12 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2019
→ SELLING IT
Brown shooting an
Instagram video for
her new Walmart
line of supplements.W
hat do you do for a second act, when your first act literally changed an
industry? That was the question facing makeup powerhouse Bobbi Brown,
whose simple line of lipsticks blossomed into the billion-dollar company
Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. She left it in 2016 with no plans for what to do
next; all she knew was that she was done with corporate life. (The company
had been acquired decades earlier by Estée Lauder.) “It wasn’t freeing,” she
says. “It was like, Oh, shit; now what?” But she’s since found an answer—expanding
into new territories with a supplements line for Walmart (Evolution_18), an editorial
site ( justBOBBI), and a boutique hotel (The George), all of which launched this spring.
She also has a new podcast (Long Story Short) and a film and photo studio (18Label),
and more to come. But the second act isn’t really so different from the first act, she
says: At its heart, everything an entrepreneur does is just about doing.
Q&A