Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic production I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For years, cosmetics companies and beauty companies will be telling
Speaker 1: people what's wrong with them. You need this cream because
Speaker 1: your skin is bad. You need this foundation because you're
Speaker 1: the wrong color. You need this because you have to
Speaker 1: change the shape of your nose. That's not true. Yes,
Speaker 1: you want to look good, but if you don't feel good,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna look good. And it's not about weight
Speaker 1: or diet, It's just about feeling good. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing,
Speaker 1: where we examine that special mix of art and science
Speaker 1: that's behind the great marketing and business successes. On this episode,
Speaker 1: we have someone with strong creative and business skills, an
Speaker 1: unmatched charm and determination, and the successes and brands to
Speaker 1: prove it. Bobby Brown. Bobby is sometimes described as a
Speaker 1: makeup artist, but that is like calling Steve Jobs a
Speaker 1: computer salesperson. She created a billion dollar cosmetics business that
Speaker 1: carries her name. She's written nine books about beauty and makeup.
Speaker 1: She has been a contributing editor from magazines and online.
Speaker 1: She's a regular part of our own I Heart Radio's
Speaker 1: Elvis Durand's Morning show. She has danced on stage with Florida.
Speaker 1: She was a regular on The Today Show, and she
Speaker 1: is currently doing even more businesses. And with all that,
Speaker 1: she managed to find some life work balance with her
Speaker 1: family and she's a lot of fun. Bobby welcome, Thanks
Speaker 1: so much. That's so sweet. We're gonna dig into a
Speaker 1: bunch of the stories, but first I want to dig
Speaker 1: into you in sixty seconds. So this first thing that
Speaker 1: comes in your head, Tequila, I love that you asked
Speaker 1: me the first thing that came in my head. Do
Speaker 1: you prefer sunrise and sunset? Sunrise Montclair, New Jersey or
Speaker 1: who Will met? Illinois? Montclair, New Jersey, Chicago, New York,
Speaker 1: New York Instagram or Twitter Instagram snapper TikTok neither coffee
Speaker 1: or tea, espresso, Beetles or Stones, Stones chocolate or vanilla chocolate,
Speaker 1: still or sparkling Still? Are you ready? It's about to
Speaker 1: get harder? Favorite hip hop artist, flow Right, smartest person
Speaker 1: you know, my husband, childhood hero and d Alice first
Speaker 1: job selling shoes at Carson Perry Scott. Favorite movie, love story,
Speaker 1: worst de beauty trend, so many contouring one superpower you'd
Speaker 1: like to have to be a better dancer. Favorite cocktail
Speaker 1: tequila or vodka, Last vacation, Bahamas, secret talent. I think
Speaker 1: I'm funny. Title of your memoir, what would it be?
Speaker 1: It'll be all pictures, no words. Who would play you
Speaker 1: in a movie? Jennifer Anderson proudest accomplishment, my three children
Speaker 1: And what's something you can't live without? My family? Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go. You get credit for introducing natural looking makeup
Speaker 1: at the dawn of the nineteen nineties. What was going
Speaker 1: on at that time and what were you rebelling against
Speaker 1: a makeup at that time? Right before the whole scene
Speaker 1: in New York was a lot of parties, a lot
Speaker 1: of going out to the clubs. Women were doing makeup
Speaker 1: like multi colored eyes and overlined lips and all this
Speaker 1: crazy stuff. And when I came to New York, I
Speaker 1: got a job to do a cover of Cosmopolitan at
Speaker 1: Jerry Hall. I tried everything in my power to do
Speaker 1: her makeup grade and she was so kind and she said,
Speaker 1: beautiful job, but can I have the mirror. I gave
Speaker 1: her the mirror and she said, can I just make
Speaker 1: a few touches? She redid her whole face, and I
Speaker 1: learned watching I didn't feel bad, I really learned, but
Speaker 1: I realized I can't do that kind of makeup. So
Speaker 1: I started doing it my way and it kind of
Speaker 1: slowly caught on. So what was your inspiration for your way?
Speaker 1: Because this was not the way now? It was definitely
Speaker 1: not the way. When I was in middle school, I
Speaker 1: wanted to be pretty and I didn't think I was,
Speaker 1: and I would use my mom's makeup to make me
Speaker 1: look tan and pretty. I don't want anyone to know
Speaker 1: is wearing makeup. And then when I became a makeup artist,
Speaker 1: I started doing that two models. People told me I'd
Speaker 1: never worked. If you want to work, you have to
Speaker 1: learn to do the other thing. But I just couldn't
Speaker 1: do it, and so I started doing it my way,
Speaker 1: and it's slowly slowly took on. What big names adopted
Speaker 1: your style that sort of gave you cred and sort
Speaker 1: of pushed you over that tipping point for you. I
Speaker 1: did a cover of Rolling Stone with Annie Leebowitz, and
Speaker 1: I made the guys look good, and Keith Richard's manager
Speaker 1: came over to me and said, oh my god, can
Speaker 1: we book you again? And so I got a couple
Speaker 1: of times got hired to do it because I always
Speaker 1: made people look healthy. Stones that's pretty good. That was
Speaker 1: pretty good. That's pretty good. So I want to dig
Speaker 1: into this a lot more, But first I want to
Speaker 1: go back to your roots. You were born in the
Speaker 1: late fifties in Chicago. You grew up in the suburbs
Speaker 1: will matt home of the famous New Trier High School.
