Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
I'm reading this book called money masters of our time, written by john train. And there is a chapter on warn buffer here. And in the chapter warn buffer, there's an incredible quote from warn buffer where he says that a good manager must be a demand on cost.
Buffet knows what most of history s greatest founders knew without watching your cost, with the foundation on which other competitive advantages can be built. Listen to what jeff bases wrote about this in his letter. Jef rote focus on cost improvement makes IT possible for us to afford lower Prices, which drives growth.
Growth spreads fixed costs across more sales, reducing costs per unit, which makes possible more Price reductions. Customers like this, and it's good for shareholders. Please expect us to repeat this loop basis brings up the importance of controlling you're spending, washing your cost again in another shahada, he says we will work hard to spend wisely and maintain our lean culture.
We understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost conscious culture. What other trade to histories greate founders have in common? They all studied the great founders that came before them.
Jeff is on record over talking about the influence that sam walton had on hit the way he built amazon, sam walton said in his automotive phy, you can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient Operation, or you can be brilliant and still got a business if you're too inefficient. The way to think about this is that most success comes to efficiency, and most failures are due to waste. Here we go back to both IT.
The really good manager doesn't wake up in the morning and say, this is the day that i'm going to cut costs any more than he wakes up in the sides to practice breathing. You keep cost low from the start. If you read that the companies instigating a cost cutting program and you know so that management has been slacking in keeping costs low from the start, rap keeps you from slacking on watching your cost.
And if you have been slacking, rap helps you get back on track because ramp has built the world the best tool that gives you everything you need to control your span, watch your cost and optimize all of your financial Operations on a single platform. I have now read three hundred and sixty one biography and autobiography founders for this podcast. A fundamental law of company building is watch your cost.
IT is in the S A lot. Automotive phy, which you're about to hear. It's in the book, I don't talk. The cast brings her husband in to partner on the company of their building together. He focuses on sales and product, and he focuses on their finances.
His job was to watch the cost rap hopes you do the same ramp, hopes you watch your cost history grade founders new that watching your cost with the foundation on which other competitive advantages are built. Rap has built the world's best tool. Rap gives you everything you need to control your span, watch your cost and optimize your financial Operations on a single platform.
Go to ramp dot com and start building your competitive advantage today, that is ramp dot com. Ramp dot com. I hope you enjoy this episode.
And S A. lauder. She's one of my favor entrepreneurs. The third time I read her autographs. Business is not something to be tried on.
It's not a distraction, not a fair, not a momentary flink business. Marry you, you sleep with IT, eat with IT think about a much of your time. IT is in a very real sense and act of love. If IT isn't an active love, it's merely work, not business.
What makes a successful entrepreneur r is a talent well, perhaps, although no many enormously successful people who are not gifted in any outstanding way, not blessed with particular talent, is that that intelligence, certainly intelligence helps, but it's not necessarily the education are the kind of intellectual reasoning needed to graduate from the war den school of business that are essential. How many of your grandfathers came here from the old country and made a mark in amErica without the language, money or content? What then is the mystical ingredient is persistent.
It's that certain little spirit that compels you to stick IT out just when you're at your most tired. It's that quality that forces you to persevere, find the world around the stonewall. It's the immovable stuff ness that will not allow you to cave in when everyone says give up just before we decided to commit ourselves to cosmetic ics full time, our count and lawyer took us out to dinner.
They had something grave to tell us, don't do IT. That was the advice. The mortality rate in the cosmetics industry is high, and you'll rule the day that you invested your savings and your time into this impossible business.
We beg of you, don't do IT. We did IT. We make the business decisions.
No one else we make them. Mark train once said, keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that.
But really great. Make you feel that you too can become great. Our first year sales amount about fifty thousand dollars. Expenses aid up just about every time, no matter forward. That is an expert from the book that I just finish reading for the third time.
One of my all time favorite entrepreneur, autobots pes, definitely, mount rushmore book keeps getting Better every time I read IT, and is the autobots phy of S A lauter. The book is called S A, A success story. And IT was published almost forty years ago.
And keep in mind, as we go through this today, he was seventy seven when SHE is writing these words and still working everyday, still going strong. The way I think about her, her, as I really think he is just an american bats, I says over over again, I really think a lot of today's entrepreneurs to try to emulate S. A.
And that if he was alive, that he would be kicking other entrepreneurs acs up and down, the court warn, buffer charly monger said, that should be a crime that more business schools are not studying. Henry singleton, that's the way I feel a crime that more interneuron don't study as stay lauter someone to jump right into IT. IT starts with a very painful memory at the very beginning of her career.
okay. So you just said the end of the first year of her company, they did fifty thousand dollars of revenue. Think last year they did something like sixteen billion, the companies, almost eight years old.
And what's remarkable, her empire starts as just a small concession stand at a single counter inside of a single beauty song. And when IT starts, SHE is the soul employ. And so there's something that happens at this beauty salon that stayed.
Now he is talking about that, you know, forty years after that happened, maybe longer. And if he can remember that, like he was yesterday, says, I remember the woman at the forest, more beauty along where I had my first cosmetic concession. SHE was thoughtless and cruel and will always remain that way.
In my mind, maybe SHE was a catalase for good. In the end, maybe I wouldn't become S A laughter if I hadn't been for her at the moment. He was cast in my memory to last their ver.
I despise her, simply thinking about that incident brings back pain. SHE was having her hair comes, and he was lovely. I was very Young and vulnerable.
And I love the beauty. I thought I wanted to make contact with her in some small way. What a beautiful boucher wearing. I said her, it's so elegant.
Do you mind if I ask you where you bought IT? SHE smiled, what difference could possibly make? You could never afford IT.
I walked away, heart pounding, face burning, and is the punched lines. Entire seas is my reading. Never will anyone say that to me again.
I promise myself, someday I will have whatever I want. And then one of the most interesting things is he then starts her autobiographical. That's the first story, right? But then SHE doesn't go into her early life.
