You made your name in a time
before the phrase personal
brand existed. Did you ever
think of yourself as a brand?
Not even a little bit. I didn’t
know what a brand was back
then. I was a makeup artist. I
just wanted to make something
that was better than what was
on the market, and that I got
really excited about.
I hear that a lot from famous
people—that they weren’t stra-
tegic about building themselves
up. It’s such a contrast to now,
where people consciously treat
themselves like brands.
A lot of them come to me for
advice, and the only advice I
have is: “OK, go home and just
do it. Put your head down, fig-
ure out what it takes, and just
do it. And if it doesn’t work,
then do it, but do it a little bit
differently.” Everyone wants to
talk about doing it and plan-
ning and strategizing, but peo-
ple are forgetting you actually
have to do it. I’m a doer.
Did anybody give you that
advice at your start?
No. The only advice I got at my
start was from someone who
said, “The world doesn’t need
another cosmetics company.
You don’t know what you’re
doing.” So I said, OK, and I just
kept doing what I was doing,
which was making a lipstick that
didn’t smell bad, that was actu-
ally the color of your lips, and
that wasn’t dry or greasy. I met
a chemist at a photo shoot and
told him what I wanted, and
he made it for me, and I said,
“Wow; people are going to love
this,” and he said, “All right. I’ll
make it, you sell it for $15—you
get $7.50, I get $7.50.” I said,
“Deal!” And that’s how I started.
“The world doesn’t need another
cosmetics company” sounds
dismissive, but I wonder if it’s
also good advice. Because the
world doesn’t need another
cosmetics company, any more
than it needs, say, another
beverage company. Which
means an entrepreneur really
needs to make the case
for what they’re creating.
Right. When times were quiet,
I thought, Well, to make some
extra cash, let me go into a salon
and do makeup for women. So I
worked with mothers and aunts
and sisters, and I would teach
them makeup, and they’d be
like, “Oh my God—I love this.
It’s so simple.” And as my brand
grew and my career grew, it just
was common sense. My brand
became the teaching brand.You’ve said that if you wrote
a business book, you’d call
it Duh. Do you feel like, at its
heart, business is actually
quite simple?Yes, and I find people waste
time, energy, and money on
things that don’t matter.So, I want you to walk into an
imaginary business right now
and tell people to stop doing
things. What should they stop?
Well, first of all, stop putting
your head down in your com-
puter. At least once a day, raise
your head, get some fresh air,
and talk to people. And stop
having so many meetings.
Honestly, sometimes a discus-
sion just takes two seconds.You left Bobbi Brown
Cosmetics in 2016, after
25 years of building the same
company. Now you’re doingJoey Fatone. I’m not the
smartest in the room, but I’m
sure the most curious.Speaking as someone who inter-
views people for a living, I can
say: That’s the right way to do it.
If you use prewritten questions,
you won’t listen to what some-
one is saying and ask follow-ups.
Prewritten questions are the
death of conversation.
Well, that’s good to know, because
I don’t look at them anyway!If podcasting had existed at the
very beginning of your career, do
you think you would have done it
the same way—just walk into a
room and go?
No, not at all! I mean, the good
thing about being experienced
and getting older is that your
confidence gets stronger. And
honestly, after all these years,people want to know from me:
How do you become confident?
The only thing confidence is,
is being comfortable in your
skin. I’m comfortable to make
mistakes. I’m comfortable to
admit what I don’t know. I just
think it’s interesting not know-
ing things, so long as you’re not
afraid to ask questions and say,
“Wait; what do you mean?”People would rather you ask the
question and learn, rather than
pretend you know it and don’t.
Right, exactly. And for some reason,
people think that to be a success-
ful entrepreneur, you have the fairy
dust: Just sprinkle some on me!
And it’s like, guys—what I have is
that I just keep going forward.totally different things—
supplements, lodging, content.
Is that disorienting?
No. It’s honestly no differ-
ent. Because I’m someone who
thinks about a project, thinks
about what it is, how it could be
better, how to really explain it to
people, how to curate it, how to
Instagram it, and how to visu-
alize it. Doing Evolution_18 is
the same thing I did when I was
creating colors for the season or
product categories. You know,
you just make things up. An
entrepreneur really is just some-
one who likes to make things up
and likes to get them done.Not everything you’ve tried
since leaving Bobbi Brown
Cosmetics has worked out, like
a stint as a Yahoo beauty edi-
tor. Do you worry about failure?
I’m not afraid of failure. Ifsomething doesn’t work out,
I look at it and say, “OK. That
was fun. That was interest-
ing. This is why it didn’t work.”
Because I always like to learn
from it. I’ve done things where I
say, “I don’t want to do it again,
but it was interesting to see.”I’d bet that’s really freeing. When
you’re not afraid of failure, you’re
willing to take more risks.
Totally. Like, I’ve been given
an opportunity to have a pod-
cast. I don’t know anything
about interviewing people. I
don’t prep. I’m handed a piece
of paper, I go into a room, and
I just talk to the person—
you know, anyone from Mickey
Drexler to Jeff Raider toPUT YOUR HEAD DOWN, FIGURE OUT WHAT IT TAKES,
AND JUST DO IT. EVERYONE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT DOING
IT AND PLANNING AND STRATEGIZING, BUT PEOPLE
ARE FORGETTING YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO DO IT. I’M A DOER.”September 2019 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 13