Speaker 1: Can you paint the picture of those times. I'm the
Speaker 1: oldest of three kids. I was born to my family
Speaker 1: when my mother was twenty and my dad one very
Speaker 1: good looking couple. My dad and a tourney and my
Speaker 1: mama homemaker. By the time they were had three kids,
Speaker 1: were living in the suburbs, pretty normal, but my parents
Speaker 1: were very young. So I would come home and they'd
Speaker 1: be in our TV room with all their friends going
Speaker 1: to a concerts, and like, guys, I smell that. What
Speaker 1: is that? So I kind of grew up around a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, things that were happening at the time.
Speaker 1: I understand you had a very special bond with a
Speaker 1: very entrepreneurial grandfather. Yes, Papa Sam. What impact did he
Speaker 1: have on your business, because evidently he was a hell
Speaker 1: of an entrepreneur and a great business mine. Well, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I really learned a lot watching Papa Sam. I just
Speaker 1: saw how much he cared about the people that bought
Speaker 1: his cars, the people that worked for him. He was
Speaker 1: constantly marketing his own business. He was putting his photos
Speaker 1: and envelopes with kids, would sit with them and mail
Speaker 1: the things out, and told great stories. He knew al
Speaker 1: Capone and Whitey and all these guys. They all bought
Speaker 1: cars from him, and he was just larger than life
Speaker 1: for a teeny little funny man. All of five too,
Speaker 1: by the way. So what was the best Alcohoone story?
Speaker 1: Not the best Alcophone store. But my favorite Papa story
Speaker 1: was one day this man came into the car dealership,
Speaker 1: looked like he'd been sleeping on the street at two
Speaker 1: garbage bags, and no one would wait on him, not
Speaker 1: one person in his office. So he went over and
Speaker 1: he said, hey, doc, what can I do for you?
Speaker 1: And the guy said, I want to buy a car.
Speaker 1: He said, all right, I'll show you some cars. The
Speaker 1: bags were full of cash. He bought two cars cash.
Speaker 1: And so Papa always taught me that you cannot judge
Speaker 1: by what someone looks like. How about your dad a
Speaker 1: lawyer and my dad he was a business person, big influence.
Speaker 1: My dad was a lawyer till he was seventy. He
Speaker 1: retired and is now a children's book author. He's a
Speaker 1: very cool young eighty four year old. He's had quite
Speaker 1: a life. But my dad used to come home from
Speaker 1: his law job and sit down with me and do
Speaker 1: creative things, drawing and photography and art, and he talked
Speaker 1: about things that father's you wouldn't think they would talk about.
Speaker 1: He taught me about dating, He taught me about men.
Speaker 1: He really wanted me to go away to school and
Speaker 1: study something super interesting in Spain or somewhere, and I
Speaker 1: ended up studying makeup in college. It worked, It worked
Speaker 1: out for me, But he wouldn't have known that at
Speaker 1: the time. When did you discover makeup? And how I
Speaker 1: discovered makeup when I was a young kid, because I
Speaker 1: used to watch my mom get ready to go out
Speaker 1: at night. They would go out on Wednesday night and
Speaker 1: Saturday night, and my mother was very glamorous, and she
Speaker 1: was very, very skinny, and always wore really high heels,
Speaker 1: and she would sit in the bathroom basically in her
Speaker 1: underwear with her high heels on her jewelry cigarette hanging
Speaker 1: off the counter, and I would watch her do this
Speaker 1: glamorous makeup and I would just be in awe. I've
Speaker 1: never been a glamour girl. I've never personally felt that
Speaker 1: it was right for me, but I think it's because
Speaker 1: I watched my mom master it. When did you start
Speaker 1: wearing makeup? I started wearing makeup probably around middle school,
Speaker 1: and I was allowed to wear a little bit to
Speaker 1: school when you couldn't see it, but on the bus,
Speaker 1: I remember putting blue mass gara and you know, purple
Speaker 1: eyeliner in because that's what all the kids did. But
Speaker 1: I really fell in love with makeup when I was
Speaker 1: in Florida, because we would take our winter breaks in
Speaker 1: Florida and coming home, I would literally go into the
Speaker 1: airplane bathroom and put bronze all over my face because
Speaker 1: it was always like a competition who had the best hand.