SHE is not talking about herself. She's talking about her obsession, her obsession with beauty. And there's a multiple things that are going on on the on the next few pages that I think you're important not to say a the a few.
Number one, beauty is an ancient industry, which leads to number two, which allows her to build a business around things that will never change. And so jeff basis famously said in the early as amazon, he thought I was really important to build your business around things that won't change. So the very beginning he realized, people always gna want low Prices.
They're onna want faster delivery and they're na want White selection. They're gona want that today. They're onna want that ten years and now they are going to want that twenty years for now.
So I mean, he can invest heavily in those areas and read the benefits for many decades to which leads the third thing, that's obviously as a lot SHE study, the history of our industry. And then the fourth thing is he not even implied. He says, I organ completely obsessed.
SHE loved beauty. This was not. Beauty was a mission for her. IT was not just a product. And so he says, beauty has always commanded attention.
Beauty secrets have been passed on from mother to daughter through the ages. So he talks about what primitive we were doing thousand years of years ago. He talks about what they were doing in rome, what clear a patrol was doing, what they were doing egypt.
And SHE says, women have always enhances their god given looks. IT has always been so. IT will always be so.
And then he speaks to why this is her mission and why SHE made this her life's work, what IT does for her customers. Beauty is the best incentive to all respect. You may have a great inner resource, but they don't show up as confidence when you don't feel pretty.
People are more apt to believe you and like you when you look fine. And when the world approves, self respect is just a little easier. The pursuit of beauty is honorable. And then SHE continues talking about her obsession.
But really, this is a universal appeal of the product in the industry that SHE built her empire in beauty, translate, class, intellects, age, profession, geography, virtually every culture and economic barrier. There isn't a culture in the world that has, in powdered, perfumed and pretty, its women. Love has been planted.
Wars, one and empires built on beauty. I should know i'm an authority on all three love. Wars and empires have been woven into my personal tapestry for decades.
I've been selling beauty ever since I could recognize her. And the last line is very important, because that is one of the most important traces that he has. He is a master world class sales person.
He talks about IT over over again. In fact, he says, I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell IT and I sell IT hard.
And then the most important relationship that she's gona have outside of the one SHE believes he has with her immediate family, with her husband. And her kids is the one with her mother. True interest tends to be revealed early, and we definitely see that the case with as a lot.
And beauty SHE says the first beauty I ever recognized with my mother as they would observe the way her mother emphasized her own beauty routine. My mother began brushing her golden hair in the morning even before SHE opened her eyes. I remember her reaching after that brush as soon as he began to stir.
I adored my mother's hair brush, her hand cream and the globe when SHE passed away at eighty eight years old, he was still beautiful. What I love that s. Day's mother did as SHE instead self confidence and self belief into her daughter.
Really, really early. It's obviously you read as days automatic. He does not lack for confidence, are ourself believe you are as beautiful as you think you are?
You would tell me, the secret is to imagine yourself, the most important person in that room, the person everyone else is waiting to see. If you imagine IT vividly enough, you will become that person. And if you could see the notes that I left myself throughout the book, a lot of them are just ever peed over over again.
The fact that he was born for this business that he was in, that is really important to pick a career that you have an immense passion about. In fact, I love what the advice of charly monger gave, where he said, in my whole life, i've never been good at something I wasn't very interested in. IT just doesn't work.
There's no substitute for strong interest. He could be speaking about and describing as a laughter, my very first memories that of my mother sent her, or a freshness to perfume of her presence. My first sensation of joy was being allowed to reach up and touch her fragrant and set ney skin her harden, escape my attention, either as soon as as as enough to hold a brush.
I'd give her no peace. As you've already brush my hair three times today, I can still hear her complaining. My older sister, when I submitted to getting her face pata with my mother's cream, my sister in law was perpetual same.
Like in her submission to my treatments, all of this annoyed my father considerably. Stop fighting with other people's faces. He'd say, but that is what I like to do.
Listen to this paragraph is in same, but that is what I like to do. Touch other people's faces, no matter who they were. Touch them and make them pretty before i'm finished.
All set, i'm certain the world's record for face touching. I could spend magic on the faces of my family. As soon as school was over, i'd run home and start on faces and hair.
Even at eight years old. Even then, I knew this continues. This is what he says about her childhood session.
A few years later, I want to pay a picture of the Young girl was a grow caught up m by pretty things. And pretty people thinking about my childhood now reveal such early patterns. My drive and persistence are always there, and those are qualities that are essential for building a successful business.
Still, I sometimes wonder, if I had set my heart on selling anything else but beauty, would I have risen to the top of my profession? Somehow I doubt IT. I believed in my product.
I love my product. A person has to love her harvest if she's to expect others to love IT too, and beauty with such a bountiful harvest. How could I known this at twelve years old? I don't understand that I just did. And so S A laughter has a lot of the same traits that are covered in one of my favorite on youtube, which is called running down a dream, how to succeed and thrive in a career you love by bill girly.
And there's a line in in that talk that also speaks to what the advice of charly monger just gave us that you know there is really no substitute for having this deep and grain like really strong interest in what you're doing and line for running down a dream that I think applies, says a lot. And a lot of the great entrepreneurs you speak about is that someone else has a deep passion for whatever career path you're on, and they're gonna smoke you if you don't have IT yourself. And I think that's tie to another one of my favorite maximum, which comes from other shako ton.
By enduring we conquer. We have in this book think she's seventy seven years old. She's writing the book.
She's talking about an obsession that has taken hold of her almost seventy years ago and never let her go. If you love IT, you're gna do at all time. If you do at all time, you're going to get really good at IT.
And more importantly, you won't quit by enduring we conquer all. The success is so many decades into the future as a lot of the company is, I think, seventy eight years old as of today, they did fifty thousand dollars of revenue. Their first year, they did sixteen billion last year.
