since the partner was from P and I was already a PR machine We just used PR. And what really put Bobby Brown on the map was I had written my first book. Bobby Brown Beauty. And I was on book tour. It was in Florida, and I was at Neiman Marcus and the in 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 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 Із there anything else you want to do? I said 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 fourteen years. Once a month for fourteen years. Bobby, will you tell us about how you first met Oprah and your first time on the show? Well I think I Probably was on Oprah. 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 back stage and we I don't remember a lot, but I remember that I had this big ugly green sweater on and I had this, you know, kinda messy makeup artist 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, you know, 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, you know, this fresh pea soup and They did and I brought it in a very nice bag and Oprah said it was the best gift she ever got, like fresh pea soup. I mean, when you can give Oprah the best gift she's ever gotten, I feel like we're done. That's it. We're done. How did you meet the lauders. How did that come to pass? Well, I got a phone call one day from the hairdresser Frederick Fekai that said Leonard Lauder would like to meet you. And getting a call like that, it's like Leonard Lauder, that's like royalty, you know, when you're in the the makeup business. And we had a dinner. And it was the most wonderful. warm, friendly, incredible evening, you know, that I had ever had. And he said, You guys are beating us in the stores. We were. Bobby was the number one Brand and Esty Lauder was number two. And he said I think we should buy you. Where was this dinner? At his apartment. On the roof. Him and his wife were the most incredibly charming Down to earth, but everywhere you looked there was, you know, du buffets and Picasso's and I just never experienced anything like that. But sitting on their deck eating dinner It was like being, you know, with any of my family members or my friends. They were incredibly wonderful. And down to earth, and um 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. Вот if We partnered together and we could help you do all the things you don't like to do. Like HR, like distribution, like all of that. So You know, the price was right, he was right, and it probably took about Five or six months to get the deal done. I mean it's not that common that in a very first meeting I mean it's like Proposing. to get married on a first date, right? What do you think He knew that gave him confidence that this was the right move for Estee Lauder at that time. Well, I think he looked at this new Makeup artist. doing this and it reminded him of his mother. And we did have a follow up dinner and meetings. You know, 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 twenty five year non compete. I started counting on my fingers. Twenty five. I'm gonna be in my sixties. I'm not gonna want to work. So who cares? Still ahead why Bobby Brown built a billion dollar brand and then left it behind. To start again. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Khalyubi. And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Hey, listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely. From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and more. On our YouTube channel. How did things change for you when you went from being effectively a solopreneur? Global Corporation. In the beginning in the early years, it was magic. I mien I had such support, you know, 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 can we do. And it was amazing, and I had the resources from the S D Lauder Labs. All the way down to you know the head of PR marketing. So for many, many, many of the years it was great until it wasn't. What happened that it wasn't when it wasn't? It was one awful year and, you know, a really Tough year before that. You know, there was new sheriffs in town. Лenд was no longer the CEO. There was someone that came in from another Corporation. that had his way of doing things and You know, it just started to feel different. Things were starting to shift. But I've always been such a naive person, I thought, oh well, who cares? I could still do what I have to do. And I guess I couldn't. Can you just break down what you're 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? have a company become more process driven or sclerotic. What changed in your experience of it? very process oriented and v 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, like 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. And they were being hired not at the lauder level, but at the Bobby Brown level. At the Bobby Brown level, yeah. 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 gonna work on the brand that has my name on it? 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. And you know, one person particularly that had a was hired for a very big job. I had all these long term Bobby Brown. Heads of countries. Call me up and saying this is a disaster. This is gonna 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. The Bobby Brown brand Inside Lauder is how big at this point? You know, when I left it was a billion dollars. Okay. So thick. No. No. 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 did you do really well and Where would you do it differently if you were doing it all over again? 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 To 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. Um now I do. And Leonard stuck to it, and so did all the people he hired. And then things started to change. You know, there's a certain amount of Pompousness. In corporations, you know, especially I find this I apologize to say this to you in men. Like I 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. You know, we know different things, and when you put the different things together, it's magical. You don't know what women want. I do. I mean 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? Longer or just even better. I mean the one thing about Lenard was I don't care how bad things were, and there was a lot of things, you know, that happened that were pretty bad and pretty tough. And I knew that I can 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 you know, I'm just She's hysterical. She's you know, a woman. She's hysterical. He 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 like it was a conversation. And that's because of who he was. And then there was the next CEO was a guy named Fred Langhammer. He was the same way. So I don't need to even like dwell on this and talk about it because You know, the only reason I'm like reliving all these things is because of my memoir, where I write, you know, for the first time I write it all down. The new memoir is called Still Bobby, and we've put a link in our show notes. 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 you know, there's nothing like Time. And a success of another company to kinda get you over those emotions. Yeah. Baby the decision to leave you referenced The twenty five year non compete that you'd signed when you sold the company. It hadn't been twenty five years when you decided to leave. You still had Four and a half years left. You don't strike me as someone who's gonna 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 for four and a half years? Well, I didn't decide to leave. I was called into the office and thinking that I was going to have finally some candidates'cause we were we went to search to help me. 