How to build a beauty brand during the pandemic
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Welcome back to MIC and Happy New Year. I'm Josh Christensen. Yaz is still out on holiday and we won't be back with regularly scheduled episodes until next week. But in the meantime, we have a great conversation that Yaz had with Dibs Beauty CEO and co-founder Jeff Lee about his many jobs from coaching the Miss Universe pageant to starting a makeup company during the pandemic.

He has interviewed him last month before we went on holiday break, and here is that conversation now. Enjoy. Hey, Jeff. So I am so excited to have you on the show. And it's partly because I think you've had a super fascinating career, and I literally don't even know how to describe it for our listeners. I was trying to synthesize everything that you do from co-founding, running Dibs Beauty to coaching people for Miss Universe. I mean, just take us

through your roles and also your previous roles. Thank you for the intro. Wow. I mean, and it's so great to be on here. What an honor. I mean, I can't say enough good things about how Fast Company is a dream for people like me and couldn't even imagine myself being on here. If I had to describe my career in one word, I would just have to say, yeah.

It's really been intense. And that's really what I think I've been able to bring to all the amazing places I've been able to occupy since the beginning. And I started off as a son of immigrants, thought my entire life was going to be headed towards corporate law. So I really spent my entire undergrad positioning myself to get into law school and then go into the top M&A law firms in Wall Street.

And after I did that, I felt a great sense of professional accomplishment. But I had a parallel path that I was interested in, which was beauty. So as you mentioned, I am a beauty pageant coach. I do it at a very high level. I tend to coach winners of national pageants. So you have to have won your country. And there's actually a whole grand slam of pageants out there. Miss Universe, Miss World, Miss International, Miss Grand. I know it's so esoteric to an American audience. It's so good.

Crazy world, yeah.

whether it's in a corporate law firm that prides itself on being the best at what it does or being on stage with 90 other women that have won national titles against tens of thousands of people competing for the same thing. So I had the chance then to actually go back to business school and back to Stanford where I did my undergraduate degree. And coming out of that, I met up with Alex Rodriguez, legendary baseball player.

That's A-Rod for those who don't know his full name. I mean, I was, you know, I probably was one of those people. I mean, you know, I really had no conception of him really until I met him. But I just was immediately taken by the sheer intelligence, the incredible kind of power that he brought to everything he did.

He asked me at the end of our first meeting, we had just met through a friend. He's like, what are you doing? I said, I'm interested in going into beauty. I'm actually going to go work on my own beauty startup. He starts laughing. And before I know it, I'm his chief operating officer. And I helped him actually launch quite a few brands in the consumer goods space, including a men's makeup line with him. I remember. The blur stick, right? Like, I mean...

real real brave move right for one of the best athletes in the world to go out there and say hey guys why don't you look good in this way too but he did it and that really kind of fueled my passion for going into beauty full-time so I was able to meet the co-founders of Chula Skincare and Bobby Brown and they told me we have this incredible woman let's have you meet her see if you guys can you

hit it off. And we met, her name is Courtney Shields. And I think within five seconds of meeting each other through Zoom and the pandemic, we knew that we were going to build something together. So this team came together very quickly. And here we are with Dibs now just celebrating its second anniversary. So I actually want to talk about literally how, you know, you've coached everyone from beauty pageant people to A-Rod to Courtney on just like how to sell both

themselves and a product and i actually let's start with pageants what makes a pageant winner like what advice do you give a pageant winner there are two things that i tell um each of my girls before they go up on stage and they're my girls yeah it's a term we use you know it's like an industry term right they're your girls right and even the snugs are older than me right and you know i was a teenager starting out and listen you know but they were my girls

How did you even get started? Well, what you do is you go to, it's like law school. You go to beauty pageant school, you get licensed and accredited. You pass the beauty pageant exam. I'm just joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. This is one of those industries, right, where like, believe it or not, there are actually these programs

professional beauty organizations in Latin America, but there's no way in unless you just hustle. It's not like I knew people. So I would literally write blogs. I would pester people to let me follow them to Miss California. And my big break was actually the father of a contestant from Miss Venezuela called me up and said, "Hey," I was in college at the time,