And so keep that in mind if she's about to talk about one of the most important experiences. As he has, SHE starts working at a very Young age with her uncle. So he says, when I dreamed of my private universe, I dreamed of being a skin special and making women beautiful.
Since i'd heard that many of my mother's family did just that, my shining moment came in the form of a quiet man who also loved touching faces. My uncle john, my mother's brother, came to visit us from hungry. He was a skin specialist.
What glory? Those words countered up. He captured my imagination and interest as no one else ever had.
I was smitten with uncle john. He understood me. What's more, he produced miracles. The first beauty products that S A lad is ever going to sell are the ones that her uncle john makes. I recognized in my uncle john my true path.
He produce his glorious cream in our home, working happily over a gas stove. I watched, I learned, I was his, notified. My education was just starting.
I was devoted to IT. I loved his creams, loved his portions, loved my uncle john. This is the story of bewitchment.
I would be watched by the power to create beauty. Uncle john had worlds to teach me. We construct a laboratory sorts in the tiny stable behind the house.
Do you know what that means for a Young girl to suddenly have someone take your dreams quite seriously? The teacher's secrets, I could think of nothing else. After school, i'd run home to practice.
Being a scientist, I began to value myself so much more, to trust my instincts, to trust my unique ness. Trusters oneself does not always come naturally. If learn when Young, the practice sticks. Today, there is no one who can intimidate me because of title or skill or fame.
I do what's right for me, and it's a preview of what her business is going to be like because everywhere he goes, he Carries her products with her and you'll strike up conversation and he'll do like these mini makeovers and convert customers. One of the time SHE was doing this back in high school, I didn't have a single friend who wasn't slathered in our creams. Deep inside, I knew I had found something that mattered much more than popularity.
My moment had come, and I was not about to miss seizing IT. Uncle john loved me. I loved him, and my future was being written in a jar of cream.
Okay, so now here is is something this can be surprising. So she's, you know, eight years old, twelve years old, sixteen years old. She's completely obsessed.
SHE is actually going to do this business for free, for fun for a few decades in the family he was raising at the time as she's leaving, IT is expected to go from her family's house to her husband's house. SHE gets married Young. She's around twenty years old.
They have their first kid two, three years later. So she's four, twenty five years old. She's a housewife.
And this entire time, SHE doesn't found S A lot of companies till shi thirty eight. This is, you know, a decade and a half in the future. And during this entire time, SHE still running a business is just for fun.
And this is a great description of her obsession. We were struggling so hard to be independent, and sometimes this was not easy. Times were lean.
We had a beautiful sun. And I spent my day's mothering. And all the time, all the time I was mothering my zeal for experimenting with my uncle creams, improving on them, adding to them.
I was forever experimenting on myself and on anyone else who came within range. Good was not good enough. I could always make IT Better. I now know that obsession is the word for my zeal. IT was never quiet in the house.
There was always a great audible sense of industry, especially in the kitchen where I cooked for my family, and during every possible spare moment, cooked up little pots of cream for faces. I always felt most alive. When I was doubling in the practice cream, I felt as though I was conducting a secret observing experiment, a real adventure.
And I think the zeal that he has for beauty, for developing on products, for teaching beauty, a lot of what he does is teaching how to use the products, what they can do for you, SHE did this for fun. And that is going to directly lead to this foundation, or using the founding of this empire, which starts with just a single counter inside of a beauty salon. So she'd go to this beauty salon once a month to get her hair died and done.
And SHE is an extrovert and a master saleswoman. And so she's talking to every single person in the salon SHE. Become friends of them, invite them over to our house and then give them like, free makeovers.
So says many of the Young women who came to FLorence Morris, that, with the beauty to get their hair done, would come to my home for a quick beauty lesson. I love sharing what I knew in creating excitement about skin. One day, mrs.
Morris, the owner of the shop, said to me, what do you do to keep your skin looking so fresh and lovely? IT will turn out to be a question of great importance for me. I didn't have to be asked twice.
The next time I come, I said, or bring you some my products. My heart was pounding. S day comes back a few weeks later for her Normal employment meets with flooring.
And SHE says, would you mind leaving them with me? He asked, as I offer my four products, i'm so busy now, i'll try them when I have time, I knew Better. Goes back to this master salesman's ship is understanding of persuading that S.
A. had. He said, I knew Better. Just let me show you how they work.
mrs. morse. Give me five minutes and i'll see the right way to use them.
Nothing could have induced me to leave my bowl without a demonstration. I have to pause there before I gone. That is one of the most important insights into the history of advertising.
so. I've gone back and read, you know, countless 8 grapes about many of the great advertising agency founders。 Many of them were founding their companies in the forties and fifties and sixties.
But they will tell you a lot of their ideas came from the early one hundred hundreds in this one guy named claude hopkins clad hopkins may be the best copywriter of all time and the most influential thinker in the advertising industry. He wrote this book called scientific advertising. His boss, Albert aska, thought the book was so valuable that he locked in a safe for twenty years because he didn't want his competitors to have access to the ideas. Eventually, the book gets out of the safe, gets printed and goes on to cell like eight or nine million copies. The reason I tell you all this is because there's a line in claude hocking's autobots phy that is demonstrating exactly what S A laughter knew at this time in her life.
No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration, as they knew that instinctively, because he says, nothing could have induced me to leave my bony without a demonstration so he goes through this quick beauty routine and he says, I showed this is more is a miro SHE was raving beauty SHE then said, do you think you would be interested in running the beauty concession at my new salon? I did not hesitate for a second. Up until that point, I ve been giving away my products.
This was my first chance at a real business. I would have a small counter in her store. I would pay her rent.
But whatever I sold would be mine to keep no partners. I never did have partners. I would rise the rent, but if IT worked, I would start the business.