Speaker 1: So I had the best hand because I knew how
Speaker 1: to give myself the best hand. I was so into
Speaker 1: tans in Chicago that in March, as soon as the
Speaker 1: sun would kind of peek its head, I would take
Speaker 1: a big giant box that had a refrigerator or something
Speaker 1: in it, put tinfoil in it, put iodine and baby
Speaker 1: oil all over my body, and just lay there and
Speaker 1: we would all get tanned. No one said, that's probably
Speaker 1: not a good idea. Were you talented and makeup at
Speaker 1: that age? Where like kids going wow, how did you do? No? No,
Speaker 1: I've never been talented to makeup. I just have honed
Speaker 1: my craft. Not like some of my peers who are
Speaker 1: incredibly painters. I'm not a painter. I'm just I make
Speaker 1: sure it looks the way I wanted to look. Let's
Speaker 1: jump to college. You tried out University of Wisconsin, osh, gosh,
Speaker 1: not you. You tried University of Arizona in Tucson, not
Speaker 1: for you. Then you discovered Emerson College in Boston, and
Speaker 1: it clicked. Why when I found Emerson, I really found
Speaker 1: my people. I was always under the impression that I
Speaker 1: wasn't very smart. I would sit in school and be
Speaker 1: completely bored out of my mind, even in high school.
Speaker 1: Unless it was a teacher that taught with creativity, with
Speaker 1: this visual vision, then I would get engaged and be
Speaker 1: really into it. I'm a visual learner. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that at the time. I thought that there was something
Speaker 1: wrong with me and I wasn't smart, but when I
Speaker 1: finally found Emerson, I found other people that were as
Speaker 1: creative minded as I was and learned differently. Emerson College
Speaker 1: let me study makeup. They didn't have a makeup program.
Speaker 1: They had something called an interdisciplinary program. I got to
Speaker 1: make up my own major. How did you find Emerson?
Speaker 1: My mother sat me down and said, if today was
Speaker 1: your birthday, you could do anything you want. And I
Speaker 1: could have said go to Paris, buy new gene something,
Speaker 1: but I said I wanted to go to Marshall Fields
Speaker 1: and play with makeup. She says, well, why don't you
Speaker 1: become a makeup artist, And I said, I don't want
Speaker 1: to go to beauty school. The thought of being in
Speaker 1: a beauty salon was not intriguing to me. And she said,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a college somewhere. And my father's friend
Speaker 1: told me about Emerson. You have been, I know this,
Speaker 1: a lifelong supporter of Emerson. What did you get out
Speaker 1: of Emerson? What did that put you on a path to?
Speaker 1: What about you is Emerson? Honestly everything? Because they allowed
Speaker 1: me to study makeup, they allowed me to create my
Speaker 1: own major. I did the plays, I did theater. I
Speaker 1: took classes on speech. I took classes on filmmaking, but
Speaker 1: I would decide what film I wanted to do based
Speaker 1: on what makeup I felt like doing. So I would
Speaker 1: create the characters and then right afterwards and I realized,
Speaker 1: I'm not like everybody else, I'm only like me, and
Speaker 1: it's okay. So who were your early influences on beauty
Speaker 1: makeup style? Well, when I graduated college, there was a
Speaker 1: makeup artist named Bonnie Mallor. I read an article about
Speaker 1: her in Mademoiselle magazine and she was the makeup artist
Speaker 1: that worked with Bruce Weber, Patrick de Marcialer did all
Speaker 1: the fashion shows from Ralph Lauren to Perry Ellis, and
Speaker 1: she had a very natural style and she was freelance.
Speaker 1: And I read the article. I'm like, that's what I
Speaker 1: want to do, and so I called her up. She's
Speaker 1: never called me back. I wrote her a letter. She
Speaker 1: didn't answer me back. I moved to New York. I
Speaker 1: called her again and I got her answering machine that said,
Speaker 1: I'm probably traveling, but if you need anything, call my agent,
Speaker 1: Brian Bantry. I called Brian Bantry. I went to see
Speaker 1: him and he said, I can't represent you. Because you
Speaker 1: have no experience. I'm like, all right, dude, how do
Speaker 1: you get experience? He said, I'll start sending you on jobs.
Speaker 1: So I got out the Yellow Pages and I looked
Speaker 1: up models, modeling agencies, makeup. I went to the makeup Union.
Speaker 1: I just started, of course there is yeah, and I
Speaker 1: walked in there. I said, I'm here, I'm ready to
Speaker 1: sign up. They're like, okay, well sit down, let me
Speaker 1: tell you how it works. It takes about seven to
Speaker 1: fifteen years to get in unless you know someone, and
Speaker 1: then it will take about two to three years to
Speaker 1: get in the union. Yes, but they said we can
Speaker 1: help you though. Some of our artists who are in
Speaker 1: the union need assistance. So they sent me to one girl.