I saw your blog. You seem to know what you're doing. Can you help us out? We're moving to Venezuela to compete. She ended up winning Miss Venezuela. And for those who don't know this kind of insane little world, Venezuela to Miss Universe is like Brazil to the World Cup. They've won seven times. They've done it back to back. No country has ever achieved it. To win Miss Universe, you have to get through Miss Venezuela. They trained for years. Their pipeline is years long to even get into the passion. And then once you're there, it's a

full-time job really for a year until Miss Universe or Miss World or Miss International. What I say to each of my contestants is two things. Number one, enjoy every moment right now because it will never be this fun. Anything can happen tonight. When you win, you'll win and then you have that achievement and then you move on. But it's all about the anticipation and the competition and being in the moment and that's why you're here. Second piece is when you win, don't cover your hand, your face with your hand like this because it's a terrible shot.

And that's important because she's going right up there. The competition is going to happen and she needs to know that it's a when and not an if and go up there with that mindset. That is what separates more than beauty, more than your dress, more than your designer, more than your coaching a winner from another. You know right away when you are there, you see these 90 women who's going to win that night.

It's the one that goes up there and she's got the mindset. It's in the micro expressions on her face. It's the entire aura. She's going up there and she says, I'm the winner. The other 89 women here are just going to have to wait. And you can see that in people when they enter these rooms.

Yeah. How do you tell people to make that choice?

You know what I mean? Like with A-Rod, you know, like I think these are the parts of your personality or personal story that really makes sense. Well, I think it's amazing when you're with someone like Alex Rodriguez where it's such a wealth of information. And I think what he has is not only life experiences that everyone can learn from, both, you know, succeeding at the highest level and failing. He's the first to say –

He has, you know, really a PhD in getting back up onto his feet. But I think it's also important to have someone who is intellectually curious. And that's one of the prerequisites I have for working with anyone in any context is I need to know that you want to know more about yourself and about the world around you. You can't train that into someone. And so if someone has that intellectual curiosity, that tells me they have the ingredients to change and adapt immediately.

and become great brand stewards, business people, business partners, or talents in their own right. If they don't, then what you get, scratch the surface, get more surface. When you sit down with someone like A-Rod, there's so many business opportunities they could take. How do you help them pick which ones make sense, whether that's makeup for men or alcohol deals? How do you figure that out?

I like to say, you know, I used to joke, I'm like the wet blanket at A-Rod Corp. You know, it's a corporate lawyer in me, but you actually don't ever want to be Mr. No. You don't want to be Dr. No. And this is something I tell to all the lawyers and the naysayers out there, especially if you're in a position of responsibility. You know, you can't always be in the position of being the no guy because then that makes it really easy to just go around you or ignore you. And that's not how you carry value.

I think the way you create value for these people and for the brands that you're working with is really looking at it as you only have so much battery life. No matter how hot or intense you are right now in the public eye, you can only drain that battery a few times before you need to recharge it. So think about where that iPhone shelf life is going to take you. Like what are the things you really want to be clicking about when you see you're hitting low battery and what really makes sense for you? The other distinguishing fact is

Can you go out and amplify this through things that are not related to the deal itself? Is this a product or partnership that will be enhanced and lift your reputation that you'll lift its reputation by beyond just what you have to do within the four corners of your contract? If you can't naturally do it, it's not a fit.

Taking all that into account, and just when you look at the industry, what are some, you know, either celebrity brand partnerships or influencer brand partnerships that you think have really succeeded in that arena? I mean, when it comes to the originals, Gwyneth Paltrow, no matter what you think of Goop, you know, has really aced it because she did a couple things. One, it was very natural to her own lifestyle in which she was already, you know, kind of promising. So she was amplifying Goop without having to just

push scoop all the time. Second, she did put an enormous amount of time into it. She treats it like a job. But the most important piece of that success is being ahead of the curve. So being ahead of the curve in terms of, you know, the market is about to talk about wellness in this way, using this terminology. People are interested in these aspects of wellness. Understanding that you're going to strike while that iron is hot is really key.

I think we've done that with dibs. We were founded in the pandemic. People would have said, you're crazy to think about doing makeup in the middle of the pandemic when everyone's covering up their faces. We said, this pandemic will not go on forever. If it does, we're all dead. And so when we come out of it, right? People are not only going to want to buy makeup.