I always dreamed about risk taking. This is one of my favorite sentences and entire book. Risk king is the corner stone of empires. No one ever became a success without taking chances. And this is one of the most remarkable things about S A later, and why you trying to, like, shout from the rooftops, please study her. I read her biography, listening to the episodes have done on her over over again.
SHE understood this spite instinct, this fundamental understanding of humans, human nature, and then combining that with building her business on a handful of simple principles, one of the most important thing you will ever do again, if you're gonna to go from fifty thousand hours of sales in your first year, multiple 6 billion， seven years later. Customer loyalty over everything else. Customer loyalty over everything else.
SHE just understood this. And so SHE invents, at least he claims to, I haven't found any examples of other people doing this. SHE SHE claims invent the sales technique of the century, which is giving gifts with purchase.
And in sometimes giving gifts, even without a purchase, this is so powerful. Now, the big secret, I would give a woman a sample, whatever he did not buy as a gift. IT might be a few tea spoons of powder in a wax envelope, perhaps, that shape off a bit of lipstick and tell her to apply with her fingers.
Perhaps in another envelope, I would give her a bit of glow. The point was this, a woman would never leave empty handed. A woman would never leave empty and handed.
I did not have an advertising department, I did not have a copywriter, but I had intuition. I just knew, even though I had not yet named the technique, that gift with a purchase was very appealing. In those days, I would even give a gift without a purchase.
The idea was to convince a woman to try a product, having tried IT at her leisure, in her own home, and seeing how fresh and lovely made her look. SHE would be faithful forever. We are going to come back to the about customer loyalty and what and how S A laughter cultivated this over over again.
He would be faithful forever of that I not had not a single doubt. Again, this is not just a lot I can come this idea of the importance of customer reality over everything I feels been like on in a bunch of the books, you know, over the years, but especially in last few weeks or last few months. Go back to lush wap, one of charly mongers, favorite founders.
He had this idea. He's like, hey, ah, he ran his ads like, we will change. We will fill your tire and change your flat for free, even if you don't buy anything.
And what he knew was that, hey, you come in. We fixed for fly. We did your service. We did your favor.
When it's time to get new tires, you're gonna go back regarding surprise or anything else, you are going to go back to the store that did something for you. Last, we get an example of this with fascinating. They would custom order a part that they don't Carry as a special request for a customer.
In that episode, I references that. But I was doing this back in what the nineteen forties, probably there's a line from budd's biography. He receives a letter thirty years.
He had sold this customer a car. Thirty years earlier, something broke on IT. They don't have that part anymore. Buganda offer to custom manufactured that part and give you to at cost. A few weeks before that, we talked about sam walton in the early days of omar.
If somebody would return something, not only way to give their money back, he would instruct his sales people who want doing that return to give them a gift for free customer loyalty over everything. A few pages later, this should not be a surprise. A devoted clientele was developing, not to my surprise, of course.
My products for the finest. And the beauty salon atmosphere was perfect. Women were already in the self improvement mood.
Think about us. Go to where your customers are. That is what she's doing. The beauty salon atmosphere was perfect.
Why should they go home with beautiful here, with beautiful hair and a tired, lifeless face? IT made sense to sell a total beauty package. Word spread business move gradually, but sadly, I worked every day from nine.
Her son is in school this point. So this is where the school word spread business move gradually. But I, I ve, I worked every day from nine years when I rived to polish my jjb to six in the evening.
I never took a lunch. I felt I had to be there for every woman, or I would surely lose her. I cleaned, cleaned, colored, talked, talked, talked and talked.
IT worked like a charm, and the interest in my products grew. There is a line that warn buffet has when he describes rose blanken affectioned, known as mrs. b.
And he says, I would rather Russell grisly then compete with her. This would be an example of why the same would apply IT as a lauter. She's on vacation.
She's at a beautiful hotel poll side. What do you think she's doing? SHE walks over to the women at the pool side, and SHE starts giving them free makeovers.
The response was, the next few years, i'd spent some weeks alone at this hotel or that hotel, as what what might be called working vacations. Many women would gather around and ask me to teach him about skin Carrying cosmetics. IT was fun for them and profitable for me.
Women wanted to learn. One summer after another, I pushed myself lodin creams, making up women, selling beauty and the winners. I'd visit these eager ladies at their homes, where, with a bridge game as a backdrop, i'd make up their friends and sell more creams.
The mood of these sessions was as exhilarating for me as for them. I didn't need bread to eat, but I worked as though I did for the pure love of the venture. For me, teaching about beauty was and is an emotional experience.
I brought them Christmas and knowledge about the possibilities. They gave me a sense of success. I felt flushed with excitement after each session.
That is the positive side obsession. What is the negative side? Is going to destroy her marriage. Now I should speak of a time of great pain, in great confusion. It's difficult for me to speak of IT.
I'm always reluctant to divulge intimate family matters, but i've determined to be candid in this book. So I shall, I am a visceral person by nature. I act on instinct quickly without pondering possible and without indulging in deep introspection.
This quality can work well in business where instant counts and where one must be able to risk and take immediate action. The same quality can be an irritant and personal relationships. I was moving steadily forward, and all the progress brought with IT a great deal out of activity that neither interested nor in many ways, included joe.
Joe is her husband. This is gonna lead divorce says when he wanted to talk. I'd usually be off in another world, thinking, projecting, planning, my thoughts on a dozen projects.
My mind, a world, a world. I was busy building a business I was single minded in the pursuit of my dream. Business itself was the pious romance for me.
So they gonna get divorced in one thousand thousand thirty nine. SHE considers this her greatest mistake. He wants to fixing her mistake. They're going to get remarried, and they are going to be married for over fifty years.
And there's an insight that he has here that I think also sam walton realized as well that I wanted take about one second. But he says we were never to be separated for longer than a few days ever again. We always till the day he died, that day was the beast sad.
This day of my life had each other to hold and to talk to. So joe and I will remarried this time forever, but with a few changes. Now, this idea in this point is really important.