Speaker 1: Her name was Bobby. She was the makeup arts for
Speaker 1: Serday Night Live, so I got to assist her. Eventually
Speaker 1: I assisted Bonnie, but I ended up doing a lot
Speaker 1: of work that she couldn't do, and one of them
Speaker 1: was Bruce Weber, and that was a big break. I
Speaker 1: eventually got hired to do magazine work, which is what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. Took me seven years, but I
Speaker 1: got a Vogue cover. Used to a lesson in this
Speaker 1: and everybody that's building their career wants to know how
Speaker 1: do you get that big break? Just know that there
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily a big break. There's a lot of little
Speaker 1: things that lead up to it, and it's the simple rules.
Speaker 1: Number one is you have to be open. Number two
Speaker 1: is you have to keep going no matter what. You
Speaker 1: just got to keep at it. And number three is
Speaker 1: you gotta be nice to people. If you're not nice,
Speaker 1: no one's gonna want to either help you or do
Speaker 1: anything for you. And you just got to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: What made you unique as a makeup artist in that
Speaker 1: phase of your life, Well, I think what made me
Speaker 1: unique was my style was different, and I was always
Speaker 1: ready to go and if there was some other jobs
Speaker 1: that needed to be done, like I needed to fan
Speaker 1: the models or get them water. I was the kid
Speaker 1: that did anything. I was so happy to be working.
Speaker 1: I was a sponge. I wanted to learn a lot,
Speaker 1: and I just kept trying things. And I think people
Speaker 1: sense that I was just an eager beaver. Late eighties
Speaker 1: early nineties, You began to make your own makeup. How
Speaker 1: did that start? Well, not in my kitchen. People say
Speaker 1: they started making in their kitchen. I did a shoot
Speaker 1: for a magazine. I think it was Mademoiselle magazine. The
Speaker 1: story was actually on me how a makeup artist shops
Speaker 1: in New York City for off the Beaten Path makeup.
Speaker 1: We went to Keels, nice guy behind the counter, he's
Speaker 1: a chemist. I started talking to him about this lipstick
Speaker 1: I can't find and he's like, oh, I could make
Speaker 1: it for you. I said, really, and I told him
Speaker 1: exactly what I wanted. He made it, sent it back
Speaker 1: a couple of times, not right to dry the color.
Speaker 1: And I said, all right, these are the ten colors
Speaker 1: that I think all the you need really to get
Speaker 1: any color out there. And he said, how about this,
Speaker 1: I'll make the lipstick, you sell it, will sell it
Speaker 1: for fifteen dollars, you get seven fifty. I'll get seven
Speaker 1: Fifty's great idea. And he made them for me and
Speaker 1: we started selling them out of my house. By the
Speaker 1: time you debuted in Bergdorf Goodman in New York, by
Speaker 1: figured something out. Well do you know how I figured
Speaker 1: it out? I want to hear that. I was in
Speaker 1: the elevator in my then apartment in New York and
Speaker 1: there was a girl on the elevator and I said, hello,
Speaker 1: and she said hello, and I said, my name is Bobby.
Speaker 1: Her name was Sharon, and I said what do you do.
Speaker 1: She said, I work at a lab, a cosmetics lab.
Speaker 1: I said, really, do you have a card? And that
Speaker 1: lab still makes the lipsticks today. That is true story
Speaker 1: you debuted in Bergdorf Goodman. They estimated they would sell
Speaker 1: a hundred lipsticks in the first month, and instead they
Speaker 1: sold the hundred in the first day. Did that surprise you, Oh,
Speaker 1: it was pretty cool. But at the time, I had
Speaker 1: one baby, I was commuting back and forth from New
Speaker 1: Jersey to New York. I was still working as a
Speaker 1: makeup artist. My husband was in law school. You know,
Speaker 1: money was tight. Everything was kind of a blur. You
Speaker 1: had to scramble, obviously to get more. And berg Doorf
Speaker 1: must have said, wait a minute, we got a hit here,
Speaker 1: let's give it the shelf space. Right. Well, we were
Speaker 1: originally on a table, and the only reason we were
Speaker 1: on a table is because they didn't have any counter space.
Speaker 1: People now think it was a brilliant marketing idea, and
Speaker 1: it was in retrospect. And then they said, okay, we
Speaker 1: need lip pencils, we need I pencils. So we slowly
Speaker 1: started adding and it grew. Then Neiman Marcus called and said,
Speaker 1: we'd love to take you in four stores, and then
Speaker 1: Barney's called, and then Bendal's called. We didn't have a
Speaker 1: salesperson to go sell it. That's pretty good on It
Speaker 1: sells itself because it was different than what was on
Speaker 1: the market and it was really hitting a nerve. And
Speaker 1: I think the combination of having this product that actually
Speaker 1: didn't really look like makeup that was out there just
Speaker 1: made you look better. It didn't smell, it felt good.
Speaker 1: It wasn't greasy, it wasn't dry. Women looked pretty. It
Speaker 1: was a more natural look. It's what people wanted. And
Speaker 1: at the same time, not because there was a strategy,
Speaker 1: but I was the makeup artist doing makeup for the
Speaker 1: fashion shows, so I got to talk about the trends.
