Bobbi Brown, Founder and CCO, Jones Road Beauty and EVOLUTION_18
Interviewer: Claire Zillman, Senior Editor, FORTUNE; Co-chair, MPW Next Gen

MPW Next Gen 2021: Reinvention and Leadership lessons from Bobbi Brown

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the theme of our summit this year is emerging stronger. And our first guest is the embodiment of that notion. She's also an innovator and genius of reinvention. She's an author, health coach, wellness advocate hotelier and once again diving back into makeup and beauty space, the makeup and beauty space with her latest brand, jones Road. She is bobby brown and she joins us here today, bobby. Thank you so much for being here. Oh, it's so nice to be here and to talk to you. Thank you. Great! So I want to start with jones Road, your new makeup brand that you launched in october. Can you tell us just a little bit about it and how it's different from the first brain you launched several decades ago, Bobbi Brown cosmetics? Well, it's makeup, that's the similarities. But the difference is it's a director consumer brand, it's a clean brand and it's really makeup that doesn't look like makeup, it's makeup, it just makes you look like natural and better. It's a very different finishes, different forms and it's really fun to be doing it again this way and that, that served no makeup makeup. Um, why do you think that that's sort of what women want right now? Um, what about this moment in time is makes that the right fit for us? You know, it's a, it's a, I don't want to say it's a trend, but it's what I saw coming down the pipeline, you know, mostly from spending time with so many women, so many younger women and just saying that women were not wearing as much makeup as they did. And it's really hard to take traditional makeup and make you look like you're not wearing makeup. It still looked like makeup on the skin. So it's personally, it's what I was doing. You know, when I left the brand, I started wearing less makeup and I felt better. I felt pressure and I just, you know, did make up different and I saw makeup different, right? And when you see left the brand, you're talking about your previous brand and that one's owned by, that is owned by Estee lauder. Yes, yeah, Bobbi brown cosmetics, my husband and I started it, you know, I don't even know if it's 30 years 25 years ago, but I stayed with the brand After we sold it for 22 years, which is a whole another talk. But you know when I left still had 4.5 years left of a very long non compete and so I was not allowed to do anything in beauty, which is why did all these other things being crazy entrepreneur. I left the brand at 60 years old, 59.9 years old and I didn't feel like doing nothing and I did a bunch of things and you know I launched jones road on the day my non compete ended one week before the presidential election. Wow. Yeah, I wanted, I wanted and in the middle of a pandemic no less. So I wanted to talk about that. I want to sort of get to this um, from the second stage of your career. But I want to ask about the timing of jones roads launch as you mentioned before the election in the middle of a pandemic after a very tumultuous summer um of uh social justice protests. It was just quite quite quite the timing. Um how did you, how did your plans for the brand if at all change given those circumstances? What what about its launch or even about its tone? Um did you, did you change based on the circumstances? Um, everything changed. First of all, we are only directed consumer and we will stay that way maybe with some pop ups for the current time. And you know, it's were being sought out by so many of the retailers, but I really want to do this differently. And the difference is that when you are in charge and you have your own brand and things are different. Now. We talked to the consumer over social, we talk over zoom when we launched when I launched jones, I launched on the Today Show Wall Street Journal article and radio show Elvis Duran that I basically did from my office couch, you know wearing shorts and a blazer. It was good as it would have been with full teams of people and strategies are only strategy is that we kind of know what we're doing and you have to be a very, very nimble and you have to be able to shift quickly which we did right? And I want to sort of go back. I want to, well, first I want to encourage our audience to um drop any questions you might have for bobby into the chat and we'll get to them. Um, but I want to go to your decision, you mentioned, you know, leaving at a lot and you having this non can be, you know, at that moment in time you could have, that could have very easily been the end of a tremendously successful career. You know, why did you decide that, jones wrote, you know, you wanted to start fresh all over again with jones wrote at this stage of your career. You know, I didn't when I left the brand, I had no idea what I was going to do and you know, it was a long time in coming and when it finally happened, I had nothing on my on my agenda because my my schedule in my calendar was so packed full. I couldn't possibly had one more thing and you know, besides having three kids and you know, a life, I was very, very, very committed to the brand. When I left I started just talking to people and projects came up and I realized I never called myself this before, that I'm a serial entrepreneur. I love taking chances, I love not knowing things because that's how I I get excited figuring things out doing it differently. And I really love working with teens of people that I, you know, our creative and are smart and are are as positive and not, you know, not negative. I don't like being around people that are always thinking I can't do this or complaining. I I just like people that are very optimistic. So I was so excited because what else was I going to do? You know, I'm not a lady that lunches you know, I I just like to be busy and I like challenges. So how did so how did jones road come up? I mean at what point did you say? Aha like this is it for me, this is the next thing. And how did you go if you had, I assume you had a lot of opportunities coming your way. How did you go about filtering through to decide sort of what your next, you know, project was going to be? So the first thing I did, I had my ninth book to promote which was which is beauty from the Inside out. So I did that six months after I left the brand and I also, a friend of mine um owned Lord and Taylor and he said I want to give you the just bobby shop, go to town and do whatever you want. So I did this curated um bobby shop in, you know in person and six Lord and Taylor's. We eventually moved it into a digital magazine which we have now, but I jumped in and I did it and then I went back to school, got my degree as a health coach. I worked with my husband developing a hotel in Montclair called the George and I got a couple of requests. I went to India to keynote the very first indian makeup show I realized which I love being a bit of artist. I went back in the studio and I also then got a call from master class to be the expert to teach makeup at the same