SHE makes IT a family business for these obsessed, obsessive entrepreneur types, like a same walton, like an S A laughter, like my friend Justin, who was just talking to this, about, you want to spend so much of your time on the same way. You want to spend so much of your time building your business. One way to not have to absolutely destroy your personal life is to involve your family in their business.
And so S A laughter convinces joe to give up his business was wasn't doing as well, and come help her with the S A laughter business. And so I always tell my friend just about this because he's doing the same thing. His wife is going to come into his business so they can dedicate a lot of time for the success the business, but also spend time together.
And so when this book is published, right, this book is publish one thousand eighty five. IT is still consider a family business. IT doesn't go public, I think, for like another ten years out of the fact.
So s states obviously leading the company. Her husband helps her. Her son is involved lender. The older son is involved at a very Young age, and then they have a second son like ten years later, and he works in the family business as well.
Now I do not want to give you the mistake in perception that her business is just growing by leaps and bounds. IT is a slow, steady craw. Says nothing happened fast.
They talk about, you know, that the myths of the overnight success and success, he says he does not happen that way. I cried more than I. eight.
There was constant work, constant attention to detail, lost hours of sleep worries and heartaches friends and family didn't let a day go by without discouraging us. Despite all the nays says there was never a single moment when I considered giving up that was simply not a available alternative. I had a secret weapon.
This is very faster. Keep my wear in nineteen may. I be nineteen forties. At this point, I had a secret weapon.
There were, in those days before, television and high loss advertising, only two key ways to communicate a message quickly. The telephone in the telegraph, I came up with a third, and IT was pot tea woman. Women were telling women the word of mouth was her base.
That was her initial distribution. Women were telling women they were selling my cream before they even got to my slam. Tella woman was the word of mouth campaign that launched S A laughter cosmetics.
And at something he is going to use over over ganas will see and SHE makes another point addition to this dish way she's going to quit but he says, I knew there was a business and beauty. As long as there was a woman alive every day, I touched fifty faces. So I think by now, you ve heard to say a few times that he was obsessed with beauty and obsess with details.
And this is a combination of the two, when she's deciding what the packaging, what the jars of her cream will look like. And so this is how he makes the decision. First of all, I reasoned, where would my jars sit in every woman's bathroom naturally? Second, I knew that I wanted every woman to remember whose creamer was that was making her look so fresh and lovely.
The name would have to be embedded right on the jar. Needless to say, the jar had to be beautiful. And this is the hard part. IT couldn't clash with my customer's bathroom decor.
Having obtained sample jars, my research consisted matching the few colors to which I narrows my choices to wallpapers in every guest bathroom I could manage to visit. Every time I went to a friend's house or an elegant restaurant, I would excuse myself from the company, visit the bathroom and match my jar colors against a vast array of wallpapers. There were silver bathrooms, purple bathrooms, black and White bathrooms, Brown bathrooms, gold bathrooms, pink bathroom, even red bathrooms.
Which color would look wonderful in any bathroom? I deliberated for weeks. I spent an in order amount of time fishing up. People must have been worried about my long absence.
And so eventually SHE has her eyes set on growing out of beauty salons and into sex with avenue and SHE, said SHE that SHE needed a larger marketplace, the great department stores, because of the new phenomenon of charge accounts at the beauty along her customers would have to pay for the merchandise uh, with cash and some of the women that didn't have enough cash on them at the time would asked, what do you have a counter at sex with avenue? And I could just add IT to my charge account. And so what she's about to do here, she's going to repeat at later stages as she's about business.
But he wants to break into these stores through the ground up. And you also see why. Earlier, he thought that persistence was the most important trait for an entrepreneurs have says my name was not exactly unknown at sex for seven, the teller women campaign had already resulted in hundreds of phone calls from women asking for my products.
The story is begetting to wonder about me. The enthusiastic phone calls from my own clients were having effect. So he goes and talks to the cosmetic buyer, skinning mister Robert, and he says no much time.
He says he finally exceeded to my millions request. He gave me a small order for approximately eight hundred dollars worth of merchandise. Hello, lua.
We decided to send my own customers, and all the people would charge accounts at sax, a small, elegant White printed card with gold lettering. Their red sex with venue is proud to present the S A lotter line of cosmetics now available at our cosmetic department. And this is another example of that.
Big thing starts small. Do we have one hundred wonderful products? No, we had four, but SHE had a lot of confidence in those four products.
And you had to because this is where he goes and she's going to invest all of her savings. Previously, she's been making all of her products at home. And so they wind up getting their first like abati slash office.
IT was a former restaurant. They had to pay six months rent in advance. We swallowed hard and signed the lease on the restaurants, gas burners.
We cooked our creams. We did everything ourselves. Every bit of work was done by hand forehands, to be exact, joes and mine. We stayed up all night for nights on and snatching sleep and fits and starts. And then SHE talks about the fact that breaking the mamas barrier into real over the first time was one of the most exciting moments that sh'd ever known.
And so by building up all this goodwill over years and years and years of developing her customer based lately, one at a time, then also doing this direct outreach campaign to her, her customers, but also saxes customers that he just described, here is the result. All the people to whom I give samples, all the people who have been telling other people, all those people peared on opening day at sex fat avenue. In two days we sold out.
The fun was about to start. And with that came the end. Less work. The unless travelling, the unless streams, rivers, tides, torrence, oceans of words. I would, in praise of the products I knew with a cream of the crop, I was a woman with a mission.
I had to show as many women as I could reach, not only how to be beautiful, but how to stay beautiful on the way I hoped in my secret heart to find fame and fortune. IT was nineteen forty six. That is the official founding of the S.
A lot of company ies shes around thirty eight years all the time. And now she's often running because when she's in one sex store, she's going to expand to other sex stores. If she's in a bunch of sex stores, that makes the easier to to expand into other department stores.