Speaker 1: I was also on the Today's Show. I got to
Speaker 1: talk about it, and everything together look like brilliance. But
Speaker 1: it was just really good luck. I'm sure you made
Speaker 1: your luck. Let's go back. How did you get the introduction?
Speaker 1: It's gonna sounds like I make this up, but I
Speaker 1: was at a party, someone's fancy party in New York City,
Speaker 1: and I said thank you, for inviting me. My name
Speaker 1: is Bobby. I said, what do you do and she said,
Speaker 1: I'm my cousina expire Berg doorf goodman, I'm not even kidding,
Speaker 1: and actually give you some money to put on the
Speaker 1: roulette table. And I think we do very well there.
Speaker 1: So you've got to look at that moment and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: something's happening here. What did you make of it? What
Speaker 1: I remember about that moment is I was still a
Speaker 1: working makeup artist. My husband was probably still in law school,
Speaker 1: I had a second baby, I was still commuting. We
Speaker 1: had business partners. We did not get along with them,
Speaker 1: just two different visions or styles or both both and everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really a tough time and it's probably the
Speaker 1: reason we ended up selling the company. I'm the person
Speaker 1: at night that starts thinking about my day and everything,
Speaker 1: and I'm like really stressed, and my husband's the guy
Speaker 1: that says, not now, we'll talk about it in the morning.
Speaker 1: So I had to somehow go to bed and I
Speaker 1: woke up in the morning every day and we would
Speaker 1: talk about it. We knew it wasn't a forever situation,
Speaker 1: but we were also young kids at the time. We
Speaker 1: didn't know any better. You had this instant success almost
Speaker 1: and on a spectrum of this must be a mistake.
Speaker 1: I don't believe I'm worthy of this too. I'm a
Speaker 1: freaking genius. Look at me. Where were you falling at that?
Speaker 1: Neither neither of those. I was just the person that
Speaker 1: would roll up my sleeves, having a notebook, writing in
Speaker 1: a drawing in it, coming out with new ideas. That
Speaker 1: was the next thing. I wrote a book, What you
Speaker 1: were to write? My first book. It was after Dylan
Speaker 1: was born, so it's got to be around nine two.
Speaker 1: I didn't know a book agent. I don't know how
Speaker 1: you write a book. Okay, so tell us this story.
Speaker 1: It's a story. We were in Nantucket for a vacation.
Speaker 1: I'm on the beach. My kids are playing with some
Speaker 1: older girl, her mother. I introduced myself, what do you
Speaker 1: do that? I'm a book agent. She was my first
Speaker 1: book agent, and I did a book. Had the book.
Speaker 1: It was on the New York Times bestsellers list. Just
Speaker 1: hold on a second, because we've got so much more
Speaker 1: to talk about. We'll be back after a quick break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to math and Magic. We're here with Bobby Brown.
Speaker 1: So you had a really quick pay day, you launched
Speaker 1: A ninety one by Frederick Fakai. Our friend introduced you
Speaker 1: to Leonard Water, and you sold Esta Lauter in nine
Speaker 1: and became the chief Creative Officer. I was actually the
Speaker 1: CEO in the beginning because I got to pick my
Speaker 1: title and I it sounded cool. I didn't notice CEO
Speaker 1: was But after a few years they kindly asked me
Speaker 1: not to be the CEO, and I said, okay. Was
Speaker 1: the only reason you sold Unwind a partnership? Well, it
Speaker 1: was a combination. When Leonard Lauder invited me over for
Speaker 1: dinner and we have this talk dinner on top of
Speaker 1: his building looking over Central Park. I don't know how
Speaker 1: he got the Philharmonic to play, but you know it did,
Speaker 1: and he somehow figured out the food. I like. It
Speaker 1: was exactly a Bobby meal with the best wines you've
Speaker 1: ever had. And he said to me, I know what
Speaker 1: you want to do. You want to be a mom,
Speaker 1: You want to be a wife and a creative person.
Speaker 1: You don't want all this headache. We can grow you
Speaker 1: and we promise you total autonomy. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: autonomy was, but I said, okay, did you get it?
Speaker 1: I did? I stayed twenty two years. What was his
Speaker 1: pitch other than I know you want to do this.
Speaker 1: How did he get you so excited about Estay lauder Well?
Speaker 1: He said to me, you remind me of my mother.
Speaker 1: You are so what the brand is, and I know
Speaker 1: women really live on every word. What you've done is
Speaker 1: so different. And I believed him. I think he was
Speaker 1: the best thing that ever happened to me, and certainly
Speaker 1: that company an amazing guy. Is how did your life
Speaker 1: change working inside a major company and how did people
Speaker 1: begin to treat you once you weren't Bobby Brown but
Speaker 1: you were at State Water Well, it was like being
Speaker 1: in grad school, sitting in these big corporate meetings with
Speaker 1: these guys in suits and ties. Me sitting there with
Speaker 1: some uncomfortable little suit because I thought that mostly guys
Speaker 1: that are mostly guys, even not doing Yeah, the top
Speaker 1: tiers were mostly guys. There were women there. They were
Speaker 1: kind of the lifers they've been there forever. I would
Speaker 1: try to dress up in this way that I fit in.