They got to be more careful about it because you've just gone through this collective trauma as a society. You're going to be more selective about where you put your money, but you're also going to come back in a big way. You're going to embrace the fun of it. Makeup before the pandemic had become too involved, too intricate, or too clinical. And we said people are going to come out of the pandemic and look at this as a piece of discretionary spend, but one that's supposed to bring them joy. So yeah.

Really for us, I think we were also very able to kind of see where that trend was going and then seize on it and then leave it. I think that, you know, you were in a position prior to founding Dibs Beauty where you could have partnered with any number of people to start a beauty company. You chose to partner with Courtney Shields, as you said. You know, did you speak to anyone else? How did you know that she was the right fit?

Why was she the right fit? Like, introduce our listeners to Courtney Shields. Courtney Shields is a self-made woman. You know, she's a mom. She's been a single mom for some time. Now she has custody with her own amazing daughter. She is a professional lifestyle and fashion and beauty influencer. And, you know, this is a world that was totally alien to me.

But the fact is, you know, she's someone who started off at a Nordstrom counter and then began blogging and grew this incredible audience that has followed her through a divorce, through all the ups and downs of life. You know, she lost her father as well. And I think that's one of those things is that she's been kind of people's big sister. And in terms of finding her as the right partner, sometimes you really do know. Now, as a lawyer, I'm not supposed to go by like, you know, the first two seconds of judging someone. Yeah. But...

That's how we make decisions in beauty pageant world. That's how you make decisions in business. People go by their gut. And I was, first of all, impressed by the guy. I think she was with me as well, with our whole team, our founding team. Like everyone kind of looked at each other and said, you're the right people we want to be in business with. But also with Courtney, I think what struck me was this real clear problem and solution. She didn't say, okay,

People have been asking me for makeup forever and now I want to give it to them. And that was why she was doing this. She said, Jeff, my face and body makeup explodes in my bag. So I want to make it into a stick. Apparently it's never been done before. Something so simple. She said, Jeff, no one knows how to combine blush and bronzer. I want to take the intimidation out of that choice. These are very clearly articulated philosophies. Solving for mess, solving for fear. And when you are able to articulate intimidation,

a brand thesis in that way. That tells me you have what it takes. That makes sense. The other thing that really struck me about Courtney Shields is there's a lot of influencers out there, first of all, who have skincare lines. Courtney has a lot of appeal with people beyond or outside of the coasts, right? Tell me about working to tap into this maybe underserved market.

We're a 50 state brand and I am so proud of that in large part because of Courtney. And also, you know, my experience with A-Rod was that we traveled every week for, I still cannot believe he had me do this, but like, you know, I was, you know, one of his producing assistants for ESPN Sunday night baseball. This is a guy who was like 90% sure that they run counterclockwise or clockwise on the, literally. Right. And I'm sitting there in the booth with him for almost 80 games with

literally listening to his calls, checking the pronunciation of player names, giving him facts about these players and everyone on the field. And what that did was that it took us all over the country. You know, we were in St. Louis, you were all to Arizona, to Florida, to Seattle, and you're seeing the country beyond just New York and LA. And that said to me, wow, there is a huge market here. And fortunately with Courtney and Dibbs,

we speak to a customer that is spread all over this country. And so one of our plans is to have an event for our community in all 50 states. And we're well on our way to hitting half of that already. And I think a lot of brands think, oh, beauty, you know, New York or LA. And we said, we're not going to look at that. We're Austin headquartered. Our team is remote, spread all over the country. And, you know, some of our biggest events are in places like Indianapolis and Nashville.

Who tends to be your customer? Like, is it moms? Because I feel like, to me, there's two types of influencers to some extent. I mean, they overlap, obviously. But there's the one where you're like, that's never going to be my life. She wears Chanel every day. Like, that is so cool. And then there's the one that's like, she could be me. And Courtney, to me, falls into the second one a little bit. Absolutely, right? I like you say, right? Look...