And SHE just has A A lot of great, I really feel like, great advice and great lessons for future generations of markets. S this one, this one stories about the importance of never unless timing a customer's desire. IT was one hundred and one in the shade and downtown santa onion, texas.
And I was making my first personal appearance at the S A lot of counter in an elegant department store. This is something he would do. SHE would travel all over over the country and launch SHE, spends like a vigor to there, launch every single store personally, to make sure that all the people are trained, right? And they were doing things to up to her expectations.
Slowly, a woman made her way towards us. SHE was short, swarthy and definitely out of her element. He had no shoes and two gold teeth.
SHE stopped directly in front of the counter. Then SHE pointed to one jar and looked up expectantly. I was about to assist her when the sales person tell me on the shoulder, not her.
mrs. Laughter, don't wish your time. She's not going to buy anything. I know her type. I rolled around. Since when do you know how much money he has in her pocket book? I asked.
I went to work first, the cleansing oil, which I pad IT on and immediately took off, then the Green pack, then the super rich all purpose cream I worked all of IT in, and then remove the excess, and then handed her myr. SHE stared and stared and then smiled. He couldn't speak english.
I couldn't speak stanislaw. At that moment, I felt such a bond with that woman and SHE. I both marveled at the miracle of makeup, you know, the ending to this story.
Before I write, IT SHE bought two of everything I used on her face, and the next day her relatives did the same. I never forgot her SHE symbolized so much for me. Never be patronizing.
Never underestimate any woman's desire for beauty. That proud woman embodies my entire philosophy. How bad do you want? IT. I would open each store myself. I might have to travel by bus, train or donkey, but i'd be there for a week to train the sales people, to set out merchandise and to create the ora.
And then there was another description of this free sales, this free sample sales technique that SHE pioneers, the free makeover SHE just gave, that woman with no shoes and gold teeth, the free gift SHE would give with purchase, the free gift sometimes without purchase. And what this, this was the engine that drove of her business. The reason to pear, my counter, was the gift to the customer, the freeze, something that would sell everything else.
IT sounds so simple, doesn't IT. I'd have to agree. IT was simple.
Most good ideas start in simplicity, so much so that everyone wonders why no one did IT before. The sample was the most honest way to do business. You give people a products a try.
If they like IT, they buy IT. They haven't been learned by an advertisement, but convinced by the product itself. This is so smart what you did here.
And again, this is instinct. You just knew this to be true. We took the money. We had plan to use an advertising and investor instead in enough material to give away large quantities of our products.
IT was so simple that are heat or sneered when they heard what we were doing today. Even the banks are copying us. And so it's obviously you go through her life story that especially distort her life.
She's acting with this insane sense of urgency. So he said that the fact that he started business when he was older, he thought I was a distinct advantage. And I love the way he describes this.
I started late. I didn't have the time for waiting women of a certain nature season enough to bypass certain temptations. They can focus on their interest more steadily than their useful counterparts.
IT takes a certain tone of vision, the ability to look directly ahead. And older women are not quite as easily distracted. They are usually more successful when they have an advantage of years.
And then S A laughter, just relentlessly resourceful. How many people are willing to put in this type of effort? She's going to recruit customers one by one. And I would make the argument after this, as she's actually not recruiting customers.
One one explained me in the early days, I spent an unless amount of time riding the rail, so she's travelling all over the country on by train. The sounds of training wales became background music to my dreams as I traveled around the country to be president. Each S A water counter opening.
I met the woman who would one day be my customers. At least I hope they would be to that. And I never stop talking to people, not ever if he sees a woman sitting by ourself to go.
They had love to make up her face and show you your cream or make you so lovely to touch. SHE would give them a makeover for free, and they should had hand them a miro. SHE looked herself.
SHE couldn't believe that I gave her a little of everything to take home. SHE still rates to me. Now keep mind, by time she's writing the book she's had, she's been turning a business for forty years. To this day, I still receive male from women. I met all over the world, met, touched and made up during spontaneous moments.
And so my point is like, well, first of how many people are willing to put in this type of effort recruiting customers one by one? But think about that, some of these people who might have met twenty years ago, thirty years ago, they're still writing to our there are still customers of her. How many other customers have they gone? And advani, zed and recruit for S A laughter IT wasn't a one on one.
If you're in the things for the long term, it's not a one on one interaction. It's one on one thousand because is that person and then whoever that person tells, then whoever that person that that person tells, tell us. And that just compounds and growth throughout the decades.
And so the relentless resource mini doesn't stop there. So you know you're launching your S A laughter, your inside of a department store, right? You're at the cosmetics counter.
Do you think he stops to the cosmetics counter? No, he did not. He goes to the a when she's launching a store. SHE will go to every other department, say there are selling dresses or hats, where the cases, so make friends with the people should give them free samples, and say, hey, when you sell that hat, mentioned a new shade of lipstick might look good with the hat. I can make friends with sales women selling hats.
And he might suggest to our customer that a free makeup at the S A lot counter where to hands a new hat immeasurably. And the dress sales person might mention to our customer, S A law r has the perfect of lipstick to wear. With a new dress.
I would induce the whole store to speak for my products, more relentless resourcefulness from her. The point was to keep thinking, to keep placing the products in the public eyes, to keep devising new ways of capturing the consumers attention. During the week, I usually spend an an opening promotion.
I made my business never to leave town without seeing every beauty editor of every magazine and newspaper. I brought them samples, made up their faces, gave them beauty advice. I promoted beauty and made friends.
There is no such thing as bad time she's doing this. They were talking her during the economic downturns that she's going to be in trouble. This is a response.
There is no such thing as bad times. I keep telling myself. There is no such thing as bad business.
Business is there if you go after IT a few pages later, more relentless, resourceful behavior give full effort, always everywhere. No community was too small for my attention. My absolutely full effort.
I had ridden ten, for instance, on a bus for six hours to open a small store in corpus Christi, texas. The stores client to was modest in size and economics. No matter, never underestimate who live in small towns, are those with limited budgets.