Speaker 1: I was channeling Melanie Griffith and working girl. I used
Speaker 1: to have to leave my house in the morning with
Speaker 1: a bag of clothes, one outfit for dropping my kids off,
Speaker 1: one for going to the corporate office, one going down
Speaker 1: to do a shoot, and god forbid I had a
Speaker 1: party to go to. I would just have different outfits,
Speaker 1: and finally one day I said this is really stupid,
Speaker 1: and I chose one outfit. And the only thing I
Speaker 1: would ever bring with me is a high pair of shoes.
Speaker 1: If I had a party, I even wore blue jeans
Speaker 1: to the White House every time my one. I didn't care.
Speaker 1: So if you could reach back in time, give yourself
Speaker 1: some great advice just as you were ready to sell
Speaker 1: the company. What would that advice be? Just do exactly
Speaker 1: what you did, you would I wouldn't change anything. Maybe
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have made sure that there was a twenty
Speaker 1: five year noncompete. But it's almost over. Wo never heard
Speaker 1: of one of those we must not pay on your name,
Speaker 1: They on my name, and they can have that name
Speaker 1: after the sale. You, as we were talking about, became
Speaker 1: an even bigger personality and expanded your scope. But you've
Speaker 1: sort of done everything. As you mentioned, you are a
Speaker 1: regular contributor on the Today Show. You know how I
Speaker 1: got that? Tell us the story because it's a religious story.
Speaker 1: I was promoting my first book at Name and Marcus.
Speaker 1: I did my thing and afterwards any questions. There was
Speaker 1: as cute as little lady in the back of the room,
Speaker 1: and I went over to her and she said, yeah,
Speaker 1: how do I keep my lipstick out of the lines?
Speaker 1: And I told her and she said, I've seen you
Speaker 1: on the Today's show. I had been on once. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, and she said, you've done so much. What
Speaker 1: would you like to do? I said, I'd like to
Speaker 1: be a regular. She said, honey, Jeff Zucker is my grandson.
Speaker 1: She called Jeff, and I got on the show on Monday.
Speaker 1: So that's the way to get in. Find the grandmother.
Speaker 1: Find the grandmother. That's the lesson in this. You been
Speaker 1: a regular contributor on the Elvis Rand Show and see
Speaker 1: all the stations he's on, as well as the Rart
Speaker 1: Radio app. You were a contributing editor several magazines. You
Speaker 1: were actually the editor in chief of Yahoo Beauty. You
Speaker 1: and your husband even have a hotel. Now, yes, what
Speaker 1: did you become? This sounds like another phase of Bobby Brown. Well, honestly,
Speaker 1: I learned early on that it's not what I know
Speaker 1: that excites me, it's what I don't know. The projects
Speaker 1: I get excited about, especially if I've never done them before.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about being an editor in chief
Speaker 1: when I did Yahoo Beauty, I didn't know anything, but
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, how would I like to do this.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the same thing with the podcast and
Speaker 1: the same thing with the hotel. Never done a hotel before,
Speaker 1: but I stayed in enough of them. So what turned
Speaker 1: you on was it was new, it was different, you
Speaker 1: were learning something, cultivating it, and creative. It's got to
Speaker 1: be visual, it's got to be creative. I don't like
Speaker 1: working alone. I like working with the team of people,
Speaker 1: and I like having people that are good at all
Speaker 1: these things that I'm not good at. That excites me.
Speaker 1: So talk a little bit about how does the work
Speaker 1: life balance work. I've somehow learned over time what is
Speaker 1: more important and what isn't. But you know, when I
Speaker 1: was a younger working coming up, I was torn. I
Speaker 1: would get a call to do Nicole Kidman's makeup and
Speaker 1: Saurday Night Live, but I had a surprise party for
Speaker 1: my friend Gino Goldberg. Two weeks I agonized about what
Speaker 1: to do, what to do, what to do, and I
Speaker 1: finally made a decision. I went to the birthday party
Speaker 1: and I don't regret it. So you've had a lucky life,
Speaker 1: although you've worked hard for that luck. Talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how you get back you've done some amazing things,
Speaker 1: and how you figure out what you're going to We're
Speaker 1: very big on local. We do a lot of local
Speaker 1: things that make a difference. We have an organization called
Speaker 1: Reaching Out Montclair, which helps the underserved. We also just
Speaker 1: brought a family from the Bahamas that lost their house
Speaker 1: in the Hurricane sixteen. People showed up at my house
Speaker 1: and stayed with us for a couple of weeks until
Speaker 1: we got them a house. And they're here on tourist
Speaker 1: visas and they will be here as long as they
Speaker 1: can because they have nothing to go back to. I
Speaker 1: went to see them last night in the house, and
Speaker 1: these are the happiest, most amazing people, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: that fills me up more than seeing people joyous and happy. Montclair.