The appeal of Courtney about the appeal of dibs is your life's a little messy. And that's where I really appreciate the following. And, you know, our core demographic tends to be skewed more millennial. But we have a large group of Gen Zs that are entering through TikTok as well. So it's very fascinating to see how the different platforms have kind of accreted different demographics to dibs. But they're all drawn in by the appeal of having someone

who looks great and is very, like, very unintimidating, very approachable, friendly, but has words of wisdom. But also, like, you know, not everything's perfect. There's not, like, the immaculate background. Like, you know, you see her content. I've been there in the house. Like, sometimes the cat's just kind of jumping around in the back, right? Life is a little messy.

but your products, the makeup you choose should be dependable. And that's how we go about it. Similarly, what makes us so unique, I think, in the way we speak with our customer at DIBS, we like to joke that it's reverse masterclass. People used to learn about makeup from celebrities, from celebrity makeup artists. You look at this incredible makeup artist and she did 20 steps and you're copying it very precise. People learn how to apply DIBS from each other.

Our social media tends to be regular women just showing you how they do it. We will sometimes rarely have a makeup artist showing you all the precise placement. That's not what we're about. We're just about take the stick, take the brush, take the powder, put it on. You won't mess it up. And if you learn something from your friend over there, even better.

For a lot of our listeners, the sort of beauty pageant world is like very foreign, right? But I know at one point Gretchen Carlson became, you know, started running as a Miss Universe. Miss America, yes. Miss America, Miss America. And I guess I'm curious broadly how you think the pageant world has changed or evolved.

Because I think a lot of people you know are like, well, that seems like some kind of like old antiquated thing. And the pageants have had to find a way to sort of modernize. There are a couple ways. Such a great question. I love this one. Number one, the pageants will stay relevant as long as they generate people of great significance to society. So Gretchen, you know, is a great example.

Oprah competed in pageants. Halle Berry was exposed to the world through pageants. Gal Gadot was Miss Israel in 2004. Let me tell you, no one knew at the time. She was incredibly friendly. She was basically like, I'm just here. Did my contract. You're so beautiful. You're going to win. That was the running joke with that. Miss Israel was just super friendly and totally checked out. But she crushed it. And that was a platform that led to an even bigger platform. But what makes the pageants more relevant are a couple of things. First, the pageants.

The pageants themselves are actually highly meritocratic in the sense that they test your skills. And I like to say that we give opportunities to people that can hit a ball or punch each other out or jump around at a high level of precision, no matter your race creed or your background, your economic background.

For pageants, we're giving people the opportunity to succeed. We're democratizing access to fame and opportunities. If you can compete in this way, if you can project that confidence. So even if beauty itself is not meritocratic, and I think that's an unease people have with pageants, right? I mean, I get stuck.

on that right where I'm like how can you be good at the swimsuit portion but maybe you can I don't know you know because really it's one on truly the basis of your confidence on how you've mastered the walk we all know that person that everyone just kind of turns and looks at when he or she comes into the room and that's frequently not the person with the most symmetrical features that's

That's frequently not the tallest or the shortest. There are people with that energy, that courage, that confidence. And that's really what the pageants are testing. Because from my experience, you know, if I were to pick the quote unquote most conventionally beautiful woman, I don't think she's won Miss Universe more than twice in the last 25 years. It's always been the one that showed up and had that X factor. And that is so important in society because that's what gets people ahead. The other thing I truly think about beauty that does define it is

Beauty, like fitness, you know, I'm also a certified personal trainer. So fitness has been a real passion of mine. Beauty and fitness are two of the things that you'll find in the archaeological record. Bear with me. Pre-dynastic ancient Egypt, one of the earliest civilizations in human history, you find two things. Number one, you find makeup. So they clearly cared about being beautiful for both genders back then. You also found records that they made their pharaohs, their kings, run a marathon at the 30th year of their reign called the Hepset.

And the theory is that if the king could not complete the marathon, they killed him. Those stakes are too high. Totally nuts, right? But it shows you how much importance we as a species have put on beauty and fitness going back continents and millennia. Now, do we do it better now? Yes.

But I think that it's also important to acknowledge that these are very key underpinnings to how we're wired and how we view the world. And how you grow the categories is much more important to me than denying their value or place in our society.

And we're very unapologetic about what we're selling at Dipsy. We're selling you makeup, right? We're selling you makeup that will make you feel better and look better in your own estimation after you've bought it. There shouldn't be any illusion about it, you know? And like, that's what we're here for. Just like for some people, it's the coffee that they drink every morning that makes them feel better.

Do you think, and this more comes to pageants than dibs, which I think has obviously a big shade range and anyone can use makeup, but do you think something like the body positivity movement can coexist with pageants?