People, no matter where they live or on what their finances will spend, if they are convinced of worth this ideas, he repeats constantly, go out, build relationships, make friends. Keep these friends for your entire career. This way I told you, saml and I monger both said to me in different ways in person, I used every second to make friends and to spread word about our products.
That is just fantastic advice. He says, never unrested mate the value of an ally. And so one of her early allies was this woman name, Helen Blake.
And again, never underestimate the value and allies at great line. And she's on the phone with Helen Blake in the swiss. You know, he would say to me quite casually during a phone call, I think you might want to give me hope.
The merchants manager from woodward, a call I was with her yesterday, and he mentioned that I look wonderful and I told her was due to your cosmetics. And while I just think you'd like to know more about you that instant, I would call miss pope, if you do not do important things when you think of them, you probably never will, and you will lose out today. They call this networking, the sharing between colleagues.
IT is one of the most powerful tools in business. Another great line about this. Imagine a business world where you were the seller and the buyers for your allies. Then go make that happen. Another thing that s say laughter does this really smart is SHE.
SHE wants to answer this question, how can I get more women to buy their own perfume? And her answer this question is, genius is gone to wind up launching this giant business line for them. And so S A lauter had studied cocos o SHE called cocos o multiple times in this book.
At the point she's writing this book, coco chanel perfume, you know, number five, is widely popular. But as they realized, like perfume is very high margin, very expensive product, but at this time, women all buy for themselves. It's like A A man buys IT for women to mark a special occasion, like a birthday and adversity, things like that.
And so SHE asked a question, okay, well, how can I get american women to buy their own perfume? How can I get the american women to buy their own perfume? I would not call IT perfume.
I would call the youth do a bath oil that doubles as a skin perfume that would be acceptable for them to buy, because a woman would buy her own bathroom, right? Taking back. A woman could buy herself a bottle of bath oil the same way that you buy lipstick without feeling guilty, without waiting for her birthday or anniversary.
And the result is something he has, was a mini revolution. This is why, instead of using their french perfumes by the drop behind each ear, women were using youth due by the bottle in their bathwater. IT doesn't take a graduate school business to figure out that meant sales, beautiful sales.
In nineteen fifty three, you did, you do did about fifty thousand dollars with the business for us in nineteen eighty four that figured had jumped to over one hundred fifty million. One product in a family member is family own business in nineteen four gay, one product line from one question three that he has yourself three decades earlier is generating over one hundred and fifty million in revenue a year. So want to go back to her idea about the importance of making in a family business.
SHE was completely wrappered and obsessed, and completely this idea taking hold of her building this company. But SHE says, I refuse to their choose business, our family, I wanted both. And so this is a little bit about how they structured the business now only between themselves, husband, wife, but also more importantly, I think their Young kids and I think the experience that they gave them, he first, for now, both of her sons are still alive.
Think one is ninety one and one is eighty, and they're both multibillionaire. The result of decision member going back to the very beginning, the account and the lawyer don't do this. Thank god.
S I didn't listen anybody about herself, and you get for to eight years later and look at how SHE changed the projector of entire family. So as the business grew, we cared very much about involving our sons lander work at the office every day. After school, he delivered packages.
He was our first billing clerk, and he would type up every invoice. This is when he's in high school, by the way. And then he'd work full time for us or with us during every summer.
After high school, he went to the world school finance at the university pennsylania. And then after that, he went to colombia graduate school of business. All while in college, we'd been sending him copies.
This is such a great idea. All while in college, we've been sending him copies of all the correspondence. That S A water. So things like notes from distributors, deals, loss or may letters from customers, financial statements positive and negative were all forward to him at school.
And IT was around this time where they get an acquisition offer and they are like what we received an offer to sell the business for a million dollars. You know, we're in one thousand fifties and so they asked their sun, you know, what should we do? And I think it's obviously ted and consider selling for one second.
But he said, in a million dollars doesn't sound like too much. We should keep going. And today, the market cap somewhere around thirty billion dollars. And then when s they want six pan into europe, the way he does, I think, is really smart.
So he says, i'm going to start with the finest store in london, which at the time was Harris and SHE thought if I could get my products inside of hards, and all the other great stores in europe would follow. And so he goes and pitches the buyers at hards the first meeting, the buyer is simply not interested. And so S A does exactly what he does when she's in town to launch anything, even at this time, which he was unsuccessful getting into her products.
And there SHE goes, and he says, a little media attention was called for. I visited the beauty editors of various magazines, and he convinced the beauty editor at harper's bizarre to write a piece about her products. And they degree within, they ask her, okay, well, what store in london are your products available? And SHE says, my products are not available in london and SHE relies.
Okay, it's fine. Already be saying that S A loaders. Cosmetics will be coming soon.
The article comes out as well received as they goes back to the bioterror. Again, I went again. The answer is no.
There is no space at this time. There was no call for my products. This wasn't the right time a year.
Maybe another time, I had to keep trying. I stayed in england another month, visiting every beauty editor to make my name known. I was getting right up, but no order from Harris. The next year, I go back to london and I go back to Harris.
He was not the buyer was not quite as hostile this time, SHE says, let me tell you, I have no room, but as I told you before, but perhaps I could take a tiny order and put IT in with the general toilets. IT won't be next to good cosmetics that you will have to understand. IT was not a Victory yet.
I visited every one of the beauty editors again to remind them of me. Another round of makeup, another round of samples. Do you think you might write another peace? I ask, I ask them.
Now they were in london and herods. The articles appeared. Customers also appeared.
Women began asking for S A. laughter. The herds buyer was reluctant to notice, but SHE had no choice.
In the flush of a good week sales, I summed up courage to ask if he could give me a more important counter. Oh, no, he said, other counter space is definitely not available. That's fine.