Speaker 1: While we're on the subject so long, he's telling me
Speaker 1: that's now the new artist town, that the artists are
Speaker 1: moving to Montclair. Well, Montclair is kind of like the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn of New Jersey. It really is. It's the coolest
Speaker 1: town and the reason it's it's twelve miles out of
Speaker 1: New York. It's easy and it's a complete melting pot.
Speaker 1: Anything goes there in your hotels there. My hotel is there,
Speaker 1: and we also have a film and TV studio. We
Speaker 1: have a soccer bubble. My office is right between it.
Speaker 1: The Food Network shoots across the street from me. We
Speaker 1: have Stephen Colbert Patrick Wilson, who is Aquaman. I saw
Speaker 1: him this morning at the Chiropractor. It's a really fun town.
Speaker 1: So you're back in the thick of business again. You
Speaker 1: left in two thousand and sixteen. It was doing over
Speaker 1: a million dollars in revenue. Your company aspirations for that again?
Speaker 1: Never so whatever. Tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 1: new businesses. Well, when I left the brand, I literally
Speaker 1: had no clue what I was going to do. The
Speaker 1: first thing I did is I called two friends, two
Speaker 1: of my besties. One is Mickey Drexler. He was amazing
Speaker 1: emotional support. The other was Richard Baker, who happened to
Speaker 1: own Lord and Taylor and Sex. Richard said, awesome, I
Speaker 1: got a project for you and gave me a Just
Speaker 1: Bobby concept shop in Lord and Taylor. It was successful enough.
Speaker 1: Didn't save Lord and Taylor, but it was successful enough.
Speaker 1: And then I brought it in house digital. I opened
Speaker 1: up Just Bobby dot com digital magazine, started doing speeches
Speaker 1: and just seeing people. Opened an office, hired an assistant
Speaker 1: out of the Apple Store because I needed someone to
Speaker 1: help me with my iPhones. Office in Montclair or New York. Montclair.
Speaker 1: I will never have an office in New York again. Sorry.
Speaker 1: I literally walked to work. My dog comes with me,
Speaker 1: people's babies come with them. We have a manicurist every
Speaker 1: other week. It's just so different. Then I got this
Speaker 1: opportunity to create a wellness brand. The wellness brand is
Speaker 1: growing the fastest thing right now. We're in a lot
Speaker 1: of retail, we're digital, We're going to the UK opening boots.
Speaker 1: I'm also launching a podcast, as we said, with my Heart,
Speaker 1: which I'm really excited beyond the beauty, pretty excited about that.
Speaker 1: We're very excited about folks have worked with you. Honestly,
Speaker 1: all that stuff means a lot. I just launched a
Speaker 1: master class, which was the first ever makeup I had
Speaker 1: to get models and I got to teach my philosophy,
Speaker 1: which is health and wellness and entrepreneurship and not contouring,
Speaker 1: So talk about Beyond the Beauty. The podcast Beyond the
Speaker 1: Beauty is basically I talked to everyone from my husband,
Speaker 1: my kids, my Aunt Alice, to hair restoration people, to
Speaker 1: fitness people to entrepreneurs things that I want to learn,
Speaker 1: because beauty isn't just makeup, it's really what is beauty.
Speaker 1: Beauty is what like to look at, what you like
Speaker 1: to feel like. I'm a very curious person trying to
Speaker 1: better myself. I like to share with people the things
Speaker 1: that I want to know. And guess what, it's not
Speaker 1: that complicated. Are you doing one a week? One a week? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Tell me about podcasting. When you first get interested in podcasting,
Speaker 1: when did it pop on your radar screen? Well, I
Speaker 1: had no clue what podcasting was. I met Gary Vannerchuk,
Speaker 1: so I was on his show a couple of times.
Speaker 1: He invited me to come back, and then one day
Speaker 1: he started a podcast division. He wanted to do a podcast.
Speaker 1: I said, okay, I don't have an agent. By the way,
Speaker 1: I don't sound like I've never had an agent. So
Speaker 1: I did it for about a year and a half
Speaker 1: and that was called long Story Short. I would just
Speaker 1: come in and I have all these interesting people, people
Speaker 1: I didn't know, people I would bring in and just
Speaker 1: start talking and ask them like, who are you? This
Speaker 1: podcast is really for marketers and entrepreneurs. What a marketers
Speaker 1: not understand about beauty and health? People that are beauty
Speaker 1: people don't understand that beauty is more than just makeup.