It does because, right, you know, your tea, first of all, the passions have become so much more inclusive. Really? In every way informed. Miss Universe began allowing transgender contestants to compete back in 2012, 2013. And this year there will be two, you know, Netherlands and Portugal. You know, there might be a last minute country, so maybe there'll even be three.

I'm also guessing Donald Trump not owning Miss America. Believe it or not, he actually was the one that allowed it. And I believe that, yes, he was the one that, you know, he said, I have no problem with it. And he changed the policy. And without getting into politics too much, I believe DeSantis ran an attack ad against him recently on this basis. That is very surprising. One of the strangest things that have come out of our political discourse

course maybe lately in a very strange time but um you'll think we're talking about body positivity i think what's really important to really reinforce and it's the same for standards of beauty or how you use your beauty is ultimately there is no external solution for your internal confidence right and and that is just where we're at as a society the fact is i've met many winners of this world of this universe miss international who have the crown and sash that say that they are the best and

and who have incredibly deep insecurities. And I can tell you, I was an incredibly overweight kid all the way until college, and I was pretty fine. I was basically like, you know what, this is my body, I don't wanna work out. I'm sluggish and I'm pretty confident 'cause I'm smart. And that was my identity. I was pretty happy, honestly, as an objectively high BMI individual.

And I chose to lose the weight and to adopt a physical fitness regime because it was all about being productive and getting my energy and less about how I felt about myself, if that makes sense. Yeah. My last question for you, and this is like, it's so hard to cover your life and career in one interview because you've done so many, this is not a pejorative, random things. Yeah.

Like you've had a random life. Yes, I love it. But you have worked out in every equinox in the world. You don't do things by half measure. What? Why? Yeah. I like to say he gave me the job because of that. He was like, I didn't care about any of the other degrees. He was just like, I saw that this guy worked out all of them. And by the way, there's even one they hate it when I tell this story. There's one that you can't access as a member, period. It's actually located in a residential building. It's a

full-blown club and you can't get any access to it but I was determined to have it in Midtown New York so what I did was I called the related leasing office I told them I needed an emergency move in and then I made this poor leasing agent walk me around the building and then I like

said, oh, do you mind if I work out in the gym and just try it out? She thought she was going to close on like a three bedroom corner apartment. I felt so bad. I'm sorry, Gia, if you're listening. No, this is awesome. I can't just like check in and take the picture. No, I actually work out, you know, you can't just like touch the gym. You have to go and do it. And so I worked out for 30 minutes in front of her and, you know, poor thing. And the next day I said, oh, I'm going to go with another building. Just kidding. Yeah.

But like, you know, more than random, like I said, you know, I'm very intense about what I do because I think that it comes from a place of gratitude. God gave me a great life with great talents and great opportunities. He gave it to me and gave me this opportunity, the way he's given you and everyone listening the opportunity to do great things in their lives, things that bring themselves great satisfaction. Even if it's just collecting a paycheck to put money on your, you know, you know, and food on your kitchen table, whatever.

These are amazing opportunities. And I come from immigrant parents. I know what it's like to not have. And so when I've been given so many opportunities in different spaces, including with this company, with Courtney and our amazing founding team and all of our team members,

I owe it to them and to myself to really pursue something to the maximum possible outcome. Whether that is, you know, hey, I have the opportunity to work on this amazing gem. I said, you know what? Let's just take it to the max. Or to work with these amazing women from all over the world, Ghana, Peru, Albania, China, going to the biggest competition of their lives. As long as they're giving it their all, as long as the people we're working with are giving their all, I will give it my all. And that's really always the promise that I have.

in all of these very random pursuits. Is there a latest pursuit that you can talk about? Do you have like another weird goal? There's something percolating in my mind next, but you know, honestly, right now I am a thousand percent drilled in on the business of beauty, the business of building a great brand with Courtney. I'm already thinking with her through 2025, 2026, what we're developing. And that's really, really been the beauty of my life. I didn't plan for all these pivots and it's,

you know, really just been a case of focusing on what you know you're good at doing, pursuing it to the max, and the rest will fall in place. Great. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the show. Such an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.

That's it for today's episode of Most Innovative Companies. Our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom. Mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres. And our executive producer is myself, Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review. And we will see you next week.