time, I was using clean products and I was really curious what could be done with formulas. That doesn't, that was better than what I was saying out there and jones road kind of popped into my head. Now we have a question from the audience that I want to get to um what lessons did you take from developing and launching your Bobbi brown cosmetics um line and how did you apply them to developing this new line, jones wrote, obviously there were decades in between both of those. So what, what's still carried over to this new launch? Well what carried over? You know, first of all is my my love of Formula, my ability to make something out of nothing or come up with a reason or make something better. So that's very similar. Certainly, you know, having the right team around you is really important. The difference is I now have two girls in product development where I used to have dozens. Um, you know, certainly the teams are completely different. I have one graphic designer who I call my art director, who's a year out of college. I used to have 10 different teams and probably 25 people for anything. So I knew it had to be done. But I also know there's an easier way to do things without meaning without documents, without 10 people having to discuss. And I just like to actually get things done right. Um, the size of your team and you know that it's so small, it's really interesting, really interesting and obviously such a difference from from your previous brand. We have another question you mentioned being held back from spreading your wings because of a long non compete. What got you through those times? And what advice do you have for those who are stuck in a position that limits what they want to do? Well when my husband, I sold the company, my husband said, you know, there's one sticking point they want to give you, you know, they want you to sign a 25 year non compete. Well, I was 34 years old at the time and I said 34, I'll be in my 60s, I'm not going to want to work. So we signed it. So that was a long time, 4.5 years for someone like me was forever. So the first thing I did is I went and bought a charm on my necklace that had the date 10.20 so I knew I would be able to have more freedom than I wore it around my neck, started doing different projects while always thinking, you know about what my passion was. I developed a line of wellness products that are sold on amazon and walmart and direct consumer called Evolution 18. All those things kept me busy and also got me into the D. D. D. D. C. World. So I kind of knew, you know, what would, what is really happening there. I fell in love with it. So when I launched jones, I was able to carry those things with me and I learned a lot, you know, so what also helped me are my friends, my husband, I had more time so I could take better care of myself and mentally that really helped my physical and it really worked together and I branched out and met a lot of people and I grew my network and my support system. I now have so many female founders as friends. I help them, they help me. It's pretty, you know, pretty neat. Mhm. I mean you talk about, you know, signing that deal when you were um 35 the non copy. Do you have any regrets about that? About the deal with Estee lauder? And the terms of it? No, I have I have no regrets because I learned so much I experience things other people could only imagine. They were incredible to me. You know, we were very close for most of the years. You know, especially the lauder family. I mean it's really the lauder family when I joined, it was a family business when I left, it was a very different corporation, you know, and that happens when companies grow. So I I have no regrets and you know, maybe I should have left a couple of years sooner, but I got to celebrate 25 years while I was still with the brand and that seemed like a perfect time to go right. We have another question from the audience, can you talk about the idea of clean beauty and what that means to you? How does your brand compare to other clean quote unquote clean lines? Well, I think most clean brands strive for the same thing and that's to keep you know, the quality of their product up and also make sure that you don't have ingredients that have been proven harmful. So when I first left the brand, I had breakfast with the founder of Credo, which is a natural makeup uh retailer. And she gave me her Credo list 2700 ingredients that you are not allowed to have in the clean world. So that was a big help where I could hand this to the lab and say you can't put any of this in trial and error. What does keep things shelf stable? So we've learned a lot a lot well and you mentioned this about having a team around you that's optimistic and positive. And and one of the things that struck me when I was reading about you and talking to you is that you don't seem to be afraid of failure. You've said in the past, I don't ever think things aren't going to work out. Um is that level of confidence and optimism? Is that intrinsic to who you are? Or is that a tree that you learned along the way at some point in your life and career? Well, I don't think it's just because I'm sure, you know, courageous, I think I'm very naive, I am really naive. So I don't think things are gonna work out and by the way, if they don't, I'll do something else. You know, that that's just my my attitude or I'll do it differently. So I definitely think that I am, you know, optimistic, and, and, you know, the glass half full by far right. And you talked about having relationships with other founders, uh, and even found in the beauty space and, you know, they are, to some extent your competitors. Is that, did you have those kind of relationships when you first started? And um, you know, what, what makes those relationships possible now, even even when, you know, there's a lot of competition between brands, I absolutely did not have that at the first brand, I wasn't allowed to ever shout out another brand that wasn't part of the corporation, and that was just their thing. So I certainly, you know, know the difference. And you know what? A lot of people make lipsticks. A lot of people make flushes. I support my friends, I want them to be successful. There's enough success. You know, there's enough room for all of us to be successful. What I do is different, what other people do. I don't copy. And I think it's, you know, we're a lot better when we work together. And just to wrap up, you you mentioned being a serial entrepreneur. So, so what's next? I mean, I know you just launched um jones road, but do you have anything up and coming? Well, I have a podcast and so I'll have a new season on my podcast and um you know, it's with I Heart Radio, it's called Beyond the Beauty. I am hoping not to come up with another brand. I think too, you know, emerging brands is enough right now. So you know, that's that's and I would like to meditate, it's on my list, but I don't know if I'll ever achieve them. Okay, A good goal for all of us. I think if we're not already doing it well, bobby, thank you so much for being with us. I really enjoyed talking to you. Um Thanks again for joining us.