Speaker 1: There are other things that are beauty, and women are
Speaker 1: more interested in lifestyle than just beauty. So it's not
Speaker 1: about this perfect thing in your face. It's about how
Speaker 1: everything goes together. So when you look at models, and
Speaker 1: you look at magazines, or you look at online or
Speaker 1: social how are they getting wrong and how they're representing
Speaker 1: things to women in America. Not everyone is doing it wrong,
Speaker 1: but I think that there's a big opportunity because for years,
Speaker 1: cosmetics companies and beauty companies will be telling people what's
Speaker 1: wrong with them. You need this cream because your skin
Speaker 1: is bad. You need this foundation because you're the wrong color.
Speaker 1: You need this because you have to change in the
Speaker 1: shape of your nose. That's not true. Yes, you want
Speaker 1: to look good, but if you don't feel good, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna look good. And it's not about weight or diet.
Speaker 1: It's just about feeling good thinking about this moment in
Speaker 1: time and beauty and fashion. How would you describe where
Speaker 1: we are right now? We're at a very interesting time
Speaker 1: because there's a combination of the YouTube makeup tutorials and
Speaker 1: people becoming brands because of this platform them in makeup
Speaker 1: that supports it. We also have the big brands that
Speaker 1: are trying to figure out what's going on. We have
Speaker 1: the digital brands that are some are doing brilliant jobs.
Speaker 1: There's so many of them. And there's also the new
Speaker 1: clean movement. So I find it a really exciting time.
Speaker 1: But I see a really big white space talk about
Speaker 1: ingredients and the products. It's changed a lot. It has
Speaker 1: changed a lot, and hopefully it will change permanently because
Speaker 1: there are a lot of ingredients that when I was
Speaker 1: making cosmetics, I had no clue they weren't good for you.
Speaker 1: Everything gets absorbed through the skin, So I only use organic,
Speaker 1: clean things to clean my house. I make sure that
Speaker 1: what I eat is as clean as possible. I know
Speaker 1: not everyone listening could afford organic food, but if I
Speaker 1: have a choice, I don't want chemicals. There's no reason
Speaker 1: to do that. The best quality food that you can
Speaker 1: put in your body is going to make you look better.
Speaker 1: The clean beauty space is going to keep growing, and
Speaker 1: I think eventually no one's gonna have a choice. Every
Speaker 1: company is going to have to have clean products. So
Speaker 1: you've been a big success by almost every measure of success, family, financial, work, fame, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I know there are a lot of folks listening who
Speaker 1: are building their careers today. What advice would you give them?
Speaker 1: I mean, I would first of all say there is
Speaker 1: no rush. I help a lot of young entrepreneurs that
Speaker 1: I'm friends with, and they always seem like it has
Speaker 1: to be done now. Oh my god, has we done?
Speaker 1: Oh my god? Series A, Series B, I don't even
Speaker 1: know what. Like, guys, calm down. You've got to build
Speaker 1: a brand. People think that the whole idea of building
Speaker 1: a brand is to sell it and make a lot
Speaker 1: of money. No, build a brand that you love. It
Speaker 1: takes time. It's like a baby. You've got to nurture it.
Speaker 1: So I would tell people to relax and chill and
Speaker 1: not be afraid to change if something they're doing isn't working. Change.
Speaker 1: So as we wrap up, we end each episode with
Speaker 1: a shout out to those special people on the creative side.
Speaker 1: And on the analytical side of marketing and business, who
Speaker 1: is your choice for that math person, that analytical brain
Speaker 1: that you've encountered or know about. I mean, right now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to say David Nass, who was my CFO,
Speaker 1: just because he was the one that understood and he
Speaker 1: knew exactly how to explain it to me and teach me.
Speaker 1: So on the creative side, who's the magician? I would
Speaker 1: say a photographer named Henry let Wilder. And I've been
Speaker 1: looking for my creative marketing partner for a hundred years. Bobby,
Speaker 1: you have an amazing life story, lots of valuable lessons.
Speaker 1: Thanks for sharing, thanks for asking me. Nice to see you.
Speaker 1: Here are a few things I've picked up in my
Speaker 1: conversation with Bobby. One, there's no such thing as a
Speaker 1: big break. As Bobby says, it's a lot of little
Speaker 1: breaks that eventually add up to a big success. To
Speaker 1: get excited about what you don't know, whether it's becoming
Speaker 1: a magazine editor or hosting a podcast. Bobby is always
Speaker 1: eager to step outside her comfort zone and try new things.
Speaker 1: Three talk to everyone you can. Some of Bobby's most
Speaker 1: important relationships from her makeup manufacturer to her distributor to
Speaker 1: her book agent. All started with a simple conversation with
Speaker 1: a stranger. Bobby has our own podcast, Beyond the Beauty
Speaker 1: with Bobby Brown. Be sure to give it a listen.
Speaker 1: That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
Speaker 1: to Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which
Speaker 1: just no small feat. Nikkiatore for pulling research bill plaques
Speaker 1: and Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor, Ryan Murdoch,
Speaker 1: and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel Mango and
Speaker 1: everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until
Speaker 1: next time,