Six months later, I made a third trip to london. I met with the buyer again. Well, we seem to have many london women asking for your products, SHE graduate inly admitted. I think i'll give you a small spot at a more procedures counter.
And that is how S A laughter came to europe, this relentless way that SHE follows up, this relentless way that he draws attention to her brands and gets other, other people, other customers to ask to the media through her own kind. Tell is something SHE just over, over again. So he wants to span in the canada.
The buyer, this department stores like no like the cosmetic department is is spoken for. We have all these exclusive. And she's like, okay, well, what not a cosmetic? Uh, you need bathroom.
Why don't you stock? My youth do so he said, you need a bathroom. En would love to come into a department store inside a drug ore to look, buy IT on consignment.
If you sell IT, fine. If you don't, you've lost nothing. Oh, okay, he said, but semi, just a few bottles and only the oil.
You know, she's not gna do that. So I was wrapping up the bathroom to send to canada. I decided to put a few creams in with a note, take these on.
And also, you certainly won't want to have to say no to any woman who ask if you have everything, if you have anything else in this line, right? And his response was, what about our exclusive with other companies? What about my lack of space? What about, what about? What about? He spotted red when I spoke with him later on.
Look, you must go with the trend and with the world. Everyone is using the bath oil and these creams in america. You don't have to pay me for them until you sell them. Okay， fine.
He said in resignation, when I came to make a personal appearance at the opening invested lot in canada, my sales department had sent everything, the bathrobe, the colon, the cream, little boxes of powder I can give me with gifts. We sold out of everything. The buyer came down to see me after three or four days.
How did you do this? He said, you don't self cosmetic. He responded, you sell, your sell IT all goes back to what you said. I've never worked a day in my life without selling.
If I believe in something, I sell IT and I sell IT hard he is an entire chapter on silly IT is not enough to have the most one onder ful products in the world. You must be able to sell IT one person with definitive ideas and pride in their product, and a hands on approach can lay the foundation for a strong business. Creating a great product is an accomplishment.
Making people aware of its existence, let alone getting them to try IT is sometimes harder to do than to create in the first place. Combine this with your unique philosophy about building a business authentic to her. Goes back to what the gentleman in canada was saying, oh, you don't sell your products.
You sell yourself. This is what S A said. Each business person must find a style, that voice that grows clear and louder with each success and failure, observing your own successes, sm failures, make sure inner business voice more sure and vivid.
SHE continues, and SHE states what he learned about building and beauty works for all products. During the acquisition binges of the one thousand nine seventies, we saw business firms becoming congal. There was pressure for us to do the same.
The laughter inner voice said, no, stick to what you know best and don't change IT. Today, the same firms are spinning off all the subsidies because they weakened. Instead of strengthen ing the original product, the voice grows stronger with each success member that company building philosophy voices what she's referencing.
The voice grows stronger with each success, each observe failure. All one has to do is listen. Business is a magnificent obsession. I've never been brought day in my life, partly because as a true business attack, it's never been enough to have steady work.
I had to love what I was doing, love your career, or else find another soup, glue or beauty cannot be package and jars, tubes and bottles, and all invented like any other commodity. The big difference lies in the venture. The big difference lies in you, not the items to be vented.
Even excEllent glue, soups and beauty products can die in the marketplace. If the vendor isn't passionate and clever, develop your own style. Our unique style has come from years of trial and error.
And this two piece of advice, I think, go well with each other, visualize, and then work like hell to make your vision a reality visualized. If in your minds eye see a successful venture, a deal made, profit accomplish, IT is a superb chance of actually happening. Projecting your mind into a successful situation, most powerful means to achieve goals.
If you spend time with pictures of failure in your mind, you will orchestrate failure countless times before the event, I have pictured a heroic sale to a large department store every step of the way, and the picture of my mind became a reality. I visualized success then created the reality from the image, great athletes, business people, inventors and achieve s from all walks of life. Seem to know this secret sounds really food.
I'm just found a bunch of the books. Bob noise, found intel, Edwin land, steep jobs on our short agger as they laughter. They all did this.
They all talked about doing this as well. And then combine that with working like hell to make your dreams reality. I tend to work nonstop during the day, usually seven days a week.
And then at night, he goes out at night about five times a week on average. Why IT helps my business that keeps me in touch with the people who buy. And so my cosmetic cosmetics IT keep my finger on the post of my customers are also the kind of people I choose his friends.
It's very usual to stay close social contact with business associates, those who are connected with my business life store on our fires. Media people, movie stars, Young career women are all involved on another level in my social life. And then finally, he has some parking advice for you and I, which is focus and don't quit.
First comes to wish, then you must have the heart to have the dream. Then you work and work and work from where you see. You can probably reach out with comparatively in touch, a life of serenity, ity and peace.
You can wait for things to happen and not get too sad when they don't. That's fine for some, but not for me. Surrenders is pleasant, but IT lacks the excesses of achievement.
Leaving the american dream has been intense, difficult work, but I couldn't have hope for a more satisfying life. I believe that potential was unlimited. Success depends on daring to act on dreams.
How old do you want to go? Go all the way within each person is the potential to build the empire of your wishes. And don't allow anyone to say that you can have at all.
I've always believe that if you stick to a thought and carefully avoid distraction along the way, you can fulfill a dream. My whole life has been about fulfilling dreams. I keep my eye on the target, whatever that target was.
I've never allowed my eye to leave the particular target of the moment. Whether your target is big or small, grand or simple, ambitious or personal, i've always believe that success comes from not letting your eyes strain from the target. Anyone who wants to achieve a dream must stay strong, focus and steady.
You must expect and demand perfection and never settle for mediocre. If you push yourself beyond the furthest place you can go, you'll be able to achieve your hearts to dream. And that is where I leave IT for the full way.
Highly recommend reading the book. If you buy the book using the link in the shower notes are available from pakistan com, you'll be support the past the same time. That is three hundred and sixty one books down one thousand ago. And I talk to gan soon.