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 gonna do. And I'm not someone I don't have girls, you know, waiting for me at the tennis courts or a book group or You know, my kids were out of the house. Like I had no idea what I was gonna do. So what you do? Well, I called my husband. And he came into the city and he basically said to me, um, 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've I just bought this building. He's a developer. And he said I l 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 Lorden 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 Lorden Taylor. So I did that. And then master class called and asked me to do the first makeup master class, and I'm like Alright. 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 make up doesn't have to be All that. Right, 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,'cause that was the trend at the time. What was different about starting a company in twenty twenty As opposed to nineteen ninety. When I started the second company, I had all this years of knowledge and understanding how things work and what makes sense. But I also knew the most important thing was I knew what not to do, what was a waste of time, money, and energy. And 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 like invigorated again. I had instead of like All these people and all these layers saying oh I don't know no ha yeah 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, you know, if you interviewed them, they would say You know, 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. And you launched Jones Road in October of twenty twenty. And October twenty twenty is notable in my mind on this front for two reasons. One, we're in covet. Mm-hmm. Two We are a few weeks away from one of the most consequential presidential elections in American history. One week. One week away. As someone with a marketing background, if you'd called me and said What do you think? I might have said, Bobby, I don't know. I mean, maybe you want to wait at least a few weeks here. Why did you launch in October of twenty twenty under those circumstances? Why was because that was the day my non compete 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'cause I could. Bobby launched her new company, Jones Road Beauty, in a much different environment. One where social media influenc a lot more than fancy department stores. So she lean into this new world. 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 Bobby, you know, I don't I'm not on TikTok, I'm new, but what would you want? And we got bombarded, you know, with questions and I was answering them and they started to go viral, whatever number that meant, it did. And then Our business quadruple, like it did really well. But then a year later we launch 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. And she I mean you know, she had like twenty 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 v 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, you know, Tootsie and the cover of, you know, all the magazines. But that really blew it up and I learned a new term because everyone that watched it said You know, Bobby Brown clapped back. I didn't know what a clap back was, but apparently I clapped back. Well, you clap back, but you didn't do it with cruelty or vindictiveness. It was authentic to who you are. So it it felt more like an authenticity moment than a clap back moment to me. And Authenticity is such an overused word in this world, and yet for a reason, right? I mean, you were true to yourself in doing this. 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 kind of like nodded his head yes. I got up and I walked over and I said, Meredith Hi. I'm Bobby Brown. And she looked at me, she goes, Oh my God, my mother loves your Jones Road. Not a word about like that moment, but you know. Yeah. Uh Bobby, 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. So my son was a strength and conditioning coach that took these mastermind courses that became this like brilliant kid, you know, in growth and digital advertising. So he started working Just you know, freelance for the company and everything he did made a huge difference. And little by little he kind of grew in the company, he eventually became the CMO. And now he is 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 nother 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 like two of our really close friends who Are very big in business. How many people at the company right now? I think there is like in our office in the forties, between forty and fifty, depending. And you know, we now have Ten or twelve freestanding stores. I don't know how to say it. Industry sources, but anyways. Last year I think we did one sixty. Hundred and sixty million with forty ish employees outside of your retail stores. Right. I mean, those are pretty extraordinary numbers for a CPG company, certainly one in beauty. How are you able to Do that. I don't know. I only do what I do and I don't know how they do it. And you know, I constantly thank them and I constantly you know, say how come we can't do this better? You know, 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. You know, but it's like okay. To me the most important thing building a brand Is that we make a profit. And that that we continue to inspire and to feed the people that are buying the products. And they wanna rebuy it and they wanna tell their friends about it. One of the things that you talk about in the book is your relationship with Leonard Lauder, who unfortunately passed in June of twenty-five. 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 in the masters of scale community to know. Well, certainly being a human. Right, like 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 You know, it's not just all Black and white. There's so many things involved, but but really being a mensch, you know, you could be tough as nails, you could be smarter than anyone. But just be a really nice kind person and care about people. Mm. Will you tell us about the last conversation you had with him? When I left the company, Leonard was pretty much out of the picture anyways, but I you know, I didn't talk to him. It was a tough time for me emotionally. And then years pass and when I read about or heard that he turned ninety, 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, you know, pretty short Note. And he called immediately and he said, Can I see you? And I went up to see him. And you know, 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 promise to 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. A powerful and profound place to wrap the conversation. Thank you so much, Bobby. My pleasure. Appreciate you. Thank you. Bobi Brown's story is full of hard one 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 re-invention. It's impressive how she's leveraging all of those lessons now as she builds Joan's Road Beauty. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our senior producer is Trisha Bobida. Associate producer is Masha Makatanina. Senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern. Mixing and Mastering by Aaron Bastanelli and Brian Pew. Original music by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Letal Molad. 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